Tuesday, August 30, 2011

Tortured Berries, or Why Cletus Betrayed Us

Gate to the old cemetery, Virginia City, NV
This is the second installment in a senselessly continuing series of fractured ramblings by an old man who’s outlived his usefulness, which he set down on paper while traveling through the badlands bordering the state of Fugue, which is just outside Virginia City, Nevada.

It was hotter than a whorehouse on nickel night, and had been for near to a month. That's why we decided to try it, on account of the sun baking the dirt so severe that our horses would be able to raise a powdery cloud and obscure our escape. On the day we left, dust did indeed conceal our progress from the observers up in the hills as we made our way through that little valley beyond the old wood gate. Those bastards knew we were down there somewhere, but could not hone their senses good enough to figure our location precisely or to predict what place we were headed to. Until the belly-cheater Cletus decided to go off on his own to higher ground after sage grouse. Dumb idea anyway, circumstances notwithstanding, because although I will allow that Cletus was competent enough with beans and miscellaneous organ meats, he could not cook a feathered creature without rendering it as dry and stringy as what was commonly sold at drugstores to pull last week's jerky out from between your teeth. It took the watchers not one-sixth of an hour to extract the details from Cletus, and from that time forward our end stood in plain form before us. Cletus was left bloody and bereft of his berries, and we lost our only way out.




© Pseudocognitive


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