Dirty Western Men and Tattered Tan Paper

I was standing in a hallway in Goldspohn, upstairs. The walls were stucco, and the building was done like a Spanish mission. A dirty, angry, foul-mouthed man out of an old Western movie stood next to me, roaming the hallway, guarding me. He was missing teeth, his face was covered in mud. He hobbled on a gimp leg and dressed all in black. Hair was missing from his scalp and he attempted to cover it up with a hat. He was emaciated, weak, and angry.

I heard you approaching by your boots. The boots I'll always remember. I heard you clomping down the hallway and I turned the corner I was leaning against and quickly jerked my head back when I saw your face, avoiding eye contact like I had been for the last month.

The dirty, foul-mouthed man that was full of hate came and stood next to me, holding his body right at my side, touching my shoulder. He blocked your path down the hallway and something you were carrying got caught in him.

"Please don't...you'll rip it. I don't want you to rip it. It's a project; it's important to me," you said as what you were carrying got caught in his arms and legs.

You stopped after he moved aside, as if you had something to say to me. Tears started falling from your eyes; you couldn't stop.

I pulled you into a nearby stairwell and before I could ask you what was wrong you embraced me, held on to me, and cried into my shoulder. Your tears were staining and soaking the shoulder of my shirt. I kept holding on, trying to ask you what was wrong.

You released me, faced me, and gave me what you had been carrying, the object that the man with me was trying to ruin. It was everything. It was a diagram, a model, a poster, a card, a letter. It was everything that I loved and valued. It was all of me and everything that I was and wanted to be, everything that I tried to be for everyone, every expectation and goal for myself that I could never live up to. It was all of this on a piece of crumpled tan paper that the man had tried to ruin when you got caught in him in the hallway. You had somehow made it for me, and you were going to give it to me. It was going to be a gift.

The man was gone. He hadn't followed us into the stairwell and it was so much easier to not be angry when he wasn't there. It was so much easier to not feel hateful when he wasn't there guarding me, roaming around me, covered in dirt and screaming obscenities at the injustices he had faced over the years.

When I woke up, it was harder to be angry. In losing that anger, I fear I'll lose any protection, any shield, any defense that I might have gained. That anger and that vile tongue has always been my defense. It has always been roaming around me and attempting to protect me.