Tuesday, March 2, 2010

Part I: You draw your gun and shoot him.

...
You don't know this kid's relation to the man you killed, but he's likely a family member, maybe a son or nephew. He knows your name, and he knows about the killing. Whoever he is, he shouldn't have come looking for you in this place, where men are killed over cards and imagined slights. People know you here and won't say a word about a kid who got in over his head and got shot. You draw your gun, swivel, and fire a shot into his stomach. You fire again higher, into his chest, and he tumbles off his stool. In death his lip curls into a sneer. He struggles to reach some bulge in a jacket pocket, but his strength fails him. When he is gone, you find he was reaching for a cheap little pistol, the sort of thing that jams frequently, the sort of thing that you can pick up for a few coins from disreputable merchants, the sort of thing that gets young men killed.

The incident is swept away: no one saw anything, and the body was never found. But you can no longer tell yourself that you made a mistake--can no longer tell yourself you're not a killer at heart. That you wouldn't kill to cover your tracks. The boy will haunt you, even as you walk the streets a free man.

THE END

Achievement Unlocked: A Right Bastard

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