The Wake

[this post is part 3 of a 156-part series, "The Twilight Zone"]

Synopsis:

This episode begins in the American west, the old-time west of the Western. We meet the town drunk, Al Denton, a man who has no money and must live on the charity of the men of the town, who will buy him drinks if he amuses them with a song.

Denton used to be a champion gunman, but some traumatic event in his past shifted him from that path to the one he follows now. He does not sing very well, but sexy ladies feel bad for him anyway.

One day, Denton finds a gun in the dirt, and, drunk out of his mind, he picks it up and begins to carry it with him. One of his tormentors, a tall thin man in black with thick lips around a mouth that slices his face open from cheek to cheek, ragged strands of hair stylishly swaying down below the brim of his hat, notices the gun and instead of soliciting a song from Denton, he jokingly challenges him to a duel.

The man in black poses with a hand against the saloon, his face amused and coyly expectant, welcoming the phallosymbolic bullet it knows is coming its way.

Denton makes wild drunken gestures with his gun-hand while explaining to the man that he doesn’t want any trouble, and then Denton’s gun goes off, shooting the gun right out of the man’s hand.

The men of the town rush Denton into the bar to celebrate his victory, and the man in black rushes in behind them, legs and back bent with anger and face wild, demanding a rematch. Again, Denton gesticulates and accidentally fires, this time shooting the chandelier from the ceiling, and it falls into the man in black, knocking his gun out of his hand and him to the floor. This whole time there has been a man standing at the door of the bar watching, and at this he smiles all knowing and satisfied and walks away.

Scruffy, drunken Denton declares that he thinks he will have a shave, because he is a badass.

The man in black stands up indignant, and gets all in Denton’s face, but Denton just slaps him full across his thick smooth cock-hungry lips. At this, the sexy lady who has been sympathetic to Denton from the first pulls off her strapless dress and stands before him naked but for her high-heeled shoes, her hair sculpted and face made up and ears dangling masses of glittering metal, and she fucks him right there on the floor in front of everybody while they watch silent, hands down their pants and their faces contorted into twisted hungry sad shapes.

In his postcoital confession to the sexy lady, it is revealed that Denton used to be the fastest gun in town, and he was constantly forced to duel every fast and fancy man who owned a gun. What drove him to drink was when he killed a 16-year-old in a duel, leaving the kid there in the dirt on his face bleeding to death with Denton’s bullet in him. And now he knows that the stream of challenges will begin again, only this time he’ll be the one shot to death, because he’s not up on his skills.

As the barber begins to give him that shave, we can see a reflection in the window of the barber shop: that same man who watched the duel earlier is watching the shave now, smiling the same haunting smile. And the screen fades to black.

With his face smooth and his hair combed, Denton is quite pretty.

Two men walk into his house and one of them says, “Tall man. Doesn’t usually wear his gun. Blond hair.” A reverent description of the revitalized Al Denton. And then he describes an opponent who has challenged Denton to a duel. Denton replies, “Tell Mr. Grand I’ll be there tomorrow night. I’ll wait for his pleasure.”

Denton tries to practice his gunwork but his hands are all shaky and he can’t hit anything. It really was just drunken luck the night before.

And then that night, there’s the fucking guy who keeps watching Denton, a rather fanciful-looking man in a black frock coat, staring up at Denton’s window, smiling his creepy smile. Denton runs down and confronts the man: “What are you doing, you creepy pervert, just standing there leaning on your cart with your hip jutting and that smile on your face like you’re looking at my body under my clothes and you like what you see?” The man informs Denton that he is a traveling salesman and he understands Denton’s predicament, that he has a potion, an elixir, a male enhancement formula which will fix Denton’s inability to perform. It only lasts ten seconds, but if you time it right that’s all you need. The man insists that Denton try the potion out now, so that he knows how to use it later: “Let’s test the merchandise.” And Denton drinks it down.

Indeed, ten seconds was all he needed.

In return for his service, the man gives Denton another potion for his engagement the following evening, for no charge.

The next night, at the bar: in walks a young blond vision of adonis, smile radiating from the shining-white teeth in his creaseless face. This is the man Denton must grapple with in the grueling embrace of intimate man-to-man conflict. Denton knows he can win. If he drinks the potion down at just the right time, ten seconds will be all it takes. But the other man, this smooth white figure, this unmarred tribute to human beauty, he has the same potion! They both drink it at the same time, then stand there staring at each other’s bodies, concentrating, concentrating, until at once, at precisely the same time, they shoot their pieces from each other’s hands and stand there breathing heavy, spent.

The two champions, mutually victorious, come together for one final moment, their faces close, and decide that their time together has blessed them both, and that man who gave them their enhancement potions, he smiles knowingly at them with lecherous eyes, having had the best vicarious orgasm of his life through their performance, and then he trots away on his horsecart full of viagra to the next town, and the next pair of men he can trick into fucking in front of him for his pleasure.

The end.