Perhaps thirty minutes passed, and each woman gave slightly in her position, but Annette would not consent to take action. Her experience let her know how it would transpire, and it would not be able to be undone. She held out that there had to be some other way.
Then they were interrupted by footsteps on the porch and the door swung open.
There stood one of the women of the town, panting, the light and heat flowing in from behind her.
"Mother come quick!" It's Jenny," she said, and the words rushed from her mouth like a bull bent on destruction, "they shot her."
Within Annette, the words snapped the rope that held the monster in check. She knew she would no longer be able to live her life here, but it suddenly did not matter. She stood and the chair scraped loudly backward.
"What are you doing?" asked Mother Francine.
Annette's eyes locked on hers.
"I am going to do what you have asked, priest," she spat the words, her rapid anger heating the house.
"Annette..."
"Go! Be with the child. You do God's work, I will do the devil's."
With that, Annette turned and left the room, leaving the priest and the townswoman, who then departed.
In the bedroom, Annette reached under the bed and withdrew the box that had not been open since she arrived in this town.
She opened it and could nearly see the souls she had sent to the afterlife, so many now whose names and faces were insignificant to her. She had no count for how many, but she cursed the women who now drove her back to this. She removed the belt and holster and slung it around her hips, where it fit as if no time at had passed, as if it belonged there. Then she took the gun. Its blackness spreading once again through her own soul. It had a word engraved on its old barrel. She cursed this, and it cursed her back:
Destiny.
When Annette emerged from the small sod house a few minutes later, into the blazing sun and opprssive heat, she was not a different woman than she had been when the priest first arrived, she was now merely free to be her true self.
She retrieved her horse and her saddle. A low rumble rolled across the prairie from black clouds on the western horizon. Annette began her journey east toward town. A hot wind urged her along. She knew where she would find these women.
By the time she arrived in town, the wind was nearly in a fury and the black clouds had advanced to where they soon would block out the sun.
Annete rode down the main street to the bar-motel-brothel. There was a gaggle of horses fastened to the post. She dismounted and left hers standing in the street untied.
Each step she took in the fine sand sent a littl puff whisking away in the wind. As her boot struck the first step to the hotel's porch, a loud crack peeled from the sky as a bolt of lightning leapt in anticipation from one cloud to the next.
The world lapsed into darkness as the army of black clouds mercilously envelopped the sun.
Annette looked up momentarily and stepped through the front door.
There were six of them, and six bullets in Annette's gun. She was beyond the point of thinking any of those bullets would not go to use. All six of the women stoped the momement she walked in.
They stared at her, as if unable to comprehend who this bold stranger would be. Three of them were engaged in billiards, two were at the bar drinking beer or whiskey or both, and the final woman was in a dark corner with one of the hotel's employees doing something typically reserved for a private place. It was this one who stood and turned, fastening her pants, and it was this one to whom all the others looked when she spoke.
"Well," she cleared her throat, "as I live and breathe: Annette O'Caylee."
The bartender and the various boys who had been looking to make some extra money scattered like rats on a sinking ship.
Annette spoke, "I have come for your souls."
At that, one of the women at the billiard table made some move to draw her gun. High above the town, a bolt of lightning began its journey in te clouds. Annette drew, aimed, fired. Once, twice, three times and one, two, three rounds passed through bone and flesh in their targets at each of the women around the table, all now dead on their feet.
The lightning struck the building directly across the street and the windows onthe front of the hotel shattered inward, making the bar area an instant cacophony of sound, wind, driving rain, and violence.
The two at the bar, and the leader had managed to draw their guns by this time, but the eruption of glass and noise caused them the slightest twitch of distraction. Annette knew no such distraction, and in that moment, her hammer fell twice more, and two more bullets ripped through their targets.
Annette dove to her left then as one bullet passed through the space where her body had just been. The leader had finally managed to return fire.
In reality, that shot wasn't more than five seconds from when the shooting had started, but Annette was simply on a different level than normal people.
"Let's say we call it even?" the woman yelled to be heard over the wind, but her fear was hidden in it,
"You've killed my girls, but I have no quarrel with you!"
One of the bodies from the billiard table slumped and slid to the ground with a thud. They both knew that this wasn't even a fight.
Annette stood from behind the overturned table, took instinctive aim, and fired her final bullet directly through the woman's heart before she could even react.
"Too late," Annette said, "too late."
Shortly after the incident, Annette left town. She was a killer to them now, and clearly she was not done paying for her sins.
