Bungle's History
Note: The original
history I wrote for Bungle was the shortest history I had ever
written
but it often surprises me what characters will really stand out
to you and which will
not. I figured a Mike Patton fan would kill him the first day.
But I think Berkley Breathed said it best and I will paraphrase.
You never know when a Mr.Bungle will show up at your door.
Then it is our job to decide which should be sent away
and which should be cleaned up and given food.
Of course after that.
They never leave.
Kingfox let me go back and write a more detailed history.
Your personal player history:
-----------------------------
People had called him Bungle for so long I don't think he could
have told you
his real name if you asked him to. At the moment he was guiding a
pair of
travellers across the wastes when from out of a nowhere a
Mantlion pounced on
the female of the pair snapping it's jaws.
| This type of thing always happened to him. Before anyone could react or the girl could even manage a decent scream her throat was lying somewhere in the sand as the rest of her body was destroyed. The man in the pair he was leading was utterly useless, screaming and yelling but no action, Bungle withdrew his axe from it's sheath and stalked up to the creature. It snapped at him and was reward with the axe being buried cleanly in it's skull. |  |
People had called him Bungle for so
long I don't think he could have told you
his real name if you asked him to. At the moment he was guiding a
pair of
travellers across the wastes when from out of a nowhere a
Mantlion pounced on
the female of the pair snapping it's jaws.
This type of thing always happened to
him. Before anyone could react or the
girl could even manage a decent scream her throat was lying
somewhere in the
sand as the rest of her body was destroyed.
The man in the pair he was leading was
utterly useless, screaming and yelling
but no action, Bungle withdrew his axe from it's sheath and
stalked up to the
creature. It snapped at him and was reward with the axe being
buried cleanly
in it's skull.
Christ the guy in the pair really was a
pussy he was still carrying on as
Bungle passed him resealing his axe in it's sheath. Best to
moving on.
Wouldn't want to be caught outside at night.
But an argument insued. The little
prick wasn't going to pay him. And after he
probably saved his life. Stupid fucker. Well Bungle tired of the
argument
quickly and began walking off, the man still screaming about his
dead
girlfriend, whore, who knows and then when the man turned back
his guide was
gone. Bungle had disappeared into the swirlling winds of the
wastes. The man
stood alone in that place a long time but our story lies not with
him but
Bungle as he treaded through the sands not thinking precisely of
where he was
going. His mind was in the past. Thinking of how everything
seemed to turn
out this way.
He didn't know how old he was
precisely, but I, as his story teller can tell
you he was concieved by two hippies at Woodstock in 1969.
Concieved in the
summer of love and born on a cold night in 1970. From his parents
he was only
called, the mistake, the accident, or just a general stream of
curse words.
He attended your basic schooling up to high school. He grew up a
nicely bitter
and resentful child. Hyperactivity caused his parents to have him
put on
ridalin. Just another one of the chemical zombies. Of course in
those days the
psychological side effects of Ridaline later in life were not
known. Shunned by his
peers for being weird. He read often, espically mythology.
Outside of these facts he was
a very typical kid.
Some years after high school with no
direction Bungle left home. The nickname,
which was to be the only name he'd go by and in time remember had
been set on
him by his parents. He was a bungle, a mistake, an accident.
There was a good time for Bungle
though. When he was about 23 (1993) he met a
woman named Katherine down at the small boat habor where he was
working.
Working there during the summers and at a company called RUPP
Rental Inc the
rest of the year had allowed him to scrape out a living doing
general dumb
muscle work.
He had been carrying a greasy engine
down the dock the day he met Katherine,
his boss' daughter. He saw her face and, perhaps did not
instantly fall in
love like poets or stories may describe but an attraction was
there. For him
it was toward a beautiful girl from the otherside of the tracks,
for her it
was for a burly, rather short man, with a gleam in his eyes
should would never
be able to fully make her father understand.
He slung the engine under one arm (not
an easy task mind you, but I have seen
it done and thus perhaps you understand the strength Bungle
possessed even
then) and extended a greasy hand to Katherine. She eyed it for a
moment and
then he wiped it on his pant leg, more then a little embarrassed.
The motion
became an automatic response for him before shaking anyone's hand
ever since
then.
The two began dating, fell in love as
you may have it, and, with a begrudging
father's concent, were married three years later (1996).
Bungle worked very hard to support them
in there new life, even taking a job as
a bouncer at a local nightclub on weekends. Greeting people with
some
semblance of a smile, with a sock full of quarters in his back
pocket. He had
married Katherine in a Pagan Celtic ceremony. Something which she
thought was
romantic, but Bungle had started to really believe in. Old norse
mythology.
In the year 2005 two things happened.
Katherine became pregnant, much to Bungle's joy, and her only
woeful
acceptance. But Bungle did not seem to care. He would do things
right with his
child. Perhaps to show his parents, perhaps he just had a good
heart then. But
it was not to be.
The second thing that happened was Zero
Day. Bungle saw an entire way of life
come crashing down in the blink of an eye, something that
screaming prick back
in the wastes would never see, espically since he would probably
never get out
of the wastes alive.
Now anyone can tell you, if they were
alive then, that perhaps the one's killed
by the bomb were the lucky ones. Erase order and the blastwave
will extend
around the world.
So imagine this if you will. Bungle
trying to care for a pregnant wife and
survive. And then after Julie was born, a wife who had never
known hardship
such as this, and an infant.
Under these circumstances, where daily
life was becoming Darwinian evolution
and the three had made their home in a broken down abandoned
building and
Bungle's -job- now was to go out every day in search of food and
supplies
(sometimes coming home stained with blood and no words of
explaination), one
cannot exactly blame Katherine for breaking.
| Her sanity disappeared and one
day Bungle came home to find her holding a pillow over the face of their now 11 month old infant. Bungle pulled his beloved off of the baby but still she tried to get at it. Picking
up a piece of broken glass she stabbed it into Bungle's |
 |
Katherine picked up the baby and walked
to the window. With blood pouring from
where the glass was still imbedded in his eye Bungle pulled
himself to his
feet and rushed at Katherine. In one move her grabbed the child
from her and
crashed his shoulder into her side. The baby fell into his arms
and stumbling
back Katherine fell through the window. Bungle's voice yelling
after her as
her body landed on the ground with a sickeningly wet crack-thump.
Bungle would never again know the touch of a woman by his own
choice. Women, he
felt, were not to be trusted.
Soon the Desert Rangers were formed and Bungle, seeking stability
and society for
his young child joined up.
He had never been one for guns and rifles or swords when it came
time to fight
or train. Bungle always preferred the close up combat. Savage
instincts and
savage results but he learned from the Desert Rangers and so that
is how he
became adept at moving through the wastes.
One night he was stationed with his daughter in a scouting camp
when a drifter
stumbled into the camp. Unfortunatly this drifter brought with
him the dreaded
NAS plague.
The call went out for the vaccine but very few survived to get
it. Bungle and
Julie were among those few who survived.
But at ten years old the disease proved too much for the young
girl and
Bungle's only child, and only link to his lost love died in his
arms. A victim
of the NAS plague, after the fact.
Bungle himself, to this day, suffers a nervous twitch in his
hands from that
experience. A constant reminder or the heart he lost. He left the
Rangers.
In recent years he had at last come out of the wastes, living as
a nomad after
the Ranger's disbanded.
| He made money guiding people
through the wastes like the young couple that I mentioned earlier. unfortunatly most of his escorting ended in ways similar to the forementioned incident and Bungle didn't get much work. At this moment Bungle trekked back toward where he had left the screaming man. Perhaps with this abandonment he would offer him more money if he could get him out of the wastes. Looking at the corpses, half devoured, of the two he was convinced they had been lovers. |
 |
"Fuckin breeders." he thought
and turned.
"Well" he said to himself "Maybe I should just go
where they were going, New
Carthage is as good a place as any."
And then he began to walk.
Bungle, a short, mean, bitter, tough old man trekked back
off into the wastes toward New Carthage.
He is 60 years old and now his story begins.
** Approved by Indigo at Fri Apr 14 00:58:55 2000 EDT **
Fabulous. Excellent work.