A Death or a Birth? (All Welcome)

[alejandracrawford]

As the feline stepped from her room and lite the oil lamps about the Brothel, she noticed something was amiss. Not only was she the only one awake at the late hour of eleven in the morning, but Ambrosia was missing. At first Ale thought nothing of this, as her beloved pet was more than likely off with Bank. It wasn't until she spotted the small puddle of slightly dried blood by the front door; this could mean one of two things: one, Mack, Danny, or Bo had gotten a flesh wound or were nursing it upstairs or two, Ambrosia had been shot.
Feeling angered and upset, Alejandra picked up the skirts of her dress and ran from her establishment yelling her beloved dog's name through the streets, hoping to see hear a bark. When she found drops of blood closer and closer together, she realized there surely could be no hope for her Irish Setter.

[Jackson]

The boy of thirteen travels the dust-ridden Kings Highway, he is without companion but the mule by which he sits astride, shuffling lazily along the well-traversed road. The child has no destination in particular, knowing only that all roads must lead to something else, perhaps another world entire. He is uneducated and ignorant of all but the pervasive violence within his own heart and that of all men entire, he has no family nor friends by which to learn the way of things, and all that is known to him is known firsthand. Jackson comes upon a crossroads where a signpost gives names of the places at road's end, the boy cannot read and thus knows not the purpose of such devices as signs; instead he looks to the things he knows, dangling from a crossbeam upon the post a man resides, hanging from his neck by a rope but four feet in length. The child observes such with only minute interest, the hanged man violently floundering about, likely in attempt to break his own neck that he might not suffer the indignity of strangling; his face is swollen and as dark as a bruised plum, the eyes within his deep-set sockets bulge so severely they might threaten to burst from his skull like overripe fruit. And yet, the boy from Tennessee continues to watch, mayhap oblivious as to the goings on, less than a minute or so following his arrival, the hanged man's few remaining friends, who'd also been watching the fellow, run to his side and all tug down upon his legs. The snap of his neck is sharp and loud within that deadening silence, his purple tongue lolls out from between blued lips, swollen and vile as creeping nightcrawlers, piss soaks the man's trousers, leaving the soil below muddy and with foul stench. Despite the scene before him the child cannot help but notice the relief within the dead man's eyes, and a smile gradually spreads upon the boy's tiny, chapped lips. He is glad of the man's death, and all depart from that place. No tears are shed for the fallen.