BANG! (A short story)

The scene froze in front of his eyes.

Light from everywhere else faded into a shadow-drenched obscurity, slipping amenably beyond the edges of his vision into some otherworldly blackness. The lone candle-chandelier, flickering all this while, had suddenly awakened to the sound of gunfire and panicked scurrying into an enlivening constancy, even obdurately surviving a ricocheting bullet. Shards of glass hung suspended in the night’s salty air, a hundred reflections of the Serpent’s face looking into every corner of the room. What they saw, however, was quite something else. Bayou, crouched behind the upturned table, was reloading his revolver one bullet at a time; old Twofour stood behind the door to the cellar, up on a flight of stairs, his carbine rifle pointed squarely to his left; the Marauder stood straight ahead, both revolvers pointed into the room, just as still as the Serpent was, just as coiled up.

And the last bullet slipped into its slot, settling down with a muffled “clink” that brought the room back to life.

The bottle spinning slowly above the Serpent’s head exploded to send down a rain of whiskey, droplets catching fire as they came down to etch the wooden panels. The table in front of Bayou was beginning to turn to ashes, the electric-blue wave scouring across its surface in one smooth motion. He was dead before he could react, a bullet speeding its way nonchalantly through two layers of bone and one of very little brain. The revolver in his hands dropped right on top of the cartridge of bullets near his knees and, before his body hit the floor, they were riddled with holes from all directions. Those that couldn’t participate in the mutilation instead graduated to the shelf of bottles behind him, soon showering the path of the advancing Serpent with sparks infinite. However, the bullet he had sent at the Marauder’s face hadn’t found it, sending him to stillness once more.

A leaden projectile caught the barman on his voice, sending the bone shattering and shredding inwards, and the Marauder held on to the rifle before it went off in its agony, catching the falling body with his other hand.

All that stood between a blind assassin hired by the townsfolk and a deaf marksman who served the sheriff’s needs was a damp shelf, two chairs, half of a table and a pool of alcohol, all eager hellions in a battle for the town. To the tall, thin man at one end of the room, the world was a pool of blackness through which any sound around him swam noisily to his notice. An arsenal of sixteen revolvers hung from holsters on his belt, eight to each side, saving him the need to embarrassingly try and reload during a fight – and he was yet to lose one. At the other end of the hall was a veteran of many shoot-offs, and that only testified to his skill with the gun. Stone-deaf in both ears since birth, he had relied only on speed and razor-sharp precision to remain alive for an astonishing 45 years. Now, however, hearing would have done him no good: he knew and trusted his opponent’s light-footedness to leave him in quite the same position as the Serpent was with an assortment of obstacles in his path. Speed, it would seem, was to be the decider.

He held the rifle limply in his hands, waiting for the first sign of movement, any movement. When none seemed forthcoming, he decided to take his chances, and tossed the heavy firearm all the way across the room, where it struck the stairs and went off with a loud bang.

The Serpent ducked quickly but clumsily to where he knew Bayou’s body was, aware it was a ruse played by the Marauder to distract him. To say the least, it had worked splendidly: on the one hand, there was the clichéd possibility of a decoy; on the other, there was the more dangerous possibility of a smart gamble that would effectively leave the Serpent with two targets, each a doppelganger of the other. Holding on to one gun, he placed the other on his thigh, careful to not let it slip into the pineapple soup at his feet.

Not making any sound, the Marauder stood up slowly from his corner, rising awkwardly into the cottage now smelling pugnaciously of gunpowder. Once upright, he walked over to where the rifle was, picked it up, his breath still trapped in his chest. Pointing it straight at the crouched wrangler’s face, he pulled the trigger.

If the Serpent could see, he’d definitely have looked up before taking any aim. With surprising enunciation, he heard the hilarious exclamation of “FUCK!” follow the foolishly loud click of the nock against an empty barrel. Standing up quickly, he pointed straight at the unfortunate sod and-

In his mind’s eye, though, another scene played itself out with stunning clarity, a scene with a fully loaded revolver falling silently into an incendiary swamp, its hot hammer slamming into the wood to set off an innocuous spark that crackled and seemed to die... before exploding with unbridled fury, all the heat climbing up the legs of the Serpent like an arboreal fork of lightning.

The Marauder watched the Serpent thrown a few feet into the air, his legs already severed from the body, currents of flame slowly burning into his skin. Walking up to him, he was painfully aware of his impending duties, his rights due his stature. A shot through the heart put his villain of a brother at peace, and without missing a beat, he turned the gun to his head. In a fight to the death, you either had to kill or die. Anything else, including the idiocy of the man pointing his gun at your head, was unacceptable.

And he pulled the trigger.