Excerpt from “The Range or Truth and Death Walk Across the Desert”, a short story I am working on.

“Our boy lay prone upon a hill, bandana pulled up to stave away the stench of burning, and stale excrement. He took up a pair of binoculars, a second set of eyes, as he scanned the horizon of the Range for the factory.

A sudden pain shot through the back of his head and the sky went dark.

–

Truth will see him, truth will decide. Set him free or let him die. Whispers danced around his ears as he drifted between consciousness and darkness.  His hands and feet were bound with old rags, the smell already infiltrating his nostrils. A sick putrid odour, clawing its way down his windpipe. Dallas coughed and tried to spit out the nauseating vapors as his captors let out waves of sulfur-tinged cackles.

Our boy asked them who they were, though he knew, and he knew his fate was sealed.

They merely danced around him, some as naked as the sun in a clear sky, others clothed in various garments. Mixed and matched from whatever poor souls they had stolen them from.

A bell clanged, clanged, clanged in the distance.”