“Hey…leave that gun boy!” 

“Then get up and get it,” the man said back to him. 

Cal was only just keeping himself up with one knee and one arm, he remained in that position wary that man would hit him again.

“It ain’t yours, don’t you got any decency not to touch other people’s belongings?!” 

“I mean, yeah,” he said, “but I’m not taking my chances right now.” 

“Heh…. You don’t need no gun if you hit hard. Who taught you how to fight like that?” 

He picked up Cal’s rifle and inspected it.

He’s still got this loaded, he could’ve shot at me a few more times. Why was he stalling? 

“Huh? What did you say?” 

“Tsk, nothin’. I said, ‘Why don’t you come and shoot me already?’ listen when somebody’s talkin’ to you next time.”  

“Well I’m not gonna do that.” 

“Then what you about to do?” Cal asked nervously, seeing him walk up to him right after answering back.

“You’re not getting back up?” he asked as he got closer. 

“I don’t know, I’m not tryin’ to die.” 

“Then that’ll make it a lot easier.” 

What he mean by “it”?

“Wait a minute!” Cal’s eyes widened out of concern and then stood up immediately. “What you tryin’ to do?! You better not do anything with that gun!” 

Swipe

Cal went down again, from another hit to the face with the rifle, following with the man placing his foot on his chest to keep him still. He aimed the rifle downwards in his sights.

“Hold on kid! We can talk about this!” 

“We will a little later.” 

BANG 

The bullet sounded loudly enough to even catch the man off guard. He felt a strange silence in the midst of the wind and looked in the opposite direction—where Jarid and the lady went off to. 

“Cal, do you think your friend is gonna come here because I shot a bullet? I’m sure he heard it.” 

Actually, Cal’s been shooting a bit and no one’s come, not yet at least.

Is that girl gonna be okay…

“God…” 

Grunting and groaning was heard right beneath the man.

“Goddamn it kid! The hell’s wrong with you?! You shot at my ear!” 

“Only next to it,” the man corrected him. 

Cal held his head in agony. His eyes were shut and he winced to the point where the man could see almost all of his teeth. 

Measuring the distance between the rifle and Cal, he gently placed the tip of the barrel slightly further away from his head than before. He held the rifle steady with both hands and placed his finger on the trigger. 

“Don’t fire that thing off again dammit!” Cal grabbed the barrel to make an attempt to pull it away from. “I’m gonna get into heaps of trouble ‘cause of you—” 

He shot again.

Cal shouted to the top of his lungs upon having a burning feeling in his hands, as well as another ringing in his ear. 

“Can you hear me?” 

“You gonna die…!” 

The man let some minutes pass to give Cal time to gather himself and recover from the blasts. He decided to look again in the direction in which the lady ran, wondering how she could possibly defend herself with a bullet in her shoulder. At the same time, he took more notice of the scenery he was in, an empty, and slowly moving wasteland with little to no greenery, harsh winds that were hardly letting down, and clouds blocking most light…of a soon to be sunrise. 

It should be past midnight.

“Hey, what time is it?” he asked Cal, who was finishing his panting and heavy breathing, getting over the pain in his ears and his hand. He sat up and looked at the man with such distaste, but refused to do anything but put up with him. 

“Why you askin’ that? You in a hurry or somethin’? And don’t talk to me like I know you.” 

“What time is it?” he said right after Cal spoke, slightly raising his voice.

“I don’t know, probably six a.m., or close to it.” 

“Six??” 

“That’s what I said kid.” 

This is wrong, everything is going wrong right now. 

He stayed in his thoughts for a while before calming down. He had a feeling that if he were to ask any more questions about time he wouldn’t get anywhere, so he put that thought to rest. 

“Okay…. So why are you out so early with Jarid? You guys really needed to go in that house?” 

“Look here! You don’t understand nothin’! If all you saw over there was just some people fightin’, then it’s a hell of a lot worse than that!” 

“Like what?”

“Like NOTHIN’! You don’t gotta know!” 

“Then why didn’t you let me go earlier instead of bothering about some dumb house?” 

The man brought his pistol out from the pocket of his coat, letting it be seen as he was speaking to him, asking very closely what he just mentioned. He made his way in front of Cal, looking down at him. 

“Also didn’t you say something about making a deal?” 

“You ain’t even gonna believe what I got to say so just let me go, I gotta find Johnny!” Cal shouted as he began panicking,

“Johnny…” 

“Yeah…. Hold on, you said she helped you with something right?” 

“So you wanna talk?” 

“C’mon just say it!” 

He looked a bit behind Cal’s position and threw the rifle in that sighted spot, then threw his pistol just next to it, rolling a bit away. 

“You mean Anna? Tell me about her first.” 

He lowered himself to Cal’s level and sat down in front of him, to listen, and to recover

“You gonna believe me?” Cal asked. 

“I might.” 

Looks like we’re cool now.

Adjusting his hat to reveal less of his face, he was ready to hear everything, but also prepared to catch pieces of information that wouldn’t make sense. On the other hand Cal took his time forming words before telling this story, he didn’t want to make any mistake or say what wouldn’t make sense in front of the man, afraid of what he would do to him if he lied.

“One time…some folks came back tellin’ us there was a house away from here, and they told us it was a woman livin’ there by herself. Nobody knew about something like that, or how the hell a whole house was built in that spot, so more folks went over there to see. She was a good woman, she said hi to people and made friends with everybody. People told her a bunch of times that she could come into town and live with everybody, and that’s the weird thing.” 

“Why’s that weird?”

“She never did. She stayed at that same place so everybody had to go to her.”

“Did she ever say why?”

“No,” Cal said, “she never gave an answer and acted like everything was okay. One time someone asked how she got her house and she never answered, all she said was, ‘It was done for me.’ or somethin’, and she used to smile at us and still acted like everything was okay. A lotta people us was thinkin’ she was crazy, or she was hidin’ something. Few months later a lot of us forgot about her.” 

“And then?”

“Then some people, Clayne, who’s a friend of mine and Johnny, Johnny himself, his kid Nate, and his sister went over there one time. Clayne still had a good relationship with Anna and wanted to pay a visit bringing other people with him. When they got there—and what they told everybody later made no one wanna go back.”

“So she did something and you guys found out?” the man asked.

Cal remained silent.

“Or she hid something? Something serious?”

Unsure of how to even continue, he only looked away.

He ain’t gonna believe me.

“She was dead…lying on the floor. They told me the blood was black like the dirt we sittin’ on.”

“What?”

“And not only that, there was another man too, dead! Nobody ever seen him before! When they checked the bodies, they heard somebody coming down the stairs! Who do you think it was?”

She’s dead…? But—

“Another woman, that same one I’m thinkin’ you ran into.” Cal said. 

“…?” 

The man stayed silent once Cal’s story made less and less sense.  

“An—”

“No! She looked them dead in the eye, it looked like she didn’t know what to say! She just said something like, ‘I’m Anna, and I’m not trying to disturb you all.’” 

“Wait so she was…”

“Exactly! See that was the fake one you saw at the house. The real one we knew ain’t here no more.”

The man looked down to ponder everything he told thus far. 

I’ve never seen anything like this. 

“You see?” Cal asked him, hoping he would understand and believe what he’s saying.

“What happened next?”

“Nate stood there shook and scared. His sister ran off to find help, and Clayne followed her to make sure she didn’t get hurt. But Johnny stayed, and pulled out a gun to shoot her on the spot, too bad ‘cause it ain’t work somehow.”

Somehow?? Did he miss? Or could he not aim just like Cal?

“And that’s it.”

“What do you mean tha—”

“I said that’s it!”

Cal took a deep breath before resuming.

“Johnny always caused problems back in town, he’d been arrested a hundred times. And after that incident with Anna, he got worse. He stayed at that house with Nate. And one time when a lot of us went there Johnny just kept shootin’ at us, he even killed a man. He kept goin’ until everybody was too scared, and then we left.

“He came to town once in a while but it always ended in him fightin’, then he would go all the way back there. Nowadays nobody…nobody comes around here, they all happy with Johnny gone. But I gotta check on him, somebody gotta get him out of there.”

“Really…” 

“Yup. It’s been two years since then, and folks are still tryin’ to have a peace of mind.”