The cold steel of the sheriff's gun felt unfamiliar in Bill's hand. Yet, there was something about the comforting weight that helped to keep him grounded as he tried to make sense of the see through yellow pop-up dangling in his face. Its sudden appearance was both unexpected and distracting, but the text it displayed was downright ominous. Critical hits? Debuffs?

Alright, this is getting out of hand! Are you telling me this is some kind of a hyper-realistic video game?! What do you know about this Wild Bill? Are… Are you a… computer program? Did I get combined with an NPC? Would he even know if that's what he is?

Heedless of Bill's headlong plunge down a rabbit hole of alarming and fantastical possibilities, Wild Bill was facing a much earthlier, and embarrassing issue.

He couldn't read his way out of a wet paper sack.

Despite his nagging suspicion that this floating photograph was some kind of a fever-induced illusion, the way it seemed to emit its own yellow light almost made it feel like he was looking at a piece of sunlit glass that some rascal doodled on.

The squiggly characters that lined his most recent hallucination had him wishing for the second time of the day that he'd hung up his pride and allowed his wife Sara to teach him to distinguish his letters. She was such a patient and tender woman. If anyone could've got it through his thick skull, it surely would've been her. But nonetheless, to his great remorse, Wild Bill turned her down more times than he felt confident in counting.

Once, on a particularly chilly autumn night, he'd taken her up on the offer just to see what all the fuss was about. However, all it took was a single glance into one of her fancy pants story books to set his eyes to spinning about like wagon wheels. He couldn't understand how those confounding lines were supposed to make sounds and words.

Sara had given him a long look and said that if he put in the effort, he would get used to it. That after a page or two, she no longer even saw them as words. Instead, she could hear the contents of the pages being spoken in her head. That somehow, these words were transformed into a moving picture that danced around behind her eyes. From the way she told it, each of the characters somehow spoke to her, all in their own distinct voices. Quite honestly, it all sounded like a bunch of hogwash.

Part of him thought she was trying to poke fun at him, but she never backed down. Having never been the imaginative type, her explanations came across like the ramblings of a snake oil salesman. Regardless of his past reservations, now that the chance was forever lost to him, he regretted not trying harder while he still had the opportunity. Before his wife descended down a path of mindless self-destruction.

After the death of their newborn daughter at the hands of a plantation master named Robert McCready, she had made it her life's work to uproot all traces of his plantation from the state of Texas, and after they succeeded, she sought to demolish slavery as a whole. It was a noble pursuit, and she built up quite a following. But her actions drew the attention of a well-armed Confederate Militia. That spelled the beginning of the end.

“Go on an' get on outta' my face!" Wild Bill demanded, balling up his free hand into a fist as he endured a torrent of vivid, and maddening recollections. At wits end, he swung Slavin' Dave's sorry excuse of a firearm in a backhand strike, fully intending to obliterate the floating picture into dust. However, just like the much larger blue illusion that showed up just before the voice in his head decided to make an appearance, right as he was about to make contact, it shrank down to a fraction of its original size and floated up into the very top right corner of his vision. Where it immediately turned opaque and merged with the tiny red dot that was already sitting there.

Although Bill was mostly unaware of Wild Bill's current mental fluctuations, his close proximity to such an impactful emotional surge left him drifting through a fog of his own painful memories.

It had been just under a month since the tragic car accident that stole away everything that mattered to him. Only a few weeks since his fiancée Sara's final text arrived, yet it felt like ages.

'Finally Otw home from work! Need anything from the corner store? 😘'

Thoughtful as always... Had Bill known it was to be their very last conversation he would've said something meaningful. And now that the opportunity was forever lost to him, there was nothing he wouldn't give to go back. To do it all over again.

Bill was unable to forgive himself for his lack of foresight. He spent every waking moment wishing he'd picked up the phone to call her, to tell her how much she meant. Instead, distracted by playing his favorite first-person shooter, he asked her to pick up a beer and, after ensuring the text went through, promptly got back to getting his ass handed to him by a particularly foul-mouthed 10-year-old.

The memories of that day, of the worst day in his life, haunted him relentlessly. There were reminders of Sara's presence everywhere he turned. The loss of his closest friend and lover a constant ache in his heart. Home, school, friends; nothing was the same. They all became little more than painful reminders filled with the ghostly specter of Sara. It grew so overwhelming that he started to consider ending it all.

Try as he might, Bill couldn't bear the sympathetic looks, and the whispers of pity that followed him wherever he went. The weight of grief bore down on him, threatening to suffocate his very soul. There was simply no escaping it. Seeking something, anything, to dull the harshness of reality, he made a decision that many of those same 'friends' deemed impulsive, irrational, or both.

After two weeks of drifting through life in a fog of mind-numbing depression, Bill was at the end of his wits. He knew he had to do something to pull himself back together before he hit rock bottom. His answer: Drugs. Hallucinogens in particular.

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Following a vivid and transformative dream fueled by exceptionally powerful magic mushrooms—an unconventional recommendation from Mr. Reyna, one of his favorite teachers—Bill decided to drop out for a semester and embark on a journey of self-discovery. What his ancestors on his father's side might have once called a vision quest. He left behind his familiar surroundings and ventured to the sun-baked streets of San Antonio, Texas. His wanderings eventually led him to the Cosmic Exchange.

"Money ain't the only currency in this world, young man. There are far more valuable things at stake. But suit yourself. I've no doubt you'll learn soon enough…” The voice of that crazy old shopkeeper echoed within Bill's mind, but before he could contemplate the hidden meanings hidden in her cryptic manner of speech, a booming thunderclap shocked him back to reality.

Adjusting his fist to maintain firm grip against his pistol's recoil, Wild Bill took aim at Slavin' Dave's left foot and pulled the trigger in hopes the racket would help to dislodge the crushing memories that threatened to drive him mad. The sound of the gunshot echoed through the town, accompanied by Slavin' Dave's agonized wailing. His body convulsed in pain, thrashing around on the ground like an oversized child in the midst of a frenzied tantrum.

Bill hesitantly glanced down at the sheriff's foot, now little more than shredded boot leather and pulped flesh, and felt his arm jerk to the side, his finger tightening around the trigger. The gun roared again, launching a grape-sized lead projectile through the meat and bone of the sheriff's uninjured foot, eliciting a guttural scream of pain and primal terror. Bill was beginning to feel queasy, but it felt safe to assume that the agony plastered across the sheriff's face was undoubtedly a reflection of the torment he had inflicted upon countless others. It was disturbing but deserved.

A grim smile tugged at the corners of Wild Bill's lips as he ignored the stabbing pain in his hip to kneel down, positioning himself near Slavin' Dave's panic-stricken face. He was getting an absurd amount of satisfaction out of watching this scumbag writhe about on the ground, screaming in agony from multiple grizzly wounds. The sheriff's womanly cries merged with the sounds of the blacksmith's continued hammering. It felt like he was conducting a macabre orchestra of suffering. This twisted symphony would soon reach its crescendo.

But Wild Bill still wasn't satisfied. His fury demanded retribution, and he was all too happy to oblige. With a rush of icy resolve, he aimed the stolen gun at the sheriff's outstretched hand and pulled the trigger once again. A deafening blast sounded out as a quarter-sized hole tore through the meat and the bones it concealed. Slavin' Dave's face turned dark purple as his piteous howls reached all-new heights.

“Puh… Please… no more." As the pain ripped through the sheriff's body, an unexpected transformation occurred. The hatred in his eyes faded, replaced by a glimmer of fear and desperation. His voice strained and trembling, he began pleading for his life, guttural moans intertwining with hushed whispers of falsified remorse. In his disjointed ramblings, the sheriff acknowledged the stark divergence of their foundational beliefs on slavery.

'I've always… respected your cause…” he choked out, “I realize… that you wished to abolish slavery. But… it is a necessary evil." Wild Bill heard a sizzle as he pressed the barrel of the sheriff's pistol to his chin and used it to lift his face. Delirious, and at the end of his ropes, Slavin' Dave continued to try to talk his way out of the death he felt looming over his shoulders. He said that his actions were driven not by a personal grudge, but by his perceived duty as a man of the law. He questioned Wild Bill's self-righteousness and the audacity to appoint himself judge and executioner.

The sheriff gave Wild Bill a pleading look. “There are laws in place for a reason!" he demanded, “and you, ya' unstable sunofagun, broke damn near every one of them when you freed your half-breed and decimated the McCready's plantation. You and that wench cost the lives of nearly two dozen good white men! And you stole every capable slave…” his voice trailed off into a whimper when he heard Wild Bill cocking back the hammer.

“Don't kill me Bill. Let's just think this through now… I'm a sheriff of the law! If you do this, they'll never stop looking for you. You'll be hunted to the ends of the Earth!!" Madness shone in his eyes as he played his final card. “I know I done you wrong… But look here! Spare my life, and I give you my word. I will report you as dead. Y'all can head on west and start a new life…”

A sardonic chuckle escaped Wild Bill's lips, a chilling fusion of amusement and contempt. "What 'bout them over there?" he asked, jerking his head toward the slaves attending to the stagecoach. “Them noirs gonna get a new life too?” he spat the despised word out as if it were poison.

Slavin' Dave's reply came in the form of a confused whimper. "My noirs? What about them boys? Jupiter… Jupiter is mostly housetrained, but Nero ain't nothin' but a two dollar noir. Not good for much… 'cept for minding horses."

Slavin' Dave's dismissive words struck a raw nerve within Wild Bill's trigger finger. Unwilling to listen to another distasteful word, his hand tightened around the handle of his gun, his finger twitching over the trigger. But before he could deliver his final judgment upon the pitiful remnants of a sheriff, his attention was drawn by a flicker of movement near the front of the distant carriage.

His gaze shot up just in time to witness the well-dressed African man, the one Slavin' Dave called Jupiter, hastily laying a rifle on the back of a horse. The man's brown eyes narrowed with concentration as he took aim. Reacting with the speed of a veteran gunner, Wild Bill's arm shot up in a desperate attempt to fire before he could be fired upon. However, fate intervened in the form of Nero, the wiry slave, who had recognized a golden opportunity amidst the chaos.

Nero's lean body lunged forward, colliding with Jupiter just as the rifle coughed out an explosive retort. Bill said a silent prayer as the bullet whizzed past his head and zipped off into the distance. Wild Bill, while used to such close calls, still felt his heart pounding in his chest, adrenaline flooding through his veins. In that drawn-out moment, he realized that he likely owed his life to Nero's intervention.

Bill watched, as if in a trance, as Wild Bill redirected his attention back to the crippled sheriff, who now lay frozen on the ground, his face a mask of grim understanding. With a fluidity that left Bill stunned, he pulled his beloved Sara's Smith and Wesson Model 14 with his left hand and holstered the decrepit Colt Navy revolver. Without hesitation, he tossed his Model 14 into the air, caught it in his dominant hand, aimed and pulled the trigger. The harsh crack of a single shot echoed as he blew Slavin' Dave's brains out through the side of his blocky skull. The body was still twitching when another yellow screen appeared. Followed by yet another.

Unsure of what he was supposed to be feeling, Bill just stood there, enveloped in a plume of acrid gun smoke, his mind struggling to come to terms with the weight of what he had just participated in.