Earnest sauntered into town, his handkerchief placed around his neck to prevent the sand from blowing into his face. The humor of it not being used by his hands and placed below the object he sought to protect was not lost on him. He chuckled wryly, the lips attached to his face momentarily breaking their permanent grimace. The lips cracked, blood began to run down his chin. He dried the blood with his black handkerchief, and quietly swore to himself. “Damn my sense of fashion, I should have gone with the red handkerchief. Now this one is unseemly.”
The townspeople looked at Earnest with a mixture hushed apprehension and cow-eyed curiosity, since he was a well known outlaw who brought death wherever he went. To make him even more particular, Earnest always walked into town by himself, would seemingly choose a target at random after some amount of drinking had taken place, then proceed to shoot some unlucky bastard. That was on bad days; on others he would carry on cordial conversation. Well -- as cordial a conversation as anybody could have back then, in between all the burps and spitting of tobacco and lasso tricks along with the constant gunplay.
Earnest was one of the finest shots in the old west, and this was no small feat. Back then, all they had for entertainment was shooting guns and drinking whiskey, and sometimes the men would get carpal tunnel from drinking and all that would be left would be to go around back the local casino and shoot tin cans or small birds. Compared with today, where only serial killers and future cops kill small animals for fun, the old west was a place fraught with extreme danger; and along with that comes extreme folk. Earnest was the extreme folk that made other folk (dangerously extreme by our modern standards) uneasy.
The dust kicked up left and right, as his left and right feet sloshed back and forth, carrying him further down into town. Eventually he arrived at his destination, the place he was going. He was going to the saloon, of course. The saloon and general store were the two destinations people went to back in the old west. Back then all people did was eat healthy yet stale food from the general store or drink grog from the saloon when not entertaining themselves as previously described. This was life back then: eat, drink, shoot, sleep, repeat. That’s all they did, which makes you wonder how they ever got anything else done.
Earnest sauntered into the saloon, much similar to how he sauntered into town, which makes sense when you realise that if he sauntered one specific way prior, chances are that he would saunter that same specific way the next time he sauntered. It’s just common sense to presume that a man will saunter one specific way multiple times. After all, sauntering is just muscle memory. Earnest took a seat. A hush followed his sitting, as the fellow drinkers quickly realized the identity of the new patron. Only a few people continued to talk, the more drunk ones. “Hey aren’t you that cowboy outl-” one shot rang out as a formerly alive patron slumped over in their seat, dead. Blood began spilling out from the bullet hole, as humans tend to bleed when shot in the chest.
Earnest got up and began to walk out of the saloon when something unexpected happened, which wasn’t something that normally happened (or else it wouldn’t have been expected.) “Why did you just shoot him?” said a voice from the crowd. It was neither obnoxious nor meek, but rather an inquisitive voice, which made sense since the voice was asking a question, which is neither declarative or exclamatory in nature. Earnest stopped and turned, perplexed for a second. Nobody had ever asked him why he had shotton anybody. Usually, a crowd would form to gawk at the body, but nobody would ever ask the motive.
Earnest stopped and thoughtfully chose his next words. “Well,” said Earnest, “ever since I was a little kid I wanted to be a cowboy. I read about the great ranchers and their duties. I worshipped my father, one of the biggest ranchers in the entire west. Then when I was in my early teens I developed an allergy to cows. Now I can’t even go near a horse or any animal without my nose getting stuffed and eyes red as a demon in hell. I’m cursed, I’m a broken human being, and my one desire in life is a desire I can never fulfill. Because of this, I walk everywhere I go. Because of this I am doomed to never travel.” The crowd was now enthralled by Earnest’s speech. The dead man at the bar was not even on their minds, not even the sheriff was attending to the corpse. “When somebody calls me a cowboy,” said Earnest, “I get so angry that I shoot them. I’m not a cowboy, I’ll never be a cowboy, and I’ll never get over that.”
Earnest began to tear up. A townsperson patted him on the shoulder. “There there,” said the listener, “it’s not all bad.” Earnest had been humanized. Walking out of the saloon, Earnest turned to face the crowd once more. “That’s my story. I’m only an outlaw because I was born broken. If only you could understand the lonely road I walk. To see but to never touch. To see those alive doing what I crave but never will be able to taste, that tears me up and chews me up every waking moment. Perhaps in another world I’d get the understanding needed to find a place that works for me and all of you. Perhaps in that reality I wouldn’t be seen as somebody to fear, but rather somebody to try to help before I became somebody to fear.”
With those words, Earnest left the saloon, the crowd behind him, and the town in his dust. The townspeople were shocked and confused. How could a man who killed on a whim have such a tragic backstory? How could he be human just like them? All those questions and more hung over the town like an omen. Earnest never did come back to that town. Some say he moved on, but it was unlikely due to his lack of transportation. Most likely he blew his brains out or starved to death. Either way, he was never heard from again, and pretty soon everybody forgot about Earnest and his important lesson.
Nobody ever asks why school shooters did what they did.
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