By Gabrielle Josefsson
Performed by Dan Puglas
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Cowboys, criminals, and consonance combine in this wacky Western adventure.
EXT. – OLD WESTERN HOMESTEAD - SUNSET
DJEREMIAH is seated in a rickety old rocking chair on the beaten-up porch of his modest ranch house. He is admiring a desert sunset while a herd of cattle grazes in the distance off the meager grasses in the fields, reminiscing.
DJEREMIAH
So, you wanna hear the story of how I became the sheriff of Buckdraw, do ya? Well, I’ll tell ya, it all started with a visit to the old homestead west of Pearltown. I was wrangling a herd uh steer down the valley towards this very town when I decided to visit my little lady friend from my days as a young’un. Barbara Virginia Mary Carol Anne Sue was her name, and what a name it was. Rumor had it that her parents just couldn’t decide what name to give her, so they mashed em’ all together. Most cowpoke wouldn’t bother with a woman with a handle like that, but not me. I’d still love her even if she had a hundred names or none at all. Barbara Virginia Mary Carol Anne Sue was as stubborn as a Texas longhorn and twice as horny. So, you can imagine my surprise when I arrived at her front porch to see her cryin’ like a baby on the front step. I rushed to comfort her, and she told me that her family’s entire fortune had been stolen when the bank of Buckdraw was robbed.
The infamous Djimmy Django gang had struck again. They were the most notorious bank robbin’ cow stealin’ train mobbin’ puppy kickin’ gang this part of the west had ever seen or heard. Three misfits who rode around on their stolen horses terrorizing anyone who laid eyes on ‘em. There was Djonah Django, the youngest of the three, who was afflicted with the worst case of Mad Cow disease known to man. No amounts of ransacked drugstore medicine or doctor-prescribed cocaine could cure im’, yet he refused to die. It made him twitchy, unpredictable and a real fiend with a bullwhip. The second was Djoodi Django, a convent reject who was on a God-given mission to sow chaos wherever she went. The psycho nun gunslinger of Our Lady of Unfortunate Women’s Convent house. She’d made a name for herself by single handedly ransacking brothels, saloons, and banks. Proclaiming that her mission was to rain bullets upon the serpents of the West and that when God gives you his toughest battles, so too does he give you his biggest gun.
"They were the most notorious bank robbin’ cow stealin’ train mobbin’ puppy kickin’ gang this part of the west had ever seen or heard."
Finally, there was the big man himself. Djimmy Django: fiercest lean in the west. That slimy son of a second-hand salamander was famous for strutin’ into town like a scoliosis-riddled rooster. His chin rested squarely on his chest, back bent back like a tabletop and his crotch thrust way forward like he was liftin’ his whole body up by the pockets of his chaps. Djimmy Django had never lost a duel, his head and chest were too low to the ground that no man could shoot im’ and so he was free to wreak havoc wherever he went. I’d heard the stories, but I knew what I had to do.
I rode out to Buckdraw the very next morning and made an open challenge to the Djimmy Django gang. Duel me at sundown, winner gets the town and everything in it. No tricks, no backup, just ten paces and one bullet to decide Buckdraw’s fate. They’d yee’d their last haw round these parts and I was gonna make sure of it. Sure enough, Djimmy sauntered under the saloon door at high noon that very day and accepted the challenge. Djonah and Djoodi stood on the sidelines, contemplatin’. Djonah seemed to have a rare moment of reprieve from his constant twitchin’ and shakin’. Sizin’ me up before spittin’ a mouthful of foam into a nearby spittoon. Djoodi counted the shotgun pellets of her makeshift rosary, no doubt askin’ God if I needed to be taught a Smith and Lesson. They had no reason to believe that Djimmy would lose. After a firm handshake from Djimmy the gang left the saloon without much ruckus and the duel was on.
"They’d yee’d their last haw round these parts and I was gonna make sure of it."
Djimmy Django Gang and I met on main street just as the sun dipped behind the mountains. We loaded, we turned, we walked ten paces, then we shot. Djimmy’s shot barely missed but mine struck home. I didn’t kill im’ but I blew the nose clean of his face, the message was clear. There was finally someone in town who knew how to shoot below the waist. The unshootable Djimmy Django had done got himself shot by a lowly cattle rancher. The other degenerates panicked and scrambled to collect their boy. I fired a couple more warning shots into the air in case Djoodi and Djonah got any funny ideas and added a “Go on, git!” for good measure. As they rode out of town I yelled out “Y’all’d’ve never gotten into this mess if you’d kept to yerselves!” and no one has seen em’ in these parts ever since. As for Barbara Virginia Mary Carol Anne Sue and me, we used the reward money that I’d earned chasin’ those hooligans outta town to have ourselves a nice little wedding and buy a little house together. I was named Sheriff of Buckdraw for my exploits, and we’re expecting our little Djuliette or Djoseph to be born next fall.
Gabrielle Josefsson
Gabrielle E. Josefsson is an emerging freelance writer from Vancouver Island. She specializes in horror, fantasy, and sci-fi, but is also branching out into creative non-fiction. Her work has previously been published in the Nosleep Podcast and she is a Fiction editor as well as a contributor here at GOOEY. She loves anything involving gods and monsters (Greek mythology excluded) and believes the secret to being a good writer is read your preferred genres frequently and to wake up in abject terror between 1:00-3:00am at least twice a week.
She can be contacted at Gabrielle.E.Josefsson@gmail.com for professional inquires.
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