This week’s Saturday Scares theme was the Wild West, and I could have made gunfights. I went the other way. My Latin roots got involved, some Caribbean gothic came in behind them, and what came out is a frontier where the danger is patient and everybody is holding a candle.
Four pieces. Somber, off-kilter, and a lot quieter than a western is supposed to be.
The Candle Rider
A veiled woman crosses the dunes on a horse that stopped being a horse some time ago, carrying a candle in a glass jar like it’s the only law out here. Behind her there’s a bell tower with nobody left to ring it. She’s smiling. That tends to be the part that bothers people.
The Mission Vigil
Somebody set a ring of candles on the floor of a ruined mission and laid a machete in the middle of it. Roots and tobacco hang drying from the rafters. There’s a figure in the doorway, backlit, either waiting to be invited in or waiting for the offering to finish. The saints on these walls have been asked for things the church would not approve of.
The Chain and the Thing on the End of It
Two vaqueros ride out under a sky doing colours a sky should not do. One of them is mounted on something horned and patterned that no bull would recognize as family. The other is dragging a chain across the sand. Follow that chain far enough back and it stops being a chain.
Last Call in the Rain
It’s raining inside the saloon, which nobody has chosen to comment on. Two girls in gowns are having the worst conversation of their lives while a man with a shotgun slung across his back politely waits on his drink. One of their faces is on the wanted poster by the door. Nobody in this room is going to mention that either.
Where the rest of this lives
Saturday Scares runs weekly, hosted by @promptadventures and @horra.i on Threads. New theme, new drop, usually on time.
If the mission piece did something to you, Custodian is the story it belongs to: a priest, a wounded antlered thing in his root cellar, and a ledger he keeps because it’s the only penance he has left. Free to read, no paywall.
If you want the desert with a curse on it instead, that’s The Curse of Dawn. And if you want the frontier with a wolf in it, The Story of Red and Her Wolf starts August 1, free every Saturday.
Next Saturday there will be a new theme and something else that shouldn’t be smiling.
