A Short Story on the Website of
the Red Dirt Writers Society

Choices
by Betsy Randolph (Mar 2011)
 

        The hard, cold steel presses against her palm as she searches the scarred face of her rival. Would I? Could I? She questions herself in a split second. The deciding factor hasn’t surfaced as the tension in the trigger is eased.

        Did he make his final appeal to the Creator of the universe? She wonders.

        His breath now ragged; his hand and arm limp. Falling to the floor she sees the object of her fear, the knife that sealed his fate.

        “Go in peace,” she whispers, as she clutches his wrist and snaps the teeth in place. “You should never bring a knife to a gun fight.”