Auntie Entity

“It aint a lie,” he allowed, as good as a yes to her question. Wasn’t going to sell himself short, but what were they saying he was capable of now that he hadn’t already said on his way in and had discarded?

His eyes dipped to the fruit in her hand and back up. The fresh sweet smell was distracting, foreign familiar, a tug at his nose toward a memory. A grocery store aisle. Apples, strawberries, but he couldn’t place the name of that one. ‘Peach’ was wrong-

Capable. Folk were passing it around that he was capable. Back to present. Goose blinked.

Yea. He’d loosed a few expletive laced suggestions down below. Went off once or twice on the incompetent mechanics banging around over his head and lent more elbow than strictly necessary for what they’d hired him to do out of exasperation alone. A little grease monkey stuff, nothing big. 

The cheshire grin only spread as she noticed that moment of distraction, and she could almost swear she saw his chapped lips get just a little dryer and desperate. She popped the last bit of mango slice into her mouth, chewing slowly and thoughtfully as she began to cut another.

“We’ve got a lotta’ junked cars, and I need ‘em runnin’. But the catch...”

She bobbed the knife’s tip toward him almost scornfully, if not for the grin still brightening her eyes as the second slice fell neatly into her palm. 

“The catch is a couple of my best junkyard boys got themselves twisted up in the fire and metal that brought Barter Town down to cinders.”

She slipped the sweet slice into his hand, smiling as she turned her back to walk out between the fluttering cheesecloth that billowed and shuddered in the hot wind, watching as men and women both labored below to rebuild Barter Town to its former glory.

New faces didn’t show up all that often anymore. Not from what he’d gathered these past couple weeks. Everybody seemed to know everybody to some degree- and if they didn’t they had stories. Second hand descriptions, gossip, and lots of it. 

Yea, he had a good idea who this lady was. Why she’d decided to pluck him out of the slime was a little less clear.

But the sewer rats from below...they weren’t always so lucky.

A grin curled at the corner of her mouth as she dragged a thumb across her lower lip, and took several steps closer.

@allhailauntie

He was currently shirtless, barefoot, months unshaven, and streaked with sweat and all varieties of grime. One more muscled but gaunt body with a bush concealed face, come in from the wastes and put to work.

Though. He did, technically, have a shirt and jacket and pair of boots in his possession. Squirreled away with his bike and more treasured items that didn’t follow him when he went to work in the muck Barter Town seemed to be wallowing in at present. He might have deigned to be fully clothed if he’d known ahead that some ruffians were going to haul him topside to Meet Someone.

Goose shifted his weight from one foot to the other, hip cocked and hands twisting the grungy makeshift handkerchief he’d used to wipe them clean. ‘Clean’ being a reasonable jump from ‘not completely coated in pig shit and oil’. 

Auntie Entity, loved Tina Turner in this role! If you haven’t seen Beyond Thunderdome, see dat!!

The pigs, at least in my own theory, feed on the dead, or treated to those who have broken Barter Town laws, and were unfortunate enough to land themselves with that as a punishment. They could also be fed fruits and vegetables that never formed correctly, or have rotted beyond human consumption. Pigs can and will eat just about anything you put in front of them, and considering the vast amount of shit they produce, it’s likely a lot of their food is high in fat and sugar, hence the theory that they eat people and rotten fruit. There’s certainly no shortage of the dead and dying in the Wasteland. And any pig that dies of natural causes could easily also be recycled into more food for the other pigs, or harvested for its parts.

Touching on trade relations again, I personally headcanon that Barter Town and the Triumvirate (Gas Town, Citadel, Bullet Farm) have a trade agreement in place. She provides alternate forms of power (methane), along with pig parts such as hides for clothing, bones that can be made into tools or weapons, fat for candlemaking or cooking, in exchange for fruits/vegetables, ammunitions, and perhaps even guzzoline that she may either use in Barter Town, or can sell/trade to others. The trade agreement was born out of a need to cooperate for resources rather than waste lives and time warring with the other territories for them.

Joe scowled intensely, his entire body going stiff, hands clenched into tight fists at his sides. He didn’t kiss her back but he couldn’t look at her, either. For all the indignation that howled just under his skin, deep at the soft, wet core of him he was inordinately pleased with the attention.

“Is that all you’ve got to say to your Auntie, hm?”

Her thumb ran over his dry lower lip, envisioning what that lip might feel like between her teeth, being torn straight off his chin. 

Tina Turner behind the scenes of Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome (1985)

Auntie E