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| Take Your Shot. |
My given name is Charlie Emerson Jr.
That is, before the name Hollow was hung on me.
It’s a story I don't much like
telling, not that I've often got anyone to tell stories to. I live in a graveyard called Progress
Township in the dead center of a wasteland called Nevada. This is the kind of place that people come
after crossing a line they can’t retreat to.
Each of them then seems to bring that trouble to my door. I haven't had a lot of luck knowing people in
this town. I'm truthfully better at
killing people than knowing them. I
stand at the edge of every happy room and over the man that crossed me at the
end of every fight, when the same rooms turn cross.
Every sinner before me says there's a seat waiting for me
in Hell, not for the wrath of my rifle, but for the little humanity I've got to
offer Heaven. There are only a damned
few truths worth counting on in this withered old west, but for the knowledge that
the sinner or saint that falls under the view of my rifle, from ten paces or as
far as my bullet will travel, falls dead soon after and there's as much good denying
it as there is waiting on a fair life. I
don't expect they keep a set of seraphim wings aside for one with a calling
like mine, but I don't expect if they did I'd much like the company. If I'm bound for hell I’ll take my rifle with
me.
They drew lines around this hole in our country and named
it a state on the day I was born, but our federal government gives us less
thought than the Indian folk they have herded between here and Texas. Personally, I enjoy the value of being
overlooked. It gives me occasion to
observe, to see what most chose to overlook.
On most days I am the postman of this territory, a
cripple limping on a false right leg down a dusty road consumed by my famous
father's lawman shadow. On some nights I
am drawn into using my rifle for more than a counterbalance over my shoulder,
to hide my crooked walk, and to carve a different balance out of the dirt,
blood, and shit of the end of this century.
On nights like these I am the shadow myself.
Stay Tuned for... Hollow Hell Bent
