Don't Meet The Reaper
(a western duel)
Goosebumps, the quivering of dried-out shrubs under a faint breeze mimics a pair of human hands and a flash of green light on the horizon fills the air with a sickly foreboding, and as the sun ascends through the heavens a lathering rides upon the forming wobble of the heat haze over the sand. Lips parched, dry, the tongue flickers over them as the eyes stare ahead unmoving. If a fly was to land on the surface of the eye and inch its way across, step by step, and poke at the moist exterior the eye would still not flinch, refuse to shift for anything that might happen, for it was gazing at the The Reaper who carefully gazed back. George Merry chanced upon him often, and this time The Reaper took on the form of a sunburnt man with pale brows, his gun-hand hovering over a leather holster on his belt. Merry’s open palm hovering over his gun summoned pale drops of sweat like copper pennies falling on a scale of Life and Death in favor of the Reaper. His fingers swayed shakily along with the fingers of Pale Death, every miniscule shift and movement mimicked each other as if Merry was gawking in a floury mirror at himself. His throat had dried up, he swallowed, waiting for the signal. All was still, they were watched from the windows by people and by the trifling life hiding in nooks and crannies, ants and ticks between and in cracks of planks, and watched by extant Life. A loud bash of a wood stick on wood rang from the side, and the two combatants drew with a swish of steel against leather. Two gunshots reverberated simultaneously across the small town, succeeded by another moment of stillness as the leftover echoes roamed away into the expanse. The man before Merry fell flat. George Merry had escaped The Reaper for another day, his heart racing and thumping with force equalling the power of the smoking revolver pointed forth.
Merry rode across a barren desert of fine sands, small pebbles and sand-rocks under the hoofs of his slender steed past small dried plants rooted deep to survive the harsh scorch of this climate, where cadavered cacti lay in small rotting heaps. A great ball of flame rose everhigher from the East, puppeteering a mirage of heat-haze showing sceneries of deep lakes of emerald water, views of green oases of palms and exotic fruit, all but hell’s attempt to lure Merry down below. The reality was dry, sharp, and deadly, like a spiked branch digging into his throat in his sleep. The only truth ahead was survival, the only path: that of his compass. A large spec of grey grew from the horizon and across his straight, into sight came a squarish rectangular boulder, an odd exception in the drabness of flat sands.
As Merry approached he curbed his pace and circled the rock, a tidy greyish sedimentary boulder of a multitude of layers. A man emerged from behind, standing up and rubbing his bare shoulders and back with a pair of rugged-skinned hands; unarmed, and smoking a poorly rolled cigarette.
“How goes there!”
The man's voice was tad gruff, though cheery, he wore a thin leather vest unbuttoned revealing a bare belly and wool pants; in this heat… The man had no hat covering his round head of short, balding hair, and his beard looked like it was shaved using a knife and without a mirror. The man looked like any miner or otherwise labourer Merry would meet in towns, rough dirtied skin and calloused dry hands. He responded in kind.
“Hello! May I rest in the shade of this rock?”
“Well, I s’pose so, there's enough room for two…”
Merry circled around the shaded side of the rock, where a small sack lay beside an indent in the sand, where the man sat or lay. He loosely tied his horse to a shrub, took off a pillow made of spare clothes wrapped in a blanket and went to lay down in the shade. The strange man watched him slyly, sitting nearby on the hot sand, outside of the shade. He was on the shorter side, and his growing forehead gleamed under the sunlight.
“Have you been traveling far?”
“I guess I have, been going west for some time now”
“Hm, anywhere specific?”
“I don't think so, just going somewhere, west is fine”
“Ahhh, that's a decent way, reminds me of the way my friend does things. But he might come up with a reason worse than that, haha… I’m bringing him a gift, this boulder”
Merry turned his head slightly to check on the boulder providing him shade. It was a colossal thing to “bring”, even a town-full of people wouldn't find a way to efficiently move it across sand. It was shallowly buried, though it could have been larger underground like the tip of an iceberg.
“I heard my friend was in the east, I hope to catch him there before he goes off too far”
“Hmm, that must be a thoughtful gift… I’m George Merry, what might I call you?”
Merry hoped the man wasn't insane, and hoped to steer the talks away from the rock.
“Oh, you don't need to call me, I don't need to be called by a name… Well, what do you do, might I ask? You don't seem like the type to find trouble…?”
“Ah, I’m not. It keeps finding me every single time…”
“Oh well, but your heart is open to it!” The unnamed man spread his arms wide. “You enjoy the rush, you welcome it every time, even if you may not admit it!”
The unnamed man smirked craftily, and Merry pursued his lips cunningly.
“Let’s see, shall we? Do you use that thing at your hip often?” He nodded at Merry’s well-polished revolver.
“Alas, I’m required to! There have been many a challenger in many a town!”
“You’ve seen Pallid Death then?”
“I’ve met the Reaper”
“No, haven't met yet… You’ve witnessed plenty, beheld at his cold grace, but never met…”
“...”
“You fear him, don't you?”
“Of course. Don't you?”
“Yet you rush to lay your eyes upon him time and time again! Wonderful!”
“You might be a strange one…”
“You yourself may be found strange by your potential comrades, yet even you find me strange? Perhaps I need to reflect on myself then, hahaha!”
The unnamed man took a long waft of his cig, blowing it out slowly out his nose. Then he looked back at Merry, and at Merry’s revolver.
“What say you and I have a go? I’m worried I’m going out of shooting practice!”
“Haha, sure, come evening! I don't want to lose a conversation buddy this early into the day!”
“It’s a deal then!”
A tiny wave of cold goosebumps rolled over Merry’s back and down his arms. The unnamed man stood up from the coarse sand, shook it off his pants and began strolling in a seemingly random direction. After a few dozen meters, he turned sharply and continued in another direction. It seemed as if he was simply strolling about the area, staying within a certain distance of the boulder while he explored the empty barrens. The sun was blazing straight overhead and Merry had huddled up close to the rock in order to remain in the shadow, nibbling on a large triangular piece of dry aged cheese as he watched the saunter of the unnamed man. Merry fell asleep into a cozy nap on the warm ground.
When he awoke the unnamed man was sitting in his previous spot in the sun, taking bites and chewing on some old hard-tack.
“G’afternoon!”
“And to you.”
Merry got up and ambled over to his horse, taking out a small tin box from a larger leather pack. He picked up a few of the abundant dry twigs, placed a few rocks closer together and lit up a small fire using a piece of flint. All the while, the unnamed man watched with a faint smile. Merry retrieved a small flat can, opening it with a hooked blade and heated it over the fire until the layer of juices atop the mysterious was almost at a boil. Much too hot to hold onto, he held the can atop a piece of leather strap and ate with a small tin spoon. Although he offered to share, the unnamed man refused without a slight change in expression.
“So, where have you yourself been travelling from?”
The unnamed man finally stopped staring at Merry, sprawling on the searing sands and placing his forearm atop his eyes and face.
“Me, I found this boulder near a volcano. Decided it would make a good gift, been bringing it along the past week now”
George Merry had not received higher education, yet even he knew the basic difference between igneous and sedimentary rock. He found the unnamed man’s words misaligned, if they were even truthful in the first place.
“Does your friend like boulders, then?”
“I’m not too sure… He likes the sun, its rise, and sunsets, that’s for sure, but I haven't asked him much about no rocks… What about you, whaddaya fancy? Booze, girls?”
“Sigh… I did run out of tobacco some while back, and haven't been able to stock up in the last town before I had to flee…”
The unnamed man shifted his laying posture slightly, bending one knee up.
“Oh, well, say, if you win I’ll share you a smoke!”
Merry meagerly tensed. If he won, he’d likely take whatever was inside the man’s travel sack. Likely, he would ride away without providing a burial; he had no shovel and wouldn't expend time digging with his hands. He would likely win…
As the unnamed man seemingly napped, Merry stared at him intently. The volume of the whoosh of the winds increased within his head, a deafening roaring that spun his senses into a twirling vertigo. Way up above in the azure heavens the clouds winked at the ground, a tremendous flat plane shattered only by the corporality of a rectangular chunk of layered stone and two men in its close vicinity, the exact center of their own universe and perhaps the focality of something greater, something yet to shape. Merry felt quite small, a tiny spec in face of the world, like a single ant before a booted foot of man, gazing up and marveling its own fate with searing expectation. Merry was quite familiar with this feeling; he felt it every single time… He was due to see The Reaper again, but it was yet up to fate if a close introduction was in store. An illimitable amount of time passed in the span of minutes, as the sun began to set.
“Oh, it seems like it's the right time!”
The unnamed man got up, walked over to the boulder and stuck his hand into his travel sack, rustling and searching before pulling out an old revolver with small patches of rust and corrosion. It was of standard double-action design, medium length barrel, six-shot cylinder, much like Merry’s if it wasn't so poorly maintained. The man spun the cylinder, checking the rounds one-by-one and then pushed it into a roped leather belt (straight into the belt, with no holster), walked over and stood a half-dozen meters away from the boulder. Merry checked on his own pistol, then walked away two-dozen meters away from the boulder, facing the man so the rock was not behind him. His holster was already unbuttoned, and his hand hovered over the curved polished wood handle of the gun. All the sound shrunk and balled up into a bead, a tiny spec so small it ceased all existence.
“At your count, anytime!” the unnamed man called out with a wide grin across his rugged face.
An icy chill slithered its way along Merry’s back, his breath returned to him from hellish depths in the form of a tiny blade ebbing in his chest, poised to strike at his opponent. To his wonder, when gazing at the nameless man he did not see The Reaper, who appeared before him so often, extending forth an algid, gaunt hand adorned with long, skeletal fingers. Now The Reaper stood beside him, behind him, stared at him from above and lurkily peeked at him from below the ground itself. The Reaper himself stood everywhere all at once, stroking Merry’s neck with a numbing sensation and whispered devilish enigmas into his ears. Blocking out all feeling, every sound, every shift of the hair, Merry placed every scrap of his attention on his opponent. He shifted, their hands moving simultaneously towards their sidearms, but from there Merry’s actions were quicker. He fired first, landing a hit on the stomach. The nameless strange man flinched from the pain and fired off to the side, into bare dirt. Merry remained alert, weapon steeled.
“Wouldya look at that! It’s my loss it seems!”
The unnamed man felt at his wound, which began to bleed. He then shook the empty casing out of his pistol and then threw the revolver atop his sack, before calling over. Merry, who was maintaining his position, relaxed at last upon the man’s disarming.
“Come look at your handiwork, that was a good shot!”
Merry marched back to the man, who now circled in place and was feeling at his back.
“There’s no exit wound, it’s still in me. You wouldn't happen to be a doctor, would you?”
“No…”
“Ah, then it seems I haven’t got long! Eurghh… It stings, it sure does…”
Left palm pressed onto his wound, the man shambled over to the boulder and plopped himself onto the sand with the top of his body leaning against the rock. Merry sat beside him. The man threw his revolver back into his pack and instead took out a tin box of tobacco and a piece of thin paper. His hands moved clumsily, and Merry took the chore of rolling a joint onto himself using nimble fingers. They lay beside each other, one more alive than the other, and passed the joint between each other, taking long snuffs and slow exhales, as if they were tasting fine aged wine in a chateau.
“Commendable skill, truly. I was thinking I could win after seeing some trembling in your hands, ah, but I’m too unpracticed in such matters”
“...”
Merry truly feared Ol’ Grim, but that didn't take away from his chances of victory.
As darkness grew like an iniquitous weed enveloping across the wastes the man slid down, using his sack as a pillow. He reached into it and pulled out a thin blackened brush and his revolver, beginning to brush the inside of the barrel. When he was done he placed the brush back and took out an uneven chuck of sandpaper, using it to scrub the rust spots away. Merry watched in silence as the man serviced his pistol, finishing it with a coat of preserving oil. Then he simply packed his things back up into the sack, resting his hands across his chest and gazed up at the stars. Merry slid down and lay beside him with his pillow under his head, gazing up similarly. Soon, Merry fell asleep.
He awoke from the shine of sunlight on his face. Hopping up on his feet, he grew stupefied. Both the unnamed man and the boulder were missing, no crimson spot remained where the man bled nor a crater where the rock was dug. Searching as much as he did, all George Merry found was a single old bullet casing, not of the type he would use. As ardent desert winds blew sand across vast, cadavered wastes and the sun was hoisted across the blue skies by forces unknown, Merry felt at peace.
Posted Jun 27, 2026, 10:34 AM UTC