Thus completes the anthology. Fifty-two stories. A little over a year. Thanks for watching/reading all this time. It’s been a great experience, and I have no plans to stop. Here’s looking forward to year two!
Speaking of looking, I revisited the old west in this one, through the eyes of a lookout. What is he looking out for?
Thanks for reading.
Artwork by Gavin O’Donnell
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/B1dQW8
DISCLAIMER: This work has not been edited beyond what was 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
Couldn’t breathe worth a damn, blue-hot sky beating Ambrose with a switch the size of, well, the sky. Look at Carlo, son of a bitch paddling around that swimming hole of mud as if that’s where he’d find it. Brave for a man who couldn’t swim, but Ambrose was the climber anyhow, and had better eyes, so the top of the rock was his spot. Carlo was still wearing his kerchief, too, as if Ambrose could make out his face from here, the fool. Their only rule: only names, no faces.
Ambrose scratched his shoulder with his rifle because that’s where it was. Gunmetal like fire on his naked hands, trigger finger sweating something fierce.
He reached for his kerchief, caught sight of the hand that had done the bloody deed, then thought different for some reason. Should’ve shaved this morning. But he didn’t have a blade, anyhow. Would have used it for the deed, too. Cutting throats with blades is easier than with finger nails, though his were razor-sharp, hard to make a fist. That old braided Indian had taught him why claws were better than fists.
More than whiskers itched on Ambrose’s face at that thought, in three distinct lines that still hurt when it got too hot, like today. Funny how he couldn’t feel a finger on his face, but those scars burned like rivers of fire all by themselves.
Even she wouldn’t touch him there, ugly as it was. He hadn’t blamed her, but he still killed her, with those nails that the chief learned him of, hair spread around her like nightfall. He stroked that hair long after she died. Now both their spirits haunted him, leading him and Carlo off course from what they’d earned.
“What I earned,” Ambrose pushed through his teeth, the “I” splitting the “we” in two as he spied Carlo hauling something up out of the muck.
Ambrose shifted his stance in what must have been hours, legs cored by stone as brittle as the stone behind him. He trained his rifle on Carlo’s fat dollop of a body. Fuck if he was pale, neck and up and elbows and down as dark as the mud he climbed out of.
Ambrose returned the rifle to his shoulder and made a fist. Drew something hot there he knew wasn’t sweat. Slap that fat bastard in the face with the blood, the smell and taste of it would throw him off course long enough for Ambrose to fire a shot into his belly, maybe two. Fall back into that mud, sink down, preserved for someone else to find a thousand years from now after it all dried up, in this–
“God damn sun,” Ambrose said, pulling his arm across his forehead.
When Ambrose saw Carlo had found an old empty crate and not the prize they were after, he shuffled to the one barrel in a hundred mile radius he hadn’t shot up, but was, and took a swig of a memory. The bottle, left empty for some time, abandoned by someone else, but, closing his eyes, he thought he might feel the spirit of what used to be trickle down his throat. Like the two spirits that both scorched his face and wouldn’t touch it.
He threw the bottle against the ruined wall. Felt good, but seeing all that glass sparkle into dust made him think of rain. Hands planted on the window sill, nails embeded into rotted wood, Ambrose couldn’t win.
He kicked a bucket in his path that turned to dust as he rounded the corner to find shade or answers or solace, but more than likely dirt.
Ambrose did find dirt but also something else. Planks beneath the dirt of what used to be a floor. Who the hell would live up here, closer to the sun than anyone wanted to be? Ambrose took to what little shade there was and considered his question. He kicked aside some dirt and what he though was grains of sand scatter on tiny legs. The ground gave more than it should.
“Now why’d you go and do that?” It was Carlo, caked in dried mud, kerchief the only clean thing on him. “No faces. And now I have two reasons you ugly fuck.”
Ambrose looked around to the source of Carlo’s dismay. He saw of his nose than he should have. His kerchief was off.
“Now I’m gonna have to kill you,” Carlo said, revolver aimed.
Along with his kerchief, Ambrose had misplaced his rifle.
“A shame, really,” Carlo said. “A tough solo haul this is gonna be.”
Ambrose stepped toward him. “You found it?”
“Hey, hey hey,” Carlo said. “Watch it.”
Ambrose did. To the floor that matched the sill and the bucket. He smoothed dirt back over the spot.
Carlo frowned, then smiled. “You hiding something from me, Brosie? Nu-uh, don’t go doing that. Stay. Put.”
Ambrose dropped to the ground in a ball and broke through, taking Carlo along with him. Then Ambrose fell through something again: water. Plunging deep, the only thing he could feel were those scratches on his face.
He found the surface somehow and emptied his lungs onto a ledge of slick rock and kicked his feet to stay afloat, water the only purchase below he could find. Convinced he wasn’t going to drown yet, he listened for the man who surely had. Not a splash, or gurgle, or weak grasp on his shoe.
Ambrose smiled and looked up to a hole full of blue-hot sky. His scars weren’t burning for once, and it troubled him. He reached up for a handhold, found one, but his weight tore all his nails off except his thumb’s. Just as he reached his other hand up, light fell on it, then shadow, crawling across it like termites. Above were two sillhouttes, one with braids, one without. Sharp nails that weren’t his clacked on stone and echoed around him. That and darkness were all he was left with.