by Wesley Nyx

In the time of the outlaws, cliches hadn’t yet been recognized as such. Stories that began ‘once upon a time’ and triumphant heroes were commonplace, but unrecognized. Even more often, you had cruelty. You had the mean folk. The boogeymen.

Violence came and went, unvindicated and unanswered for.

In the devil’s waltz, was there a rhyme or reason to whose toes were stepped on?

His name was Silas Black. He was a murderer, a cowboy, and a cold-hearted son of a bitch. He may not have eaten nails for breaks or had tacks for snacks, but once, maybe twice, when he had had too many (which was often), he may’ve made others try it out.

Even the most brutal square-dancers out in the wild west were left shaking in their wingtips at the very muffled, hushed whisper of his name: Silas Black.

Anger wasn’t uncommon. In tough times, resources were finite, and food was scarce. His anger though, his anger was different. It had the devil in it. He kept them together and, hand-in-hand, they do-si-doed.

Silas wanted to be known. He wanted the people he thought of as nothing more than cattle to know his name, and to fear it.

“Silas Black,” he whispered it aloud beneath his breath. He said it again, again, and a fourth time, “Silas Black.” And, as he did, the blood trickled down his neck like a snake slithering through a tall patch of grass. His beard was drenched a dark, deep red, a tint that went against its original usual dirty blond.

His breath wreaked of whisky, and as it just so happened, the man dead on the ground once held the deed to the town’s saloon. He had known little about the man beyond that. He hadn’t even gotten his name or exchanged a single pleasantry. In the storybooks, this man wouldn’t have received a second word’s description. Nevertheless, Silas watched the blood trickle out of him just the same. In life, the man may not have had a name, but, in death, he would help prop up another’s – he’d help them remember the name Silas Black.

The man had slashes and gashes on either side of his ribcage and shortly, no longer squirmed or writhed in agony, he merely was, until the very moment he wasn’t. Although, to Silas, he hadn’t ever been much of a man, but, rather, a means to an end. And now, he was little more than a lifeless carcass for the maggots and mice to gnaw on. How thoughtful am I, Silas thought, but didn’t say aloud. After all, he didn’t want to seem like a loon. He had made enough holes in the man that he would make for a nice little inn for all the critters tonight.

Life in the west, it wasn’t ballet.

Silas stifled forward. His body wobbled like a barstool with one leg shorter than the rest. Out the corner of his eye, he was able to see nosey onlookers staring at him through their boarded windows. Doors locked tight. He offered a burp as his rebuttal and focused on steadying himself. One foot in front of the next, come on, Silas, you know the steps! His partner, the dog that bit him, spun him ‘round and ‘round, until he was sent tumbling to the ground.

With this, he arrived at a fork in the road, or was it a rock? He was drunk and couldn’t tell a man which way was up even if he had a map. All he knew was that that rock-fork had went into him and cut him good!

As his hat flung off and he bit the dirt, his eyes darted upward in time to see the silhouette of a man in a dark cloak. Silas crept away with uncertainty in his eyes. His dance-partner said nothing but offered him the hand of Death.

The morning after, Silas Black, the town’s most notorious drunk, was now merely the stuff of fables – the shard of a broken beer bottle found deep in his liver. The townspeople awoke, now free from their boogeyman. By chance or fate? Whichever. They danced.

Cha Cha Cha!