Saloons, spittoons, spurs, shootouts and… cowboys kissing??
Let’s write some Wild West stories together and see what happens!
During the last stream, a subscriber requested that we write some Wild West stories.
Watch the video here or scroll down for the stories.
The first prompt was: A brothel decides to take up arms against outlaws to protect their town when all the cowardly cowboys run away.
Here’s what we came up with for it:
As soon as word came to Cobbleton that the Iron Casket outlaws were on their way, all the cowboys in town up and scooted away on their ponies.
“No way am I stickin’ around for them!” Johnny “Quick Fingers” McMann yelled as he galloped off into the dusty desert. “Word has it the Caskets made a deal with the devil, ain’t nothin’ can kill ‘em, not even a silver bullet.”
Quicker than a jackrabbit could spit, all the residents of Cobbleton were left behind to fend for themselves. They stood out on the porches of their homes, saloon, blacksmith, five-and-dime, lookin’ mighty hopeless. Even the mayor, Elliott Cobbler himself, stood forlorn holding his shoe-makin’ tools, staring off into the sunset. Its light stained the sand scarlet, heralding the demons’ imminent arrival.
Only one building stood strong. Madame Ma’Lady’s Chastity Belt Brothel, with its three-story Victorian gables and balconies and maroon-painted wood with white shutters and frills. Eleven badass ladies stood poised on the porch, decked out in corsets and hoop skirts the size of buffalo. Ammunition belts crossed their lace-and-cotton dresses, and they each had a Winchester in hand, a Derringer stuffed away in their stockings, and a six-shooter hidden in a place that would make the town priest blush.
“Y’all get your raw hides inside for safety,” Ma’Lady yelled to the townfolk. “We’ll batten down the hatches here.”
As much as the town usually pretended the brothel didn’t exist, for now they had no complaints. They slammed their doors and windows and let the hot, sandy wind blow down the main road like a lonesome phantom.
The Iron Caskets slowly trotted into town. Their group was ten strong, each atop a steel-cold stallion, manes like coarse whips, hooves like anvils. The setting sun behind them cast their shadows long and dark before them, as if they were the true men, merely pulling the corpses on steeds. Their stetson hat brims casted a mask over their eyes as even the desert air chilled in their wake.
They rode up to the front of the Chastity Belt and halted, their shadows greeting the ladies of the night. The women aimed their guns, ready to defend their town, but the men retaliated with something more terrifying. They removed their hats.
Their gaunt faces were slathered in rashes, the lymph nodes in their necks popping out like unholy Adam’s apples. Each of them gripped their horses’ reins with thinned fingers that looked barely strong enough to hold a playing card much less a gun.One of the women, Sally, stepped forward. She’d seen men like this before. Hundreds of them.
“Y’all ain’t been branded by the devil or whatnot,” she said. “Y’all just got syphilis.”
The leader of the Iron Caskets cracked open his diseased lips. “Ya mean this ain’t a demon curse?”
Another one spoke up. “It’s not an evil spirit sucking away my life like desert water?”
“Nah,” Sally said. “Y’all jus’ been pokin’ around where ya had no business pokin’. But no problem! No matter your affliction, we got a girl for you.”
One by one, she pointed to the other women. “There’s Chlamydia Jane, Gonorrhea Gertrude, Henrieta Herpes, and me of course, Syphilis Sally.”
Madam Ma’Lady stowed her Winchester away in favor of these ten new guns.
“Welcome to Madam Malady’s Chastity Belt Brothel,” she said. “Silver bullets may not kill the devil in ya, but our liquid silver can cure a man possessed. And our girls can saddle you up for a ride to heaven too!”
The next prompt was: A ghost town from the gold rush era comes back to haunt the rich cities of modern America. And yes, the ghost is the ghost of an entire town.
Here’s what we came up with for it:
Brock Johnson, CEO of The American Way Corporation, had everything. A multinational business, multinational bank accounts, and at least four multinational ex-wives.
And yet, there was still something he lacked.
All his life, Brock had lived in awe of the American legend, Samuel Arranger, a prospector who had struck gold back in frontier times and caused an entire town to sprout up around him. Banks, schools, brothels, Samuel Arranger had summoned them like a shaman summoned rain… until the gold mine dried up, his town was abandoned, and turned over to the ghosts.
Legend had it that Samuel’s town still existed, drifting through America like a vagabond, popping up wherever poor people had a dream in their heart to hit it rich, just like he had.
And just like Brock had too. He’d come from nothing, made it himself with nothing more than the shirt on his back and a small interest-free advance of half a million dollars from his CEO father. Just as Sam turned empty desert into family fortunes for all those around him, so too did Brock turn modest fortune 500 companies into the largest in the world.
Yessir, the spirit of Samuel Arranger was alive and kicking inside Brock’s heart, and he was going to be the one to find the old prospector’s ghost town.
He signed his dream into action with a memo and a check. Suddenly he had ten thousand new employees, ready to walk across America with radios tuned to ghost-frequencies strapped to their backs. Samuel’s town would be found in time to bump the Q4 earnings report!
But when the quarterly business review with shareholders came, Brock still had no ghost town to show them. All he had were charts in the red from money wasted on infrared detectors and settlements out of court for trespassing on private property. It looked like his dream was about to give up the ghost.
Until he came up with a new idea. A brilliant idea. Even better than Püper, his idea that had made the company hundreds of dollars. The slogan was, “You don’t go to the restroom, we come to you!”
Instead of going out searching for the ghost town, he could make the ghost town come to him.
Construction began immediately for Samuel Arranger’s ghost town replica. Brock managed to appease the shareholders by saving money hiring only illegal immigrants and bribing the local government to let him build over a nature preserve. It was just a bunch of nasty animals anyway.
Soon enough, Samuel Arranger’s legendary ghost town was no longer a wandering myth, it was a museum that anyone could go to for twenty bucks a pop, ten-percent off every third Tuesday.
Customers flocked to visit, to learn, to become inspired to search for the ghost town themselves. News reports started popping up about people dying in horrific accidents, searching abandoned mines, mountains and deserts, spending all their life savings on paranormal equipment, all for just a glimpse of Samuel Arranger’s holy hoard.
When questioned by the media about how he felt for helping cause this phenomenon, Brock Johnson had this to say, wiping a tear in his eye with a hundred-dollar bill:
“Well, it seems that the real treasure Samuel left to us was the profits I made along the way.”
If you want to join us and help write a story by trolling in chat, or share your own writing for feedback, then we’d love to have you join us on Twitch.
And you missed the stream, you can still watch them on the YouTube channel or watch the full stream reruns.
Hope to see you next time, friend!
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