He came into the gas station just on the edge of town. Charlie, the cashier, didn’t see or hear a car, the Stranger just walked right in. Tall, thin, with a chin that stuck out from the shadow of his hat, the Stranger smiled like he was chewing on barbwire. He bought a Yoo-hoo. Charlie might not have paid him any mind if he hadn’t seen his right hand when the Stranger took the 16 cents in change. It was dark and crimson as if he had dipped it in blood.
The moment the Stranger walked out of the station, Charlie called Sheriff Thomas. Sheriff Thomas started calling everyone. When the Mayor told the Sheriff to do something about it, the officer refused, and so the Mayor ordered some of his boys out. Loyal to the fat old man and his largesse, the boys got on their bikes and took out their chains and rode out to meet the Stranger with their mothers weeping for them as they left. No one saw them again.
By the time the Stranger got to the town square it was filled with the innocent and the guilty, each of them waiting. It had been years since his last visit and everyone remembered the fire. What disaster would accompany the Stranger now?
He wandered through the town square, people on either side, ignoring everyone. Not seeing whom he had come for, the Stranger laid a hand on a girl of sixteen and said to her, “Bring me the Mayor.” But the girl dropped dead at his touch, so he moved to speak to another. Seeing this, and that he was close to the chosen, the Sheriff ran to the small town hall where the Mayor was hiding.
The skies around town had long ago blackened with the tar of the refineries and the fields long lay fallow, and the Mayor had filled the cemetery with anyone who cared. Now the Stranger had arrived. The Sheriff couldn’t pull the Mayor out of the Hall, and the Stranger kept making his way down the line, touching one townsperson after the next, each dropping, until more and more of them headed to the Hall to help the Sheriff. But the Mayor stayed inside, the fat fuck shouting excuses, citing the shield of his office, until someone showed up with a gasoline can and the liquor store empties. They started filling bottles with petrol and stuffing their necks with rags.
When the Stranger walked out of town again, the Hall was on fire and the blaze spreading. For the townsfolk, learning the same lesson again hadn’t made it any easier.
See the author’s published work here.
Related Posts
The American: Chapter 71 Next Post:
The American: Chapter 72
