Topic: Tumbleweeds

Madison Rye

Date: 2017-01-27 03:09 EST
"Open up the door, ma'am."

"Told you, ain't here."

"Your presence behind that door indicates otherwise, ma'am. So please, open up. Won't take much of your time."

"Beggin' to differ. What it does indicate is that I'm not here for the talkin' and got no time for it. Now get."

First there was a creak. She could make out their shadows moving like snakes beneath the door where the late afternoon light spread in flat white squares. Her pistol was level with the door handle; shoot their hand off them if she had to.

Next, a soft rattle. Then the door exploded in a shatter of splinters. The sound of it seeming to linger in her ears like reverb as the shock of the moment came in waves; cruel tides that lapped against her ceaselessly as the pain flared brightly. But it was the sound of the door cracking as metal tore through it that had her cringing. It didn't mellow out like the pain was. But she was drifting with the tides.


Bill Laughdnan and Henry Bickers stepped over her body and continued on their way to the safe as Madison Rye lay bleeding from her belly in shock on the floor of her office. The men worked quickly, expertly, their hands sure and steady without a shake. No nervous words, no checking on the woman. The shotgun shell lay fat on the ground by the busted door. The men were shadows to her still, faceless, from where she lay spread. She knew them only by their voices and the stink of grease and sweat and alcohol, a vile fragrance that permeated the area of the small room.

When the men were done, they stepped back over her body with a carelessness that said this was not their first time stepping over a prone woman. Bill smiled and commented on the way her hair spread around her on the floor like a dark sea and said it'd make such a fine painting; one could omit the red. "See, darlin', in art, you tell what you like. If I was a paintin' man, I'd paint you like you was just sleepin' in the sun. I'd never tell the story about the bullet though I am sorry to pain you so." He breathed in his satisfaction with a quick and vacant laughter and rubbed at his whiskers and tipped his hat to her and entered the hall. Henry hung back to toast a stolen bottle of Hennessy her way and toss a coin at her which landed on her chest.

Her eyes fluttered to a close, his face murky as vision fled and dusk ate up all the glare in the room.

"That's a tip, honey, for the toll. When you cross the bridge on your way out. The collector expects his coin."

Then the two tumbleweeds blew on out the door down the stairs. Blood continued to spread into floorboards. The air smelled like iron and tasted like rust. The clock above her desk ticked out the minutes as consciousness went.

The wind was still outside on the street.

Madison Rye

Date: 2017-01-29 07:31 EST
Bill and Henry sat outside the city on a squat hill surveying the horizon. They discussed where they might sleep that night and where food might be taken from but not a word was given for the woman. They discussed the proliferation of coyotes they had come across on the outskirts but neither one shared how uneasy it made them. Bill removed his hat and checked his watch and mentioned that he thought he saw a vacancy sign up at "that Moon place, west of town." Henry nodded, always easy to agree with Bill and dismounted to take a piss behind a row of bare trees he didn't know the name of but which sprang up hairy and high the leaner the land in distance to the heart of it being the city they had fled after the business at that bar.

"Lotta dogs." Henry readjusted his saddle and made small talk while Bill consulted his cell phone.

"I said, lotta dogs."

"I heard you and I was ignoring you." The older one continued to busy himself at the device leaving Henry to roll his eyes and walk around kicking pebbles loose from the dirt and marvel at how big the sky was out here. Away from the suffocation of all those buildings, it had a chance to breathe, loud and full and wide. It'd never looked more blue.

"Sure she ain't the one we saw with that delictuoso's son? Out in the heat?" He asked, walking a slow circle.

Bill shook his head. "Ain't the one we saw with that Pueblo bitch's son. She was dead. That weren't this." He slid his phone inside the suede vest that sat over his shoulders and coughed.

"You sure she was dead?"

"Which time?" Bill looked down at his partner from his horse and filled a paper with tobacco and when he was done he licked the paper to seal it and slid it between his teeth.

"Back there, at that bar?"

"This ain't the same woman. And that woman at the bar is good as dead."

Henry didn't feel much like smoking and placed his hands on his hips and turned to walk out and stare at the city from where he stood. Too many wild dogs and a sinking feeling that curdled his stomach. That and the fact he stunk; he hadn't showered for a few days and he wanted to be out of those clothes. "We need a place to stay a while, Bill. I can't keep riding. I'm exhausted, I'm hungry and a bath wo--"

"Well then, let's see us about that Moon place we saw."

Henry turned about to face Bill up on his horse and the man was only a black, harsh silhouette against a declining sun, like some 1950s advert for Marlborough cigarettes. Smoke spilled from the silhouette and chased itself into nothing and the sun only lowered.

"Yeah, let's."

"Don't get your head full of feeling for a dead woman. You're young but you'll get the hang of it yet. She ain't your first and she won't be your last."

Henry watched as Bill set the horse around and down off the hill and the sun sank behind the world and the terrain seemed to lose all its color, even the sky went the color of stone, yes, he thought, the sun went down somewhere behind all things he knew, abandoning him to the dark of who he was now and what his life would be; a killer and worse yet, starkly alone with Bill in a place he didn't know.

"Get the hang of this yet." The curdling in his belly worsened still.

He echoed beneath his breath with a frown. Then he spat the bad taste from his mouth and carried himself to his waiting mare and pursued his partner back into town like two men who were fresh to it and innocent as babes. But he couldn't get the image of that woman on the floor from his mind.

Madison Rye

Date: 2017-01-30 03:27 EST
"Easy on the goddamned bag, my shit's in there."

"Sorry, Bill. Where do you want it?"

"Over there, under the bed."

The older man set foot inside and pointed over to the bed and then set about dumping the satchel over his arm emblazoned with a faded ROUTE 66 emblem to the floor before proceeding to checking every drawer in the single table and then over to the bureau and then over to feel up the pillows and blanket and see about whether the last occupant had been forgetful. Finding nothing, Bill swore and his disposition soured and he sat down on the very foot of the bed and got out his tobacco pouch and the papers and watched Henry unpack.

"Change your shirt. I'll head downstairs and ken what I can about food. Maybe women."

"You don't mind if I shower?" Henry, rangier than the stockier, taller man on the bed, righted himself to his 5'11 and looked over at Bill beneath his hat with his cigarette. He noticed that he still didn't have the urge to smoke and hadn't since the incident at the bar. Not even a twitch.

"No, no, go on right ahead, son. You make to it. Clean yourself good and come on downstairs."

Henry walked the bag of money over and slid it right under the bed with the other satchel of Bill's and then began unbuttoning his shirt. "Think anyone would be lookin' for us?"

Bill shrugged and tapped one boot toe against the floor and looked over to the window. "If they was, they wouldn't 'spect killers to dawdle none. I don't think anyone prone to be findin' her for some time. Least until mornin'. So for now, Henry, while the hours are on our side, you go lather up in peace and think about a pretty lady for yourself, tug ol' john a while, eat a meal with me and maybe if we're lucky too we'll find her after dinner."

The younger man noticed the dried blood on Bill's toe and then looked down to the fresher blood that streaked his own forearm and the entire front of his shirt. He watched beneath his brows as Bill stood and ashed the cigarette in mid air and walked over to the door in that light, ball of his feet prone walk of his and opened it up and looked down at the poor son of a bitch who lay slain on the landing. Bill nudged the man with his boot then bent down to casually feel about the deceased's pockets for change or smokes.

Henry glowered and felt his shoulders stiffen like the pull of piano wire and shut the door behind Bill. He looked over to the empty, old floorboards and thought about that woman again, imagined her laying there, like Bill had said, not shot, but sleeping in a field. He smiled some, thinking himself odd for it and rubbed at his tired, road dust strained eyes.

"God damnit."

After undressing, he showered and closed his eyes to the blood running off him the whole time. Behind his lids he saw her again, smiling up at him from the floor, like she was about to tell him a real good joke; her mouth curved slyly, her eyes shining. He must of spent half an hour in there he figured before he realised himself and hurried it up. He washed his shirt in the basin with a hard brick of soap that still had small, dark curls of hair in it from the previous occupant, and though it disgusted him it was all he had.

He wondered what his mother would have of him now, washing blood from his clothes in some shit hole hotel. And then he thought back to that man in the desert by the El Camino, watching them go by in the car. He thought about the Indian woman behind bars and how he thought maybe she had cursed him from behind them. He thought a series of non-related things and all of them unnerved him like the dogs in the gloaming had done.

He dressed again and when he opened the door to the landing, the dead man had been removed and once again he was pantomiming. He possessed himself, rid his mind of wandering and skipped every second stair down to the entry of the Penny Moon and rounded the case to the kitchen. The feeling chased up his legs and spine and sat in his jaw where it tensed it. The beginning of the lie. The way this new life was starting; this awful epoch, this red moon living.

"See, darlin', in art, you tell what you like."

He could be someone else now. He was finally free. When he sat down opposite Bill, who had picked together some cold, cured meat, a few chicken wings from the fridge and some left over mash, he felt like a new man.

"Good shower, boy?" Bill tore a piece of dried skin off of the bone with his teeth and then ate the thing whole, gnashing his canines around cartilage hinged with pink tendons, then sucking and chewing the marrow loudly, grease on his chin, bits of potato in his moustache. There was stolen money upstairs and a dead woman alone in the city bleeding into the floorboards. The two thoughts rabbited in and out his head, dogging him.

"Good shower." He shook it off and agreed with the man, brightening.

"Good." Bill smiled, gruff, and then pointed out back. "Got to get rid of the stiff before we go looking for company. You finish this up and I'll sort that predicament out."

Bill looked at Henry intently, as if suspicious of the young man's thoughts, then rose and headed out the swinging door and into the court yard. Henry watched him go and wondered if it wasn't too late to just run now. Get away from Bill. But instead he ate in silence, staring at the chicken bone pile on Bill's plate.

He thought to himself that it looked like a funeral pyre.

Madison Rye

Date: 2017-01-30 23:34 EST
"You have to die a few times before you can really live." Charles Bukowski

Nosing in through the door, the coyote padded directly for the stairs and up them, sniffing as it went, following the smell of smoke and blood in the air. It padded straight into the office where Madison Rye lay sprawled. Eyes shut and stomach barely rising with shallow exhalations. Her face blanched and lips parted where streaks of red dried along her jaw, as if by some painter's errant brush in careless strokes.

At once the beast got to work at licking at the blood. Wiping it clear with rough tongue from her chin and then paws to her shoulders as it leant in and began to administer savage licks to her stomach. When it was done and its snout was in the air, it was dark with the woman's bleeding. It yipped loudly and then barked as it began padding around her, sniffing at her hair, chewing at the ends and then out the door, back down the stairs and into the street, wending through the legs of drunken passerby who didn't notice the wild animal nor the vitae in its jaws.

At six twenty pm, Madison Rye took her last breath.

Glenn Douglas

Date: 2017-01-31 00:26 EST
It was six twenty-three PM. Charlie's was a ghost, all dark and quiet and not-right. Not at this time of night.

But Madison Rye had never operated according to any schedule or laws set by man. He didn't think much of it at the time. That was until he saw the glass scattered on the ground outside, more of it falling in. It reminded him of a time some years past, of a low hanging sun bathing a street where his shadow grew long and threatened to step away from him. Glenn pulled the old six-shooter from its holster as he opened the front door.

"Rye?" he called out the dark, cavernous room bar. The chairs stood as if in mourning, their upended limbs protruding from tabletops like strange overgrowth of wooden and metal fauna. The glass glittered like diamonds on the floor where the moon touched it.

No answer.

His footsteps retraced an old path. He went past the bar, electing not to stop for a complimentary glass of whiskey, and took the stairs up to the second floor. The office door stood ajar. He scanned the ground outside the door, the smudge of something dark and recently dried stood out to him. Something else, too. Mud, paw prints maybe.

" Shit ," the curse was quiet, but in the dead silence of the office it sounded like a roar. He fell to his knees beside her, the gun clattering to the ground. A hand went to the angry red splotch on stomach. Another went to her pulse, or at least where it should have been.

Glenn wasn't the type to call an ambulance. He didn't call for the Watch or any such officials, not right off the bat. He'd spent too much time on the other side of the law to want that kind of attention, for the thought of it to even cross his mind. So instead he sat there, falling back onto his haunches as he studied the uneasy serenity of her death mask. The blood was cleared from her limbs, from her hands and her face and everywhere but that violent hole in her belly that had spelled her unceremonious end.

"After all the shit you put me through," he told her. "You're gonna go out like this? Alone in your office? You're supposed to have more grit than that, girl."

The office wasn't small. He remembered when he'd first set foot some four or five years ago in that place. She'd called herself Annie, he'd made up some ridiculous name like Wyatt. He'd robbed her good and seen her the next day, and the day after, and so on. They fell in and out of love, twice if he recalled, but that second time had culminated in a better understanding, an acceptance of one another in a way they never could have as lovers.

"I'd have done it again," he recalled the bell tower and the army of coyotes all around.

Coyotes.

He thought of the paw prints outside, thought of the red on his hands and the smell of copper in the air. Something else was under it. Something human.

Finally, he picked his gun back up and holstered it. He checked her pockets and found her phone.

"I'm sorry," he told her. "But a man like me ain't allowed to mourn his losses. I don't deserve that kind of time, and you ain't gonna hear me anyhow."

"I never stopped loving you in my own way. I still dream about the good times, I still remember Cadentia and Redemption, the smell of apple pie and those long hot baths. I don't think we'd ever have made it to that life you wanted, but it was a nice dream while it lasted."

Glenn dialed the Watch with steady fingers. The operator picked up.

"There's been a murder at Charlie's Bar in West End," he said. "Send someone. Quick."

He set the phone down beside Madison's body and leaned down to kiss her on the forehead.

"So long, Madison Rye. There ain't never gonna be another quite the same as you."

Glenn stood and turned to leave. He felt something skitter across the ground and he knelt to pick up the shotgun shell that was blasted open. He lifted it to his nose, breathing deep the acrid odor and the oils from fingers and a man who hadn't bathed in some days. Sweat and dirt. Dirt he didn't recognize, from a road leading to a different kind of west than the one he called home. Glenn pocketed the shotgun shell and left the porcelain doll that was Madison Rye's corpse behind without a second look.


Out on the street in front of Charlie's, Glenn took a moment to breath the fresh air. Brought to him an array of smells he spent most of his will ignoring when he could. Tonight though...Tonight Glenn Douglas would embrace the coyote that still lurked inside his heart. He'd take that animal and make him his like he'd never done before.

Because there wasn't anything else in the world to keep him human anymore, Glenn Douglas decided he'd stop pretending to be.

Dead Cowboy Blues

Date: 2017-01-31 00:47 EST
Knock, knock, knock.

Like final heartbeats.

"You Elijah Donaldson, sir?"

"Yes, I am. What is it?" He stood half naked; a cheap, pilling towel around his waist and a cigar hanging from his mouth. "Whatever it is, I didn't do it." He grinned at them, all white teeth against the dark of his sun-kissed complexion, when he saw that their eyes had changed and he didn't like what he felt pregnant in the pause, and all the jovial ease in the lean of him stiffened and he bristled up.

"What? What is it?" He tore the cigar from his mouth and gripped the door frame hard.

"Sir, we're here with some bad news and to ask you accompany us. It's your ex wife, Madison. She was found dead at six twenty three pm this evening. We need you to accompany us to the morgue to formally identify her body. But, take a few minutes if you need them. This kind of news isn't easy to receive."

Eli took one step back in shock and felt the air rush out of his mouth and all the light of any gathered hopes flee from his heart. He watched as the men lowered their eyes from him and stepped back out into the hall. Bile was rising up his throat and he couldn't see for all the saltwatered vision.


When he had dressed, in a daze, and the Watch had escorted him in a grim, black van to the morgue, by the time he saw her he still wasn't ready. No amount of preparing could prepare him for seeing what he saw. Lying there on a cold slab, devoid of any laughter, any wisecracks, any sass. How the world wouldn't know the cadence of her speech or her forlorn spirit any longer. The way these things had made her the woman he knew and had always loved. Just like Glenn Douglas. Like Tag. How someone could be all these things, these qualities, these quirks, a voice, a heart, a soul and then....

"There's nothin' there."

The two men remained silent, watching grief transmute from denial to pain on the blonde cowboy's face. Eli looked at them with raised brows like he was asking something. Like he couldn't compute the emptiness before him.

"Nothin'... gone like the wind."

He reached out to her face and cupped her icy cheek then drew his index finger up her forehead and back through the dark of her hair. He pressed the thick locks through his fingers. It'd never blow in the breeze again. Her face hidden behind it, smiling.

He sat in a metal chair all night right by her and held her hand like she was still there. Speaking to her like she might wake up. Hoping she might, by some luck in this cuckoo, surprising town.

"You'll go on livin' Rye, beyond yourself. Always were too big for your britches", he smiled, fondly, running his thumb back and forth along her limp fingers "your body, any place. And now you're everywhere. Everywhere and still I can't find you."

Glenn Douglas

Date: 2017-01-31 01:30 EST
The Penny Moon had been a home, a refuge, a prison. He?d come to love and hate it as much as he loved and hated the woman who?d first introduced him to that old run down place. He?d come to learn and understand its creaks and groans, the howl of the wind whistling through cracks in windows and walls and the foundation of the place. It always looked half ready to topple over, he thought. One day there?d be a fight, one last gunshot and the mortar would give out and the place would come tumbling down. He stood outside that place, stood out in the street with a shotgun shell in his pocket and a cigarette between his lips. The lamps out this way didn?t work too good and the only light cast on him was the orange glow that flared up when he drew in a breath. It was cold, his jacket was soaked through with rain and he?d left his hat on a grave back in York and had nothing to protect his head with. It washed the blood from his hands, it soaked his hair clean and finally, it killed that tiny orange ember on the end of his cigarette. He dropped it in a growing puddle.

There?s a storm coming, Madison Rye. He used to say that to her, once upon a time. When they rode out west over rolling plains and unending lands of flat, dry heat. He?d said that to her when they found a little girl who wasn?t real, when they found a dead man and went on to make many more like him.

They?d shared a room together here on more than one occasion. The one he kept rented out permanently. He?d abandoned it not long ago, but the loss of another had him coming back. Like a child to his security blanket, Glenn Douglas coveted the familiar as much as any man. It was out there in that cold, wet street that the loss really hit him. Like a punch in the stomach that knocked his breath out, that stole whatever warmth remained and replaced it with a bone deep chill that made him stiff jointed and dead on the inside. He splashed through puddles of dirty water and mud. It came up to soak his pants around his calves. He trudged through it, through the dirt and the grime until he?d reached the door. His hand closed around the handle but something not entirely drowned out by the smell of water and fresh mud, something distinct and still warm lurked under the surface of everything. He could feel it, he could taste it. Glenn stepped back and looked up at the building like it might answer his unspoken question.

Then he went around back saw the muddy boot prints leading from the back door to the dumpster. The tracks in the ground behind them, the way the hobbled and stumbled with an uneven gait suggested someone dragging something heavy and unwieldly. He lifted the lid and poked his head in.

?Christ, Samuel?? that?s two Sam?s he?d failed now.

Glenn went inside through the back door with his pistol in hand. He followed the hall to the stairs, went up and up until he found the splatter of blood on the floor outside the room. The hammer locked back under the practiced urging of a strong thumb. He looked at the door.

It swung open, the jamb splintering from the force of his kick. It?d been half knocked off its hinges, the cheap lock torn and bent its way through the wood. Glenn?s other pistol was in hand and he cocked it as he aimed the first, the long and dark barrels of the old Dragoons a familiar and comfortable weight for him to throw around like that. Just like an old dancing partner.

Madison Rye

Date: 2017-01-31 05:46 EST
"Wanna know somethin' that'll get you through that foolish empathy you're feelin' tonight." Bill worked the rag along his hands, taking the blood with it as Henry combed his hair by a lantern and watched Bill via the cracked mirror. He didn't answer and knew he didn't have to for the older man to go on; no matter what his real thoughts on any of it were.

"You just remember that if it was the other way around, son, she'd have shot you. Tables been turned, you might be missin' yourself a toe or a finger or hell, maybe she would have put a hole in your head." He made a sound of contempt as he tossed the rag onto the table and fetched out a tooth pick from the red checkered pocket of his shirt and sidled up close to Henry and shared the reflection of the glass with him.

"No one is gonna look out for you in this world but you when I'm not here to do it for you."

Henry worked the fine tooth of the comb through his dark hair and tried to stop returning Bill's attention in the mirror, his cold eyes radiating ire and intensity kept bringing Henry back, to that place he saw the soul of the man. And though Bill's eyes were blue he knew inside him was black.

"You always been a mean man?"

"I've always been the first to shoot is what I've been." He smiled without any shred of benevolence.

He reached his arm around Henry's lower back to place his hand on his waist. "You're too slender. Best beef up. Get you some weights."

Bill caressed that spot there, below the younger man's ribs, grinned horribly and stepped back and away and headed for the bathroom. "Gonna shower. You leave with that money and I'll slice you from end to end like a pig and then I'll hang you from this here ceilin'. Be out in a few." He said it congenially, like telling him to have the first rinse earlier.

Henry placed down his comb and stared past the glare from the lantern that buzzed intermittently with a dead insect inside it, watching as Bill closed the door behind him. He grit his teeth and looked over to the bed where the cash lay beneath and he thought long and hard about getting away. He thought about picking up his gun and going into the bathroom and blowing the man's brains out. What it would feel like to do so.

"I've always been the first to shoot is what I've been."

Again he saw the woman there on the floor. Saw the cracking wood and the blood and heard her gasps. Realised what they had done.

He wanted a cigarette. Half way across the room to retrieve his pouch and check the door was locked he bent over, doubled up and began to vomit. In his mind, that woman was smiling at him. Smiling like she thought it was funny.

It was there, on his knees, that he looked up as the door opened and a man he'd never seen in his life was poking iron at him. Henry immediately sprang up out of his pool of sick and looked from the intruder and to the bed, figuring that the stranger had seen them leave that bar, flush for days. The bathroom door opened next, steam pooling into the air before Bill set foot outside it and looked at Glenn with a slow surprise.

"Good evenin'. Somethin' I can help you with?" He was holding his pistol too. It was aimed for Glenn. "Henry, get the sack." His voice humored, soft, slow. "While I see what this gentleman here is interested in." Bill conned a toothy smile. The hammer clicked in place.

Glenn Douglas

Date: 2017-01-31 12:12 EST
The run-down gunslinger, chilled to the bond with cold and water that soaked his clothes through, stepped into the room without invitation. He assessed it quickly; the man called Henry half-doubled over with a dribble of vomit on his chin and more of the sick on the floor in front of him. The older man coming out of a bathroom with a roiling cloud of steam desperately trying to escape behind him. The iron in his hands.

?Henry, you move and I?ll blow your fucking brains out,? Glenn told the younger man. He punctuated this statement with gunfire.

When Glenn shot, it was without fanfare or theatrics. A bullet escaped the long barrel of the Dragoon, the hammer caught by his thumb almost as soon as it had made connection. It came back, the three clicks of the hammer locking to place blurred to one with the efficiency of the motion. Glenn?s expertise had been hard won, his familiarity with the weapon forged in blood. He?d fought tooth and nail to be as good a killer as he was then and there.

It came as easily to him as breathing. He walked forward as the forth bullet exited the barrel like he didn?t care if there were any headed his way. He?d faced death, looked it in the eye and accepted the black with every ounce of will he could. He?d been through that song and dance before, for the same reason he was retracing those old steps now.

It?s a thing that has to be done. The words of Charlie Walsh echoed in the back of his mind, the first man he?d ever killed. He couldn?t remember Charlie?s face, only the cold and quiet sense of satisfaction he?d felt at ending the man?s life. Madison Rye, though, was a picture as clear as day in his mind. He thought of her as he emptied the Dragoon of its last bullet.

It didn?t take long.

Madison Rye

Date: 2017-01-31 21:15 EST
Bill's head exploded like a watermelon at a county fair being hit with pellets by young boys in one of those competitions. Henry couldn't believe his eyes or his luck. And then the fear set in; grabbed him like the owl grabs the mouse from the field. Overpowering and silencing fear.

"Wh-.. wh-... who the fuck are you?"

His voice came sterner than he meant, shaking, as he looked from Bill to Glenn and wiped the dribble of vomit from his jaw. "You ain't takin' that sack." And then he moved straight for the bed, caring only about the money and not whether there was a bullet left in that stranger's gun. Desperation outweighed all things when you're a starving dog. He reached his bare arm under the bed and dragged the sack out and hugged it to his chest like he was some kind of child and looked over at Glenn with wide, reproachful eyes. "You ain't TAKIN' IT."

Then he looked over at Bill who lay with his eyes half-open staring across the room at him and thought about how Bill hadn't shot first. And he thought maybe this man with the gun was a kind of salvation. Maybe this was the best thing that ever happened to him. He didn't feel sorry for Bill. Even as blood pooled in thick gobs and something white ran from the back.

He foisted the sack ahead of him onto the mattress and crawled to his feet and watched Glenn's barrel like a wild, hungry animal, not knowing that it wasn't the gun that was these things but the semblance of man holding it. Henry suddenly wanted to sick again.


Out on the street, the scream of sirens broke the quiet, tearing past on their way to Charlie's Bar.

Dead Cowboy Blues

Date: 2017-01-31 21:32 EST
"Ho, Billerton. Ada there with you?"

"Ho, Eli. Good to hear from you. Been wonderin' you folks still alive out thattaway." He laughed, easy-like, and waved Ada over, mouthing that it was Eli on the phone.

"Billerton, put the phone on speaker."

Bill did so, with a confused expression and looked to Ada with a shrug. "Says he's got somethin' for us."

Ada smiled a little and nodded primly. She rarely said so, but she always had hoped their daughter might find love again with the cowboy. Even there, in that moment.

Eli wiped the tears from his eyes, the ones that kept coming up, and paced the room of the Inn. He finally came to the window where he looked out over the city. He could just make out the roofline of Charlie's and it dug that pit deeper in his belly.

"Bill, Ada, I got some ... some news I ain't ever wantin' to be givin' to you in my life." He shut his eyes and shook his head. "Acony was killed at her bar last night. They're lookin' for the men, likely long gone. It was a robbery from the looks of it."

He held the receiver away from his ear as he heard them both cry out in anguish.

"I'm... I'm sorry I failed your daughter. Sorry I never... " he thumped at the window pane with the flat of his palm. "Sorry I never brought her home to you. But I will, I will now. Just not the way I'd hoped."

He looked back across town, to that rooftop. "Not the way it was meant to go."

Madison Rye

Date: 2017-02-04 09:02 EST
Back at the Penny Moon, upstairs...

The acrid smell of gunpowder was overpowering. The soapy water and steam was sucked out of the room by the door behind him, by the draft in the hall and a window that wasn't sealed right. It left just that sour and smoke behind, a smell more familiar to him than the scent of any woman. It made the hairs on his arms stand on end, made his hackles rise in anticipation of the violence that was to come. The shower of blood and bone, of brain and chunks of flesh and hair gave that animal something to clamp down on. Teeth sank deep, the beast shook it violently, demanded more.

The spent Dragoon was holstered. He had a second one in his other hand, and as Henry scrambled for the sack and spat his useless words at him, it followed. Glenn took a step closer, sizing the young man up the way a hunter stalks its prey.

"I'm Glenn Douglas," he said. "I'm gonna kill you tonight, Henry. I'm gonna eat you 'til there ain't nothing left."

He caught the young man's eye and paused, finger on the trigger.

"You killed my..." what was Madison to Glenn these days? They weren't lovers, they weren't friends in any traditional sense. He stumbled over that, his expression darkening like the storm clouds pelting the world with their merciless rain just outside. It pitter-pattered against the window, the flashing lights of passing squad cars on the way to Charlie's illuminating the drops. Refractions of color, light bending this way and that, it painted the room with colors too soft and too sharp at the same time, reds redder than the blood leaking from the missing part of Billy's head, blues deeper and darker and brighter than Glenn's eyes. He smiled.

"You killed Madison Rye. You killed Samuel Dickson. I liked Sam. I loved Madison."

The young man didn't exactly recede but didn't advance either, and watched the lines of Glenn's frame for some telling as to how the man might go.

"If'n you talkin' about the woman, the wom... the woman back at the bar, it was an accident. Bill said we was just robbin' the place and it wasn't meant to go thatta way... the way she is now." Laid out on the floor like a dreaming child in the sun. He gripped the bag tighter and then looked past the stranger called Glenn to the door. "Bill's the one you was after, you shot his brains clean, you can go now."

Yet. Yet something in the man's talk of eating him rang with Henry like a current that he felt in the air and went up his legs. Something feral but not reckless, something angry but not senseless. Glenn had come here with some purpose, had somehow traced them here despite leaving nothing but a shotgun shell and a woman who was gone before he could ask her who they were. Henry looked down then, away from the door and the edges of the wild man and shook his head. "I'm sorry that she meant somethin' to you. We didn't mean to do that but she's gone and killin' me won't get her back." He extended his words, dragged them out as he flexed his fingers against the rough cloth of the sack in his arms held like a baby. "Ain't gonna get her back thatta way. Not by killin' me and it wasn't even my doin'. That don't make it right. I just want to take this money and go. Same as you."

There, Henry set his deep set emerald eyes on the man. Hard. Unflinching.

"We are both here in this room for lost things and ain't gonna find them none. Killin' me ain't change the state of your pain and why you came on in just as me walkin' out here with the cash don't make me a rich man. But it makes me a man able to pay a few debts my family got. We're both lookin' for easin' our pains; don't make your sorrow any bigger, Glenn."

Henry finally looked at Bill again, dead on the floor. He wasn't someone anyone had ever painted nor would want to. Nothing in his craggy face and mean mouth or cruel fingers would do that. "That bastard said in art we get to tell how we see it like it is it." He sighed. "And I find it hard to think he didn't paint himself into that corner there where he's lain like a heap."
in dreams and ink

"Are you seriously tryin to talk me into lettin you leave with that there money, Henry?" Glenn asked, his voice dangerously low. "Don't give me no fucking bullshit about accidents. I been in this life a helluva lot longer than you. That weren't no accident."

Glenn raised the gun, sighting down the barrel at Henry.

"You gonna drop that sack. If you got any chance of getting out of here alive, any chance, you're gonna do exactly as I say. You're gonna answer my questions, and you're gonna drop that fucking money. That ain't yours, that ain't mine. Don't give me that same as you bullshit. Because now I gotta bury the only friend I had left in this world, because you and your fucking friend can't rob a god damned bar."

"I told you, we wasn't trying to kill nobody. This guy said the place was easy to jimmy so we went over and she was at the door upstairs givin' lip and .... " his chin jerked around, not quite a full shake of the head and he hissed out past clenched teeth and cast his bright, green eyes down to the sack in his hands. He hadn't ever held that much money before and the weight of it was a sensation he didn't know he could let go of now that he knew it, even with the man staring at him. The same mad, foolish rush that had been running for the bed to begin with to grab the bundle was the one that had him gripping it tighter still and backing up until the pressure of the bed's side at the backs of his knees had him sitting down. That and the gun...

It was going to pay more than half of his father's debt with the baron who he had to pay up to every fortnight. It was going to put a couple months? food on the table. Supplies in his sister's factory. A little beer money for him. He didn't need for month. And now, it could pay for Bill's grave.

"Ask your questions." He looked up and with a look of frustration and contempt, he shoved the sack aside where it rolled onto its side like an aggrieved lover on the other side of the mattress and then Henry sat forward and hung his arms over his knees. That same furiously intent look returned to his features, to the near incandescent glow of his eyes. He nodded once at Glenn. "You got you some spooky eyes, man. Like them dogs outta town. You seen em? Packs of em. Sarcina motherfrickers. You believe in that folk shit? The ones that change their skin? Bullshit if you ask me." He slapped his leg and shook his head. The whole scenario from the moment that woman hit the floor had become surreal. He felt depersonalized. Estranged. Like he wasn't quite in the moment, just outside it. He went quiet.

"You said her name was Madison? Pretty name." Genuine contrition played along his face, like light from a blade. "Pretty woman too. I was sad after we was leavin', seein' her there... You was her man?"

Madison Rye

Date: 2017-02-16 09:36 EST
Glenn showed a toothy grin at the mention of Sarcina, a grin of sharp teeth that had tasted the blood of men in days past. "You best start payin credence to them folk tales, son," he warned darkly. "More truth than lies in talk of men turned to dogs. It all starts with people like Bill and you. Tramps come down the road lookin for an easy break, before they know what hit em, they done sold their souls and been reduced to beasts. I know the story well. I know what it's like to become that coyote, to feel the rush of primal satisfaction when a man's blood fills my belly with chunks of flesh and bone. I've cracked and sucked the marrow out, eaten and swallowed people whole. You think that's bullshit, too?"

He said her name. He said her fucking name. Glenn shot, the gun jerking aside so the bullet, if it hit him, would strike the man clean in the shoulder. Hurting, wounding, but neither maiming nor killing, yet.

"Don't say her name."

The rest of his inquiries went unanswered.

"Where are you and old Dead Bill from? I know just about every petty thug and crook who come into this town, and most of them is smartet enough not to go fucking with Charlie's Bar, so you sure as shit ain't from around here."
just now

The man jerked forward as the bullet lodged itself in his arm. The feeling spread and it was the most real thing he had ever felt. Beautiful in its own way, its uniqueness, its newness, it's profound agony. Henry cried out as he sat forward and breathed hard to clear his head. "Truth and Consequences, Arizona. Bill picked me up, said the pay would be good but that we'd have to steal it. I was pumpin' gas back home. I had..." he grit his teeth and breathed hard again.

"And yeah..I think what you're talkin' is bull fuckin' shit... men don't become dogs!" Henry's green eyes were wild when they shot up, sweat beading on his brow. "But it explains some things. Like seeing that fuckin' dog out there, that coyote. Out in the desert. Kept turnin' up, every which way. Like it came outta thin air."

Madison. He experienced her name as he did the pain. A blinding, dark indulgence.

Madison. He would think of her name again and again and again with abandon. Glenn couldn't enter his mind, even if could get underneath his skin.