February 2012
3 posts
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Chapter 19
I did not realise how cold I was until I was shot, the searing hot round whipping past my head and taking the top part of my left ear with it. My head rang with a mortal urgency, the stink of my own warm blood and torn flesh beset and bewildered me for a moment.
Then I ran.
My legs were far too heavy, clung to with wet clothes near frozen with mud that seemed to weigh more than it should. Mine...
6 tags
Chapter 18
The boy who lay before me now had that look about him, the teary eyed acceptance that there was no other possible outcome to his present situation than his own doom. I thought then that if he had the strength of determination to do so he would have done himself in, but he did not.
‘How many?’
He looked up and me with wet cheeks and snot running into his mouth. ‘Two. Three more. Two more and...
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Chapter 17
Yesterday was a typical Saturday, the usual day when inhabitants of White Falls made their way down to Blackwater to attend to weekly provisioning and other necessities. Those that could still stand made their way back at night. Others remained behind to satisfy weaker desires in brothels or saloons or backroom poker dens and, if they did not end up detained in jail for drunken or lewd or...
January 2012
4 posts
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Chapter 16
When they came there were three.
These were the sort of mindless half-sober bumbling antagonists Vernon would happily sacrifice in return for knowledge of my exact whereabouts. I do not doubt that he had made eloquent and persuasive promises to such men, graspers who give little thought to the value of things other than the immediacy of their reward; it should be noted that men who could be so...
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Chapter 15
“Cease fire, you witless fucking retards.”
Vernon’s rough throated voice echoed across the water, and brought with it an immediate silence and deeper chill to the day than felt entirely natural. His penchant for profanities was considered an upsettling and roguish trait amongst civilised folk, especially those of a more sophisticated education who deemed it a sign of limited and...
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Chapter 14
The first gunshot took me by surprise.
It ricochetted around, it’s deadly trajectory zinging in my ears while it expended its energy. My heart leaped into my throat and I involuntarily gasped for breath, my eyes wide and wild with panic. That it did not strike my person amazes me to this day, and although a dozen or so other bullets followed soon after not one came as close to corrupting my...
4 tags
Chapter 13
I could hear them approaching on the far side of the river, careful not to be the first in line, bellyaching and cussing as they slipped and slid in muddy ruts or stumbled on the uneven hillside snapping branches and twigs. However many there were I could not entirely tell with any accuracy, but clumsy careless stumblers were not the kind to concern me. Vernon would use them like pawns, to remove...
December 2011
4 posts
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Chapter 12
Waiting is easy when you know what it is that the passing of time will bring. When you believe that promises will be met and the words of others hold value, that such commitments have been forged on men’s honour, then there can be no reasons to be fearful or hopeful or otherwise anxious; things will be just as intended, when it is intended that they be so. In these instances it would be a...
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Chapter 11
Although I did stop to take his coach gun, and to lighten his pockets of a handful of shells, I knew I could not pause to wonder at the corpse of Meeks; it seemed true that even the strongest of men became nothing more than meat and bone for scavangers when their time was done. The racket made by our skirmish at Mother Kettle’s bridge would have alerted any persons nearby to the violence of our...
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Chapter 10
My progress towards the bridge was fueled by a ferocious fortitude of just cause, one foot placing itself in front of the other with a quickening of purpose; mine own dark spirit had at last begun to burn furiously with a sense of its own indomitability. The more ground I covered the more all previous apprehension or anxiety about what needed to be done fell away, it becoming clear in my mind that...
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Chapter 9
I would not wish to diminish the discomfort I felt at the idea of confronting this cavalcade of Vernon’s, by my own personal account I had contributed to the wickedness he brought down upon those who he judged to have wronged his freakish family. As I have stated elsewhere I do not see myself as either brave or cowardly, merely a person who does not dither needlessly when a careful examination of...
November 2011
8 posts
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Chapter 8
I should have been more thoughtful in my assessment of my predicament given my history with Vernon and Luelle, if they had troubled this far out of their way to seek me then they would have determined any approach they dared with a cruel deliberation. Only now could I see the hopelessness of defending our home as I laid its position out in my mind, for it sat sheltered by a bluff of sandstone on a...
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Chapter 7
I could not stay rooted to this spot, I would be done for in the open like this if it was not for the good fortune and cover of fog that this day had brought. The sounds of the wagon and horses came along, suffocating the life out of all the good and natural things that lay about me with a creeping debility. Crossing the covered bridge it seemed as though there were surely more than one horse...
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Chapter 6
These recently past years I have not been what you would call a recklessly brave man, I would not go looking for hazardous adventure or try to test myself against seemingly insurmountable odds without due care for my well being. I would not say either that I am particularly cowardly in my disposition, no more so than any man who would only be pushed so far before determining what reaction is...
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Chapter 5
I found myself frozen to the spot, unable to think clearly or make a decision on what course of action to take. Even though I had not heard it in over ten years I knew that laugh well, and feared it for good reason. It reminded me of ill advised promises made to cover iniquitous debts, degenerate deeds on which aspirations and hopes had been made to break in bloody retribution, and the worsening...
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Chapter 4
A freezing fog had blanketed the outside, making it hard to see beyond 20 or so paces. Everything was a brittle shade of silhouetted grey and there was a fearful hollowness to everyday sounds, as if the strangeness of the day had affected the nature of creatures and muted the temperament of the elements. Everything felt too distant, until it became too close.
I made my way down to the...
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Chapter 3
I did not do any digging on this day, Sunday.
Cora, my wife, and Jake, my son, had left well before sunrise, so as to have the religious preachings and divine enlightenments of the Reverend bestowed upon them in the town of Blackwater. Cora’s sister, Lydia, lived there with her three boys and girl, along with her pusillanimous husband, Arthur Hurt; Arthur being a weak-willed drunkard and...
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Chapter 2
Today I dug another hole.
My son and his young friend helped, with as much dedication to the task at hand as to be expected of two such easily distractible and foolish young imaginations. As we laboured we uncovered a number of large rocks, and it was no easy matter to dislodge them from the thick clay; at the end of the matter it was brute force determination and a relentlessness of spirit that...
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Chapter 1
Dug a hole today. It was a big hole. There was no gold in it, nor anything else of even modest value. My son worked alongside me for a while, getting hopelessly muddy as he did so. His laughter at our continued lack of reward baffles me, I fear the child might not be as bright as I fucking hoped for. Still, his play was pleasurable to watch and it lifted my spirits. Tomorrow I will dig another...