A Matter of Inspiration

Savages Like Us

Kel Borren hadn't meant to die here.

Then again, he supposed no one ever really meant to wind up on Boot Hill, barely six feet deep and with no one to cry over their grave.

It was just about right for him, his life, though. A bounty hunter, that's what he'd been. Feared by some, reviled by others. He had never, not once, shot someone in the back. But that hadn't keep him from dying that way.

He hadn't seen his death coming. Hadn't even been able to clear leather, his Colt tucked in its holster while he fell face-down in the dirt.

Now he was stuck here, invisible and untouched even as the world wheeled on, changing around him.

Unfinished business. That's what one of those people said. Those people who led packs of chubby children and elderly folk around, pointing at the old buildings. They said he was stuck here because of unfinished business.

Kel figured that had been true, once. He'd spent months and blood hunting that horse-thieving, back-shooting Carl Maxin from Golden to Bodie.

Bodie, where Maxin had friends in high places and Kel had been labeled a badman. And maybe he was quick on the draw, maybe he hadn't been too friendly, but that didn't mean he should have died with a bullet in his back and forgotten.

By now, though, Kel figured Maxin was as dead as he was. That business was finished.

What kept him hanging around was the fact that the world had rediscovered Bodie, and Kel had found he wasn't completely consigned to the pages of history. People came around Bodie and they remembered—if not Kel specifically—Kel's world.

He drifted closer to the glass-less window, unable to feel the breeze that rippled the grass or smell the desert sage he remembered from his ride into the town on the eastern slopes of the Sierra Nevadas.

It was early morning. The sky was breathless blue and never-ending, the sun throwing spears of golden light as it peeked over the horizon, nestled in a bed of orange-stained clouds.

Too early for the living.

Yet, a young woman walked purposefully between the dead buildings.

She didn't carry a gun. Not many people did nowadays. She wore pants so short Kel would have blushed if he'd still had blood pumping through him. Her blonde hair was tied back in a purposeful braid, and she carried a paint can in one hand.

Scorn radiated off of her as she stopped in front of the two-story building Kel most liked to haunt. It used to be a hotel. He'd slept here the night before he'd died.

He watched as she set the paint can in the dust and looked down the street, then pulled a thin piece of metal with a bright yellow handle from her pocket.

He recognized this woman, Kel realized. He'd seen her before. Had felt that same scorn with the sixth sense death had granted him. He recognized her feelings more so than her appearance. She didn't carry that sense of awe and nostalgia most visitors had.

She did not like this place. More than that, she hated this place.

Which was funny considering she wasn't the one stuck here.

Curiosity sparked for the first time in a century and Kel slipped through the dark, cold space that was stitched throughout the world and appeared behind her. She crouched down, ignorant of his presence, and set to prying the lid off the can.

His chest moved with a memory of what it was to breathe, and he focused first on the place his heart used to be. It had taken him a long time to learn how to do this—longer to realize it didn't really matter that he could.