Tales from the Vault

The Cowboy Mystery

First of all, there needs to be a tiny bit of explanation. When I was little, my brother and I had a fantasy world consisting of four major regions. The capital of this unnamed world was the gloriously-dubbed Car City, which was modern and vastly wealthy and full of technology (mid-2000's technology, that is). Car City was ruled by the snobby nobility of the Leida Estate, who also dominated the world's currency system and owned money-printing machines. Then there was Roseland, which we described as an "in between" place. The lifestyle there was roughly like the 1940s or 50s. The main adventures in Roseland came from an evil orphanage worker who kidnapped children and sold them. Then there was Apple Brook, later renamed Broadway for reasons unfathomable. This was a pioneer place where people wore 19th-century clothes, lived in cabins, rode horses, and went to one-room schools. Finally, there was Bear Country, originally the world our stuffed animals "lived" in. The citizens there worshiped the Sun Bear and for motives unspecified were constantly engaged in civil war. I actually created a Bear Country alphabet and language that was not only cringe-worthy but monumentally inconsistent.

Anyway, to those of you still reading this, my brother and I started crafting this world when I was 6, and we played it with stuffed animals and LEGO until I was 9, when I started writing stories about it. Until I was 11 or 12 every single story I wrote took place in this one weird, jumbled world, and most of my countless characters knew each other in one way or another. One of my regular characters was named Michael Jhonson. This was not a misspelling of Johnson. I was constantly justifying that it was a completely different last name than Johnson and I pronounced it like it was German. I have no further explanation. He lived in the 19th century world and what you're about to see is one of the stories from his point of view. I wrote three stories total about his completely personality-less family. I think this one was the second. This one in particular was written while I was evidently going through some weird cowboy and horse stage because every.single.thing in the story is cowboy-themed.

Brace yourselves (and your brain) because this is about to get bad. 

So without further ado....

(My present-day comments are in bold.) 

The Cowboy Mystery

(Written right around my 10th birthday) 

Chapter 1

Something special was happening today. I knew it the moment I woke up. Then I remembered it was my birthday. My older sister Cameron and my little brother Noah were already up, and Cameron had made up her bottom bunk with the pillows neatly propped up on the headboard. Noah's wooden toys were scattered on the floor. I could smell breakfast cooking. I scrambled out of bed, remembering too late that I was on the top bunk. I tumbled to the floor, landing on Marxie's tail. Marxie is our puppy. (What kind of name is Marxie? Are they Marxists?) Marxie let out a squeal of pain and skidded across the floor. I flew over to him and patted him intill (original spelling) he stopped trembling. Than (original spelling) I ran out of my room with Marxie playfully nipping at my heels.

From this moment on just assume all misspellings/improper grammar usages are original because they were too good not to keep. I didn't edit any of this. 

I plopped down in a chair. "Happy birthday!" Mom said as she served blueberry muffins.

I rushed through breakfast. "Can I open presents now?!" I asked eagerly.

"Go ahead!" Mom laughed.

 Dad placed three packages in front of me. The first was a book of astrononts. (This was my brazen attempt to spell astronaut) The book had all the constalattions, glow in the dark planets, and information about astrononts. "Thank you!" I said happily. "It's my dream to be an astronont!"