AcmeShorts

Reckon The Stranger rode in to town at just the right time. McGreedy and his men had run out most of the tinpans. Those that remained, well, they may have been men once. Couldn’t tell anymore by the looks of it. Their confidence had been crushed like the dying embers of a cigar ground beneath McGreedy’s black boot. It looked like the end.

But the Stranger’s presence buoyed spirits. On the wind-swept plains of this dusty two-bit God forsaken town, hope blossomed like a Desert Lily. On his own, The Stranger cut down McGreedy’s men. After a series of exchanged glances he even shot down McGreedy himself, a gunman of some repute.

As The Stranger rode off, Little Molly, whose father lay six-feet under thanks to McGreedy, went chasing after. But there was no sign of him. Nothing but a trail of dust.

And in the dust she saw a vision of the town 100-years from now.

There was a harried, slightly overweight single-mother looking for bargains in the 2-For-1-discount bin at a Wal-Mart. A more civilized time, but diminished somehow.

She looked and the vision changed to 10,000-years later. She saw elongated humanoids with luminescent skin equipped with uniform reproductive sexual organs shopping for flying cars at a dealership staffed by android sale-bots. Weird, Molly thought, but okay.

She looked even further and the vision morphed to a million years in the future.

And the colors, such pretty, pretty colors…