Back to modern western noir. There’s something about this genre I’m drawn to. Novels like No Country for Old Men and Devil All the Time evoke something in me that I never tire of. I think some of it is the simplicity in the archetypes. They’re familiar and powerful, and somehow never feel played out. I had a good time with this one, and I hope you do too.
Thanks for reading.
Artwork by Davison Carvalho
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/kDRxky
DISCLAIMER: This work has not been edited beyond what is done in the video. The goal is to capture a story in a short amount of time and keep it as raw as possible.
The Story
The squad car lights lasered the roaring fragment of Hell that coughed halftone smoke into a dead sky.
Deputy Madison Clement had never thought such poetry. The letters that made words that made sounds seeped through his jacket that still smelled of Barns’s cheap cologne. Jeanie would smell it when he got home. Through the smoke, through the dirt, through the screams.
The dirt as his feet parted for him as if sand buffeted by an ocean breeze. He was far from any ocean. He stopped becuase he couldn’t stand the sound of it. The dirt. He wanted to hear what he should be hearing, but for some reason, the sorry bastard had gone silent once they’d left the car. Resigned to what was to come, Clement supposed. Like a fucking hero.
“Like a fucking hero,” Clement said. It tasted like a shot of shoehorn whisky. And shoehorn whisky tasted like shit.
If he kept walking, he’d make it to the treeline, where the trees would overshadow what he left behind with their shadows. Night shadows were the darkest. Cut from the reflection of something far hotter than the blaze that consumed the silent hero.
Goddamnit, Clement needed to stop calling him that.
But Clement couldn’t walk. Locked to the earth like dock posts, cemented with barnacles. Where were these thoughts coming from? He patted his coat pocket for his notepad. Might as well capture something of worth tonight. All he’d caught was a man who was a man.
“Wish I had a camera,” Deputy Crawford said from the next county over, one made of embers and heat. Crawford had never given in to smartphones. He’d barely adopted a flip phone last year, and was adamant about one without a built in camera. Good thing.
Clement let his shotgun slip from his hand and stake the ground. It served him better as a cane now, the stock cold despite his grip, despite the fire.
How long would it burn? He burn? He’d watched a movie about the witch trials about a month ago. Jeanie loved horror movies. He hated them, but he supposed the vows he’d said at the altar twenty-five years ago included watching a horror movie to keep his wife happy every now and again. Maybe it had been the Lord telling him something. An omen of some kind. A warning. “The road you’re headed on only leads to Hell.”
Hell yes he deserved it. Clement grimaced, wanted to ask forgiveness but couldn’t bring himself to look at the sky, because that’s where the Lord was, not within as Pastor Downey liked to say. The hearts of men were no home for the Lord.
A pop broke the stillness. Then Crawford’s laugh broke that. “Think his heart burst,” he said. “Could’ve been his head. Empty of everything but sour farts. Hey, you hear that stuff about cow farts ruining the environment?”
Clement flinched at the squad car’s red laser. It had found him. Hey, Clement. Ready for another?
“Clement?” Crawford said.
“Crawford?”
“Yeah?”
“Please be quiet.” Clement kept the “fucks” to himself. He’d sinned enough tonight. But sinning is all he could do anymore. And there were yet sins to be done.
Boots shoveled dirt behind Clement with the sound of sandpaper on skin. Crawford was ready for the other one.
A car door opened. Driver’s side. With that creak that sounded all too like the oiled pews under his backside Sunday morning. It was Friday. He had a day to figure out what Sunday would be like after all this. How long would they wait for–
“You gonna give me a hand or what?” Crawford called.
Clement somehow turned his head to see that portly bastard he couldn’t stand the sight of. Partners. No. He and Jeanie were partners. But would she still be if she found the blood under his nails that no amount of washing could clean? Probably not. But Crawford would. He lived for this stuff. Would do the work Clement couldn’t, and only asked for his help when he really needed it. Like–
“Now would be a good time, Madison.” His first name. Would he call Clement by his middle if he had one?
Clement’s lungs couldn’t find the sigh they so desperately needed, and he trudged to the squad car, and Crawford, who was hunched over the trunk, fighting off two polished loafers that kicked with the amount of force the duct taped ankles allowed.
Crawford squealed like one of those old TV show cops. Clement supposed he was one.
“Say your prayers,” Crawford wheezed between laughter.
Clement looked up to the sky, the stars, and what he knew was beyond, looking down at him, with judging eyes that would never forget. Because he had something to say.
“Fuck you,” Clement said. Not the poetry he’d expected, but it felt good.
“You hear that, preacher?” Crawford said and tore the man out of the trunk who had married Clement and Jeanie, forgave their lack of donation when cash was tight, prayed Jeanie to sleep every time she’d lost another baby.
“He’s a pastor,” Clement said.
“He’s a fucking marshmallow is what he is. And I like mine burnt. Real burnt.”
Clement ushered Pastor Downey down the aisle he’d carved when he’d taken Barns to the pyre first. It was smooth and deep and worthy.
Crawford threw him in, because it was the part Clement couldn’t handle, and Crawford went back to his spot, in the front row, and Clement went back to his spot, a short walk a stone’s throw from the treeline of everlasting shadow. Where he could get lost, if only he could move. Where the air was clear of smoke and screams, because out here was brimming with both.
The pastor did say his prayers. In shouts and then gurgles. When that was done, the fire finished them for him.
Clement found his notepad. He opened it to the light of the fire but had nothing to write.
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