Seth MacFarlane - A Million Ways to Die in the West

The three Apaches moved toward the pyre and prepared to light the kindling.

Albert spoke suddenly. “Stop!”

The warriors moved back, startled. Not because of the word he’d said but rather because he’d said it in perfect Apache.

Cochise ordered his men to stand down for the moment. They complied but kept their torches at the ready. He then addressed Albert, once again in his native tongue. “How is it that you, an asshole, have the power to speak our language?”

Albert answered with perfect diction. “I am a nerd asshole. Since the other white assholes do not like me, even though I am one of their own, I have always kept to myself. Therefore, I have read many books, know many languages, and am good at math.”

Another Apache spoke up from the group. “Quick, what is 27 times 89?”

“2,403,” said Albert.

Several of the warriors murmured among themselves, aware that the white man had answered correctly.

“Why are you out here?” asked Cochise.

“Please untie me, and I will tell you.”

Cochise turned to the two torch-bearing warriors. “Well, he speaks our language, which means there’s no reason not to trust him.”

Albert breathed a sigh of relief as they lowered their torches and cut him loose.

Some time later, Albert found himself sitting around a campfire with Cochise and about nine or ten of the other Apache warriors. It was a scenario he never would have imagined in a billion years. Nonetheless, they were anxious to hear his story and to know how and why he had wound up all the way out here by himself. He told them everything.

“…And after I escaped on the train, I rode like the wind,” he concluded, “and the next thing I remember is waking up in your camp. And now I have no idea what to do.”

Cochise regarded Albert for what seemed like a very long time, then turned and whispered something to the leathery-skinned Apache elder seated at his right. The elder slowly nodded. Cochise turned back to Albert. “I will show you the way,” he said.

He gave a wordless hand signal to one of the younger warriors. The man rose from the circle and stepped away into the darkness. He returned a few moments later with a cactus bowl containing some sort of viscous liquid. The warrior handed the bowl to Cochise, who took a sip and then passed it over to Albert.

“What is it?” Albert asked uneasily.

Cochise gave him a meaningful stare. “Your path.”

Albert didn’t recognize the fluid in the bowl, but he had a pretty good sense of what it was, having just been through this with Anna and her goddamn cookie. “I’ll freak out, I know it,” he said, giving Cochise a look of severe apprehension.

“You won’t freak out, I swear.”

“You don’t know me. I’m serious, I’m very sensitive to drugs.”

“Nerd.”

The other tribesmen joined in the taunting. “Nerd! Dork! Tool!”

Albert reluctantly submitted to the peer pressure. “Okay, fine!” He downed the rest of the liquid.

Almost instantly, the Apaches’ taunting expressions shifted to shock and alarm. “He drank the whole bowl!”

Albert froze in panic. “What?”

“You drank the whole bowl!”

“Oh, shit! Oh, shit, is that bad?”

“That was for the entire tribe!” said Cochise. “You’re totally gonna freak out and probably die. Good luck.”

Albert’s jaw hung open in terror as the world around him dissolved into a distorted hellscape.…

He tried to move his arms, but they remained locked at his side. Something was holding him in place. He looked down to see that his entire body was sandwiched between two brown, rough-looking sides of the same giant vise. Wait, not a vise… a walnut? Yes, a walnut. He was trapped in the center of an oversized walnut. But where the hell was he?

When he looked up, he saw stars. Countless stars. Never had he seen so many. But what terrified him was what he saw when he looked down: More stars. Thousands. He was floating above the sky, in the heavens, and there was no up or down. He could see, on all sides of him, other walnuts of various sizes circling the sun .

Somewhere off to his left, another light source flared up. Albert turned and was astounded to see a massive cloud of gas and dust expanding from a single point too far away to ascertain. Every color in the known spectrum was engaged in a sort of misty water ballet; there were even a few new colors Albert had never seen before . New colors? How was that possible? But before he could contemplate it further, the gas cloud contracted as quickly as it had expanded. The gorgeous multihued formation was drawn into a rapidly widening vacuum. A gaping hole opened up, like some horrific maw leading back to a dark time before creation that no living man should ever see .

And then everything was sucked inside. The walnuts, the stars, the gas and dust, and Albert. The intensity of the pull flung him free of the nut in which he’d been confined, and he found himself being hurled at blinding speed through a vast tunnel, which that seemed to twist and turn at random like an agitated earthworm being poked with a twig by a sadistic child .

And then all at once he was on solid ground. He hadn’t felt the impact, but nonetheless he was here, lying prostrate on an uneven surface. He lifted his head and spat out a mouthful of sand. He was back in the desert .

But as he struggled to stand, he saw that it was not his desert. Not the Southwest. There was no vegetation here, no rocks, no dirt—just sand. Miles and miles of sand, with dunes stretching all the way to the horizon. It looked more like the North African deserts he’d read about in books .

He was not alone. Something was here with him. A dark shape momentarily blocked out the sun, and Albert heard a piercing SHRIEEEEK. He looked up just in time to see a massive black condor descending toward him from the sky. It was moving as fast as a locomotive and appeared to be nearly half the size of one as well. But that wasn’t the only thing wrong with it. Its eyes glowed bright green, and it had fangs. No bird that Albert had ever seen or heard of had fangs. This was a hellish demon-bird that looked as though it had burst into reality from a mythical tale created by some long-dead and best-forgotten savage civilization .

Albert tried to scream, but nothing came out. So he ran. He ran as fast as he could, which in this nightmare world still felt like moving through molasses. Just as the condor was upon him, he lunged over the crest of one of the dunes, tumbled violently down a steep embankment—

—and crashed through a layer of solid ice .

Albert plunged deep into the frigid water beneath. He immediately swam for the surface but could find no opening. Beneath the solid ice, he was trapped. He began to panic again as he pounded on the frozen ceiling with both fists, his lungs aching with pressure as their final reserves of oxygen were depleted .

Then at last, just as the grip of unconsciousness tightened around his body, he found the opening through which he had fallen. With all his remaining strength, he pulled himself up out of the water, finding purchase on the snowy shoreline that rimmed the freezing pool. He stood up, dripping and shivering, and surveyed his surroundings. He was in an Arctic wilderness, and there was a blizzard in full force. Stinging snowflakes bit and snapped at his face at the same time that he became aware this was no ordinary tundra. There were tall palm trees peppering the landscape, so curiously equidistant from one another that they looked almost artificially placed. Each frond was a different color, which gave them a striking rainbow effect. But what drew Albert’s attention more than anything else was the cabin. It was his cabin. Just plopped out here in the middle of this insane, otherworldly panorama. He ran toward it, partly out of curiosity and partly out of fear of death from pneumonia or hypothermia. He reached the cabin door and hurried inside .