Queer Weird West Tales by Julie Bozza

Author:Julie Bozza
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: horror, gay, fantasy, lesbian, speculative fiction, historical, supernatural, science fiction, trans, lgbtq

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The Shape of a Man with Peacemakers on His Hips

Miguel Flores

I remembered Jesse the way he was when he found me—a dark-haired lanky boy with black eyes, bright and hungry. I cradled his urn all the way from Tallamoosa. I could never rest on locomotives, but at least nobody bothered a man carrying an urn.

I was heading to a place called Hexburg, in the shape of a man with Peacemakers on his hips. Hexburg was a boomtown grown from a trading outpost between two huge blue mountains towering in the distance. No gold had ever been found in the nearby slopes, but the town was growing wealthy with a different choice commodity—fur. Fur so nice that well-off stiffs back east didn’t care what was done to get it.

It was a fickle kind of fortune. To a stiff, a beaver isn’t worth a damn until it’s skinned. No animal ever took such joy in wearing another creature’s skin as stiffs do. Skin is everything to them. They live and die by it. They kill for it. When this part of the world was still full of wildness it was safe for my kind. But if the great bison herds, the grizzlies, and the wolves had nowhere left to go, neither did we, people like Jesse and me—shapesters.

It seemed every time that steam whistle blew, it broke the silence of a million years.

The train began to slow and soon came to a halt. I stepped off at the Hexburg station, which was bustling with travelers. Without Jesse beside me, the horde of young girls in their Sunday dresses, arm-in-arm with their gentlemen darlings, seemed to mock my constant mourning.

In places like Hexburg, ladies never went anywhere without a man, and men never went anywhere without a gun. I was growing too used to the weight of guns on my hips. I didn’t always realize when my hand would reach to feel that coldness in its grip. But when it did, I would stand tall, streets would clear, and folks would call me “sir” even when they had no idea who I was.

I walked along the edge of town towards the grassy make-shift cemetery with only a few rows of tidy tombstones. There was a shady grove nearby with a stream full of tiny fish. It was a place Jesse would like.

I sat on the damp ground by the stream and caringly opened the porcelain urn. From inside crawled a long, dark, earth-colored rattlesnake. “This is it, Jesse,” I said, petting his head, stroking the black horns above his eyes. “Soon, it’ll be over.”

He flickered his tongue at me, warming his scales in the morning sun. I couldn’t tell if he understood me or if each day more and more of him was fading. When shapesters have their hearts broken, they forget themselves. They get lost in whatever skin they feel safest and never find a way out. But if those wrongs could be made right, maybe there was a chance Jesse could regain himself.

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