Yantarian, a roving mage of the 54th order of nebulonic seers, was kind of depressed ...
"Shit, I can't even afford spider soup, let alone the medusa-eel that is found in the old river ..."
Yantarian, or Yant, was one of many wanderers in that post-nuclear-war world ... looking for food. Believing he had super powers, as most of the mutants did - of course no such thing was possible, but belief is a messy thing man. The people of the ZERO AGE, as they called it, didn't live long - 35, 45 years of age, and then one of 1,000 different cancers, after eating away at their bones and gut, left them as a stinky pile mess ... their quality of life would be considered sub-standard by the mole-kings of the Rocky Mountains.
America was a vast wasteland of poopy nothing ...
No crops could be grown but the "fungus", and it was a deadly combination of food and predator. The "fungus" had evolved quickly from crop blight, in that strange radioactive world. It had the ability to move, to be connected to a hive brain, it even wrote short stories ... the fungal stories would be scratched upon the rocks, etched upon the walls of old buildings, in the greases and bio-acid the fungus exuded from its dirty nasty crap hole.
Yant was a wanderer. He had no tribe, no sect. He called himself a "mage", but he really didn't know what that meant - he could barely read, and what he knew he learned from old Dungeons & Dragons game manuals. Yant was hungry. He hadn't had the "fungal" loaf, or the spider-soup in days. The spiders were pretty good eating, and equally dangerous. The spiders would move in large packs across the great plains - which were now mostly desert and dust and the bones of cars and men.
Yant had heard there was an old style bar, that sold fermented spider blood whiskey, not far from his current location - which was near the old city of Lawrence, KS. The bar or tavern or public house was called the Shlimbus Fury, named for a very debilitating intestinal issue, mostly due to that fact that the human intestine had been mostly destroyed by decades of radiation, and replaced by maggots, from flies, that lived symbiotically inside the humans that still "thrived".
He could see a fire-light in the distance, his pace quickened - he didn't care what gimbus-bowl he had to swallow, he had to eat, his internal maggots were restless ... and this was bad because when the maggots hadn't eaten in a while they would slowly consume the human host from the inside out ... messed up man.
"That must be it, that must be Shlimbus Fury!", Yantarian exclaimed, for no one to hear but the fungal colony that was tracking him.
He could hear the colony behind him ... oozing, sliding, moving with a nasty stealth across those barren lands.
He had to eat, and soon ...
And he had arrived, it was there - SHLIMBUS FURY, one of the last bars in N. America. He had some tradable items ... an old cassette tape, a glass bottle, and an arrow for a handheld crossbow ... he didn't own a crossbow, but he'd found it along the way.
He opened the door to the bar, and the usual types were there - Las Vegas slave-lords, hookers, LSD freaks, and various monks of the Order of Unholy Shite. He grabbed a stool at the bar, and the bartender came by ...
"Crap head, what do you want?"
"Do you have the spider-ale?"
"Fuck yeah bro, but it's a little off ... get it at half price ... what do you have to trade for credit?"
Yant showed him, the bartender, his finds - the bartender measured, made notes in an old pornographic magazine he used as a ledger, and then after 5 minutes or so ... well ... he came back to Yant with an estimate of value.
"Dude ... this stuff is ok, gets you 10 credits ..."
Yant looked at the menu written on chalk above the bar, on it was the "catch of the day" - two headed boar ... 3 credits for a boar sandwich, and 4 credits for the large spider-ale ... spider soup came with the sandwich, and this made Yant very pleased.
"I'll take the number 3, with a large spider-ale ..."
"Be careful bud, that shit is off ... kind of trashy ... a woman came in last night, a hooker from Seattle ... she'd been 'paying her way' across the wasted realm ... she drank two drams of that crap ... started bleeding from her butt hole ... died right where you're sitting ..."
"Man ... I don't care ... I'm a 54th level mage man ..."
"What's that?"
"We are slayers of bugbears, and capable of defeating wizards with fireballs and crap."
"Whatever man ... sounds like bullshit to me ..."
Yant waited for his food, and slowly sipped his spider ale. The ale wasn't that bad, in fact, it tasted better than most of the ale he had consumed lately. Lately, a nasty radiation storm had been dropping gobs of burny, itchy, shit, all over the world ... most had red burn splotches on their skin. Some were saying that a great and terrible comeuppance was coming, that mankind, which numbered about 50 million at this point, was going to be gone soon. The nuclear war, which ended 50 years earlier, had completely destroyed the world's ecosystem, damaged the weather, and ruined things - there were stories of a place called WALMART ... a magical place ... but no one believe it existed or ever did.
"Here's your tormulak swill ... enjoy ...", the bartender said.
Yant began eating his two-headed boar sandwich, he guzzled down his spider soup, and nursed his spider ale ... he had enough credits for another drink ... and he would have one.
"Dude, are you sure you want another pint of that crap?"
"Man ... I'm a mage man ... a mage", the alcohol content of spider ale was 67% ... and Yant hadn't had a drink in several months.
Yant felt strange ...
His heart rate changed, as if he knew what that was ...
"Are the maggots having issues?", he thought. It wasn't the maggots. The spiders had been evolving, incorporating human RNA into their poisons. No one knew, how could they? - but these goddamn spiders were now producing blood containing mutagens, capable of changing human DNA.
Yant's arms began growing coarse, nasty, hair.
The bartender ignored him - he was talking to a hooker.
Yant's legs grew longer, his feet fell off.
Still ... no one in the bar noticed, because one of the 5 breasted strippers was on stage.
Yant had bad thoughts, of drinking human blood, but he needed that fucking drink ...
After 30 minutes, Yant was different ...
The bartender looked up to notice, and Yant shot a proboscis from his head ... drank the bartender dry.
Everyone took notice - one of the monks came at him, with a sword, and Yant trapped him in a sticky material that shot out of his butt hole.
The bar was in terror ... the gawkers and schlimbus drinkers ran out as soon as they could - but Yant, Yant sealed the door shut with his butt juices.
It was eery ...
The bar was silent in 10 minutes ...
Yant helped himself to as much spider ale as he could drink.
As Yant's consciouness became more "spider than man", he read an inscription on the wall ... probably left by a hooker.
"Don't shove that down your shlimbus pipe, behold the gromulan of tomorrow ..."
And Yant, in the last moments of his human consciousness, remarked to himself - because no one was left alive in the bar.
"That's it ... I am the GROMULAN of TOMORROW!"
THE END
(nuclear war is bullshit)