Like coyotes they circle, skirts brushing the dirt, twin pistols watching two sets of eyes. The high noon blood sun burns already-red skin. Birds and creatures watch from the cacti, sounding shrill cries of premature grief. This is not the first duel they’ve seen.

Dust waits to fly at the crash of a corpse.

Daisy tastes liquor and salt and sin. Millie’s as lovely as ever, or would be if not for that dark wicked weapon. Her gaze cuts the clear desert air. Blonde braids toss in the wind.

Their guns go skyward. The women count.

An apocalypse of noise.

And Daisy’s world is a pinpoint as that cruel steel slug screams across the span.

The heartbeat it takes Millie’s bullet to loose gives Daisy no time to think. No time at all. There’s no rush of childhood memories, no highlight reel of life. No time is spared even for shock.

There’s just time to watch Millie, moving like water, hand flying to red lips.

Just Millie: the rancher’s girl who whistled while she worked, who had a voice like hard rain. Who helped Daisy off her horse, hand in her hand, heat zipping between them, gazes meeting and coming alight. Who she shared a saccharine summer with, splashing in swimming holes and baking honeycakes and kissing and knowing. Shooting beer bottles—bang bang bang—as if Millie’s great aim could ever mean a thing.

How long has Daisy’s fate been sealed? She could regress to yesterday night, to that final confrontation with Millie. When under the stars Millie said there’s no comin’ back from this, darlin’ and she’d returned there was no comin’ back from this from the moment you first kissed me, Lord knows, and they’d agreed to meet right here right now, high noon, guns drawn.

Further, to the night before. The night at the saloon. She’d found Millie’s husband, Orville, at the bar. She’d chatted. Flirted. Sat too close. Flashed him a smile and a little ankle even though there was nothing on that mustached face she fancied.

Daisy always knew his eyes wandered, and he was a few drinks in, and that was all it took to take him to the back of the bar, after hours, where Millie pulled her skirts up far past the ankles.

There was no passion in these relations. There didn’t need to be. Daisy only needed a reason to take Millie to the dueling grounds. A way to pretend it had anything to do with a man. The morning before, she’d seen Millie and Orville walk down Main Street, wife heavy with jewelry, husband guiding her with a hand at the waist. The waist with the smooth tan skin for Daisy’s hands alone to explore.

But the bullet’s hurtling towards, and even if Daisy tore that greedy hand away from that stolen waist, it wouldn’t have been enough. She’d have to go back to the day they married. She would have to go back to that first time Millie and Orville came to the saloon, hand in hand, Millie swearing to Daisy it’s all for the looks, love, to make my mama quit jabberin’ about when I’ll find a husband. She would have to go back to the first time Millie heard of Orville’s wealth, eyes lighting with hunger, none of it for his love.

She’d have to return to those quiet nights in the stable, quiet but for the breathing of horses and the breathing of women, soft hay making a nest for them. She’d have to untangle her fingers from Millie’s hair, golden as sunlight through whiskey. She’d have to snuff out those twin blood suns burning on Millie’s face.

She’d have to unask is this real?

She’d have to unhear real as life.

As her lover’s bullet just barely pushed skin, Daisy knew how far back she’d have to go. She’d have to kill the first ape to fashion a spear. She’d have to find the first girl with a roiling in her gut, that dangerous burn called love, and crush it to nothing.