The Diary of Cameron Mantle

A Red Dead Redemption 2 Short Story

Entry 1

The sunrise looks the same as all the others. It’s nice, of course. Not a sight I mind seeing every morning. But I’ve seen it so many times now. How many times can you see something beautiful before it begins to lose what makes it special? I suppose it’s been about three weeks since I left, so perhaps that’s the answer.

They aren’t following me. That I am sure of. If they were they would’ve found me by now, and I would’ve seen them already, or I never would have seen them and they’d just have killed me without a second thought. But I’m still here, alive, running.

I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to come to terms with what I’ve done. I can’t face the truth of it, not yet, not with it still so fresh in my mind. My hands tremble if I dwell on it too long, my mouth turns dry and my eyes wet, and the world around me seems to fade away, sounds fading and sights blurring and everything losing meaning. At night I look up at the stars and try to sleep but all I can see is her face, her beautiful face that I fell in love with. Her smile. The red in her lips, on her cheeks that wrinkled in that way they did when she smiled. The red in her eyes, leaking in from behind her brain. The red pouring from her mouth, from the hole in her chin. The red on my hands.

I threw the gun in the river. I couldn’t take it with me, not knowing what it had caused. What I had caused.

Entry 2

My travels have proved easier than I thought. Slow going, but manageable. Plenty of game in these parts, though I expect that won’t last as I continue north. Not much else has been easy about it, in any case. I’ve never been further from home than I am now, I’m sure of it. I grew up on that ranch, my daddy’s ranch he gave to me when he passed, that I would’ve given to my son had he come to exist. He never would have, I suppose. What will happen to it now that I’m gone, and won’t ever return? Will it go to the bank? Perhaps others from town will bid on who gets to overtake it. If anyone wants to. The Lindells, perhaps. It doesn’t matter anyway.

I don’t know what I’ll find in the mountains. Somewhere to live the rest of my days, of which I don’t think there will be too many. If the remainder of my time here on earth is spent starving while I wait for the next rabbit or deer to pass by, alone and without the chance to burden, to have it or to be it, and suffering for the mistakes I’ve made but was forced to choose, then so be it. If I weren’t such a coward I would have ended the suffering along with her, but I could not. I cannot. All I can do is ride, and live, and think. I can’t stop thinking, as much as I wish I could.

Would I have done anything differently if I could? I am not sure. But I expect I’ll ask myself that question every day for the rest of my life.

Entry 3

I never even learnt any of their names. There was a clear leader, the one who did all the talking, and maybe five or six others. A woman, too. I can still see some of their faces, but not clearly. But I never asked their names, and they never told me. Not in the few times I saw any of them. First at the ranch, the day they came through town, came out to our home to terrorise and belittle us, me, until they laid eyes on Lynne and everything changed, their voices and their faces. And why wouldn’t they? It’s how I felt every time I saw her. Struck by her incredible beauty. Drawn in by who she was beneath it. Heartbroken by her sadness when it began, when it only came up every now and then to pull her into a long sleep or quiet hours of crying, when it grew and became routine, became all she was at the end. Grief she inflicted upon herself, as she would have liked others to believe. It was never her fault, nor mine, nor anyone’s but the Lord’s. I don’t blame him. Blame is pointless. All I could do was persist. We were given much in our life, and likewise we had some taken away. I could live with it, though it hurt. Lynne couldn’t live with it, not in any way that either of us were used to. That’s how this all started, I reckon.

Each time they came back I grew more concerned. They hadn’t done anything yet, but I could see they weren’t just going to leave us alone. They wanted Lynne. I told the sheriff, hoped he’d do something about it, but they couldn’t send someone out to the ranch just to wait around for them to show up again, is how he put it. They were staying in town, but weren’t causing any real trouble to the point the law was going to do anything about it. All we could do was wait, at least that’s what I thought.

I hated myself when they took her. I knew I should’ve done more. Should’ve run away, or taken Lynne somewhere safe and gunned them all down when they showed up. Anything. Instead I came home to a goddamn note they forced her to write. I don’t remember much else after that. I was angry. Everything inside me was on fire, and hurting.

I’d get her back. I’d find her and save her from them, I told myself, even if it cost me my own life. What else could I do?

Entry 4

I always preferred the cold. Though I have never seen snow, and perhaps that kind of cold will be too much, not like the early mornings on the ranch, the fields still dark and wet with dew. Some mornings it’d be too cold to rise and I would just lay in bed with Lynne and we’d keep each other warm. Her smile on those mornings, candlelight flickering over her face, our bodies together as we fulfilled our marital duties. Thinking about it, I miss it. Even before all this, it was a long time since we’d shared a morning like that. She used to try still, for me, I reckon, but it was never the same for her. She never directly said it, but I know the thought of doing it without ever being able to start our family tore her heart in two. Eventually she stopped being there altogether with me when we shared our bodies, and so eventually I stopped forcing her into it.

I do regret what I’ve done. I’ve been thinking on it all the past few days. There isn’t much else for me to do. And I regret it all. I wish I could say I didn’t because I know I did what I had to. She needed to be free, and there was no other way to get that for her. She wasn’t happy for a long time, long before they came and took her, forced her to go with them just to keep me safe. But still I regret everything that led to it, regret that I had to do it, why I had to do it and everything about it, and of course doing of it itself. But it was the only thing I could do.

I regret not being able to go with her. I pulled that trigger to free her and had every intention of following straight after so we could both be with the Lord but when I saw her and held her and cried and knew she was gone as quick as the bullet went through her I knew I wouldn’t be able to do the same for myself. I tried, the barrel hot on my skin as I held it there, I don’t know for how long but I held it, pushed it, tried to pull the trigger but I just couldn’t.

When I left her there I knew I’d done the right thing, except no part of me feels better knowing it. Maybe even feels worse. I don’t know what I’m supposed to feel, or if I’ll ever feel anything normal ever again. I expect not.

Entry 5

It’s tough living up here. I don’t expect I’ll last too long. I only see some deer on rare occasions, and I am not the best shot with a rifle, so my hunger grows worse each day. I even saw a grizzly one morning, off in the distance. I raised my rifle for only a second before I quickly changed my mind. There’s not much I could do with the corpse of such a beast, even if I managed to kill it. I watched the monster for a while before I went home for more canned beans.

There is no shortage of monsters in this world. I’ve known that for a long time, since I was a child and the sickness took mother. But when you come face to face with monsters that look just like you it’s an altogether different experience, and one I wasn’t prepared for when it happened. I don’t think I could ever be prepared to face those people, before or since.

It takes a special kind of monster to lure an innocent, weakened woman from her home just to spare her husband’s life. To be done with as they pleased, as if she was simply a product to be used and forgotten. But they didn’t forget her. If only they had.

It hurt more than I thought it would when I found her. Even after weeks of not seeing her, only having our photograph to study, to let others see how beautiful she was and lead me closer to her whereabouts, when I finally found her and saw her again I felt my heart sink in my chest like it had gained a dangerous weight. It broke any will I might have still possessed.

It didn’t hurt as much as when she spoke. Hearing the things they’d convinced her of, that she really wanted to be there, that they’d never threatened my life in order to go with them and that it had nothing to do with me at all. I couldn’t believe it, I didn’t, and I do not. Even if she did believe it, I know it wasn’t true. Only monsters like them would change such a pure, perfect girl. She told me she wanted to be there, that our life had led to nothing but pain and misery and there was nothing left for us together but more of the same, and she could at least escape it and try to enjoy some other way of life while her heart was still beating.

It hurt to hear it all, hurt to see her crying like that. I cried too. But it hurt more knowing how quickly they’d changed her, how quickly they made her say it all to me so I’d leave her alone and let them continue to do with her as they pleased. That hurt even more than having to free her. I could live with that, as painful as it would be, as painful as it is, but never with knowing what life she’d be forced into under their instruction.

She begged me not to. To leave her to live her life, this new life they’d told her she wanted, that she may have even believed she wanted herself. But I knew her better than that. Better than they ever could, better than she did at that point. And I knew she couldn’t live her life like that. She deserved far better, but I couldn’t give it to her. All I could give her was an escape.

 Entry 6

I thought this would be the place I could live the rest of my life in peace, alone, about as much as I deserve. But the weeks of endless cold and hunger have proved difficult in a different way than I’d expected. I thought I would die out here, that I wouldn’t even last a week. Yet here I am.

I came up here to run from the gang who stole Lynne away from me and herself. To run from my life, from myself, in some way. But I can never run from myself. And if I’m too stubborn to lay down and die in this wilderness, what else is left for me?

This life simply is not for me.

I can’t return home, I know that. The ranch isn’t my home in any case, as it’s Lynne’s and mine. It would be too difficult to pretend otherwise, to try to return to how things were before all this. And they’ll look for me there. If the monsters who took her haven’t already torn the place apart, and if the law isn’t looking for me after what I’ve done, though I don’t expect that to be the case. But I don’t think I’m ready to die. I am ready for change. For a new life, where I can put all this behind me and continue on, find a new ranch, a new home, perhaps a new woman, one who can give me the family I deserve.

I believe I’ll head west. I’m not partial to the heat, of course, but it seems like a good point of difference to begin a new life, one where no one knows me, where I can be any man I decide, the one I’ve always known I can be.

I feel good about this. My life with Lynne was stagnant, I’ve realised. Perhaps by freeing her, I’ve freed some part of myself I didn’t even realise was trapped, too. It feels good, as if I have relieved myself of some heavy burden, and I can finally begin anew, as I’ve always needed to.