I lined up the shot by habit more than hope. The sheriff’s face wavered in the heat, not heroic or villainous — just tired, creased by years of deciding who mattered and who didn’t. I squeezed the trigger.
Click.
The sound was small. Polite.
I stared at the gun, offended by it, then by myself. Counting had always been my weakness. Lucy Calder — sharpshooter, saboteur, lifelong lover of women — undone by arithmetic.
The sheriff didn’t laugh. Didn’t gloat. He raised his revolver, already aimed, already decided.
“You should have left town,” he said. Not cruelly. Almost gently.
My chest tightened. Esther stood at the edge of my vision, cigarette balanced at her lips, giving me that look — as if staying might make the world bearable. Leaving had always been easy for me. Loving women who deserved better never was.
I threw the gun. It clipped the sheriff’s forearm, drawing blood, and for one absurd heartbeat, pride flared.
Then he fired.
Weight — not pain — hit my chest. I fell hard. The floor rushed up, smelling of iron and burned powder. Boots crossed my vision and stopped.
“You were thorough,” he said, glancing toward the street. “I’ll give you that.”
I smiled, blood slicking my teeth. “You should check the livery.”
The explosion came after I stopped hearing him.
Darkness didn’t fall. It closed.
***
I woke in a room that smelled of old soap and rot. The walls were thin and stained, the color long since given up. The bed sagged beneath me, mattress alive with the itchy memory of other bodies.
A hotel, I thought. Or the idea of one.
Beyond the window, a wrought-iron gate rose into nothing. Something vast shifted behind it, blotting out the lamplight. When it growled, the glass rattled and my teeth answered.
Wet-coal eyes fixed on me. The stench of iron and decay slid through the cracks of the walls.
I turned away.
My chest was still gaping open. Not a wound so much as an absence — raw, wet, unmistakable. I pressed my fingers through it and touched the mattress underneath.
No pain. Just awareness.
So this was hell. Not fire. Not screams. Just staying.
The women I’d loved crowded the room — not as ghosts, but as pressure. Their unspoken questions pressed against my skull. Every apology I’d swallowed thickened the air. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t breathe. I was buried under my own history.
A bell rang.
Once. Twice.
Too close.
Footsteps followed. Measured. Certain. The sound came wrong, as if the echo arrived before the step. Leather creaked. Metal dragged — too heavy to be spurs.
I sat up.
The bell rang again, and understanding clicked into place. Check-in. Check-out. Hell ran on schedules, too.
The doorknob turned.
The sheriff stepped inside.
“The guy at the front desk told me where to find you.”
The dynamite had done its work. One arm ended at a blackened stump. Half his face was burned down to bone, teeth grinning through char. His torso was a ruin — meat torn away, ribs exposed and scorched, organs missing or fused into pulpy mush. Ash and dried blood flaked from him as he moved. He smelled like tar that never stopped burning.
His shadow lagged behind, clinging to the floor like it wasn’t sure it wanted to follow him in.
For a moment, bright, savage joy surged. I was ready to laugh, to scream, to finish what I’d started with my bare hands.
But when I opened my mouth, nothing came. My hands shook.
The sheriff looked at me, what remained of his eyes steady. There was no triumph there.
Just something thin and tired.
“You know,” he said, each syllable pulled wet and squealing from the prolapsed hump of his throat, “this doesn’t make it better.”
I forced a laugh. It emerged wrong. “This is perfect. You’re dead. You’re here. I get to kill you again.”
“Lucy.” He soaked the word in pity.
I looked down at the stained mattress. He was right, and I hated him for it.
His presence didn’t punish him.
It punished me.
Hell wasn’t the hotel. It wasn’t the gate or the thing guarding it. It was this — being trapped forever with proof that my vengeance had worked, and that it had changed nothing at all.
The sheriff stepped back. The door shut on its own, latch clicking softly.
I leaned into the pillows.
Esther’s arms wrapped around me. She wore the lilac dress I always praised, moth-eaten now, split at the seams. She bent close, as if to whisper — or bite — but vanished before I could decide which I deserved.
I stared at the door, listening to the sheriff’s footsteps fade down the hall. “Well,” I said to the empty room. “Welcome.”
Toshiya Kamei (she/they) is a queer Asian writer who takes inspiration from fairy tales, folklore, and mythology.
If you enjoyed this story, show your support on Patreon.
