//------------------------------// // Mystical Golf // Story: Odd's Oubliette: Otherwise Obsolete Oddities // by Odd_Sarge //------------------------------// Mystical Golf is advertised as an authentic golfing experience, and by the layout of the three courses, one would most certainly see the resemblance of the Scottish Highlands. The courses are immaculately designed: each hole experiences a multitude of elevations; a great deal of hilly inclines block views and shots alike; the population of select species of plants and a lack of trees around the green; and the massive freshwater lake is truly something to soak in. It truly is a golf club that anyone can see the beauty in. Well, as long as you can look past their advertisements of ‘fantasy creatures.’ I’ve had enough encounters with Canadian Geese to last me a lifetime over. I had been fairly impartial to the prospect of getting a part-time job while going to college, but the boredom of my relatively short four-day weeks had sunk in by the end of the second week in college. Mystical Golf was the last place I expected to find a job. I saw myself as more of the run-of-the-mill college student working the fast food line, not someone down in the sandtraps and the cart depot. Funnily enough, management had put me on the part-time list for the upcoming Labor Day weekend, and I was slated to get some training done for cart maintenance for my first day on the job. That actually got me excited to go to work; I was already on the educative-track to go into work as a biomedical equipment technician, so getting to work on some machines was something I was all for. However, they neglected to mention to me that I would be spending a great deal of time cleaning and dealing with batteries. I hated how sweaty my hands could get under gloves, and now I had a job where a good portion of my time was going to be spent with gloves. At least I didn’t need gloves to check tire pressure. Saturday was a more laborious affair than Friday; a course had some debris that needed clearing. The Mystical Golf Club is actually separated into three separate courses: the Witch Golf Course, which is more swamp than turf; the Man-o-War Golf Course, which shares the right side of Mystical Golf’s lake; and the Wizard Golf Course, which shares the left half of the lake. Thankfully enough, I got to work on the ‘nicer’ courses, which were the side-by-side turfs of the Man-o-War and the Wizard. And unfortunately enough, all the geese in the Carolinas seemed to live there. I later learned from a coworker that the reason all those birds were there was because of the golf club’s desire to bring even more nature to the course; supposedly, ‘nature sold well. That answer left me with even more questions. How much money could they make off nature? Why would they choose geese of all things to bring in? Did they realize how much excrement they left lying around on the courses? How did they manage to call geese ‘fantasy creatures,’ without jest? And more importantly, how did they attract all the geese? The answer to the last question was delivered in a pastel package. I was finishing up my process of loading some fallen branches and bags of leaves onto my golf cart when I noticed something off about the geese across the lake. For the most part, the geese spent their time in and on the edge of the water, but suddenly they were shuffling about to organize into an absurdly neat lines. It didn’t take too long to see what had them going about the strange ritual. The pony had a bright yellow coat and violet mane that marred the otherwise bland terrain with its mixture. They seemed to be waving on the geese with one of their front hooves; how they managed to stay balanced so well, I wasn’t sure. The pony also seemed to call out to the geese, but the voice was lost on the wind. The geese all eventually crossed the road the pony was stood on, wandering past the parked golf cart and out of sight. I watched the pony trudge down to where the geese had been, cautiously stepping around the messes they’d left. A pair of protective goggles were pulled from their mussy mane over their eyes, and with a roar, the engine of the orange weed wacker awkwardly held with a foreleg and a mouth spun up. I played with the idea of sitting there and watching them for a tad bit longer, but I had my own work to do. I piled into my cart, looked once more at the pony, and turned the key with a curious hum. For once, Sunday was true to its name; a light fog that had descended upon Myrtle Beach early that morning lifted off within a few hours of the waking day, and I was off to the golf club to work under a blue, and cloudless, summer sky. Like the pony the day prior, I was armed with a cordless orange trimmer. There was a great deal of rain in the Carolinas, and with the coming hurricane, even more rain was being hurled our way; combined with the warmth of the summer sun, it was a perfect recipe for unruly plant growth. Most of the sandtraps needed trimming quite badly, and I ended up driving myself all across both the Wizard and Man-o-War courses to catch the edges of the eighty-odd sandtraps scattered across the thirty-six holes. I was ‘working’ with someone the whole time—I continued to come across trimmed sandtraps throughout the morning—but by the time lunch rolled around, I was more than ready to drop on the ground from the heat. While we had our own breakrooms, employees were allowed to use the kitchens on-site so long as they cleaned up after themselves. I ended up using the Wizard’s clubhouse, and not just because the building was a faux castle; it had the better kitchen of the two clubhouses, and was equipped with a superior microwave. And although I hadn’t expected it, but the pony inside was a sort-of bonus. She greeted me from her position near the center of the room as I stepped through the door. The pony had her hooves propped up on the marble-top island in the kitchen, a mug of cinnamon-colored coffee to one side of her hooves, and a closed blue flip phone on the other. I stumbled a bit in surprise, but we both shared a laugh at my expense when I recovered. I settled into one of the bar stools and set my meal down on the counter. We exchanged names, and conversation kicked up swiftly.  She preferred the name Yam, and said she didn’t have much of a story to tell, but that was a plain-flat lie. I didn’t see a need or desire to pry any further, as I felt I’d been told enough; I learned that she was from a family of farmers, and all of them—her included—proudly worked some good farmland up in North Carolina. They had plans to purchase some of the land for their own at some point, but Yam’s family were satisfied with the deal they’d struck with one of the major family-owned farms; magically-enhanced crops still saw some scrutiny, but the massive improvements to harvests definitely held some leverage. For her own part, she had plans in South Carolina to try her hoof at hemp farming later down the line, but for now she was content with studying at the local university for a BSBA in Management. After a bit of talk about our pasts and goals, we inevitably sank into conversation about work. While I was new to the golf club, Yam had been working there for a few months. I was pleasantly surprised to find we were both fulfilling the same position, though she had a few additional roles that I had gotten a taste of the previous day. It turned out that she had been the one to enable the management to add ‘fantasy creatures’ to the golf club’s features list, and while I couldn’t get an exact answer out of how she managed to do it, I did get the feeling that it was a very unique characteristic. We spoke for a little longer, but eventually we had to part.  I felt a bag of longing on my shoulders for the rest of the day, and by the time I’d gotten home, I still was unable to remove that aching feeling. I’d never spoken to a pony in the decade they’d been on Earth, or even spent time around them, but it made me wonder why exactly I’d feared approaching them to talk. They seemed just like us. No matter how much she tried, though, Yam couldn’t get me to accept the pest known as geese. It was Labor Day, and I was working alongside a pony to maintain a golf course while the sound of golf drivers flooded the air. It turned out that Yam actually had trouble wielding the trimmers we used for the courses; I was surprised she was able to hide her discomfort so well. The blower, however, seemed to work perfectly for her. With me on point and Yam holding the rear, we made quick work of the remaining trim on the lake, and were off to deal with the branching ponds of the Man-o-War course. Hurricane Dorian was a menace to our work; the storm was getting close, as evident by the gray clouds above that sprinkled us with precise shots of rain every so often. I came close to calling off our work when a particularly large pack of clouds popped up on the horizon, but Yam seemed confident we would be able to finish up. It was through her careful planning that we managed to plow through all the flocks of geese and work before the rain came pouring down on our heads. It never did, but that didn’t stop me from enjoying the time I spent working on a golf course of all things. I’d expected to go back to school on Tuesday since the weekend and national holiday had passed, but I was clearly mistaken. The governor called for emergency services to be available as mandatory evacuations were sent out across several of the coastal counties. All of the local colleges and universities closed, and urged students to ensure safety was their number one priority; education definitely remained the second-most priority for the schools, however. While I wasn’t in an evacuation zone by a healthy margin, I still remained vigilant and kept an eye on the local TV whenever it was in view.  I heard one of the ponies living in the apartment complex arguing with my downstairs neighbor. From the bits and pieces I’d heard, it seemed to be a controversial debate over whether or not Tom had put his trash in the pony’s bin. Of course Tom did, because ponies had been good neighbors to us for the past decade, and people like Tom had been everything but accommodating to them. But mostly because Tom is the only one who cooks a Digiorno every night. Nobody, or anypony for that matter, in the neighborhood eats that much pizza. I had been a bit apprehensive to go into work on Wednesday. I was really glad I did. Dorian had been knocking on the doors to the Carolinas for the past few days, but that day it outright broke it down. Rain has been scattering all around my apartment and the golf club, leaving behind pools of standing water and the echoing gurgle of the storm drains. That didn’t stop management from calling in those available for maintenance. Unfortunately, I didn’t get to work on the golf carts; I was off to the course. I was once again on the journey to visit as many sandtraps as possible, but it was for a task I’d never even considered; the sand inside them needed to be maintained, too. There was a lot of constant heaving and drawing with my rake and broom, but I just couldn’t get the right consistency across the board for the sand. It wasn’t until Yam came up with her own rake and broom that life finally found a way. Yam had repeatedly shown that she was capable of making things look easy, and her work with the sandtraps was the purest sample of her efficiency.