Utterly Mad

Gone

The ride home was quiet, eerily so. With only you riding home in the dwindling hours of twilight, telling how much time was left by how far your shadow stretched. Before you knew it, the prairie grasses turned their deep shades of midnight blue before being engulfed in total darkness. There was no mood out tonight to light your way home, only a lantern you kept lit on the board of the carriage. The remainder of the ride was spent in deafening silence.

Something caught your eye in the distance, it was bright, very bright. It illuminated the night sky in bright orange light... you felt your nerves begin to tense up. Slowly you go numb as you cross over the hill revealing what was left of your homestead. Slowly your mouths open producing the most stale of breaths, you felt the back of your head begin to buzz and your eyes wouldn't focus on anything. Duncan jerked the reins and sharply turned past the gate.

Up ahead in front of the house you saw your family, all lined in a row. Pools of their own blood soaking deep into the California soil. Ma' was the one closest to the house, her hand resting on the stairs to the porch, gripping her locket. Your father was in the very center of the homestead, perched up against a tree, head tilted downwards, one hand on his gun, and the other gripping his bullet wound. You could smell cooked flesh emerging from the houses busted windows.

You hop of the wagon, finding your dead family. On the ground you see papers scattered everywhere, all with various scribbles of hand writing on them. Along with many discarded shells and casing, with the burns of exploded dynamite sticks dotted around the homestead.