Disclaimer: I own none of the characters presented in this story. Red Dead Redemption and all associated with said property belong to Rockstar Games.

Disclaimer: Strong depictions of violence, murder, and other such heinous and repugnant acts, very harsh language used throughout, and some taboo and offensive material occasionally presented.

Part Seven: Abigail

10:37 PM, July 18th, 1899

The echoing bang of the gun dispersed through the dark swamps like the whistle of a train—ear-piercing, guttural. So violently loud it broke through all other emotions, converting whatever mood you were feeling into one of tense aggravation until it passed. When it did pass, after what must've been a month (a week at least) the emotion that settled into Abigail was one of apathy, of unwavering coldness. Still, she opened her eyes sluggishly, her mind developing a horrible collage of images like one of those picture shows she'd heard about. Where would John be bleeding from? She didn't hear any moans of agony, so he must be dead. Did she hit him in the head, marring his already scared face; a feeling of tumult outmatched her passivity, she imagined him still alive, jaw torn apart, teeth missing, smiling at her and planting a rotten, bloody kiss on her lips, leaving an arrowhead-shaped chunk of his tongue inside her mouth.

She almost laughed when her eyelids were lifted to see John completely unscathed, reciprocating her apathy in full, stagnant eyes and a slightly agape mouth that made it look like he was a half-wit. She heard Bill mutter thanks to the Satan-serving whoresons who made the worthless, unreliable cattleman revolver before she looked to see it in the dim shallow grass, steam emitting off of it like reeked of something awful. A squib load.

How utterly proper, she thought, as Charles came down hard, tackling her to the dirt— right where I belong. There were other voices, Sadie, Mary-Beth, though she couldn't hear them; all she heard was Jack: "...we caught a fish… and I made you this necklace."

Why hadn't she kept that precious orchid chain? Why hadn't she been keeping an eye on him when those Braithwaite's came by? She thought of his scruffy hair that shined golden-brown with the sun, his innocent, sanguine smile, his love of reading, the annoyingly wondrous tick-tock of his tongue clicking—because he hadn't yet learned to whistle—whenever he tried talking to the horses. Her eyes became slick with misty tears, but she didn't dare cry. She was tired of it, the crying—some days she thought as though she'd cry until all her tears were gone and dark ruddy blood would take their place, to be followed by green piss and white sweat until she was a wrinkly, drained raisin of a woman, more ancient than Grimshaw. And she was tired of worrying and was tired of everyone trying to console her, tell her what they thought she wanted to hear, tired of Dutch's empty promises and Hosea's books, and she was tired too, so tired. She hadn't slept since he'd gone missing; she'd stare out her window to the town of Saint Denis all night, crying for the Lord to bring her Jack back safely, hearing the creaks about in the old house, knowing the gang was up with her, silently praying she'd shut the hell up so they could go to bed. Abigail decided she wanted to sleep now, sleep and pray she woke up to find it was all a dream, or never wake up at all. She stroked the soft, moist grass with her hand and felt the sprinkle of the Sandman calling to her for the first time in days and she gave in, letting the darkness consume her before she saw, through fluttering eyes, John disappear on foot into the caliginous woods, away from the gang, away from her. How utterly proper.

The world became a much simpler place for Abigail Roberts after that as she lay in her bed on the second floor of Shady Belle, paying no caution to the swarm of visitors, hearing only a series of faint pesty hums. Hosea the hornet, buzz, buzz, buzz; Sadie the sandpiper, tweet, tweet, tweet; Pearson the pup, ruff, ruff, ruff. It meant nothing to her.

Her room was the one with the missing wall—courtesy of Bill—and yet she had never felt so safe, so private. Probably because she wasn't in the room, she was in Purgatory, that ineffable, unchartable line you inhabit when you're neither dreaming nor awake; it was Eden, she Lilith. Each confused emotion, experience, and state of consciousness melted into a new one. There were no ends, only a bottomless stream of beginnings. No heartbreak, no fetters, no dicks, just blissful sleep. She wandered around that dry gray void, that nexus of reality and fantasy, having never felt such peace since she was a little girl. That's how old she'd been when she lost her virginity. She had only bore a subtle understanding of the male physique from the older girls at her orphanage when he'd come for her. Gray fog enveloped her now as she thought on his silver hair; he had been very handsome. He'd had a long full mustache, and a light, feminine voice that worked against his burly frame, made even more noticeable by how snugly the vestment fit on him. She remembered the way he looked at her beforehand, so fatherly and tender, such a violent contrast from when he was in the middle of it, one hand tight on her throat, the other on her face, the strong fingers keeping her eyes peeled on him, even as his thick bubbly spit enshrouded her eyes, making her vision blurry.

The memory usually brought her dizzying umbrage, yet it meant nothing to her now as she lay face-up, shifting to the nonexistent force of his long-past thrusts; it was why she hadn't minded the lack of coitus between her and John since Swanson married them two months into her pregnancy: the motions were tattooed into her. How filled with ire she'd been back then, how she craved to mete out vengeance. Abigail chuckled (although Mary-Beth would later recall it as a raspy utterance); how naive that sweet little girl had been. Running off, thinking she could be someone—some fancy lady, some learned businesswoman. Of course, she became a wanton. Her hoar-haired man had raped her into a whore; the irony was as precious as it was meaningless. Story of her fucking life.

Ceaseless strings of joyless fucks and pleasureless thrusts and beatings and beratings all for a couple of bucks. Stealing the twilight of her youth, leaving her with nothing but pain, loneliness, a few pennies, and syphilis. Didn't matter. Nothing mattered.

She rolled sideways, feeling a fly get bottled in her ear as it pressed against the hard pillow, yet she didn't open her eyes—wouldn't yield to the world that had belabored her so vindictively. The cyclone of midge moans spiraling through her eardrum did not lead her astray from her path of giddy, languid ignorance; that was the treasure of sleep: everything faded away under its spell—the bruises, the ostentatiousness, the deriding remembrance of a perfect bronze-haired boy, it all burned away faster than Abigail's bitchy landlady's hotel when she'd tossed a fire bottle in it to get back at the nagging crone. She'd been very drunk at the time, and not of the soundest mind, but still she knew Hell was a certainty for her when the roasted corpse flung itself unexpectantly out the window. The same shit-stain landlady had also been drunk and passed out inside the hotel when Abigail had tossed the bottle, not knowing she'd been inside. Not knowing that the flames had reached her, dancing on her, needling every part of her body with exasperating agony until she unclenched her jaw with a scream so powerful it reached every soul in the town of Wet Cactus as she crashed to the ground below, her exposed charcoaled tits staring Abigail down like a cat's thin yellow eyes, and her mouth even seeming to part open and shut long after her the life was lost on her eyes, as if she was taking her last words to invoke a curse on the thirteen year old girl.

Not that a curse could hurt her anymore. In her dream she saw the future laid bare: of solidarity and willful self-destruction, and of what awaited her afterward. She knew she wouldn't be admitted to the Seventh Circle of Hell, the circle of boiling blood, but instead the Second, the circle of endless tempests contorting her oh-so-pretty figure with gusts ennobled with the strength of a thousand men until every bone was shattered. Then, her sweetheart with gray locks would find her weak and immobile, pleased it would save him the hassle of tying her down this time. So was the Second Circle of Hell, the circle of whores and tramps. Because that's what she was, first and foremost—a cheap, heirless tart.

Abigail was stiff as a corpse now, mirroring the fly in her ear that had long given up escape. Even her chest only wheezed up and down in slight, paltry motions. She felt luke-warm piss stream from between her legs—

That's the only part of you worth anything, dear.

She couldn't even gather the strength to groan from the obnoxiously familiar voice pealing in her head. In shattered, confused pieces, they resurfaced, the unsuccessfully forgotten memories of Uncle lying in bed with her, his hee-hawing laugh and crude tongue just as noxious as they'd been all those years ago. He was rambling on about some big heist in town his gang was pulling, and she must've begged him to introduce her—although in truth, she didn't know; thinking was becoming a challenge as the insatiable jaws of sleep began to gnaw her simple—because she left her new landlady a shit on her front porch as a good-bye present shortly after.

She was still only there for one thing—the only thing she knew how to do—but at least the fellows there were more akin to gentlemen; at least she believed so (bear in mind melancholy is completely pilfering poor Abigail of her wits, so what follows isn't what she actually remembers, but what she remembered to remember thinking she remembered if that sounds intelligible):

Dutch had been airy and romantic, the first man who'd taken his time with her; Arthur was phlegmatic but sweet—he'd listened to her, compared to Dutch who just liked to talk; Javier was a greenhorn, shy and awkward, but he had the pipes of a mockingbird; Bill was… well, Bill; and then there was John.

Even thinking about her husband, the father of her precious love, she felt no more alive, no more emboldened by love. Quite the opposite: she was beginning to doubt she ever loved him. It was more of an understanding that they shared, a 'better the devil you know than the one you don't' thing. Not at all like they did in Mary-Beth's silly books. She couldn't think on any significant moments they had together—yes, she was aware her memory was being rather capricious of late, but this was different. He had always been distant, seldom surrendering anything freely; barely talked to her, barely done anything with her. The only moment that survived inside her was the first time she went riding with him on Old Boy (although to where and the other finer details obviously eluded her) feeling inklings of passion when she held his chest tighter, than disappointment when he'd say nothing, do nothing (like he'd always done), and she'd know the passion flowed like a river—uni-directional. She could never hold it against him, though, after all, his reticence was the reason she hated and loved him; he was like one of J-Jack's pinewood toy soldiers—each one had been expertly crafted by Hosea, the intricate details like the lopsided bayonet and long-feathered hat had been done with a tiny needle while the rest was done by a hunting knife (even in contrast with her faulty, heartbroken memory, she was dead certain of this) —a vessel I could play pretend with, one who wouldn't bother arguing with my sweet stupid dreams about a better life and other such drivel. That was what he was, I suppose, a dream. A dream I'd had where I'd been married to a simple, honest man working at the ranch, or general store, or some such place, and I was his normal wife, who would dust the floors and make him dinner, and we'd both read together, or rather he would read and I would sew, and we'd only perform in the standard monogamous marriage ritual once in a while, and if some ruffian shot me some gross look, we'd just ignore him, like we was better because we were—

Like she said: a dream. Abigail's blood turned a frosty purple and she was suddenly terrified—even if she lacked the strength to open her eyes—as the notion struck her like a slap (she'd know, she'd been honored with many in her day): was it the same for Jack? Did she only love him because he was a symbol of a dreamy, stupid future she might be able to ascertain if she'd had more guts? Then the oceans of memories came flashing in—Jack as a pretty bald baby, Jack saying his first words (mama?), Jack reading his first book, Jack making her that priceless necklace she'd tossed away (you idiot, you goddamn idiot)—and she was relieved to decide the answer was a definitive no.

Then Abigail realized that the hag had cursed her. Cursed her so she couldn't forget him; no matter how decayed and putrefied the other flickering echoes of her past were, and how much worse they'd get still, she knew then she'd never forget him. Never forget his golden-brown hair or kind smile or his dumb inclination for reading or his makeshift whistles.

Abigail considered waking up then, considered making an effort to return to the real world; her loss wouldn't sting any less, and the hole in her heart wouldn't fill any more by sleeping. Yet, like Pandora's box, these rustlings were herded away by the blue seed of hope; maybe if I sleep, for just a little longer, an hour or so, the thoughts of him will slip away like the other remembrances. Just one more hour or so. If I don't feel any better in an hour or so, I'll get up. Just an hour or so.

And she was gone, disappearing for good inside whatever bewildering set of dreams would be brewed up for her; in a sense, she got what she always longed for: a dream. Not that anyone could blame her; it was easier to ensconce in the security of slumber, to let it numb her, so she'd never hurt. They brought her food sometimes, and she vaguely recalled the textures being spoon-fed to her face, but they couldn't reach her, couldn't hurt her. It was liberating to be this free, this invincible. And so, Abigail Roberts stayed comfortably in the recesses of her mind, between life and death, fact and fiction, past and present, her blue eyes firmly latched shut.

One of the shorter ones I've written, yet this one actually took one of the longest to write; Abigail is one of the more underrated characters in my opinion, so getting her right felt important.

And yeah... obviously I didn't have the guts to kill John off this early. Hope you like how I foreshadowed the squib load with Bill.

Fun fact: Uncle was the one to introduce Abigail to the gang, so he'd "met" with her before John. Get that image out of your head.