El Paso City

This is the final part of three stories based on the Marty Robbins trilogy of songs, "El Paso," "Feleena" and "El Paso City." Randi has written the first, Cagivagurl the second part. The stories should be read in this order. Readers may find the other two stories here: El Paso and here, El Paso: Feleena.

I'd like to thank George Anderson and Blackrandi for their tremendous help. I'd also like to mention that it was Randi who came up with this whole idea.

*

I knew he would be among them. I watched their faces, trying to figure out who it would be: the person I would be fighting against. It could be a woman. Most of them were men, though. Each one was looking around, checking the numbers, trying to find their opponent. We were strangers, brought together by fate for this sole occasion. The upcoming fight was nothing personal, and we all knew it.

There he was. I just sensed it. Sometimes it's just that gut feeling. He knew it, too. He looked into my eyes, trying to gauge me. He seemed fit, a bit older than me, possibly a bit more experienced. This fight wasn't going to be an easy one.

Armrest superiority was the name of the game. There was only room for one winner. Sadly, economy flights were a regular part of my life. Being a large, broad shouldered gym junkie and a lowly accountant was an unfortunate combination. My opponent was pretty big, too, and the fight was on.

He immediately scored with a quick elbow move right after sitting down. I hadn't expected a big man to be that quick. A bit later, he was distracted by the complimentary peanuts and I won it back. The problem was my own peanuts. The war waged back and forth as we taxied to the runway and became airborne.

I had glorified these small things into some kind of Wild West duel, maybe to give my life any kind of spice, to break the mind-numbing monotony. This would probably be the most exciting thing I'd do all week, and the thought depressed me. I had a good life, except for being alone, bored out my mind and lacking any kind of chance at a promotion.

After a while, I realized once again that those fake duels didn't improve my life at all, maybe because I was never overly competitive or ambitious. I decided to stop this nonsense once and for all. Following my new relaxed life style, I gave up the armrest and started to count my peanuts instead. I still had a bit of time to kill until the meal would be served, and it seemed to be the most exciting thing to do. The answer was forty-two: a decent number of peanuts for this airline.

I didn't enjoy business travel. Cramped planes, featureless hotels, boring offices filled with faceless people, lots of numbers. Sometimes, I forgot which city I was in and rarely did I ever remember anything about any of them afterwards. Problem was, that was all my job consisted of. A few years ago, they were looking for someone to travel and I jumped at the chance. For a perpetual loner, it seemed ideal. Sadly, I soon learned it was far from exciting, and as it estranged me from my colleagues, I wasn't ever considered for a promotion. They were happy to have someone dumb enough to travel all the time.

I had to think hard to remember which city I was just coming from. Cleveland? Or Cincinnati? Something with a C, I was almost certain. I was reasonably sure I was going to El Paso, though, mainly because it was one of the few places I'd never worked.

El Paso.

I had no idea about the city. I usually didn't have much of an idea about the cities to which I traveled. Why then, did I have this weird tickling in the belly?

I loved wide-open spaces, wind and raw nature, not that I ever experienced much of that. This airplane was not where I belonged. While waiting for a meal I wouldn't like anyway, I was desperate enough to consider actually reading the safety placard.

The plain was windy, dusty and hot as hell. The sun was blinding, as always. I was used to that and hardly noticed it. I waited for them. I felt calm and almost looked forward to it. I knew it would be deadly. My gun felt heavy and reassuring, like a good, trusty friend.

"Chicken or beef?"

"What?" I replied, trying to wake up fully.

"Chicken or beef?"

"Umm, chicken. And a Coke. Please."

Wordlessly, she put the tray in front of me. After the glorious beauty of the desert in my dream, the vaguely food-like items on the tray looked depressing. I briefly looked at my former armrest foe's tray. He had chosen beef, but it didn't look any better. Knowing the game, we both shrugged our shoulders. The things in front of us weren't meant to be tasty, they just needed to be there.

I looked out of the window as we were about to land, and I could already see the city down below. I imagined the desert again, and a trite but sweet love story between a cowboy and a pretty girl. Probably didn't end well, I thought, as I looked at the badlands below us. Those were hard times back then. Weirdly, I had the thought that death might await me down there. I shook my head and thought how ridiculous that was. I was a damn accountant, for God's sake.

I stood on the boarding stairs, relishing the gush of hot desert air that hit my face. It was the same wind, the same smell, the same heat that I had dreamed. I had never been here before, but it felt like home, and I didn't know why.

Again, I felt restless in my hotel room. Again, I felt as if I never really had the chance to be what I wanted to be, but didn't know what to change.

Unable to stay inside, I left the hotel and walked around in the neighborhood. I loved long walks like this, even when I took no notice of my surroundings. This wasn't sightseeing, this was jailbreaking.

A small grocery store lured me inside with the promise of an ice-cold beverage. I smelled the cold, lifeless, conditioned air, and decided to cut my stay inside as short as possible. I quickly located the Coke fridge and was just about to grab one when an obscenely high-pitched female shriek distracted me.

"Shut the fuck up, you bitch!" someone hissed in reply, a bit rudely in my opinion.

"Please don't kill me," a woman pleaded, probably the mad shrieker. I assumed they were joking.

"Just do what he says and everyone's gonna be fine," another man recommended, and he sounded dead serious.

Okay, this must be a robbery. The shrieking woman was clearly terrified, so I guessed at least one of the guys was armed. I could see the elderly cashier behind the counter and I had heard two perps. The shrieker was clearly assuming the classic damsel in distress role. All basic elements were in place. I felt at ease and at home with the situation, though I had never experienced anything like it before.

The baddies didn't seem to have noticed me. I was almost disappointed by their incompetence. I heard the woman whimpering. I felt sorry for her, but it was definitely easier on the ear than those shrieks. I heard one of the guys panting. He was out of breath, although he didn't move.

"You keep her here, bro," one of them remarked while his voice moved towards the cashier.

It was a damn scary situation. Terrifying, really. Surprisingly, I wasn't terrified. I felt calm, clear, alive. I felt ready; I just didn't know for what. The lack of fear surprised and irritated me. It was as if my humanness had just been tested and I had failed. Normal humans would be frightened, and I wasn't. What the fuck was wrong with me?

There was no reason to move, so I didn't. I heard everything. I sensed movement, I saw things out of the corner of my eye and reflections in the glass of the fridge. I constantly updated a mental map of my surroundings. Slowly, I turned around, still unnoticed, mostly hidden behind the sweets rack.

I saw two masked thugs; both were armed. They clearly didn't have a plan: they didn't secure the room, they didn't cover their backs. They just stumbled into the store, stinking and loud. I smelled sweat, and I smelled fear.

Surprisingly, the latter didn't emanate from the elderly cashier. He seemed resigned in his fate and much more professional than the robbers. His main problem was that he was mind-bogglingly slow.

He bent down a bit, reached under the counter and extracted an ancient looking gun. As if in slow motion, he began to raise the vintage weapon toward one of the robbers.

Unlike the old cashier, the guy next to him wasn't in slow motion at all. He just lifted his gun and unceremoniously shot the poor guy twice in the chest. The shots were obscenely loud, so I should have flinched, but I didn't. Still in slow motion, the elderly man spun from the impact as he sank toward the floor. He was dead before he reached it. I should have been appalled, but I wasn't. The weak and the slow died. The strong and the quick took what they wanted.

I heard a hard object hitting the floor, unnoticed by the others. The old man's final movement had thrown it right next to me.

The cashier's weapon.

"Go get the cash, asshole!" the guy at the door shouted, and I noticed I didn't really care what they did. I was focused on that gun on the floor.

The thing looked both alien and familiar. I'd never fired a gun in my whole life, but this one somehow seemed to belong to me, or at least with me. I knelt down to take a good look at it.

Again, time seemed to slow down, and this time not because of the painfully slow movements of an old man. Things were still happening around me. A shot. Glass shattered. Another shot. A woman was screaming. My pulse was slowing down. My eyes focused. It felt as if I were in a trance. All I saw was that gun. Nothing else mattered. Nothing else affected me.

I looked at it, and it looked at me. I saw "Wally" was engraved in its side. It looked well worn. It had probably been in that drawer for an eternity, moved around endlessly, unworthy stuff rubbing against it until it was matte. The hammer was cocked. I knew it was loaded. I just sensed it, as if it had told me.

I watched my arm as it inched slowly towards the gun. Finally, my right hand closed around the grip. I almost sighed with contentment. My hand was where it belonged.

I felt weirdly detached, almost as if in a dream. A man lay in his own blood near the entrance. Another person's legs were twitching, the rest of the body hidden by shelves. Something must have happened at the door while I had been busy with the gun.

One of the thugs was emptying the register in a hurry. The other one was urging him to get it done, while nervously checking the door. A younger woman was cowering next to the beverages, still more or less standing, but trying to sink into the wall. I recognized her as the shrieker.

I stood up fully, knowing I was perfectly safe. I saw the sweat dripping from register guy's chin. I saw it pooling in his brows. He was afraid. I could smell it. He was shaking slightly, possibly a junkie. He had a strange tattoo on his cheek. If it hadn't been so badly done, I might have been able to tell whether it was a frog or a dragon.

While I tried to figure that out, he sensed my presence and looked up at me, surprised. From this point of view, the tattoo might have been a cat, as well.

"Where the fuck do you..." he said, while starting to raise his appallingly cheap and undignified looking pistol. I was a bit offended he even tried to shoot me with such an unworthy piece of junk. These guys were complete junk anyway. I sensed I had killed guys like him before, and it was the right thing to do, I just couldn't remember when.

I decided one bullet would be enough, through his right eye. Nothing else needed to be done. He was embarrassingly bad. I had my aim before he even raised his gun. My right forefinger pulled the trigger and his right eye was gone. No big deal. I wasn't even surprised about my speed or accuracy. That was just how it was.

Without conscious thought, my left hand cocked the hammer again. My body had already started to spin around and duck. The jars above me exploded after being hit by door guy's bullets, as was to be expected.

He was noisy as hell as he moved through the shop, making it easy to track him even behind the shelves. He moved towards Ms. Shrieker. I knew he wouldn't shoot her immediately, but use her as a shield.

The possibility of a third guy in front of the shop turned out to be true, as a bearded, ugly as shit man entered, looking around in confusion. Right eye again, cocked hammer again. It was such a routine. He went down before he grasped what was going on.

Having a hostage was what had kept the third guy alive to that point. Me having to cover the door gave him enough time to move, and that woman might have to pay the price.

"Okay, asshole, nice shots. Game's over. Drop your fucking gun."

The woman turned out to be the perfect textbook victim. Young. Blonde. Pretty. Exceptionally pretty, actually. Looking very scared. Shrieking from time to time, which was seriously annoying, and made the other guy flinch. I was afraid he might shoot her, just to get rid of that shrieking. I think I would have understood.

I peeked around the concrete pillar I had automatically put between myself and the remaining man. As expected, he held the woman in front of himself with his gun pointed vaguely at her head. At this angle, if he fired, he would blow off parts of her forehead, but possibly not kill her. She wasn't my main priority, but I'd avoid that if I could. Calm as fuck, I left the cover of the pillar, my right arm with the gun relaxed at my side.

"How about this? You drop your gun and I let you live."

He tried to laugh, but it sounded a bit like a donkey, and his fear surrounded him like a dense cloud. He would never surrender, which meant he had only seconds to live. I noticed he wore the same tattoo as his late compadres. His was just as cheaply done, and I still had no idea what it showed.

In the corner of my eye, I could see blue and red lights flashing, but so far, nobody felt the urge to enter the shop.

"Fucking asshole. How about this?" he asked, possibly not expecting an answer. He started to turn his shabby gun from the woman's temple towards me. Before the barrel moved an inch, I reacted. It was as if we both followed a predefined script. I think somewhere in his diseased mind, he knew it as well. His was the role of the dead man. He just saw no other option, as he wasn't thinking clearly. I was, though, thinking more clearly than I ever had before, and it felt great.

He was mostly hidden behind the woman, with only his head and right arm visible. He should have been safe, but he wasn't, and I guess he knew it.

My gun jumped up again. There was no conscious thought. While the woman screamed yet again and someone said something through a bullhorn, I looked at his right eye and placed my bullet there. It was as easy as clicking my fingers.

I hadn't planned any of this. I hadn't even thought about it. I was just in a situation and did what needed to be done.

Calmly, I placed the gun on the counter and lifted my hands. The woman was still more or less standing and hadn't stopped screaming since I had ended the junkie's life. I thought that was a bit inconsiderate. A man had just ceased to exist and a bit more dignity would have been appropriate.

She seemed unable to do anything besides shriek, and it didn't seem as if the cops were in any hurry to enter. I guessed something needed to be done, and obviously, I would have to be the one to do it.

Reality around me changed somehow. Everything seemed less crispy, less clear. The colors were duller, the intense scents were gone. Instead of a load of information, there was just vague background noise. I felt somehow unfocused. I even felt a bit dumb, slow and mundane.

I already missed the sharp sensations of the fight and that thought scared and confused me.

Slowly, and suddenly feeling very vulnerable again, I moved towards the entrance, my hands behind my head. Rationally, I had always known I was mortal. Still, as I exited that shop and looked into every gun barrel the El Paso police had to offer, that feeling was driven home intensely. Mortality had been temporarily suspended in that shop, and I missed that feeling.

If I was totally honest, I hadn't just enjoyed the clarity, the feeling of superiority, the adrenaline rush. I had enjoyed killing those men, and the thought almost made me throw up. That was not me. Absolutely not. Worse, I even craved having that feeling again while feeling repulsed, rationally.

This must be what junkies feel, I thought, while someone shouted "On the ground!"

Damn, my suit was almost brand new, in contrast to the sidewalk below me. At least the woman had stopped screaming.

"Okay, one more time, buddy. You want to tell me you've never done something like this before?"

I was getting tired of it. I wasn't his buddy. I had done nothing wrong. I had shot three baddies and saved the girl, like the classic script demanded. I felt that wasn't fully appreciated. While nobody hinted at me being in legal trouble, nobody seemed enthused about what I had done, either. For some reason, they seemed wary. Maybe they disliked others doing their job. Some of the cops even seemed a bit afraid of me. I didn't understand why, I wasn't some kind of homicidal maniac. Well, most of the time at least.

"What do you mean? Having done what before? Being the victim of a botched-up junkie robbery? No, I actually haven't." I might have been snippier than I needed to, but I had answered this a million times before.

"Careful, Mr. Davids. I mean, surviving a situation like this without a scratch. I mean shooting three bullets, using an ancient revolver, and hitting three perps right in the eyes. All of them in the right eyes, it seems. It ain't natural. Look around, this is a building full of cops. I don't think anyone in here could have done that."

"Sheer luck, I guess." I was really getting tired.

"You expect me to believe that?"

"I don't expect anything." Problem was, I couldn't explain it, even if I wanted to. I wanted the answers just as much as he did. Maybe more, because this was my life we were talking about here. The difference was, he had someone he could ask, I hadn't.

He looked at me, obviously trying to come to a decision.

"Okay, you're either the luckiest bastard I've ever met or the most dangerous. My money is on the latter. I don't like you being out there. Nobody as deadly as you should be running around among normal people. Still, technically, you're some kind of hero. Please understand we will keep a lid on this. Don't expect any victory parades. We don't want to scare people. I won't thank you, but you're free to go. Remember, we'll keep an eye on you."

I tried to think of a pithy reply, but nothing good came to my mind, so I just stood up, nodded briefly and left the small shabby interrogation room.

Just as I walked down the corridor, I was attacked once again. From my right side, someone plowed into me, and I struggled to remain standing. I felt a warm, juicy kiss planted on my right cheek.

"Oh my God, it's you! I can't believe it. You wouldn't believe how afraid I was. You like totally saved my life. I'm Traci, by the way..."

I briefly thought the thugs had been lucky I had shot them, granting them a permanent reprieve from that high pitched voice. I decided I didn't particularly like her, and wished I had saved someone a bit less intense. Problem was, she was the only hostage on offer at the time. I had to admit she was damn easy on the eye, though.

"You just have to..." she said. She was obviously waiting for an answer to something she had asked before, and the lull in her monologue had pulled me back to reality.