The Tiny Sketch

Originally posted May 14th, 2005
Mid-nineteenth century, somewhere around Texas or somesuch place. A completely abandoned, small, tired town of miners/folks trying to work their way towards some money.

A small tavern-like place, half-dirty, half-maintained in the tedious fashion of people who work out of drilled habit, not out of living.

A tired, dirty, disillusioned guy slowly enters the place, barely dragging his feet. His looks are so despairing - it's clear he's lost all interest in anything reminding life; he's barely existing; he doesn't seem to have a grasp or concatenation with life.

Nobody has ever seen him in town, but it is clear that the guy hasn't been in touch with anyone for a long, very-very long time. So much so that he seems to have lost pretty much every notion that usually keeps people together - notions that people consider their own.

The bloke is lifelessness incarnate; so much so that one of the tired, sucked inside-out by work guys stands up and points his gun at him. In a flash-moment, the bloke shoots him off a perfect line-of-sight, without aiming with his eyes proper. For a couple minutes, he seems alive; but only in the looks. He soon drops back to his stillness, all the while the on-lookers are in shock. The first to come back to half-broken reality, another scared, stiff like a stone, miner-looking, tired, sucked-out-by-everyone-and-everything-including-his-job-which-is-the-only-that-keeps-him-going(somewhat) guy, points his revolver at the tired bloke. The bloke, having felt the threatening sight, shot the threat right at the palm of his right hand.

He seemed a bit more alive then.

He moved to the bar and sat there, asking for a tea in barely audible voice, one that would've appeared humble. He slipped into his barely-consciousness again. Until the tea was brought...