DEATH OF PURL

The death of Purl Ashblaque, the gun-slinging grunge wizard.
Very rough draft!
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Cannibalus taunted.

"Come on, dad. Weren't you summoned to punish me? That's why you're here, huh? Well, come on then, dad! I'm just a little kid, administer my punishment!"

(not written yet)

Dreyfuss struggled, spitting sand from his mouth. "Why do you keep calling him dad, you little shit, what does that make you, then..." Ignatius forced Dreyfuss's face into the sand, muffling him. Cannibalus frowned, then turned his attention back to where Purl lay in a blackened, smoldering heap.

"What the heck are you supposed to be, anyway?" He whined. "You're not real. You're just a wash-up's hero, conjured from the drug addled brain of a heroin junkie!"

Purl lay in his crater and murmured, "I'm the last gunslinging..."

Cannibalus threw his little eight year old noggin back and laughed.

"You're fiction, dad, and really crappy fiction... heck, you're worse than that, you're fictional fiction! It's Gunslinger. The last gunslinger!" Cannibalus strode forward to where Purl Ashblaque lay in the pit. He knelt down and leaned over, cupping his tiny mouth with his tiny hands, and boomed...

"YOU. ARE. JUST. PATHETIC. DO YOU HEAR ME DAD? DO YOU? YOU CAN'T PUNISH ME! YOU'RE NOT EVEN REAL!"

The landscape shook and shriveled as the Starvlings voice echoed for minutes, sucking the dry and unnurturing sustenance from it.

Silence across the dead lands. Then...

(not written yet)

Purl gripped his clef with both hands and leveraged himself to his feet.

"I'm Purl Ashblaque. I'm a... the last grungeslinging..."

Dreyfuss struggled and spat a furrow of sand away from his face, just enough to catch a quick gasp of breath. Ignatius pressed down harder with his forearm onto the back of Dreyfuss's neck, closing his windpipe even more. Dreyfuss could hear Cannibalus, muffled through the sand that pressed into his ears and mouth and nose and eyes, taunting Purl as he lay there, defeated and dying. With the last of his breath and with stars closing in around the borders of his vision, Dreyfuss bucked and spat... "I'm not going to take this, and I won't have it..."

Ignatius laughed, and with the inheaving of one of his laughing breaths, the pressure of his forearm against Dreyfuss's neck relaxed by a fraction, and Dreyfuss bucked mightily, throwing Ignatius off and away. He was free! Dreyfuss inhaled a rough, injured breath, then forced a shout, equal to his heart, out and through his ravaged lungs...

"Purl! Don't die, I'm sorry, I love you!"

Ignatius roared with fury and fell back down with all of his anger, but before Dreyfuss was slammed back into the sand, he caught a glimpse of Purl's charred and tattered form, clutching his blackened cleft, and standing.

"I'm the Grungeslinging Gunwizard."

Cannibalus laughed.

"The first and the last."

Cannibalus coughed.

"I was made for this moment..."

Cannibalus sputtered and gripped his throat.

"For I have dealt with many fools, and I suffer your kind lightly."

Cannibalus gagged, his tongue protruding.

"You adorable little bastard."

Purl drew his broken gun and fired. The explosion sent shrapnel...

(not written yet)

Cannibalus wheezed and gagged as his throat swelled grotesquely. As his neck bloated and grew, he clutched at the base of his larynx more and more frantically, until finally a fountain of black blood hemorrhaged forth from the gaping wound, and kept hemorrhaging... onto Purl, onto Ignatius, and onto Dreyfuss... slippery black blood.

Dreyfuss wrenched himself out of Ignatius's grasp, and saw...

(not written yet)

Purl lay on the pristine sand, far away from the charred crater where he'd fallen originally. Dreyfuss scrambled over the blood drenched sand to him. He gathered his broken and bloodied body into his arms and tried to hold him up so that he could breathe. He didn't say anything as he held him. They stayed that way for a long time. Finally Purl opened his eyes.

"Is this all?" Purl whispered. "I was so afraid. I'd always pictured it as being so much worse, and with so much more suffering. Death, you know." He closed his eyes and smiled. "This is more like something from a book.... I can do this. I mean, I can die like this. What a relief.... Thank you."

Dreyfuss had half expected Purl to disappear like Obi Wan Kenobi, but Purl didn't disappear... he just died, like everyone else. A frozen moment passed and then Dreyfuss realized that he was, once again, on his knees and at the end of himself. He found the idea profoundly absurd, especially when he began to weep, once again.