It was high noon, somewhere.  Elsewhere, it was Miller Time.  Dog neither bothered with the clock nor the weak stuff, as he tapped an IV of Jaegermeister directly into his foot, careful to run the tubes upward and hook the bottle inside his boot without getting his feet wet.  Two things he didn’t let go to waste: good liquor and foot fetishes.  Today was no exception.

 

Across the path, Aggeloi checked the concealed blade in her parasol shaft, then opened it and shaded herself from the sun.  It was one thing for her shotgun metal to heat with use, but if she couldn’t steady it because of solar issues?  That was downright disappointing.

 

In the middle of the road, Nashvillebecker cast a long shadow.  This was difficult to do at high noon, but with strategically placed mirrors and a narcoleptic continuity director, anything was possible. 

 

Tumbleweeds rolled in the stale breeze.

 

Nash, oblivious to the previous paragraphs’ indications otherwise, checked his pocket watch.  Sure, he was historically early for everything.  But Cheese and others were last-minute folks, and they were ready. 

 

Someone called for a showdown.  At least, that’s what Nash believed he heard.  He hoped honeygloom wasn’t plastered when she told him that, as she tended to slur her words.  If this was a hoedown, it was going to get bloodier than the PMS Menopause .  He saw no washboards or gutbuckets, which supported the showdown.  With an S. 

 

Theblackhand whistled Bon Jovi’s “Wanted, Dead or Alive” which made better sense without investing much deep thought.  Y’know, since the first line says “I’m a cowboy.”  Clad in straight black, he was a fountain of sweat.  Fearful of cattle licking him, he retreated indoors where he’d rigged enough torture devices to consider a run in politics. 

 

Dkk and BazookaJones stood guard at the outskirts of town.  (On occasion, BJ (who preferred not to go by his initials) tried to look up the outskirts, but the town kept its streets crossed and its intersections inaccessible.) 

 

In the distance, a cloud of dust arose.  They expected it wasn’t the cyber-express, as letters to the calvary (ShadowedPen, ShadowMan, wsells, Silver, Raven, beanpole, and Wolfram, among a long list) had gone unanswered for far too long.  Even Shad and Chloe had deserted the desert in favor of a location with better desserts.

 

Dkk sounded the alarm, which was a series of hand signals passed along rooftops, via ricogirl, Ace, WBScott, JD, and anyone else I’m not going to worry about mentioning from this point forward.  As is prone to happen, “They’re a-comin’” was somehow lost in translation and interpreted by Nash as “Grape Cezanne is a kinetic otter.”  Applying his anti-morphing-language skills picked up on one of his many journeys, he broke the code down and understood the threat was at hand.  If the hand was on the horizon. 

 

A lone vulture soared overhead.  The ground rumbled.  The sky grew dustier.  Sentences shortened.  Seriously.  Brief.  Yep...

 

An ellipses indicated the passage of time, and before anyone knew what was happening, dr3arms charged his stagecoach to town square.  Drawn by six horses, as well as ten serpents on invisible strings underground, the carriage was massive enough to contain the entire posse of villains the doctor claimed were inside.  Strangely, no one else answered when he called their names.  He countered by slipping inside the coach and talking loudly with the other baddies, but they all sounded mysteriously like him trying other voices.  Weird, that.  Then again, the heat had been known to fry a brain or five, plus 3arms had a prior reputation for scrambled thoughts.  When he finally emerged from the mansion on wheels, he stood bow-legged across the dirt from the sheriff.

 

Nash scraped a stroke in the dirt, then stepped back.

 

“What’s that s’posed to be?” asked dr3arms.

 

“It’s a deadline.”

 

“Say again?”

 

“No need.”

 

“What’s a deadline have to do with this western motif?”

 

“Figure it out.  It’s a line, right?”

 

“Okay.”

 

“So why don’t you step across it and see for yourself what happens?”

 

“I ain’t gonna.”

 

“C’mon, Doc.  You’ve never had problems crossing lines before.”

 

“I don’t mean to insult you or anyone else, you stupid, ugly dumbass.  I’m just here to express myself.”

 

“We’re not stopping you.”

 

“From what?”

 

“Expressing yourself.”

 

The doctor removed his hat and tapped his scalp, making the tiniest of hollow sounds.  “I ain’t never said nothing ‘bout expressing myself.”

 

A chorus of voices from all angles shouted, “You just did!”  Nash waved them down.  They knew better than to mess with a man who stood dangerously.

 

The sheriff contemplated a different approach.  With his hands in the open to avoid prompting any quickdrawing, he walked toward this scourge to Mashtown.  “Doc?  You seen that new Arby’s commercial?”

 

“Huh?” 

 

“Arby’s.  They have a new deal where any combo costs $5.01.  Their slogan is it’s worth every penny.”

 

“What about it?” dr3arms asked, suspiciously.

 

“Basically, they’re saying their meal is worth one penny.  Because the other part is five dollars.”

 

Nash waited for a minute to let it sink in.  As the doctor’s blank stare intensified, Nash decided not to wait two.  “It’s like this.  Arby’s is saying a roast beef sandwich, curly fries, and a Coke is worth one penny, but making consumers pay an extra five dollars for it.”

 

“Isn’t five dollars the same as five-hundred pennies?”  dr3arms asked, grasping at straws (and not the bendy kind).

 

“Not the way the commercial pitches it.” 

 

By this point, onlookers wandered into the street, trying to decipher what kind of logic Nash was twisting.  Dr3arms rubbed his eyes and stumbled.

 

“Who cares what you say, you [five minute tirade, using new connotations of curse words to inform Nash of the things he’d done to himself with a jar of lube and a cactus].  No offense.”

 

“None taken,” responded the sheriff, “but has it dawned on you that your entire catalog of stories isn’t sufficient to earn you enough money to buy you curly fries that aren’t worth a cent?”

 

The audience released a collective sigh, which could’ve been the wind that rose the dust into the doctor’s tear ducts that spawned the tears that rolled down his face.  Or he might’ve been crying.  Not from sadness, mind you.  Merely the stress of thinking so hard.

 

“I’m the best thing to ever happen to this town!” he announced to his invisible compatriots, since he couldn’t convince anyone else.  “Y’all got everybody together just to see me!  I can’t believe you spent your time putting together these chapters, like some junior high clique who won’t let me in because you’re supposedly too cool!  I don’t need any of you!  I’ll just mind my own business and leave you alone, unless anyone says anything I disagree with!  Why, I have more integrity in my little finger than I do in any words I’ve ever spoken!  Why don’t you idiots get together and circle-jerk each other to fend off randomnickname or madugungladesh?”

 

Nash carefully contemplated his answer.  “They’re much easier to ignore than you are.  We’re not asking you to go away.  We just want you to be quiet.  If you want to start something, do it with one of your own posse.  Please.”

 

The doctor’s face grew redder.  “You’re just lucky they’re still in the stagecoach!”

 

“Yes, we are.”  Nash said, calmly.  “And we’d be even luckier if you were too.”

 

With that, the sheriff turned his back, rubbed the line out of the dirt, and returned to his office where it was quiet.  (At least it would’ve been if WriterWannaBe wasn’t doing his best Otis impression and locking himself in the jail cell.) 

 

It was high noon somewhere else now.  But for Nashvillebecker, it was time for a nap.