The Legend of Cowboy Thursday

Chapter 4- The First Rodeo

Something strange happened in my dream.

As what happened all those countless nights before, the shadowed figure lay in the desert, shot, blind, and alone with his assaulter. But as he lay in the sand, looking at the bright, blue sky and it's beaming sun slowly fade to black, a thick voice rumbled through the darkness.

"Come on boy, find the light."

The figure opened his eyes at that moment, sand stinging his eyes as the wind slowly came to a halt. After trying to get up, I could feel the figure knew he couldn't move a bone in his body. That was when the assaulter came into view, and looked down at him like a wounded animal.

The thing was I just didn't know what he was, or who he was,or where he even came from, but all I saw was that he was a ball of light wrapped in my clothes, standing over the black figure who continued to bleed out and saw nothing.

The light just shook its head and said:

"You're done running."

And as soon as he said that, everything slowly faded to black like the end of a movie, and I woke up.

I thought I was going to escape the fashion police of the morning, but I guess my prayers lost their magic because my mom came right around the corner to the front door. Although, she didn't laugh, or even smile, but looked at the cowboy uniform I was wearing like I was some kind of alien.

"What is that?" she said, pointing at my beat up cowboy hat.

I followed her finger, and I let out a nervous laugh.

"A friend gave this to me, as a late birthday present."

She crossed her arms and let out a suspicious noise, and I gulped pretty hard.

"It's November."

I nod my head.

"Your birthday's in October."

I start to unbutton my shirt, feeling as if I entered a game of 20 questions with a master interrogator.

"That's why it's late."

She rolled her eyes and walked past me into the kitchen.

"Pick up your sister after school today. She has film club, or something."

I tell her I do, and I get into my car and drive off, left baffled how she didn't tell me how stupid I looked in my outfit. I mean, she usually likes it when I dress nice for school, minus the cowboy hat.

It's either I didn't make it too obvious how much of an idiot I'm making myself, or something was bugging her so much, the last thing she needs is a fight with a functioning human being on his outfit choice.

So, I want everyone to know that when you walk into school, there is a giant space called the lobby, that breaks out like tentacles of one great, big octopus into many different wings of the school. Because of this, students from all over come through the lobby to get to their homeroom, or the library, or whatever. The point being no matter where you come in, the lobby is one of the first things you see.

This was the place our "Ranch" was going to meet up, and stand there in our glory for everyone to see.

So, I came to a large mass of my friends and as I hoped, Owen and Thomas were just there, in all their cowboy glory, tipping their hats at people, and making the ladies giggle or sneer as they tried their Western charm on them.

Owen turns to me with what appears to be a long piece of wheat in his mouth, and frowns at me.

"Where's the bandana?"