CROSSROADS - Judgement Day

Welcome to Texas, the mid-1880s, and a tiny incidental desert hamlet named Crossroads. It's a little known, seldom spoken of frontier town, snugly nestled beneath majestic mountains along the southwestern border between Texas and Mexico, and morally poised between virtue and corruption. For some it's a place to seek a better life away from the increasingly modernized mayhem of progress. For some it's a place to hang their hat before moving on to their destiny. Still for others it's a sanctuary from the past, a last chance of sorts to start anew.

So welcome, my friend. Welcome to a town where last chances meet new beginnings. Welcome to a town on the edge of the American spirit, where the unimaginable is cultivated from the seeds of the human condition. Welcome to a town where the past and the present roll the dice with the future hanging in the balance.

Welcome... to Crossroads.

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CROSSROADS

"Judgement Day"

by LW Thunder

II=====II=====II=====II=====II* PROLOGUE * II=====II=====II=====II=====II

Throughout his life a man must face many forms of adversity whether it be from his lifestyle, his beliefs and fears or even... his own mortality. It is what a man chooses to do when those moments arrive that determines the character and resolve of a man. Some may choose to ignore the situation while others may turn away in abject terror of the consequences. Still others will act with bravado in the absence of any other believable alternative. Such a man is the subject of our story.

He is a forty-three-year-old man of good health and sound mind who is trying to find his way thru an unforgiving land with a moral compass that is less than true. He is seeking what most of us want in our short time on this earth; a chance to live a normal life with normal cares and normal circumstances. His journey to this point has been anything but normal, however. Indeed, it has been a life of self-indulgence laden with a stunted conscience and a vague code of ethics. But this man is rapidly approaching a fork in the road of his destiny and he will have to make a very significant decision. It is a decision which will demand a lifetime commitment. But there's one very important detail that may have a heavy bearing on his selection.

You see this man... has a dangerous past.

Although quiet and unassuming on his veneer, he is not a man to be trifled with. He is what people in this land call a gunfighter, a hired gun, a shootist. He is a man who prefers to settle his confrontations with the absolute finality of his revolver rather than civil discourse. By all accounts, he's a cold-blooded killer whose weapon of choice is the unforgiving bullet from a Colt .45. It's been said that he has no soul and that when he dies even Ol' Scratch himself won't let him into Hell.

This is a man driven to present legend by the deadly success of his past. It is a past compiled from bullets and blood, guns and graves. It's a life of self-indulgence through intimidation and fear, of fame and fortune at the barrel of a gun. But that reputation has outgrown its usefulness and its appeal. It's become a burdensome life of running from town to town, keeping three steps ahead of the law and the hangman to avoid paying the final bill on his troubled history. It is that escape which has brought this man to his current quandary.

The tragic truth is, he is a tired man now. He's grown weary of living off his gun. Death is a repulsive notion for him these days. He knows it could come the next time his gun swings from his holster. He'd like to stop running, settle down and live out the rest of his life in peaceful anonymity.