She held a gun to my head. I tried my best to ignore the obvious and offered her my binoculars. “If you look closely enough, everything is innocent,” I said. The red rock was glazed with snow from last night's storm and through the glass looked otherworldly. “I stopped believing in innocence after Marlo. Now I believe in the future,” she said. “And I know when somebody wants something from me and you look hungrier than a woodpecker with a headache.” I laughed despite the pressure from the gun pressing at my temple. “Sure, I want to know something,” I said in my best tough-guy slur. “I want to know what happened here.” “What happened? They tried to build themselves enchantment,” she laughed. The gun was a forty-five automatic circa nineteen-fifty-two and the damage it could do was legendary. My universe was encountering a black hole for the very first time. But I tried to ignore the possibilities outlined in the laws of physics and concentrated instead on the present conversation. “I don't understand,” was the best I could offer. “Boynton Canyon,” she sighed, and turned the gun on herself. “Barbed wire,” she gasped. “No!” I screamed and tried to knock the gun from her hand. “The Enchantment Resort,” she almost died laughing. The sound was like a crack of thunder even though the flash was just a small electric shock. “The Enchantment Gulag's more like it,” she left her last words in my care.~Chandler Chiller 2006
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