Time & Space: Chapter 6

Scorching heat set every inch of Mac’s skin ablaze. The warm air was stifling, and he struggled to take in the initial breath of it. He couldn’t see, blinded not by darkness, but a consuming white light.

Hell is living up to its reputation, he thought.

Shapes began to define themselves upon the blank white canvas of his vision. The brightness faded, but only a little, revealing a sea of dirt, spotted with brush and shriveled vegetation as far as he could see. Distant ridges of sand-brown plateaus cut across the horizon. Everything seemed to be the same drab color. The sun beat down overhead and was the only feature in a vibrant blue sky, reflecting its harsh light off the bleached terrain. He could see how someone would describe this as hell.

“I’m gon’ need you to git yer hands above yer head nice n’ slow now Parrish,” Mac heard a gravelly voice say directly behind him.

He didn’t know who “Parrish” was, but he knew the command was directed at him because he could feel the unmistakable hard nose of a gun barrel press into his back, just behind his heart.

Mac slowly lifted his hands, keeping his arms wide and his fingers outstretched. He was not about to let himself get shot as the first the he did after dying. The person behind him grabbed at his side and removed something from his right hip. He didn’t risk looking.

“Right, now, turn ‘round real slow,” the voice said. He did as he was told.

The pallid landscape whirled around him until his eyes finally settled on four shapes. The foremost was holding the barrel of his weathered revolver inches from his face. He was an older man with leathery brown skin which was darkened in spots by smudges of dirt on his worn face. A light grey shadow of stubble framed his jaw, and his long, jet black hair was flecked with streaks of grey and woven together in two seamless braids which poked out beneath a ten gallon hat that matched its owner’s description in nearly every way.

A cowboy hat?! Mac thought. What the hell is going on? He looked past the strange man and noticed a woman in a long, muted green dress that buttoned high on the neck. She seemed disheveled and stood behind the man clutching her waist and looking down into the dirt. Next to her stood an imposing white and red painted horse wearing a simple saddle with a rifle holstered in it. It stamped and shook its head, snorting as it made eye contact with Mac. A second, slightly smaller, grease black horse stood next to it, reigns tied to the horn of the paint’s saddle.

“I think you owe Miss Turner here an apology,” the man said with a smirk. Mac hesitated, unsure what he had done, or even where - or when - he was. “Go on, now,” he tapped the revolver twice on Mac’s forehead.

“Uh, I’m sorry,” Mac muttered, confusion clearly evident in his voice. She turned away from him.

Suddenly, a searing pain shot down Mac’s right arm, filling his shoulder with a burning sensation that pulsed with his heartbeat, and causing his raised arm to fall to his side. He hadn’t noticed it before in the confusion, but the back of his shirt was soaked in warm blood.

I did get shot then, he thought. It was odd to him that he would keep a wound in the afterlife, and stranger still that he had been killed by a seemingly non-vital shot in the back.

“We better git you back into town and get that shoulder looked at,” the man said. He turned and whistled sharply through his thumb and middle finger. Around a nearby rock outcropping, two more men on horseback trotted towards them, rifles in their right hands and pointed at the sky and kicking up large clouds of dust as than approached.

“Jimmy, you boys git Mr. Parrish in irons and into a cell. Have Doc Thompson come take a look at him,” he shouted at a frail looking man with an almost cartoonish curled mustache as he rode up behind Mac. “I’ll give Miss Turner a ride home.”

“Sure thing, boss.”

Jimmy, apparently, jumped down and began fitting heavy metal handcuffs of some sort around Mac’s wrists. He left his hands in front of him, Mac assumed, so that he would be able to hold himself onto one of the other horses. Mac went along with it, unsure if this was a real experience, or some sort of bizarre, comatose dream. The other man, who hadn’t said a word and appeared to be the youngest of the three, stayed atop his horse, aiming his rifle in Mac’s direction as if to be sure he wouldn’t try anything

The braid-haired man strode over to the painted horse and boosted the woman up into the saddle. He climbed onto the black horse beside it and swapped the configuration of the reigns. With a grunt, he launched the two horses into a trot in the direction of what Mac thought looked like a small grouping of buildings about a mile off.

Jimmy walked back over to his horse a pulled a length of rope from its saddle. He quickly tied a simple slip knot, looping it around the horn and then tying the other end in a somewhat more complicated knot around the middle of Mac’s handcuffs.

Looks like I won’t be riding after all, Mac thought.

Jimmy swung himself back up onto the chestnut-brown mustang and spurred it forward. The initial tug of the animal’s movement lurched him forward, but the horse settled into a slow walk that forced him forward but did not drag him. The silent man fell in behind them, rifle still held ready.

His shoulder ached and he was beginning to feel light headed as they made their way down a nearby dirt road that seemed to lead in the same direction the man and miss Turner had traveled in before. Mac wasn’t sure if it was blood loss, shock, or both, but he could not force his mind to work towards piecing this all together.

“Wh-” Mac tried to call something out to Jimmy, but the words caught in his throat which had become dry and coated in dust. He coughed instead.

“What was that, Parrish?” Jimmy hollered back, turning in his saddle.

Mac swallowed, “Where are we?” he repeated, making sure each word came out correctly this time.

“What d’you mean ‘where are we?!’” Jimmy said with a laugh. “Hey, Rabbit, I think the sun is gettin’ to Mr. Parrish, here.”

The man called “Rabbit” humphed in amusement, but said nothing.

“Yer in Texas, Parrish. Have been most all yer life I reckon,” he said. “What? Did ya hit yer head when you fell off that horse? Made ya crazy did it?” He drew out the word crazy in an obnoxious way, obviously entertained at Mac’s confusion.

“My name’s not Parrish,” Mac said. This set Jimmy into a fit of laughter that sounded less than half sane itself.

“Parrish has don’ had his brain cooked, Rabbit!”

Another, less enthusiastic, humph came from Rabbit’s direction.

Mac was no less confused, but asking questions didn’t seem to be getting him anywhere. He could remember that just moments ago he had threatened that nurse in a cold, wet, back alley in New York City. Now, he was being taken prisoner by cowboys who looked and talked like something out of a western film.

Am I dead? Mac turned the thought over in his head, finding no logical explanation.

He didn’t know how long they had been walking, but his head was spinning faster and faster by the second. His feet began to drag along the ground until they eventually tangled themselves, but he was able to catch his balance by clutching on to the taught rope before him. He was quickly losing consciousness when he realized they were flanked by small wooden buildings on both sides. A few horse drawn carriages lined the dirt road on either side, and several buildings had horses hitched to posts in front of them.

Jimmy stopped them and jumped down from the mustang. He slipped the loop off his saddle and lead Mac by the rope towards the nearest building. It had the word “SHERIFF” painted above the door frame in half-faded, block letters. Mac tried to step up onto the wood plank porch, but caught an edge on the unexpected tip of his boot. He fell forward, slamming his face into the dusty wooden boards. He groaned and lay there, motionless with his eyes closed, too exhausted to pick himself up.

Two sets of hands grabbed him on either side, sending a sharp pain through his right shoulder as they raised him upright and supported his weight, his arms slung over their backs.

“Up ya go, Mr. Parrish,” Jimmy said, still frustratingly cheerful.

Mac forced his eyes open long enough to see a tattered poster hanging just beside the door frame they were forcing him through.

WANTED: DEAD or ALIVE for ROBBERY - HORSE THIEVERY - MURDER. $50 REWARD.

COLE PARRISH.

The man in the picture looked nothing like Mac.

This can’t be real, he thought, as his mind slipped out of consciousness, and this upside down world faded to black.

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