01-20-2018, 06:08 PM
<center><table bgcolor=black width=500 cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0><tr><td><center> <center><table bgcolor=black width=500><tr><td>
<center><font color="white" style="font-family:times new roman; font-size:9pt; line-height:12px; letter-spacing:2pt;"><i>
I’ll worship like a dog at the shrine of your lies
tell you my sins so you can sharpen your knife</i></font></center>
<font style="font-family:times; font-size:12px; letter-spacing:1; line-height:normal; color: #D0D0D0 ;">
The darkness crowds him, swallowing like a mouth, and he succumbs. The smell of ink fades. He wishes, for one hopeless moment, that he is being returned to the meadow, found unworthy of whatever he was cast into. He breathes in, the smell of wood and leather, of hay --
He opens his eyes. He hadn’t realized they were closed.
What surrounds him is not the meadow, but four walls. He can see out, can see other horses, and humans moving about. He glances down, and realizes he’s black again, the purple gone, drained from him.
There’s a sense of déjà vu to this – he remembers a girl, brown haired. He was a toy, then, in a different world, a different reality. She had cradled him in her hands, under her touch he had raced and jumped, competed with the other horses there (toy horses with broken legs or ears, an island of misfit toys). There, he had been content. There, there had been a mantra: <i>she loves us</i>.
But this stable is different – he is real, here, beating heart and slick coat, and the other horses are real. He tries to speak to the horse beside him – a mare, dapple gray – but all that comes out is a shrill neigh, his words robbed from him. The mare pins her ears and lunges toward him, stopping just shy of the bars, letting out her own dissatisfied squeal. He wonders if she’s victim of this to. He has no way to ask.
He cries out again, desperate to speak, but only that same shrill whinny leaves his throat. There’s no space in this confinement to run, but he rears and paws his hooves against the stall door. The well-filled water buckets slosh onto his chest and legs. He continues, banging at the door of his prison, trying to cry out, when two humans stop in front of the stall.
“What’s up with him? He’s flipping out.” The girl who spoke cocked her head as she examined him. She was well put together, dressed in full-seat breeches and a polo shirt, long hair tied into a ponytail that streamed from under a pink Ariat baseball cap. A few strands of hay stuck to her breeches, evidence of the chores she’d been finishing before he started his ruckus.
“He’s a drama queen,” says the older of the two, a woman with a sun-worn face, gray hair kept short, “if he’ll let you, want to take him out to the round pen? Might help him get his bucks out before Sarah tries him out this afternoon.”
The girl sighs, resigned, and moves closer to his stall. He stops his fit momentarily to observe her motions, and then the door slides open, and she slides a halter over his head, the cool metal of a stud chain pressing into his nose.
“Be good, buddy,” she says, voice calm but firm, and he feels pressure as she moves. He follows tentatively, hooves thudding on the stable’s concrete flooring. He blinks as she walks him out into the light, the footing changing for concrete to gravel and then grass, and then she leads him into another enclosure, a round fenced area with a sandy footing. She unsnaps the lead, including his chain, then steps back into the center of the arena.
“Go on then!” she calls, and clucks her tongue to the roof of her mouth. He moves off, uncertain, trots the perimeter of the enclosure, looking for a way out. There’s nothing, the fence is too high for him to jump, and he realizes he’ll have to make a run for it when she leads him next. He glances at her, where she stands, body straight and tuned onto him. She seems nice, kind.
He knows the futility of it, but again, he tries to speak. To explain. Only a low whicker comes out.
<i>I’m sorry,</i> he thinks.
He comes to a halt and stares at her. She clucks again, and he doesn’t respond. She waves her arms, changing her body into something strange, but he holds his ground.
“Get UP,” she calls, waving her arms, moving towards his rump. He moves to the gate, stands there. Sees the lead she’d draped over the gate, picks it up in his mouth. Drops it at her feet. Looks at her. At the gate.
Her mouth drops, and she reaches down to pick it up. She laughs, a bit nervous, and looks at him.
“Trying to tell me something, then?” she asks. He walks forward, lowers his head. She rubs his forehead before clipping on the lead.
This time, there’s no chain. It will make it easier.
He waits, as she unhooks the gate. Waits until they are both clear. He looks out. There’s sprawling pastures, lines of fencing, but in the distance there’s a copse of trees, a place – a promise – of escape. When he feels her distraction shift for a moment as a white truck turns into the driveway, he makes his move. He lunges forward, shoulder knocking into her back, pushing her down. She cries out, but he is running already, the lead line dangling, whipping at him. He digs in, runs faster, and for one terrible moment he steps on his own lead line, feels an awful pressure on his head as he’s pulled down by his own weight, and then the leather crownpiece of his halter gives, and the whole thing tumbles to his feet, and is left behind.
The trees loom larger in his sight, but before them is a white board fence, bright against the lush green of the pasture. It’s tall, but he has a running start now. He heads straight for it, and when he’s close, he lifts off, knees tucked to his chest.
He’s doesn’t clear it, not completely, his hind legs catch and for a moment he thinks he’ll fall, head over heels, but the board gives and though his legs are left scraped he is once again free.
He stops when he reaches the tree line, sides heaving from the exertion. Foamy spittle flicks from his lips and over his chest, and it’s only when he stops moving that he realizes the enormity of his exhaustion.
He’s lost, in these unfamiliar woods, and he picks a direction at random. He is aware of shouts from the direction of the barn, and hears the roar of a motor. He picks up a reluctant trot, then a canter, weaving through the trees. His heart pounds wildly, from the terror and exertion of it, and for a moment he wonders.
Would it really be so bad? To allow himself to be caught? That girl had been kind. What was there to escape to? His life in Beqanna wasn’t much.
But he remembers the smallness of the stall. The hardness of concrete. The place he’d left behind was a prison.
Distracted by these thoughts, he stumbles, falls to his knees. Barely gets back up. There’s a blackness to the edges of his vision, now. He slows to a walk – he has to – but still trudges forward.
There is a place, in the distance, where the world blurs. A portal. He moves quicker, desperate in his hope that this will lead him home, when he stops dead. In his path float balloons, dying ones, only a few feet off the ground.
He focuses especially on the red one. He once saw balloons like these, clasped in the hand of a clown, a shrieking, awful thing.
<i>(we all float here sleaze)</i>
“No,” he says, and it’s only after he says it that he realizes he’s spoken. Barely a word, but there.
He’s close. He’s so close.
The way the breeze shifts the balloons gives them an organic quality, and one of them – the red one – drifts closer. He takes a step back.
He knows this is stupid, that they’re not the same balloons (and there’s no sign of that awful clown), but his primitive brain is terrified, frozen as he watches the balloons move.
He moves away, moves around them, but the way the trees press force him to be too close, and he thinks the sheer dumb terror will eat him alive, he bursts through, and then he <i>runs</i>, and something touches his ankle but he can’t run faster he fucking <I>can’t</i>, and the world blurs and somewhere there’s laughter and maybe it’s all in his head or maybe it’s real and maybe that clown came back to finish what he’d started and we all float here we <i>float</i>--
Again, the world flips.
“Congratulations,” says a voice. He looks, and there is a creature – a being – a god – a tiger, a pure and dazzling white, jeweled color on its neck. The jewels send prisms of light on the floor before them.
“Let me go,” he says, “please.”
“Oh, Sleaze,” says the tiger, “just a bit more. But first, let’s make you something worth writing about.”
Sleaze looks at the floor, where black pools at his feet, like ink. It takes him a moment to realize it’s his color, being leeched from him, and when the tiger is done he is left as white as she is, though his mane and tail are a dark purple. He’s only come to terms with this when there’s a terrible sensation in his forehead, like his own mind is clawing its way out of his head, and then something erupts from him.
A horn, sharp and dangerous, silver colored. A trickle of blood weeps down his back like tears from its eruption. His head feels heavy and strange with this new weight.
“There,” purrs the <s>tiger</s> god, “that’s better. Now you’re a thing fit for a story.”
<center><font color="white" style="font-family:times new roman; font-size:20pt; line-height:12px; letter-spacing:2pt;">sleaze</font>
<font size=2><font color=white> cancer x garbage</font></i></font>
</font></a></center></font></tr></td></table></tr></td></table></center>
tl;dr
word count: 1,622
- obstacle 1: escaping the round pen/stable/handler
- obstacle 2: a fence
- obstance 3: a bunch of balloons, which are terrifying to horses, and also Sleaze dealt with an iteration of Pennywise in a quest a long time ago.
<center><font color="white" style="font-family:times new roman; font-size:9pt; line-height:12px; letter-spacing:2pt;"><i>
I’ll worship like a dog at the shrine of your lies
tell you my sins so you can sharpen your knife</i></font></center>
<font style="font-family:times; font-size:12px; letter-spacing:1; line-height:normal; color: #D0D0D0 ;">
The darkness crowds him, swallowing like a mouth, and he succumbs. The smell of ink fades. He wishes, for one hopeless moment, that he is being returned to the meadow, found unworthy of whatever he was cast into. He breathes in, the smell of wood and leather, of hay --
He opens his eyes. He hadn’t realized they were closed.
What surrounds him is not the meadow, but four walls. He can see out, can see other horses, and humans moving about. He glances down, and realizes he’s black again, the purple gone, drained from him.
There’s a sense of déjà vu to this – he remembers a girl, brown haired. He was a toy, then, in a different world, a different reality. She had cradled him in her hands, under her touch he had raced and jumped, competed with the other horses there (toy horses with broken legs or ears, an island of misfit toys). There, he had been content. There, there had been a mantra: <i>she loves us</i>.
But this stable is different – he is real, here, beating heart and slick coat, and the other horses are real. He tries to speak to the horse beside him – a mare, dapple gray – but all that comes out is a shrill neigh, his words robbed from him. The mare pins her ears and lunges toward him, stopping just shy of the bars, letting out her own dissatisfied squeal. He wonders if she’s victim of this to. He has no way to ask.
He cries out again, desperate to speak, but only that same shrill whinny leaves his throat. There’s no space in this confinement to run, but he rears and paws his hooves against the stall door. The well-filled water buckets slosh onto his chest and legs. He continues, banging at the door of his prison, trying to cry out, when two humans stop in front of the stall.
“What’s up with him? He’s flipping out.” The girl who spoke cocked her head as she examined him. She was well put together, dressed in full-seat breeches and a polo shirt, long hair tied into a ponytail that streamed from under a pink Ariat baseball cap. A few strands of hay stuck to her breeches, evidence of the chores she’d been finishing before he started his ruckus.
“He’s a drama queen,” says the older of the two, a woman with a sun-worn face, gray hair kept short, “if he’ll let you, want to take him out to the round pen? Might help him get his bucks out before Sarah tries him out this afternoon.”
The girl sighs, resigned, and moves closer to his stall. He stops his fit momentarily to observe her motions, and then the door slides open, and she slides a halter over his head, the cool metal of a stud chain pressing into his nose.
“Be good, buddy,” she says, voice calm but firm, and he feels pressure as she moves. He follows tentatively, hooves thudding on the stable’s concrete flooring. He blinks as she walks him out into the light, the footing changing for concrete to gravel and then grass, and then she leads him into another enclosure, a round fenced area with a sandy footing. She unsnaps the lead, including his chain, then steps back into the center of the arena.
“Go on then!” she calls, and clucks her tongue to the roof of her mouth. He moves off, uncertain, trots the perimeter of the enclosure, looking for a way out. There’s nothing, the fence is too high for him to jump, and he realizes he’ll have to make a run for it when she leads him next. He glances at her, where she stands, body straight and tuned onto him. She seems nice, kind.
He knows the futility of it, but again, he tries to speak. To explain. Only a low whicker comes out.
<i>I’m sorry,</i> he thinks.
He comes to a halt and stares at her. She clucks again, and he doesn’t respond. She waves her arms, changing her body into something strange, but he holds his ground.
“Get UP,” she calls, waving her arms, moving towards his rump. He moves to the gate, stands there. Sees the lead she’d draped over the gate, picks it up in his mouth. Drops it at her feet. Looks at her. At the gate.
Her mouth drops, and she reaches down to pick it up. She laughs, a bit nervous, and looks at him.
“Trying to tell me something, then?” she asks. He walks forward, lowers his head. She rubs his forehead before clipping on the lead.
This time, there’s no chain. It will make it easier.
He waits, as she unhooks the gate. Waits until they are both clear. He looks out. There’s sprawling pastures, lines of fencing, but in the distance there’s a copse of trees, a place – a promise – of escape. When he feels her distraction shift for a moment as a white truck turns into the driveway, he makes his move. He lunges forward, shoulder knocking into her back, pushing her down. She cries out, but he is running already, the lead line dangling, whipping at him. He digs in, runs faster, and for one terrible moment he steps on his own lead line, feels an awful pressure on his head as he’s pulled down by his own weight, and then the leather crownpiece of his halter gives, and the whole thing tumbles to his feet, and is left behind.
The trees loom larger in his sight, but before them is a white board fence, bright against the lush green of the pasture. It’s tall, but he has a running start now. He heads straight for it, and when he’s close, he lifts off, knees tucked to his chest.
He’s doesn’t clear it, not completely, his hind legs catch and for a moment he thinks he’ll fall, head over heels, but the board gives and though his legs are left scraped he is once again free.
He stops when he reaches the tree line, sides heaving from the exertion. Foamy spittle flicks from his lips and over his chest, and it’s only when he stops moving that he realizes the enormity of his exhaustion.
He’s lost, in these unfamiliar woods, and he picks a direction at random. He is aware of shouts from the direction of the barn, and hears the roar of a motor. He picks up a reluctant trot, then a canter, weaving through the trees. His heart pounds wildly, from the terror and exertion of it, and for a moment he wonders.
Would it really be so bad? To allow himself to be caught? That girl had been kind. What was there to escape to? His life in Beqanna wasn’t much.
But he remembers the smallness of the stall. The hardness of concrete. The place he’d left behind was a prison.
Distracted by these thoughts, he stumbles, falls to his knees. Barely gets back up. There’s a blackness to the edges of his vision, now. He slows to a walk – he has to – but still trudges forward.
There is a place, in the distance, where the world blurs. A portal. He moves quicker, desperate in his hope that this will lead him home, when he stops dead. In his path float balloons, dying ones, only a few feet off the ground.
He focuses especially on the red one. He once saw balloons like these, clasped in the hand of a clown, a shrieking, awful thing.
<i>(we all float here sleaze)</i>
“No,” he says, and it’s only after he says it that he realizes he’s spoken. Barely a word, but there.
He’s close. He’s so close.
The way the breeze shifts the balloons gives them an organic quality, and one of them – the red one – drifts closer. He takes a step back.
He knows this is stupid, that they’re not the same balloons (and there’s no sign of that awful clown), but his primitive brain is terrified, frozen as he watches the balloons move.
He moves away, moves around them, but the way the trees press force him to be too close, and he thinks the sheer dumb terror will eat him alive, he bursts through, and then he <i>runs</i>, and something touches his ankle but he can’t run faster he fucking <I>can’t</i>, and the world blurs and somewhere there’s laughter and maybe it’s all in his head or maybe it’s real and maybe that clown came back to finish what he’d started and we all float here we <i>float</i>--
Again, the world flips.
“Congratulations,” says a voice. He looks, and there is a creature – a being – a god – a tiger, a pure and dazzling white, jeweled color on its neck. The jewels send prisms of light on the floor before them.
“Let me go,” he says, “please.”
“Oh, Sleaze,” says the tiger, “just a bit more. But first, let’s make you something worth writing about.”
Sleaze looks at the floor, where black pools at his feet, like ink. It takes him a moment to realize it’s his color, being leeched from him, and when the tiger is done he is left as white as she is, though his mane and tail are a dark purple. He’s only come to terms with this when there’s a terrible sensation in his forehead, like his own mind is clawing its way out of his head, and then something erupts from him.
A horn, sharp and dangerous, silver colored. A trickle of blood weeps down his back like tears from its eruption. His head feels heavy and strange with this new weight.
“There,” purrs the <s>tiger</s> god, “that’s better. Now you’re a thing fit for a story.”
<center><font color="white" style="font-family:times new roman; font-size:20pt; line-height:12px; letter-spacing:2pt;">sleaze</font>
<font size=2><font color=white> cancer x garbage</font></i></font>
</font></a></center></font></tr></td></table></tr></td></table></center>
tl;dr
word count: 1,622
- obstacle 1: escaping the round pen/stable/handler
- obstacle 2: a fence
- obstance 3: a bunch of balloons, which are terrifying to horses, and also Sleaze dealt with an iteration of Pennywise in a quest a long time ago.