Doebrough was the name of the town. Upon arriving it was covered in mist, the amber light of torches and candles peeking through the buildings. The carriage stopped outside a tavern. The traveller walked over to the back and banged on the side to wake me up.

“We’re here,” he said. With a groan I got up, weary from the travel. I wasn’t sure if I had slept. I gave the traveller some coin before we went our separate ways.

With weary eyes, I looked over at the name of the tavern: The Frisky Lemon. I walked inside. It was well lit, loud, and had a man on the piano. I went over to buy a drink and looked around, giving a half-smile to one of the locals sitting down near me.

“You alright mate?” the man I had looked at asked.

“Yeah, just a bit tired. Do you want me to buy you a round? “

“If you want. I’m not gonna turn down a free drink.” I ordered another, pointing at him. The bartender nodded and poured a drink, and I walked over to sit down.

“What brings you to Doebrough?” he asked.

“Looking for someone, I think. Have you seen a rugged guy, a large blue coat? Keeps to himself, might be a bit weird.”

“No idea what you’re talking about,” the man said, taking a sip from his drink.

The bartender shouted over: “You might have to be a bit less vague than that. Plenty of people here look like that.”

“I think he’s on the run. The man has a pistol and a blade.”

“Still no idea. Why do you need this guy so much?” the man retorted.

I looked down into my drink and replied, “I don’t want to talk about it”

“He’s not your friend, right?” the man added.

I nodded, and he seemed to down a fair amount of his drink.

“So, what do you do?” the man asked earnestly. His expression was a bit more curious. I wasn’t in the mood for small talk.

I motioned a slight smile, but my eyes probably showed my sadness. To the man’s surprise, I got up from the chair and walked out. I guess I couldn’t do small talk.

I started walking down the mist-covered street, the amber lights revealing small paths in front of me. I wasn’t even sure what I was doing here. I started thinking about Jess; about her smile. The moments she was frantically carrying water. I would have done anything for her. It was all I wanted to do.

A bit later, I heard some people coming over from the other side.

“So I hear you’ve been searching for me,” one of the men said, in a voice escalating in pitch. A large well-kept blue coat covered his body. His face was obscured in the mist.

I stayed silent. I didn’t know what to say.

“Why did you do it?” I asked.

“What? You’ll have to be more specific than that. I do a lot of things.”

I didn’t know what to reply. I felt weak. “What?”

“Just give me your money,” the man said. “I know you’ve got a pouch. Give it to me.”

The man came closer and pushed me, his friends on either side. Something snapped. I grabbed him by the neck and with strength I didn’t know I had, took the man and spun him around slamming him to the ground.

“Why did you do it?” I shouted in a rage.

Then I saw in his eyes a true fear. His feet kicked out at me in a panic and he frantically tried to pull away from my hand. He had a beard and a blue coat, but this wasn’t the man. His friends came over to get me off of him, but I backed away before they touched me.

“Sorry,” I said, and began to re-evaluate the situation. I wasn’t normally a violent person it was strange.

The two took the man on the ground away, as he started feeling around where I grabbed his neck.

“Get that guy,” he shouted in a coarse, strained voice.

I was still buzzing off the adrenaline when they came at me. An awkward fist seemed to drift towards me from the right. I went to move in closer, and harnessed my rage into an explosive spark which hit him in the side of his head, knocking him out and into a bush. When I turned to the next one I was hit in the side of the jaw, but took it in my stride — to the other persons alarm — as I followed up in grabbing the startled man by the shirt.

The man in the large blue coat, still wheezing on the ground, took out his flintlock and fired. The pellet hit me in the side of the stomach. Shocked, I stumbled backwards and collapsed to the ground. My pouch was pulled roughly out of my hands, then they grabbed their knocked-out friend and started shuffling away.

“Fucking shit,” exclaimed the shooter, seemingly referring to me as he limped.

When they disappeared I was left on my own. I crawled towards a short wall and rested against it with the light of the lamppost illuminating me. Blood was seeping through my shirt.

I thought about Jess, about watching her take care of the children. About her organizing the chairs in the school before looking over to see me. I thought about the white wolf from before. I watched as it went through the forest. Then the creature looked towards me, and as its bright blue eyes stared at me, it began to growl. I woke up.

“Ugh,” I exclaimed, pushing up from whatever bed I was resting on.

A nurse came over to me.

“Don’t move!” she exclaimed. There was a bandage over my stomach and a bloody lead pellet was on the desk at the side of the bed. Quickly making sure I was in a resting position, she checked the bandages.

“You’re lucky,” she exclaimed.

“If it had been just an inch to the left then?” I replied.

“No, you’re lucky they didn’t finish the job.”

Blood leaked through the bandages.

“Now look what you’ve done,” the nurse said.

I wiped some sweat from my face and looked at the nurse as she re-bandaged my wound. It hadn’t opened up by much.

“It’s healing nicely,” she said. “Did they take anything valuable from you?”

“Yeah, my money,” I replied with a grimace.

“These people, they have no heart. Wait here for a second.” She motioned before heading over to the side and grabbing some herbs.

“Why haven’t they been arrested?” I asked. I wondered if the bad people truly ran this world.

“This is the back end of Doebrough; you don’t go around at night all on your own here.” I got up from the bed — with some more grunts — and moved towards the door.

“Thanks, but no. I have some things to do.”

The lady looked at me with confusion. “You really need to rest.” She repeated.

I walked towards the door. She was almost in shock

“Sorry I don’t seem grateful. I really am. But I have to go.”

“Steve,” the nurse called.

Steve was waiting outside having a cigarette.

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“What are you doing?”

I kept hobbling down the road. Steve motioned over to me.

“You can’t just limp around different towns on some suicidal search mission.”

“Why are you here?” I asked.

“You know why. I couldn’t just leave you after you left that note. Do you know how worried Brian and Venessa are?”

“I’m doing this, Steve.”

Steve ran in front of me, a good degree faster than my hobble down the road.

“Where are you going? You don’t even have money!”

I pushed him to the side and kept hobbling forward. He grabbed my side and held me still, moved a small pouch of coins into my hand and said, “If you’re not back here tonight I’ll leave without you.”

I carried on walking away.

Steve standing behind me called out, “James, you deserve to be happy. Take care of yourself.”

I walked until I found a tavern and got a room. I rested until it was later in the day, just before the time I arrived last night. I went back to The Frisky Lemon.

I opened the door and walked to the end. The bartender and the man with whom I had drunk earlier were both in the same places. Something about the adrenaline of walking in there had caused the pain to cease, so I stopped hobbling. I sat down opposite the man.

“Do you remember me?” I asked him.

“I have no ide—“ I reached across the table and grabbed him by the cuff of his shirt, slamming him into the table. The people in the bar turned around to face me and started to clear out.

“What are you—” the man on the table tried to say, before I smashed a bottle on the table next to his face.

I shouted to the bartender, “You get this guy’s friends or I’ll break his fucking neck.”

A few moments later five men came walking into the bar.

The man leading them was still wearing the same blue coat, but also had a new cut across the side of his face which seemed to be infected.

“The fuck are you still doing here?” he shouted in amazement.

There were just two table-lengths between him and me. His friends started moving into a greater circle, trying to make it so I had no escape.

I walked towards him, dragging the man to the side of me by his scruff. He moved from trying to pull my hand away to hitting it. Even though it was five, or maybe six on one, I wasn’t intimidated. Even though, even to me, this seemed objectively delusional. Steve was right in a way. I wasn’t suicidal so much as I didn’t care what happened to me — only what happened to them. I smiled, almost feeling like I was harnessing my rage and adrenaline into a weapon.

“You’ve made a big mistake,” the man in the blue coat exclaimed, as he pulled a dagger from his pocket. He casually flaunted the blade. It had a silver pattern across the handle, leading across its hilt into a red gem.

He came closer. I pulled the man I was holding down up from the ground. He had a single cut on the side of his cheek, probably from the glass. The men were surrounding me and the one I had dragged made an angry face, saying, “You have no ide—”

I kicked him squarely in the chest and launched him into the blue coat. Taking the impact, he stumbled. His balance was lost, so I dove forward, ducking into the man’s blind spot. I swiftly came up on the right and launched a hook into the side of his face, knocking him over.

Another man on my right went in for a punch, but I moved backwards, causing him to miss and with a slight adjustment plant his hand into the bar’s regular. After guiding his fist, I had enough of a hold to pull his outstretched arm over my back and carry his momentum into the ground.

Now the three men were collapsed on the floor, as the other four were running at me. One man was jumping across the tables, two were jumping over chairs and another was pushing past the half-downed blue coat.

When the first one came, I parried their fist and countered with a hard jab, adding him to the pile. The next one jumped at me from the table and realized his mistake as I carried his trajectory across, past another table and into the wall.

The last two came at the same time. I saw one shoot a slow punch and quickly elbowed it out of the way, slamming a bottle to the side of his head. The man collapsed to the ground without the bottle breaking. The final man hit me in the jaw. I turned to face him, the only one left. The punch had cut my lip from the inside of my teeth and I wiped off the blood. He looked me in the eyes amidst the cries of pain echoing from his friends and quickly backed away. I launched the bottle at the now running man’s head and even then, the sturdy thing bounced, knocking him to the ground. *some good glass that one*

A chorus of moans echoed in the pub. The man who had flown into the wall, and apparently passed out from hitting his head, slipped from the table on which he had landed. I restrained the man in the blue coat. With a shaky hand, he was pulling the flintlock towards me again, but I pulled it out of his hand. “Too slow, too late, asshole.”

The bartender poked his head through the door.

“Get the Constable,” I said to the barkeep, and I laughed a bit, thinking he might just get more ‘friends’.

The local authority came, and they were all put in chains, arrested for numerous crimes. In a stroke of luck, the blue-coated one had most of my coins on him. For the rest I took his knife. As the men were taken away I saw Steve watching. His face conveyed both a sense of shock and worry. He didn’t see me after that and likely went back to the village.

The criminals and their gang were arrested for numerous crimes. Apparently, what had happened started a chain of events, leading to more people coming forward about crimes and more criminals being arrested. It was as though a long-held fear of criminals within the town had disappeared and now was the time for action. I was given two hundred and forty gold coins for the arrest; the local authority was so impressed that they petitioned for me to be registered as an official bounty hunter.

Look at me now, blue coat — I’ll get you yet, I thought. Part of me felt guilty that anything good had come of what happened, especially for me. I sent the money from the bounties with a letter to the school.

I managed to get an artist’s sketch of the blue-coated man, dictated from my memory and followed information about blue-coated murderers. I was hoping I would find the man, but ultimately adopted the life of a bounty hunter. I was good at it, better than I ever thought I would be. Still, every night, I would think about that image ingrained in my mind. Of the blue-coated man shining in moonlight; of his face as he pointed the flintlock at mine. A grizzled beard, wrinkled complexion, cold firm eyes.

Later in the year, I had trailed a bounty to an area of warehouses: another thief wanted for murder. I managed to watch from the top floor window of an abandoned building. As the man exchanged something with another before the quiet night was interrupted by the sound of a flintlock. I dove through the window, covering myself from the glass with my new trenchcoat and landing on the ground before running off.

I passed a man bleeding out on the side. With a pained expression, he pointed down an alleyway. Following that direction only left me open to a surprise attack; the running man had hidden and dove out from behind some boxes. stabbing me. His blade lodged into my arm.

I pulled on the blade handle from him by twisting my stabbed arm. Having gotten used to bounties, I easily overpowered him and held him against the wall. I ripped off a part of my jacket and tied it firmly around my arm, trying to stop the bleeding. I came back to the man bleeding out, he was dead now, the flintlock killing him.

It was then that I thought about guns, about their necessity in a manhunt, as though it had never occurred to me before. If I was going to be a bounty hunter I needed better protection.

Turning up to the magistrate with the murderer's freshly dead body, I received ten gold coins. I put them in a letter which I sent to the school.

However, before I managed to send it off, I received one back.

“Dear James McCarthy,

Thank you for your continuous donations; they have been greatly appreciated. However, we are a small school and are unable to spend the funds you have left us. We thought it was best we send the last donation back and trust that you will find a better place to spend it.

Kind regards and best wishes from the Jess McCarthy School.”

I took the money and screwed up the letter. I guess now was the time to spend the money.

I bought a flintlock, and, after walking around further, caught my eye on a blunderbuss. I took the weapon with a dark smile, adding them both to assemble with my decorated dagger.

While following one trail, I heard about a massacre. A murder of three, where the bodies were ripped and the area destroyed. A single man in a blue coat with a shortsword and flintlock was seen near the area. I had thought such a thing to be more of a coincidence at this point, yet I followed the trail regardless.

Following this trail took me to an old man in a general goods shop. A bell chimed as I entered, like that of a local store. The dark wood walls held dark wood shelves that stacked many an assortment of goods.

I quickly got to the point: “Have you seen this man?” I showed the shop keeper a picture. “He was possibly seen with a short sword and flintlock.”

“Y-yes. I believe this man was here not too long ago,” the old shop keeper replied, looking at the picture. “If I recall, he took a flask of water, some silver, and left for the forest.”

A feeling of realization washed over me. My heartbeat thickened in anxiety and adrenaline.

“How did he travel, and did he have anyone with him?” I feverishly asked.

“Oh well, he seemed to be in a rush, so I didn’t ask him. But he was alone when he came in here and I think he left his horse outside.”

I ran to the forest. It had dark purple leaves against a dark wood. The night was starting but it wasn’t enough to hide his tracks. An hour went past, and I found him, travelling on foot. He was walking alone through the forest. Circling in front, I managed to hide behind a tree in wait for him. I had thought of what I would do: talk to him, drag this out to find out…Find out why…But a year and half of bounty hunting had shown me that this was the real world and I can’t give any chances.

It was almost like that night; the light of the moon shone through the leaves and illuminated the path the man walked down. His dusty coat reflecting the moonlight. I waited and focused on the sounds of his steps, my back against the tree.

As I heard him approach I quickly spun out from the tree bringing the blunderbuss down. But in some unimaginable feat of speed he was already there, holding the blunderbuss up with his sword. I shot, and the recoil crippled my hand scattering the leaves around us. My other hand dropped down and grabbed my dagger, bringing it up. He spun his sword into it, smashing the decorative knife to pieces. I wasn’t finished. I grabbed my flintlock and pointed it towards him, having fallen partly to the ground. It was just like before —looking up, seeing him in the moonlight, pointing his flintlock at me.

I screamed, then heard the bang. My other hand was now crippled as he shot the flintlock out of it. I was screaming in rage and pain, but the man just looked at me almost as if disappointed, before walking away.

“No.” I could not give up. This was my everything. My meaning. All my purpose, an end to it all. I ran at him, and with inhuman speed and strength I dove into the air and landed on him. Now my claws were covering his throat and holding him to the ground. I was shocked. What was I? I got off the man and stumbled back.

The man got up and walked towards me, the same look of sympathy in his eyes. He held out his hand and said flatly to me, “I didn’t kill your wife. You did.”