Equus
My Equus, my beast of possession, my trusted means of hunting down my obsessions. The four-legged hurdler who never stopped hurtling, who revelled in the pursuit, who could be let loose on a moment’s whim to race my each and every all-consuming need, desire and depravity to the point on the distant horizon where the thoughts were too dark and the heart beat too fast, where reality blurred as my pulse over-clocked.
My charger had an unerring equine instinct for the direction in which my indulgent flights of fancy too often lured me. The flames of the fire would lick at the base of its gleaming eyes as it was suddenly seized by the need to run free, leaving me almost in its wake were it not for my hands seizing the reins for dear life, the leather burning through the creases in my tightly gripped palms. It had no care for my gasping breaths, and neither did I. The exhilaration was too much to resist, and my senses lost out to everything but the rhythm of the chase and the scent of the sweat on the skin of my steed. One nudge of the spurs, and we were off. Gone. Departed into dust clouds. The rider and the ridden each lost in their own thousand-yard stare, yet united in a desire to be consumed by the promise that would surely lie in the bright beyond.
It couldn’t last. We were pushing the limits, forcing ourselves down tracks that had been long forgotten - though with good reason, because they were far too precarious to be followed. Crazed and captivated, we sped towards fences that looked too fearsome to leap, where a wrongly placed hoof could spell certain disaster. And often did.
Now, with my senses dulled and my mind emptied, and as I cast my eyes around for the someone or the something to grab me and transport from here to the great elsewhere, I regret how I galloped that poor animal into the ground. I took it in an unerring line from spirited stallion to old nag, from rippling muscles and sinews to mere flesh and bone, until its ribs rose from its tired skin as if a rusty radiator had formed along the once majestic lines of its back.
I had to resort to blinding the beast. Spiked its eyes. Felt the blood gush. It seemed like the only way. The only way I could imagine ever being able to well and truly bury my ever-present obsessions was to rob the animal of its sight, because even though its frame was weak and used, sunken and bruised, it would still plead with me to harness it, kick my gleaming spurs with force into its sides, and set it galloping one more time. Just once more.
My Equus, you never ceased in your belief that even though my single-minded haunting led us both into the pitch black, we would always reach the light on the other side. That we would always arrive at some final revelation. That with the wind tousling my hair and the snatched breaths pressing and stretching my lungs - too full, too full, too full to bursting - it could never be less than right, even whilst it felt so very wrong.
Today, I am cold. Cold, hard-faced and thick-skinned as I lead you from your stable one last time. You served me well, my Equus. You took me where I wanted to go even whilst I denied the inherent truths inhabiting those desperate, far-flung destinations. but here I stand about to betray you in the cruellest, bloodiest way. Needs must, because self-preservation has become my raison d’être. I wrap, I cosset, I nurture my basic survival instinct, and you are paying the ultimate price for my reasoned, calculated selfishness.
I will hide you, will protect you. Won’t let anyone take you away. You’re mine and mine and mine forever, though your part has been played. This role was always going to be finite, by necessity. No longer can I let you carry me into the dawn mists channelling low over the deserted moors. No more and never again. Obsessions must kill or be killed.
I place my hand at your mouth and feel the damp warmth of your final breath, before pulling the pistol from my pocket in one fluid movement and calmly firing a solitary bullet into the side of your once noble skull.
As you fall, becoming one with the dusty earth, my parting whisper glances across your right ear. Listen to the last words you will ever hear. “Allow me to show you, the way which I adore you.”