Last Chance Saloon

The sand dune only materialized when he acknowledged it. Like that famous thought experiment where light was both a particle and a wave depending on what you were measuring. When he acknowledged it, behold, there it was. When he it didn’t, it didn’t.

Deckhard sipped his beer bottle, reflecting in the lazy summer heat that chaos was beautiful. A drunk child staggered past him down the street, murmuring something about God. Deckhard lent back in his easy chair and squinted knowingly at the shadowy imp following the child. Its prickly wings were ash gray, blending into the dunes beyond the town, its mouth open, gaping with blunt little teeth.

Deckhard glanced down at his watch. 11 minutes past 11 on the 11th day of the 11th month of who the fuck cares? The radioactive sunset bathed the child in an orangey green glow and the clouds sulked overhead, gray and sagging. He fingered his revolver grimly. Deckhard was dressed in rough leather pants, an old tunic and a cowboy hat, with two tubes leading from his nose into a small water pack on his hip. The determinedly drunk child was struggling up a huge black dune, the imp with its cauliflower hair following gamely.

Deckhard sauntered down from the deck of the tavern and strode cockily after, chewing on the inside of his lip. The wind picked up, whispering insistently like a telephone in his ear. Sandstorm, it said insistently, Sandstorm. The crunch of his boots grated quietly. An opera of possibilities out here in the forsaken desert. The drunk kid had reached the top of the dune, somehow. The imp was lower down, about half way, when Deckhard opened fire. The bullet disappeared against the dust.

“Hey fuckwit!” the child called down at him.

“Huh?”

“Don’t you know what a sand dune is made out of?”

“No!” cried Deckhard, flinging his gun away and falling to his knees.

“It’s made out of light!” cried the little boy ecstatically, jumping up and down as the sandstorm thickened and whipped, bathing him in a pale red glow.