Cowboys and Girls

Christopher was pushing every button and turning every nob within reach of his hands in the hopes of getting back to earth somehow. Luckily it was having some effect because the ship lurched this way and that as it began to plummet to the earth but it had little effect on the cowboy inside it, due to something that kept the occupants of the ship from feeling outside effects. As the ship began to get closer to the earth it began to look less and less like a comet as the details came more and more into focus. Anyone watching in the nearby city would know that this was no mere comet. The crash rattled the ground as if an earthquake were rolling them.

The ship, once a gleaming metallic godsend, was now a twisted mess of ripped, bent, and dirty metal. A lone man stood up from the monstrosity as bare as the day he was born, not so much as a single hair tarnished anything below his neck. He did not know how that had happened but he was not asking any questions at the moment. The first thing he wanted to do was find his weapons, the ones that had been on him when the light had flashed the first time, he still did not really understand what had happened.

After cutting his hand pretty badly he started to be a little more gentle with moving around the sharp pieces of metal.

Jagged corners and faceless walls made up the world Lucy called home. Her travels took her closer and closer to the final black curvature that made up the edges of her reality. Whenever she came to the final smooth obstruction she climbed back into the real world. From her vantage point the world always looked like draped in shadows; she preferred it to the way it always looked.

As she took her step out from her mirror world and into the bright lights of Marfa, Texas. The night crept up upon the sun, ushering in the orange and red twilight of dusk. Within the hills of Marfa odd lights glistened in a mysterious manner. She did not come for the lights, whether in the horizon or along the mountains. She came rather for the disturbance that she saw within her world. A shadowed figure crashed from the sky and landed along the hills of the arid land. Lucy tried to figure out a way to make her way into the ship, but needed a better view, a view that attributed color and light.

Smoke build up from a smoldering crater. Spectators gazed upon the site from a few miles away at the designated watch post the citizens built as a tourist spot. Local authorities would probably get a call about this, but disregard it as just some more alien talk from the watchers at the lights. Lucy stepped towards the nude man. "Are you looking for something?" Lucy saw a reflective piece of the ship that allowed her to cast just enough of a reflection to make her way into her world. She stood in the window pane and watched to see how the man would react to the ghostly voice.

A few years ago Lucy tried a trick where she hid in the mirrors of a man's house and followed him around. She would hop out and say things to get his attention and then disappear into the mirror world. This took place for months and slowly drove the perfectly normal businessman to a nervous breakdown. His work made him seek the guidance of a psychiatrist. After a few sessions the man reported that the clinics were making him worse. Lucy took the guise of the psychiatrist by pretending to be the doctor's father. She told him his mother died and that he should attend the funeral. This gave Lucy time to play doctor with all sorts of people, but her favorite was the businessman who heard voices. In the end the businessman and the doctor both lost their jobs, but Lucy gained a little insight into how people relate to each other. And, how they will say anything to a man in a coat who says "And how does that make you feel?" Psychiatry must not be hard for a girl like Lucy to do it, but then again she did mess two people up.

Lucy hopped out of the mirror behind him and continued the rouse, but this time took on his appearance. "I know where it is. Just follow me." This might give her more fun.

Christopher heard the voice before anything else. He did not hear the approach of the woman, see her, or even smell her. Sneaking up on the rugged man was not impossible but it could be a very hard thing to do by any means. Looking around for the source and seeing no one around, Christopher began to become suspicious but he tried not to let on, he had never been one to believe in magic or ghost. “Yeah,” Christopher called out to the surrounding area in general, “Ah’m lookin’ fer my weapons. My clothes tew if you happen ta see’em.” His words were stressed through a thick and almost forgotten accent that had almost completely been forgotten by time, showing more than anything else what time he was really from.

When he heard the response of the woman to what he said he turned around but this time he was greeted by his own naked image. It was odd but he knew there was some explanation for it; maybe it was some other strange creature from the ship that had also escaped. Christopher was not the kind of person to trust another person, or thing, easily and often kept people at arm’s length at best. The thing said that it knew where his weapons were though so he reluctantly followed, although he was prepared to kill the thing if it tried anything funny.

Since Christopher really did not know what was going on with the bright light, the duplicate of himself, or the strange feeling he had about everything around him in general he was a little on edge. Jumpy, he felt like he was ready to attack anything that provoked him. He did not know why but he felt more angry than usual.

Thinking of ways to play this out Lucy looked to add her own spin to the situation. Her voice creaked out a rough, high class English accent. "I suppose we should check the local hamlet, and if they do not know we should investigate a larger village. Perhaps rough up the local vagrants who inhabit the village pub." Lucy continued to prance in the classical Mexican stand off style. "I do agree with you that we could use a fresh pair of nickers and some tunics to clothe our very small nudity." Her hand moved to cover her mouth. "Oh my, I must excuse my language. I said nudity." With her only goal deriving in mocking the poor man she really knew nothing about getting him weapons or clothes, but she could gauge his reaction to see whether or not she would stay with the man.

"We should definitely speak with the constable about the ruffians who pilfered out belongings from us." Lucy pranced about waving her arms with effeminate control up and down as she skipped towards the town. "Excuse me..." The mountains helped cradle her voice to push towards the town. "I am in need of assistance from a dashing nobleman to assist in finding me some pantaloons to cover my nudity. Oh my, there I went and said it the public forum."

Christopher watched as his own reflection run around, speaking with an irritating accent and flailing his arms around in a flamboyant manner. Christopher grit his teeth and tried to stay calm but it was difficult, seeing the reflection of himself do these odd things got his blood to boil. He turned away from the image and continued to shift through the debris but it did no good. “Are ya goin’ ta help me look or ain’t ya?” His already thick accent was even grizzlier from holding back his anger. Christopher, the real Christopher, looked up in time to hear the offhand remarks of his reflection about his ‘small nudity’.

Looking back at himself, Christopher turned just in time to see and hear himself, with that god awful accent, shout to the mountains like a crazy person. That was the last straw, he began walking at a very brisk pace towards himself with the full intention of beating the living hell out of the doppelganger, even if that did mean beating himself up. There was a times for words and a time for action, Christopher had not been too keen on words since the death of his parents either. “Ya have ta the count a three before I make you sorry for laying eyes on me,” He said as he made his way to himself, his knuckles white from how hard he was clenching his fist.

While Christopher was completely prepared to beat the stuffing out of himself he was still far from being belligerent with anger. If the reflection were to do something that would help the man, or at least made him feel as though all was fair, he would stop his immediate vendetta to kill it. There were only a hand full of times that Christopher had gotten so angry that he did things he regretted but now was not one of those times, even though his day was far from glorious at the moment.

"Quickly men this vagabond has threatened me by counting. The counting, the counting..." A dust ridden hand brushed up to the forehead of the false image of the cowboy as he spoke like a Southern Belle. "Ever since the aliens sent me back from Jupiter this man has constantly accosted me with his nonsensical counting measures of one, two, three." Lucy took the opportunity to shed her disguise in an incriminating way. "I cursed myself by making the dreaded one, two, three..." With a dramatic motion, Lucy feinted to the ground. She kicked her heels to project herself closer to a mirrored glass pane. When she hit the ground she took notice of the image of herself in the window pane; before anyone could move to help her up she disappeared.

Bewilderment struck the crowd who just witnessed two naked cowboys arguing in odd accents. Lucy gazed out from her mirrored world onto the scene. Now she just needed a new disguise to help create true calamity in Marfa, Texas.

Christopher looked out at all the people that had gotten closer and saw the ending of the odd back and forth between him and, well, himself. Still rummaging through the debris he pointed a finger at all the people behind him as he said in his gruff voice, “You lot stay back thar. Ah’m tryin’ ta find ma damn clothes.” His nudity was well noticed by the locals that had managed to make their way to the crash site and in the background the cowboy could make out a few hushed words, things about ‘cops’ being on the way and other things the man from the past did not understand.

Luckily, with the next large piece of warped metal Christopher uncovered what looked to be a large sterling silver locker which was fortunately unlocked. Opening it he found his clothing and most of his weapons. It did not take long for him to redress himself and put his weapons in their proper place, though oddly the people around him never took their eyes off him or his strangely hairless body. Once he was settled again he looked to the people around him and spoke again, “Where’d that thing that looked like meh git ta? I want ta find’t and beat the livin’ hell outta it.”

With his words said and an audience, which seemingly did not want to answer or had no answer, that just wanted to look at him with utter ignorance plastered to each and every face. “You lot ‘re about as useless as ya git, aren’t ya?” He then set off through the crowd, looking for himself with his own eyes.

Taking the situation down the path of most resistance would make her job even better. While all the attention of the assorted alien watchers and paranormal trackers fixated on the now dressed and armed with all the finest commodities the eighteen hundreds could supply. Lucy moved away from the window pane and into the serving area of a local diner. All in all it looked unremarkable, possibly by the way of the featureless world she viewed it from, but still unremarkable. Lucy moved towards a vantage point to the world and gazed to take an image of the world around her. The situation looked to get worse, but with his demeanor he would merely leave the bewildered people and that would be no good.

Just as she thought her fun would end a new hope flashed on the scene. Shimmering red and blue lights flickered against the buildings sidings creating a new light show. Stepping from the car two officers dressed in tan uniforms stepped out to deal with the situation. Lucy started to make her way so she could get a view of the unfolding event. "What seems to be the problem here?" While looking to investigate the man with a series of questions used mainly on deranged drifters, Lucy crawled out of the window in a newly discovered police uniform.

"Looks like we got ourselves a five-four-three-two-one here boss." With a make believe pen and pad in hand Lucy began making a hand gesture to mimic a writing gesture.

"What are you talking about?" Feeling out of sync with his partner standing to his left, the officer turned to talk to Lucy in disguise.

"Who the hell is that?" The officer standing with the image Lucy stole stepped back in shock staring at himself.

"Pull yourself together rookie. We got to deal with this situation before we can get back to the red light district. Any of you fella's happen to know where the red light district around here is?"

"We may need back up here." The officer standing in the middle reached for the walkie on his shoulder and began to relay a message back to the dispatcher.

As Christopher was walking away he was stopped by two police officers, not something that he was in the mood for at the moment. Though he was not happy about being stopped, and put off momentarily from his mission to find and beat himself up, but for the time it was alright. It was not until a third officer approached that things began to take a horrible turn for the worse. The new law enforcer was saying things that Christopher did not understand, using numbers in ways he had never heard before, which agitated him a bit and he was not the only one either. The other officers seemed to be deciding that the new person was out of place.

The first police officer, and apparently the highest ranked of the three, moved his hand to his gun, which Christopher noticed and went straight into self-defense mode. Grabbing the officer by the front of his shirt, Christopher pulled him forward hard making solid contact between Christopher’s forehead and the other man’s nose. There was a loud breaking sound followed by the law enforcer falling to the ground with blood streaming down his face. If he was conscience then he was doing a go job of faking being blacked out on the ground. Christopher had reacted to save himself from being shot, putting a hand on your gun in the time he was from was the intention to use it and that rarely worked out well for the man from the past.

The second man sputtered a few syllables as he tried to comprehend what had happened in seemingly less then three-quarters of a second but then made a bad mistake. The second officer, his badge read Jim Kyle, Christopher noticed, made to grab his gun and began to draw it. He was fast but Christopher was faster as he clenched his left fist into a ball and struck him square in the throat, it did not collapse but it did make it hard for the man to breath for a few minutes. With that, Jim Kyle collapsed to the ground and began to try and intake oxygen sharply.

Looking to the last of the three, Christopher knew that something was wrong with this one. The woman with the pad of paper had apparently said some things that had made the other two suspicious and he could not simply ignore that. “Ah don’t know what’s wrong wit’ ya but ya had better keep yerself away from me,” Christopher was almost growling but he cared very little for whether the woman could even understand him. All that mattered was if she knew what he was implying. Taking one last look at the woman and then to the crowd he knew that he would need a distraction to make any kind of get away before more people in uniforms came around.

Drawing quickly and pulling the trigger even quicker, he fired off three rounds into the sky as warning shots as he yelled, “Git outta here before Ah start shootin’ you folks.” From the looks on their faces and the sudden rush as everyone tried to run back to their homes, vehicles, or just away from the man with the gun. “If’n ya are a sheriff or whatever that get up means ya might wanna handle this." With that he motioned around and began to walk away yet again.