?Pappa??

The voice was sweet, delicate like a flower. It belonged to a waif of a girl with wisps of blonde hair. She was small, so very small, and Glenn was sure that if he touched her, she would break. She sat on the floor of a dusty old shack of a home. They were somewhere out in the desert, he knew. Madison was with him. She was supposed to be, anyways, but when he looked around she was nowhere in sight.

The girl wasn?t looking at him. She was looking at the body of a man lying flat on his back. It held the stiffness of death, his skin was pale and dry. He was settling well into rot and beginning to stink up the place. His eyes were open and they were staring up at Glenn with an intensity he didn?t remember seeing in person. He was dead, Glenn remembered, and that was it. But this man?s gaze held with it the weight of judgment. He was being measured, sized up, and knew that the man found him wanting. He was not suited to take this girl on as his ward and see to her.

He knew then, he knows now. And that is why he let her down. Because he was not suited to raising a child in any capacity.

?You?re a coward,? the dead man said.

?I know,? Glenn replied. ?I know.?

?You?re a wretched man.?

?I am.?

?You?re a monster.?

?Yes.?

?Pappa??

The girl?s voice stole Glenn?s attention from the dead man. He looked at her and felt the weight of world bearing down on his shoulders. His throat felt tight and dry, and something cold and dark was slowly crushing his heart.

?Your Pappa?s dead, Maida.?

?He was just talking.?

?Sometimes the dead have more to say before they can move on.?

?Who are you??
?No one.?

?You are not no one,? said the dead man.

?Who am I, then??

?You are your father?s son, Glenn Douglas. The last of a long line of bad, bad men.?

?Did you know my father??

?As well as anyone can know the west.?

?Hmm.?

?What happens to her??

?She dies. You?ve seen it. Madison told you.?

?But,? another voice said. Glenn turned and saw his brother, Brandon, standing in the corner of the shack. That?s how he knew this was a dream. Brandon had been killed already. ?You and I both know, little brother, that death is a fickle thing in the end.?

?So she?s not dead.?

?She is.?

?Are you saying she can come back??

?Not like you, not like me.?

?Well that?s just fucking great.?

The world was gray and black. Shadows seemed darker and longer than they should have. He couldn?t think of why this felt strange to him. Couldn?t reconcile this image of life that stretched out before him with what he saw it was supposed to be in his head. Color had drained and warmth had faded with it. Not just warmth, but cold, and all sense of feeling, really. He felt nothing. Neither scared nor brave, happy nor sad. The only sensation that remained was strange. A strange, curious, and unknowing feeling. Even that was a distant thing like recalling the emotions from a distant memory. He could think of how it was supposed to feel, but he couldn?t really feel it again without reliving the moment in a very real way.

Maida was gone and he felt neither concern nor relief. It was a fact, as true and stark as the black sun in the gray sky.

The sand was white and lifeless and in it were long, curling lines that had been drawn with a stick. He knew this because he held a stick and was still drawing with it. He felt something when the wind blew his hard work away and smoothed the sand back over. It was all flat, perfectly flat. He couldn?t describe the feeling, but he felt it. Or maybe it was the absence of feeling that struck him so profoundly in that moment.

He tossed the stick in the sand and it sent small speckles of dust into the air. They glittered in the pale god rays coming through clouds that had appeared from nowhere. He looked at the clouds and felt something about them, which he still could not explain.

?This is weird,? he said, and his voice sounded, to him, far away.

?You don?t remember?? Maida asked.

He looked down and a monster stood in front of him. It was small and hunched over, its shape vaguely human. It had wisps of dried and dead wheat grass for hair and its eyes were black pits. Sand would fall from those empty sockets in tiny showers of glittering dust. Beetles and other crawlers skittered over the thing?s arms and legs, which seemed covered in skin that was like old parchment.

?Remember what?? he asked the creature.

?This place,? its hand gestured to the vast emptiness around him. ?The In-Between.?

?Hmm,? Glenn nodded. ?I didn?t recognize it.?

?Because of the colors??

?Yeah.?

The thing nodded and Glenn thought that it would fall over. Its head was larger than it should have been, and the way it hunched forward made it look doubled over. It had Maida?s voice and he knew this should scare him, but at the moment he felt nothing but withdrawn curiosity. He reached out and touched it?s dead-wheat hair. It crumbled, and he wasn?t surprised. The thing, the monster, Maida, or whatever it was, took his hand. Glenn was right. Its skin was dry and brittle and he knew that if he squeezed it would crumble into dust.

It turned and lead him away from the stick in the dirt.