It's a Long Walk Home

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I was there the day he gunned my family down. I stood and watched their lives ended. I took my vengeance and by the night’s end the air was blue with gun smoke.
I swore to the Gods that I would see true vengeance served. I stood, bathed in my family’s blood, and the oath was made.
I ran, I hunted, I followed and sought. I walked every day always on this trail. The aroma of his guns was heavy in my nostrils; the salty taste of his sweat stung my tongue. He was always close at hand, yet just out of sight. I never slowed my pace, never sped for I ‘knew he was oblivious to my presence; for he made no attempt to hide his tracks.
The days rolled by, the states changed, seasons came and went. Oceans were travelled and bodies were laid in the ground. For he understood that I was chasing him. I came close to him once, on an ocean liner heading across the seas. We called a strange truce; our feud put aside during journeys. Over land, sea or air, we would often meet, yet our bond stayed our hands.
He sent many a follower to get me, to halt my pursuit over the years, and each one I greeted with a smile and a flash of gun smoke. I think he sent them to die, thinning his own numbers so that it would just us.
And so it was; after countless decades of chase, the thrill began to die, and we stood alone, beneath the blazing desert sun. Finally I saw him, really saw him; my enemy. The rage, the feral desire to see his blood shed, body emptied, hollowed out and left to dry… was gone. For before me stood not the dashing villain that had slain my beloved, heartlessly murdered my children, but an old man. A decrepit bag of bones with skin several sizes too large. Fingers knotted with arthritis, and about as able to yield his weapon as an infant.
He smiled his teeth long since left by the wayside. “Has it come to this?” He asked.
“Aye” I answer. My weapon roared, his body wilted like a flower removed from its bed. He did not bleed, for too many years had passed for both us to have anything left to shed.
The stench of death hung heavy in the air and as the sun beat its relentless tune on my back, I knew it was not him but me that was the source. So with my body rotting around me I turned and made my way back across the desert, for it was a long walk home to be with those so long ago left behind.

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