we set fire to the horse

by dØgtail nØrth

“How many Horses does it take to make a man?

                                    None.

For a man is nothing, barren, salted earth –
             and cannot contain

    The magnitude of what constitutes a Horse.” 

                                                                                       -Ed

we opened the large doors to the foyer and slapped it on the ass and sent it careening into the house, closing the double doors behind it

the noise it was making as it reared and slammed into the walls, smashing furniture sounded not unlike the cries of the daughter of the man who owned the horse, the house, when she discovered the large flaming animal as she made her way in from the kitchen\

the curtains catching fire, fine china and crystal being knocked from shelves and trampled under foot as the horse ran to the girl it recognized as safety and promptly in its’ confusion barreled straight through, leaving her to go tumbling into the shards of glass and porcelain on the floor

the fire from the curtains licked the walls, the ceiling and embedded itself into its’ fibre, aspiring to reach the sky through the roof

the girl was no longer moving, she died before the horse did who was now kicking its way into and around the kitchen, knocking the gas ovens loose, the wall of the kitchen facing out to the backyard garden promptly decided to make its exit from the rest of the building and scattered its’ own remains on the to-be gravesite of the family lineage just as the horses cohesion also decided to make an exit from the building, painting the wall facing the foyer red and blowing the front doors back open along with a fine mist of horse blood and sparks.

we weren’t sure explicitly how much of this we were actually culpable for considering the horse had asked us to set it on fire and assured us that it was “all good man”

with some of the supporting structures on the back half of the house either gone or weakened, the back quarter left of the house caved in which we figured was overall ok considering the world could always do with another cave, with which you could hide something, like, a treasure or a bear inside as long as either was fireproof.

with the front doors wide open we could see the owner rushing down the stairs to see what all the commotion was, he never reached the bottom of the stairs though, but more so arrived at the bottom of the inside of the stairs as they collapsed underneath him due to the spreading fire making it look as if he had practically disappeared

with the horses’ goals supposedly attained, we decided waiting around and watching would be a mistake so we took off into the night, or more accurately went running into the cornfield, after a few turns we decided to slow

my sister turned to me and told me she missed the horse

i took a moment to hold her head to mine, brushing the hair out of her face in the same movement – but was also sure to tell her that we probably wanted to make more distance between us and the fire.

Døgtail Nørth is a writer, artist and designer living in Olympia, WA. She is co-owner of Undying Apparel, author of the unpublished manuscript Dirt Rat Fucker 412 and has published work in Always Crashing. Find her at twitter.com/poonathefuckdog