“Never open with dialogue,” the Ranger cautioned while liquor dripped from his lip beside levity. “It's a terrible start to the story. Really, you want to find the ending as quickly as possible, and sometimes you do that by saying nothing at all." He knocked back a shot and burped.
"Easiest way to put a crook behind barriers is to put a bolt in his noggin.” The glass thud upon the bar. “Can I get another drink and an OH YEAH!?”
Apart from the usual sounds fit for a cantina, with a hodgepodge of language and tongues and drinks to keep them flapping, a moment of silence ensued.
“I think you’ve had enough, bud,” the bartender cautioned. He looked neither amused nor amusing.
“Enough, eh?” The Ranger snorted. He sat that stool like it was a throne, liked he owned it—and the bar and its tender and the entire cantina and everyone in it. “Let me tell you something, bud.” He leaned forward, pulled his coat closer, exposed the blaster at his thigh. “It’s enough...when I kriffin SAY it's enough!"
Enough...enough...enough...
The Ranger whipped out his blaster. The bartender backed up. There was a blaster shot. The man fell down. It wasn’t the bartender; he was still standing, staring from the stool to the shooter. “Nice shot.” The bartender nodded at the corpse slumped over the counter. “Clean bolt to the back of the head. Paid for that mistake. Shame he won't be paying his tab too…”
Mistake...mistake...mistake...
Just as the bartender sighed out his woes like a dead man dying another Ranger breathed in; booze and stale chips and the clarity of having just killed a crook. He rose from his table, pulled his coat closer, holstered the blaster at his thigh.
“Do, done, did,” the Ranger spoke with a rolling shoulder, reaching the bar to request a whiskey. There was a stutter in his speech but his host heard him clearly enough.
Nice painting. The Ranger squinted at the painting above the bar, maybe a hall in a ballroom, majestic architecture, gilded splendor. I don't like it one bit. A man contradicts himself. I don't feel well.
“So, how does it feel, partner?” Bartender smiled as he poured and passed the glass.
“How does what feel?” Ranger knocked back the whiskey, set the glass down, raised a brow at the question and the twitch in his hand.
Bartender looked left, looked right, and there might have been a smile in one eye and a scowl in the other. “To have shot yourself in the head, of course.”
Ranger looked right, looked left. What...the… There he was, sitting on a stool right beside him: a mirror image of himself. The clothing, the body, the skin, the species—all of it identical. No...way… He pulled on the body’s shoulder so the living and the dead could meet face to face. The face...my face…my face...face...face...
“Tell me,” the other voice returned. “How does it feel to have killed yourself for the hundredth time, Zad Ruzed?”[/abox3]