A grizzled man wearing blue jeans peaking out of his leather chaps, a black b.u.t.ton-up shirt underneath his leather duster, and a leather hat walked into the saloon--each step slow but loud in order to draw attention to himself. Although you couldn"t see his hip, anybody could tell with one look that this man was armed. After looking around he knew that he had found the right place.A band of no-good outlaws stopped hara.s.sing the poor bar wench when they spotted him. "Well, I"ll be. Look who it is, boys. We thought you was dead." The leader of the outlaws--a man they called Fast Hands Johnny--had a run-in with this cowboy before. Back then him and his band of men stole this cowboy"s horse, tied the man up, and left him for dead when he saved a farmer"s daughter that they were about to a.s.sault and kidnap so that they could later sell her at a brothel. Thanks to his heroics they were now wanted men and were on the run from the law.
The cowboy adjusted his hat and brought one side of his duster behind his back, exposing his revolver. "We can do this in here or outside. I"ll leave it up to you but I"d really recommend doing it outside. I wouldn"t want to dirty this nice establishment with your blood."
This pack of outlaws looked at each other and couldn"t help but laugh at this lunatic that delivered himself to their hands. "Leaving you out in that sun must have made you touched in the head, old man. There"s one of yous and many of us. I reckon you could shoot two or three of us before we saw you but now it"s too late. Do you know what they call me?" Their hands inched towards their guns.
"Sorry about the mess." The cowboy looked over to the bartender as he spoke these words. Before any of the outlaws could draw their sidearms the cowboy drew his revolver and shot them all in their necks, leaving the poor bar wench scared at the sight. After shooting them all he turned back to the outlaws laying on the ground. "The name on the wanted poster says you"re called Fast Hands Johnny but it looks like I got the wrong guy."
"Fast Hands Johnny" could only manage to gargle out a few sounds before bleeding out on the floor. A look of disbelief remained on his face even in death.
"Cut!" At this moment the director stood up. "That"s a wrap. You did good as always, Preston. I look forward to working with you again." Shaking the actor named Preston"s hand, the director wore a huge smile on his face; clearly proud of today"s shoot. After letting go of Preston"s hand he turned his attention to the five villains of this movie. "You all did well there. If I didn"t know better I would have thought that he actually shot you."
At this time, four of the five villains stood up and looked down at the last one. "Hey, Tommy, the cameras have already stopped rolling. You can stop pretending to be dead now." The man talking was a good friend of Tommy"s named James and had played as an extra alongside him in a few movies now. This was their first time having important roles. "Hey, Tommy, get up." Now kicking Tommy a little, James seemed to be getting a bit impatient.
Bending down to check on his good friend, James noticed that something was wrong. "Quick, someone get a doctor!" After everybody heard James shout they all looked towards the set and started crowding the two of them. "s.h.i.t! Tommy, don"t die on me, man." In tears, James tried holding down on Tommy"s injury to try to prevent him from bleeding out; unaware of the fact that Tommy was already dead.
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Thomas Gunnell--or Tommy Gunn--was a relatively unknown actor before getting the role as Fast Hands Johnny. Only his friends in the same business as him had even known that he was an actor. Even after getting the role he wasn"t that well-known; merely being mentioned in news alongside the much more famous director and lead actor in the movie. Even the actress playing the unnamed bar wench was more famous than him. Now he became headline news and even people that didn"t care about wild west movies knew his name. In a way he accomplished his dream of becoming famous but, unfortunately, he wasn"t alive to see it.
He had no family, no real friends outside of the industry, and no lover. The media talked about Tommy as if he was someone to be pitied so that they could get more views but Tommy loved his life. Acting was his pa.s.sion and he had real talent for it; perhaps he would have been famous already if he had made more connections. It was through acting that he could live many lives and go on adventures, even if it was only for pretend.
After Tommy"s death the movie"s release was put on hold pending an investigation. The weapon used was a Colt Single Action Army and to make the movie more realistic they decided to use blanks in a real gun instead of a replica. Through the investigation they discovered that a certain bullet manufacturer had made a mistake and packaged live rounds in a few boxes of blanks but only the .45 colt rounds. On any other day they would have noticed this mistake but a few boxes of ammo had spilled out. Instead of destroying them like usual there was a new guy that decided to re-package them by hand so that he wouldn"t lose his job or get his pay docked. Thankfully this worker had done this on camera or else the investigation might not have concluded for a long time.
When the police reviewed the tape filmed inside of the manufacturer"s distribution center there was something strange on it. The boxes fell unnaturally and there was something transparent and glowing that seemed to have scattered them across the ground. The investigators couldn"t understand what they were seeing so they concluded that there must have been some sort of error with the taping. Sometimes these companies would reuse tape for security footage and there"d be parts burned into the tape that would show something that wasn"t really there. n.o.body in their right mind would think that some otherworldly being orchestrated the entire accident just to kill one seemingly unimportant man.