Shoeless hooves clopped over the worn road. Dust painted the town a pale gray, and against dusk’s light, shadows stretched far beyond the size of their once masters. Eyes turned to the rider and the dismembered head hanging off the saddle. A monstrous thing of organic iron, sprawling antlers, and rows of serrated fangs.
A long time since he’d been to Resperás. The town had grown. As had the territory of Palo Verde and everything in and beneath it. The return was strange, but he didn’t think of home as any one place.
Aaron tied his stead outside of the bar and carried his prize by the antlers. The fiddle slowed, as did much of the conversation. The liver-spotted bartender looked from the head to the week’s old blood on Aaron’s hands. He served and worked up the courage to ask, “What do you got there, Son?”
Aaron presented the bounty poster for the ‘Glutton of the Gray Line’. “Where do I cash in?”
The man looked over the parchment and its illustration of the gaunt colossus.
“Sheriff’s office,” the barman said. “But they won’t be able to get you nothing till the bank opens tomorrow.” After a week of hard riding, what was one more night?
The door squealed as a patron hurried out and down the road. Aaron eyed the rest. The young man didn’t so much have violence in him as around him. The opposite was the case for God, but he did his best to disbelieve. He figured it unlikely someone would try to claim his prize, but Arturo had taught him to always be ready, and unclasped the hand cannon’s holster. Like all novelties, fascination waned and people went back to their own concerns. At least until the door burst open again, a grizzled giant of a man, molded of iron, dressed in a linen suit and new hat. Stories hadn’t done him justice. Behind the giant came a band of suited men with pistols on their waists and badges on their chests— in tow, the one who’d gone running.
The Warden’s spurs clicked to Aaron’s side where he eyed both him and the monster’s head. He turned to the skull to better see the hole between the eyes.
The man felt the metallic skull. In a cold baritone, he asked, “What’s your name?”
“Aaron,” he said, extending his hand. “Ortega.”
The Warden met it with a bull’s grip. “Warden Elias Day.”
“I know.”
Looking him up and down, the Warden asked, “How old are you?”
“Eighteen.”
He scratched at his mustache. “A lot of men with more heads than you’ve got years fell to this bastard.”
“Sorry it took so long.”
Silence pervaded the bar, furrowed disbelief upon hopeless faces. Finally, a smile. “Henry, whatever the kid wants.” Elias looked to the patrons. “All y’all, we celebrate. Liberator of the Gray Line.”
Ten turned to twenty, twenty to forty, and in time the roads were lined with dancing and bonfires. Aaron smiled through it all, caught in the shadow of the Warden, led by a steel grip on the shoulder. Greetings from the sorts of folks who’d never once looked his way, either here in Palo Verde or across the state. He held a firm belief that emotion was the ruin of a man, but all hugs and open admiration was hard to ignore. Head and heart light with drink, the two sat on the bench out front of the morgue and watched the revelry. They sat in silence, the sort that cut to the core of the earth.
The Warden said, “Hope’s hard to come by.”
Aaron had gone about as far as going went until he realized that. He realized too in coming home and hearing the tales of ‘Warden Day’ and the desert he’d tamed within an untamable country, what a story can do for a soul, that it wasn’t just the dreams calling Aarron to deliver his people to the sea that gave purpose— dreams many said the Warden was privy to as well— but that men can provide too.
Elias sipped his moonshine. “They say an ocean lays beyond the Gray woods.”
“Do you believe it?” Aaron asked.
The Warden’s chest rose like a barrel as he sighed. “It don’t matter. If they think there’ll be a day where they can wash off the dust, they’ll keep stepping.”
Amongst the faces, Aaron noticed one, soft, caramel, with eyes like amber.
“Who is she?” Aaron asked.
“Molly,” Elias said, taking a sip. She danced with a man of similar features, red-cheeked, and with a frame like a mountain, but in between her spins, her gaze returned to his. “My daughter.”
A knot tightened in his chest. “That her husband?”
“My boy, Joss.” Elias grinned and squeezed his shoulder. “You didn’t run before.”
The sounds of a fight rang down the way and, from around the town, Elias’ troupe of ‘Mighty Men’ pushed through to quell the disturbance.
“From these parts?” Elias asked, the bench crying out against his weight.
“A long time ago. My parents passed and I went east with my uncle. He passed too and…” For the first time since his passing, Aaron considered bringing up the voice and the dreams. “I came back.”
Elias nodded in contemplation. “You find anything out there?”
Aaron thought of the monsters throughout and beyond the state, the vast stretches of country where nothing grew and children had become currency. “Nothing worth seeing.”
Elias’s face softened for a fraction of a moment.
Aaron cleared his throat, “…Can I ask you something, Sir?”
He gestured on with his mug.
“Why didn’t you kill the Glutton yourself?”
The Warden stroked his freshly shaven chin and sighed. “We’re surrounded by devils, Boy. Wartibes and outlaws, a desert that would like to see us buried. I know it ain’t much different than anywhere else, but at least here they got someone on their side.” His eyes glittered like stainless steel, somber and yet unwavering. “Too many people counting on me nowadays. I won’t lose my head over something that might not change anything.”
Aaron’s gaze fell sullenly to his boots.
“But I’ve been wrong plenty of times.” Aaron looked up and saw something in the man’s eyes. Elias pointed to the stars. “It never is though.” Elias let the point sink in before asking, “Considering sticking around?”
“As much as leaving.”
Molly’s smile flashed in the firelight.
“Got any work?” Aaron asked.
Elias slapped his back and stood. “More than you’d hope.”
***
Implacable faces hidden behind dust drenched scarves. The thunder of two dozen horses reigned over the barrial, seared images of the Gila tribe’s bloody handprint upon the town of Pueblo de la Luna, charred bodies like curled spiders, women hung naked by the ankles from Joshua Tree in the plaza, children gutted like deer.
The Gilas’ camp lay flat at the base of the orange valley, no tents or fires and— without notice from the slain lookouts on the previous peak— unstirring yet in the lawn of dawn. Joss drew his five shooter and the company followed Captain’s suit.
The marauders, painted with weeks’ old blood, rose from their bedrolls as the riders reached the hill’s midpoint. Shouts rang in a foreign tongue, spurring the hundred or so Gila to their rifles, bows, and blades. The deputies opened fire on the war tribe, loosing a cloud of acrid powder smoke which returned in kind, lead rounds traded across sides, burrowing through bone and shattering rock. Arrows soared in shallow arcs. Screams cut short as deputies fell from their saddles and natives toppled to the dust. Like a rolling earthquake, the lines of riders and foot-soldiers converged. Hooves pounded skulls into the clay and precinct issued clubs splashed brains from skulls. Gilas’ lances drove upward and speared the riders off their horses.
Five out, five down, Aaron switched one pistol for the next. Dark smoke burned his lungs. Arrows and bullets shot past his face and spears overhead. Shock left him cold and buzzing, unable to hold any singular thought. Masses blended into a single warring throng with horses from both sides running riderless. Blood turned the clay into mud. A sharp cry pulled Aaron’s attention, Joss Day on his back, covering his bloodied face to the towering brute and his raised sword. Aaron’s aim hit true and painted Joss with blood.
The world was pulled from under him as his horse reared, wailing death over the spear in its chest. His back crashed hard on the stone and lungs locked without breath. A creature of hate rose over him, stone in hand, teeth bared. He squeezed the trigger and a hole burst through his chest. The white noise of hacking, bursting powder, and shattering bone poisoned the senses. Years in the hinterland, bounties and vengeful bastards had seen him through swamps of gore, yet still his mind never fully embraced the hell. Always, it was an act of will. Keep moving, that was the mantra that kept his feet from turning to stone.
With no rounds left in the cylinder, Aaron tossed the pistol aside and rose. At his feet lay a stone-headed club. Something beyond him said to take it, to meet the gaze of a blood painted Gila before him, to charge. The rest was beyond him.
***
Like senseless spirits, the townspeople glowed gold by the firelight and black from the shadows, swinging at the arm to the music, wet with spilled drink and sweat. Aaron stared from the window, the stitched gashes pulsing, burns of backfired powder still fresh on his hand.
A velvet voice said from behind, “Looks I owe you.”
Cheeks slightly flush, freckles hardly noticeable behind her tan, Molly’s grin was brighter than the electric lighting of the penthouse.
Aaron took the champagne and said, “I got paid.”
They touched glasses and drank. “That’s not what I meant,” she said, looking to Joss, his face and torso bandaged, drunkenly recounting their tale to a troupe of fat men around a card table. “I don’t have much else to lose.”
“There’s always something else.” Aaron’s gaze turned to Elias at the bar. His cheeks warmed but the man nodded his approval.
Molly stared with a tenderness he wasn’t accustomed to, the sort that brought out fear.
“They say you were an animal,” she said. “Cut down thirty men. ‘The second coming of Elias’.”
“I try to think that wasn’t me.”
“Then who was it?”
“Who I’m asked to be.”
“Can I ask you to be something else?”
Aaron swallowed and nodded.
Molly went on, “Can you be you.”
There was no him. Still, he said, “I can be anything you need.”
“I need someone who’s more than what they do.”
“…That’s gonna be hard to come by.”
She grinned, “I have a feeling I’ll know it when I see it.”
“I’ve got a good pair of binoculars if you need some.”
A town-wide chant raised beyond the windows.
“Aaron the Gray and Prince of the Palo,
The prophet of peace and prophet of war,
Wicked will pay, the dawn brings us tallow
He leads with a club, our burdens he bore.”
Aaron turned back and saw— the only one not gathered at the window now— Elias on the stool, staring at the floorboards with an iron countenance.
“Prince?” Molly asked.
“Anything can look like gold in the right light,” he said.
The floorboards bent under Elias’ weight as he started out the room.
***
Molly squeezed Aaron’s hand and Joss patted his shoulder, the line of Mighty Men stood behind. Yellow marigolds and pink agave flowers colored the chapel, grinning faces he didn’t recognize and prideful tears, watching as if it was their own kin. He couldn’t help but wonder why they cared, why she did. It seemed likely they were opposites. The pastor’s words were static until the final query.
“I do,” Aaron said. Her lips tasted of rose and voice rang like an angel.
Hats flew over towards the rafters and all but one man raised to their feet. With a taut and stubble roughened jaw, the Warden watched them down the center aisle and through the crowd on the roads. Joss closed the carriage door behind and patted the vehicle on.
It rocked over the avenue towards the Pascal Oasis, and for a moment, the world was right. He shot a last look through the carriage’s window. Beyond the trailing masses a shadowed mountain watched from the chapel’s steps, sipping a flask, and started the opposite way.
***
Silence held sway over the precinct.
“Dad,” Joss said, eyes bouncing between deputies for support. “One man?”
Elias sucked the whiskey from his teeth. “Aaron the Gray is hardly a man.”
“Be serious,” Joss said, in gritted offense. “You can’t send Aaron by himself to hunt down the Red Scar.”
“Why not?”
“Because it’s suicide!”
Aaron chewed on the cigar and thought of last night’s dream, the burning agave and its blessing.
“Walk through the night and fear not the touch of death.”
“I’ll go,” Aaron said, watching the cigar’s smoke drift into the light through the window. “It ain’t my first time meeting a Deathless.”
The men turned in disbelief. Green said, “Ain’t no man met a Deathless and lived.”
Elias’ gaze burned yellow.
“No counting you, Sir,” Green clarified.
“Well, I guess ‘met’ was the wrong word. More just said ‘goodbye’,” Aaron clarified.
Elias smoothed his bristly mustache. “See… it’s no problem.”
“Hell with that,” Joss said. “If he’s going, I am.”
“Denied, Captain,” Elias said. “I’ve got bandits down south.”
He met his father’s stare with a rage that couldn’t pierce the implacable carapace.
Aaron stubbed his cigar in the ashtray and checked the time. “The tar swamps out east?”
Beads of sweat dripped from Elias’ chin as he nodded.
“I’ll be back next week.”
***
Beyond the fire’s glow lay only faint outlines of shrubs and the desert’s endless horizon, but at the rising clop of hooves, Aaron’s hand fell to the five shooter. The silhouette clarified within the nimbus.
“This ain’t south,” Aaron said.
“Looks like my compass is broken,” Joss said.
Morning rose with the dry scent of a dying country. Grit coated their teeth and sweat turned the dust on their faces into mud. Shallow hills and bones, small towns with specters whose bellies had swollen with hunger. Stories of Deathless giants who’d come at night and eaten generations.
For three days until the black stretches of the dead forest came into sight, slow bubbling pools of tar in the dusk shadows. Weariness weighed upon his eyes and hunger had turned temperament animalistic, but Aaron told himself it was a choice. He passed a box of slugs to Joss, water stained from where the pastor had blessed them. “Aim for the heart.”
Horses tied beyond the swamp, Aaron loaded his sawed-off pump and Joss his double barrel. A sinus-searing aroma of molten rock emanated from the skeletal forest of iron bark oaks.
Through the pools of tar lay small trails of hard earth, just enough to fumble upon as they fought with spinning vision from acrid steam their scarves failed to mitigate.
At wits’ end from an hour of delirium, Ross coughed, “Aaron—”
“Quiet.”
Something within told him before the stirring. A slow pulpy sound raised from the viscous pools. In the moon’s light he could only make out the outlines. Tar drenched hulks rising from their slumber, reflective insect eyes and unhinged maws with quivering mandibles. Slugs soared and powder smoke melded with that of the molten tar. Fist size holes bored through chests. Aaron’s heart raised into his throat. Joss cursed in panic as more colossus rose, packs running through the tar and snarling in an unearthly baritone. There was perhaps not as much guilt in slaying these monstrosities as there was in laying down his fellow man, but there was fear, the untamable unknown which they represented. But when violent passion rose to the point where one life must end, all faces were the same.
A final beast splashed into the muck and the thunder faded. All that remained was their hurried breath.
With chattering teeth, Joss said, “That was my last shell.”
“I’ve got one left,” Aaron said, feeling for the last on his belt. His eyes narrowed, “But I didn’t see—”
“Shit!”
Aaron turned and, on instinct, ducked to log barreling through the air. It cracked Ross and sent him soaring. Caught in a ray of crisp moonlight, Aaron saw its mantis face, the goliath frame, and the great red scar across the chest. Its herculean hand grabbed him by the torso and slammed him under the hot tar. Eyes shut to the burning muck, lungs locked, he fumbled for the machete-sized bowie knife on his belt. Shoved blind, the tip met flesh. The monster’s hand released and, raised up from the blackness, Aaron drew a long breath. Reeling backward and holding its mangled eye, the creature reached out and Aaron hacked. It wailed a pitiful baritone as its forearm dropped. He picked up his shotgun, loaded the last shell, and aimed for the heart.
***
Beyond the revelry and regard, dancers trying to pull him to the saloon’s backrooms— regardless of Molly’s presence—, Aaron felt only Elias stare at the bar’s end. His eyes were deep caverns beneath the shade of his hat.
Joss sat at Aaron’s side, arm slinged, stiff with cracked vertebrae and using the word ‘brother’ in each recounting. Aaron chewed his cigar and stared at the beer-soaked wood bar top, trying to remember the faces of his parents and what their home looked like.
“Boy!”
The fiddles and roistering hushed.
“How’s it feel, ‘Prince of the Palo’?” Elias asked, with a slight sway.
Slack-jawed faces turned between the two of them.
“Good to be home,” Aaron said. Trying to overlook the tone.
“How about my daughter? How’s she feel?”
“Daddy—” Molly said.
“I’m talking girl!”
“You’re drunk, Pa,” Joss said, rising to appease.
“And you’re a disgrace.”
Joss froze, looking as if the air had been punched out of him.
Elias wiped the shine from his lips. “What’s in this for you, Gray?”
“A paycheck and warm bed.”
He bore the look of a man who heard voices, or perhaps had been left with too much silence.
“Empires crumble from within,” Elias said.
“Meaning?” Aaron asked.
A handful of gasps rang as Elias drew his pistol. “I don’t trust you. Maybe you’re with desperados. Maybe the anarchists. You said you came from out east.” He spoke to the congregation. “There’s something he ain’t telling us, y’all. What man in their right mind takes on the work he has?”
“Who said I was in my right mind?” Aaron asked.
Elias’ grin curled. “How about you prove it? Kiss my ring.”
A muted look of second-hand offense turned the faces of the twelve Mighty Men. Aaron felt it too, but he also felt the call of something great telling him to bring peace. He crossed calmly, took Elias’ stoney hand, and as he laid lips on the gold ring, felt the steel barrel against the back of his head.
“Dad!” Molly and Joss shouted.
“Back up!” he shouted, pulling the hammer back.
The dreams had told Aaron that death would not lay its hand on him yet, but it had also said sacrifices must be made. “You best be sure,” Aaron said. “You can only pull that trigger once.”
“Please,” Molly begged, too horrified to step nearer.
“You don’t think I will,” Elias growled into Aaron’s ear.
All he had was faith.
“I don’t you can,” Aaron said.
“You son of a—” the hammer clicked. Aaron raised his head and saw Elias’ staring in disbelief at the empty cylinders. “I… I loaded it… I know it did.”
Elias looked to Aaron and back to his gun, and cursing to himself, shoved his way out the door. Shames glances turned to the floor. Aaron forced himself to look, to see the broken trail of a once great man, a shattered soul.
Back home, he and Molly undressed in silence, steeped in the unspoken knowledge that something had fractured beyond repair. A knock sounded at the door.
Hat pressed to his heart, Joss said, “You’ve got to go.”
He knew it. Vice had strangled the once king, and the miracle he’d seen that night wouldn’t happen again. Maybe he could stand, fight, but even for survival’s sake, he wasn’t sure he could kill the father he’d sworn to under God.
Aaron nodded in resignation and withdrew for the last time into life he’d never expected. With his beloved in his arms, he breathed beauty and in turn truth, yet hadn’t it in him to say goodbye. Before dawn’s light graced the horizon, his foot met the porch and eyes met those of the twelve Mighty Men saddled and ready to ride.
***
Town to town, week to week, month to month, hidden by the grace of righteous souls, they wandered without purpose, not strong enough to travel beyond the territory nor strong enough to turn back. Guilt followed with the tales of those who’d opened their doors to ‘The Driven’, the gory work of Elias’ mercenaries and enlisted Gilas. The dreams came more vivid and deafening than ever, no longer a burning agave, but clouds which commanded, “Harden not thy heart.”
Aaron woke to the hushed voice of the homeowner, “They’re here.”
From beyond the confines of the cellar where all thirteen slept, the thunder of charging horses and wailing townspeople filled the night.
“Get your things,” the woman whispered, shaking the odorous men away. “Get your horses.”
Elias’ voice echoed. “I know you’re here!”
A hardened heart would kill the once messiah, a hardened heart would run, would lay down his life in pacifism and let madness reign. Just as when his uncle had passed and he found himself lost, lost for purpose, for desire to live, he rose on legs that weren’t his, the vessel of something else, and let the world take him. Hat down and face covered, he emerged from the shelter and before the chaos. Torches flashed through the streets, blood painted Gilas racing on horseback and mercs pushing crowds towards the plaza where the man paced on the gallow’s stage.
With equal parts fear and faith, Aaron passed through the night. Shadows of The Driven hurried low around the rears of buildings with lever-actions in hand. No man of height or or size, he blended within the hundred or so before the gallows. Over the shouts of townspeople pulled from their homes, the sharp claps of gunfire rendered the assembly docile.
“Get out here you conniving bastard!” Elias said, pacing with a torch in hand. “Treachery comes at cost.”
Aaron eyed the shadows perched over the roofs and lowered his scarf, “You’re right.”
Twenty odd barrels fell upon him.
“When’d you stop listening?” Aaron asked, hardly seeing anyone but fallen anointed.
“When It stopped talking.”
“…Ever ask yourself why?”
Elias’ jaw ground side to side. “Get up here and take this rope or these people will.”
“Can’t do that, Warden. There’s still work to be done.”
“I’ll handle it for you.”
“Afraid it’s not yours to handle.”
The mania in his eyes shone bright in the fire. “Hope you’re happy, Son. You’ve brought all these people with you. Fire—”
Peals of thunder rented the night. A dozen mercs and Gila dropped. Screams filled the air as the crowd scattered. Aaron drew dual cannons and opened the chests of two below the stage. Then, like a horse’s kick, a sudden shock rocked his stomach. Deafening claps turned the senses, muzzle flares traded between the streets and roofs. Through the delirium, he saw the smoke from Elias’ pistol and watched the cylinder turn again. He tried to dodge but the impact gored his shoulder. Knees buckling, he caught himself and fired blind. Elias screamed and dropped hard to the stage with a spurting hole in his thigh. Aaron fired again and the pistol flew from Elias’ grasp along with a chunk of hand and fingers. Chaos and clouds of choking smoke filled the streets, huddled townspeople and mounting corpses as the Gilas spread. The sort of hell he’d come to believe was his duty to stop. His head fell and vision spun. He figured one of the bullets had his name on it.
Then a last shot, and he was still breathing. In the wake of the skirmish there remained the dull moaning of near-dead.
Aaron gritted his teeth through the pain and sorrow and, holding the hole in his stomach, rose. Each step weighed three times itself as he drew towards, Elias supine on the stage and staring at the stars, his dark skin a gray pale, blood flowing in undulating waves from his thigh and mangled hand. The man looked at the barrel looming over his head.
“I never had no mind to hurt you Elias,” Aaron said.
“I know… but I’ve got the devil in me… I wasn’t ready to let go.”
Across the town’s roofs the shadows stood from their cover— most of them.
“I want you to live,” Aaron said. “But the days you’ve been breathing through ain’t that.”
“I got no purpose anymore.”
“Then figure it out,” he said, turning and limping down the way.
“Where you going?” Elias called.
Aarron sighed, “Wherever I’m headed.”
***
The old farmhouse wasn’t what Aaron remembered, but the tombstones were. Alone on the eastern flats, the last standing objects before a great desert and a world that was turning on itself. He licked his cracked lips, and though stiff from the porch’s chair, he couldn’t bring himself to move and revive the pain.
His gaze turned southward to the rider kicking up dust in the distance. It didn’t take long to recognize the silhouette. The six Mighty Men emerged from the house with rifles in hand.
“It’s alright,” Aaron assured.
Molly stopped shy of the porch, her yellow dress and stead painted white with dust. “Those bandages don’t look good,” she said.
“Don’t feel good either,” Aaron said. “You here to finish me off?”
“If you ask me to,” she said, with a smile.
“I don’t suppose there’s any chance your dad’s ready to make accords?” he asked.
Her smile turned somber and she scanned the porch. “Where’s Joss?”
***
“Captain!”
Aaron sat up with a shock of pain through his stomach. Molly poked her head in from the kitchen. The front door burst with a rush of cold evening wind, Green and Vince carrying a beaten and bloody Elias by the shoulders. So swollen, that if his eyes were open, you wouldn’t have known. Blood and dirt formed a black paste across his skin.
Molly raced to the man in quick tears and watched in horror as they laid him prone on one of the cots, where at last he saw the stub arrow shafts out his back. Too weak to cry out, Elias could only whimper to the agony of movement.
“We found him by the creek,” Green said.
It did little to appease the quick flash of rage in Aaron’s heart. “Water,” he said.
One of the men poured a small stream from their canteen which, even tilting his head back, careened helplessly over his lips.
“What happened, Warden?” Aaron asked.
His eyes fluttered as he coughed up black spittle. “Gilas ain’t big on forgiveness.”
Molly pressed his limp hand to her cheeks.
“Why were you meeting with the Gilas?”
Through shallow breaths he said, “Because I’m a wretched bastard.”
Aaron fist shook white and cold. “…I’m sorry, Sir.”
The weight of Elias’ eyelids proved too much. “Don’t be,” Elias said. “I wouldn’t have been for you.”
Desert winds washed over the cabin and brought with them the cries of starving coyotes.
“You know,” Elias panted. “It told me you were coming a long time ago. A prince in gray who will find the sea.”
“I ain’t found nothing.”
A slight smile curled. “Neither have I.”
Aaron limped across the room and knelt at his side.
“Take them there, Son. Trust the dreams” With a slight nod the man gestured to the badge on his chest. His lips were cracked wide open but there wasn’t anything left to bleed. “It’s yours.”
“Not mine to take.”
Elias opened his eye just enough to look at Molly and the men. “But it’s there’s to give. And they—” He stopped to draw a shallow breath. “I just wish—” he exhaled and a furrowed look of sorrow crossed his face, a slight sheen of tears. But then it went flat and the soul behind those eyes darkened. In their reflection, he saw his own coming end.
Molly muffled her cries in his blood-soaked rib cage. Aaron closed his eyes to the sting of tears. Too many times had he heard a soul’s last breath. What hurt in equal measure is he figured this wouldn’t be the last.
In the morning they rose and pierced the impenetrable earth with rusted shovels and axes. Those twin headstones gained a sibling, a twined X of Pale Verde branches and desert stones. They packed the saddles, mounted, and turned westbound. Aaron spared a look at the house which had once seemed to offer many futures. Before him lay only one. Perhaps that’s all there had ever been. Days, weeks, months away, the song of phantom waves carried through the wind.
[Image Credit : Photo by Chris Yang on Unsplash]
Mark Manifesto is a writer, teacher, father, and lover of stories. He’s been writing fiction, essays, articles, and poetry the past seven years. Currently he lives in the Bay Area, and should you want, you can find his work published across multiple journals including the Colored Lens, Hightower Magazine, Altered Reality and Guilty Crime Magazine.
