It's wicked to mock the afflicted

The cowboy was making his rounds. His tiny toy pistols had been replaced with two spray nozzles, the kind that comes from household cleaning products. He still shouted ‘money for the whisky’ and pulled the red plastic triggers at the passing people without concern for the lack of verisimilitude of his weapons.

I watched him while waiting for the green man at the cross walk. I daydreamed that his carer, in the hopes of curtailing his peculiar habit, hid his six shooters. She would have taken his cowboy hat and vest but she knew he would have kicked up too much of a fuss. So, while he took a nap in front of a daytime rerun of ‘the Searchers’, she gingerly uncurled his fingers from the handles as he snored and muttered about whisky. Upon waking and realizing the theft, he immediately went to the kitchen and fashioned two new pistols from a bottle of window cleaner and a nearly full bottle of animal odour remover that he accidentally spilled on the floor when removing the nozzle. He went outside to make his rounds. While he was out, the carer attempted to divine the purpose of the two headless bottles on the counter and whether the puddle on the floor was cowboy urine or something more benign.