"This is how ya shoot a gun."

BANG!

Jasper flinched, his breath shivering, pores drained of sweat. Numb fingers tremblingly wrapped around the handguard of a revolver, aching from the heft of recoil that had slammed them to his wrist. His sweaty fingertips repeatedly grazed against the cold, metallic slide of the trigger. Gunpowder choked his nostrils, intertwined with the fishy, inundating scent of death. Blood besmirched the wooden bar and beheld carnage everywhere, the countless corpses littered with gaping bullet wounds, lying next to the flipped-over tables, and...

Everyone had died except him and his Papa. The warmth of Papa's fingers guiding his aim left in half-assed solace as they slyly slithered away. A silent assassin he was. Papa had done all of the shooting except one. Jasper tried to smile. He wretchedly forced his teary gaze to the man he just put out of his misery, his unrecognisable head blown out like a popped watermelon. Insides percolating; brain matter, bits of bones, blood. Blood, blood, blood.

Papa started laughing.

Jasper didn't find any of this funny. Not one single bit.

Whimpers stuttered out of his lips.

His fingers let go of the revolver and pressed against his lips, and his puke frenzily clambered through his parched throat. Lunch cascaded from his mouth, squelching between the gaps of his fingers as he doubled over, rushing to crash on the floor. Knees buckled. Tears fell. He desperately spun around to the exit and tried running away. He couldn't wrap his head around the constant desensitisation in the past days of pure massacres after massacres. Ever since Mama slept forever. Ever since Papa took him in.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

I c-can't...

Papa tripped him.

Jasper's chin caught the saloon door, its rusty hinges creaking before Papa grabbed his collar from the back and threw him to the floor. He cried out. He landed on the back of his head hard. His teeth seared. His vision swirled, and his head hurt. He hollowly stared at the ceiling, his tear-stained cheeks dry. He embraced the fleeting feeling of teetering on the border of unconsciousness. Embracing the metallic acrid fluid harassing his helpless tongue. Embracing the brutal shoot-downs endlessly replaying in his head, the image of mutilated corpses mirrored in his retinas. Papa entered his view, looking down at him with a widespread, toothy grin. Not a wound, not a scar, nothing.

The past days...

"Ready to meet Chloe, son?" he said. "Ready to move on?"

Ghost towns after ghost towns.

"I d-don't..." Jasper whispered.

Papa scratched his moustache and deeply exhaled.

All because of him.

A horrorstruck gasp pierced the silence from beyond the saloon door. Papa hunched. Cold, calculating, empty eyes steadfast. A flick of a wrist, a bullet fired akin to a clap of a thunder. Smoke billowed from the muzzle of his revolver, and a small swath of blood splattered diagonally across his cheeks. The echo of the gunshot faded away.

"Whew."

Then came the distant thud heralding the last of this town's joy and laughter.

Coldness chipped away Jasper's cheeks.

Reality or not, the blue, rotating minuscule magic circle before the revolver's muzzle and subtle hue wrapped around Papa's arm had gradually vanished into nihility.

Jasper wasn't sure if he was seeing things anymore.

His lips formed a half-deranged smile.

Tried laughing, but his throat gurgled on insanity.

Laughing.

"Round two, it is again. C'mon, son."