I sat and pondered for a moment what I was about to do. The silver bullets were loaded into my six-shooter and the beast was howling before me like a crazed animal. I was going to shoot this creature.
It wasn’t like I had much reason to feel guilty about it though. It’d murder seventeen people across four states. Some say it came from the Indians but I doubted that. They were people when they wanted to be.
Honestly though, I don’t know how I wound up in this hell-bound position. I was spending my time to myself, drifting across the lower planes of America, madly chasing the idea that I’d someday be rich. Then someone framed me for murder and the bounty was set at ten-thousand dollars.
Waste of my god damn time… and theirs if they could see me now.
Amberly, the sheriff’s daughter of Westlake, the town I’d been imprisoned in, had let me out on account of the killings. They had no reason to charge me if I had nothing to do with it. I’d remember her sweet words and pretty curls forever. “Crayton, if you were any part of a good man before tonight, you’ll continue being one.” Then she handed me this damn gun, saying that it’d somehow kill the thing tearing up all the townspeople.
The sheriff had his men tail me for three days before tonight, when all hell broke loose and the demons in the souls of all those murdered people had risen out of their dead flesh, screeching and howling like dogs at the moon.
I don’t know what she saw in me but I know one things for sure, it was god awful because, in order to catch a monster like this, who can inhabit the dead and make them attack the living like they do, you have to find another soulless beast to hunt it down and stop it in its tracks.
That’s where I came in, seeing as though my nickname was Reaper in more than five states. I guess reputation preceded me. Hence the reason she felt fit to throw me in mortal danger in order to save some folks that wanted me dead. Apparently, I was just damn ruthless.
So long story short, here I sit, watching for that big ugly thing to show me its teeth.
When it finally did, I was ready. I jumped from my cover behind a few barrels and shot it as it lunged for me, digging my spurs into the ground like there was no tomorrow.
The town was silent as the shot rang out loud and clear. The victory was surely mine.
Amberly came running out of the sheriff’s office to see the beast, watch it turn back to its sickly human form. It was just a man inside that thing.
She turned to me. “Thank you Crayton.” Her hands wrapped around me but she suddenly froze as she held on. “What’s that smell?”
I felt a sudden heat, a burning in my arm. I looked down to see the torn piece of my shirt, swelling with blood. I looked at the moon and she ran as my eyes turned a bleating yellow and a growl reached my throat.
Monster kills people, people find monster, people kill monster, and monster kills people. I would have laughed if I knew how, underneath all that burning flesh. The night was still young and boy was I hungry for revenge.
