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[Oct. 18th, 2009|06:45 pm] |
In the desert of the American West, the wind at times makes its own music. A high and lonesome sound, shivery and sad, like a premonition of death. This is not America, nowhere near it; and the time for premonitions is past. But the wind is the same, cold and cheerless, and the stones, and the dust.
This is what comes after. And this is the man who has gone before. Sheltered from the siren wind by hat and serape and the lee of impassive stone, he lights a cigar and waits.
It's a principal skill of his former profession. |
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| (no subject) |
[Jun. 26th, 2007|08:51 pm] |
It's funny--they call it a desert island. But it's lush and green and vivid, even when it's deadly, a wet and fecund deathplace.
This is not a desert island; this is a desert. It's dry and it's desolate. It makes a man hard--and a little lonely.
There's a piece of wood so old and dry that it could be a stone, and a campfire red and low.
There's a shadow half-reclining, the shape of a guitar in his hands; almost the shape of a woman. But it's not a woman; there aren't any women here. He's playing something that doesn't match the world or the voice, the rasping voice of a lonesome cowboy.
(He's not a cowboy.)
"And I would walk five hundred miles, and I would walk five hundred more, just to be the man who walked a thousand miles to fall down at your door--"
Come a little closer. |
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| (no subject) |
[Sep. 21st, 2006|11:45 pm] |
The fountain is beautiful, a rippling column of light refracting the deadly desert sun, and Joe settles himself on the edge of it with a quiet sigh.
He's old. Not in the face, which is as battered and unchanged as an old boot and has been for a long time, but in the eyes. He touches his breast pocket under the poncho, but his hand comes away empty.
"Hunker down, miss," he rasps. "Let's talk. You know what I am?" |
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| (no subject) |
[Apr. 17th, 2006|01:39 am] |
APRIL is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Here, said she,
Is your card, the drowned Phoenician Sailor,
(Those are pearls that were his eyes. Look!)
And here is the one-eyed merchant, and this card,
Which is blank, is something he carries on his back,
Which I am forbidden to see. I do not find
The Hanged Man. Fear death by water.
I see crowds of people, walking round in a ring.
I had not thought death had undone so many.
'That corpse you planted last year in your garden,
'Has it begun to sprout? Will it bloom this year?
'Or has the sudden frost disturbed its bed?
'Oh keep the Dog far hence, that's friend to men,
'Or with his nails he'll dig it up again!
'My nerves are bad to-night. Yes, bad. Stay with me.
'Speak to me. Why do you never speak? Speak.
'What are you thinking of? What thinking? What?
'I never know what you are thinking. Think.'
I think we are in rats' alley
Where the dead men lost their bones.
HURRY UP PLEASE IT'S TIME |
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| AU |
[Jan. 20th, 2006|02:28 am] |
Fucking Jekyll.
Fucking Hyde.
Fucking Europe.
Joe Manco may not have a marriage anymore, but he's got a bottle of fucking Black Bush whiskey, the stuff so sweet and pure that the Lord of Dreams drinks it when he's in the mood for a stronger tipple, and that makes the world all right. So long as it he doesn't think too much about red eyes and red hair and the long, pointless talk. Talk, talk; he's half-sick with the talking.
He's not a talker. He's a killer. He deals in lead. 'Course, neither of them would've died of lead poisoning, and maybe he's gotten soft, but he didn't shoot. He just packed up and left. He's wearing a pair of cowboy boots so new that they squeak and an ancient green serape and he's been stinking drunk since Thursday night. Everything since then has been maintaining, the prescription of Dr. Booze. One drink as needed when thoughts of wife recur.
It's Monday, and Joe Manco's already got his whole week planned out. |
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| AU |
[Nov. 20th, 2005|12:04 am] |
[For the purposes of this AU, Joe did not get fucked over on the day of his wedding, and thus lives in late 19th C Arizona with his wife Mina, visiting Milliways from time to time. At the time of this AU, Mina is in Europe on Business of the War-Stopping kind without him.]
"Where life had no value, death, sometimes, had its price. That is why the bounty killers appeared."
Joe Manco can cook, in a limited and idiosyncratic way. With Mina out of the country, he has just about reached his limit on beans and bacon sandwiches.
He takes off his hat and lays it on the Bar. "A steak, dear," he tells her. It hangs over the edge of the plate all the way around, and when he cuts into it inside it's a tender pink. "And a beer." The bottle is thick brown glass, with no label. His brand.
"Thank'ye kindly." He shrugs the faded green serape over his shoulder and takes up his knife.
Maybe later there'll be pie. |
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| (no subject) |
[Oct. 2nd, 2005|01:49 am] |
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Butch: Do you believe in an afterlife? Sundance: I think this is it.
Santa Fe, New Mexico, 1879:
Joe Manco is writing a letter, the last letter for a packet that he'll be leaving with the bank down the street before he lights out for the Canadian Territories.
Tell her I'm trying to come back.
But tell her I'm starting to think it isn't going to work.
A pack of Highlander playing cards is laying on the desk. Across the street is an abandoned livery barn; the front door is slamming in the night wind, again and again.
Then it stops. |
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| (no subject) |
[Apr. 17th, 2005|12:21 am] |
Spike
Roland will give you my will and some letters for people (including you and Beth). These are only for if I turn out to be dead, which I won't. I got something rigged where if I don't send a telegram down to Santa Fe every couple of months, they send a letter along to the French bank, where it'll wait along with the other stuff I sent (including this letter).
Also, you can check with the Endless, I guess they'd know.
If I'm alive, I aim to make it back for the wedding, or as close to as possible -- before probably not being a good idea.
Joe ('79)
If Spike opens the packet it is attached to, he'll find several envelopes and a pack of playing cards inside. One of the envelopes is marked clearly WILL. The others have various names, including MINA. |
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| This is where the groomsmen are supposed to meet. |
[Apr. 16th, 2005|04:51 pm] |
The door to Room 3 is standing slightly ajar.
Joe's boots--the ones with the silver heel and toe caps Mina gave him--have been neatly polished and are standing next to the dresser, just to your left as you come in the door.
On the dresser proper is a nice silver watch that tells the time in Milliways. It was a gift from Snow White. Anyone who knows Joe well may have seen him checking the time on it, now and again. There was generally a small crystal fob then--it's not there now.
There are fine drifts of sand in the carpet.
There is a surprisingly small quantity of Joe.
Not as in, bits in the carpet. Just... no Joe at all. |
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| (no subject) |
[Apr. 16th, 2005|01:53 am] |
Joe comes through the Bypass Door to the second floor of Milliways, heading towards Mina's room. Very early, He passes by room 3, where he lived originally and which he still rents; in fact, the plan is to use it for a staging area for the men's half of the wedding.
He hears something behind the door.
He turns and looks at it. It sounds like the wind blowing.
He does not remember leaving the window open. This is because his room has no window.
"What the fuck..." He lays his hand on the doorknob. It's hot.
In fact, heat is baking off the door, as if there's an enormous furnace on the other side. He smells something--not smoke, as he might expect, but dry dust and alkali. Before he can move his hand from the knob, it springs open under his touch, and he feels invisible hands--or perhaps it's merely the wind pouring through the door--grasp his shoulders.
"Sonovabi--" |
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| (no subject) |
[Mar. 11th, 2005|03:59 am] |
Joe hauls himself up the stairs wearily. Fighting off an invading army of monsters takes it out of you. So does Aes Sedai healing.
So does losing something precious.
He'd dropped the fucking card, when it would have been a moment's work to shove it in a pocket. Roland would've survived that long. And he'd been there--seen the moment--when the beetle that attacked Meg staggered in, stepped on it, slipped--
the card flips out behind it and twirls away into the todash darkness. Into the maw of something he doesn't like to think about too much even now. And that thing is now vapor in the todash darkness. With his hope.
He doesn't blame Roland. Is happy for him. He has the horn. Someday the door will open for him, and all will be well.
It is never going to open for Joe again.
And that is the truth. |
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| (no subject) |
[Mar. 7th, 2005|08:07 pm] |
Joe is not feeling very well.
He had bad laryngitis and bronchitis, then laid around in slush and mud for a few hours just a week after recovering from it.
Then, of course, trying to save his friend, he managed to get him cast into eternal darkness and possibly doom his universe.
No, Joe's not feeling very well.
He's also hiding from angry gunslingers. |
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| (no subject) |
[Mar. 5th, 2005|09:43 pm] |
Joe glares at the book, and throws it across the room.
Damnation. How many thousand pages, how many thousand words, and it ends with his friend damned? And why? Because he'd lost a Horn?
What bullshit is this?
Symbolic qualities, archetypes, morals and messages, all sail neatly over the bounty hunter's head. All that is bullshit when it's your friend.
Nothing but bullshit.
He glares at the book again... and sees what has fallen out.
It's a card.
He's seen it before. He reads the note attached.
The password is written on the card.
There's nothing written on the card.
Password.
Roland said the door asked for a password. Kept saying 'password unkn--.'
Unknown.
Yes. Once there had been money, in a grave. It was the one marked unknown, next to the one marked Arch Stanton. Joe had written the name on a rock, and there had been a shootout for the rock. But he'd not written anything--always a cheat, always a schemer.
Nothing on the card. Nothing on the rock. Password unknown.
An ending is a door no man can open. Joe picks up the card.
Fuck that. Fuck all that to hell and back. He turns it in his hand.
It's a trap. The question is, did ol' Walter underestimate my mundie ass? |
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| (no subject) |
[Mar. 5th, 2005|09:14 pm] |
Saturday morning he surrenders.
He's always been a cheater. Always wanted to know--to control--the endgame. Always wanted the ace up his sleeve.
In the end he has to read it.
He reads ponderously, with much of the beauty of Roland's journey up the steps of the Tower lost on him. He's the type of reader King despises:
You are the grim goal-oriented ones who will not believes that the joy is in the journey rather than the destination no matter how many times it has been proven to you. You are the unfortunate ones who still get the lovemaking all confused with the paltry squirt that comes to end the lovemaking.
Endings are heartless. An ending is a closed door no man can open.
You can stop here. Should you go on, you will surely be disappointed.
There is no such thing as a happy ending.
He reads on.
[OOC: quotations from Dark Tower 7: The Dark Tower.] |
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