Writing Peers: Top 10

A MAN WITH NO NAME

      Something hot was running down Jed’s temple, his mouth flooded with the taste of rust. He didn’t remember being hit. Hadn’t seen whoever did it. One minute he and Carlos had been creeping up on the place in the dark, the next he was facedown in the dirt, being dragged by his hair to an oak tree and forced to kneel like a whore.

      It had taken them the better part of the day to make it to the cabin. Jed and Carlos had ridden quads halfway up the mountain, parked them in the brush, and waited until dark when they’d gone the rest of the way by foot. They’d followed a long, winding logging road that seemed to have half-grown back, piles of fallen trees littering the roadway. Yet the longer they walked the more obvious it became that the trees had been artfully arranged to easily accommodate a truck, the spaces between them rutted out from use.

      The objective was simple: Get in, confirm the site was what they thought it was, and get out. Nothing special. Just your average goddamn Tuesday. And then everything had gone to shit.

      Two horses snuffled sweetly, grazing in the tall mountain grass, their front legs hobbled with loose rope to keep them from running away. He wondered if the rope around his neck would find its way around a horse’s legs in the morning.

      On the porch of the sagging cabin not one hundred yards away, a man raised his fist to the door and pounded twice. It creaked open, a slice of light illuminating the rickety porch as a second man appeared in the glow of the doorway, a black shadow in the bright light. He cocked his head before he reached for his hat, pulling the wide brim down low over his face and closing the door behind him. His boots hit each step with a thud, and a clink, the sound of his spurs echoing through the night like gunshots in the dark.

      The grass whispered in the wind as he strolled leisurely towards them. As if he had all the time in the world. As if two men with ropes around their necks on his front lawn were his average Tuesday.

      The man leaned against a large rock, crossing his boots at the ankle and reaching into his shirt pocket. He withdrew a cigar, struck a match on the rock, bent his head low, and puffed until smoke billowed out from beneath the brim.

      He examined the end of his stogie, tendrils of smoke curling around his fingertips.

      Despite the blood dripping from Jed’s chin and the rope snugly crushing his windpipe, Jed was not the kind of man who was easy to scare. The sort of life he led? He knew he wouldn’t meet his end in a warm bed at a ripe old age. Surveillance and infiltration had many perks; a long shelf life wasn’t one of them. But this man, in his dirty jeans and stained boots, was too quiet. Too still. For the first time in a long time, Jed felt nervous.

      Carlos cracked first.

      “Listen – ”

      “Quiet!” someone hissed, smacking Carlos in the back of the head with a pistol. He crumpled forward, out cold, his body suspended grotesquely by the noose around his neck.

      The man continued to puff on his cigar, watching as Carlos began to gurgle and twitch, a dark stain spreading down the front of his pants. Eventually the gurgling stopped, rope creaking in the breeze. He’d been lynched on his knees, a special, horrifying kind of indignity, even in their line of work. 

      Jed’s heartbeat accelerated as his mind raced ahead, trying to picture a future – any future – where he wasn’t dangling from a tree.

      Who the hell are these people?

      They’d thought this was a small, low-level drop site for drugs, but Jed’s gut told him this was something else. Something bigger. Something worse.

      The man tipped up his hat, his tan face and stubbled jaw relaxed, but his eyes were as cold and hard as gunmetal. 

      Jed’s palms began to sweat.

      “So,” said the man slowly, his voice quiet and low. “Seems we have ourselves a predicament.”

      Jed stayed silent.

      “What could the DEA possibly be interested in all the way up here? Hm?”

      “I’m not with the -”

      BANG!

      The man had pulled his pistol so quickly Jed hadn’t even seen him move. He’d fired at the taught rope next to him, severing it cleanly in two as Carlos’ limp body slumped to the ground. The man spun the gun by the trigger and tucked it neatly back into his holster.

      “Don’t. Lie.”

      Jed swallowed, which was hard to do against the pressure on his neck.

      “They sent us for recon. They think this is a drop site.”

      But as the sun crested and a slice of horizon began to glow, the crimson sky and crimson earth bled together, the whole world turning red. Behind the cabin, stretching as far as the eye could see, were poppies. Row upon row of poppies.

      We got it wrong, Jed thought. This is a grow-op. A massive one.

      The man’s mouth twitched as he dropped his cigar in the grass and stomped on it with a hiss. He stood up slowly, walking towards Jed, the clink, clink, clink of his spurs the only thing Jed could hear over his pounding heart.

      “This ain’t no drop site, boy,” he said. “But thank you. For your honesty.”

      The man nodded once at someone behind him and Jed felt his whole body lift off the ground. Jed thrashed his legs as the man stared up at him, removing his hat and pressing it to his chest.

      He turned to one of the other men, the one who had killed Carlos.

      “Save the rope,” he said.