I don’t trust horses. I don’t have anything against them. I’ve even met a few I’ve liked—but I don’t trust them. They unsettle me. It may be partly because I’m used to being the tallest Sheila in the Outback. But even when I was a wee babe I preferred them on the other side of the fence.
There’s something otherworldly about them. How the skinnier ones are all pointy and the meatier ones are all…the word ‘behemoth’ comes to mind. I’m pretty sure they’re all demons. Think about it. Have you seen their legs? Those knobby joints connecting thin, sinewy pegs
clopping around looking like the elder wand. Their sharp, Shrek-like ogre ears. Enormous heads with bulbous jaws. Lips that warp and ripple over their teeth like they could suck you in, issuing steaming shrieks,and great snorts from their socket-like nostrils.A horse foot is essentially a giant, singular toenail, which then have iron lucky charms nailed into them. Hard core. They’re so casual. The way walk with their heads bobbing in that nonchalant “I-know-exactly-how-fierce-I-am” fashion that’s usually reserved for drag queens.
The same goes for the little ones. The ponies. Those jaunty little bastards. I don’t know if they’re demonic, per se, but they certainly have an attitude problem. Every pony that’s been introduced to me has been described as “rather grumpy.”
You know one of them kicked me the other day? In the shin. And another keeps trying to untie my shoes. Gremlins. Their size combined with their puffy fringe calls to mind angsty, emo, scene 'tweens. In this case, it really wasn’t a phase, Mom.
And come on, we call them nightmares. Mares. Horses just look like they’d be right at home surrounded by fire with flaming manes and eyes aglow, tearing across the brimstone moors of hell under a sunless sky, sulfurous embers and smoke streaming from their nostrils and dry bones cracking beneath their feet and maybe spiked armor. I mean -- my god, how epic would that be? Not to mention there’s something cryptic about their refusal to cross grates in the ground. Like vampires and water. An archaic caveat probably carved in Sumerian runes on the cracked stone from whence they first hoofed their way into this dimension. And really, how is it they’re able to thunder through a forest for dozens of miles at a time when the only thing they eat is grass? Humans eat an entire food pyramid and we still struggle with stairs.
Perhaps most eerie are their manes. It’s like they have human hair, but draped around their long, alien faces. Like they’re trying to blend in. Assimilate. So they can turn on us in the night. So far it hasn’t worked, but they have sent emissaries into our midst. The Horse Girls. You know who I’m talking about. In elementary school, the ones with those folders printed with a glossy headshot of a sun-dappled Clydesdale and the name, Chestnut, scrawled in glittery cursive bubble letters. They could never hang out on weekends because they were always “riding.”
They’re good enough people. Some I even call friends. But I have to wonder how. How do they align themselves to such creatures? Blood sacrifice? Some kind of James Cameron-type ritual involving braiding their own hair into the horse’s mane? Maybe they offer their bodies as vessels to the Old World God the horses serve? Or is it their souls with which they barter? Is it for power? How do you make sense of the relationship? Horse Girls are a mystery, but not nearly as mysterious as their hay-consuming allies. I bet not even they know all the secrets of these wingless dragon-mammals.
None of this is to say that horses are bad. This isn’t a GOP sponsored bulletin urging you to build a wall around the stables. I’m sure you already have a fence, and that’s fine. If you like horses, good for you. If you don’t, let them be. They’re living creatures on this planet that deserve just as much respect and fear as the rest of us. I even admire them, in a way. From a distance. Because, like I said, I don’t trust them.
