Back Sweetened Oblivion by John Patrick Robbins

Good morning, and welcome to another edition of October Stories! Today’s is a short story by John Patrick Robbins!

Back Sweetened Oblivion

By John Patrick Robbins

Somewhere in the sticks and not so distant future

Mac always preferred to set his camp in or near cemeteries because, in reality, no hunter in his right mind looked for fresh meat in a stone garden.

Of course, the world hadn't been in its right mind in ages ever since the proverbial shit hit the fan and the rich hid behind their walls as society as a whole was reset to zero. Those on the outside were left to die or kill one another off as the new civilization would outwait us to, in turn, then clean up the mess and start over.

It was a beautiful theory, but the so-called lesser people were as hard to kill as cockroaches, for when you come from nothing to begin with, you first learn to be resourceful.

Either way, here Mac was, still alive and still in hiding as he had always been; now it seemed the whole outside world was homeless, as the so-called smart ones banded together like packs of mongrel dogs hunting until that dried up, like now, as they slowly turn on one another.

Mac sat there, hidden as best he could be behind a giant old tombstone. He looked through his binoculars at the tent set at the tree line. The dumb fucks should know better, he thought to himself. Then again, he also had to remind himself some of these morons were raised in these packs of even larger idiots who became drunk with power; much like the politicians of the past, power always brings out the worst in humanity.

The one thing he missed, besides being available for dinner or on the menu, was music.

“Fuck, I wish sometimes this shit would just be over,” Mac said aloud, knowing how he couldn't make those kind of fuckups. Often, conversations could kill, even ones just to hear your voice because you're sick of not speaking at all.

Pets had long become extinct; everything and anything that could be consumed was on the table. Maxwell Davison sat there waiting for nightfall, careful to breathe. Careful to not do anything that would draw attention.

As he played this cat-and-mouse game that was his daily existence, he wished only to be back in his bed in his home in the marsh, surrounded by snakes and everything that, along with himself, was hard to kill and, at times, difficult to spot.

It seemed like it had been hours when, at last, a hunter noticed the tent just as he suspected. Mac grabbed his binoculars and focused on the hunter who, although reasonably large in stature, seemed scared shitless like everyone was in these times where the saying don't fuck up took on a whole new meaning.

The man looked around, knowing this was almost too good to be true. He slowly approached the tent, his ax clenched.

Mac didn't even consider calling out. It wasn’t even dog-eat-dog these days; it was more like dog-eat anything that you could quickly bludgeon without getting damaged yourself. The wait made Mac almost sick to his perpetually empty stomach as he tried vainly to block the sights of his memories past, many started like this.

The hunter slowly, ever so cautiously, approached the tent, reaching out with a shaky hand as he took one step too many. His leg fell into the hole as he felt the searing pain of the bear trap biting into his leg. He screamed as the pain was unfathomable.

“Damn, that looks like it hurts, my friend.”

The hunter almost pissed himself at the intrusion as he tried in vain to reach for his ax, watching as this strange old man quickly grabbed it. “Now, now, my friend. Let’s not start off on a bad foot or, should I say, leg.”

“Fuck you! Motherfucker, you better fucking run before my friends get here. Either way, you’re fucking dead, asshole!”

Mac laughed. He had to admire this clown's balls. This guy was almost as thin as Mac himself.

Clearly his friends didn't share the wealth, if they had any to begin with.

“Yeah, I'm scared. What you gonna do, chew your leg off and chase after me, cocksucker?”

“Goddamn, you fucking asshole,” the man cried, and for that, Mac could not blame him. The pain was just another agony of this fucking hell. All those who still existed topside had to endure; lucky were the dead, for they knew peace.

Mac felt the tremor in his right hand. In his momentary loss of thought, Mac almost dropped the ax as the trapped hunter tried to reach for the weapon. Even though it was hopeless, he appreciated the man's instincts to survive.

“I'm sorry,” Mac said, bringing down the ax upon the man's head. The force made a sickening thud that almost split his head in half like a damned cantaloupe, the blood splattering. Mac knew that no matter the mess, he had to move quickly. It was the law of the jungle out here, and someone was always willing to swoop in like a vulture and steal the fruits of another’s deeply twisted labor.

Mac began as quickly as his aging body allowed, butchering this unfortunate fool's body just beyond the treeline as the proverbial hunter turned out to be the hunted.

The lure had worked, and for that, Mac was grateful as he traversed his way back to the insufferable shack in the marsh where he would begin the process of smoking the meat and live yet a few days more happily alone ignoring the tremors along with the aftereffects of cannibalism and the pains within his heart what indeed was the signs of heart disease.

He wondered if the rich behind their walls had not entombed themselves to face the same horrors eventually or if their agonies were running out of caviar and champagne.

Sometimes, he questioned how they would taste. Would they be sweet, void of the struggles of a collapsed society? He once heard a story about when they had first discovered the Donner party. When they offered the certain survivors of this unfortunate group of people huddled around a fire actual food, they refused, instead choosing not to waste their fellow fallen companion’s flesh.

Mac was like a dog with a taste for blood. Was he a monster or a survivor who had evolved by necessity, never because of choice?

He boiled the soup of an unfortunate soul's fatal mistake, knowing full well that this could have very easily been him. By the illumination of the fire, he viewed the old picture of his beloved Tiffany and their daughter.

Mac knew his demons very well. He kept a piece of them with him, quite literally, as he had consumed his beloved’s heart and kept her skull upon his makeshift nightstand.

Forever, she would remain, for he had devoured her very soul along with their child. It is amazing what a human will do to survive. He lay there in the small shack’s fireplace’s illumination, staring into the sockets that once held those ever-so-deep blue eyes.

Sometimes, if you stare long enough into the abyss, so it’s said, the abyss stares into all that never was you.

Sometimes, there are far worse fates than death.

The End

Bio

John Patrick Robbins, is a Southern Gothic writer, his work has been published in Schlock Magazine, Punk Noir Magazine, Sava Press, Disturb The Universe, Fixator Press, Piker Press and The Dope Fiend Daily.

His work is often dark and always unfiltered.