Chapter Text
1st Entry
Hello Diary! My name is Midge, Midge Miracle. I’m writing you because I’m currently confined to a small place I’ve already explored every nook and cranny of.
Confined because my nose was shot off, which takes a while to heal (well, the skin around it, I’m not about to grow back my nose,) enough not to be at risk of infections if you go outside, Doc Mitchel says.
I’m no fool, I know new wounds need time away from the out of doors to be safe, and I know to stick to a healer’s advice. So I’ve been staying in, but I swear at this rate the boredom is bound to kill me sooner than infection ever could!
Nobody’s even been to see me! Well, expect Mitchel of course, but he’s been finding reasons to not find me as of late. If my estimations are right, and they usually are, it’s because rolling in the hay together got him feeling things he wasn’t planning. Which is not commonly the case with quiet lonesome folks, maybe I shoulda accounted for the possibility, tread lighter or not at all, but I didn’t even think of said possibly being there.
I got stir crazy! and when I get stir crazy it becomes mighty difficult to think of much beyond what’ll get me not stir crazy.
I do hope the poor fella’s not having much trouble handling whatever feelings he may or may not be having on account of my lack of accounting, I would hate for him to be suffering.
Anyway, nobody else in this village, Goodsprings Town I’m told it’s called, has been to see me. I figures there’s three possible reasons for that.
Firstly, the local folk well might take kindly enough to outsiders to let me stay where I am, but not kindly enough to want to see heads or tails of me. That doesn’t seem much likely given how exceeding Mitchell’s hospitality has been, but for all I know he could be the odd one out. After all, it would make sense for the nicest person in the village to be the one to be the one that ends up a healer. Still, I’m hoping this isn’t the case, so it doesn't seem likely.
Secondly, everyone who would be nice enough, or just curious enough to stop in has been busy. I’ve got no clue what this village is like outside of what I can see from the windows here, but what I can see is at least some of the folks are dang near always helping some plants grow or picking what those plants have grown. Must be important, given they’re at it such a high percentage of the time I’ve been here. Doesn’t seem fun enough to stuff like that for the fun of doing it. So could be the whole village has been busy doing important things! Could be a seasonal thing, I certainly hope so, living like that year round don’t seem like much of a life to me.
Thirdly, it’s just the local custom here to leave people who are in the process of healing to their lonesome. A whole village of hypochondriacs, or of superstitious types who think injured folks are bad luck or something silly like that, the specifics ain’t important. I’ve been told a bunch of folks out there hold onto a whole lot of strange and confusing stories like that as fact for strange and confusing reasons for years and years, even some from before the war!
Well, the possibilities tallied up. One, two, three. I can only come to one conclusion. This was a sorry attempt at keeping boredom away!
I don’t much care why I’m by my lonesome, I am by my lonesome and it’s boring and I hate it! No possibly I can think up will change that! Only leaving this drab little building will change that.
I wanna go outside!
2nd Entry
Hello again diary, I know it hasn’t been long, but Mitchell still isn’t back yet. He’s avoiding me.
So I figures I may as well put down about how it was I got here, sans nose.
I grew up in a sleepy little village not too far off from here, a member of the tribe of the Anfo October. I would never say we’re exactly a bad tribe to come up in, in fact I would say we’re just about as kind and fair and good to each other as anyone could be! But kind and fair and good to each other isn’t enough for me, not when it comes with sticking around our little village and making the same explosives as pretty much everybody else and only doing anything actually exciting or even trading for anything new when pretty much everyone agrees to it.
Till I set off, traders where the only outsiders I ever did get to see, and they only came a few times a season at most! To make things worse, while I was growing up, oftentimes I was lied up in bed and missed these rare visits completely! Back then traders tended to be hurried off by folks almost as soon as they put down what we’d gotten from them. I never could stand that, it was just about the only time anyone wasn’t acting fair to each other, and how very unfair it was! Shooing folks from the outside off knowing full well there was a portion of the youngers who wanted tales of the outside very much, and when often one of which hadn’t even been able to even lay eyes of the outsiders this time.
Folks who did the shooing were usually ones who had done traveling in the outside themselves before coming back home. I figures it was because of this they thought nobody would be much entertained to hear tales of the outside. Must have proven mighty dull to them for them to home back not wanting to talk hardly at all about it, but we made it very clear to them we wanted to hear tales no matter what they advised.
This blatant unfairness didn’t stop for a while, everyone more or less taking for granted that it was just how things go and where to go, but I’m proud to say I have a major role in how it did stop! It was my idea that all the youngsters who’d been wanting to talk more to the traders, that we should put voice to the unfairness we’d suffered when all the tribe have gathered to decide what to trade for the things for trading we’d made this season.
Well, once the whole tribe saw that a whole lot of us hadn’t had a say in a decision that mattered quite a bit to those who hadn’t had a say, those shooers hung their heads in shame and shooed no longer, you can believe me there.
Of course, myself and the other previously mistreated youngers, we didn’t hold grudge against those folks now that they’d ended the mistreatment.
Funny enough, one of them was my closest and longest standing companion, my father, Maverick Miracle, who like most of them had been outside. Unlike most of the others, howsever, he was born and raised out there! Which I figures is why he was so attached to me compared to the other children who’d come up alongside me. He told me where he grew up the only one to look out for a child growing up was the one who’d carried the child before they’d come into the world and sometimes their one romantic love. That was one of the things he told me whenever I asked why he chose to stay in such a boring place when he could have gone anywhere, a common line of questioning I put to him. In Anfo October, folks just took care of folks.
I had, and still do, have a hard time believing this is such a rarity as he would have me think. As he thinks himself.
There's so many people outside that little village! Even if many of them are bad, so very harsh a cruel and unpredictable like he’s told me they are, they can’t all be!
I was right in that, just look at Mitchell! I’ve never even set foot in his village he didn’t know me one bit, yet he gave his all to ensuring I have a safe recovery and didn’t expect nothing in return. Blast, how many of Anfo October would show such generosity to a unknown outsider?
He discouraged my setting off, my father did, because he said it’s rougher in the outside than I could ever imagine. I’ll admit, I hurt to have him so against my dreams, (it always had, a bit, but it was worse when I was just about to reach out and grab those dreams) but I didn’t let that stop me. And, maybe there was truth to what he was saying, but I won’t let that stop me either. Sure it’s rough, but I’m not some sick child blown over by the wind anymore, I can live without my nose! Because there’s goodness out here to, just like I knew there would be! Goodness beyond what he could ever imagine!
For sure, for most of my life this didn’t seem like anything I’d ever be able to do. Radiation got to my father when he was carrying me, before he joined our tribe, and although they fixed him up pretty quickly, they couldn’t do the same for me. I was brought into the world just fine, but after that guess you could say I didn’t grow up in very far in the most literal sense, about four and a hair literal feet before I stopped, and I was sick almost always. I’d probably find lying here nostalgic, if it wasn’t so lonely. Back home I always had friends around, and my dad, and when I was sick was no exception. We’d dive into fictional worlds in old scripts, and create new worlds just for us, taking turns making them from scratch or how we imagined places outside of our time and place to be, like before the bombs or across the vast desert or in that shining city in the distance brighter than any star, and act out adventures through them when I was well enough. Sometimes with an audience, which was the best of times.
But I got better, slowly, never did grow taller, or grow any hair, but I was well enough to leave home and finally see the outside! Walking all the way to Goodsprings Town should be proof enough of that, but that isn’t all I did. I got myself to a whole different place first, called Primm, and got a job as a courier. I don’t even remember what I was given to carry. It doesn’t matter, what matters is what it was to me, proof I was ready for this outside! For adventure, and excitement! I’ve grown out of playing pretend, and I don’t intend to stay around this sleepy little village for much longer!
Some asshole, or assholes shot me, for reasons that remain a mystery to me, and took what I was transporting. But they didn’t take my proof!
Entry 3
Mitchell finally stopped avoiding me, long enough to say I can leave! Boy howdy am I glad to see this village from outside his house, even if it is actually fairly dull now I’m out here. Would be exploring more instead of pausing to write, but he told me I better take it easy at first and I know better than to push when a healer warns against it, even when you feel like you can take it just fine.
Before sending me on my way he handed me the thing I had on me when I was attacked, (expect for the nice purple dress with the kitten embroidery because, tragically, it was too worn and torn by the whole getting shot then dumped in a shallow grave thing to save, and the pretty pink pretty pink wig I was wearing, also tragically lost, he says I came in without it), plus a off white scarf thing for my head so I don't get sunburned there, which I guess is worth wearing something so plain, a jumpsuit that used to be worn by a woman who was his wife (that's an old world term for a long lasting, very close romantic partner who's a woman, there’s a version for men, 'husband', and a version that covers all options,’spouse’) so I’ve got some clothes on, and an amazing little gadget called a Pit-Boy!
There’s a couple things like a Pit-Boy back home, but none as advanced as this, it’s practically a shrunken down computer! No, it does even more than one! And it’s just for me to use! It feels so strange for something so useful to be just for me to use whenever I feel like it instead of only when it's my turn, a little like I'm doing something wrong, but I can't share it with anyone now I'm traveling solo. It’s really just for me! It'll always be my turn with it! It tells the time, oh what time is it? time for my turn!
But actually it does tell the time, and does so many other things to! I haven’t figured out all of them yet, but I have figured out a bunch. It’s got a map of everywhere I go with it on, with so far isn’t very far but will be, a light, and greatest of all, a radio with two stations! I haven’t gotten a chance to listen to those much yet, but I know I will! Having music whenever I want is sure to make the roads between exciting places a lot less boring!
Then I met my savior, Victor, a real cowboy robot! Well, a real robot, one that talks and moves and thinks like something out of an old story! Back home there’s a big old shell of what looks to be a robot, much bigger than Victor, but that hasn’t done anything but be good for climbing and painting on for as far back as anyone can remember, I’ve never seen anything like Victor, so full and alive! He says he’s a “securitron”, which sounds like a type of guard or protector. If it’s the latter, could be that’s why he’s sticking around here looking out for folks in trouble. He sure gave me security, I’d have been a sure goner without him!
Oh, and he had the wig I wear! A little dusty, but just as pink and pretty as I last saw it otherwise. What a relief to retrieve it, it’s a more important part of my appearance than my nose ever was, and I’d look downright plain without it! Victor says it was a little ways from the spot he found me at, must have fallen off when I was grabbed.
Anyway, he helps out around Goodsprings Town in other ways when not being a daring rescueer, has been doing so for about a decade and a half. Sadly he doesn’t remember much of his past, or he doesn’t want to talk about it, which is damn frustrating when he’s got such an interesting one but I grew up with world champion questions about past dodger Maverick Miracle raising me, so I know how to live with the frustration.
Doesn’t seem to remember much about whoever grabbed me to shoot my nose off and left me in a shallow grave to be dug out my him neither, other than that they looked like “bad eggs”. I might have hit my head too hard to remember what they look like, but I think I coulda figured that part out myself. Said the other folks around here might know, so I’ll ask them.
Still, I keep thinking back to one question, who would do something like that? I didn’t do any wrong by them! Not that I’m aware of anyway, and if I did something that was bad enough to make someone want to kill me, or come near to killing me, sure think I would be aware of it! Back when I first took this job, which feels longer ago than it was, making me a courier, there was another courier, well, a few other couriers, but one in particular, a nice quiet fella, had about half his face scarred up so much, chunks where just gone. I didn’t ask how that’d happened, because it seemed to be a point of insecurity to him, the way he was trying to hide in the big ol hat he had on, but now I almost wish I did. We’re both working the same type of job, could whoever shot my face done the same to his? Maybe he would know why.
Taking what I was carrying by force I can understand, even if that little thing didn’t seem worth the risk to me (them not knowing if the folks of the nearby village would come by and make trouble for them for doing so, or if I had something up my sleeve to deploy against things being taken by force) but almost ending somebody’s life? There’s gotta be a reason for that, and I aim to find it.
Entry 4
Met a couple more local folk! Both human this time.
Sunny, a pretty dame a bit older than me who has a stinky dog and neato armor made of the geckos she hunts. I like Sunny a lot, and she’s gonna teach me how to shoot a rifle! I can already use a handgun alright, but that’s about where my firearm knowledge ends. I’m good with explosives, but those can get heavy and out here are pretty hard to come by, so will be good to know another way to fend off nasty critters. Plus, it’ll just be nice to spend time with Sunny! Even if I have to spend time with that mangy thing following her around to do it.
Chet, who is a trader but instead of traveling stays in a place called the general store. Says he gets other folks to bring in his wares. Not sure what that leaves him to do! But he says it leaves plenty. Also says folks mostly trade separate from each other in this village, which seems down right inconvenient to me. Chet says it works for them just fine. I figure he says so because the inconvenience is what gives him plenty to be doing, and what he’s got to be doing he enjoys the doing of.
Even without doing the traveling traveling for what he trades, at least nows-a-days, like any trader I’ve met, one of Chet’s primary wares is his telling stories about how things are outside of where he’s telling ‘em. It’s a good thing it doesn’t need to be traded for, because it’s always been my favorite type of traders’ ware! Chet knows more than anyone else here about…. Well, anything outside Goodsprings Town. He’s even been to New Vegas, and twice!
That’s the name of that shining city I’d watch in wonder on clear nights back home. Just about everyone I’ve ever known wondered about it, but I’ve never met anyone who’d actually gone to it, right up to the lights and walked in. (Oh diary, they must blind the eyes that close!)
Never met anyone who’d been there but Chet of course, and he says it’s mostly casinos, and in those casinos is everything from theatre to sex to live comedy! And lots of games and liquor, Chet says he drank a lot and lost all his caps. Chet says there’s a whole bunch of robots like Victor there, controlled by the mysterious ruler of the whole city, who nobody ever sees and knows only as “Mr. House.” (The robots, the ruler, so much sounds down right fantastical! Might be that Chet is pulling my leg, but he seems earnest about it.) And that I should be sure to visit a casino called Gomorrah if I visit, which I will because this is the shining city we’re talking about! Sure the road to visiting might be long and hard, but of course I’ll be visiting!
But even if I wasn’t set on seeing New Vegas in person for all the normal reasons, I would because Chet also says the people who shot me where let by a fella who looked like he was from New Vegas, which is actually how we came on the subject.
The other people with the New Vegas fella, Chet thinks where just assisting with my almost murder because New Vegas fella was paying them to. They’re from a tribe called the Great Khans. Now I’ll admit, these ones don’t seem to great to me on account of how they came so close to kicking my bucket, but they seem like an alright bunch otherwise.
Apparently most of them stick to themselves in their home and make chems, so not that much different from my own tribe. Differences being Anfo October made something else, and choose to keep to ourselves. The way Chet tells it, the Great Khans’ keeping to themselves is mostly a necessity of having powerful enemies, those powerful enemies being a group who folks call the “N.C.R.”.
This group partially rules over New Vegas, and their ruling, as partial as it may or may not be, is enforced by people who call themselves “military police” that Chet tells me are crawling all over New Vegas, so I’ll be running into N.C.R. members first hand. I’ll make sure find out more about the group when I do.
That’s a task for future Midge, right now I’m still in the sleepy little village of Goodsprings Town, wearing a pink dress I traded caps for at the general store. I was worried I’d damage the old jumpsuit thing Mitchell handed me, given how sentimental it must be to him, being what his late sweetheart used to wear. Also didn’t like the idea of wearing it much because it was pretty ugly, sorry Mitchell’s sweetheart.
Entry 5
Turns out this village isn’t always as sleep as I thought! I went to the saloon, was just about to introduce myself to Sunny’s sweetheart, Trudy, and this weird fella in some kinda uniform was threatening her! Said he wanted her to hand over a fella named Ringo or something, I don’t know I didn’t really catch much. He’d gotten me scared, he was big and angry and from the sounds of him he wasn’t just puffing smoke! But Trudy wasn’t scared one bit! Just told him to leave if he wasn’t going to buy anything, like he was some rowdy little kid!
He walked into me as he left, probably because he was just looking straight ahead, and demanded to know what I wanted? I didn’t want anything! I think I might have squeaked or something, but he left me alone after that, slamming the door as he went.
So I go up to Truly, and she was acting just as unaffected as before, I don’t think she would have even acknowledged what happened if I hadn’t asked. But I did ask, because of course I did, and this is what she told me.
About a week ago this Ringo fella had come to Goodsprings because he was looking for a place to hide from the men who were, and are, hunting him. The local folk gave him a place to hide, because they thought he wasn’t actually being hunted. Boy howdy they were wrong! He is, by a group called the Powder Gangers. This ground is made up of men who were captured by the N.C.R..
This group, the N.C.R., put rules on folks, and they don’t exile people who break rules, they capture them and chain them to each other and with violence and threat of violence they force them to do work in gender segregated camps, and there is a lot of rules N.C.R. puts on folks. These captured men had been forced to create railroads, using dynamite and blasting powder. At some point, the men used the dynamite and blasting powder to escape the camp they were being held at.
I’ve been around explosives my entire life, like just about all Anfo October children before I could write I could tell types apart by smell. Some of the happiest memories of my childhood were made at the demonstrations the tribe would make every spring, watching flashes of light transform into great balls of fire, destroying the junk collected over the winter. We have a saying, “the urge to destroy is a creative one.”
I was taught how to use dynamite and blasting powder, I could probably clear away any area you put me in, given enough of the stuff and plenty of time. It’s not something you put in the hands of someone who doesn’t know how. But these men, captives of the N.C.R., were forced to use it without knowledge of how. I’m sure of this, because I also know how I would escape if I was given dynamite and trapped in a camp. It wouldn’t be hard.
I can’t even imagine how many of them must have died before they found a way out. How many must have been disabled and disfigured. What does N.C.R. do to captives who can’t work anymore? I don’t know, but the wondering alone churns my stomach.
World, changed together like that, if one went down, scores would.
Entry 6
I’m getting out of this place as soon as possible! I’ve been talking to Trudy more, and she says something bad is fixing to go down between the people who live here and the escaped captives. I sure as sure don’t want to get caught in the crossfire! I hope she’s wrong about that, and everything finds a way to work out without anyone going down, the local folk have been nothing but nice and those escaped folks have gone through so much already, but I’m not about to risk myself on a hope. Getting shot once or twice was more than enough for me, thank you very much.
I’ll still be taking Sunny up on her offer for rifle shooting lessons, and maybe see what else I can get from Chet that’d prove useful for traveling, but then I’m gone.
Entry 7
That didn’t go like I expected! I’m starting to think nothing in this village ever does.
Started out normal enough, Sunny handed me a gun called a varmint rifle with some ammunition and explained how to hold and aim and fire the thing, and showed me some empty bottles I could practice on.
The kickback on the varmint rifle is pretty powerful, but I managed to hit a bottle! I had to step closer a pace or two or three, sure, and ask her for some more ammunition, but still counts! Very impressive for a first timer, I think.
This is when things started to get unexpected, because she asked me if I would help out clearing the geckos away from some nearby wells. I agreed, and so far things weren’t exactly wild. We snuck up on the first round of the nasty little things, which was fun because my size makes me something of a natural sneaker, and once I got close enough I used some dynamite. Oh diary, if only I coulda snapped a photo of Sunny’s face when I blasted those things sun bound! And I thought she was pretty before!
Well, still, that was pretty standard for someone as good at blasting horrible creatures as I am, and I’m proud to say my blasting did a fair portion of getting a well free of geckos before this story even gets to the important part, which is… me and Sunny saved a woman’s life!
We saved her! Together! I didn’t actually catch her name, which I should have, but I was just excited!
Anyway, anyway, how we saved her. We had just got done with the first well, me and Sunny, and where coming up on the second when we saw her. She was going to collect some water I guess, but there was a whole pack of geckos closing in, just *scores* of beasts.
Sunny had her rifle set on the ones closest to her, bam bam bam! But there was more coming, and fast! So I do what I just shown I’m so good at doing, get to blasting! BWOOM! KABOON!
She sure was happy! Shaken up as all get out, sure, but happy to be alive! Guess that’s how I wouldn’t felt about a week ago had I remembered how close I came to dying when I woke up. I’m still plenty glad I’m alive now of course, even more because I passed it forward!
Maybe nobody dies in Goodsprings, just comes within a splinter.
Entry 8
About to finally leave this village now, Sunny helped me pack.
Well, Sunny helped me trade the rifle she gave me and some parts of geckos we killed for a pretty little white handgun, some food, and more dynamite from Chet. And then helped me pack that stuff.
Part of why she had done that was I handed the rifle back to her because it’s so heavy and cumbersome that I just can’t imagine taking it far when traveling any distance more than a yard and she insisted I don’t leave Goodsprings Town without a gun. Of course, she’s seen how good I am with dynamite and sneaking, there can’t be so many geckos and whatnot between here and the next village that I can’t sneak and blast my way through, but she was mighty insistent. Not that I much instituted otherwise. As much as I wanted to leave this village behind, we both where wanting to prolong each other’s company. So, not surprising that when we go to the general store for a lighter one she realized I didn’t have much food either, and not as much dynamite as I started with, and took the time to remedy that.
So she went on stalling our parting, and I would be lying if I wrote that that wasn’t a cause I felt like getting behind. So I let her fret, and pack my bag just so, and we didn’t leave that general store till the sun started to dip, painting the sky and all under it golden and orange.
In that glow Sunny’s armor caught and reflected light till bits of it looked woven of copper wire, and her hair seemed to almost burn in a low fire. Her hand, warm and calloused, held mine, and I felt as if I was with in the company of a woman born of sunbeams.
“Guess this is goodbye,” She told me, voice uncharacteristically hoarse.
I didn’t know what to say. Sometimes there is nothing you can say. Would have told her I’ll pass this way again and see her then, but I just don’t know if that’s true. I’ve not got the slightest idea where my wondering will take me in the long run, aside from away from here and her.
So, I did the only thing I could do, before I quite realized what I was doing. I kissed her. Wasn’t a long kiss, on account of I had to stand on my tip toes and crane my neck to do it, which isn’t a position I can maintain for long.
After the kiss, she looked stunned for a moment. That moment was all I got to see, because I turned round and tore off down the road.
Sunny, a wonder of a woman you are! So good natured and beautiful and selfless, Trudy and me and anyone else who share love with you find ourselves very lucky!
Goodbye, goodbye!
Entry 9
Soon after parting ways with Sunny I met someone new on the trail, and it was just horrible!
I was just minding my own self when a fella, pale and scruffy and about my age, comes running up. This fella looks well worse for wear, dark bags around his tired eyes, stained and worn clothing, the works. He pleaded for me to save a girl trapped by geckos on a ridge we were by.
Well I wasn’t going to just sit back and let someone die, of course, and this wouldn’t be the first time I saved someone from geckos! Those terrible critters deserve to all be blasted sky high, the whole lot of them, and if I wasn’t limited in the number of explosives I have by what I can make or trade for, then I just might make that my life's mission!
So I go up the ridge and see the nasty things, and make no mistake, there's a lot of them. I managed to kill them all, but it wasn’t easy, let me tell you that. Had to use explosives and my gun.
Anyway, I’m doing what I think is heroic action, and while yes all gecko killing counts as heroic action for the general danger to folks they pose, turns out this wasn’t the type of directly heroic action I was hoping it was.
Because, dear diary, there was no girl. There was a dead body, and before I got a closer look I thought I was just too late to save the girl I’d been told was here. That thing was the horriblest sight I ever saw, it was burnt bad and half crewed up by the geckos, but once I gave it more than a glance it was clearly a body that’d been up there a while. Looked to be probably the body of a man too, but of course whoever it was was long too dead to ask so I couldn't be knowing for certain.
Then the fella who sent me up the ridge, he comes up to, all the geckos being safely taken care of by yours truly.
I had questions I was aching to ask, but something on his face kept me quiet. His eyes seemed more sunken than before, and he had the tight lipped grimace of somebody about to confront a particularly tricky task.
He thanked me for my help, and apologized for tricking me, because it turns out this had been a trick! He wanted some stash at the top of the ridge, and he was willing to kill to get it!
Not that he needed to kill me to get it! Or trick me, I would have been perfectly happy to just help him get to this stash he was talking about if he’d just asked me to. Shit, I was fine with letting him have it now! I told him so, but he didn’t believe me, acted like I was the one playing tricks and not making a lick of sense, the little shit!
He shot at me! Luckily, and I figure this is the reason he didn’t just try to clear out the geckos by himself. He’s a terrible shot. Bullet missed by a mile and all it did was scare me enough to scramble around and pull out my own gun.
I ducked and *screamed* at him to cut it out but he wouldn’t listen, he shot and missed again! Now this was the second time he tried to kill me, not even counting the danger he’d put me in with the geckos, so I hope you’ll understand me going to a great length to get him to cut it out.
I never shot anyone in my life, I never wanted to, but… I did. Right in the hand, I think, the one holding the gun. It was hard to tell there was so much blood and his own gun bust in his hand and pieces of his hand fell to the ground and bled there and pieces of his hand looked like they would fall but didn’t. But half opened and it was like someone took an ax to a water pipe with the way the blood dumped out.
I don’t know how long I saw that awful sight. Probably not very long because I bent to hurl. But, to long.
My stomach had already been churning, on account of seeing the body of some poor dead stranger, and this was worse to see, because it was by own doing. Even now, after puzzling over it half the night, I couldn’t truthfully tell you how I did something so terrible. Him or me, he started it, I didn’t have time to do anything else. Maybe that’s all true, but can there ever really be reason enough to disable someone, take it upon myself to change another person’s whole life in an instant?
I don’t believe that there is, at least, I thought I don’t believe there is.
He was running away when I looked back at him, ruined hand out of view. I just let him go. In hindsight, I shoulda tried to get him to Mitchel, maybe if I threw my gun down he’d believe I wouldn’t hurt him again. Nasty wounds like that can get infected bad out in the desert. Could end up I’ve taken much more from him than a hand.
I wish I had at least told him how sorry I am.
Entry 10
I can see my destination now, Primm, just yonder. If I think about that, what I done last night seems further away. Selfish, maybe, yes, yes it is, but I just want to be bound on. The lights make Primm shine up the night, nothing like New Vegas but more than anything else I’ve ever stepped foot in in my life. A real city.
The time before I’ve been to Primm, I didn’t have the time to really explore like I wanted to. I got a job there, as a courier, because that would give me the caps to keep on with my traveling, but the fella who hired me said I had to set off quick because my first delivery was an important one, but that usually deliveries weren't so important and I would be able to explore anywhere I went next if I did good this time.
I thought it was mighty strange that they got a rookie to take such an important delivery, even if that rookie was a fast learner and charming and pretty as all get out. I figured maybe it was some kinda test, and now I hope that if it was, it’ll be clear to everyone that it wasn’t one bit my fault that I had the delivery taken, I was shot! Well, my nose, being no longer on my face, should make that pretty clear. Don’t dwell on how bits of people look after a gunshot takes them off, or failing any test, because I’ve got proof that losing the delivery wasn’t my fault! Don’t got a thing to worry about, do I?
Besides, I’ve got to make sure whoever ordered that little thing knows that they won’t be receiving it, at least not as promptly as they thought. I hope it’s replaceable, and that a replacement ain’t too hard to track down.
Maybe I could help track down a replacement! Oh, or the one that was taken! I still want to find out why that stranger would try to kill me, the first one. The second one I know thought I would kill him for tricking me. So he tried to kill me.
World, have strangers tried to kill me two separate times already? What awful luck I have!
I’ll be sure glad to be anywhere that’s not the trail soon. Talk to folks, get busy on what I’ve got to be taking care of there in Primm, with the delivery. Get some rest, maybe something besides water to drink. I am awfully tired, having been walking most of this night.
Well, diary, I’ll write you next in there!