Furious Horses

>I had a piece of grit stuck right down at the edge of the fingernail on the little finger of my right hand. A tiny black dot sticking out against the pale pink of the skin under the nail. I tried everything to get it out, even went as far as to stick a pin down there, but the pain level was indescribably high. So I went to work with the piece of grit stuck into me, and as I was on the bus, I thought: How did it get in there without me noticing? I held my finger up to the light and tried to work out what the black dot was and where it came from.

When I got to work, my cubicle looked strangely different. Something wasn’t right. My finger was throbbing by this point. I had been picking at it with my thumb in my coat pocket for the entire walk from the bus stop to my office and it was so sore but I just couldn’t stop aggravating it. But what the hell was up with my cubicle?

Craig walked past then and tapped me on the shoulders with both hands in a weird way. Craig was always behaving in ways people really shouldn’t. He rode a scooter everywhere, for one thing, and had a girlfriend who was morbidly obese and dressed like the host of a 1930s horror revue. This morning, Craig is eating prunes and I know this because I can see their sludgy remains in his mouth when he talks at me.

“How’s it going, Ted?” Sludge. Munch. Prunes.

“Alright. How are you, Craig.”

“Fairly rocking.”

“Good for you.” I tried to squeeze past Craig and into my cubicle, which is a difficult manoeuvre, but one I have practiced often enough. Except this time, he stepped in front of me so I couldn’t get past.

“That’s a sweet throw,” he said.

“A what?”

“That cosy throw, on your chair.”

I looked over to my chair and sure enough, that was the thing that was different about my cubicle: a soft throw rug slung across the back of my chair. “That’s weird,” I said.

“How’d you score it?” asked Craig.

“I didn’t score it,” I told him. “I’ve never seen that thing before.” Craig nodded, but didn’t move, as if I was holding something back from him. “Anyway,” I said. “Should probably start some work.” Craig threw three more prunes to their death.

*

All day, it was either the grit in my finger (which I swear was getting bigger) or someone popping their head over my cubicle to check out my new throw. “Looks cosy,” they all said, and it was cosy, but I couldn’t understand why it was such an attraction. Some of them lingered there, disembodied faces above my wall dividers, waiting for something. I even offered it to Trudy from accounts, who had begun to look like a dog at a butcher’s window, but she just turned up her nose at me when I held the throw out to her, like it was a poisoned chalice. “Couldn’t possibly deprive you of such a soft, luxurious throw,” were the actual words she used.

By the end of the day, an official memo landed on my desk, put there by Craig himself, who had left tell-tale pruny fingerprints all over the manila envelope. Employees are NOT to bring to work any “comfort” accessories, i.e. cushions, pillows or fuzzy warm throws to work unless otherwise approved by a medical professional and management. Not only does this issue contravene many Health and Safety issues, it does affect the morale of other staff members, those of whom who do not have the financial security to purchase such luxury items as a chocolate cashmere shawl to cuddle up to during the day. It was the most ridiculous thing I had ever read.

I stuffed the throw into my bag, now that it was banned from my workplace, and set off for home. I was only fifteen metres from the bus stop when I fainted. As they told me in the hospital later, the black spot under my fingernail had turned out to be a particularly aggressive cattle tick, which I can only assume had burrowed into me on a recent bushwalking trip. The doctors kept saying how lucky I was to have collapsed in such a well-populated area. Apparently if it had gone untreated over night I may well have died. But what the doctors were really interested in was my cosy, comfortable throw. When I finally offered it to a particularly insistent toxicologist, he just shook is head and said, “You just really don’t understand anything about your throw, do you.”

>When we cracked open the door, and the smell hit us, and Shawn went What the freaking Jesus is that? this was the smell of Ricardo Rezlik. We thought he was just a pile of clothes at first. He had slumped straight to the floor and wasn’t moving, but then Cathy poked him with her foot and he groaned. That’s a dude! said Shawn, and after our initial shock, we helped Ricardo up and took him out to the lounge room and got him a glass of water and some banana chips.

At first, Ricardo wouldn’t talk at all, and then he just made hand-gestures and I said we should get him some paper to write on in case he was mute but we didn’t have any paper because none of us had really unpacked yet so Shawn ripped some particle board from the kitchen wall where someone had tried to cover up a crack and Cathy found some lipstick in her pocket and we gave them to Ricardo and tried to show him what to do, but he just started drawing patterns instead of words⎯intricate, ever-repeating patterns⎯and eventually we gave up.

Should we put him in the tenant’s report? said Shawn drily. I was making us all toasted cheese sandwiches with cheese and bread I had bought from the corner shop at the end of our new street, and Cathy was sitting with Ricardo trying to draw a map of the world so he could point where he had come from. What if the people before us kept him as a slave or something? she said, suddenly worried. I told her we’d have to ring the real estate agent the next morning, but that it was too late to do anything now.

I was so tired after a day of moving, and I knew the others were too. Really, we should have called the police or something, but all we wanted to do was get to bed. Cathy and I hadn’t had our bed delivered yet, so we gave Ricardo the couch, and then we all climbed awkwardly onto Shawn’s futon. Normally, I suppose, this would be weird, but tonight w just wanted to sleep, no matter how or where. From the moment I lay down my head, I didn’t think of Ricardo once.

The next morning, we woke together, an embarrassed tangle of limbs and dry mouths. Hot summer sun waffled the uncurtained windows. We wandered out to the lounge, remembering, all at once, our mysterious house guest. Wonder if he’s going to talk this morning? said Shawn wearily. When we rounded the doorway, and when we saw what Ricardo had done, our stomachs tied themselves in awful sour knots.

What the hell? said Cathy.

That’s disgusting! said Shawn.

I’ll grab his arms, I said. Shawn, get his legs. Cathy, you open the cupboard.

>When Celandine reached the end of her life, she realised that yes, she’d been right to hide a little toothpaste aside each day. She got her nurses to lift her gently into the bath. She enjoyed the minty-white caress against her skin just as much as she thought she would. She died, just as she noticed a small strip of blue, just by her knee, that had survived intact all these years. Her smile, when she passed, it was perfect.

>She arrived, on our doorstep, like some abandoned child, swaddled not in hasty blankets but rather carefully chosen shawls and Indian throws.

She looks like a fabric shop, said my husband quietly, after she had finally gone to sleep, passed out heavily on our couch.

She’s always been like that, I told him. Always collecting quilts and material to wrap around herself.

*

She was still there in the morning, even though I know we’d both hoped she might have up and left. She snored loudly through a gaping mouth, our dog Winston draped across her stomach shamelessly.

She padded into the kitchen as the last of the coffee percolated through to the jug. My husband peered at me meaningfully over his newspaper.

How are you feeling? I asked her.

She blew some hair from her face. Oh, she said, you know. That fair trade? She pointed at the coffee.

Um, I don’t really know. It’s just from the supermarket.

Steve, she asked. You know if it’s fair trade coffee?

My husband shrugged his shoulders. It’s just coffee, Janice, he told her.

*

When I get home from work, the house smells different. Steve staggers out of his study, hands ink-stained, face pained.

She hasn’t left yet?

He shook his head. She’s been brewing herbs in the kitchen all day, he said. She wants to exorcise Gary or something.

Shit. I stomped into the kitchen, whose lovely long window was now covered with pinned-up bunches of dried herbs and flowers. My sister stood by the stove, reading a beaten-up paperback with one hand, stirring our largest pot with the other. An evil-smelling purplish smoke chugged around us.

Did you ask Steve if you could foul up our kitchen?

Janice looked shocked. This is how I heal, she told me.

What exactly did Gary do to you?

He was an unfeeling, callous bastard.

Anything specific, though? Any particular reason you’ve landed on our doorstep.

Janice plucked a sheaf of herbs violently from the window and tossed them in the pot. Not that you’d ever want to understand, she told me.

*

We lay in bed, Steve and I, each with our own private, stewing thoughts.

Eventually, Steve said, Do you think she’ll ever leave?

And I told him, no, I don’t think she ever will.

>They dug up a potato at midday that looked to all intents and purposes like the President’s head and which—after some detailed inspection—turned out to actually be the President’s head. They let it sit in the sun for a while, but instead of a healthy tan, as they had hoped, the head began to take on a blueish-green tinge.

The president’s wife arrived after a few days, as she had not yet been able to make herself believe her husband’s head had been discovered sitting in dirt. But after the worst of the rotten flesh had been scraped away, even she recognised her husband’s distinctive cheekbones. She let out a single tear and—so those were there said—cursed aloud God’s name.

The funeral was held to great fanfare. A phalanx of trumpeters arrived from two towns over, along with three entire divisions of trained doves who had been draped in the gold and crimson livery of the late President’s favourite racehorse. The President’s head was given pride of place in the ceremony, sitting resplendently on a large cushion, which had been specially prepared by a team of widows and orphans. The head had been reassembled (from all the parts that could be found) by the court artist, to the best of his recollection. The effect was striking and regal from a distance, but utterly frightful from less than three feet away.

The funeral was a resounding success, but once the final pigeon had been swept away, the late President’s advisors had time to realise they were in something of a pickle. They spent many days combing through the constitution, seeking guidance as to what should happen next. Presidential changeovers had, up until now, occured through either simple heridity or bloodless coup. A decapitation was something else altogether. The late President had no sons, and all the Generals of his army were toothless tigers, far more intent on securing a good place at the dinner table than excercising any Presidential ambitions.

Confusion reigned for forty nights, and apprehension for forty days. As luck would have it, however, on the forty-first day, the President’s body turned up, uncovered in the field next to the one in which his head was found. When the news reached the city, the mood lightened considerably. The Presidential advisors installed the late President’s body at once to its rightful position of power, and it ruled over the land for many prosperous years.

>Jemima had come to the cliffs to do one thing. Her heart was a vacancy. She skirted the edge of the earth, as close as she could get to air. The grass was far too long where she walked, as no one could get near it enough to cut it, and, she guessed, no one would really care either way. On the tops of the grass stalks were puffy dandelion heads, shivering, too delicate against the chopped up wind. She kicked through the grass, but rather than disintegrating, the grass spores simply waved and sprung back upright. She wondered at how the world could be so overwhelmingly optimistic.
She came to the place she had decided on; a rocky outcrop that stuck out just below the land’s lip, hidden by its own shape. She fingered the fabric of her summer dress—chosen long ago in a shop with high walls, and took her final steps onto solid earth.

>Down at the end of the tracks, where even the dusky dogs had stopped pacing, was that house, ever-standing. Built by someone’s hands back in the days when people did things like that: pioneering, trailblazing, fate-forging. Logs, it was, locked together, real wood that you could tell was wood, and not particles of timber forced together like all our houses were.

We stood outside the house for a while, each of us shifting out weight. Pete said, Reckon he’s home? And I said, Where else would he be? Those dogs were growling up by the main road, but we knew they weren’t every hungry till well after dark. Pete told me once that the dogs got so hungry that they cracked their own ribs just from barking.

But that was just a story. This, the house, this was real. Through the tiny cracks in its wooden walls seeped the presence of a bloodthirsty pirate. The real blistering breath of evil, resting four feet from where we stood.

Dare you, said Pete.

Dare me what, I said, my voice shaking. He had to say it.

Knock.

We had never been this close before. We had invented excuses for ourselves, wandered away. But tonight we were here.

Knock, said Pete.

Knock, I said.

Knock.

>Hello,

My name is Jack Johnson. I am very succesfull american singer-songwriter with much appeal. I came across your contact through american songwriters alliance and know you are such a person for this opportunity. I am retiring soon, and would forsee much beneficial for you in the once per lifetime opportunity, in so much and so far as some one must step in my shoes as america’s next popular lazy-fingered surfing acoustic poet.

I know that you, dear friend, have the heart for this not to be missed chance to fame and fortune. Can I tell you dear friend that what i offer you is %100 genuine. You will soon enjoy many free wetsuits, skateboards and guitar strings, as well as many hit records with three chords only needed! You have many friends easy such as actor Ben Stiler, musician Bob Harper and surf-pro champion Keli Slater.

All i require from you dearest friend is bank account details from you for me to transfer my gold records and album earnings directly to you!! I hope I hear from you very soon. Send all bank details (including PIN) to my personal email: jack_-_johnsin111972@hotmail.com

Flip you on the underside dud!

Jack.

>Dear Fiction Reader,

I am writing to excuse Christopher from his “Furious Horses” blog post tonight, as he is feeling under the weather, due to a persistent and virulent influenza virus. I want to assure you that he had every intention of writing tonight’s post, such is his dedication to his craft, but unfortunately, just as he was about to sit down at his computer, his hands were accidentally bitten off by his girlfriend, who, due to an existing condition, often confuses human appendages with Indian food. In this case, she thought Christopher’s hands were two succulent pieces of Tandoori chicken and it was only some minutes after that they both realised what had happened.

Also, due to Christopher’s extensive charity work with blind orphans, he was unable to fully commit his energies to tonight’s post. Really, he does so much for those kids. There should be a medal or something.

Christopher has given me his assurances he will post a story tomorrow night, and he apologises for any inconvenience tonight’s post has caused.

Yours Sincerely,
Chris’s Mum

>El Sanchez woke with a start. The sound of metal shovel against hard clay dirt was not one he had heard since childhood, but there it was, cutting through the night. The darkness in El Sanchez’s room was not something his eyes were ready for; what with his ears receiving such strong signals, it hardly seemed fair.

El Sanchez followed his ears to his bedroom window, across the room from his bed. He climbed up onto his window seat, and looked out into the gloom, feeling the cold night air pressing up against the outside of the glass. El Sanchez only had a small strip of lawn running beside his house, and the rest of his view was taken up behind his back fence, looking out into his neighbour’s backyard. El Sanchez could tell this was definitely where the shovel sound was coming from. As he waited for his eyes to adjust, El Sanchez’s mind raced ahead of him, trying to picture what could be making the sound. Surely no one could be digging at this time of night, he thought. Perhaps it was a dog, but then again, El Sanchez was not sure his neighbour had a dog.

Then, suddenly, there it was. Teredo, the neighbour, he of the hulking shoulders, was crouched next to a hole right in the middle of the backyard, flexing his back, like it was sore. Teredo did lots of weight training, almost too much, El Sanchez thought, although he didn’t really know about these things. Teredo was usually always indoors, or at his gym. El Sanchez had often wondered why Teredo’s enormous backyard was kept so meticulously tidy when Teredo was never there to look after it.

Teredo stood up, wiping his forehead with his forearm. Then he plunged the shovel into the dirt beside the hole, ploughing his weight behind the wooden handle, pressing down on the shovel with one foot, which sported what looked like—to El Sanchez—a medicated massage sandal. As the scene became sharper in El Sanchez’s eyes, he saw Teredo was digging a very large oblong hole whose edges seemed to suggest considerable depth. What was most interesting, though, was the care with which Teredo piled the dirt he dug out of the hole. After every two or three plunges of the shovel, Teredo very carefully climbed into the hole and scooped out the dirt, tangled with clay and tree roots, and placed it on the grass. Then he climbed out of the hole, put the dirt back onto the shovel, and placed it into a black garbage bag that sat next to four others that were already full.

El Sanchez lost track of time as he watched his neighbour—whom he had hardly said hello to before—performing such a strange task. It was only when the first pink leaks of daylight began to spill over the horizon that El Sanchez realised how long he had been watching. Teredo seemed to sense the light too, because soon enough he stopped digging, tied up the garbage bags, and dragged them back into his house. He came back a few moments later with a large blue tarpaulin, which he used to cover the hole. Then he was gone again, and El Sanchez was left to reflect on what a strange thing it was he had seen.