Post by Matt Knox on Dec 18, 2023 0:01:37 GMT -5
I guess now is where this has all been leading, eh Peter?
Well….Here the hell we are, then.
“DO SOMETHING”
“I-I’m tryin’! Have her drink this!!”
The memory flashed behind his eyes from where he sat, the screams serving as a backdrop to the desperate pleas for a fate that was anything but the one they’d been dealt. His hair stuck to his weathered face via a mixture of sweat and blood…
….Her Blood…
He raised his hands, staring at the stains upon them. More of it.
More of her.
What was left of her.
That son of a bitch…..
He shot her down.
“Shot her down…” he whispered the thought aloud, face scrunching up as a sob choked him, all his will going to stifle the cry that demanded freedom from where he barely held upon it in her chest. The sheriff. Peter Vaughn. He shot her down.
She come to put things right, and he shot her down for it. He shot her down, because he couldn’t put him down himself any of the opportunities he’d had. Hell, he was here trying to get him out by the book because he proved he wasn’t man enough to take him in a fight.
His little girl… “Ronnie…” he dared whisper her name, squeezing his eyes shut as part of the wail escaped him. Tears burned his eyes and blazed a trail down to the blood stained stubble as he remembered the heat of the red hot brand they held inches from his face. The screaming for them to do it, to brand him and be done with it.
He remembered Terry’s mercy. He remembered Larry not bein’ able to look him in the face after. He remembered leavin’ Thunderhead for a long, long time afterward.
And all too clearly, he recalled everything he lost when he came back.
The camera opens up to a shot of a large, empty field. The second most boring setting next to locker rooms or dark rooms. Hell, there wasn’t even a room here. Just a single figure in a spotlight, clad in black and puffing on a cigarette. The camera slowly zooms in on the figure, only to be filled with a horrific flash as flames shoot up in a circle around the figure seemingly consuming them.
A notion soon dispelled by an all-too-familiar voice ringing from the flames.
“What do you know of hell, Peter? Actual hell, not the hall-passes you’ve used-and-abused ad nauseum. You seem to fancy yourself an expert, signing up to visit it three more times in one night in the hopes that you’ll finally be able to rid yourself of the millstone that I’ve become around your esteemed neck….”
In an instant, the same lithe figure steps through the wall of flames seemingly unharmed, still puffing on a cigarette with a familiar smirk on his face.
“I wonder, do you lie to others the same way you lie to yourself? What do those lies sound like, Peter?
‘I beat him before, I’ll do it again’.
‘The Cabal runs TPW’
‘I’ll drag him through hell, I’ve been there before…’
And on, and on and on…” he flicks the cigarette to the side, running a hand through his hair and chuckling briefly before continuing “You’re not entirely unjustified….for all that I keep getting up, you do keep knocking me back down and forcing me to find enough spite in these old, broken bones to rise once more and try again.
This is the first time though, that I’ve seen real fear in your eyes and heard it all the same in your voice. Is it because you’re alone now, like the rest of us? Left with what's left of El D and the ineffectual Alexander Marshall in your corner?
Page has tired of carrying your water, especially with the pail growing beyond his own. Mac Bane has disappeared into the ether along with Tristan or whatever his name was…The War Queen…..does she still work here? I suppose you have Zybala, but he’s got Lux to worry about…
So where does that leave you, Peter?”
He lets the question hang, turning his back to the camera to stare at the flames.
“I asked earlier, ‘what do you know of hell’ Peter?
You should know something. After all you’ve been, haven’t you? Helped save my son in law, and make my daughter happy. I should thank you, but I won’t. You don’t deserve it because you didn’t do that for any reason other than to put some green in a ledger that's dripping red.
Maybe that's what you’re afraid of….having to pay for your gluttony.
Three Stages…Three…..Have you read about the 3rd circle of hell, Peter? Dante’s inferno?
Its a political allegory mostly, but the sin it covers is the one you and your ilk are so guilty of.
Gluttony.
It's not enough to have one title, you want to be in a group that has them all. It's not enough to have all the titles, you need to run the entire godforsaken operation. You want for nothing, except more.``
He pauses, allowing one more chuckle at the irony as he steps closer to the flames, reaching out and holding his hand barely out of the flame’s reach, the occasional orange fleck threatening to lick the flesh from his bones.
“I’m no hero….Terry maybe believed I could be, fool he was.
Truth is? Most of you are right with what you say about me. Just as you’re right to fear me like you do…don’t be insulted by that Peter. Fear is a good thing. It motivates survival…and you’ll need it to survive me one more time, let alone three.
Three Stages, Three fights…You want an end, but all you’ve guaranteed is your own. The Cabal is gone, The Malvados can’t save you this time nor do they want to. Alexander? Useless, and running out of ideas faster than you’re running out of time.
It’s just you, Mechanic. Janitor. Pawn. Villain.
Fool.
We know who you are, and what you are Peter…and Me?”
He turns to face the camera now, slowly backing into the flames as he speaks.
“I am Raze….
I am Ruin….
I am Penance…..
I am The Raven…”
The flames seemingly consume him now, raging up toward the heavens and roaring like Lucifer’s own call before suddenly extinguishing to nothing but the darkness we first found, a serenity soon cracked by the voice of a should-be ghost.
“And I’ve Come to drag you to Hell.”
The smoke choked him then, as the sobs threatened to now.
“And so, we commit these two souls. One who hadn’t been far from God’s Grace for more than a year…”
The wind swept at the preacher’s robes same as it did the duster that hung from his lithe, dead form. His eyes, glasz and bloodshot stared down at the two caskets, one stacked on top of the other Neither was very large, but one was so much smaller that it could have shattered the most stone of hearts.
“Death is bittersweet. Bitter in the pain, but sweet in the salvation…”
In his hand, he gripped upon a band of gold that he thought once would bind him to a life previously only held in a dream. A life that was torn from him by The Cabal for his hubris. They hadn’t hid what they did, left a card for the Thunder Rolls Inn, mocking him. Just as the raven haired woman resting in the box didn’t hide her pleads for him to leave his iron holstered, and to leave the endless wars for that life. For their life.
“Though Heaven, and the eternal paradise of God’s love is our end goal as men, we too often forget that first we must traverse a version of Hell, some much too close to the actuality for comfort…”
For their family…
“Ashes to ashes, dust to dust….from whence we came…”
We shall remain….
The camera cuts to the same sullen look, now stained with blood and sweat as he mouthed the prayer once more. His mind clung to the words and their mercy, memories clinging to the pleas and the peace they promised. The memories created a whirlwind of a fog that manifests in a the twisted expression on his face. He forces himself to his feet, taking a shaky step away from the doorstep of the doctor’s office, his voice whispering out.
“No…”
No.
“No….” he grits once more, his voice taking a venomous edge through the grief as more memories join the maelstrom. Familiar, infuriating ones of Sheriff Vaughn. His smug look. The sadistic gleam to his eyes as he held the brand inches from his face, the anger behind them when he knew the man they called The Raven didn’t fear him.
The man who helped gun down his family.
The man who just gunned down his daughter.
“Vaughn….” he croaked out once, eyes lifting to peer through the veil of tears. Eyes that now burned with a primitive sort of rage, “Vaughn!” he repeated, a bellow now as he yanked the Colt Navy from the holster on his hip and the No. 3 Schoelfield .45 from his waist, the pearl handle now stained with the blood that soaked his waistcoat.
“Vaughn!!!” He cried once more, marching up the wooden street toward the Thunder Rolls hotel, where the men and women of the cabal all seemed to gather for their debauchery.
“Drink this..” The sawbones had said, the Sheriff held onto Ronnie’s hand as she writhed, her hand hovering over the wound on her stomach ,over her father’s hands as he desperately pressed the quickly reddening cloth against the wound. The sawbones all but forced the liquid, onion soup, down Ronnie’s throat before shoving Knox aside.
He stepped back, wiping his hand over his brow and staining it with blood. He could smell what the doctor smelled as his nose hovered near the wound. The onion soup cut through everything, driving the nail into her coffin.
He’d taken another from him.
The crack of the revolver was the last thing one of the strongmen at the door heard, his body crashing through the glass door and alerting everyone inside. Thinking better of it, the War Queen slipped out the back. On the balcony, a masked man took aim with his .30-30. A twisted grin on his burnt face beneath the singed mask soon wiped away by the crack of another rifle.
Knox wheeled around to see the body drop, then looked for the source.
Lawrence Tact finally met his eyes once more, a nod shared between them as he stepped through the shattered glass door and over the bodyguard. The streets were alive with people scrambling from the gunfire as within the walls of the hotel, a father’s rage poured past the well-constructed restraint he had built.
“Vaughn!!!” his voice bellowed over the gunfire. Eventually, he carved a path to a set of double wooden doors which didn’t hold up to the one powerful kick he sent into the middle of them, opening the room in an instant. Two more cracks, and the goons that guarded the new mayor Marshall were dispatched.
“N-Now Knox you listen here! Ain’t no goin’ back fr–” the butt of the Navy ended his protest, sending the man sprawling on the ground only to be snatched by the collar and jerked up to eye level with the murderous gaze of the enraged man.
“Where is he!?” He demanded, pressing the still smoking barrel to the man’s chin and reveling in the quite sizzle of his skin being singed.
“H-he ran out the back! Y-you can catch him! Just don’t hurt me!”
How quick the snakes eat one another…The sneer on the man they called The Raven’s face was deeply set as he listened to the pleads, replying only with “Your mama shoulda stopped at Terry.”
One more crack, and the irons were silenced. The storm passed over Thunderhead if only for the time it took the disheveled, blood-soaked man with tears streaming down his face for everything he’d lost to step out, eyes darting toward the horizon where he saw exactly what he was looking for in the receding form of the Sheriff on Horseback.
“Knox!!” he wheeled around, pistols raised to find the Dock Worker running up to him, his own pistol drawn and a look of desperation in his eyes “This ain’t the way we said we was gonna do things!”
The smile was almost sad on the older man’s face as he turned, whistling once for the black Ardennes he rode into town on all those years ago to come trotting to him.
“No, it ain't..” he replied simply, almost breathlessly as he hauled himself into the saddle. He looked down at the younger man who had leveled the pistol. He smirked, adding “You’re what they need…” he raised his hand, pointing at the retreating man in the distance “That’s what I want.”
And with a shout he wheeled the horse around to pursue the former sheriff, ignoring the cries for him to stop and to not do this. He’d already made the decision. He would have Vaughn, he would have his prize.
And he’d chase the sunnuvabitch through Hell if he had to to get it.
Well….Here the hell we are, then.
Corvid Combat Films…
In Association with Bongwater Productions…
Presents…
Cold Snap: Thunderhead
Episode 0006
3rd Circle, 2nd Shot, 1 End
“DO SOMETHING”
“I-I’m tryin’! Have her drink this!!”
The memory flashed behind his eyes from where he sat, the screams serving as a backdrop to the desperate pleas for a fate that was anything but the one they’d been dealt. His hair stuck to his weathered face via a mixture of sweat and blood…
….Her Blood…
He raised his hands, staring at the stains upon them. More of it.
More of her.
What was left of her.
That son of a bitch…..
He shot her down.
“Shot her down…” he whispered the thought aloud, face scrunching up as a sob choked him, all his will going to stifle the cry that demanded freedom from where he barely held upon it in her chest. The sheriff. Peter Vaughn. He shot her down.
She come to put things right, and he shot her down for it. He shot her down, because he couldn’t put him down himself any of the opportunities he’d had. Hell, he was here trying to get him out by the book because he proved he wasn’t man enough to take him in a fight.
His little girl… “Ronnie…” he dared whisper her name, squeezing his eyes shut as part of the wail escaped him. Tears burned his eyes and blazed a trail down to the blood stained stubble as he remembered the heat of the red hot brand they held inches from his face. The screaming for them to do it, to brand him and be done with it.
He remembered Terry’s mercy. He remembered Larry not bein’ able to look him in the face after. He remembered leavin’ Thunderhead for a long, long time afterward.
And all too clearly, he recalled everything he lost when he came back.
The camera opens up to a shot of a large, empty field. The second most boring setting next to locker rooms or dark rooms. Hell, there wasn’t even a room here. Just a single figure in a spotlight, clad in black and puffing on a cigarette. The camera slowly zooms in on the figure, only to be filled with a horrific flash as flames shoot up in a circle around the figure seemingly consuming them.
A notion soon dispelled by an all-too-familiar voice ringing from the flames.
“What do you know of hell, Peter? Actual hell, not the hall-passes you’ve used-and-abused ad nauseum. You seem to fancy yourself an expert, signing up to visit it three more times in one night in the hopes that you’ll finally be able to rid yourself of the millstone that I’ve become around your esteemed neck….”
In an instant, the same lithe figure steps through the wall of flames seemingly unharmed, still puffing on a cigarette with a familiar smirk on his face.
“I wonder, do you lie to others the same way you lie to yourself? What do those lies sound like, Peter?
‘I beat him before, I’ll do it again’.
‘The Cabal runs TPW’
‘I’ll drag him through hell, I’ve been there before…’
And on, and on and on…” he flicks the cigarette to the side, running a hand through his hair and chuckling briefly before continuing “You’re not entirely unjustified….for all that I keep getting up, you do keep knocking me back down and forcing me to find enough spite in these old, broken bones to rise once more and try again.
This is the first time though, that I’ve seen real fear in your eyes and heard it all the same in your voice. Is it because you’re alone now, like the rest of us? Left with what's left of El D and the ineffectual Alexander Marshall in your corner?
Page has tired of carrying your water, especially with the pail growing beyond his own. Mac Bane has disappeared into the ether along with Tristan or whatever his name was…The War Queen…..does she still work here? I suppose you have Zybala, but he’s got Lux to worry about…
So where does that leave you, Peter?”
He lets the question hang, turning his back to the camera to stare at the flames.
“I asked earlier, ‘what do you know of hell’ Peter?
You should know something. After all you’ve been, haven’t you? Helped save my son in law, and make my daughter happy. I should thank you, but I won’t. You don’t deserve it because you didn’t do that for any reason other than to put some green in a ledger that's dripping red.
Maybe that's what you’re afraid of….having to pay for your gluttony.
Three Stages…Three…..Have you read about the 3rd circle of hell, Peter? Dante’s inferno?
Its a political allegory mostly, but the sin it covers is the one you and your ilk are so guilty of.
Gluttony.
It's not enough to have one title, you want to be in a group that has them all. It's not enough to have all the titles, you need to run the entire godforsaken operation. You want for nothing, except more.``
He pauses, allowing one more chuckle at the irony as he steps closer to the flames, reaching out and holding his hand barely out of the flame’s reach, the occasional orange fleck threatening to lick the flesh from his bones.
“I’m no hero….Terry maybe believed I could be, fool he was.
Truth is? Most of you are right with what you say about me. Just as you’re right to fear me like you do…don’t be insulted by that Peter. Fear is a good thing. It motivates survival…and you’ll need it to survive me one more time, let alone three.
Three Stages, Three fights…You want an end, but all you’ve guaranteed is your own. The Cabal is gone, The Malvados can’t save you this time nor do they want to. Alexander? Useless, and running out of ideas faster than you’re running out of time.
It’s just you, Mechanic. Janitor. Pawn. Villain.
Fool.
We know who you are, and what you are Peter…and Me?”
He turns to face the camera now, slowly backing into the flames as he speaks.
“I am Raze….
I am Ruin….
I am Penance…..
I am The Raven…”
The flames seemingly consume him now, raging up toward the heavens and roaring like Lucifer’s own call before suddenly extinguishing to nothing but the darkness we first found, a serenity soon cracked by the voice of a should-be ghost.
“And I’ve Come to drag you to Hell.”
The smoke choked him then, as the sobs threatened to now.
“And so, we commit these two souls. One who hadn’t been far from God’s Grace for more than a year…”
The wind swept at the preacher’s robes same as it did the duster that hung from his lithe, dead form. His eyes, glasz and bloodshot stared down at the two caskets, one stacked on top of the other Neither was very large, but one was so much smaller that it could have shattered the most stone of hearts.
“Death is bittersweet. Bitter in the pain, but sweet in the salvation…”
In his hand, he gripped upon a band of gold that he thought once would bind him to a life previously only held in a dream. A life that was torn from him by The Cabal for his hubris. They hadn’t hid what they did, left a card for the Thunder Rolls Inn, mocking him. Just as the raven haired woman resting in the box didn’t hide her pleads for him to leave his iron holstered, and to leave the endless wars for that life. For their life.
“Though Heaven, and the eternal paradise of God’s love is our end goal as men, we too often forget that first we must traverse a version of Hell, some much too close to the actuality for comfort…”
For their family…
“Ashes to ashes, dust to dust….from whence we came…”
We shall remain….
The camera cuts to the same sullen look, now stained with blood and sweat as he mouthed the prayer once more. His mind clung to the words and their mercy, memories clinging to the pleas and the peace they promised. The memories created a whirlwind of a fog that manifests in a the twisted expression on his face. He forces himself to his feet, taking a shaky step away from the doorstep of the doctor’s office, his voice whispering out.
“No…”
No.
“No….” he grits once more, his voice taking a venomous edge through the grief as more memories join the maelstrom. Familiar, infuriating ones of Sheriff Vaughn. His smug look. The sadistic gleam to his eyes as he held the brand inches from his face, the anger behind them when he knew the man they called The Raven didn’t fear him.
The man who helped gun down his family.
The man who just gunned down his daughter.
“Vaughn….” he croaked out once, eyes lifting to peer through the veil of tears. Eyes that now burned with a primitive sort of rage, “Vaughn!” he repeated, a bellow now as he yanked the Colt Navy from the holster on his hip and the No. 3 Schoelfield .45 from his waist, the pearl handle now stained with the blood that soaked his waistcoat.
“Vaughn!!!” He cried once more, marching up the wooden street toward the Thunder Rolls hotel, where the men and women of the cabal all seemed to gather for their debauchery.
“Drink this..” The sawbones had said, the Sheriff held onto Ronnie’s hand as she writhed, her hand hovering over the wound on her stomach ,over her father’s hands as he desperately pressed the quickly reddening cloth against the wound. The sawbones all but forced the liquid, onion soup, down Ronnie’s throat before shoving Knox aside.
He stepped back, wiping his hand over his brow and staining it with blood. He could smell what the doctor smelled as his nose hovered near the wound. The onion soup cut through everything, driving the nail into her coffin.
He’d taken another from him.
The crack of the revolver was the last thing one of the strongmen at the door heard, his body crashing through the glass door and alerting everyone inside. Thinking better of it, the War Queen slipped out the back. On the balcony, a masked man took aim with his .30-30. A twisted grin on his burnt face beneath the singed mask soon wiped away by the crack of another rifle.
Knox wheeled around to see the body drop, then looked for the source.
Lawrence Tact finally met his eyes once more, a nod shared between them as he stepped through the shattered glass door and over the bodyguard. The streets were alive with people scrambling from the gunfire as within the walls of the hotel, a father’s rage poured past the well-constructed restraint he had built.
“Vaughn!!!” his voice bellowed over the gunfire. Eventually, he carved a path to a set of double wooden doors which didn’t hold up to the one powerful kick he sent into the middle of them, opening the room in an instant. Two more cracks, and the goons that guarded the new mayor Marshall were dispatched.
“N-Now Knox you listen here! Ain’t no goin’ back fr–” the butt of the Navy ended his protest, sending the man sprawling on the ground only to be snatched by the collar and jerked up to eye level with the murderous gaze of the enraged man.
“Where is he!?” He demanded, pressing the still smoking barrel to the man’s chin and reveling in the quite sizzle of his skin being singed.
“H-he ran out the back! Y-you can catch him! Just don’t hurt me!”
How quick the snakes eat one another…The sneer on the man they called The Raven’s face was deeply set as he listened to the pleads, replying only with “Your mama shoulda stopped at Terry.”
One more crack, and the irons were silenced. The storm passed over Thunderhead if only for the time it took the disheveled, blood-soaked man with tears streaming down his face for everything he’d lost to step out, eyes darting toward the horizon where he saw exactly what he was looking for in the receding form of the Sheriff on Horseback.
“Knox!!” he wheeled around, pistols raised to find the Dock Worker running up to him, his own pistol drawn and a look of desperation in his eyes “This ain’t the way we said we was gonna do things!”
The smile was almost sad on the older man’s face as he turned, whistling once for the black Ardennes he rode into town on all those years ago to come trotting to him.
“No, it ain't..” he replied simply, almost breathlessly as he hauled himself into the saddle. He looked down at the younger man who had leveled the pistol. He smirked, adding “You’re what they need…” he raised his hand, pointing at the retreating man in the distance “That’s what I want.”
And with a shout he wheeled the horse around to pursue the former sheriff, ignoring the cries for him to stop and to not do this. He’d already made the decision. He would have Vaughn, he would have his prize.
And he’d chase the sunnuvabitch through Hell if he had to to get it.
