A Debt Settled

I glanced about the smoky room and stopped on the figure I came seeking. He was hunched over a wooden table with several others around him, playing a game of cards.

He was bedraggled like his companions. All I could see of him was his top hat and his worn and faded black overcoat as he looked down. He had a bottle of whiskey next to him with the top off, a small shot glass with the remnants of the last sip turning the bottom amber. Next to this was a tin cigarette tray full of ashes and remnants of rolling papers.

He tilted his head up from his cards laying them out on the scratched and worn tabletop and lifted his smoking cigarette from the tray. He looked directly at me. His sallow cheeks bearing salt and pepper whiskers. His greasy black hair hanging limp from under the tattered brim of his hat.

My eyes locked with his cold gray stare as he slowly placed the bent cigarette in the corner of his mouth, the other side curling up slightly into a smirk. His bushy eyebrows lifting slightly as a spark lit his gaze.

For how long we stared at each other I do not know. Time seemed to have slowed immeasurably. His hand slid slowly as if through smoky water to the table and fell there. Smoke from his cigarette plumed upward from his lips, obscuring his face slightly but not lessening the gleam in his blue gray eyes as we remained. Locked in a moment of time.

A bead of sweat formed and slipped slowly down the side of his face, becoming lost in the grizzled whiskers of his unkempt beard.

Two peals of thunder cracked through the dense air.

He stood with his right arm bent at the elbow, a gleaming metal gun in his ruddy brown hand. The barrel smoked in synchronicity with his cigarette.

His gray eyes widened ever so slightly as a deep red blossomed forth from his chest, coloring his sweat-stained shirt.

I looked down to see my gun falling from my hand and a crimson flow from my ribs down my side and to my pant legs.

I looked up, surprise on my face and saw his smirk once again. That sly curling of the corner of his mouth.

We both fell slowly to our knees, our gaze never wavering.

A fuzziness came about the edges of my vision then.

He fell forward, his arm reaching out aimlessly trying to catch on to something, the edge of the table, a chair, anything, but it moved too slowly. His finger too slack.

The room tipped before me. I felt my head thud onto the worn and dirtied floorboards.

Feet moved about me as I lay on my side and the darkness came from the edges of my vision. Marching inward. Closing me off from the world.

My mind found a few words then, before I was gone.

A life for a life.

Just.

Fair.

A debt finally settled.