Johnny Ringo

A song of the same name by the band Crown the Empire converted into a story.

Johnny Ringo

This is your time,

Your life's flashing before your eyes.

And soon enough you will realize that 

this is goodbye,

but what if I gave you a chance?

You just have to sell your soul...

Being raised as a good Christian I was always taught that suicide was among the most 

unholy sin that Man could commit against his creator. Taking the power of life and death into 

one's own hands instead of retaining it within in the hands of The Almighty. However, there 

comes a point in most every man's life that he begins to feel he's reached his end; that any day 

further spent living is a burden not only to himself but to those that he holds most dear. By 

this time I had begun to walk into the darkness and abandon the idea of a God who had most 

certainly abandoned me. My days as a good Christian man had been counted, the horse gone 

to pasture. I was brought to this world on May 3, 1850 and on this day, marked July 14th of 

the 1882nd year after the death of Christ the Son of God, I took my own life. Now since I had 

given up on the idea of any God, I thought that my soul would reside in a black void for the 

rest of eternity. That figments such a Heaven or Hell neither existed nor were a thing for me 

I was wrong.

I fell. I fell far and I fell fast. Faster than any horse or locomotive could take me. The world 

around me was cavernous and cold, humid and unforgiving hot. Then I hit the ground, a fall 

which should have broken me to pieces. Still I emerged from the crater and took in the 

environment around me. The air smelled of sulfur and smoke; the ground was dry and 

crusted with a orange and brown plates of what seemed to be dirt and flesh. 

I did my best to dust off of the layer of God knows what on my gentleman's attire, but to no 

avail. I was in what I could only describe as an impossibly large cave running in all directions 

until the end of time and space. The flesh of the place glowed with an orange hue while the 

air seemed to be a yellow and red mist. Surrounding me on all sides were dead tree trunks so 

densely packed together that it made it nearly impossible to breathe. Ghostly white figures 

peered at me from behind these trunks, whispering and screaming as the disappeared and then 

reappeared. Snakes slithered in the filth strewn across the ground. The trees went on for 

miles, and then, a clearing. Tall grey grasses enraptured me, surrounded me and reached out 

for me. I paused in the in the sea of man-sized grass; steps ahead of me the grass began to 

uproot and swirl in the air as if an invisible twister and snared them. Flames shot out of the 

ground with a demonic rage. 

"Ringo!" the shapeless being wailed 

The shock wave put me on my a*s. The flames dispersed and all that remained was a man in a 

black toga trimmed with gold and various precious gems. He seemed to levitate above the 

fleshy ground, arms outstretched as if waiting for me to embrace him. His face shifted from a 

screaming man to a serene young man whose eyes were closed in rest. His hair was black as 

coal but with the cut of that of a king. His wings, yes wings, shifted from a morning dove's 

into skeletal bat wings. There was no denying that there was splendor in his presence, but it 

was the kind filled with pride, that demanded to be looked upon with awe. He lunged toward 

me at amazing speed but only stopped inches from me staring down at me without actually 

opening his eyes. He swam in the air around me, like a canine would to another, he was, 

"Ringo my boy!" He called to me as if I was some old friend lost in the weaves of time and 

"I wondered when i would see you again old sport, it has taken so long for us to meet 

"Again?" I thought to myself

"Why yes again! Do you not remember the day that you turned your back on god?"

I ran through my memories, looking for this person, this visage. 

"let me help you with that dear boy!"

He grabbed hold of my face, his fingers easily grasped around to the back of my face. 

The young man had transported us above a familiar scene, a love lost, a life forever broken. 

She had left me for another, for someone who many people including myself had not seen as 

being any better than I. Circumstances drove us apart, my anger, her unwillingness to accept 

change expect when is satisfied her immediately. She never regarded me, never respected me, 

partly I believe she never even loved me at all. 

The scene changed, wartime, Mason County in California. Scuffles between the immigrants 

grew into all out bloodshed and horror. Twelve men lost their lives here, including some of  

my friends that I had made out there in the wild. Nobody had ever been able to say for sure 

who started the firing, the Germans or the Americans. 

The scene changed again. The badlands of Wyoming dominated this vision. A small wagon 

trailblazing its way across the barren soil and rock carted along beneath us. The driver pulled 

in his reigns forcing his horses to withdraw from further movement. Being ever vigilant he 

grabbed a hold of his shotgun from under his seat and leaped off the wagon's helm. He was 

off to survey the area in the hopes that they could make camp here for the night and continue 

onward to California the next day. His little boy, Johnny, watched him as he trailed off into 

the dusk to clear the surrounding area of possible threats. A shot rang out and echoed 

violently across the empty land, that was the last time the boy and his mother ever saw the 

man; the story goes that the shotgun somehow "accidentally" discharged and the man ended 

taking off his own head in the process. The scene shifted into the next day; where the boy and 

his mother buried the man alongside the very trail where he died only hours before. As they 

began to move on the trail toward California they left behind and wooden cross with the 

name Martin Ringo etched into the relic of a man wronged by fate in such a simple manner. 

The young man's grasped had been lifted back in this hellish place. I had been forced to relive 

memories that I had tried to forget, tried to transcend. Still after all the time that had passed I 

could not, they were a part of me of my being and soul, my past, my present and my future. 

The latter no longer of any concern. 

"you regret, you hate yet you do not understand why, why do bad things always 

happen to poor little Johnny?"  

"You were weak, all your life. as a child you chose not to follow your father into the 

night because you were afraid for your own life and chose not help someone else on 

such a hazardous undertaking. in mason county you were too afraid to fight even on 

the side of your own friends as they were gunned down in front of your very eyes; 

and let us not forget your dear Rebecca. she left you for another man because you 

could not control yourself, you were too weak even to help yourself become a better 

man, a man that you longed to be, therefore together with these shortcomings you 

lost everything! The choices you never had the guts to make!"

I remember falling to my knees, the sheer weight of those memories washing over me like a 

waterfall. I wept, I broke down lower than any man ever should if he had any self-respect. 

The young man was correct, correct in every way, I had lost everything because I was weak. I 

could not do anything to help myself or even the ones I loved most. I did...regret. 

"dear boy, regret is wasted on me! I am sorry that you could not be all that you 

wanted to be in that life of yours! Yet I give you an offer! Relinquish to me your 

immortal soul and all will be restored, reversed and forgiven, you can begin life 

anew, memories of yesterday still intact! does that not make for a wonderful 

"A chance? A chance to rebuild all that was lost? To begin anew, yes. Yes that is what I need, 

to fix and to amend all those ill fortunate events of my life, to live life to its grandest, to die 

without regret. Yes." 

"Wise choice dear boy, do send a postcard, yes?" 

The young man grabbed my face once more and lifted me from the ground with no effort, and 

with one flick of his wrist shattered my spine piece by piece. I woke up at midnight in my 

own bed, my own skin. I can feel air inside my lungs again.

Author's Note

Please be a critic
Honestly, this is just me having a spot of fun
Part I of III
Also converting from word file changes certain fonts and respective sizes. I can email original file if you'd like

Source: "Johnny Ringo"- Crown the Empire