Pigment And Wax

snippet oo7 (the bond of snippets)

It’s like this.

You’re riding on the back of a flea bitten, decomposing Barb horse. Its head is split open from its forelock to its crest, and the cannon of its front leg has been gnawed down to the bone. The hooks of its ribs are poking through the flesh that’s still there and it’s treading on its own small intestine while it unfurls across a stretch of burgundy out land. Seventy feet of horse intestine is dragging behind you and splitting open along the road. The dust that’s been suffocating the Earth since the end began is shimmering under heavy sunlight. It’s like Mars out there. For Burnt Sienna, it’s a sweet deal. You’ve got one hell of an advantage when your waxy shell is the same color as the dead world surrounding you.

She’s singing, “London town 1730! Women drunk, children dirty! They’d seen the pictures from afar! Down in Gin Lane! Over the bar!” while rounding up a brood of storming cattle, all with their scalps peeled back and their skulls bleached by the sun. Once she’s gotten ‘em running together in damn near perfect unison, Black throws the makeshift bomb, and they scatter in bloody chunks all across the highway. Suddenly there are colors everywhere.

Burnt Sienna finds this little f**k, a black crayon with his fingers worn down to the knuckles in the back of a motel one night. He’s sticking his stubby fingers into the warm, gooey insides of radioactive vermin. Black drawings, most of ‘em tally marks, are etched all over the parking lot. He’s writing himself to death. She says, “Why’re you sittin’ out here wastin’ time whorin’ yerself? Ain’t you supposed to be out there killing things?” And he says, “It doesn’t mean anything because nothing means anything. Ultimately, everything comes to a stop. Even time.”

She takes him with her. Burnt Sienna, the feral rotting horse, and Black, going wherever the bedraggled road leads them, blowing up whatever and whoever with explosives made from the wax chemical waste she scrapes off of Black’s legs. He's gonna die soon anyway, right? He might as well make 'imself useful. They go on riding for days without a sign of life from their own kind. Finally, they come across some periwinkle knucklehead running through where? It doesn't matter. Just that they find two other units in this mess of of rubble and sewage. Burnt Sienna pushes Black off the back of the horse and he goes tumbling into the ground as she dismounts. She joins her Crayola brothers with a dignified nod and Black is still rolling around on the ground, writing himself until his forearms are flat. Sienna laughs and spits hot, melting wax
onto the crumbling pavement.

"So what? So we got Orange, Grey, and Puke Green."

Author's Note

{ the apocalypse. everything that was once living has become a radioactive zombie. the earth's saviors are crayola crayons. anthropomorphic crayon people. each standing at about five feet. it's their job to wipe everything off the earth. OK? ok. }

Reviews

[Man-Alive!]

Seriously, you need to learn how to write a film script!

[Two Timer]

exceeelllent! first paragraph has got such a flow it's got a whole RYTHYM. could totally envision that horse tearing itself apart on some highway some where. wish you would stop being add and continue!

[Dane Osborne]

Wonderfully creative and surreal. As usual you don't disappoint. I loved the whole premise of crayon people in a radioactive appocalypse.

[Henry Daube]

f*****g great...is what it is really....

crayola crayon people
ok. great.
Really.

Impressed.