“(Gasp)... (Cough) Oh god what’s happening!” I look around I seem to be in some box, wait is this a coffin” Did some damn hooligans try and kill me by burying me alive? I feel around for my gun belt. Well they’re not complete clods they at least took my pistol rig but they left me my boot knife. I got to work climbing out of this coffin , as I breached the surface I thought to myself “ that damn saw bones didn’t know shit I didn’t need to give up smoking I just dug myself out of a grave and I didn’t even break a sweat.”
I finally see stars and from the looks of it they put me down in the old bone yard on the edge of town. My eyes focus and I see someone hunched over facing away from me crying and what looks like a young man standing next to them, I’m not sure if these are lookouts for the soon to be dead men so I keep my boot knife handy and sneak up on the young man and hook my blade underneath is throat and say “Who sent you?’
“It worked!” hollered the hunched over form, “Ok I guess I owe you a coke Vic, but can you get your zombie friend offa me.” The other one whispers.
“The fuck you say, Son.” I’m getting annoyed.
“Look you take the knife away from my boyfriend’s neck, and I’ll explain everything. Ok?”
“Ok.” I tuck it back in my boot.
“Ha what a dumbass.” The dude in front of me pulls an odd looking hog’s leg, it looks like one of those odd European makes, and he points it at me cocked sideways “How useful could he be if I can get the drop on him?” My eyebrow raises and I snort. “What?”
“It’s nothing, really I’m sure you’re a powerfully dangerous man when the occasion calls for it well since I held up my part of our little bargain you mind explaining to me what’s going on?”
The girl winces and motions for the boy to lower his gun, he hesitates then proceeds to not point it directly at me. “Better?” I nod. “Ok how do I start this, what’s the last thing you remember, or rather what’s the year?”
My eyebrow raises further. “Ok, Ha-ha you think I haven’t read a dime novel in my life your gonna tell me that I died and with some kind of magic or some such equally ludicrous means you brought me back from the great beyond to help you in some queer quest!”
“Who you calling queer!?!” The boy spits at me.
“Well, both of you, you got pants on so tight that I just might be able to count the change in your pockets, and the girls got pants on and she don’t look like no lady cowpuncher.”
“Queer means strange, dumbass.” The girls says “Also somehow you got it right on the nose and I’m going to say that utterly impressive.”
“Oh ok sure I’m back from the dead prove it.” I chuckle.
“Ok! I got an idea.” He points his gun at me and pumps 5 rounds into me. I stumble back a few steps I look down at my chest and back at the boy, I feel rage build in me until I realize that I don’t feel no pain and I ain’t bleeding.
“What in the Sam Hill did y’all do to me…shit you weren’t lying.”
“Ok I’m Victoria and that’s Josh and we have a business proposition for you.”
“You say that like I have a choice.”
She looks at me for a moment almost hurt “Y-you do. What do you think your my slave or puppet, I’m a white necromancer when we raise the being has agency.”
“Is that supposed to mean something?”
Vic looks visibly frustrated” It will if you come with us.”
(Exasperated sigh) “Lead on.”
We walk off the old boot hill and move through the town I used to know. Seeing this is one of the most painful thing I have done. Standing before me is a nightmare version of what I spent my life to defend. The place I used to catch a drink with my deputies looks like it burned down decades ago, my office is a vacant lot, and as my eyes scan the near hill for my old home I see the bones of it jutting into the sky, looking like the hand of a man buried in a shallow grave. I ask my new partners if I can give it the once over, maybe I’ll find some of my old belongings or something of value. They shrug and we begin to make our way u the short hill. When we reach the summit I can see that there is nothing of value but I remembered that I kept my workbench in the cellar. I see the door and as I approach a great pain grips me I collapse like a calf getting lassoed.
“What in the blue blazes is going on inside me? “ I gurgle
Vic grabs a glass flask of some clear liquid pops the top and empties it down my gullet, there’s a burning in my throat and a warmness in my joints, but the pain soon evaporates.
“I was wondering about when that was going to happen.” Vic says with her hands on her hips
“Oh, was that all?!” I shout sarcastically. “Anything else I should know sawbones?”
“Yeah, you do feel pain your body is just coming to life sort of. So those bullets that tore through you kind of caught up with you.”
My head snaps in the direction of that rat-bag Josh and my eyes narrow.
He giggles and points.
In short time my faculties return and I haul myself up. “Hey doc, question.”
Mmm-hmm.
“Do you have any more of that handy dandy potion, because aside from a strong glass of Arbuckle I’ve never drank something and felt so much better?”
“That’s no potion.” She smirks like she knows the punchline to a bad joke “It’s cheap vodka. Anything that’s used to preserve bodies heals you and alcohol falls into that.”
“Well don’t that beat all.” I laugh out
I get up and walk towards the cellar the door is intact but powerfully rotted. One swift kick reduces the wooden door to kindling. I climb down to the basement of my long passed house and two things hit me the first being the smell of damp earth and wood the other being how bright it is.
“Is the future brighter or something? I mean as far as I can tell there’s nothing but starlight above but I can see everything as clear as crystal.” I muse to the others
“What?” josh questions as they pull out odd-looking square pocket watches, which emit a blinding white glow. “It’s dark as dicks down here. Wait… holy shit come here.”
One of my eyebrows slowly raises “Why?”
“Just do it stinky.”
I saunter over and Vic turns her watch into some freaky glowing mirror and shows me my face I’m pale, incredibly pale which is not any sort of surprise but the thing that stops my heart, well it would if it were beating, my eyes are giving off a smoldering glow like embers at the end of a bonfire. They shut off their lights and ask me how dark the room is and I tell them that it’s not really dark like I can see their faces as clear as day. They inform me it’s as black as pitch in here. Josh gets a sudden notion and pulls out a little steel rectangle with a clover on it and in an instant there’s the brightest smallest flame I’ve ever seen
“How bright is this?” He’s looking me dead in my peepers
My mind reels “Bright, But what does this mean?”
Vic moves closer and puts her palm out “focus on my hand, like really focus, what is it you see?”
As I do as she instructs is see her dainty hand then I see lines glowing under the skin then they gain more detail becoming veins and as I look her over she looks like a nightmare version of a medical text book come to life culminating in a bright globe I assume to be the heart. I can’t keep the look of rear off my face.
“What did you turn me into?”
(Sigh) “Looks as I’ve said something close to ten times if you come with us all will be made clear to the best of my considerable abilities m’kay?”
“Get the horses ready and I check out this area for anything useful and meet you there in 10 ok”
Josh stifles a giggle and says that they will ready the transportation they leave me to the vacant basement with my thoughts. As I sift through the collapsed ruins of my old work shop I’m astonished to see most of it untouched by human hands but the hands of time have not been as idle I figure there’s nothing of real value here as I’m walking out I feel a pull drawing me towards a collapsed table. My eyes go wide, it’s my old gun rig, and more curiously it looks brand new I clasp it on and meet my compatriots at what I can only call a closed top burgundy horseless wagon.
My face gets a relative sarcastic flatness ok ya’ll better have a form of wagon that moves under its own locomotion ‘cuz otherwise y’all lost our horses
Josh gives an annoyed huff “Just get in you horror movie reject.” He opens the back door and we set off and after some time in this weird self-rolling buckboard Vic turns to me and says “Here I think it’s time to welcome you to the 21st century.” she hands me one of those queer pocket watches and she begins to show me how that work and they are called a cell phone or just a cell and after that has utterly blown my mind with that level of functionality she introduces me to the internet and after I’m learning about what was known as the second world war and what modern-day “things” even are
Josh tells me were almost to the most impressive sight I will ever see. I ask what it is and he tells me Las Vegas and this name doesn’t register even slightly but then like hell rising on the horizon I see it lighting up the desert sky. I can’t help but adopt a look of abject horror. What was laid before me was a pimp’s greatest life aspiration a row of what I can only describe as garish and gaudy mega saloons and whore houses. This was what I fought to keep my town from becoming and here it is celebrated as a lofty achievement of mankind. One of the strange lights turns red at an intersection he turns back to tells me something but sees the look of gut wrenching fear on my face and “Are you ok man, what’s wrong?”
“What version of hell did y’all bring me to? Are you really demons sent to usher me to my final judgement?”
Vic tells him to pull over as soon as he can, we arrive at a place called Denny’s which seems to be some kind of low-cost dining hall. We come in and I hurry to the commode to splash my face I look at the faucet and remembering what the interwebs said about this I turn the knobs and wash my face it’s here I get good look at myself. My goatee is still there complete with handlebar moustache my hair is still its dark brown but my skin is like chalk and my eyes still have an orange luminescence but a point I noticed is that aside from the blood soaked bullet holes in my abdomen my clothes look in unreasonably good shape and as Inspect my boots I see the still look serviceable, the same goes for my gun belt, guns and even my bullets. I thank god wash my hands and meet my new friends at their booth.
“Oh hey we got you a steak. Also as promised I will level with you this all started a few years back…