TITLE = Crooked Picture : The Last Lullaby at Cattletongue Gallows
AUTHOR = Ananova Crowe
SUMMARY = fiction with some splurges of fact...
PLEASE = review, i'm starting to think you don't love me... :(
CROOKED PICTURE : THE LAST LULLABY OF CATTLETONGUE GALLOWS
Chapter one - Horses on Fire
It had been an ambush. Neither of them had seen it coming. They couldn't of. It was all over within the bruise of an eye. And the crack of a broken jaw.
It was some rowdies Rains had commissioned. To clean up his nasty work. The fattiest, greasiest men he could pay. A few with missing teeth. Some with shit-for-brains. And all of them with ready guns at itchy fingers.
Jesse'd forgotten how long they'd ridden by now. Not that he was in the state of mind to do so. But when the thought did cross his mind, it was fleeting.
With wrists bound too tightly to the saddle horn, Jesse bounced with the uneven strides of the skittish horse. Its flanks occasionally stuck with a vengeful rifle butt to make it kick and toss him around, pulling his wrists to their extent. Blood washed down his face, cuts, swells, and bruises covering his purple and bloodied face like a painting. His right eye was hidden beneath a wash of pure red blood, let loose from a slash across the brow by a knife, which had been licked clean soon after.
The horse he barely had enough energy to straddle jumped back and forth between the forced horses that crowded and pushed in tightly around it. Its raw and sun-blistered hide bit at and kicked at by the others, driving it to its limit. But only to be caught and held by the leader of the group.
An unnamed holy-pilgrim who was Hell walking. A preacher turned desperado by the fiery chasms from below. A human vulture with one eye like cold steel and the other branded dead and white with a cross. His sun-leathered face shown thick and brown beneath his hat, shadowed by a shade of thick, black stubble along his cracked skin.
With a whistle and a kick, the horses sped up again on command. Jesse's deadened body jerking back and forth atop his horse as occasional drunken swings came to soften his face. He flopped back and forth between fists, sporadically taking a boot to the shin or knee, bruising what wasn't bleeding.
His head bounced, half-conscious eyes spilling onto that of his beautiful wife. Her head bent, her clothes torn, her hair shorn short with the same blade that cut his brow. The cut hair glistened as it stuck out of the posse leader's jacket pocket, tied together with twine.
Her lithe body wrapped tightly in his arms. Not Jesse's. Sweet, strawberry blood dying her face and clothes. Her head bounced back against the man's shoulder, blue eyes swollen with tears of defeat as they rolled to face Jesse's.
It can't end like this. Not like this.
Suddenly, with the raise of a fist from the leader, the posse slowed to a stop at a thin streambed, beneath an old, thick tree. The leader ordered the dismount and everyone did, except for Jesse. Instead, he slumped forward on the horse, unable to bear his own weight anymore.
"Think the Lord walks here tonight boys?" The leader bellowed in a raspy, sand-stolen voice as he dismounted his horse, the beaten Zee lying still in his arms.
"Smells like he does." One member sniffed gently and sneered as he grabbed hold of the reigns of Jesse's underfed horse and led it beneath the tree.
Jesse gurgled up some blood as he spoke. "You're smelling yourself dumb shit." But he cried out as the man took a handful of hair and wrenched his head back, exposing his throat to a rusted blade. "What the hell did you just say you son of a bitch?"
"Steady down now boys," the leader said gently, leaving Zee to lie on the ground as he came over, pushing down the man's bladed hand while looking into Jesse's eyes the entire time.
The cross-branded leader put a gloved hand around the back of Jesse's neck as the bladed man slunk off snickering.
The man pulled Jesse in close to his mouth, his bloodied ear touched by the man's hooked nose. "'The fool hath said in his heart. There is no God.' Is this what you believe son?"
Jesse turned his dark eyes to face the man's white and gray ones, a coy look playing at his lips.
"Yes." He whispered back, a smile curling his lips higher.
The leader leaned back.
"Looks like we got ourselves a lost sheep, what'ya say we help him find his way home?" There was uproar from the brigands.
"We'll be sending him with the Lord Almighty later tonight boys. Let's wait until we've all gotten good and rested, eh? Let's get a fire going."
Jesse watched painfully as the leader sat with Zee curled in his lap, her head against his chest, with his hands at her waist and breast. She'd been broken like a doll, the very life of her torn away to leave nothing but the shell of a woman that was no more.
The leader hummed softly against her head, occasionally bending his lips to kiss her disheveled hair and turning his eyes to watch Jesse writhe from the horsetop.
The other men, meanwhile, had all been getting drunk for the past hours, dancing and laughing and falling all over the place. Almost to the point where they couldn't tell their boots from their pistols until they realized that boots wouldn't shoot those who made them angry. And Jesse watched it all hopelessly, as he sunk deeper and deeper into himself to try and escape. But there was no escape.
"You see the way he's eyeballin' me Roy? Looks like the devil's gotten into him." A drunk whispered to another, who was halfway passed out anyway. Their eyes roamed over Jesse like the wind, an irregular glass eyeball jumping out of its place in the midst of the stare. "Lucky I caught in time." The man slurred, pushing his unruly eyeball back in before he made his way over to the leader, stopping at his side and unzipping his pants, relieving himself right then and there all while talking.
"Hey boss. The devil's gotten into our boy, don'tchya think it's time we sent this abomin- ation to the good Lord now?"
"That's a mighty big word you just said, Cort. The Lord would be proud. Be careful though, you're pissin' on yer shoes."
"Aw shit!" Cort cursed as he moved himself.
Smiling slightly, the cross-branded leader rose from the ground, laying Zee down near the fire as he came towards Jesse.
"Clean off yer boots and get out my branding iron. It's time for some credentials to be put down."
The drunken men immediately stopped what they were doing and turned their attention towards Jesse and the leader.
"String him up!" Yelled a drunken man from Jesse's side.
He cinched his jaw and eyes as his head was pulled back again by the hair, the prickly slap of a noosed rope hitting the side of his face as he fought with the little energy he had. The skinny horse beneath him did the same, trying to free itself from the mass of men surrounding it, grabbing at its rider.
Finally, with the rope tightened extremely tight around his neck, chafing and swelling his skin, they stepped back slightly into a circle around him, although one man stayed.
"Come on you sorry sonnovabitches!" A hefty man's voice came from his side. "Hold his arms down so's I can get his hands undone from the saddle." And soon, stronger hands pinned his down painfully as a large, rough pair of shaking, intoxicated hands fumbled at the knots binding his wrists.
"Aw leave 'em alone, Dog, yer never gonna git 'em in the position yer in, just leave it." Another man chimed in from the side, but was immediately yelled down.
"Hell naw, you drunken bastard! That them there's MY saddle and come Hell or high water, I'm taken it!" He worked at the knots again, before giving up shortly with a curse.
But, with a snort of defiance, and a quick wipe of the snot that just came out of his nose, he reached into his back pocket and pulled out a switchblade, flipping it out and shoving it into the knot, and Jesse's hands.
Jesse cried out.
"Aw shut up!" the man roared as her worked at both flesh and rope harshly, cutting away the layers of the ropes while spilling more blood, until finally the ropes fell away from the saddle horn.
Blood poured from his hands, spilling all over the saddle and dribbling across the man's shoulders as he forced them behind Jesse's back with another cry of pain and rebound them, even tighter than before. His fingertips soon turned purple while curled fists turned dead white, blood no longer circulating.
He could do nothing but hope as he felt his body forcefully shifted off the saddle to slide back perilously onto the horse's rump, a deadly position with the rope pulled tight already and the ground so far away.
From the group of men all watching as "Dog" came back to them with the saddle, another voice became known.
"When one walks through the land of the dead, he don't need his wallet..." A tall, thin man ambled forward, long limbs waving as he reached forcefully into Jesse's back pocket and pulled out his leather wallet, unfastening the buttons and checking inside. He pulled out a handful of bills and shoved them up into the air with a shout, immediately followed by a tackle from a couple other members of the greedy group.
Then, a heavy-bodied man with a rolling walk and cock-eye lurched towards him, stooping to pick up the red-hot cross branding iron that had been heating in the fire. A sick smile caressed his yellow and rotting teeth, exposing them to the light.
The fat man licked his lips. "Whatdoyou say boss? You think the good Lord needs to know who belongs in his Holy flock now when they're sent up to Him?"
"I think that's a mighty fine assumption Mr. McCarthy. Would you like to do the honors o' helpin' the Almighty Lord with sortin' 'em out?"
"I'd be honored." With a tip of his hat and another flash of yellow smile, McCarthy came close, then beckoned the one who'd stolen Jesse's saddle to come help. "Dog? Git over here."
Dog came forward slowly, timidly, with the saddle straddling his arm and his eyes suspicious of an attack, like one that had befallen the tall man who now lay bruised and poor on the ground.
"Cut off his shirt." The fat man ordered, and Dog obliged, flipping out his snot-covered switchblade before timidly setting down the saddle. He fought against the strange angle Jesse's body was in as he pulled the shirt up over Jesse's head and slid it down to his wrists, before slicing it in half, letting it fall. Then he gathered up his saddle and retreated back into the pulsing crowd that surrounded them all, waiting for their turn.
The fat man rolled back on his heels for a moment before coming forward and drawing a fat finger down Jesse's arm, trailing off to let it run down his side.
"Such a beautiful sin, truly the Lord had no hand in creating you. For you are as tempting as the apple Eve pulled from the tree..." Jesse turned and kicked the man hard in the kidney, a strong kick that sent the man backward to the ground.
With a grunt, the man rolled and came to a stop, before righting himself with hatred brewing in his eyes. "But a sin you are. Go back to perdition, you iniquity! Know your place under the eyes of the Lord!"
And like that, he flew forward with great speed, re-grasping the handle of the branding iron as he came, shoving the searing metal into Jesse's side.
Jesse screamed. Zee only twitched beside the flames of the fire.
Jesse collapsed over himself as the pain took him, engulfing him with an invisible fire and turning his courage to ashes.
"Enough!" Bellowed the cross-branded leader said, stepping in and pressing back the men. "If allaya gentlemen are done now, we can git on to the best part o' the deal, besides the pay." There was a muddled laugh from the group before he announced to an uproar. "Giving God back His sins!" He strode around Jesse's horse, coming to his side and reaching up to grab his chin, shaking it towards the crowd. "And I choose ME to do the honors!"
"No..." came a voice from the background. And the bandits split like swinging doors on a bar, pulling apart to expose the curled form of Zee who still lay against the ground near the fire.
"What was that?" The leader leaned forward and put a hand around his ear.
"Leave my husband alone..." she choked out through a strickened throat.
"Aw, darlin'," the leader sauntered and skipped forward much to the approval of his crowd. "We were just havin' a bit o' fun." He bent down and gathered her up from the ground, holding her against his shoulder as he spread his other arm wide in the direction of Jesse.
"What do you think lads? Should we put this naughty little bird in a cage?" Hoots and jeers came from the group, some gnashing their teeth while others growled like dogs.
"Alright then! Bring a horse!" Many men jumped into action, pulling forward a reluctant red horse whose hair shimmered gold in the firelight. The leader stepped forward, lifting his gloved hand to stroke the horse's long nose, getting it to bow its head into his hands, cradling Zee against his chest. Before he reached up with the rifle and fired.
Zee fell to her knees as the horse whined and collapsed in front of her, blood pouring from its head as huge, black, glassy eyes stared at her without seeing.
Not able to stand it, Zee stumbled away with her hand over her mouth. Holding back the vomit that was not to be held back, and she collapsed to her knees, puking. Then, she toppled over onto her side, wanting it all to just end.
Handing off the gun to another man, the leader gave his orders, suddenly not finding the humor in the prolonged situation as he did before.
"Hurry up and git the cage ready boys, the Lord's o' waitin' for his sins to come back to Him." And men scurried to do it.
With a flash and a sickening spill, the horse's belly was sliced and the sloppy spill of pale, wet intestines came rushing into the cool night, sending off licks of steam.
The men hurried to pull out the guts and organs and spread them around the horse's corpse, prepping "the cage".
"All right little lady, you hold onto this." The leader sighed and went towards Zee, leaning down over her and handing her a knife, but she didn't take it. So instead, he put it in her hand and closed it for her. "When you feel like talking, just scream." And with a snap of his fingers, two men lifted her body from the ground and carried her towards the disemboweled horse.
Jesse pulled taught at his noose, choking out words through blistered lips and raw throat. "Zee! Godammnit Zee! Fight back!"
Suddenly, as if a motor had suddenly kicked in in her head, Zerelda began to fight, starting slow then kicking harder as the smell of intestines and blood invaded her nostrils and throat.
"No!" she screamed. "Get off me! Get off! Jesse?! Help me!" She fought and tore like hell against them, but was no match as more men came to hold her and shove her into the horse's belly.
She was crammed up against its spine and bruised by its ribs as they pushed her curled form inside the stinking darkness. "Jesse!! God no!! Jesse?!!?" She screamed and pounded and hacked at the horse's ribs and flesh with her fists and the knife as they began to close her inside of it, resewing the horse's belly back together with a bootlace and knife.
"Zee!!" Jesse yelled as he fought against the rope. The horse beneath him began forward, but he pulled it to a stop with his heels as it stretched his neck, unable to say or do anymore.
The men worked excitably as they began gathering sticks and such and laying them around the dead horse and its entrails. And with Zee inside, flashes of the silver blade through horseflesh pierced the night as she tried to slash her way out, but the bones got in the way.
"If you can get out of there in less than the time it takes for the fire to get you, you're a free woman." The leader said as he pulled a match from his pocket and struck it against the bottom of his boot. The flame ignited his face as he held it up, looking Jesse deadlock in the eyes. Then, impartially, he cast the match into the pile of horse intestines and wood, giving birth to a sickening blue flame that instantly engulfed the whole of the horse.
"NOOOOO!!" Jesse screamed as he watched Zee's hand burst through the horse's boiling flesh, only to be suddenly eaten by the fire, and heard her scream from inside.
He could have sworn he heard his name once more from inside before the flames suddenly roared high and engulfed the entire corpse.
"She's floating with the Lord now son," the leader said, turning to Jesse as tears began to stream down his face, washing away the blood and revealing pummeled skin beneath.
"Damn you and your Lord." Jesse spit, sending a glob of blood onto the cross of the leader's brand under his white eye. He'd lost his faith in all of about five seconds.
"That's blasphemy you scumbelly!" The leader cocked his rifle and came forward fast, shoving the rifle end into Jesse's mouth, nearly hitting the back of his throat with it. "You watch your mouth before I blow it off." He took a gloved hand and wiped away the blood-spit, wiping it onto Jesse's pants.
Anger tinged his seeing eye before he turned towards his eager posse. "I think it's time we turned this non-believer's faith towards the Almighty Lord once again, eh boys?"
"Time to go a swingin' with He who is above us." The leader said, slowly pulling the rife barrel from Jesse's mouth then leveling it to the flank of the underfed, antsy horse while the other sick men remounted their horses, one having to double up with another.
"Say hello to that old serpent, called the Devil son, whose number six hundred threescore and six...and leave this Earth without the thought of the Lord on your mind and the breath of God on your skin, for you belong in Hell."
And Jesse just hung his head. Ready to die.
"Tell the Beast that Thaddeus Rains sends his condolences."
With a bang, a pain wracked neigh, and a jostle, Jesse did just that.
AUTHOR = Ananova Crowe
SUMMARY = fiction with some splurges of fact...
PLEASE = review, i'm starting to think you don't love me... :(
CROOKED PICTURE : THE LAST LULLABY OF CATTLETONGUE GALLOWS
Chapter one - Horses on Fire
It had been an ambush. Neither of them had seen it coming. They couldn't of. It was all over within the bruise of an eye. And the crack of a broken jaw.
It was some rowdies Rains had commissioned. To clean up his nasty work. The fattiest, greasiest men he could pay. A few with missing teeth. Some with shit-for-brains. And all of them with ready guns at itchy fingers.
Jesse'd forgotten how long they'd ridden by now. Not that he was in the state of mind to do so. But when the thought did cross his mind, it was fleeting.
With wrists bound too tightly to the saddle horn, Jesse bounced with the uneven strides of the skittish horse. Its flanks occasionally stuck with a vengeful rifle butt to make it kick and toss him around, pulling his wrists to their extent. Blood washed down his face, cuts, swells, and bruises covering his purple and bloodied face like a painting. His right eye was hidden beneath a wash of pure red blood, let loose from a slash across the brow by a knife, which had been licked clean soon after.
The horse he barely had enough energy to straddle jumped back and forth between the forced horses that crowded and pushed in tightly around it. Its raw and sun-blistered hide bit at and kicked at by the others, driving it to its limit. But only to be caught and held by the leader of the group.
An unnamed holy-pilgrim who was Hell walking. A preacher turned desperado by the fiery chasms from below. A human vulture with one eye like cold steel and the other branded dead and white with a cross. His sun-leathered face shown thick and brown beneath his hat, shadowed by a shade of thick, black stubble along his cracked skin.
With a whistle and a kick, the horses sped up again on command. Jesse's deadened body jerking back and forth atop his horse as occasional drunken swings came to soften his face. He flopped back and forth between fists, sporadically taking a boot to the shin or knee, bruising what wasn't bleeding.
His head bounced, half-conscious eyes spilling onto that of his beautiful wife. Her head bent, her clothes torn, her hair shorn short with the same blade that cut his brow. The cut hair glistened as it stuck out of the posse leader's jacket pocket, tied together with twine.
Her lithe body wrapped tightly in his arms. Not Jesse's. Sweet, strawberry blood dying her face and clothes. Her head bounced back against the man's shoulder, blue eyes swollen with tears of defeat as they rolled to face Jesse's.
It can't end like this. Not like this.
Suddenly, with the raise of a fist from the leader, the posse slowed to a stop at a thin streambed, beneath an old, thick tree. The leader ordered the dismount and everyone did, except for Jesse. Instead, he slumped forward on the horse, unable to bear his own weight anymore.
"Think the Lord walks here tonight boys?" The leader bellowed in a raspy, sand-stolen voice as he dismounted his horse, the beaten Zee lying still in his arms.
"Smells like he does." One member sniffed gently and sneered as he grabbed hold of the reigns of Jesse's underfed horse and led it beneath the tree.
Jesse gurgled up some blood as he spoke. "You're smelling yourself dumb shit." But he cried out as the man took a handful of hair and wrenched his head back, exposing his throat to a rusted blade. "What the hell did you just say you son of a bitch?"
"Steady down now boys," the leader said gently, leaving Zee to lie on the ground as he came over, pushing down the man's bladed hand while looking into Jesse's eyes the entire time.
The cross-branded leader put a gloved hand around the back of Jesse's neck as the bladed man slunk off snickering.
The man pulled Jesse in close to his mouth, his bloodied ear touched by the man's hooked nose. "'The fool hath said in his heart. There is no God.' Is this what you believe son?"
Jesse turned his dark eyes to face the man's white and gray ones, a coy look playing at his lips.
"Yes." He whispered back, a smile curling his lips higher.
The leader leaned back.
"Looks like we got ourselves a lost sheep, what'ya say we help him find his way home?" There was uproar from the brigands.
"We'll be sending him with the Lord Almighty later tonight boys. Let's wait until we've all gotten good and rested, eh? Let's get a fire going."
Jesse watched painfully as the leader sat with Zee curled in his lap, her head against his chest, with his hands at her waist and breast. She'd been broken like a doll, the very life of her torn away to leave nothing but the shell of a woman that was no more.
The leader hummed softly against her head, occasionally bending his lips to kiss her disheveled hair and turning his eyes to watch Jesse writhe from the horsetop.
The other men, meanwhile, had all been getting drunk for the past hours, dancing and laughing and falling all over the place. Almost to the point where they couldn't tell their boots from their pistols until they realized that boots wouldn't shoot those who made them angry. And Jesse watched it all hopelessly, as he sunk deeper and deeper into himself to try and escape. But there was no escape.
"You see the way he's eyeballin' me Roy? Looks like the devil's gotten into him." A drunk whispered to another, who was halfway passed out anyway. Their eyes roamed over Jesse like the wind, an irregular glass eyeball jumping out of its place in the midst of the stare. "Lucky I caught in time." The man slurred, pushing his unruly eyeball back in before he made his way over to the leader, stopping at his side and unzipping his pants, relieving himself right then and there all while talking.
"Hey boss. The devil's gotten into our boy, don'tchya think it's time we sent this abomin- ation to the good Lord now?"
"That's a mighty big word you just said, Cort. The Lord would be proud. Be careful though, you're pissin' on yer shoes."
"Aw shit!" Cort cursed as he moved himself.
Smiling slightly, the cross-branded leader rose from the ground, laying Zee down near the fire as he came towards Jesse.
"Clean off yer boots and get out my branding iron. It's time for some credentials to be put down."
The drunken men immediately stopped what they were doing and turned their attention towards Jesse and the leader.
"String him up!" Yelled a drunken man from Jesse's side.
He cinched his jaw and eyes as his head was pulled back again by the hair, the prickly slap of a noosed rope hitting the side of his face as he fought with the little energy he had. The skinny horse beneath him did the same, trying to free itself from the mass of men surrounding it, grabbing at its rider.
Finally, with the rope tightened extremely tight around his neck, chafing and swelling his skin, they stepped back slightly into a circle around him, although one man stayed.
"Come on you sorry sonnovabitches!" A hefty man's voice came from his side. "Hold his arms down so's I can get his hands undone from the saddle." And soon, stronger hands pinned his down painfully as a large, rough pair of shaking, intoxicated hands fumbled at the knots binding his wrists.
"Aw leave 'em alone, Dog, yer never gonna git 'em in the position yer in, just leave it." Another man chimed in from the side, but was immediately yelled down.
"Hell naw, you drunken bastard! That them there's MY saddle and come Hell or high water, I'm taken it!" He worked at the knots again, before giving up shortly with a curse.
But, with a snort of defiance, and a quick wipe of the snot that just came out of his nose, he reached into his back pocket and pulled out a switchblade, flipping it out and shoving it into the knot, and Jesse's hands.
Jesse cried out.
"Aw shut up!" the man roared as her worked at both flesh and rope harshly, cutting away the layers of the ropes while spilling more blood, until finally the ropes fell away from the saddle horn.
Blood poured from his hands, spilling all over the saddle and dribbling across the man's shoulders as he forced them behind Jesse's back with another cry of pain and rebound them, even tighter than before. His fingertips soon turned purple while curled fists turned dead white, blood no longer circulating.
He could do nothing but hope as he felt his body forcefully shifted off the saddle to slide back perilously onto the horse's rump, a deadly position with the rope pulled tight already and the ground so far away.
From the group of men all watching as "Dog" came back to them with the saddle, another voice became known.
"When one walks through the land of the dead, he don't need his wallet..." A tall, thin man ambled forward, long limbs waving as he reached forcefully into Jesse's back pocket and pulled out his leather wallet, unfastening the buttons and checking inside. He pulled out a handful of bills and shoved them up into the air with a shout, immediately followed by a tackle from a couple other members of the greedy group.
Then, a heavy-bodied man with a rolling walk and cock-eye lurched towards him, stooping to pick up the red-hot cross branding iron that had been heating in the fire. A sick smile caressed his yellow and rotting teeth, exposing them to the light.
The fat man licked his lips. "Whatdoyou say boss? You think the good Lord needs to know who belongs in his Holy flock now when they're sent up to Him?"
"I think that's a mighty fine assumption Mr. McCarthy. Would you like to do the honors o' helpin' the Almighty Lord with sortin' 'em out?"
"I'd be honored." With a tip of his hat and another flash of yellow smile, McCarthy came close, then beckoned the one who'd stolen Jesse's saddle to come help. "Dog? Git over here."
Dog came forward slowly, timidly, with the saddle straddling his arm and his eyes suspicious of an attack, like one that had befallen the tall man who now lay bruised and poor on the ground.
"Cut off his shirt." The fat man ordered, and Dog obliged, flipping out his snot-covered switchblade before timidly setting down the saddle. He fought against the strange angle Jesse's body was in as he pulled the shirt up over Jesse's head and slid it down to his wrists, before slicing it in half, letting it fall. Then he gathered up his saddle and retreated back into the pulsing crowd that surrounded them all, waiting for their turn.
The fat man rolled back on his heels for a moment before coming forward and drawing a fat finger down Jesse's arm, trailing off to let it run down his side.
"Such a beautiful sin, truly the Lord had no hand in creating you. For you are as tempting as the apple Eve pulled from the tree..." Jesse turned and kicked the man hard in the kidney, a strong kick that sent the man backward to the ground.
With a grunt, the man rolled and came to a stop, before righting himself with hatred brewing in his eyes. "But a sin you are. Go back to perdition, you iniquity! Know your place under the eyes of the Lord!"
And like that, he flew forward with great speed, re-grasping the handle of the branding iron as he came, shoving the searing metal into Jesse's side.
Jesse screamed. Zee only twitched beside the flames of the fire.
Jesse collapsed over himself as the pain took him, engulfing him with an invisible fire and turning his courage to ashes.
"Enough!" Bellowed the cross-branded leader said, stepping in and pressing back the men. "If allaya gentlemen are done now, we can git on to the best part o' the deal, besides the pay." There was a muddled laugh from the group before he announced to an uproar. "Giving God back His sins!" He strode around Jesse's horse, coming to his side and reaching up to grab his chin, shaking it towards the crowd. "And I choose ME to do the honors!"
"No..." came a voice from the background. And the bandits split like swinging doors on a bar, pulling apart to expose the curled form of Zee who still lay against the ground near the fire.
"What was that?" The leader leaned forward and put a hand around his ear.
"Leave my husband alone..." she choked out through a strickened throat.
"Aw, darlin'," the leader sauntered and skipped forward much to the approval of his crowd. "We were just havin' a bit o' fun." He bent down and gathered her up from the ground, holding her against his shoulder as he spread his other arm wide in the direction of Jesse.
"What do you think lads? Should we put this naughty little bird in a cage?" Hoots and jeers came from the group, some gnashing their teeth while others growled like dogs.
"Alright then! Bring a horse!" Many men jumped into action, pulling forward a reluctant red horse whose hair shimmered gold in the firelight. The leader stepped forward, lifting his gloved hand to stroke the horse's long nose, getting it to bow its head into his hands, cradling Zee against his chest. Before he reached up with the rifle and fired.
Zee fell to her knees as the horse whined and collapsed in front of her, blood pouring from its head as huge, black, glassy eyes stared at her without seeing.
Not able to stand it, Zee stumbled away with her hand over her mouth. Holding back the vomit that was not to be held back, and she collapsed to her knees, puking. Then, she toppled over onto her side, wanting it all to just end.
Handing off the gun to another man, the leader gave his orders, suddenly not finding the humor in the prolonged situation as he did before.
"Hurry up and git the cage ready boys, the Lord's o' waitin' for his sins to come back to Him." And men scurried to do it.
With a flash and a sickening spill, the horse's belly was sliced and the sloppy spill of pale, wet intestines came rushing into the cool night, sending off licks of steam.
The men hurried to pull out the guts and organs and spread them around the horse's corpse, prepping "the cage".
"All right little lady, you hold onto this." The leader sighed and went towards Zee, leaning down over her and handing her a knife, but she didn't take it. So instead, he put it in her hand and closed it for her. "When you feel like talking, just scream." And with a snap of his fingers, two men lifted her body from the ground and carried her towards the disemboweled horse.
Jesse pulled taught at his noose, choking out words through blistered lips and raw throat. "Zee! Godammnit Zee! Fight back!"
Suddenly, as if a motor had suddenly kicked in in her head, Zerelda began to fight, starting slow then kicking harder as the smell of intestines and blood invaded her nostrils and throat.
"No!" she screamed. "Get off me! Get off! Jesse?! Help me!" She fought and tore like hell against them, but was no match as more men came to hold her and shove her into the horse's belly.
She was crammed up against its spine and bruised by its ribs as they pushed her curled form inside the stinking darkness. "Jesse!! God no!! Jesse?!!?" She screamed and pounded and hacked at the horse's ribs and flesh with her fists and the knife as they began to close her inside of it, resewing the horse's belly back together with a bootlace and knife.
"Zee!!" Jesse yelled as he fought against the rope. The horse beneath him began forward, but he pulled it to a stop with his heels as it stretched his neck, unable to say or do anymore.
The men worked excitably as they began gathering sticks and such and laying them around the dead horse and its entrails. And with Zee inside, flashes of the silver blade through horseflesh pierced the night as she tried to slash her way out, but the bones got in the way.
"If you can get out of there in less than the time it takes for the fire to get you, you're a free woman." The leader said as he pulled a match from his pocket and struck it against the bottom of his boot. The flame ignited his face as he held it up, looking Jesse deadlock in the eyes. Then, impartially, he cast the match into the pile of horse intestines and wood, giving birth to a sickening blue flame that instantly engulfed the whole of the horse.
"NOOOOO!!" Jesse screamed as he watched Zee's hand burst through the horse's boiling flesh, only to be suddenly eaten by the fire, and heard her scream from inside.
He could have sworn he heard his name once more from inside before the flames suddenly roared high and engulfed the entire corpse.
"She's floating with the Lord now son," the leader said, turning to Jesse as tears began to stream down his face, washing away the blood and revealing pummeled skin beneath.
"Damn you and your Lord." Jesse spit, sending a glob of blood onto the cross of the leader's brand under his white eye. He'd lost his faith in all of about five seconds.
"That's blasphemy you scumbelly!" The leader cocked his rifle and came forward fast, shoving the rifle end into Jesse's mouth, nearly hitting the back of his throat with it. "You watch your mouth before I blow it off." He took a gloved hand and wiped away the blood-spit, wiping it onto Jesse's pants.
Anger tinged his seeing eye before he turned towards his eager posse. "I think it's time we turned this non-believer's faith towards the Almighty Lord once again, eh boys?"
"Time to go a swingin' with He who is above us." The leader said, slowly pulling the rife barrel from Jesse's mouth then leveling it to the flank of the underfed, antsy horse while the other sick men remounted their horses, one having to double up with another.
"Say hello to that old serpent, called the Devil son, whose number six hundred threescore and six...and leave this Earth without the thought of the Lord on your mind and the breath of God on your skin, for you belong in Hell."
And Jesse just hung his head. Ready to die.
"Tell the Beast that Thaddeus Rains sends his condolences."
With a bang, a pain wracked neigh, and a jostle, Jesse did just that.