Better Not Look Down - Red Dead Redemption II

Part 3 - José Javi Inez Garcia?

Javi was an innocent man. He wished he had stayed that way, but the snowball effect that came with his father's demise seemed inevitable.

Though his crimes had become numerous, he didn't do the one that started him down this path. The murder of his father—technically his stepfather—wasn't what the law had believed it to be.

The day was a Tuesday—Javi recalled that part well, it wasn't a day of importance or different from the others. Just a Tuesday. Nothing special. His father had been off for the week before it happened, it wasn't a dramatic shift in character, but Javi noticed the change. He chalked it up to his father dealing with the grief of his mother's death the year prior. Which, with what he knew all these years later, that very well could've been why he did it.

His father, Paul, was sitting at the kitchen table. He had soup prepared, the pot sat in the middle of the table and two bowls on either end for Javi and himself. Javi spent the day working on shearing their sheep. Something that was a total pain in the ass. So, coming in to find a meal ready was a welcome surprise.

The boy took a seat, digging in when he noticed it was cold to the touch. How long had his father been sitting at the table? In fact, there were flies on the pot. His father looked right at him, the eyes of the devil. Just staring, as if trying to drill a hole through his son's skull.
"Dad?" Javi had asked nervously.

He was expecting an explanation, anything normal, but the response he got was a gun. His father placed the barrel of a shotgun under his chin—one he had been holding beneath the table the entire time—and with one shot Javi's life changed. The second it fired, his father's face was gone. Just red mush. Brain was on the ceiling, and blood dripped to the floor and spurted from the arteries in the now-exposed neck.

The sound of the blood being regurgitated post-mortem from the exposed hole of his father's esophagus was the calling of a nightmare, one he couldn't ever forget.

Javi adjusted his hat, leaning it down to cover his face as best as he could without just burying his face in it.
"José Javi Inez Garcia?" Javi heard from behind him, just by the tone alone he knew it was a lawman. He flipped around and his suspicions were confirmed rather quickly. "Come wit—" Javi didn't let the man finish speaking before he shot the guy in the face. The shot lodged just below his left eye.

Of course, the sound of a bullet resulted in immediate chaos as everyone in the area ran around screaming for their lives as if the shot was aimed at them. Javi took the moment of panic amongst the townsfolk to hurl himself over the bar, knocking over and breaking multiple bottles of liquor he cut himself on.

"Do you really want to die like this!?" He shouted, the men in front of his makeshift cover scoffed. He would feel worse about killing them, but the overt cockiness in their tone was something that resulted in the liquidation of most of his guilt. So, he popped up and popped them both. One in the eye, the other in the forehead. Both fell to the floor.

Javi flew out of the saloon, throwing open the backdoor so hard he shattered the window in it. The shots attracted the excess law of Valentine, nearly a dozen men running after him. Some were on horseback, some not, though they all seemed pissed.

"Find that son of a bitch!" They shouted, the law just about to have the whole place on lockdown. Without much thought, Javi headed towards the forest.
"There he is! Get that cocksucker!" A man shrilled, Javi began to pant as he sped towards the cover of the woods. He disappeared within the trees, happy to know the horses wouldn't be able to run through such dense foliage.

The sound of the law giving chase filled his ears while he desperately fled the scene, barely paying attention to where he was even stepping. He had no real plan of where he was heading, he was simply running. As the law always seemed to do, they started shooting. Bullets sprayed out like rain on a windy day, hitting trees, rocks, and dirt, all while Javi hoped he wouldn't get hit.

Unfortunately for him, he suddenly felt the burning pain of a bullet being lodged into his shoulder. He fell to the floor, hitting the dirt with a hard thud. He scrambled into cover behind a tree, holding up his pistol. He only spotted three men. The rest of the law must've turned around to take care of other business.

He leaned out of cover just barely enough to see where he was shooting, he fired his gun and hit a man. He couldn't see where he hit him, but wherever it was, it sent the man to the forest floor.

The other two men were still firing wildly. Javi promptly shot one of them in the foot, unfortunately for the man that shot made him fall—head first onto a particularly sharp rock.
"Get the hell outta here before you die too!" Javi warned the man—to his surprise—actually listened and ran away in a hurry. "Shit." Javi groaned, his shoulder soaked with warm blood. He swiped a hand over the area of the wound, looking at his palm I saw the blood. A lot of it. He needed to get help, fast.

He found his way out of the woods after a moment, his head beginning to elevate to a light state of dizziness. Javi looked around and spotted a road, a man on horseback riding down it. It was an old man, one who looked kind enough.
"Help me," Javi muttered, just barely able to speak before he passed out cold.