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DOOM MAGNETIC!!- CHAPTER ONE:
MAGIC TRICK
William Pauley III
And wouldn’t you know it, those goddamn shit-kickers in Chorizo, Nevada actually think that Vonna and me are some sort of spooks. Fuckin’ sorcerers, witches even! All because of Qoser comin’ through here and puttin’ on his Doom Magnetic show, lookin’ for me. Don’ mean nothin, really. Hell, I never did pay too much attention t’shit like that nohow, but these crazy sumbitches actually think that they’ve caught themselves a couple a ghosts!
Right now they’ve got us standin’ smack dab in the middle of town ‘fore a crowd of about thirty or forty people. We’re standin’ on a large wooden stage, but as far as I can tell we ain’t gonna be performing no show. Although I guess in a way we kinda are. Ropes lay loose around our necks, hands tied tight around our waists. We’re about to be hanged to our deaths…and good riddance. Hell, I’ve thought about doin’ it myself several times now anyway. It’ll be a load off.
Oddly enough, the crowd don’t seem too rowdy. Most the time someone gets hanged, people from all over the state come just to say “fuck you!” or to spit in their goddamn eyes, but that ain’t the case today. All of ‘em are lookin’ at me and Vonna like we’re fuckin’ magicians. Like any minute now we’re gonna snap our fingers and the world will go dark and when the light returns, we’ll have evaporated into fog or smoke or something. And even though it may not seem like it, I can tell that they are positively terrified of us. They want to see us dead even more than they did the last unlucky bastard that had to stand up here on this very stage, ‘fore this same bloodthirsty crowd.
The sheriff stands at the end of the stage, diggin’ his fingertips into an envelope filled with moist chewin’ t’bacco. He pinches a couple a leaves and sticks it on the inside of his jaw. He buries the envelope back into his pocket, pulls back the sleeve of his coat and checks his watch for the time.
“Ah, I guess right now’d be just as good a time as any,” the sheriff says, pullin’ out a rolled piece of paper from his back pocket.
“Folks, we are all gathered here today to witness the execution of two necromancers who go by the name of…” the sheriff pauses and looks over at me, like I’m gonna give him any fuckin’ information. I turn my eyes away. Vonna mumbles something and, for a few seconds, begins to bark like a dog. She spits at the sheriff, missin’ him by several feet.
“Alright, I guess they wish to remain anonymous,” the sheriff jokes with the crowd. He unrolls the paper in his hands and begins to read the document aloud. “The gentleman on stage here has been found guilty on three counts of necromancy, including wicked lightning, turnin’ a man’s skin inside out, and agitatin’ the cosmos…openin’ black holes and whatnot.”
“Woah now, wait a minute…guilty?” I interrupt. “Now I admit, I am a guilty man, but I ain’t guilty of none of them charges you just read offa that there paper. All of that was done by a bastich named Qoser.”
“Well, well, he can speak after all!” the sheriff says and smiles at the crowd. He walks over t’me, comes about two inches from my face, so close I can smell breakfast on his breath.
“Lookie here, cowboy…the courts done made their decision. You’se guilty as sin and you’se gonna pay for it, too. Besides, even if I let you go, you wouldn’t make it ten feet through that crowd. They’d rip your hide to a thousand pieces!” The sheriff works his jaw, purses his lips, and spits t’bacco juice off the side of the stage.
“I hear what you’re sayin’, sheriff, but I ain’t gonna go down like this. Fine, kill me if’n you want to, but you ain’t gonna soil my name in the process. That’s all a man’s really got…his name.”
“Most men don’t even have that,” he says, givin’ me one final look over ‘fore turnin’ back to the crowd.
“The lady here,” he announces, pointing back at Vonna, “and I use that term lightly, folks…I ain’t never seen a lady spit like that in my entire 47 years…” The crowd erupts with laughter.
“The lady here has been found guilty on one count of necromancy and two counts of public intoxication—although people, it smells like she may be workin’ on a third count today,” the crowd giggles again as the sheriff screws up his face and waves his hand over his nose. Vonna is noddin’ off, completely unaware that she’s at the ass-end of the sheriff’s joke. The poor girl is gone. I ain’t even known her long ‘nuff to know if she ever really was here to begin with.
“Well, ain’t you a comedian today, sheriff!” I shout. “Why don’t you save us all some time and get on with it. Some of us have shit t’do.”
The sheriff releases a long breathy laugh and says, “Sure, son! We’ll get on with the show, but I hope that the shit you have to do today is die, cause that’s about all you can do with the time you’ve got left!” He rolls the paper up and returns it to his back pocket. He walks over’n takes ahold of a wooden lever that releases the trap door b’neath our feet.
“Say g’night to the world,” the sheriff says and pulls the lever.
Our bodies drop and the ropes pull tight against our necks, but I don’t drop as far as Vonna does, ‘cause my hands are buried inside of the Doom Magnetic. I still drop though, but the rope isn’t completely stranglin’ me. I can still breathe. My arms nearly rip out their sockets, my feet kick desperately at the clouds, but my neck ain’t broke.
The crowd gasps in horror as they watch me struggle, tryin’ to open up the Doom Magnetic ‘nuff for my body t’slip through—a feat that’s nearly impossible to achieve with my goddamn hands tied.
The sheriff withdraws his six-shooter and aims it at me. A man from the crowd climbs up onto the platform and tackles the sheriff just as he pulls the trigger. The bullet goes soarin’ through the sky, for all I know travellin’ straight towards the sun.
“Are you crazy, sheriff?!” the man screams into his face. “That goddamn wizard’ll split your bullet into a hundred pieces and send all of ‘em hurdlin’ back towards us! Now, I don’t mean no disrespect, but just let ‘em go! We don’t want nothin’ like that in our town! Least if he leaves, he’ll be someone else’s problem.”
The sheriff nods and the man helps him back to his feet.
I finally manage to get my feet up into the slit of the Doom Magnetic, which enables me t’rip the bastich wide open. ‘Fore I slip inside, I glance over at Vonna. She stopped kickin’ minutes ago. A heaviness falls over my heart. Goddamn. I loosen the rope from ‘round my neck fall back into the Doom Magnetic.
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Magic Trick
© William Pauley III, 2011
All rights reserved.
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