The lines on the six-shooter were sleek and smooth. The dark metal of the gun almost organic in it’s beauty. Its elegance, however, belied its power of destruction. Three score men had died from it’s bullets, ten more maimed or wounded. Each man had fallen victim to a savage poetry in motion: The lonely sonnet of the gunslinger.

It was dormant now, unused for uncounted years. Laying snug in the leather holster that molded itself around the graceful contours of the gun; a gentle lover locked in a permanent embrace.

The gun itself had no thought, no emotion, nor even an awareness of the deadly purpose for which it had been created. And yet it waited. Silently, patiently waiting for that brief moment in time when man and merged into one.

Thought, heartbeat, momentum.

A flash of light, a cloud of smoke.
The sound of a tiny deadly thunderclap.
Time ceases,
A pregnant pause.
Time begins.
A lifeless corpse falls heavily to the ground.
The hero holsters his gun and walks away into the sunset, his job done once more.