The drifter drifts into town in the wake of a tumbleweed stampede. You know the scene. Faded porches flank a straight-arrow main drag. The chink, chink, chink of spurs as boots kick up tiny clouds of red dust. A town gone dead for want of purpose.

The drifter pauses. Cocks head left then right. Continues chink, chink, chinking down what passes for a street in these parched, forgotten parts.

Are any of my friends here?

His shout echoes off the weathered grey clapboard buildings.

(How about my enemies?)

He laughs. My enemies. They may be legion but here they are not.

Above this parody of a town the sun busies itself with broiling the world beneath it. The drifter shields his eyes, peers up. High noon approaches. The time of reckoning, he reckons.

Out of his line of sight an alley-side door cracks open. A person of diminutive stature pokes its weather-beaten head out and focuses red rheumy eyes on the tall shadow growing larger out on the main drag. The head recedes and the door eases shut behind it.

The drifter pauses in his progress to once again bellow at the sky.

Have you forgotten me?

The tortured sound of the drifter’s voice carries. Below the porch of the town bank a pack rat pauses, whiskers twitching, in its survey of a pile of sweepings.

Where have all of you gone?

The drifter steps up onto the porch of the saloon. Chink, chink, chink. The door swings open with a creak.

In the darkness the two burning eyes pause to adjust. But there is not much to see. A roomful of dust-covered tables. A lacquered bar bare of bottles on the rack behind it. In one corner a low stage. In another a battered billiards table. And everywhere stagnation. Desolation of loss. An absence of company.

Outside the drifter removes his hat and wipes his brow. He stares across the street at the building from which had briefly emerged the diminutive creature with the watery eyes. Yes, that’s the one. He descends the stairs.

Inside the building minor panic has been rising to a state of mania. But the small man is now dressed. He snaps the top snap of his best shirt, knots his bolo tie. Now he pulls on his boots. Now he grooms his drooping whiskers. Now he fits the gun belt around his waist. He opens the door.

It is high noon. In the street stand two figures back to back: one tall and one short. Were it not for the gravity of context the sight might elicit a chuckle, perhaps even a guffaw. But the street remains silent. It is, after all, otherwise empty.

Twenty paces is the rule here, no matter the length of stride. And so they begin. Chink, chink, chink.

The pack rat scurries down an alley, back to its midden. It wants no truck with this scene.

The two figures turn—one aims high, the other low.

On a bluff outside of town a shepherd’s shaggy head swivels at the pistols’ report. He gazes down at the town as his sheep nibble the last bits of greenery growing on this rocky point.

Drawing his horn to his lips the shepherd blows a long mournful note. Down below the drifter saunters out of town whistling a tune no one ever recognizes.

Nothing happens at the end of this story. Yes, it’s that kind of story. To get technical about it, though, it is possible that something happens outside of the reader’s sphere of awareness. Let’s face it: that’s always a possibility. Someone might die, perhaps. For example, there is this one character. Across his throat stretches a sinewy silver scar, relic of a botched beheading. So, you know, given the previous attempt on his life, there’s probably a greater chance of him being killed off-page than one of the other characters, of whose possible prior brushes with death the reader is unaware and therefore are less of a factor in stimulating conjecture in the reader about off-page deaths in general.

There’s a bit of character development. Skeletal, really, by conventional standards. For example, Scarneck (let’s just call him that for the sake of convenience) lives with another person and the clickety-clacking of their long narrow limbs during frequent midnight lovemaking sessions often wakes the neighbors, who have short fuses and don’t shy away from confrontation. So, you know, the two of them have to deal with that delicate situation. I wouldn’t go so far as to say it’s a direct path to a denouement or anything, though. But it plays a role, it plays a role.

At some point Scarneck and his paramour part ways, as is wont to happen in these kinds of stories. Here the plot grows murky as the reader suddenly enters Scarneck’s consciousness, which is a tenebrous locale, even for one already familiar with its formations. The natural structure of time and space dissolves and the reader is left dangling, so to speak, limbs occasionally bumping up against objects of unknown substance. It is a dark time of uncertainty for the reader, who is all at once seized by a persistent horror similar to what one feels in that moment of stepping into an elevator only to find the empty shaft yawning below.

Eventually the reader emerges as one does from a 20-mile naked march through the Mojave Desert with just enough water to prevent death: seared, parched, and disoriented. In this naked vulnerable state the reader creeps at an agonizing pace toward that final sentence of the last paragraph. And it is there, upon reaching the full stop, that the reader will confront Scarneck once again, as he steps out from the void that exists beyond all ending punctuation on the last pages of all stories written since the beginning of written storytelling. As the reader looks up then, dry mouth agape, at this looming apocalyptic figure, Scarneck reaches down, plucks the full stop from its resting place next to the last word, pops it into his mouth and swallows, thus annihilating the ending of what the reader has to admit had been a rather frightening story.