Alex De-Gruchy is a writer, editor and narrative designer whose work has included comic books, videogames, prose, film, poetry, radio and other audio, and more. He currently works for the videogame development studio Hexworks as Lead Narrative Designer, the studio’s debut title, the dark-fantasy role-playing game Lords of the Fallen, having launched in 2023. You can find a full list of Alex’s credits to date at his website: https://alexdegruchy.wordpress.com/credits/

The Leafless Tree

I won’t stand here and lie, make some sorry excuse

One quick pull and then it’s off to Hell I’ll vamoose

‘Cause salvation don’t come in the shape of a noose

My road ends here at the leafless tree

Oh darling look what’s become of me



My shirt sticks to my skin in the cold, pouring rain

Tell me, Mr. Lawman, will I feel any pain?

The bridge is out ahead of this driverless train

My road ends here at the leafless tree

I got no hopes for eternity



Justice or murder, well now I’m not one to judge

Life hurled its slings and arrows but I didn’t budge

Besides, a broken neck’s a sure cure for a grudge

My road ends here at the leafless tree

The world will end with this nobody



No friends here in death but then I had few in life

When you’re stabbed in the back you get good with a knife

Still, even hardened men in the graveyard are rife

My road ends here at the leafless tree

No time left for fate to disagree



My dice rolled off the table the day they were cast

But the breaths I got left I won’t waste on my past

Words never got me far, who cares about my last?

My road ends here at the leafless tree

It is what it is, not what should be

Outside

When I first heard the rumour that was flying around

I flat-out rejected it point-blank

I heard it at the grocery store, the post office and bar

I heard it at the pool hall and the bank

I knew talk was all it was, that’s just how small towns are

My sweetheart could never do that to me

Our love was like the sunshine, like the stars in the night sky

Eternal and true and deep as the sea



But then I got to thinking she’s been out a lot lately

Coming home all shifty at all hours

Reckons she’s working late or seeing friends that I don’t know

And where did she say she got those flowers?

So today I followed her to a two-bit motel

And through a window, horrors did I see

Picked up a litre of whiskey on my way back home

Then started drinking and getting busy



That’s why your shit’s outside

‘Cause I know you’ve been running around on me

That’s why your shit’s outside

Better pick it up before it rains, honey



I threw out her magazines, her ornaments and make-up

I threw out her movies and her clothes

I threw out her photographs, her plants, albums and bags

Her bottles of booze, I think I’ll hang onto those



That’s why your shit’s outside

Never realised we had so much space

That’s why your shit’s outside

Now of your cheating ass there is no trace

Just a glass in my hand and a smile upon my face

Raynor’s Barn

Raynor’s barn stood quiet at the back of Raynor’s farm

Raynor was like me in that we’d never done no harm

The same went for the others, at least for the most part

But that day each of us held bloody murder in his heart

Five men waited amongst peeling paint and piles of hay

We didn’t talk, hell, there was nothing left for us to say

The gun in my hands cold and heavy as that slate-grey sky

Grim as our vow that today Cullen McKay would die



For too long Cullen had been a poison in our town

An animal who wore his hate and cruelty like a crown

A brutal, ugly lifetime spent doing nothing but wrong

A catalogue of awful sins unpunished for too long

But then the cops found the Bartlett family in their beds

Beat and cut and tied up and all shot right through the head

No killer was apprehended but everybody knew

And me and four other men knew just what we had to do



Lured to Raynor’s barn that afternoon with the right lie

Cullen walked on in and we all looked him in the eye

Birds cried out and took flight at the thunder of gunfire

Cullen’s grave was the bottom of a wild, lonely mire

I went home that night and held my wife and infant son

And wondered if I was the same man after what I’d done

The town’s new open secret faded in enough time

 No one saw the loss of Cullen McKay as a crime



Now my son is almost the age that I was back then

I still think of Cullen in that mire now and again

As for Raynor’s barn, that and the farm went long ago

Just as I and my deeds will on some nigh tomorrow