The Stand-Off - An Original Story

Harper's posse were one of those who had taken advantage of the weak security on the trains and robbed them every chance they got. And not just that, they slaughter every poor little soul aboard those trains, they lynched the whole populace of the towns where the trains made their stops. The rivers of crimson merging a sea of sand wherever the air even had traces of steam of trains. Numerous angry businessmen and oil tycoons had sent their private armies of mercenaries to hunt Harper and his boys but they only succeeded in making him angry. And the last thing you'd ever want is to make a person like that angry.

It was a bleak world. Dark, and red, and brown, and black, and white. And green. Most importantly green. That was the only thing that mattered to the outlaws and lowlifes. Truly a lawless world, where the most holiest of men would have committed suicide had he seen the conditions of a few towns like Coalglen and Moses. Robbed, pillaged, and raped. Burnt to the ground. Erased from the history of the world. Food for dust and bones. Justice was foreign to this world, an alien concept. Something the powerful men couldn't or maybe wouldn't understand. Whenever the fires of justice or hope were seen ablaze, they were quickly snuffed out.

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It was high noon. The Sun burned the red rock and sand dunes of a ghost town. In a sea of sand dunes, and red rocky mountains, the town feels out of time. Home only to rattlesnakes, lizard and the bones of outlaws, sheriffs, gunslingers and dark, bitter memories, that town waits like bad luck, ready to pounce upon anyone that passes it by. All deserted towns have some sort of ghosts in them. Hence the term 'ghost town'. A dark secret or a memory in the minds of the rotting corpses that lie there. And in that world, empty towns were more common than you'd think. The advent of the Railroad had done little to connect the far off towns with each other, especially with bandits repeatedly robbing every cent and nickel off of the trains, pillaging and marauding across the whole wild west. It made the name 'Wild West' even more literal.

The sounds of a gunfight rocked the air and for a second, it seemed as if the town came back alive, returned to it's former "glory". A group of men riding on horseback chasing a tall man into that town. The tall man wore a long black duster, a black top hat which had fallen some time during the chase, and black shoes which seemed very expensive. With one hand on his side, trying to stop the bleeding, and another aimed at his pursuers, he got into the dusty old saloon of that town where he planned to make his last stand. I'd tell you the name of the saloon if it still had that wooden board with it's name written on it. But alas, it was gone then and it had been gone a long, long time before that gunslinger got there. The whole town seemed out of time, like I mentioned.

Inside the saloon, he was greeted by empty bottles, rotten clothes and skeletons. And dust of course. The boarded-up windows provided him a bit of much-needed cover while he examined his bullet wound and estimated how much longer he could go on for.The rain of bullets didn't stop once he got inside the saloon. A couple of time the bullets had missed his brain by a very small margin and a barrel-load of luck.

Source

He was not afraid of those men, he was not afraid of what would happen if they caught him, he was not afraid of death. Come to think of it, he was not afraid of anything really. He had nothing to lose now, for whatever he had to lose, he had forfeited it a long time ago. And now he was at his wit's end, cornered, unafraid, hopeless and ready to go out with a bang. When one drives someone to such a point, he should be ready to face the wrath of not only the man but also God. But that was a forsaken land, from where God had turned his eyes far away long ago. And these were godless men.

All he really needed were six bullets, one for each man. The very men he once called his comrades were now hunting for his head. One of them was his very own brother. But he was sick of it now. All of it. He picked up his ivory revolver and went outside the saloon fearlessly, guns a-blazing. After a second of deafening number of gunshots, there was nothing but silence in that god-forsaken place. Nothing but silence and the grim sound of bodies falling down. Now only one remained. His own brother. And they were caught in a stalemate, with each other's gun fixed at each other's face. A stand-off.

"It's been a long time, Harper."

"John. Doesn't seem that long to me."

"Funny. When you hid in that broken down saloon, I thought it'd be the death of you. And now we're here: gun to each other's head. Only one walks outta this desert now."

Hid he thought. His blood boiled. He was bleeding badly from his side and pain had gotten much worse now. But he got more angrier each time the word "hid" echoed in his mind and in his anger he forgot his pain.

"It's time to end this," he said in a tone full of poisonous anger and pain. Both the gunslingers: one outlaw and one of the law pulled the trigger at once. Click...

They were out of bullets.

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Hey guys, I just wrote this short story at work. I'll write the next part of "The Mission" soon, it needs some more time. Let me know what you think about this one.

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Love,
Ana