Desert Chase

The scorching sun of the New Mexico desert was a relentless adversary, even after the director finally yelled "cut." Wrapped in the heavy wool costume of a frontier outlaw, I was exhausted. To blow off steam after another grueling fourteen-hour day of filming, I grabbed my prop revolver and a handful of bullets the armorer had carelessly left on a table. I just wanted to feel the satisfying crack of a real shot echoing through the canyons, to feel powerful after a day of playing pretend. I loaded a single round, spun the chamber, and took aim at an empty bottle. The blast was deafeningly real. But my celebratory grin froze as I heard a strangled cry. I spun around to see Jake, the grizzled old wrangler who’d taught me to ride, clutching his chest and crumpling to the dusty ground. In my reckless stupidity, I hadn’t checked the chamber. The one "real" bullet, a forgotten leftover from a close-up shot, had been waiting for me.

Panic seized me, cold and sharp against the desert heat. Sirens, faint but getting closer, began to wail in the distance, carried across the empty plains. I could already see it: the handcuffs, the cold cell, a lifetime of regret stretching out before me. I was only twenty-two. I couldn't let my life end here. Spotting the rickety old carriage we used for arrivals into town, I made a desperate choice. I unhitched one of the horses, grabbed a crate with some water bottles and the box of remaining ammo and climbed into the cart. With a snap of the reins, I tore away from the set, from Jake’s body, and from the life I had just destroyed, racing toward the hazy vasts and the uncertain freedom they might hold.