There is a horse in my bedroom
We both hunger for knowledge. We both hunger for a solution.
He's just as confused as I am, perhaps even more. God knows he probably understands even less of this situation than I do.
Behind those dumb animal eyes I see a yearning to be anywhere else but here. This horse should be somewhere out in a meadow, or sleeping in a stable. He shouldn't be on the seventh floor of an apartment complex. He doesn't deserve this fate.
My temper might be bad, and I do rush to speaking without proper thought, but I don't think I deserve this fate either.
I have repented for my sins yet, each and every night, the horse still wakes me from my dreamless sleep.
He's looking down on me right now as I write this impotent reddit post. I can feel the heat of his snout on the back of my neck.
I am a proud man, and it pains me to ask for help, but this strange corner of the internet is my last bastion of hope.
I need help.
A man and a horse were never meant to be trapped in a bedroom this small.
My landlord knows nothing of my curse, but the amount of damage, the smell— it surely will alert him soon. For the past three days I have prayed for a night without the horse, I have put all my hope in the animal simply not showing up one day, but my faith was misplaced.
Every night, around midnight, the horse appears in my cramped bedroom.
Tonight the beast has split my phone charger in half with its hoof, so I fear this is my last chance to speak to an audience that might understand, that might not call me mad.
If you know how to make these nightly visits stop, if you have even a shred of advice on what I am to do; please, help me.
The evening before this terrible curse fell upon me was a beautiful one, but then again, most evenings in Prague are. Having spent most of the past two years in the Soviet era housing projects that circle the city I decided to treat myself to a lamp-lit stroll through the historical part of town.
Walking past the dark gothic structures, seeing the results of nigh a thousand years of civilization, it all brought a sense of calm into my soul. What further pleased me were the obnoxiously colored signs advertising tourist traps.
For years I have hated how the specter of revenue has twisted our culture to normalize 'massage parlors' next to cathedrals and stomach churning 'pub-crawls' in quiet residential areas, yet the return of the tacky advertisements signaled something more than an utter lack of taste— they signaled the return of the tourist industry.
Prior to the plague I worked as a tour guide. The past year has not been easy, but all of the pain has been muffled beneath a promise that things would one day return to normal. The man covered in silver paint pretending to be a mute Michael Jackson in front of the 15th century astronomical clock was a sign of that promise being fulfilled.
As I walked through the streets I loosened my facemask and let my mind be taken by the impending promise of normalcy. I dreamed of coming back to work; of the rapture of a crowd, of the well-earned money, of the stolen nights with women from places I would never visit.
Yet then, with no warning, all of those dreams were whisked away.
I saw the horse.
It stood in the old town square, right next to a towering statue of a priest who was burned alive for criticizing the Catholic Church. The horse was harnessed to a carriage covered in fake gold and fake velvet. No amount of tacky decoration could hide the animal's pain. It was dripping spit on the cobbled streets, breathing breaths that seemed terminal.
All memories of the pleasant aspects of the tourism industry fled from my mind and were replaced by the specter of summer heat. The burning sun, the seared tan-lines of name badges, that eternal search for shade that would never be satisfied — reflected in that poor animal's eyes I saw the worst of the tourism industry. Yet I willingly subjected myself to the exhaustion that the brutal summer months bring, I walked the streets with my name-badge branding my red skin.
I had a choice.
The horse did not.
I stood there, overcome with sorrow from the sentience reflected from those poor eyes. I stood there like Nietzsche, with a view of a cruel world at my feet and discomforting empathy burning in my throat.
An American family with a screaming child approached the horse. I recognized the looks on their faces.
'Don't sign up for the horse carriage ride!' I yelled, in English.
The family froze, even the child found me more interesting than whatever it was crying about. Yet the look in their eyes wasn't welcoming. To them I was just a random person screaming on the street.
'Sorry,' I said, reaching into my jacket for my name badge, 'I used to be a tour guide. We're very passionate about these things. Horse carriage rides around the old town are not authentic at all and most locals see them as tourist traps. If you have a map I can point out an authentic restaurant for you.'
The name badge always does the trick, and the word authentic always clinches it. As soon as I pointed out a nearby restaurant the child remembered its misfortune and started to weep again. The American couple thanked me and set off on a search of good authentic goulash.
From behind his blinders the horse looked at me. His exhausted eyes didn't carry a hint of comprehension, yet somehow it seemed as if the beast understood I had saved it from excess labor. He let out a long sigh. The shivering in his muscles died down.
The astronomic clock beat its ancient bell and trotted out its five hundred year old puppet show. The universe seemed at peace. I felt good about myself.
That didn't last.
"What the fuck was that?!" came a shout in the local tongue, "Why the fuck would you scare off my customers like that?!"
He emerged from behind his carriage, furious. His skin was rough; the years had made themselves known on his face. He had lived through Brezhnev, possibly even a couple years of Khrushchev. Had I met the man in regular clothes, in some smoky pub, I would have ran. My tender bones born into tender democracy are no match for someone who went through the struggle.
Yet that evening I did not run.
The angry carriage driver's clothes looked like they were the result of a torrid affair between a modern day magician and a member of Austro-Hungarian royalty. The top hat covered in sequence made the man significantly less intimidating— it emboldened me even.
"You shouldn't do that to horses," I said, with more confidence than I usually had arguing with strangers, "What you're doing to this horse should not be legal."
"The fuck else am I meant to do with a horse? It's an animal. It was born to work. I feed it. It drags around the tourists and then I get to feed my family. The horse is fucking lucky it's not salami, but here come you with your sunflower morals."
The man came within striking distance. Suddenly his magical clothes weren't so calming.
"Can't you see the animal is in pain?" I asked, tapping the horse's tense shoulder. The beast let out the gentlest of neighs in response to my touch.
"Get your fucking hands off my animal."
I could smell the brand of cigarettes on his breath. Startky, the cancer sticks of a country that no longer exists.
"But can't you see the animal is in pain?"
"So what? Life is pain. Every morning I wake up with a headache and a sore back, who the fuck is looking out for me? No one. But that's fucking life. This is my goddamn livelihood and you're fucking with it. Get the fuck out of here before I deck you."
The carriage driver didn't wait for a response. He simply gave me a light shove, landed my tailbone on the cobblestone and stomped off. Once he reached his carriage he produced a pack of cigarettes from beneath his hat and lit up.
"Fucking liberals," he grumbled to himself.
I sat there on cobble stone laid a hundred years prior, watching the perfect midpoint between the men that promote strip clubs and the men that promote concert halls angrily smoke. The astronomical clock finished off its show and a handful of disappointed travelers started to make their way back home to their hotels. I should have gone home too.
But I couldn't.
Those tired dull eyes, that dripping spit; the majestic animal that hovered over me wouldn't let me rest. I couldn't walk away without getting one last jab in. Without knowing what I was about to say, I decided to let the carriage driver know how I felt about him.
"Well, I still think you're a bad person," I said, getting up. "If I had a horse I would treat him much nicer."
Since that evening I have spent a lot of time thinking about that phrase. I don't know why I said it. I don't know why I felt the need to bring up the hypothetical of me owning a horse. Perhaps it was the lack of social contact throughout the plague; perhaps I simply wanted to reassert to myself that I was a kinder human than the carriage driver, yet regardless of my motivations, I said it.
If I had a horse I would treat him much nicer.
Those words have clawed their way across my spirit each and every night since then. It is with those words, I fear, that I have sealed my fate. I reached out into the universe and offered a hypothetical.
I was a fool to think the cosmos would not answer.
"Be careful what you wish for," he said, puffing on his cigarette.
The reddened sky of the setting sun had faded away, a starless night had painted itself above us. Beneath the lamp light the carriage driver no longer looked absurd. He stood on cobbled streets once soaked in blood, dressed like something out of a toddler's nightmare — yet he no longer looked absurd. With the ancient stone of the mother of all cities around him, he looked right at home.
"The fuck you looking at?" he said.
"Nothing," I replied.
Not wanting to get shoved again, I made my way back home.
I still remember sitting on the subway, listening to the low rumble of the metro, thinking my conflict with the carriage driver was the low-point of my week. The oddly dressed man and his anger soaked up all of my attention, for a moment I even forgot about the suffering horse.
Soon enough, however, I would be reminded of the animal.
I would be reminded of the animal in the most terrible of ways.
I woke up in the middle of the night, confused and scared.
With my blinds pulled down the room was in complete darkness, yet even past my inability to see I knew. I knew there was something else in the room with me.
At first I ignored the sensation of being watched. I convinced myself that I was simply having a bad dream, that perhaps the kebab I bought on my way back home had disagreed with my digestive system, yet the foreign presence was difficult to ignore.
The stuffy air of my bedroom was laced with the scent of the countryside. In the dark I could hear something breathing in low heavy sighs. The thought that I was not alone was starting to manifest into a certainty. Something big was attempting to stand still by the foot of my bed but failing desperately. I was too groggy to wrestle with my fear of the unknown. I simply flipped on my bedside lamp.
NEEEEIGH!
Crash.
The eyes. The muzzle. The confusion.
The afterimage of the horror stayed with me as the room descended back into darkness. I was almost certain that it was the animal's long snout that tipped over the lamp. I was almost certain that there was a live horse standing in my cramped bedroom, but I refused to accept the idea.
The flashlight on my phone was meant to ease my mind, yet when I reached for the jeans lying by my bed I found another reason to be worried. Instead of grasping at cloth my fingers rubbed up against a rough surface.
Neeigh.
I knew that I was touching was a hoof. I knew there was a horse in my bedroom. I was certain, in my heart of hearts, that the animal which I had argued over on the Old Town square was currently standing on my jeans, but I retrieved the phone regardless. Knowing full well what the light would reveal, I turned on the torch application.
NEEEEIIIIGH!
Spit flew from its jowls as the animal screamed in confusion. Something cracked beneath its hooves. The fact that the horse was in the room with me was an unavoidable part of reality, the maddening questions of how the beast had made its way to the seventh floor were threatening to consume me whole. I found one last bit of refuge.
I convinced myself it was all a dream.
I could smell the horse. I could hear the soft crunching of electronics beneath its hooves. The horse was clearly standing right by my bed — yet I somehow managed to convince myself that it was all a dream.
With a deafeningly loud podcast about the Holy Roman Empire in my ears and the room draped in complete darkness; I could not hear nor see the horse. I could only feel its hot breath and the occasional drips of perspiration from its muzzle. The horse smelled my body up and down; possibly in search of answers for its predicament, possibly in search of hay. Either way the horse was not pleased. Occasionally I could still feel the floor shift as the massive animal stepped side to side.
I did my best to focus my attention on the Holy Roman Empire podcast. I desperately hung onto the bits of information flowing through my ears, trying to ignore the unavoidable truth stomping around my bedroom. At first ignoring the horse seemed nigh impossible, yet as I forced myself to focus in on a prolonged torrent of information of the Habsburg family I did the same thing everyone does when they listen to people talk about the Holy Roman Empire for an extended period of time.
I fell asleep.
I opened my eyes to slivers of sunlight crisscrossing my bedroom.
I was alone.
For a moment I was overjoyed at the idea that the horse had simply been a product of a fever dream, but then my nose caught a smell of something foul. I got up and looked at the floor.
The scream I let out was loud enough for the neighbor to bang his broom against the ceiling.
Before me was excrement and destruction. My floor was damaged beyond the wildest of security deposits, my laptop— my dear companion for the year of quarantine— lay crushed by my bed. A deep hoof mark cracked the machine well past a return policy.
The horse was real. There was no escaping it.
The horse was real and it wasn't in my room anymore.
Immediately I unplugged my table lamp and seized it as a weapon. The thought of the barnyard animal hiding somewhere in the apartment caused my blood to grow cold and jagged. Each room held the potential for the animal to be doing further damage to the home I was renting. Each door I opened rushed images of getting trampled to death into my mind.
Yet no horse presented itself.
The damage and excrement were only contained to my cramped bedroom. The rest of the apartment was spotless, or, as spotless as the apartment of someone who's unemployed for a prolonged period of time can be. Either way, there were no signs of the horse entering, exiting, or even standing anywhere outside of my bedroom.
I threw the glass shards of my lamp into the trash and scooped up the excrement into an old McDonald's take-out bag. Not wanting to risk bumping into my neighbors in the elevator, I elected to keep the putrid fast-food container on the balcony.
Removing the excrement from my floor made the stench less potent, but regardless of how much of a breeze I forced through the room it still stank of manure.
After the first night I did not speak a word of the horse to anyone. The perplexing reality of the animal still swelled my heart with terror and anxiety— putting my curse into words was beyond my reach. I simply laid in bed and listened to the sounds of children playing among the cement walls of the housing projects.
Oh how I longed to be young and carefree once again. Oh how I longed to be liberated from the festering dread that comes with the unexplainable. Oh how I longed to live a simple existence once more.
Yet no existence can be simple when a horse manifests by your bed in the middle of the night.
The sun had set. I had spent the majority of the day drifting in and out of consciousness, trying to catch up on the sleep that I had missed the night before. It was during one of these gentle waltzes between nervous wakefulness and dreamless sleep that the horse appeared once more.
NEEEIGH!
My window was open. The dim lights of the streetlamps illuminated enough of the animal for it to be unmistakable.
NEEEIGH!
The horse screamed, confused and uncomfortable.
The sound of broken strings and cracked wood cut through the bedroom. My guitar, my one way of channeling the anxious year of quarantine into art— it lay broken at the horse's hooves.
NEEEEIIIIIGH!
The animal bounced its heavy body against the floorboards in frustration. The whole room shifted. From beneath the floor an angry broom responded to the animal's stomps.
NEEEEIIIGHHH!
"Horse! Stop it!" I whispered to the animal, letting my fear of homelessness overpower my fear of the foreign beast, "Shhhh! Please. No one can know you're here."
Neeeigh!
"Horse, please."
Neigh.
The animal calmed, as if it understood my words, as if it wanted to work together to get out of this horrid curse we were both stuck in. Yet no progress was made. I spent the night staring at the horse, trying to find some semblance of reason within its eyes, but my search was fruitless.
We faced off well into the first rays of sun, man and beast, both searching for answers to their respective predicaments. My willingness to stare off with the horse soon came to a close, however. As we searched each other's eyes for a way out, the horse defecated again.
My soul churning confusion and fear soon turned to disgust. I made my way to the McDonald's take-out bags to once again lessen the presence of manure in my bedroom. By the time I came back, as if the horse had rode off on the rays of the rising sun, the animal was gone.
I did not waste time on self-pity this time. Immediately I messaged every person in my contacts who I thought could help me. I did so with the utmost hope that someone would provide advice, that someone would tell me I have not gone mad— yet no such thing happened.
Most of my friends are tour-guides, or perhaps more accurately were tour guides. With the badge not holding us together we have all drifted apart into unanswered 'Message seen' territory. All my other points of contact either avoided my message entirely or wrote back to me with jokes.
I knew the horse would return at midnight. Without a shred of doubt I was certain that the mysterious animal would appear in my bedroom again, but I did nothing to brace for its arrival. I simply laid in bed, motionless, waiting for the inevitable barnyard intrusion on my rented home.
The sun set, the children outside stopped playing. I knew I should prepare, that I should at least ensure that nothing on my floor can be destroyed by the animal's hooves, but the absurdity of my situation left me paralysed.
The snapping of electronics rung in the arrival of midnight.
My phone charger didn't stand a chance against the beast's hooves.
As I write these words the horse is looking at me. In the dying light of my phone screen I can see its bulging eyes look to me for guidance. I have none. I am just as confused as he is.
Neither of us wants to be in this situation. We need help.
So please, strangers of the internet, I beg you:
Tell me what to do.
Credited to MikeJesus
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