Devils, Sand, and Blood by Daniel Mosakewicz

Devils, Sand, and Blood by Daniel Mosakewicz

“Go then, there are worlds other than these.” -Stephen King

Part I: Devils

          Of the three people who decided to kill Curtis, only two of them had to drag him to the hanging tree. Both were men, one strikingly handsome and the other unfathomably ugly. The handsome one had pale skin and a strong jaw, with dark hair that wasn’t long, but wasn’t short either, that managed to never fall into his eyes. It had been said his smile could melt steel hearts, but Curtis had never seen or experienced it himself.

          The ugliness of the other came from his incredible weight. It was impressive that each step didn’t hand him a heart attack on a silver platter, and even more impressive that a horse could carry his weight. He did not possess two chins, but a landslide of them. Even the relatively short ride to the hanging tree brought forth a sweat so great it made the fat man look like he was covered in grease.

          Curtis was somewhere in the middle, though he liked to think he was a bit closer to the handsome one, in terms of looks. He wasn’t big, but not weak. His head was close shaven, and his skin matched his eyes, a piercing brown. They were the color of real earth, that was what his mother had called them, the color of real soil. Granted, he’d looked better before he’d walked behind a horse with his hands bound by rope across almost five miles of desert.

Everything hurt: his skin cracked and peeled, his wrists bled, and his legs burned. It would’ve been a relief when they stopped, if they’d stopped anywhere but the hanging tree. Maybe if Curtis had felt his dignity was still worth something he wouldn’t have fallen into the sand. Laying in the sand was a hell of a lot more comfortable than standing, even if it burned.

“Now look, John,” the handsome one said, “you’ve gone and killed him before we could dispense some proper justice.”

“Bah!” John spat past his chins. “He’s just playing. Maybe he thinks he’ll get out of it, but there are ways to know. There are always ways.” He tugged on the rope tied around Curtis’s wrists and a cry came from the dying man’s lips. “See, Gabe?” John said with a chuckle, “he’s still breathin’ alright.”

“Good. I’d hate to waste my time stringing up a man who was already dead.”

Curtis moaned, but his mouth was so dry it hardly came out as a squeak. He lifted his head to get the sand out of his eyes. The heat sucked at his sockets. When he blinked it felt like his eyelids scraped against sandpaper. These pains, combined with the angle of the sun, made everything appear like a cheap shadow trick, the kind done to entertain children. Even still, it was enough to make some things apparent.

Despite their talk, John and Gabrial had little intention of completing the task quickly. They lounged on their horses, fanned themselves with their hats and pawed at one of the numerous canteens of water they’d brought along. Perhaps they were avoiding work back at town, perhaps they liked having the chance to catch up, or perhaps the desert was prettier when you hadn’t been condemned to die in it. Whatever the case, neither looked at Curtis. They talked about him though.

“Still can’t believe the boss didn’t want this done in town, all public and the like,” said John. Even from his spot on the hot sand, Curtis could hear the chewing tobacco in the man’s voice.

“That’s because you’re a fool with no pride,” Gabe said. “If the boss had him killed in town, then everyone would know that this here piece of dirt was running around with his son.”

Tommy. Their speech brought his face to the front of Curtis’s mind, all flushed and smiling as they met in their secret places to stare up at all the stars, or at each other. He was beautiful in Curtis’s mind, as he always would be, as everyone agreed he was. He’d give anything to see Tommy again.

Curtis ducked his head, as if in prayer, and he brought his hands together. That was when he saw them.

There, in the sand, not three feet from his knees, were two guns. They gleamed in the harsh sun, and, despite being surrounded by the sand, they lay perfectly symmetrical, not a grain on either one. Both had a skull worked into the handle, a mark of expert craftsmanship.

Curtis was a practical man, he did not believe in miracles, but he wasn’t the type to look a miracle in the mouth either.

He looked to his captors: both distracted by bickering.

Curtis looked back to the guns. The skulls seemed to grin at him, as if they knew his situation and knew what their presence promised. Curtis knew what they promised too: Freedom.

He reached for them, all remorse gone. Though the sand around them burned, the weapons were eerily cool, and to Curtis’ surprise they fit perfectly in his hands, as if they’d been made for him.

As Curtis inspected the guns, the skulls stared up at him and seemed to laugh. Both the weapons were loaded, the bullets gleamed in their chambers, miraculously free of sand.

Curtis was so absorbed in the guns, so taken in by their presence, that when the voice spoke he almost dropped his newfound salvation.

“Hello,” the voice said, a deep voice that resonated through the cracks of his mind. It wasn’t loud, but it still silenced all of Curtis’s other thoughts. It was a voice like thunder. At first, Curtis thought he was hallucinating, pretending there were other voices in his head as the end drew near.

And then the second voice spoke.

“No time for dramatics!” The second voice was lighter. It cackled, popped, and danced around his mind. A voice like lightning. “They’ve seen you, human!” the second voice announced with glee. And indeed, John and Gabe shouted to drop his guns as they reached for their own. 

“Last chance!” the second voice cried, and then, together with the first voice: “Do you accept our deal? A life of our choosing for yours.”

Without thinking, without considering, with only the desire to live, and to kill the two bastards before him, Curtis thought: “Yes.”

His entire body became energized, filled with power so hot that it froze. It crackled through him, and though the goons had started their draws, Curtis’s hands zapped through the air; in less than an instant he pointed and pulled the triggers.

The air shattered as the guns went off, and the second voice cackled as the bullets burst forth in a blast of blue hellfire.

Gabe fell first, his light frame pushed off his horse by the impact of the bullet. He looked like he’d been struck by lightning; a hole where the bullet broke flesh charred and cooked.

John too lurched on the bullet’s impact, though he slumped instead of falling. His poor horse nearly fell as it tried to run.

Curtis didn’t stop shooting; hell, he couldn’t stop. Something visceral tore through him; it started in his gut and burned its path of destruction out through his hands.

He vaguely identified the feeling as hatred.

It took John a whole second to fall off his horse. By the time he had, Curtis put so many bullets into John’s flabby frame that his stomach popped. Curtis felt a jolt of satisfaction when the body slapped the blistering sand with a thud. John’s horse picked up speed and bolted in the same direction as its companion.

Curtis stood a second, alone with just the tree, the sand, and the voices in his head.

“Whoo hoo!” the second voice cheered. “You lit them sons of bitches up!”

Something snapped inside of Curtis, and he fired his thirteenth bullet into Gabe’s head before he could pull himself back together. He sucked in air through pulsing breaths, realized he was panicking, and fumbled with the guns. The barrels snapped out, and Curtis ran his thumbs along their sides, spinning them along. Both guns were full, not a bullet missing. Curtis tried to laugh, but his throat burned so bad he stopped.

“Are you still satisfied with our end of the bargain?” the first voice asked, the one that came from the deep, the voice of thunder.

“Yes,” Curtis said aloud. His throat was dry. His tongue stuck to the top of his mouth. It only mildly disturbed him that his first thought of liquid was Gabe’s blood.

“Good,” the first voice rumbled. “Now comes your end of the deal.”

Curtis wiped his brow, the guns buzzed in his hands. The sun was directly above, burning, hating, and laughing.

“Where do I need to go?”

Just this one favor, then he would go home. He could go back to Tommy. With the guns, with the power, not even Tommy’s bastard father could do anything about it.

“The town you come from,” the first voice said.

“You’re heading back, baby!” the second voice cackled.

And Curtis smiled.

“Perfect.”

Part II: Sand

          After that, the voices left him. The space they’d occupied in Curtis’s head felt as empty and dry as the desert around him.

          He stood alone, so alone that the only rational response was to fall down and cry, and Curtis would have done so if he’d had any water left inside to cry with. He was so alone that the desert seemed alive with that perfect mixture of hatred, cruelty, and indifference.

          Curtis was dying. Before, he’d thought it would be hanging from that tree, (like Christ, like Wōden, a voice he didn’t recognize whispered, and Curtis thought for a second that he was not alone, but he was), but now he was sure. He was further along the path, closer to those golden gates, the last place of temptation: the World Between Worlds. Not dead yet, but not alive either.

          Unlife, Undeath, Yes, that was it. He was of the undeath. An intruder into the world below, an intruder into his own realm, only here, in the limbo of sand and heat, was he welcome.

          Curtis saw things, things that the part of him which was still alive knew were false.

          It started with a fly that buzzed in circles before settling on his nose. He was glad for the itch, so grateful for the feeling that he begged for it, as long as it was caused by another living thing. His hand twitched, trying to convince him that he should swat this one.

          The fly was saved by a tremble, a shifting, and shaking of sand. Curtis’s eyes fell back onto the expanse. The sand and air shimmered so bad that it looked like when he’d opened his eyes after his brother had thrown him in the creek. Still, his eyes caught movement.

          How hadn’t he seen it earlier?

          In the distance, a mountain was moving. A wall of sand rolled towards him, pushing on like a wave eager for the shape.

          If he were alive, he would turn and run. If he were dead, he would have carried on walking. But he was Undead, and so he was pulled in both directions, forwards and backwards, life and death, pulled apart until he had no chance but to fall down into the sand, each grain burning whatever flesh it found.

          Maybe he screamed, maybe he bit his tongue, maybe he did both. The wave did not stop. It broke, but rather than a gurgling, drowning, white foam top, the top of the wave opened into a maw, dark and deep, and lined with teeth. Sand cascaded off, revealing slits along its flanks, and wings of wrinkled flesh that spun around it. Curtis realized the Beast was spinning.

          The maw rose and rose into the air, the Best impossibly large, incredibly monstrous, incomprehensibly real. It rose and loomed over Curtis, cutting off the sun, creating a sudden cool over his flesh, making him feel as dirty and sticky as a corpse.

 The creature reached its apex, and let out a shrinking roar that convinced Curtis it could envelop a whole world if it wanted to. And then the Beast dove.

Curtis didn’t draw his guns, he couldn’t have.

The Beast came down so all Curtis could see was darkness, its maw drawing closer and closer, but never touching him, rushing by until the Beast had spent itself into the earth, and Curtis found himself staring at the sun again.

His hands and face burned again. He blinked, or tried to, but his eyelids almost refused to rise.

The fly came back. Maybe it never left. It appeared on Curtis’s nose, tickling along his burned and flaking skin, like it was dancing.

Curtis struggled to his feet, knees popping. The fly followed, buzzing up past his chest and into his ear. He swatted idly, missed the insect and slapped himself in the face. He staggered, but did not fall.

On and on he walked, across sands, across worlds, across dreams. The sun followed.

Then came the hill; a dune so large it may have been a mountain. Curtis pressed on for the slope, not once considering going around.

He was grateful for his boots. The dune provided a little shade, but not much, especially to his exposed head.

The fly buzzed down his neck.

When Curtis looked up, and it was impossible not to, he found himself further from the summit than he’d been before. Sometimes, but not always, when he looked back up there was a boulder before him. He never pushed it, never even reached for it. That was not his burden. He was not dead yet, not fully.

On Curtis went, slipping back (in space? in time?) in the sand three more times before he finally fell to his knees, screaming from the pain as sand leapt into his mouth.

For the briefest moment he considered giving up, lying down, and letting the sand swallow him. It would have been tempting, but something inside wouldn’t let him. Not a sense of courage, but some deep, true, fear. For he knew, as all who cross the World Between Worlds do, that those the desert defeats never leave its grasp.

To give up would not bring him peace, only the living can have temporary rest, just as only the dead possess persistent peace. The Undead have no peace at all.

He rose, and began again up the mountain. It continued to resist, to slide under his feet, to try and send him back down. For all its effort, the mountain, and all the billions, maybe trillions, of particles that composed it, failed.

Sweating like sin, Curtis reached the top of the mountain.

Then he almost fell off it.

Before him was a valley, deep and green and pretty as could be. Most pretty of all were the horses. There must have been more than a hundred of them; beautiful brown and white strawberry roans, wandering, grazing, and rolling like a great big wave washing back and forth between the edges of the valley.

Curtis could have cried, hell, maybe he did.

If the Undead could feel joy, Curtis would have.

And then the wind came. It swept in full of heat and suffering, armed with claws that tried to tear the skin off his skull.

It did even worse to the valley, bursting in and slashing around in wild fury. Curtis looked on as skin peeled off the horses, flaking off their bones and swirling into the air. Blood poured like waterfalls, like Hector, like Revelations.

The horses were silent in their pain, screaming and rolling in the blood. It did nothing to stop the wind, for this wind was not our wind, it does not feel, it does not occasionally wander and toss and love. The wind of the World Between Worlds had been lost for so long, as long as forever is, that it had forgotten those things. For it too, is Undead.

Flesh tore and peeled until the air was thick with it. Round and round it went, until the skin swam up over the mountains: a school of fish lifted up by unseen nets.

And then the valley was empty, save for the bones of the roans and the sand of the desert. Curtis tried to take it all in, the passing of life and the passing of time, how neither one of those things really mattered, but then the sun came into his eyes, and he stumbled into the valley.

Each step down was treacherous. It took all his effort not to slip, but it kept his mind from comprehending the desert. The fly plagued him the whole way down.

Maybe he’d tried to spit at it, or maybe his mouth had been hanging open on its own, but the fly managed to swerve in between his teeth and land on his tongue.

He tried to spit it out, but in vain.

Then came the coughing; massive heaves that made him feel empty of even his own bones. Still the fly held on.

Curtis stumbled forward, no longer caring where he went. His hands rose from his side, flailing as they dug into his cheeks and his finger clawed between his teeth. He knew he must have looked like a madman, a lunatic.

He clawed and pulled until blood leaked from his skin and pooled in his mouth, the first minor relief, sticky and full of iron, tough as it was, life and death in the same act. Undeath.

Part III: Blood

          Curtis lifted his head and spat sand. He turned onto his side, and felt the world bump beneath him. He sat up with a jolt as his hands reached for his guns.

          “Rise and shine!” the second voice cackled. “Welcome back to the land of the living!”

          Curtis shook his head and realized his hands were touching wood, not sand.

          He was in a wagon, one without a cover, pulled by two horses. He’d slept between two crates.

          With the return of his senses came an awareness of pain. Not only were his wrists still healing from the ropes, but his skin was baked to the point of peeling, and his back ached from lying in this cart. A quick pat-down revealed that he still had all he’d had before, as little as it was: his shirt, his pants, and the guns.

          The guns drew his attention. They were still cool, and felt odd along his cracking skin. His hairs stood on edge. Nothing natural could be cool in this living Hell. If these things could do that, they could survive anything. Curtis knew he wasn’t built the same, and was lucky to be alive.

          “Not lucky, chosen,” the first voice said, with a resonation that came from far below Curtis’s own thoughts. “You have yet to repay your debt, and until then, it is only we who own your name.”

          “Fine,” Curtis groaned. “Thanks.” He spoke aloud, and though it burned, he was grateful for something else real, even if it was in his head.

          “Ah! You are not dead, amigo. I was worried I would be arriving into town with a corpse.” Though this new voice rang unlike the others, it took Curtis sitting up and seeing the outline of a grinning woman at the front of the card to realize it came from another human being. One of his hands fumbled to the unfamiliar weight of the guns. “I wouldn’t worry about those,” the woman said. “If I was going to kill you I would’ve done it already, but I’m not stupid enough to take those things. Lord no.”

          Curtis grunted. “Well thank you. I appreciate it; not killing me and all.”

          The woman cackled, the kind of cackle that couldn’t be done on a dry throat. “You might wish I had soon enough.” Only a few days (months, years, ages) ago, Curtis would have ignored her and tried to keep up the conversation, but all he did was lean into the boxes.

          No, he wasn’t dead, but it was the first time in his life he might want to be.

          “Hey, you want some water?”

          At the thought of water, something in Curtis snapped back to normal.

          “Of course I do, thank you much…”

          “Eset, my name’s Eset.”

          “Thank you, Eset.”

          The woman produced a flask and waved it over the front bench.

          “Then come ride shotgun. It’d be a shame for us to get robbed after I go through the trouble of saving you.”

          The miles passed more quickly with company beside and water at hand. Still, it was a long enough journey, and the sun was setting by the time they saw Sweet Water in the distance. Curtis knew he’d not come back the way he’d been dragged. Had it really only been that morning? How could it be the same day? He was not the same man.

His heart turned to Tommy. Though he was closer to civilization, closer to sanity, than he’d been since he’d been dragged out, dread sunk into his heart. He wondered if Tommy had mourned, if he would still be dressed in black, his clothes torn how they used to do it. What if he wasn’t mourning at all? What if he had already found another?

          There was one more task, Curtis told himself, shaking the thought from his mind. One more debt to pay, and then he would be free. They could run away again, set off from this place on the edge of Hell and head back East, back towards where the mountains were covered with trees. It wouldn’t be perfect, but they would be surrounded by life, not death, and the blood on the land would be less fresh.

          One last debt, Curtis told himself.

          “It ain’t worth it, amigo.”

          Curtis’s head snapped up. Eset looked into the desert.

          “What ain’t worth it?”

          “Whatever’s bringing you here. This town ain’t nothing but a shithole, worse than a shithole, and I’ve seen a lot of shitholes.”

          Curtis tried to see it that way, but all he could see was Tommy. He’d be with him again soon, then they’d break for it, towards real freedom. That was worth everything, no matter the cost.

          “There’s still something for me there.”

          The look Eset gave Curtis was so full of pity he almost believed she knew something he didn’t.

          “Only agony, ———–” Curtis didn’t catch the last word. She’d called him something, a name, but not one he understood. It wasn’t Spanish, certainly wasn’t English, but something older, something that pulled at pictures in his mind.

          By the time Curtis grasped what Eset had said, his mind had clouded over, forgetting what it already knew. He tried to shake the fog away, but it stuck in good. Knowing he was being rude, Curtis found something to say.

          “What bout you? What brings you here?”

          Eset looked aside, and he saw in her eyes even more of that damned pity.

          “I’m doing someone a favor.”

          They didn’t speak afterwards. Curtis’s head was too full of gunk, and Eset didn’t seem to mind. Just them, the horses, and the desert.

          No one noticed them pull into town, least at first. Eset looked enough of a drifter to explain. Her companion, however, the dead man, that was worthy of all sorts of talk. It took only one person recognizing Curtis when they pulled up to the saloon to make the change.

          “Are you sure you want to go?” Eset asked him. “It ain’t too late to throw them guns away.”

          The voices said nothing, and in doing so answered for him.

          “I appreciate the offer, but I’ve still got things to do, debts to settle.”

          “Well, good luck then,” Eset said, looking down to the dirt before looking back up to meet his eyes. She tugged at the horses and pulled down the main street without looking back.

          And so Curtis was alone again, his back to the wind and his face towards the darkness of the bar that held his fate. He knew this place, knew it well. How many times had he and Tommy snuck out of it into the raging night or the still of morning? Once, it had been to Curtis a place of risk, daring, and adventure. The kind of place some wild Huckleberry would have loved before moving on. Now it was as welcoming as a graveyard.

          Somewhere, past the graveyard of blundering, drunken, wobbling men, would be Tommy.

          “Hahaha! It ain’t a graveyard yet, but it will be!” the second voice cackled.

          Fear shot through Curtis.

You said only one death, one debt to play.

          “Only one debt, yes, but how you pay it is up to you,” the first voice boomed.

          Is the one I need in there now?

          “Yes,” the voices said together. One voice, one mind, one debt.

          Can you tell me who he is?

          “Not until your eyes meet theirs,” said the first voice.

          Alright then.

Curtis’s hands lowered to the guns. His palms rubbed the skull of each handle; the chisel of the teeth shot madness up his spine. He’d never been a gunman, not before today, and the chilled weights at his hips felt unnatural with promised power, the same way a shooting star promises wonder. With these guns at his side, Curtis could be a gunman. Just this once.

          Part of him wanted to throw up, to double over, scream, and put the guns to his own head, but he couldn’t. It was impossible, something stronger than him prevented it.

          The saloon door swung inward, and Curtis felt the millions of splinters buried in the wood. Whiskey stink, cheap tobacco, and the farts of tired men mixed together to make the stench of entertainment and relief. No one noticed him at first, no one cared, not until he met eyes with the first coal-toothed, foul-mouthed, sin-stained bastard.

          “No,” the voices said in unison. It didn’t help Curtis relax. He met another pair of eyes and got another no, but people were paying attention. They watched him with beady, curious eyes.

          Another pair of eyes passed by; another no; then another. More eyes turned to Curtis. Panic rose through his legs and into his gut. Where was he, this man the voices had decreed dead?

          He moved so fast he was spinning, hands on the guns, desperately searching each face.

          “No, no, no, no, no,” the voices chanted.

          Everyone in the bar was watching him. Did they know? Who were they hiding?

          “You alright there, boy?” one of the men asked.

          Boy. Curtis hated the word, hated what it meant.

          “I’m fine,” Curtis growled. “I’m just looking for someone. I owe them.”

          “Then you can sit right here and wait for them,” the bartender said as his hands reached beneath the counter.

          “No, I’m tired of waiting.”

          “Hey,” one of the cowboys said, “ain’t that the one that John and Gabe were supposed to take out today?” No one answered, but the murmuring swelled.

          One word rose about the others: ghost.

          Curtis laughed. “I ain’t no ghost.”

          “Then you’re about to be!” someone shouted.

          Curtis felt the other man’s rough hand slide against leather and iron, and before the other man’s barrel could taste air Curtis pulled both guns and swung them towards his assailant. His hands moved faster than they ever had, faster than they could have on their own.

          Even with the bone deep chill of the grinning guns, sweat tumbled down Curtis’s hands.

          The guns shrieked, the room flashed, the bullet screamed, and the drawing man died.

          For an instant, nobody moved, then everyone else in the bar drew.

          Curtis closed his eyes, waiting for the end, but it did not come. Instead, his world got brighter. Everything was made of fire, the sparks revealing the bodies around him like specters of flame.

          “This is how we see things,” the first voice said in its low, deep tone. “You humans are drawn to us, you try so hard to be us, to see your world the way we do. This is it…”

          “Let’s show you just how fun it is!” the second voice said. The burning outlines began to glow until they exploded, and the shootout began.

          Curtis spun, firing into the opposite corner where  a crowd all reached for their guns. Their moves were sluggish, like their time was crammed together and shoved through a small tube. Curtis’s eyes flowed from one to another with impossible precision. Look, point, shoot. He moved without stopping; look, point, shoot.

          “No, no, no,” the voices continued; each man he felled was not the one they wanted. Curtis kept shooting; he didn’t have a choice. He was horrified to find himself laughing.

          And then it was over. Even the bartender was gone; what remained of his body lurched over the counter with pieces of his head all around the room.

          “Oh God,” Curtis breathed as the sickness of the image rose inside him. Had he really done this? No, certainly not. He was a man, maybe not a perfect one, but a good one. The devils had done this, not him.

          “God’s got nothin’ to do with it,” said the second voice with a laugh.

          Curtis’s hands shook, and the air smelled so strongly of ozone and smoke that he was sure one more bullet would set the whole place alight.

          He didn’t dare move. Even if the building didn’t explode, he would.

          Curtis knew someone would come, someone would put him away, someone who would put him right back where he’d been.

          “You said he was in here,” he whispered.

          “We never said it was on this floor.”

          The main door to the upstairs swung open in the slow creak of someone acting with all the fear and wonder of a small child.

          Slowly, a hand, and then a whole arm, creeped out. It wasn’t a strong arm, like the ones that belonged to the men below, but it was a beautiful one, one that Curtis knew. His heart beat even faster.

          “Curtis, is that you?” a voice called. Oh yes, Curtis did know that voice. He’d heard it try to talk its way out of a thousand bad corners, had heard it move all but the most stubborn of men, had heard it spout the foulest of curses in the sweetest moments of love.

          “Ya Tommy, it’s me,” Curtis said. His voice didn’t shake, though he felt it should have. “It’s alright. It’s just me now.” Part of Curtis, the part that remembered what life was like before that morning, felt the beginnings of joy. The rest of him begged his eyes to look away.

          But he didn’t, he couldn’t, and Tommy believed the lie.

          A leg followed the pale arm, sliding out onto the balcony in a loose pair of work pants that hadn’t been buttoned properly. The other leg followed, exposing the other hand that was trying to do the job of a belt and failing miserably. Curtis wasn’t stupid, he knew what that meant, and he knew how Tommy liked to work out his feelings.

          Tommy’s head flopped into the light, straw-color hair ruffled by unfamiliar hand, followed by his pale bare chest, which was dotted by a few specks of hair.

          Their eyes met, and Curtis already knew, but the voices told him anyway.

          “That’s the one.”

          “He…e…e…ey Curtis,” Tommy stammered. “You did all this?”

          “I did.”

          Tommy tried to smile, it didn’t have its usual charm. It lacked a glamor it’d had before, a special something. Maybe the real glamor had been over my own eyes, Curtis thought. It got even worse when Tommy spoke. “Well, lookee at you then. I didn’t know you was a gunslinging type.”

          “I wasn’t.” Curtis’s hands twitched. They were pulled to the guns, threatening pain if he considered drawing away.

          “Do it!” the second voice screeched.

          “This is your debt,” the first one said.

          But Curtis didn’t care. He’d killed already, more than he’d ever wanted to kill before. Wasn’t that enough? Couldn’t it be?

          “No,” said the second voice. “It will never be enough. That’s the point.” But that didn’t scare Curtis. No, it was the deep rumble of the first voice that gave him pause.

          “Go through with this, or the pain might be more than you can take.”

Curtis thought of the worst pain he’d ever felt, he thought of his brother, murdered and gone, thought of how that particular hole in his heart was still scabbing over. If there was a worse agony in this world, he didn’t want to feel it. But at the same time, he’d lived in fear for too long, he knew that then, the grim certainty that comes from a brush with death. So, doing what he knew to be right, Curtis gathered his courage, and pushed the demons away. He couldn’t do this. So he would die for love, and that would have to be good enough.

          “Don’t you worry, Tommy. It’s all over now. I’m done, I promise.” Though Curtis’s throat was dry, the words came out sweet, sweet enough that he wasn’t sure they’re his own, but they were, they have to be, and the devils retreated into the guns. Each step Curtis took made him weaker. By the time he reached the stairs he wasn’t sure that he could climb them. Tommy was still at the top, watching with narrowed eyes.

          “So…you ain’t mad?”

          Curtis made it up five steps, paused, smiled. “Why would I be mad, little doll? It’s all about to be better.”

          Tommy let out a deep breath, and a smile grew across his face, a smile so full of relief that Curtis found the energy to make it up the rest of the stairs.

          “Oh, good, because I thought you’d be mad, thinking I didn’t think you could handle it, or something, but I knew you’d come out ok. You always do.” Tommy’s grin split his face, but it couldn’t stop Curtis from freezing.

          “What?”

          “Oh, you know,” Tommy said, stepping forward out of the doorway, his bubbling as uncontrolled as the shaking in his hands, “my daddy made me tell him where you’d be shacked up this morning, told me I’d lose everything if I didn’t, so, you know, I told him in a way that I thought’d give you the leg up, you see. And I was right! Everything’s ok. You can escape before he knows you’re here, and he don’t need to know I helped.”

          The words ran through Curtis, not making sense. Some of it he understood, but one thing he didn’t. “You’d come with me, right?”

          Tommy gulped, then glanced back into the room, where Curtis thinks he can see another shadow. “Well, Curtis, I can’t just up and leave like that.”

          “Why not? I love you.” Had Curtis said that before? He couldn’t remember.

          Tommy’s back was pressed to the door, trying to slip inside it, but kept outside by the awkward cumberance of using one hand to keep his pants up. He kept glancing at the guns, the back to Curtis’s face. Finally, Tommy got a hand around the door knob, where his mask of relief fell away into terror.

          “Help!” Tommy screamed. “This crazy boy’s got a gun!”

          As he screamed, Tommy tried to turn the door knob, tried to put something between himself and death, but his hand was slick with sweat, and it slid off the shining handle. Tommy whimpered, threw himself against the door. It held. He screamed again.

          For a moment, Curtis saw nothing. Then he saw everything; not in the Hell Sight, not that world made of fire, but with his own two eyes. He saw the pale thing before him, no more than a spoiled young man, the boy he’d loved, but he saw him that way no more. All Curtis saw now was the son of a rich white man, a vile son that would carry on his father’s wishes. Why was he ever about to die for his love of this thing?

          The guns remained cold. Curtis didn’t remember drawing them, but there they were, shining and screaming, begging. Their desire was physical, the roaring of fire that filled Curtis’s ears, the thunder of a train that shook his bones.

          Curtis took one last look, then fired.

          One last debt, paid in blood.

          Not a bit of Curtis wanted to watch, but he did anyway. The lightning arched, bold and blue and beautiful right into Tommy’s heart; it made Curtis’s whole body shudder, watching Tommy spasm like that, an overwhelming pain that turned to pleasure as the bullets carved their way out the other end of Tommy’s body and through the ceiling.

          There was a moment of stillness, a deep slow exhale meant to bring about a new calm, but it didn’t last.

          Tommy’s pants fell first, revealing what had once been impressive as something limp and dead. Then went his knees, and then his face planted into the wood of the balcony.

          “Bam! Hahahaha! Got the fucker!” the second voice cackled, and Curtis couldn’t bring himself to be upset. Nothing the voice said was a lie. Even so, it didn’t stop Curtis from putting one foot in front of the other, then doing it again, and again and again and again until he was standing beside a dead man that he’d once thought he could love.

          There was no soul left to comfort, and Curtis wasn’t sure he could have if there had been anyway, but he did caress the now-empty face with the side of his boots. He reached for the handle of the bedroom, opening it easily, and observed with supernatural apathy a silhouette flinging itself out the two-story window, leaving behind their boots.

          All was still then, as still it could be in a place like this. There was a bit of wind, hot and clawing, yet gentle once it found Curtis. The bar doors creaked. Beyond them was a buzzing. It reminded him of something persistent, something nagging, something he couldn’t remember, but the sound was real. It was the sound of people, real people, people Curtis didn’t have much reason to kill. If he stayed around long enough, they’d probably give him one, but then it’d probably be too late.

          Curtis looked down at Tommy’s corpse. There were already flies. He headed down the stairs.

          The buzzing grew closer, Curtis heard its parts: the stamping of boots and the shouting of voices. Part of him wanted to stay where he was, pour himself one last drink before being torn apart in the name of justice. That morning he’d been a dead man, and in coming back here he’d only brought death with him. Surely there would be some poetry in that, dying willingly now that he had sins to pay for.

          It was an overwhelming feeling, one of almost rightness, but as much as Curtis loved it, he knew it was horse shit.

          He looked down to his guns, their cool skulls grinned up at him, and though the voices were silent, he knew they were real, and so their promise was too. The debt was paid, with interest, and he was free again.

          Curtis looked to his hands, and they were covered in blood, but in dirty blood, the blood of the faithless and cruel. Did he deserve to die for spilling that kind of blood?

          No, Curtis decided. No, he did not. There was a whole world out there, (so many worlds, that part of him he didn’t recognize whispered) and he was free to see them all.

          When the mob came, bursting through the bar doors only a few moments later, all riled up and ready to lynch, they didn’t find a single living soul.

          Curtis was long gone, heading for the Desert.

* * * * THE END * * * *
Copyright Daniel Mosakewicz 2025