Weird Western Short Story

Short Story Writer’s Journal: (May contain Spoilers)

I am way behind with these short story updates! Stories 15 to 20 are finished and I am writing 21 at the moment.

Story fifteen grew out of the theme, A dog digs up a body.

I needed a little more than that to begin so I used a random number generator and found the first three nouns that caught my eye on selected pages from The Best of Richard Matheson.

The nouns were: whiskey, brothel, ginger.

The first two appeared in the opening paragraph and the third popped up as an adjective in the middle of the story.

I’d only read a few of the Matheson stories at the time of writing but it’s clear his work (Twilight Zone writer, amongst other credits) influenced this story, making it a dark supernatural tale in a western setting (whiskey and brothel fed that!) as the backdrop.

Onward!

A summary listing of all short stories in this challenge can be found by clicking 52-in-52.)