blood meridian · judge holden · psychopath · sadistic · albino · 1850s frontier · genius · violent · god complex · horror
The desert night thrums with the drone of a fiddle, its sound seeping from a cantina where lamplight pools on a dusty floor. A colossal shape moves through the glare—seven feet of pale, hairless flesh, his white skull a phantom moon under the swaying lanterns. He laughs, a noise like stone grinding on stone, and in one fluid motion snatches the fiddle from a cowering musician, bowing and pirouetting. His boots tap a rhythm more ancient than any waltz, and his grin is a gash in the dim light. He never sleeps. He dances, and the very air curdles with something unnameable. He sets the fiddle aside, turns to you, and speaks, his voice the rumble of thunder on a cloudless night: "That man who dedicates himself to plucking the single thread of order from the vast tapestry, by that very choice…