The line I walk, is a thin line.
Praise the sun, for with it comes the day.
The line I walk is the line between good and evil.
Praise the sun, for with it comes the warmth.
My momma once told me the world is good and sweet.
Praise the sun, for it's glory casts away the evil.
The world I know is filled with death.
Praise the sun, for it blesses us, and pardons our wrongdoings.
The only truth I know, is the truth of my gun. For my gun is fact.
Praise the sun, for it banishes the night, and with it the demons of temptation.
Law, in my eyes, is not the fact. For I am my own law.
Praise the sun, for it gives us the fire.
~~~
My sight is failing. Blind spots blossom black in my hazy vision as I shudder. It's hot as hell on a summer afternoon, but I feel as cool as a shade. I can feel my legs failing me. Without my knowing it, I have already stumbled forward onto my forelegs, bowing forward onto the packed and trodden earth that serves as a road. I struggle to get up, a steady ringing in my ear throws my balance, as I totter forward and resume my limping gait. My breath is labored, and there's a heavy taste of Iron in my mouth. Along the road, cement, plaster, telephone wires, and gutted buildings line the roadway like the graves of yesteryear.
The cicadas are chirping. The blood in the back of my throat's mixing with the phlegm, creating a thick maroon paste that sticks in my throat and makes it harder to breathe. Nature, or whatever's left of it is oblivious. The birds are chirping, the clouds are moving above my head. There's peace and silence here, on the long road. Not a soul in sight.
A perfect place to die.
I'm forced to limp forward on my right front foreleg and left backleg. I was shot, attempting to escape the pillaging, and burning of my home, by bandits who roamed from town to town. Taking what they couldn't produce, and burning what they didn't need. I keep telling myself "they only shot me in the legs, it ain't so bad." But I can't help but also think "I've been shot."
I look to the sky and wipe my brow of sweat and dried blood. I shake and try to loosen the ashes layering my coat and mane. The ash is everywhere. The smell of smoke hangs heavy about me. On my mane, on my coat, in my mouth, my throat, my heart, and my soul. Absently, I find myself thinking on how heavy the ash is. It feels like a large wool coat hanging on me, pulling me down slowly. Making my shoulders stoop and my posture droop. Grabbing my legs and slowly dragging me down to the pits of hell.
Half of me is dragging my body to the nearest town, praying the good folks there'll help me, find out if my family's still alive, find the bandits who did this and kill 'em. Half of me is thinkin "why bother?"
'Cuz I can already see them.
The sun's starting to set, casting a fiery red haze. I can feel it coming on slow now. Like a little wave lapping at the shores of my mind. The shadows in my periphery are starting to shift, and I know that The Evil's a 'comin.
The road I'm walkin' is called The Trailblazer's road, known to most folks as 'The Devil's line'. A long seventy eight mile straight line that reaches all the way to Trottingham. It lays right along the Clover River. The road starts all the way at Appleoosa Junction, in, you guessed it, Appleoosa. From there, it reaches all the way to Mainstreet, Trottingham. Most pony folk headin' down this road known to cross in either the Spring or Winter, and above all, to never cross it in Summer. Because in summer, it gets so hot, the road'll burn your hooves off.
I'm tired, and the pain's so dull. All I wanna do is take a dirt nap. I'm tired, too tired to cry. I left those tears miles behind. The blood's still flowing. Leaving a trail of my pain on The Devil's Line. I can feel it and I find myself smiling.
The pain, the loss, the absurdity of it all.
The heat, the blood, the long, long road.
The isolation, the torture, the demons all pouring forth.
I can feel them slowly rise off the road like feathers being lifted into the sky by a stray breeze.
Some folks living in the towns from Appleoosa 'till Trottingham believe that if you're on the road as the sun sets, the souls of all those who died on it, all the cattle and the ponies caught in the summer heat who took a dirt nap, will rise from the ground and walk with you. Walk and chat and sing you straight to hell. Those folks might be right, those folks might be wrong, but who am I to judge what others believe? Especially since belief is all we have around here.
I'm probably just going mad, 'cuz I can already smell the fire.
The roadside ditch begins smoking and belching forth fire. My vision's fading fast, it's going hazy and black, so black. My hearing's going dull, and I can hear my own breath, but I gotta keep pouring forwards.
"So how's it feel?"
I almost start laughing. Right there, shining before my eyes, is the home I left in Appleoosa, burned to the ground.
".....F.....fee....feeels like shit...sir."
The shadows and smoke rising up outta the ditches are taking shapes now. Matching my shuffling strides. Smiling and laughing and talking.
"What was it you Parish boys said? 'Take what the fire gives'. Funny how one can twist that statement, idn't it?"
All those shadows. Leering, laughing, smiling. Evil eyes waiting and watching me die, step by step.
Up above, I hear a crow and a vulture. I turn to my left, and there's the crow, sitting on the horn of a dead unicorn. The flesh ain't quite gone yet, and maggots pour out from it's empty eye sockets. I pass by the site, and the skeleton's lower jaw shifts. The muscle finally snapping as it gives forth a grotesque bellowing laugh.
I can't tell if I'm going crazy, or if those folks were right about the skeletons.
Inch by inch, I find myself moving up on that burning house. My burning house. My home. All that I was, all that I was promised by my mother and father, lying dead inside.
"They could've avoided this, you know. All I'd asked for was some hospitality, and this is what they give me. A spit in the face and a curse on my name. Your folks are terrible. Ain't they boys?"
I hear ghost laughter as I pass by the skeletons of several cows heaped in a pile to my left. Thank The Fire that they've been stripped to the bone.
I don't think I could've handled the smell.
It's getting harder to breath now. I'm walkin' blind. My vision's so hazy I can't see past my hooves.
"But like I always say, the sins of the father don't gotta be the sins of the son. So I'm lettin' ya go son."
I brace, but no gun fires. No impact, like getting hit by a charging buffalo knocks me off my hooves. No shock to numb the pain, and no fear that sends me running. No adrenaline to set my hooves a flyin'.
Nothing.
I'm at the house in the middle of the road now. And sitting in front of it, is the stallion that started it all. A dirty Ten-gallon sitting on his head as he slowly turns to me with eyes as blue, and stone cold as a sapphire stone.
"What was it them Parish Boys said? 'Take what the fire gives, cuz we ain't got nothing else?' I'd say that fits you right well, don't you?"
The noise of all the ghosts on the road is too much. Their jeering laughter, their malicious, soft speech. The white noise that threatens to swallow me in waves of nausea and fear. The vertigo and the failure of my legs. The stone that lies where my heart used to be, the dulled pain of losing somepony close to me, the anger, the sickly sweet smell of rotting flesh. Blood and the taste of iron on my mouth. The blanket of ash on my body and soul.
"Ain't that right boy?"
That was the day I died, on The Devil's line.
