“Lemme telly ya buddy, girls like Claire don’t usually hook up with the likes of me. I’m not what you would call ‘boyfriend material’; I’m more a means to an end. Now, I can usually tell if a chick wants my help or wants my company but sometimes even I misread the signs.

See, it’s hard to say no to a perfect 10 pleading for help. Especially if that perfect 10 is a friggin witch. Bet you didn’t know that half their magic ain’t even magic at all, it’s just straight up seduction, man. Feminine wiles, ya know? They stand real close, so close you can smell the salty tang of their skin and feel the heat pulsating off them. And they breath in your ear. I’m a sucker for that ear thing. Man, they drip sex from every pore. Hell, lots of things get hard when they do that. Especially if you’re like me.

How’s that beer? Barkeep! Another beer for my friend here, por favor.

Anyway, back to the shotguns and my pretty head. It all centered around her asshole ex-husband and some fancy ring. There’s always an ex-husband and he’s usually an asshole. In this case the ass du jour left Claire for a younger woman, and stole her family’s signet ring. I guess this thing has been passed down to the eldest daughters in her family for centuries. I tracked him and this damn ring all over the country. From Bar Harbor, Maine, where he left her, to a fancy-ass garden in Pasadena. I’m getting ahead of myself.

Hey gimme those beer nuts, man. Thanks.

Yeah so, Claire said she needed a ring and I was going to get her one. I bought a replacement to take her mind off her stolen one. I didn’t skimp on it either. It was pretty expensive, but I have connections. I guess the gesture meant a lot to her, ‘cause that night we made love. Yeow momma, tasting the salt on her skin was even better than smelling it. She said she still needed her particular ring and after that night nothing was going to stop me from getting it. She did this thing with her… never mind.

Like I was saying, I finally found him holed up in this fancy-shmancy hotel. I dug in for the usual extended stake out and surveillance, but Claire didn’t want to wait. She walks right into the lobby and uses her little witchy-hocus-pocus-sex-dripping-thingy to trick the desk clerk into giving us a key. I never even thought of tryin’ that. Probably ‘cause most guys aren’t interested in my drippy sex. Anyways, I could tell right away we weren’t the only ones after this guy. My first clue was that the door was wide open and the room was torn apart. Told ya I’m good.

More beer here!

So, right in the middle of all that mess is this big pile of ash. It looked to me like her ex-husband had burnt whatever those other dudes were after. So, Claire starts kicking the pile of ashes looking for God knows what. Then it hits me. Damn, that ain’t no pile of burnt paper, it’s the asshole. No shit, that’s what I said.”

Hey! I said beer me, pal. Thanks a-mundo.

We asked around town, me using some muscle and Clair using some more of them wiles of hers, and found out who came after him. Some old dude I never heard of. We found him in the botanical gardens a few days later.

I don’t know. Maybe he liked flowers or something. Hell, some people need to be around nature. It revitalizes them. Maybe it was that. How the hell should I know? Anyway that’s where he was when we found him. Never did catch his name but he had enough scratch to hire some really good body guards. I’m guessin ex-military. They got the drop on us, which is pretty embarrassing. So there we were, some old dude I never met is twenty feet away from me wearing the ring I vowed to get for the most beautiful woman ever to screw my brains out and two dickheads have shotguns pointed at me. Not my finest hour.

So I says to the old dude, “Sorry about the inconvenience, her asshole ex-husband stole it, bla, bla, bla, so if you just hand it over we’ll be happy to compensate you for your trouble.” Right?

So the creepy old dude pays no attention to me and looks right at Clair and says “I’m surprised you didn’t fill your new plaything in on the game.” He was mocking her. It pissed me right the fuck off. And so did Clair for that matter. I can’t believe I fell for the oldest trick in the book. Friggin witches.

So I figure screw this noise. I’m done playin nice. Bam! I start kickin ass. It wasn’t even a fair fight. The shotguns melted like soft wax and the two dickheads pointing them were just humans. Snap – snap. Done. The old guy was a different story though. Fortunately for me he hadn’t been wearing the ring long, so it only took a little mid-level magic to kill him. I used a nifty little vanquishing spell I picked up during the revolutionary war. I might keep Clair around for a while. You never know, having a witch around can be handy. This ring is pretty powerful too.

Hey buddy where you going? You gonna finish that beer? Ha, humans.”

Author’s Note: It’s getting closer to November and I need to explore some characters and I wanted to post some #fridayflash. So having only one stone to cast I decided to chuck it a two birds. Let me know if you like him, hate him or just don’t care about him. I haven’t named him yet. I’m open to suggestions. Thanks for reading.

Sheriff Jones pushed through the batwings of the Dusty Rose Saloon and surveyed its hard edged patrons. A rag-tag group of miners, dried up gamblers, cowboys and townies. He hated every last one of them. He made sure to look hard at the ones who looked back, staring right at them until they turned away first. No better than dogs, they needed to know who the master was. Men didn’t come to the Dusty Rose for gambling or women or music, they came to drink and get drunk. As far as he was concerned the sooner he dealt with this lot the better. He sidled up to the bar and slapped his palm on the ring stained wood.

“Whiskey,” he said. “And you better not give me the watered down version, Vergil, or you’ll be thinking about your business practices overnight in the hooscow.”

A couple men chuckled, but Vergil the bar tender wasn’t one of them. He poured the good stuff into a somewhat clean glass and slammed it down hard in front of the sheriff.

“Drinks ain’t free sheriff.”

The sheriff eyed Vergil for several seconds before reaching into his pocket. He slid a coin across the bar keeping his finger on it so Vergil couldn’t pick it up.

“I’m enforcing a new law. As of now Sundays are dry. Since you don’t serve food I want the doors to this place closed.” The sheriff smirked at Vergil and removed his finger from his coin before spinning on his seat to address the crowd that now leered at him.

“The town ain’t gonna go for it sheriff,” said Vergil.

“Tough. I’m sick of picking up your drunken asses seven days a week and I’m doubly sick of unexplained deaths. I need a day to rest and besides, I thought you’d appreciate it, what with the whiskey almost gone.”

Vergil eyed the sheriff suspiciously. “Ain’t no problems with my whisky supply, sheriff.”

“You say so Verg. But that don’t change the way Sunday is going to play out.”

The sheriff turned back to the bar and finished off his whiskey, smiled knowingly at Vergil then left the saloon. He had just opened the ball. Now he had to see if Vergil would dance.

Deputy Murphy was waiting outside the jail house.

“Did they bite?” he asked.

The sheriff shook his head at the bad pun. “There good and riled up if that’s you’re asking.”
“What do you think is gonna happen?” asked Murphy.

“I think there’s gonna be a hell of a lot of pissed off hombres ‘round here. So if I was you I’d stop wasting time and start making room in the jail.”

Murphy got up and slunk into the jail house. The sheriff followed.

“Murph,” he said as he fell into his desk chair. “Truth is I don’t think this is gonna simmer till Sunday. My guess is ole Vergil has someone belly down on a roof somewhere just waiting for me to walk on by.”

“How you want to play it?” Murphy asked. Hoping his nervousness didn’t show through.

“I reckon I’m gonna walk down the street and spring the trap.”

“That’s crazy, there’s got to be another-“

“There ain’t!” The sheriff stood up and walked to a locked room next to the cells. He took a key from around his neck, unlocked the door and motioned for Murphy to follow him in.

“Look Murph, I’m counting on you here. There are still some good people in this town. People that deserve saving. If I didn’t believe that with all my heart, you and I would saddle up and ride like hell wouldn’t have it. I know its suicide, but it’s the only way to give you a shot at Vergil.”

“We could set a trap of our own, here. Look around. We have enough holy water and silver here to stop a horde twice as big.”

“I appreciate what you’re doing here, but if we don’t cut the snake off at the head…” The sheriff handed his deputy two gun belts before buckling on his own.

“After they cut down on me the pressure will be off. There ain’t no way Vergil thinks you have the sand to go head to head with the likes of him.”

“Maybe I don’t have the sand,” said Murphy. He couldn’t look his friend in the eye.

“None of us has the balls to go up alone against one of them and they know it. That, and the fact that you know there are still a hundred or so men, woman and children in this town who are no more than cattle to those monsters, gives me all the confidence I need to walk down that street.”

They stepped out of the jail house and watched the sun start to dip on the horizon. The sheriff’s head snapped back as if he were laughing at a joke. Murphy left him convulsing in the dust.

He ran toward the livery trying to draw off the shooter but no one shot back at him. He turned as he passed the Dusty Rose Saloon and crashed through its doors. Vergil looked up nonchalantly and smiled when he saw it was the deputy. He poured a glass of the good stuff.

“Well Deputy, or should I say sheriff, drinks are on the house.” He slid the glass across the bar then bent to retrieve a large stack of bills. He placed them next to the whiskey.

“Your cut sheriff, you sure you don’t want to add immortality to the list? It’s only right, considering the debt we owe you.”

Sheriff Murphy surveyed the hard edged patrons of the Dusty Rose Saloon. A rag-tag group of miners, dried up gamblers, cowboys, townies and vampires. He hated every last one of them. He pulled his twin colts and leveled them at Vergil.

“I’ll stick with the whiskey.”

Author’s Note: I hope you enjoyed today’s tale. I wanted to write something that commemorated the spirit of self-sacrifice that was demonstrated by first responders and airline passengers eight years ago. This week’s prompt from writeanything.wordpress.com: Your character is determined to do something they know to be a mistake, seemed to fit that sentiment well. Thanks for reading.

Beth sat in her workshop opening and closing the blade of her jackknife. Over the years she had come to find solace in its imperfect perfection. The cool steel on her fingers was as familiar to her as her own reflection.

She opened and closed the blade over and over as she stared at the small statue she had carved. She remembered the countless days of her childhood that were spent in the woods with her father as he taught her how to search the forest for the perfect pieces of wood. Fall was the best time to hunt. The smell of decomposing leaves mixed with the crisp autumn air became her siren song; the heady bouquet intoxicating her as she followed her father off the well trodden paths behind their home.

As a young child she never fully understood his reverence for the wood and the knives he used to carve it. He would hold each piece lovingly in his rough hands and turn the freshly severed piece of branch around and around.

“You don’t see the tree, or even the wood,” he told her. “You see what the tree wants to give you.”

Often she would squint and stare at the wood trying to see what the trees had given them. On her ninth birthday her father asked her to pick out the day’s wood. She searched and searched as he watched. The role reversal was uncomfortable and exciting. She glanced back at her father who stood straight faced as she studied each potential branch. She finally settled on a piece of ash hoping with all her might that it was a good choice. The last thing she wanted was to disappoint him. Her father handed her the hatchet and showed her where to strike the tree.

“If you do it right, taking this branch will actually help this tree. Now it can put its energy into growing new branches instead of feeding this dying one.”

When they had returned from that day’s hunt her father gave her a jackknife of her own. She hugged him till her arms were tired. He smiled as he handed her the piece of wood she had collected earlier then told her to show him what the tree had shown her. She instinctively picked up the piece of wood and began to turn it around and around in her hands just like she had seen her father do hundreds of times before. Try as she might, she couldn’t see anything in the wood. She cried as she admitted her failing to her father.

“Leave it,” he said with a knowing smile. “It’s not ready to give up its secret yet. You’ll know when the time is right.”

Her father gave her a new piece and asked her what she thought the tree wanted to show them. She took the new piece and studied it for a few seconds before seeing the unmistakable image of a whale. She could see it there trapped beneath the wood’s layers. Years of growth rings had wrapped around its girth trapping it in a woody cell. She could see that it longed for release.

“I see a whale papa,” she said. It was more of a question than a statement. “It’s so clear. I can see what needs to be taken away before it can be free.” Her father smiled down upon her.

“I see a whale too Beth,” he said. His eyes looked misty. “In fact I saw a whale in that piece of wood almost immediately.”

He gave her back the wood with the imprisoned sea creature then turned to find his own piece. Beth set to work immediately with her new jackknife. Soon the whale would be free. By that afternoon she had a finished statuette to show her father. She hadn’t let him down after all. She finally understood her father’s love of wood. He had given her much more than a knife that day. She had discovered on her ninth birthday that in her hands her knife had power.

Over the years her talent blossomed and soon people were seeking out her work over her father’s. When the governor asked Beth to carve a statue for his wife’s birthday she wondered why he hadn’t asked her father too. Later her father told her it was the proudest day of his life, second only to the day she was born.

She thought of her very first piece of wood. Surely it was the perfect choice for such an esteemed client. It held such meaning for her and this was after all her biggest client. This carving would make or break her career. She studied the piece trying to will it into showing her what it wanted her to see. It wasn’t time. The piece of wood clung tenaciously to its secret.

Her daughter’s voice shook her from her reverie.

“Mama, does Grandpa still carve wood in heaven?”

“I think so sweetie,” she answered. She kept her gaze on the newly carved statue.

“Is that a new statue, Mama? Is it for Grandpa’s funeral?”

Beth nodded and turned to her daughter. She smiled through red brimmed eyes.

“Yes it is. Do you like it?”

“Yeah, it looks just like him.”

Beth glanced to the now empty spot on the shelf by her window. It would take a while for her to get used to seeing the shelf empty. Her very first piece of wood had stood on that shelf for forty two years. She picked up the newly carved statue of the old man hugging a little girl and smiled down upon her work, just like she had seen her father do hundreds of times before.

“You were right Papa, I just had to wait.”

Author’s Note: Today’s piece was inspired from a prompt provided by Writeanything.com. This week’s prompt:Pick and ordinary object and give it an extraordinary use. I hope you enjoyed. Please leave a comment and let me know what you think.