Loneliness isn’t that bad a thing. It just means being lonesome. Clod was a lonesome man walking into a lonesome town on the edge of a lonesome desert. There was a wooden post standing cockeyed in a weedy, sand-caked field. Posted upon it, almost as in apology, was a gnarled sign reading, “Appleton.” Clod looked upon it and spat a grain of sand toward the base of the post and then moved onward with the flaps of his black serape trailing behind him. Sand flew on the winds and ran through his short blonde hair, peppering his face and clinging to his stubble. He squinted his icy blue eyes against the burning sun, peering down the town’s main street. Clod was a tall man garbed in black, making him look like his own shadow. His serape had been pinned back at the shoulders, revealing his bare, scarred arms and below that, there were his guns. They rested in cracked leather holsters on either hip and were fastened down with rawhide thongs. The black metal guns were cursed. Clod didn’t know that and it didn’t matter because the curse wasn’t for him. There was deep, bitter magic in those two guns and, that Clod did know. Clod never had to reload the guns. They spat out fiery bullets from some place in unreality and then replenished the bullet as the chamber turned. The leather holsters were a burnt-flesh kind of brown and his jeans beneath were a dust coated black. He rested his hands on the butts of either gun as he walked into the weather-beaten town of Appleton.
 
The entire town could have been burnt down with a single match. There were single-story, wooden structures that stretched out on either side of him toward the horizon. Many of the shops and inns had the skins of animals hung up to dry in the punishing sun. Tiny rat pelts were like dead leaves. Snake skins with glittering blue scales - black skins with poisonous yellow stripes. There were little red skins like the skin off a child’s finger.  The low, wooden buildings cracked and whined in the hot winds and eyes glared out at him from shadow-bathed alleyways. He passed a man with his back to a wall. A woman was kneeling before him with her face buried in his lap. The man formed an animalistic snarl on his face, revealing a mouthful of browning teeth. Clod drummed his fingers against the smooth, well-oiled wood of his guns and walked on. Beyond the aisle of wooden structures, there were faded, sand-scratched ranch houses and dead fields where bone-thin cattle and swine lumbered about.
 
Along with the guns, Clod had a blade. A long stretch of folded, refolded and folded again titanium hung on his back, suspended in a leather sheath he had strapped off a mutated deer in a greener part of the world. The blade, like the guns, was more than it seemed. While the ghost guns remained permanently cold like the icy hands of the dead, the sword whispered to Clod like a loving mother. The sword had a silvery blue lick washing down its length, tapering off to a nearly invisible point. There had been many men who lost limbs and only realized that deduction after bleeding out. A sword is psychotically sharp and coolly elegant. This world wasn’t a world for swords – it was a gun and club world. It was a world where swords were torn from metal hulks and wrapped with dirtied scrapes of cloth. Swords in this world were hacking tools, little better than clubs.
 
Clod stepped onto the porch of a barroom where an old man slumbered with a Stetson resting on his head. He rested in the shade of a sagging roof where a wooden, red rooster glared like a scowling gargoyle. His legs were stretched out before him, kicked up onto the wooden railing. The boots had big holes where age had rotted away the leather. His cotton, white sleeves were rolled up to his elbow, showing thick chords of muscle and scarring. His shirt was opened down to the bottom of his chest, revealing a chest full of curly white hairs and more scars. Linked onto his wrist, there was a black, iron chain. That chain was linked to a heavy metal ball etched with millions of battle scars. He was a bowler, named for the bowls they put in men’s chests when they threw their balls. Bowlers were killers and Clod knew to let him alone and tread softly while visiting the bar inside.

Clod walked through the bat-wing doors and they omitted a sickly creaking sound. The barroom was small and crowded with tables. Cloudy sunlight spilled in through a small circular window high up on the wall, giving the barroom a smoky aura. A barmaid worked a wet cloth over a bar top propped up on sawhorses. Behind her, there were clouded glass bottles and hanging pans. Clod could see a large wooden barrel that the barmaid periodically dipped the cloth, wetting it again. Sitting at the table closest to the bar top and the barmaid, there was a skinny man sucking on a chicken bone. He had a dull, slightly brain damaged look on his face, complete with drool rolling toward his feeble jaw line. In the corner furthest from the bar top and the barmaid, there was what might have been what was once a man, but was now a sweating flesh pile in a stained undershirt. He was a bloated slug with coarse, black beard stubble. His chest raised and fell, struggling faintly. He had his hand resting on a tall bottle of whiskey  - which was almost the gone. His beady, black eyes followed Clod as he took a seat at the bar.        

“Water.” Clod said and then ran his tongue along the inside of his mouth, working up more sand. The barmaid had a dogface complete with wet nose and whiskers on her cheek. She gave him a lopsided smile that suggested that part of her face was paralyzed. Her left eye was saggy and watery.

“That all?” She asked, taking up a copper cup out from under the bar top. Her voice was shaky and sickly.

“You got meat?”

“I have some nice beef. Threaded stock. For the right coin, of course.” Clod knew that she was lying and it was an obvious lie. He didn’t say it, however. He suspected that whatever she gave him would have been as healthy as the cattle and swine he had spied grazing on the dead field.

“I’ll take it.” Clod said, fishing a gold coin from his pocket. She looked down to the coin, but didn’t touch it. She gave a nervous, half-faced smile. Clod could see her teeth, revealing black guts and piss-yellow teeth.

“Wouldn’t have change for such coin.”

“Wouldn’t ask for it.” Clod said and meant it. The town looked like it would break and buckle with a strong wind or a good push. A bit of charity might go along way and he had questions to ask. The coin disappeared into her pocket and she went to dip the copper cup into barrel where she had been dipping the cloth.

“Gold can’t buy water from the pump?” Clod said and the barmaid smiled again and then disappeared through a door behind the bar. There was a creak-creak-creak sound coming from beyond the door and then water began trickling and running steady. She reemerged with the copper cup full of water. She dropped the cup before Clod and the water in the cup was clouded with a reddish, rusted tint. Clod filled his mouth with the water and swished it around his mouth.

“The beef will be a moment.” She said with another nervous smile. Her eye flicked to the sword on his back or the flesh pile in the corner. She disappeared into the backroom and the thin man at the table closest to the bar coughed coarsely. He pounded his chest and spat the chicken bone out onto the table. The drool on his chin drooped down into a long string connected to the mangled bone. While still coughing, he picked the bone up and put it back in his mouth and began sucking on it again. Clod turned to the thin man and put his elbows up on the bar.

“Slavers come through?” Clod asked the man. The man didn’t seem to understand. He looked to Clod and kept sucking on his bone.

“Do they come around these parts?” Clod had been following them, gunning for them. The thin man made a smile around the chicken bone and more drool spilled from his lips.

  
The barmaid came out from the backroom and dropped a plate on the bar top. Clod turned on his seat and then looked at what she had given him. Threaded stock, indeed. What she put on the bar top might have been watery, brown shit that had been cooked until black in a pool of grease. She served it in a tin plate with high edges so as to hold the grease.

“My boy, don’t talk much. He got kicked in the head by a horse. The lord only took his mind that day.” Clod looked from the woman to the thin man sitting at the table. There was a certain resemblance between the two, a weak chin and a pale, ashy complexion.

“Why you asking about the Slavers, son? They’d snatch you up in a minute. Pretty as you are.” She gave another one of her half-faced smiles.

“That happened already and I got no fear of it happening again. They come through?” She looked over his shoulder and took a step back.

“I wouldn’t know.” She said and Clod knew it was a lie. Somewhere in the bar or back at her home, she had a slave. Possibly, the slave took care of her simple-minded son, but it was just as likely that the thin, simple-minded man climbed atop the slave for a shiver, now and then. It was a common occurrence and many slaves were sold for that reason, outright.
 
Clod pulled the plate in front of him and started in on the beef, if it was beef. He sliced a sliver of greased beef off the bigger hunk with a knife that had been set on the side of the tin plate and speared it with the tip of the knife. The beef was stingy and salted to hell, most likely because the beef was actually spoiled. He had a strong stomach and hadn’t eaten in a few days. The grease dribbled down his chin and he wiped it away with the palm of his hand. The meat made him need more water and the barmaid offered him another cup.

“Whiskey would do you better.” She said.

“Water does me fine.” He took another coin from his pocket. This one was silver with an eagle embossed. He clicked it down onto the bar top and looked up to her.

“How far ahead of me are they?” Clod asked. She gave him her nervous half-faced smile.

“Minister. I told you. I wouldn’t know.” The flesh pile gotten up out of his seat and moved forward. Clod dipped his hand down to the gun on his left side, expecting for something to happen. The floorboards creaked and groaned beneath the flesh pile’s feet.

“How long?” Clod asked.

“I swear. I don’t know.” Clod removed the gun from its holster and the barmaid gasped audible. Her one watery eye flooded over with tears and the normal one followed suit soon after.

“I don’t want no trouble.” She said, stepping backward. She was making a move for the backroom. She disappeared through the door as the flesh pile dropped a warm, flabby hand on Clod’s shoulder. Clod squeezed the trigger and blasted him in the foot. He expected the blast to turn him away, but he was too drunk for it. It only enraged him. The flesh pile fell down upon him like waves made of whiskey and sweat crashing down. Clod felt a stiffness pressing into his back. He fired three times in rapid succession as the folds of flesh washed over him. There were thick chords of muscle beneath the flabby flesh and he was using it hold Clod down. Something was happening and it had anything to do with the warm stiffness pressing into his back. The bar top slipped off the sawhorses and the two of them crashed to the ground. Clod got on his back before the flesh pile came crashing down upon him.
  
The flesh pile was washed in his own blood and he’d most likely die while attempting to rape him. He wasn’t going to die soon enough for Clod’s liking and the flesh pile was crushing Clod. The flesh pile slammed his flabby palm into Clod’s face. A belt buckle clinked and Clod rammed his knees into the flesh pile’s testicles and erect penis. He roared out in pain and Clod forced the pile off of him. Clod got back onto his feet, puffed wildly. The flesh pile got up as well, his teeth bared and body washed in blood.

“You go on. You leave now and I don’t kill you.” He slipped his sword from its sheath and it glowed an electric blue. The flesh pile gave an audible growl and he looked like he had never been human. His pants were sagging around his hips and would soon spill around his ankles. This story begins here, with Clod and a drunken, attempted rapist. The flesh pile charged and Clod swiped his sword through the pile of sweaty, bloody flesh. He cut the man in half and all the blood inside the thing spilled out onto the floor.


There was only Clod breathing harshly in the silence and then there was the old man with his bowling ball. He came in through the bat-winged doors and shot the ball forward. Clod sprung out of the way and the ball punched a hole in the wall behind him. Wood splinters showered the floor and then the ball retracted, launching back into the old bowler’s hands. It launched again, blazing through the air toward Clod. He lunged out of the way and before the ball could return to the bowler, Clod sliced into the chain. The ball had been released from the chain and fell back toward the bowler. The old man stepped out the way and allowed the ball to blast through the doorframe, freeing an open the bat-wings from the wall.
  
Clod got to his feet, swishing his blade though the air and then allowing it to settle in between the bowler and him. The bowler pushed the Stetson up on his head, revealing a pair of horns on his forehead. The bowler began to twirl his chain into a figure eight in front of his body, holding a harsh stare with Clod. The chain whooshed through the air, again and again. The two men were huffing and sweating. Clod was covered in the flesh pile’s blood. Clod could have killed him. The bowler didn’t have his ball, although the chain could easily be as dangerous in a bowler’s hands. Clod had his sword and his guns, but he decided to speak.

“Ain’t looking to make trouble. The big man was trying to fuck me right in the barroom.”

“I could believe that, but then there’s that big, old sword of yours. Them guns on your hips. Victims tended to be less armed.”

“Believe it or not. That’s what happened.”

“Don’t matter anyhow. I get paid to keep this barroom in intact, not your asshole.”

“How about I pay you to walk away?”

“If you got the coin.” Clod dipped his hand into his pocket and pulled out a golden coin. He flicked it over to the old bowler and the bowler snatched it out of the air.

“That’d do.”

“Can I pay you for something else?”

“You can pay me for about anything, except for what that one was up to.” The bowler said, pointing down to the top half of the flesh pile.

“The slavers. I know they came through. I want to know who got a slave I can take. The barmaid? Her son?”

“The barmaid’s Ma Perkins. Her man runs a pig farm and yeah, they got a girl with blonde hair.” Clod fished out another golden coin from his pants pocket and flicked it over to the old man. The old man caught it with the same hand as before.

“Perkins’ homestead?”

“I’ll give you that for free. Happy to see them bastards get some hell. Follow your nose up the hill. The place that smells the most like ass is where you ought to be.” The old man stepped out the door and stepped off the porch and was gone. Clod walked on out the door himself and down the Appleton main street.