Charlie Rose

Last Chap

Charlie Rose woke up gasping from a nightmare that left her just as soon as she opened her eyes. She hastily sat up, her heart beating rapidly and a shiver stuck on her spine. She closed her eyes and buried her face in her hands as she tried to reminisce what it was that she had dreamt that was so horrible and terrifying that it left her scared shitless, but she just couldn't remember it. Her mind was blank and all she saw was black. 

"This is a bad sign, Missy" Marsha said and Charlie could feel the older woman's eyes on her. Charlie shook her head and ignored her. At first, she hadn't understood what Marsha was talking about, then it had hit her like a punch right in the face and she felt like she remembered her nightmare. She didn't remember it but she had a good idea what it was about. Carlton. This was the day, she realized and wasn't sure if she felt relief or terror. Probably a mixture of both that were so overwhelming that she couldn't make one out from the other. 

Charlie swallowed hard, her eyes still closed, and she told herself to stop. Stop thinking about this because it would all lead to over-thinking and over-analyzing, and if she'd do that then everything would fuck up. She told herself that she was going to have to bury this fact under a ton of rocks, even though she knew very well that she couldn't.

"Missy."

"Marsha" Charlie said with a clenched jaw. When Marsha said nothing more, Charlie opened her eyes and looked at her. She could see that something was occupying the older woman's mind, and the best Charlie could know was that Marsha was either worrying over what would happen today or Jeremiah. Maybe even both. Charlie groaned as Jeremiah filled her mind. Like it wasn't bad enough to have to dwell on what would happen today, but to think about Jeremiah and his unpredicableness just made her shutter, to say the least. She knew she was ready to put a bullet in his skull just as she was ready to put one in Carlton's skull if it came to that, but she really wished she didn't have to. She had no idea what to make of the feelings inside her towards him, especially over the last few days, and she had no idea how she would respond if she would kill him. Killing Carlton was an inevitable thing that she craved like normal people crave food or sex, she had been dreaming of it for so long that she couldn't not daydream about it anymore. But killing other people was a whole other thing. She could still see the man with the mousy brown hair that she shot on the fourth and also the asshole Tim who apparently had not liked her just because she had gotten so close to Carlton so soon. 

"Why don't you-" Marsha started. 

"No!" Charlie exclaimed, cutting her off. She knew exactly what Marsha was about to say and she couldn't hear that right now. She was ready to kill him, no matter how she looked or if she had a nightmare or not. She had been ready for ten years. "Don't even say it" She said when she saw Marsha opening her mouth. "I have been waiting for this for ten fucking years and you don't get to stop me! No one can!" 

By that, she jumped out of bed, put her clothes on in a hurry and left the room before Marsha would try to stop her again. Sometimes it was better to be outside her room, or she felt like that now, when she knew Marsha couldn't go after her. Her room might be a safe haven from everything else, but not Marsha's reasoning, which was still going to be there when she got back. 

The only people downstairs were the bartender, a maid and two passed out drunks, lying in a puddle of drool and spilled beer. The bartender nodded to Charlie, who nodded back, and then left the saloon. It was pretty early, since there was almost no one outside or at the middle of the town, telling her that the shoot-out was not going to start for at least a while, giving her time to examine the town more thoroughly. 

She walked past the shops that formed a strip, circled two second and third class neighborhoods before stumbling across the fancy houses at the end of the town, where Jeremiah and Carlton lived. She wondered, as she walked past the houses in a good-enough distance to not be seen through the windows, if Carlton would have offered her a house like that if she had planned on staying for real and not killing him. She wondered if she'd get the nice, red house beside Jeremiah's, and for a second, she imagined the future she always told herself she would have with Carlton dead.