Skeletons in the Closet

The night roared with the power of the storm that held it. Thunder roared into the black abyss as lightning reached with its fingers of power, desperate to grasp the sky, beneath the sky of turmoil, sat a man by a dying fire. The man’s face was sullen, but strong, and his chin matched it, his hair was a dark, dark grey, he was in the later years of middle age, his eyes sat stone cold in his head, and matched the color of water in the deep ocean. He wore a cowboy hat, it was a simple black one so old that whatever it was made of, nobody could tell. Around his neck were a pair of dog tags that hung down onto a bare chest, rife with scars that told of knives, claws, bullets, burns, and all other means of warfare. Across his shoulders the man wore an old black coat, that when standing, came down to his ankle’s, this was accompanied by a pair of old, worn, militant looking boots, a pair of loose fitting jeans, both black, the jeans were held in place by a simple black belt, adorned with a buckle made of a silver molding in the shape of a monsters set of teeth, with each tooth at the end long and menacingly sharp, and the three between them being shorter, but just as sharp.
The man sat on a log, his eyes trained on the fire as he slowly ran one hand over his prickly chin, the other holding only one of a pair of guns. The guns were a pair of colt 45’s, an ancient, but powerful firearm. Each gun was made from pure steel, the grips ivory and etched with a single symbol, a cross on each side of the grip. As the storm brewed above him, the man’s thoughts were lost, even to himself, wandering the plains of his mind. Tonight was his night, the night he would put his nightmare's to rest. The man turned his head and spit into the dirt, turning his head back to the last flickering coal of the fire , thinking “once the last ember goes…” his eyes focused on that last ember like a hawk. As the ember slowly glowed, and finally faded, the darkness around the man seemed to come alive, pressing in like a hungry wolf, intent on a fresh kill. A screech filled the night, high and torturous. The sound of marching feet, rattling bones, and clanking metal filled the night from every direction.
The man came to his feet slowly, his age and power both swinging up with him as he stood. He reached inside his coat, producing his gun’s brother, hoisting them both as he deftly swiveled the chambers out to check that each was fully loaded. He then took the barrel of each gun, gently rubbing them over the pockets on his jeans, his lips turning to a soft smile as the soft rattle of his ammunition met his ears, the chambers of each gun clicking softly into place. The sound of marching grew louder, and louder, red eyes slowly filling in the black space that persisted around the man. The man turned on his heel, turning and craning his neck in every direction to check his suspicion, he was surrounded.
The man smiled softly, rolling his shoulders twice forward, and twice back before using the barrel of his right gun to cross his chest “ Father give me strength…” he whispered softly, the wind rising to his words. The man raised his gun, the cause of the marching getting closer and closer, and the man smiling more and more, his lips turning into a wicked, gleeful grin as he spun on his heel slowly, guns held up, his arms straight, his fingers ready to pull the triggers , saying softly to his guns "I will remember the face of my father...”

Time itself seemed to stop. The wind died, and the sky was oddly still, but the things in the darkness pressed on, the sound of their hellish marching, gnashing, and rattling getting closer and closer, a dim outline of the monsters coming into the man’s vision. They were nothing but bones, on some of the things hung vistages of skin, old, gray or green with time, hanging by gravity alone, falling to the ground like flakes of snow. The man smiled as the first thing came into his clear line of vision, its skull hollow and empty, its clothes only tattered, greasy cloth hanging from its frame. The thing tilted its head, its jaw opening slowly as a harsh, rasping voice boomed from within it “You, are not welcome gunslinger, this is the land of your father’s, NO MORE, this, is their graveyard!”. In response to the voice, the gunslinger raised his guns, letting out twin shots that boomed like thunder across the dark plain where he stood, leaving the skeleton shattered across the ground, its skull turned to dust.

Everything erupted. The darkness welled up, spewing skeletons into the mans vision as far as he could see, the eye sockets glowing a soft pink as they hoisted ancient and rusty weapons, cleaver’s, hoe’s, axe’s, scythe’s, and even swords. They merged into a single living mass of horror, each skeleton producing a wailing, screeching noise. The man smiled, charging the circle that was drawing in on him, his legs bending down as he braced himself, before he leapt onto the shoulders of the nearest skeleton, dodging the weapons the skeletons swung at him deftly, or redirecting them into another skeleton with the barrels of his guns. His feet landed firmly on each pair of skeletal shoulders as he ran across the tide of skeletons, his gunshots ringing across the plain as skeletons fell left and right, seemingly endless.
The gunslinger would empty one gun before using the other, reloading the first as he ran and fired, his fingers bringing bullets from his pockets and loading them, the chamber red hot as the guns were fired without stop, the man’s thumbs singed from loading the bullets into the red hot chambers, leaving rings on top of rings on the mans thumbs as he ignored the pain. His guns emptying over and over, the group of skeletons still unrelentless as more and more fell, the number shot, and the number that were felled by deflected weapons almost equal. The gunslinger finally dropped from his vantage point into a clear spot, the same spot he had started from. The skeletons surrounded him, but did not press close, instead, they began to back away slowly, leaving the circle perfectly intact.
All noise stopped, save for the sound of the gunslingers breathing, his thumbs were well singed from the constant loading, his eyes darting back and forth as the adrenaline in his veins refused to let him let his guard down. The pink glow from the eyes of the skeletons began to fade, leaving them with empty black sockets. The skeletons stood still for merely a moment once the pink was gone from their eyes, before they began to take bones from their fallen brother’s throwing them into the gunslinger’s clearing. The gunslinger dodged the bones easily, making sure to stay within the middle of the circle as well, his eyes not noticing the bones that he dodged were forming symbols in the dirt beneath him.
The bones in the dirt beneath the gunslinger began to glow the same pink that the skeletons eyes had, the gunslinger’s eyes drawn to this as he charged the ocean of skeletons, taking his heels back to their shoulders. The skeletons did not even move, the glow in the clearing growing more and more, until it was casting its own light onto the black sky, in the shape of a rose. The gunslinger kept a steady pace across the shoulders of the skeletons, not willing to slow down lest they decide to begin attacking again.

The rose in the sky slowly turned bright red, pulsing as if it had a heartbeat, the gunslinger careful to keep an eye on it, and the skeletons. The gunslinger was in mid step as the skeletons, the entirety of them, collapsed, leaving him to tumble and roll carefully to avoid impaling himself. The clearing itself glowed the same color as the rose, before the glow slowly died, leaving the gunslinger in near darkness. As the glow died out, the bones and weapons of the skeletons began to move towards the clearing, slowly at first, then sucked into it, the bones making the shape of the rose seeming to boil as they slowly floated into the air, forming a rougly human shape before being consumed by the mass of bones and weapons that enveloped and melted onto the skeleton.

The gunslinger stood slowly, taking the moment to fully load his guns, walking in a slow circle around the clearing, watching as the bones and weapons melted into the skeleton, giving it first a sickly gray flesh, then bright, red eyes and teeth, long black flowing hair, and an outfit exactly matching his, save for that the things was red. The thing that formed in the circle stood still for the longest moment, before its head snapped towards the gunslinger, cocking its head at a perfect 90 degree angle before it spoke to him in a woman’s sing song voice, almost like a little girls “hello big brother, shall we play a game?”