Certainty
A story about what remains when order replaces judgment.
The Novel
Certainty is a work of literary Western fiction set in Hollow Creek, a town that responds to an external threat by reorganizing itself around procedure, enforcement, and silence.
What begins as precaution becomes policy. Personal judgment is replaced by administrative logic. Violence emerges not as spectacle, but as a side effect of systems that value function over mercy.
As the town stabilizes, memory is rewritten, dissent becomes liability, and kindness quietly exits. The bridge holds. Work happens. And the human cost of certainty is absorbed without comment.
Excerpt
The town did not notice what it had become. That was the final proof.
Morning arrived the way it always did, light spilling into Hollow Creek in pieces that fit the shapes it was given. Smoke lifted from chimneys. Wagons creaked. A voice called a name and was answered.
The bridge functioned.
Men crossed without stopping long enough to be remembered. Names were offered when asked. Permission was granted. The planks took the weight and released it. No one lingered at the rail anymore. There was nothing to see.
Context
This novel examines how communities construct self-sustaining systems of control, not through ideology, but through repetition, language, and compliance.
Certainty does not offer resolution or redemption. It observes what survives when ambiguity is eliminated—and what that survival costs.
Discussion
Availability
Coming soon.