removed due to revision and submission. Thanks for the comments, folks!

Wow. That's a good "wow".

I was going to be in. Wrote the first two paragraphs. Then had nothing. Called myself back out of the Challenge, figured I had nothing to give, but this morning I got up, frustrated that I hadn't had any writing juice the last couple of weeks, and decided to do this instead of working. So for the first hour of my work day I did this instead of working. Picked up where I left off and just let the story lead me.

I'd like to do a second draft. There are some bits that are really bugging me, now that I look it over.

Grim. Gritty. Powerful. Wow.

I tweaked mine for a couple of days and finally had to let it go.

Do another draft - I would like to see what you change.

Amazingly powerful stuff.

I am floored by this.

Cheers, Eric.

Have you guys done a lot of these writing challenges?

This is the first one. I definitely want to do more.

I will definitely participate in more.

This was a nice kickstart. I'm tweaking a new draft even now and expect to have a more polished version for my files by this evening. I was kind or surprised where this went, and that's always a pleasure.

So yeah, you can count me in on future challenges, or whatever you call them. I always like a writing challenge.

Nice story, Eric. Dark and sad. You really feel the main character's loss

I like this. It feels like a 60's-70's motorcycle-gang type story, just replace the horses with choppers. The tone, to me, lends itself incredible well to genres. And what are motorcycle flicks if not modern-day westerns?

Nice one, Eric. Gots to 'preciate the rawness of this.

All righty. This was very good. The story was driven by physical action and movement, with the emotional backstory and characterization coming in gradually.

I was really unhappy with some clumsy language I spotted after reading it post-posting, so I went ahead and made some adjustments. No need to reread it if you're not inclined -- the story itself is unchanged -- just figured I'm mention it. I felt like the cadence was off in places; I wanted a sense of claustrophobia, but I didn't allow for any breathing room in the text. Some lines also stumbled over themselves. I think my adjustments resolved some of that, but I'll probably end up going over this again before calling it done.

(In fact, I'll have to. There is a glaring flaw I only just noticed tonight but couldn't be arsed to fix yet.)

Anyway, REVISION IN AT DEADLINE!

This was fun to write. When I sat down Monday or Tuesday the first line came quick and led to those first two paragraphs. I knew I had a massacre of some sort, but I didn't know what it was. Figured it'd be some sort of "injun" thing, but when I thought I had no juice in the tank and bailed on the challenge I stopped thinking about it.

So this morning when I dove back in, I did so blind. Figured the story would tell me when it was over. The bad guy showed up and I was like, "Hey, that's cool. How is this going to play out?"

And then the WIFE came into it quite unexpectedly, and it was pretty clear it would end with violence. Wasn't sure where it was going, but knew it would be ugly. The violence that truly ended it, the titular last shot, I didn't see that happening until I wrote it. It just sort of happened. Once I got those words down, I knew I was finished. No place to go from there.

Thanks for doing this, Monk. This was very enjoyable. I very much look forward to reading the new entries since I last looked.

Hey, thanks for the comments, folks. Much appreciated.