Sex, Blood, And Bullets

John rests his weary bones on a stool at the bar of the Lonely Lizard saloon. He adjusts the brim of his black Stetson so he can get a better view of his surroundings. With a hand he motions the bartender over and orders a whiskey and a beer. A gold coin clanks loudly on the scratched and scuffed surface of the bar.

The barkeep slides it off into his hand, nods his appreciation, and walks off to take care of another road weary hombre, who quite frankly looks like a sack of horse shit baked in the noon day sun.

John slams the whiskey down his gullet, the familiar burn of firewater melting away the tension in his shoulders. He wastes no time getting started on the beer. While he sips on his suds, he traces the line of a long, thick scar that starts beneath his right eye and travels down his cheekbone before shooting over across the bridge of his nose. Over and over, he fingers the scar, eyes glazed. His body might be in the saloon, but his mind is far from this place. Very far.
John takes another pull on his brew. A long shadow casts itself across the bar next to him. He catches movement out of the corner of his eye. Someone’s joined him at the bar.

A woman.

He turns his head a bit to get a better look. A woman made from the very fabric of desire itself greeted his eye, thick waves of gorgeous red hair curling around creamy white shoulders. Glorious curves in all the places that get a man’s attention seem to beckon him to explore where the valleys of pleasure might lead him to.

The woman eyes him with a sly, inviting smile stretched across dark red lips.
“Hey there, Stranger. You new in town?”

John ignores her and goes back to drinking his beer.

“It’s just I never seen’d you a’fore. Not around ‘ere. Nuh uh, nuh uh. Trust me, handsome, I’d remember a feller look like you.”

John stares straight ahead. He tilts the bottle up until the last drop of beer splashes on his tongue, then motions for the barkeep to bring him another.

The screechy scraping of wood on wood fills the main room of the saloon as the busty redhead slides her stool closer to John. In his peripheral vision he watches her lean in close, her ample breasts pushing themselves pleasantly against his arm. With the slow, sensual touch only a professional lover can muster up for a total stranger, she slides a hand down his arm and puts her hand in his.

The barkeep drops off another beer in front of John and looks at the girl next to him. He winks at him and walks away.

John catches a whiff of something sweet mixed with the earthy scent that only comes from a woman, particularly one that’s sure she’s about to score a handsome, well paying customer.

The rather well endowed lady leans in close to his ear and says with heavy, breathy whispers, “I could just eat you up, handsome. Why don’t we go to my room? I can do things, you know. Flexible things.”

The hair on the back of John’s neck stands up when she speaks. A prickly feeling washes over him, like a thousand tiny needles lightly jabbing his skin, a feeling John’s all too familiar with. This is the signal. The sign. He’s right where the Good Lord wants him to be.

John looks her over like she’s a fine cut of steak and smiles. He takes a long slug of his beer and sits back on the bar. He takes his hand in hers and stands up.

“Ladies first,” He says bowing and gesturing toward the stairs at the back of the bar with a flourish of his hat.

“Such a gentleman,” the red haired woman flashes a quick wink.

The two of them head upstairs and enter a small room at the end of the hall on the second floor.

The room is sparsely furnished, with an old, ragged bed pushed up against the wall in the center of the room, an old desk in the corner and a rickety, scuffed up rocking chair on the left side of the bed next to the outside wall. A softly glowing lantern provided the only light in the room. The windows are covered by thick curtains that look thick enough to make it look like nighttime even when the sun is up.

John shrugs off his black leather duster and lets it hit the floor in a heap. His gun belt joins the duster.

The lady of the night leads John over to the bed and gently pushes him down on the mattress. She pulls the black Stetson off his head and tosses it on the floor with his other things. He lays back and puts his hands behind his back, giving his best smoldering, outlaw, grizzled sexy eyed look. The woman hikes her green skirts up and straddles John. She slowly lowers her weight onto his, her eyes closing as the thick pillows of her lips press against his own.

The passion between the two flares immediately with moans of ecstasy. Deep, hungry mouths meet, tongues probing. John helps the red haired woman struggle out of her dress. She giggles. Her eyes swell with lust as she rips open his shirt. Buttons go pinging off the walls and bounce across the floor.

The whore licks her lips as she takes in his chiseled abs and well defined pecs. She drops tender kisses along his stomach, tracing a line up his chest. She looks at John’s face, lost in the sweet anticipation of the pleasure he thinks is about to come. The woman smiles as she works more kisses across his collarbone. She checks his face one more time. His eyes are closed. He bites his bottom lip.

She gently pushes his chin to the side exposing his neck. Her jaw cracks and pops as it unhinges and begins to stretch open wide, the skin of her face like elastic bands. A large, round lump wriggles its way up her throat. The red haired woman gags, thick ropes of saliva dripping on to John’s neck. Her chin now brushes against John’s chest creating an enormous gaping maw for a mouth. Long, spindly, segmented legs, like a spider’s, emerge from the black maw and grab on to the flesh around her mouth, using it to propel whatever hellish monstrosity they’re attached to forward and out of her body.

John opens his eyes in time to see a bat-like head, replete with pointy ears and piggish snout attached to the body of what looked like a freakish mix of lobster and spider, drop onto his chest, covered in some sort of clear, sticky goo. The creature’s eyes flutter open and shine an unnatural red. The bat-spider let loose with a squeal so high pitched John feels his head vibrate, certain it’s going to explode and splatter his brain all over the wall. Long, gnarly fangs protrude from the creature’s snout. It finally stops squalling and makes a dash for John’s neck.

“Gotcha, vamp bitch,” John moves with a speed that is not natural for a mere mortal man. He grabs the slimy bat-creature with his right hand and throws it across the room where it smashes into the lantern on the desk. The lantern shatters and oil and fire reign down on the creature igniting it instantly. It flops around on the desk.

Squealing.

Crying.

The flames turn the red, glowing eyes into a puddle of slimy ooze that runs out of its eye sockets. The creature curls up into a ball then withers away into a pile of ashes. The room plunges into darkness, but John can see just as good as if it were daylight.

John grabs the vampire’s thick red mane with the same hand he used to toss the bat-spider and yanks back hard. The undead bitch, jaw still hanging just above her milky white breasts yelps, surprised by the quick movement and devastatingly powerful strength in the stranger.

With her chest now exposed, John produces a long, slender piece of wood sharpened to a point and drives into her body just below the sternum with his left hand. Dark, oily blood spurts out of the wound and splatters across his face and bare chest. Thick jets of the vampire’s life force squirt out with each pump of the undead heart.

John grabs her by both shoulders and hurls her across the room. She slams into the wall, her body smashing through the wood, lodged in the hole created by the impact. Bits of wood and sawdust float through the air.

John gets up from the bed, fastens his shirt with the few remaining buttons on it, and smiles at the vampire stuck in the wall choking on her own blood.

“You owe me a new shirt, darlin,” he says with a voice rough as jagged stones.
He buckles his pistols, specially crafted Colt .45s, on his hips and retrieves his duster and hat. John readjusts the coat’s thick collar as he approaches the dying vampire. He gets so close to her face, their noses touch. He’s standing an inch deep in a puddle of the blood still draining from the creature’s chest.
The vamp bitch’s eyes are a mixture of fear and agony.

“Does it hurt, sugar britches? From where I’m standin’ it looks pretty goddamn awful.”

She’s never felt pain like this before, John knows that. He also knows it’s nothing compared to the pure torment she’ll endure after she meets her Maker.
“Well, baby doll, it sure was a hell of a time we had. Sad it has to come to an end, but when the Good Lord puts out a mark, He likes prompt delivery.”
He caresses her face, which had shrunk back to normal, with one hand. She uses what little strength she has left to hock a wad of blood in his face. A hearty laughs rips from deep within his belly. He wipes the blood away with the sleeve of his duster.

“Wish I could tell ya what happens next ain’t gonna hurt, but that’d be a lie. Good Book frowns upon that sort of thing, so I guess I’ll give you the truth. This ‘gon hurt like hell,” he chuckles, “no pun intended.”

John grabs her face with both hands. His eyes, hard as penny nails, stare into her own. They cloud over turning a pure, milky white, flashes of light floating across the surface as if a storm were brewing inside them.

The vampire woman stiffens. Blood vessels pop against her skin as if something is trying to pull them out of her body. Her eyes fade to a coal black. High pitched squeals and low gutturals rip from her throat, so loud the windows explode. Shards of glass coat the floor beneath the curtains.

A thick, black smoke comes billowing out of her mouth. It forms a cloud in the center of the room and begins to swirl like a tornado. A big ball of white, hot light flashes into the bedroom hovering above the bed. The light starts to devour the swirling black cloud, the damned soul of the vampire, sucking the obsidian mist into its brightness.

The woman’s soul now delivered for judgment, the ball of light shrinks until it is no more.

The stormy skies locked in John’s eyes dissipate returning them to their normal shade of gray. His job now complete, John heads back downstairs to the saloon to finish his beer.

As soon as his boots hit the wood on the first floor, he stops cold. Every crusty old, two-bit scum sucking cowboy and outlaw in the saloon was standing ready for him, guns drawn, red eyes shining bright. One of the dirty bastards hisses at him.

“Now we got ourselves a party, don’t we boys?”

A big, shit-eating grin spreads across John’s face. He flaps his duster back with both hands and with the lightning fast deftness of a cat, draws the pair of Colt pistols slung on his hips, and fills the whole room with a hail of silver bullets…