The sniper’s nest above the neighboring CITGO lies silent, for now, save for the crows picking at some unidentifiable carcass baking in the Midwest heat beneath the hothouse of an old, patched tarpaulin, the lonely body surrounded by empty beer bottles and long-spent cartridges and even longer-spent chances. Good luck gone to waste in what remains of what remains. This is the way of the world where leather sags against bent and rusted nails, where a nick is a death sentence. This is what Cole considers, surveying the situation as he stands on the ladder before climbing bodily into the reeking box as the feasting murder scatters. Sleek, funereal bodies croak in frustration as he relocates their meal to the ground below. The busted Timberland boot, exit wound blown out not for want of a nail, and the gangrenous foot within is the last to squelch over the side, the mass of old Mads landing with a dusty thud to his final resting place. Asking questions would do that to a man in a place like Charlatan.

The dinner guests quickly follow suit, swarming round the fallen corpse beneath the slate grey sky. Cole watches over the side and plays back the fall in his mind, and for a moment, Mads never lands, is forever tumbling to the ground, so that maybe there’s a chance. A chance to fly, to dance on clouds, but there never is. The ground always comes up to meet you, sooner or later.

Ever the consummate professional as he settles into the abandoned post, Cole pulls out a hammer from his satchel and puts the damning nails to rest into the frame of the plexiglass coffin he perches from before trading one tool for another—this one a peripheral duct tape-strapped down the length of a battered rifle: a telescope meant for a sky amassed with stars. A tool from another time, another world, one not obliviated of a future worth living in. But that isn’t the one Cole lives in, and so he does his job and protects the Crossroads Diner n’ Motel from vultures. All is quiet until he hears it coming. He raises his scope over the railing and scans for the source of the sound. There is no stealth for runners on this flat and blasted plain. It’s not long before a familiar rig rolls up from over the horizon, digging into the shattered tarmac. Sun catches in the lens despite the never-ending dust-limned haze and leaves a pink oval hovering just outside his gaze he can’t blink away.

Doomtreader? Nah, they’re never this early. Cole let’s the refurbished bullpup rest onto his hip and rubs his eye and gives another look. El Capitán. The only person that truly scares Cole is riding phaeton in that gleaming monster.

The one who brought the Factory back.

The one who gave Charlatan a reason to live again after… after.

Hell, he managed to keep currency afloat in their little corner of desolation, trading fresh mint for upscaled textiles, certain home goods, and even (mostly) clean glass—not to mention particular services the Factory kept an eye like Cole flush and alive to look the other way. The Factory back in town is the only reason vultures stay as clear as they do of Charlatan. That and the cages Old Man Gibbet keeps the bodies of those who cross him in to watch rot in the diffuse spill of daylight. Shapes prismatic in oil spill shroud wait patiently for the cages to fill again.

They never have to wait long. Crows in Charlatan eat better than the people.

He makes sure of that.

El Cap rolls up beside his usual digs (Honeymoon Suite), his driver waiting for him to enter the Motel office before pulling away. Gibbet’s in the office for longer than usual before he steps back out, slipping something into his pocket and making the twenty yard walk to the Diner, the dusty earth crunching softly beneath his precise, stalking footsteps. The old man’s grey suit clings to his rangy frame reminding Cole of the pelt of a starved wolf. Poor soul, whoever they are.

The heat in the air does nothing to stop a chill from running down his spine.

Cole rubs the back of his close-cropped head with a chemically cooled rag from his satchel as a rivulet of sweat runs all the way down his neck and past his collarbone, further, prompting him to adjust his binding. Stuff’s probably going to give him cancer, but what isn’t these days? He chuckles and looks out into the widening fata morgana, wondering aloud if this haze will ever lift. If he’ll ever see the stars he remembers in his youth. A pair of ancient claws flutter beside him, glittering eyes watching carefully before answering his pleas with an appropriate response before making off with the last remnants of poor old Mads’ lank and bloody scalp.

Cole wipes his brow thinking of glowing green stars shining on a collapsed ceiling surrounded by the rim of night. He wonders if there’s ever a chance of making things better. Maybe. Maybe just a chance. But the ground. It’s always waiting.

*

Old Man Gibbet always liked watching the way Mikaela worked. She was a fastidious young woman who kept the Crossroads Diner n’ Motel’s marbled counters spotless despite their intentionally messy, shape-breaking and overlapping patterns—a sort of greasy spoon camouflage. She always put on a fresh pot of hot drip the moment he sat down, no matter how much of the foul gunk she poured down the drain first. He also didn’t mind the way her latte-tinted hands cut through the air as she laid down a plate of sizzling hashbrowns for the shade of his neighbor—he could nearly hear the eggs wriggling—or how her soft belly gently spilled over the edge of her vintage Nirvana t-shirt.

She reminded him of his favorite brides. He imagined combing his fingers through her curly hair, breathing in the scent of tea tree oil as he felt the warmth of her cooling body cocooned in bubble wrap. He liked popping the big ones the best while he got off to the pump of their cooling blood. He wondered how curvaceous brown skin would look as she struggled beneath the dim fluorescence swaying overhead.  He hoped she would struggle. She looked like a fighter. He could feel his slacks tighten as he stared at the neat crescents of her breasts bulging the crossed-out eyes of the Smiley face. He looked up at her eyes peering over the top of her ovular glasses. They were the color of the coffee she was pouring into an immaculate ivory mug, not a trace of stain to be seen despite the rings of black at the bottom of the well. He didn’t mind that it tasted like shit.

Old Man Gibbet freaked Mikaela the fuck out.

She was a woman in this thoroughly fucked century and by now was used to men leering at her and her 9/10ths Marshall’s acquisitions. The call center job she gigged at during sophomore year before things got bad was pretty standard; give the lonely stranger on the other end in some abandoned basement the fantasy they paid for with whatever goofy voice got their blood burning and fake an orgasm so you don’t have to listen to them talk about themselves, because so many of them just wanted a woman to let them rant about their inherent specialness as they stroked themselves off in their dead mothers’ clothes—the usual late stage capitalist shit.

The feet guys were the worst. There’s only so much you can convey about your toes over a purely aural medium before you run out of nonsense to say and tell them to cum on your pumps. But Old Man Gibbet was a different order of creep all together. He drank in her color to an uncomfortable degree, and none of the others ever said one word to him otherwise since he was a big-wig at the factory in town and he tipped well—even if he did it in the weirdest way possible with dollar bills folded in on each other; always ten dollars, always in ones. Even for a cup of coffee.

Especially for a cup of coffee.

Probably into rope play or some other kinky shit.

She didn’t want to go back to moaning into a burner phone for cash, so she put up with the ogling and refreshed his pot and cleared away the breakfast-platter-surprise of the nameless coachman sat next to the old man gently turning on the barstool as he cradled the hot cup in his hands that were more knuckle than skin.

“Thank ya, darlin,” the driver said followed by the familiar clink of miscellaneous spare coinage.

“You drive safe now,” she replied automatically but she meant it.

The door bells chimed as the man left towards the desolate road.

“Hmph. Darlin.” Gibbet ceased his creaking and slurped loudly, his hands tightening around the ceramic. “You know you’re my baby-girl and nobody else’s, dontcha?”

Mikaela’s candy-shined smile became a thin line and she nodded. The air felt thinner when the kitchen vent-fan suddenly cut followed by the echo of the back door closing—the short-order cook must be stepping out for a smoke; watching for vultures. “Whatever you say, Mr. Gibbet.”

His favorite stool gave a squeak as he twisted compulsively. “That’s right,” he whispered into his cup, drinking deeply, eyes locked on her anatomy. The concussive stroke of the jake brake outside was all she could hear now (besides the lonely crooning of a venerable XM radio warbling some tale of loss she tuned out long ago) as she turned away from Gibbet’s lingering gaze.

Then there was the telltale sound of the mug dropping softly down on the counter followed by the crinkle of the BDSM tip beside it, no—she turns to look: beneath it.

He gives a hungry smile as he stands up from his squealing perch. “Thank you, Darlin.”

She can feel his hot, bitter breath from here as he steps away, gnarled hands pushing away from the countertop, watching her as if from a dark, deep hole as she picks up the money and unbinds it as she has so many times and realizes it’s ten hundred-dollar bills—clean watermarks, too—twisted and wound onto each other with agonizing care. And in-between where there should be air is a motel card key, words long rubbed away, lying buried in origami bondage.

She feels a chill as dead leaves scattered unnoticed in the wind outside.

She doesn’t quite clock how he moves his tongue in his own mouth as he looks over his shoulder while she bites her pierced, lower lip. Mikaela quickly turns around, grabbing a to-go cup and listens to the black, viscous fluid fill the pot. “Oh, hey mister, let me just get you something before you go.”

The bells on the door ring out as he presses against it, the heft yielding to pressure before he stops. Gibbet turns around and watches her place the lid on the paper cup as he walks to the counter, reaching out his hand as she smiles with those dark eyes and warm skin and he drinks her in before she raises up the coffee pot and slams it against the side of his head, and for the first time in a long time he’s surprised as his head hits that perfect marble countertop and bounces once.

Gibbet realizes for a moment that the pot didn’t break and thinks about the sonorous thunk it gave as it hit his skull (must be one of ours, he thinks) before she swings again and it shatters over his head and he feels the skin of his face boiling from the shitty diner coffee and sees his blood pooling around his head, and tries to glance up as Mikaela raises the coffee pot handle like a knife and plunges it into the meat of his neck again and again as he feels his face melting away to gristle, and he realizes,

Oh God, this is even better than Cialis, before splashing to the dirty floor.

*

It was strange. Tony didn’t remember locking the rear door before stepping out for his break. He stubbed the half-assed hand-rolled cigarette out on the side of his boot as he walked through the diner door, scratching his sparsely populated chin nervously. Times were slim. Never mind the complete lack of a single buzzard circling the sky, pointing to some easy fodder to scrape off the pavement, they were basically out of product. He got pretty good at tending to eldritch things, so bread wasn’t a problem, and even he could throw potatoes in a hole and dig them back out again, but besides some odds and ends and a fuckload of condiments, the Crossroads was out of stock. No, pretty soon they’d need to start serving the furniture. Glaring at a bar stool with empty fury—mostaza con silla, bench n’ chips, toothpick a la catsup—that was about the time Tony noticed how immaculately clean the front of house looked. The tiles practically shined aside from the trail of ash spilling off his shit-kickers. He also noticed how incredibly quiet it was. “Mikaela?”

Click.

The coffee maker running sans pot. Hot water guttered down the overflow tray.

Weird.

Tony walked back into the fusty kitchen and saw, well, nothing. Nothing besides a mop and bucket posted up in one corner and a rusty color puddling the drain in the floor at his feet, right in front of the freshly banged up prep table. Streaks of red trailing beneath.

He shivered as he stared at the dent, but slowly, grasping the handle of the machete hanging from his hip, he leaned down and peered into the darkness—just as a bony rat lunged at his face.

“Puta madre!” His weapon clanged against the floor as the creature scrabbled away somewhere beneath the ovens. Tony couldn’t blame them for trying to take a chunk out of him. The rats were as hungry as anyone else given the circumstances, and he would have done the same if his aim were better. Damn, maybe he really would have to carve up a chair or two.

Then he looked over at the walk-in cooler door, barely ajar. Slowly rising to his feet, blade raised high and ready, Tony opened the latch with a care bred by a misspent youth reading splatter-punk and years of Family Video late fees that would never be rectified.

And… no one was there. But the meat grinder sure was, its lotus pod mouth-eyes staring nonchalantly at him, and before it a vat of freshly ground meat. Ding.

“Huh.”

Ding ding ding ding.

Shaking off the reverie of this spontaneous conception, Tony tucked his unsatisfied chopper away and rushed through the swinging service doors to see a bleary looking coachman hammering away at the service bell. “What’cha want?” Tony shouted.

The stranger had the affect of someone that rubbed off an old lamp, begging for wishes, and was shocked it actually worked. “Uhh… I guess a burger?” they asked, shifting cautiously.

Tony looked over his shoulder for a long moment before turning back to the driver with a smile. “Order up.”

*

Somewhere, miles away, a dead oil barrel with rings of scorch on the inside burns an empty suit stained with a heady, metallic stench and singular, bitter foulness that lingers on the tongue and sours the stomach. High above, predators spin a whirling gyre, witnessing spokes on a thoroughly broken and shattered hub. Eyes watching. There is always a chance.

Further, so much farther from this, a tea tree oil serum bottle lies empty in the bathroom of a derelict gas station. The whereabouts of its owner? She’s safe, but elsewhere. Always elsewhere.

Some say, dancing clouds gilded in stars placed there by her red right hand.

Others, she hunts demons.

– Johnny Byutorie

Author’s Note: This story started as a simple condemnation of commodification, of metaphor for how people are so often treated as resources to be depleted the way raw materials are here in the United States; bodies seen as negotiable for dollar signs or maybe worse–stock. This spooled out to give it more life, to make it more populated, to make Charlatan feel like the place that it is in the story: an apocalyptic hitching-post at the end of the world as we know it. And yes, there might be something there in the name inspired from a certain story radio broadcast also on the edge of understanding.