home archives guidelines about

August 2008

Muerte
by Shaun Ryan

In the predawn silence, I am aware of the intruder before he has taken two steps into my small, well appointed quarters. I hear the scuff of his leather soles on the Persian rug, the rasp of his breath, the ticking of the cheap watch in his vest pocket, the minuscule clink of the cup and saucer in his hand. I smell the tang of his sweat, the pomade in his greasy hair, and the heavenly aroma of the coffee, even before he places it at my elbow. He turns and leaves without a word, knowing better than to interrupt me at my task, my ritual.

The door closes with a faint click as the servant retreats from the room, leaving only silence in his wake. Through the aromatic steam that drifts before my eyes as I raise the warm mug to my lips, I become aware of the soft gray light that has crept into the world. This is fitting. I dwell permanently in the gray, even beneath the full glare of the noonday sun.

The sickly glow marks the beginning of a new day, casting its wan radiance through the filmy curtains in a vain attempt to relieve the darkness of my soul. From the winter-bare branches of the elm outside my window, a sparrow cheerfully greets the overcast dawn. I pause for a moment to listen and then continue the ritual. The warm glow of an oil lamp reflects dully from blued steel as my hands perform the task they know so well.

It is an ancient ritual, the care and cleaning of weapons, a form of meditation, a simple task which occupies the hands, leaving the mind free to contemplate whatever mysteries haunt the soul before battle. I have performed the ritual countless times, in countless lands. I no longer care to ponder mysteries however. What I contemplate this morning is the dealing of death in the service of my master. How I hate Him for what He has made me.

This is not to say that I was no killer before I became His servant. I was well versed in the art of taking lives by the time He found me. The hardscrabble existence I was born into dictated that I become so at an early age. One made himself familiar with guns or starved. It was no great feat to graduate from rabbits and deer to men. I had a natural talent when it came to shooting and used it to full advantage. When the war began and I left my mountain home to seek my fortune, the army discovered this talent and made good use of it. I was a most efficient killer even then.

Now.... now I have become a machine so well tuned that perhaps none lives who is my better at dealing death with a gun. I long for the day I might encounter the man who is. The peace of death would be a reprieve for me. The sobbing accusations of ten thousand murdered souls would cease to plague my dreams. But such relief shall ever be denied me I fear. I am no longer a man, I am a chameleon, one with deadly fangs. I have ceased to be Evan Rheinhold. I have a new name, given to me by a Mexican peasant who lay cringing in fear against the wall of a town plaza as I dispassionately gunned down six Federals. That old man's dust choked sobs haunt me still.

"Muerte....... Muerte..."

Death. That is I, a walking incarnation of the mortality of men. I have ended more lives than I dare to consider. Certainly more than any of the battles I fought in during Lincoln's war. Would that I had found my end on those bloody fields but no, I was a destroyer of men even then and did not stop when the war ended. I drifted west and made my living by the gun. My soul was likely damned long before the day He found me--sitting a bay gelding under a cottonwood with a rope around my neck--and offered His terrible bargain. I accepted of course, like the selfish, vainglorious fool that I was.

I did not understand then. Though stained with blood, my soul was not yet beyond redemption. This is no longer true. The lives I reap are no longer solely those of criminals and arrogant fools, but of innocents as well. Without rhyme or reason or regard as to who or why, I have taken the lives of men, women, and children alike in the years since, in every land upon the face of the earth. I did not fathom His plan then, nor did I care to. I thought such knowledge would only further corrupt my rotted soul, as though such were possible. I have done as my terrible master has bidden. I cannot do otherwise. His foul hand lies clenched around my heart.

The bitter irony lies in the fact that He has made me more than human.... and less. My mind contains knowledge that any thousand scholars might envy. Languages, philosophy, history, mathematics, and science, all in the name of becoming a more efficient scourge of mankind. With the cruelty typical to His nature, He left me with a conscience, but not the ability to act upon it, my punishment for sins beyond counting. I have tasted of His foulness and been ultimately corrupted by it. Emotion eludes me. I care not for the plight of humanity. I do not even feel self pity, only bitter regret. And hatred of course. He left me hatred that I may use it to destroy.

I wallow in the material comforts that weak men crave, without satisfaction. The finest clothing, food, weapons, horses, and women. All are mine for the asking, all are hollow rewards for unspeakable crimes. I am a monster that walks among men and spreads destruction.

I hate Him for making me thus, would that I had chosen to hang those many years ago. I would try to kill Him, but such would be folly. He cannot be killed by mortal means. So I must serve and there will be no end to that service. I have not aged a day in the years since his foul blood burned its way into me. There will be no rest for me until I encounter someone more skilled than I, perhaps not even then. I will walk the Earth and do murder for my master until the day of Reckoning.

Swallowing the last of the expensive coffee, I reassemble my gun. A constant companion for more years than I care to remember, its smooth contours are as familiar to me as the body of a lover. It is my only friend in this world. In any world. Feeding cartridges into the cylinder, I wonder for a moment if I might be able to turn it upon myself. But no, that too is impossible. I can no more end my own life than I can end His. I have been given my task. To complete it will mean continued life, if it can be described as such. To fail.... I dare not contemplate. Perhaps I may find a few hours of solace in the hot flesh of some talented whore when my task is done. It will at least be a distraction.

I snap the cylinder closed and holster the revolver that is more beloved to me than my own life. All the black, bitter thoughts of who and what I have become are banished once more to the darkest corners of my mind. The time for such musings is past. I must go now and end the days of four men whom my master wishes to take from this world, men who have spent their lives dispensing pain and death in the pursuit of their own petty appetites. They are hard men, as judged by their peers, men that normal folk will go well out of their way to avoid. Not I.

It is my task to ride directly and meet them on the trail to El Paso. There they will die. I will stand before them and inform one and all that this will be their last day upon the earth. They will scoff and hurl insults, thinking me a fool in my dandy's clothing. Or insane perhaps, to face four killers alone. They have no idea what a killer is, these coarse men with their self aggrandized reputations. When the laughter fades and they finally understand that I am serious, one or all of them will reach for a weapon and they will die. The last sound they hear will be the crashing of my gun.

How I envy them.