Caldwell Pax
CALDWELL PAX (See also, REVOLVERS) The Caldwell Pax, sometimes known as the Single Action Army, swiftly became one of the most iconic and popular firearms of all time. A single-action revolver with a six chamber cylinder, designed for durability and reliability, it proved a success at the U.S. Government Service Revolver Trials of 1872. Its reputation was truly earned, as the years that followed put it through its paces across the American west. Named for the Latin word for "peace, the firearm played its part in dominating the American continent and cemented Henry Samuel Caldwell's legacy.
The Papers of Hayden Collins
Filed under: Lynch
Story draft?
Undated
She had pinned him to the ground with giant, rusty railroad stakes. The factory must've laid the tracks to move raw materials around the large grounds. With a scalpel she had cut the flesh from his leg into long strips before peeling it off in long, blood-damp ribbons. These she dipped in a foul smelling bucket and hung from a clothesline, no more forced to carry the starched undergarments of the family whose corpses still sat around the kitchen table inside the house.
The man before her was no one - not special, not chosen - though perhaps, once, there were people who valued human sacrifice. Who saw it as an honor. But in order to believe that you had to believe in something.
His breath was shallow, and that he was still alive at all was due to the glowing, pulsing liquid she had injected into his arm while she was still playing the role of nurse, when he still thought he was a patient, about to be treated, to be healed. She laughed at the thought, and slowly pulled another length of warm flesh from his leg The nerve endings ripped and the muscles below, now exposed, convulsed. He felt nothing, which was a shame, because the pain and the terror tended to make the results more potent. Non est pax. But screaming might draw in others, and she could not afford to be found before she completed her task.
She wrote her name on a piece of cloth and sewed it in the place where his tongue had been. Lynch.
The Papers of Hayden Collins
Filed under, Lynch
Story draft?
Undated
She left only his face intact. The pieces of flesh there were too small to be of any use to her, the thick black hair would only get in the way, and at least if someone remained behind to mourn, they might be able to identify the corpse, though the man was not yet dead.
While the strips of flesh she had hung from the clothesline slowly dried in the sun, and the man slowly died, she slept. It would take a while, a day at the very least, both the man's death and the preparation of his skin. Death filled the house, and so she lay outside, curled around herself in a pile of leaves, like a dog.
When she awoke, the afternoon and the night had past, and the man had begun to moan, though he did not appear to have regained consciousness. She stepped over his body to check the drying meat. Almost ready. Once the flesh was cured, she would braid it into thick ropes. The spirit, the demon - though they did not refer to themselves that way, their word for themselves was more accurately translated as gods- must be called, bound, and carried. Subdued, it could be distilled. The process took seven days, and resulted in a liquid that she used to carefully fill syringes of metal and glass, and sold to that idiot Huffington. The eyes and lips of the corpse would be used in the summoning ceremony, and the process of binding was part speed, part spell, part patience, part wit. They thought themselves infallible, and it was their greatest weakness.
