I'm a ghost. There is no afterlife, but here I am. A lone spirit in the eternal black. How long have I been here? Does it really matter? There is no time when there is only you and nothing else. I am the universe, and the universe is empty...and surrounding me is nothing.
Are people naturally existential in the dark? I wish I could figure all this out. Every time I'm here I remember a little bit more of my crazy visions, but none of it brings me any closer to understanding who I am or why this is happening to me. Then again, maybe I don't even exist at all. Maybe I am simply the byproduct of random neurons firing in some sleeping organism's brain. Maybe even that is giving myself too much credit. I want to know that I'm real...
"Easy there, partner," a drawling voice cautions.
"Where am I?"
"Wisconsin," comes the obvious reply.
"Oh yeah..."
"You took quite a shot to the side. I managed to fish out the slug. It's the darnedest thing...missed all your organs."
I peek out through heavy eyelids. A short man with a neatly-trimmed, yellowish-gray beard and wrinkled eyes that look through a pair of round spectacles stoops over me. "I wouldn't say darnedest, doc...more like blessed."
The doctor chuckles.
"Didja catch the coward what done it?" I ask.
"Yep," he affirms. "One o' Pete's cronies. Hidin' up there on Madame Penny's establishment."
"Coward," I repeat bitterly.
"Well, he won't be bothering nobody no more," the doc says. "Got him up in a cedar box right next to his buddy in the center o' town."
I grimace. "Cedar's too good for 'em. Oughtta jes leave 'em in the desert to be picked clean by the vultures."
The doc just nods in reflection.
"How's Loretta takin' all this," I ask in a gentler voice.
Doc smiles. "Oh, Loretta's a smart girl. She knows she's better off now that Pete's gone. She's here y'know."
I look up at him expectantly. "Yeah?"
He chuckles again and nods. "Sure is. She's downstairs. Let me tell her you're awake."
The doc hobbles out of the room, his limp making his footsteps ring out with an uneven thud-thud, thud-thud. As I listen to it fade down the stairs outside my room, I take the opportunity to look around. This looks like a room over the saloon. It's pretty sparse. Just the bed, a desk and a chair. And then there's me...lying here like just another piece of furniture.
"Hey there, cowboy," a familiar voice beckons from the doorway.
"Loretta," I say, unsure of what to follow it up with. She looks beautiful leaning there at the threshold to my room, one hand on her hip.
She steps inside and glides over to the bed. Sitting next to me, she wipes my hair away from my forehead. "You look tired," she whispers.
I blink. "Yes, ma'am, maybe a little. Gettin' shot in the side has a way of taking the wind out of a man." Do I really sound that dumb?
Loretta doesn't seem to notice. She smiles at me and says, "Well, we'll just have to work hard on makin' you better, then. Is there anything I can do to make you more...comfortable?"
It's probably just me, but that pause before the work "comfortable" sounded awfully suggestive. My mind races with ways Loretta could make me feel better, but none of them involve relaxation, which I'm sure my body could use.
"I tell you what," she says as if reading my mind, "Why don't I let you rest a bit more for right now? I'll be back to tend to you later, okay?"
I nod dumbly, though other parts of me are screaming for a good tending to. To make matters worse, she leans down and plants a long, deep kiss on my lips. My guess is that she's not at all sorry that Tex...er Pete, is dead. I almost ask her to stay, but I'm suddenly feeling really tired.
"All right, Loretta," the doc calls from the doorway. "Let the man get some more sleep."
She smiles down at me again. "You get some rest, cowboy," she winks.
Again, I can only nod. My head feels really heavy.
"Okay, Dr. Spector...he's all yours."
I try to open my eyes wider, but my vision is so blurry. Did she just say Dr. Spector? That name sounds awfully familiar and in a bad way. Even though my brain is commanding my muscles to move me, I barely feel my body twitch. I can hear the thud-thud of the doc approaching. A dark figure hunches over me, but I can't make out any details.
"Don't worry, son," the doc's voice creeps eerily from the shadow. "We'll get you back to normal in no time."
I am not reassured. I go now back to death's waiting room.
***
