Bad Craziness. (standard:horror, 2399 words)
Author: Jack Henry	Added: Sep 24 2002	Views/Reads: 3348/2342	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
The tale of a desperate man on the run who ends up in a small town in the middle of the desert. A western.

Bad Craziness. 

“Where're you goin' Tex.” Said the town sheriff as he firmly held his
shotgun in a threatening manner.  “You ain't leavin' Hope just yet.” 

They were out on the Main Road, just twenty yards from the Town Square
where the townspeople frolicked and danced around a bon fire raised in 
the name of evil.  They were half naked and covered in some kind of 
strange oil as they chanted evil verses from the Book of the Dead that 
lay at the foot of the fire.  The sheriff and Tex Banderson stood just 
outside the House of Ill Repute at the end of town, which opened into 
the endless desert all around them.  The horses in the stables lay 
dead, their throats cut during the sacrificing ritual, eliminating any 
possible means of escape for Tex, who just happened to be riding 
through when all of this bad craziness began.  What a bad, God awful 
punishing day. 

It happened less then two hours ago, when Tex almost rode his dying mule
out of the damning desert and into the seemingly quiet oasis of Hope, 
Texas.  For Tex, it seemed that it was all over after the third mirage, 
but once he saw the looming buildings less than a mile away from where 
he was, he felt that he had been saved by the hand of God. 

Tex forced his mule into a pathetic gallop, but it died on him not too
long after, throwing him off and landing his face into a cactus.  His 
face was pierced by what seemed like a thousand needles, sending a 
flurry of pain through his head.  He laid like that for five minutes 
before a dirty man on a horse saved him. Well. . .first it stepped on 
his hand, utterly crushing it.  Tex screamed for a minute before 
passing out. 

He woke up in a strange room above the saloon.  The smell of
perspiration was the first sign and the second was his entrance into 
this town.  He remembered this much as he passed in and out of 
consciousness while being dragged from the back of the dirty man's 
horse.  When his head bumped over a large rock, he saw the building he 
was entering and the building across the way: the hotel.  Of course the 
hotel wasn't good enough for Tex; it had to be a dark smelly room above 
the noise and music below in the saloon. 

He immediately got up from the floor where he had been dumped and walked
around the room, thinking of how to escape.  He knew that for some 
reason he wasn't being saved, or welcomed here in this little town.  To 
make matters worse, this town lay in the middle of the desert, or the 
middle of nowhere to be more specific, and that meant painless escape 
was impossible. 

Tex reached into his pocket and pulled out a cigar.  He popped it into
his mouth and walked up to the window, feeling in his other pocket for 
his last match as he looked out onto the Main Road below him.  What he 
saw horrified him to the point of vomiting.  He puked in the corner of 
the room, ironically where his duster coat had been dumped along with 
his bag.  He then ignored his personal belongings and looked out the 
window again, and to the madness on the road. 

He saw people crawling about, raising their heads to the sky and back to
the ground agai;, their impossibly long tongues slobbering around their 
desert beaten faces.   Children did the same, although in a more 
infantile manner.  Entire families, it seemed, were doing it as well.  
This was happening all over town, he could see when he looked hard 
enough. 

Then he saw a single man wade through it all, as if he were controlling
it.  He wore a large hat and a duster coat.  Inside the coat, Tex 
gathered, was a shotgun.  His own cigar bobbed up and down on his lip 
as he smiled and chuckled with the packs of wild humans.  He then 
looked up to Tex's window, seeing Tex.  Then he smiled. 

Tex sat down below the window, grabbing his head in fear.  “What have I
gotten myself into?” he thought as he looked back to a week ago, when 
he had robbed a bank twenty miles away, and shot two Marshall's that 
were chasing him down near the horse stable.  He was a wanted man on 
the run (robbin' a bank was one thing. . .but killin' a Marshall?), and 
it seemed there was nowhere left to run. 



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