"Ask Mister Bargain 3 "

"Ask Mister Bargain 2"

"Ask Mister Bargain"

" Pillow Talk."

" Letter From Home."

" Sick Note."

" The Panther."

The Panther

By Ryan Nemeth

Donna,  
I know you’re upset with me for leaving you, but it’s something I have to do. Trust me, it’s not you, it’s me. You’re great. You’re the best girl I ever met. You’re funny,  smart, athletic — just perfect. You’re all I could ever hope for. There is nothing about you I would change. Absolutely nothing. Ok, maybe one thing. But it’s not a big deal,  really. Here it goes: 
 
Sometimes, when I have daydreams, you’re in them. We’ll be somewhere, like the Old West. You know, back in cowboy times. We’re a crime fighting team. The town loves us. And we’ll be busting up a bank robbery or something, trying to catch a really sinister crook. Cornelius Von Dillinger comes to mind (or as the fictional townsfolk in my day dreams refer to him as, The Panther). He was the most recent one, anyway. He had just robbed the town bank, and we chased him to Old Otis’Gold Mine. Not the haunted one, the other one. It’s just south of the Sunshine Acres Cactus Orchard (right next to Mayor Plinkton’s family cemetery). By the way, I have enclosed a map of Hamilton  
County, the area that my fantasies take place in, with this letter—I thought that might help. So, we were just about to catch The Panther—victory was so close I could taste it. I'm the renegade deputy with a burning passion for justice, and you’re my clever but absent-minded sidekick. Mostly you’re there to make witty remarks when we catch bad guys or after we blow-up a railroad with dynamite (to derail hijacked postal trains). Well, there we were: we almost had that son of a gun Cornelius hogtied. He was stuck in a dead end in one of the mine shafts, and all we had to do was block the only two escape routes. I was on the southern tunnel and you were supposed to be watching the northern one. But, like always, you got distracted and the infamous Panther got away and went on to rob every bank within 200 miles of our town.    
 
It’s little things like that that get me really irritated. We could’ve stopped a legendary Old West bank robber, but you thought making shadow puppets in the mine shaft was a more pressing matter. Or maybe you just didn’t care about stopping The Panther. Maybe it didn’t occur to you that the money he took from the bank was all of my imaginary friends’and families’ fake life savings. Well, I’m sorry, but it’s exactly that kind of behavior that makes me realize I could be with someone else. Someone who would be a better Honorary Deputy in my frequent and extremely intricate daydreams about the Old West. That is why I’m leaving you. Also, your friend Margaret told me you peed in my house plants.  
 
John