rustedtusks.com

We'd seen most of this before, but now we have confirmed that somebody else wandered in at the critical moment. Perhaps, as had been said, this stranger even wears a wristwatch.

Somebody else had to be there when Tony Ray taught Brice the ways of the world, or so it would seem. I don't remember if it was ever said, explicitly, that Still Life with Wrist Watch and Shotgun Shells was drawn at the same riverbank where Tony Ray took Brice, but I'd always believed it was.

Now we have to wait for the Next Thrilling Episode to figure out:

Who is the new guy?

Was he following them down to the river for some reason, or is he just incredibly unlucky?

Has he appeared before? Initiate Scanning All Prior Pages for Traces of Mystery Character!

But the real question that bugs me at the moment is what does Brice do here, and why? It would appear he has a rescuer, you see. The natural thing to do would be to accept rescue and let bad things happen to Tony Ray.

The situation may be too complicated to do the natural thing, though. Brice can't go to the police for obvious reasons. He might just as well walk up to Mr. Deighton and hand him a shiny new skinning knife. But in the heat of the moment it would seem he has a lot of reason to side with the newcomer, get Tony arrested or killed, and try to make the best of it afterward. It appears he did not.

Why?

My best guess is that this newcomer was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Looks like he might've been out poaching. Not many folks go hunting at night, unless what they're hunting is not four legged but two.

While Tony was busy dealing with this inconvenience Brice might've escaped. I doubt he did so on his own though cause of the way he's bound with wire. Maybe Tony hid while the newcomer freed Brice and then before Brice could warn the guy, Tony attacked and killed him while Brice ran. As for the reason Brice didn't go to the police about Tony? Brice still had a price on his head and didn't want to bring attention to himself. That and a lot of what Tony told him while raping him probably sunk in (pun intended). Or it could've been just having such a close brush with death made him change his ways.

This page is really great because the visual blending of the past and the present is achieved with the technique of floating panels like flat shards of ice (representing the present conversation with Sam) seemingly floating on a dark, cold river of the past (as we watch the events by the creek unfold in his mind)...

I can only imagine that Brice's thoughts are essentially just like that... Fragmented, painfully cold, dizzy with his current situation, yet frozen in that past moment as even the present situation brings back smells (the cigar) that remind him of Tony-Ray...

I just love the random arrival of the gun-bearing stranger... I wonder, did he see them enter the woods, and then follow them thinking that maybe they were easy prey for a murder/robbery? Perhaps that's why Brice was willing to blow him away and then point the gun at Tony-Ray... But then, how DID Brice get untied, unless the random stranger was kind enough to do so?... And for that matter, how did this stranger manage to subdue Tony-Ray,....with a shotgun butt to the head? A moment of unconsciousness?

You're right though "AMountainLion",...it could be Brice, once whatever went down went down, just couldn't pull the trigger on the pig that had changed his life, and his own sense of self, in such a dramatic yet horrific way...

It'll be interesting to see how the details of both these encounters pan out,...the past AND the present...

Jadugara ^_^

One thing is for sure...
http://www.rustedtusks.com/slop/index.p ... 8&p=1&nc=1

That is... if weird little fever dreams can be trusted.

We KNOW the intruder with the shotgun. He has been in the story from before... or at least that is what the author has explicitly told us in the forum so many years ago. This little mystery has been bothering me all these years. Tony and Brice were followed out to the river. Sam and Uthalla have reason but are headed North with what they believe they came for. Who else would have it out for Brice? With a canine appearance? And a fancy watch? And dark fur on the hands? Every character I looked through and I can only match up at most 3 out of 4 and it's driving me nuts! There is one character that I strongly suspect and one that I dread to be the long-speculated corpse.

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"Y'know, if nothing else, living here has incredibly sharpened my 'Hey, there's someone coming for my dick!' defense skills." -

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"Popular lies have ever been the most potent enemies of personal liberty. There is only one way to deal with them. Cut them out, to the very core, just as cancers are..." - Ragnar Redbeard, "Might is Right" (1890).

Wotan, we no longer have access to that discussion because of the great of '06. I understand that it is over six years ago and even some of the people who were around then don't remember but I have been rather obsessed with this mystery and each clue that relates to it. Matter of point, the first post I made after the new forum was up was about . I may have followed the story arcs of Tony Ray's dream/nightmare girl, the redemption/manipulation of Rita, the betrayal of Marian, and the criminal odd couple, but it has always been that unidentified corpse first and foremost in my mind screaming in an ungodly voice "thou shalt search out no plot point before mine!"

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"Y'know, if nothing else, living here has incredibly sharpened my 'Hey, there's someone coming for my dick!' defense skills." -

My take on all this?

Yuppers, that's Brice with the shotgun. And that's where the interloper fucked up.

What might have happened?
Tony got ordered off of Brice and "Unwrap his hands and muzzle"
Then "Down on your knees Vepyr."

And that's where things went horrible wrong for the knight in shining armor.

Why do police hate domestic violence calls more than anything else?

"Yeah, he wired my muzzle shut while full of razor blades....and fucked me....but he loves me, otherwise he would have just killed me."

Uncle.

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Emoticons are the wheelchair ramps for the humor impaired.

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Emoticons are the wheelchair ramps for the humor impaired.