"The Devil in a Red Dress"
by
William H. Chang

II
THE TOWN OF BOGART

Far to the west, where the great desert became a mountain range, was the town of Bogart. Few had ever heard of the place, and even fewer had ever been there. It was a town in the middle of nowhere, a town that had never appeared on any map. And it was Giselle Woods's destination.

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Bogart had been established many decades earlier by a band of refugees whose names were long forgotten. They had fled across the desert, running from tyranny, persecution, and slavery. Many died during the long journey and the survivors eventually came to rest near the feet of the great mountain range at the end of the badlands. There was water from the peaks of the highest mountains, tall trees to provide wood for building shelters, and there were many wild animals that roamed the lower portions of the mountains. In other words, all the essentials.

There the refugees built a town, a town which they could call their own, a place that they could call home. They named the town Bogart, after one of their own, a man who had given his life so that they could be free. Five years later no one could remember why the town was called Bogart.

For years the townsfolk lived in relative peace, with very little interference from the outside world. No one knew of the town's existence but them, and no one ever travelled that far west across the unforgiving desert. Families were formed between many of the townsfolk; there wasn't a single person in Bogart who wasn't connected in some way by blood and marriage.

Soon the population began to dwindle and decrease under a variety of causes. Some died from diseases that may or may not have been due to the in-breeding between families, some ran away from the lonely isolation that Bogart had given them, and some just plain disappeared into the night, never to be seen again - it was never clear what happened to the people that fell under that catagory, though the townsfolk assumed that they had been killed by some mysterious, crazed murderer that had once been a member of their little town.

Like the population, the resources that had once been so plentiful began to disappear. The water that once flowed so crystal clear from the peaks of the mountains became a slow trickle that dried up in the heat of the dry season. The tall trees which the townsfolk used to build their shelters were gone, replaced by hard, cracked soil that no tree could possibly survive in. And the wild animals that had roamed the lower portion of the mountains for years were gone, plain and simple.

Eventually the town was abandoned, left empty and alone with no one to watch after it. It disappeared in the minds and hearts of all who knew of it, and soon it was as if it had never existed.

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Giselle Woods was born in Bogart, exactly twenty-four years (and two months, six days, one hour) ago. It was still populated then. As a child she was orphaned after her mother died of an illness, the cause of which was never discovered. She never knew her father, but she always assumed he had died before she was born, either from an illness like her mother's or in an attempt to cross the desert to search for a better life for himself - on days when Giselle decided on that option she cursed the spinless man, whoever he was, for trying to flee from his wife and unborn child.

Without parents to care for her, Giselle spent most of her childhood living with an aunt she had never met before her mother's funeral, despite how small the population of Bogart was. She was a mean, nasty aunt who had two children of her own, though they were much older than Giselle, along with a ferocious dog that she had trained to attack people at her command. Many of the children in Bogart (along with their parents) suspected that she was some kind of witch or demon-woman. Giselle later agreed with them on that subject.

Living with that terrible woman, Giselle began to wonder if that was what Hell was like. Ten years passed in torment. Every day was filled from dawn to dusk with tiring and tedious chores which Giselle had to complete quickly and efficiently, less she wanted to have her face torn off by the devil-dog at her aunt's command. Giselle's hands and feet were always covered in blisters, and soon they became somewhat impervious to the pain.

At the age of fourteen Giselle Woods left Bogart. She crossed the desert without once looking back. And ten years later she found herself travelling through that great desert once again, only this time she was travelling west, to the town that haunted her dreams on some nights when she could swear she still heard her aunt's dog barking in the dark night.