Behind Every Man

CHAPTER XII

Behind Every Man

Someone who knows too much finds it hard not to lie.
-Ludwig Wittgenstein

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...Ok, we’re off the train? It was certainly a good idea to jump down into these tunnels to escape the abandoned concert hall arcology, what with their lasers and debtor’s prison. Yeah, we’re off the train… I’m afraid one of my feet might still be back on the train (precisely because that would be a terrible thing to have happen)—And so of course, yeah, there’s my foot back there, on the little grate running alongside the chemical tank, but that’s ultimately OK, because, I mean, we all know this is a dream, right? [shhhh, no you don’t] Foot’s there, now it’s back, now it’s there again… Oh, the gang wants me to hurry up and jump to the next train, so I better go.
...Kinda want to stay and find out what’s making those weird horsey noises but I gotta keep movin’.
Yes, trains are one way to escape from things, and now we’ve used them to also avoid the Tokyo police, who did not want us down in these tunnels, amirite? I guess this is Tokyo, then. Tokyo is a place commonly associated with businessmen, and here’s one now! Hello, sir!
“Why hello, can you come to dinner at my house?”
Of course! Oh, is this your son, whose name I know is Junpei Whippet, because, like the value of pi, that’s just what his name necessarily is?
“Indeed. I’d like you to secure him a job, as he has no practical life skills, and I feel a job would help him develop them.”
I can see that, as he is just sitting on your expensive couch, eating a large, medium-rare steak as if it were an apple, and dripping steak juice onto your fancy leather.
“Let’s both stare at him until he becomes self-conscious and realizes his behavior is odd.”
Okay… Hmm… Wait, what’s happening to the wall? No, not a wall... A cutaway of geological strata? What have you been digging up in here!?
*CRACK* *ZOOM*
“Augh!”
What the fuck is that tennis ball thing!? Why does it have a face on it that’s biting you!? Holy shit, you just turned into a monster!
“GRAGH!”
C’mon, Junpei, put down that steak! This place is being invaded by flying tennis balls whose bite turns people into monsters! This dream is crazy! [Shut up, you’re not supposed to know that!] Let’s meet back up with the gang and get to the airport; there are attack jets we can use to incinerate them from above! You can have the Su-25 because I call the A-10!
Warthog, not war horse—Who keeps making the funny talk with all the neighing sounds!?
Oh, but of course the tennis balls have invaded the city and the streets are clogged with refugees! To the rooftops, Junpei! We’ll take the pedal-powered tandem sky bike that all rooftops are required by law to have. Oh no, they got you, too!? I’m so sorry for this!
*POW*
*POK* *POK* *POK* *POK* *POK* *POK*
...Augh, there’s too many of the tennis ball creatures, and I’m rapidly becoming self-conscious about my racket skills! Where’s the gang from the arcology, especially that cute girl with the bangs and gray hoodie!? I can’t fight them off forever! I…
Huh? There it is again—What the hell is that talking? Sounds like someone’s trying to make a slam poem out of remixed horse noises and martini music. Wait, I’ve heard this language before...
….Sorry, what? I don’t speak, uh, that. Where are you? Here, I’ll pause the fighting. ...Oops, I accidentally imagined I was wrong that I could do that… *Pok*
==PROFANITY: invoke -> “Night.” SHOCK @ Danger. RELIEF @ Caught up to dreamer.==
Oh, hey! I know you!
==SURPRISE==
That’s right, every-me, this is Princess Luna. She’s a popular cute character and de facto moon goddess in the cult hit television program “My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic.” She appeared in a previous short dream, dressed as a hotel maid, but I was unable to stay and chat because I had to finish jumping out of a window.
...I took a picture of her on my phone, though. On my real one, of course, since who has a phone in a dream? Ha ha ha! I’ll have to show you all when I wake up.
==POLITE PUZZLEMENT: What is?==
Hahaha, what aren’t I? We all play so many roles in life. Call be Blue Rob. Robshift. Oh, who cares?
In point of fact, many people think Luna is Best Pony, and I am not inclined to disagree, especially because this force field of hers is doing a pretty good job keeping all the monsters out.
[Thanks for that, Princess, by the way. Not like you ruined what was going to be one of my best “gray goo” nightmares in years or anything.]
==BAFFLEMENT: Place. Events. WHO? GOAL: Lost pony, lost location, lost lost lost. Far far far. Cold. Beyond. Thin thread. SEEKING. No words. Impressions==
Pre-verbal thought? Is that what this is supposed to be?
...Yes, now... I... remember: Luna recovering from aphasia is a popular fan trope, as she is frequently cast as a gamer and non-verbal communication is often associated with the hand-eye coordination required for both video games and sign language. It’s a metaphor for the way language works in the brain, since, as everyone knows, the brony community is heavily Chomskyite and spurns the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, while brony-haters famously believe it’s language that determines thought.
==...........WHAT?==
== BAD: dreamer not pony. BAD: dreamer not lucid.===
...No, I’m very much not lucid, but you’re welcome to stay here in this dream and wait ‘til I wake up so that we can talk clearly afterwards in the real world, ‘cuz right now you look kinda indistinct and weird. I forget where I’m sleeping, though. It’s not my apartment… Was I on a Greyhound? I was going somewhere...
You know, I was a pony for a bit, myself, actually. We have a lot in common. ...I don’t mean that in a flirty way or anything. ...But imagine the bragging rights if I hooked up with an actual moon goddess, right? Here, lemme get your number at least—Huh? Stupid phone’s not charged. But who has a charger in a dream, right? Forget it. I’m sure I’ll remember it when I wake up.
Here, let me just get down on all fours as well, so we can, y’know, chat more natural-like. Oops, I almost floated away a little bit there, but I got it now! That’ll happen—You know how stomachs are! Way worse than helium balloons sometimes.
Hey, no need to step back. What’s that face for? Here, lemme just move my neck up a little bit so that I don’t have to strain like this. That’s better. My head kinda hurts, though...
==Thread. Thinness. Too much. WHERE? Compassion and worry. Fear for experiences. For dreamer pony==
Pony? Lady, I got made fun of more enough for the horn and hooves growing up, but it’s just a coincidence! And it’s not unheard of for people to be born with tails! Look what you got my ears doin’ just thinking about it… You have no idea of all the crap I got in the girls’ locker room, too, which they made me use, instead of—
Oh, goddammit!
[Hahahahaha! Surprise!]
Yup, and awaaaaaaaay goes the ground…
==NO! WAIT!==

“Ughn… ah! Ah!” I spasmed once, in a cloying startle reflex, and a sinking sense of recognition filled me as I heard my voice.

“Yikes! She’s up!” I heard a woman say. Nicole was her name?

I shook my head and opened my eyes. “Awugh…!” I coughed once. “I’m still a horse!”

“...Wh… Huh?” Nicole was still sitting on the couch opposite mine, and seemed rightly confused.

I tried to bury my face in the armrest but realized for the foreseeable future I was only going to be able to rest my chin on things. I lazily bonked my nose on the upholstery a couple of times as if to symbolically shove it back in, and sighed. I wasn’t sure what I expected, but an abrupt confrontation with reality is never comfortable. Especially with the strange, cold, dull headache that seemed to slide back and forth from the tip of my horn to what felt like the center of my brain. Naturally, I’d never experienced anything like it before.

“Bad dream?” Nicole leaned forward, placing her laptop back on the coffee table.

“Uh… sort… Yeah.” It clicked what she meant. “I was just… it’s like, ‘I’m a horse, not a number!’ kinda thing…,” I deflected, “I’d just seen ‘Brazil’ recently. You know, Terry Gilliam? Boy, that’s a weird movie, huh?”

I heard a low grumble from the far corner of the room; a man’s voice. “...This is incredible.”

My ears dragged my head almost all the way around, until I gazed directly over that horizon of gigantic blue horsebutt. It was a stout, white-haired man with a perfectly trimmed white beard; one of those middle-aged men with taut, ruddy skin that gave an impression of his being healthier and biologically younger than he was in calendar years. He could have been Santa’s health-conscious little brother, or an indie-rocker Hemingway. All I could manage by way of greeting was a panicked “What th-!?” while the man held up his hands and his mouth slackened as he retreated further into his corner.

“Blue Shift, this is Duncan. He’s a very good friend of ours and knows a lot about, um… you peop- Um, equines.” Nicole stood up and placed a hand on his shoulder.

“I see…” Something in me had grokked the idea of letting more and more strangers in on my situation, but the more analytical parts of my mind were still unwilling to comment. I decided not to stop myself from narrowing my eyes at Duncan—I didn’t want to convey suspicion against him personally, but still wanted to give the impression that I retained some kind of veto power over what was going on.

Duncan walked up to me with a carefully measured pace, then kneeled next to the couch. I blinked and continued to stare at him, and suddenly he put his hand on my neck. “Wow, you really are something. I’ve never seen a breed like yours before… You almost have the body of an American Shetland, but your face is… and your pupils are almost totally circular; I couldn’t see your eyes before, and...” He trailed off as he noticed me glowering at his hand. Wait, ‘almost’ circular, he said? And was this just going to be a thing, now? Like a pregnant woman’s stomach or a black person’s hair, random jerks think they can just walk up and touch the merchandize all they want?! “Sorry.” Duncan withdrew his hand and let it hang limply in the air.

“That’s, uh, that’s OK… But were you watching me sleep, dude?” I squinted at him in discomfort at the idea of being so exposed.

Duncan laughed. “Well… Can you blame me? You’re rather… one of a kind around here. Quite a switch from the animals I normally deal with.”

“...Oh yeah…?” I responded with ritualized acknowledgement.

Nicole stepped in. “Duncan jointly owns a farm outside of the city, and he drives those carriages they have downtown, you know, for romantic rides and things? That, um, that doesn’t bother you, does it? Riding? I know it kind of bothers Derek.”

“Nope, not me. No more than you’re bothered by, like, ‘Jane Goodall’ stuff... or... chimps in tuxes,” I dissembled.

The pair of them laughed. Having been reminded of their friend Derek, I looked around the room for a moment before asking where he and his blazed, Skyrim-playing roommate had run off to. Nicole noticed my searching and piped up. “Derek’s taking a shower, and Brandon went to work.”

“Uh, thanks.” There was something vaguely oily and spicy still in the air and I sniffed subtly to get a better sense of it. It was obviously some sort of curry, and while I couldn’t put my hoof on how, something in the odor was telling me it had been out for quite some time. It was as if the scent had had a chance to permeate the room but then begin to fade, something I never had experienced before with a human nose.

Wait, hadn’t they said that was my curry? Not to be an ingrate, but I felt I was within my rights to be disappointed they’d gotten my hopes up only to eat without me. “Did you guys eat already?” I tried to say as casually and non-accusitorilly as possible.

Nicole unconsciously affected a gasp. “Ohmigod, I’m sooo sorry! We shouda woken you up, but a sleeping unicorn is exactly as adorable as you’d expect.” She leaned forward with her hands on her knees, as if to emphasize she thought of me as a cute and diminutive treasure she’d found.

Ugh. It was exactly what I’d been afraid would happen, but I tried to spin it in a more bemused direction—After all, they hadn’t needed to ‘kidnap’ me and offer to feed me in the first place. “Really…?” I tried to raise an eyebrow, only to find my ears pricking up with them like the hands of a puppeteer. “As much as I’d expect?” I grinned, but was only met with puzzled but expectant smiles. “Because I’m a unicorn, myself…?” I continued. “...So it would seem to me like the average level of cuteness and oh never mind…” I unthinkingly stuck out my tongue, only to feel a twinge as I realized how precious I probably looked.

Nicole took a step towards the kitchen. “Seriously sorry, though…,” she said, quickening her pace, “Here, lemme heat some back up…”

“Thaaanks…!” I was genuinely appreciative and could feel my stomach silently gurgling, but I felt like some of my risidual grogginess had seeped into my words and made me sound uncomfortably entitled, so I added a “smells really good!” There was a momentary pause, and I turned my conveniently mobile neck back towards Duncan. “Soooo…” I didn’t really know what to do with or about this new guy with whom I’d suddenly been left alone.

“So…” he mirrored. “What’s your… If you don’t mind my asking, I mean—What’s your story? We don’t get, uh, we don’t get too many unicorns around here.”

“Ummmmm, wellllll…”

Say it. SAY! IT! Tell him you used to be human!

No, it’s just… shameful. It makes me into a victim.

You just had an accident. You had an accident that gave you super powers! Tele-fucking-kinesis! Sure, you look a little weird as a side effect, but who hasn’t dreamed about that!?

“I had a little accident,” I started off. “The, uh, the magical kind.” Duncan’s eyebrows twitched at that. No doubt he’d already anticipated the possibility of the uncanny or supernatural, but it was still something to hear it spoken out loud.

Duncan suddenly took a controlled step back. “You—It, I mean the magic—It’s not still dangerous, is it?”

“Noooo, no, no…” At least I had no reason to think it was. I was pretty sure about what caused my condition, and I doubted it was contagious. “It’s something dumb I did myself. It kinda blew up in my face, and now I have to deal with the fallout. For the moment I’m just trying to get home.”

“Where’s home?”

“It—” Out of habit I nearly blurted out my neighborhood. “It’s not far. I could walk there easy if I wasn’t...y’know.” I shrugged and then tried using my neck and head like a hand to wave over my body. It worked surprisingly well, and I made a mental note to experiment later with just how far this neck could stretch. It felt like even reaching my back legs would be possible with a little contortion of my, uh, torso. Barrow? Barrel? I’d have happily asked Duncan to clue me in on horse terms if it wouldn’t immediately raise flags about why I hadn’t learned this stuff growing up.

“You don’t want us ‘mortals’ to fu—to mess it up, I get it.” Duncan crossed his arms. He was obviously a little offended by the insinuation, and universally bungling, venal humans were such a faux-humble fantasy cliche that I’d have been too embarrassed to say it even if it were true.

“Oh no, sorry, I didn’t mean that, I just want to keep this to myself as much as possible. It’s kind of a… compromising situation for me, in a lot of ways… I just want to get it over with as quickly as possible without getting other people involved… Sorry… You’re not in any danger from me, though, I can promise you that.”

He gave two staccato hisses, apparently some kind of chuckle. “Well thanks. That’s a relief.”

There was a silence as the conversation momentarily lost momentum, but we were saved as the microwave dinged, and I smelled the same pleasantly spicy grease wafting out of the kitchen. Immediately I began salivating, and noticed the hollow pang that was beginning to climb up the inside of my ribcage. I met Duncan’s eyes and conspicuously licked my lips.

Nicole brought out a chipped, powder blue plate heaped with lumpy orange goop. “Sorry about the wait again. I tasted it, it’s still good; the microwave didn’t make it all mushy and gross or anything. Derek gets kinda carried away sometimes so lemme know if it’s too spicy.” She set it down on the coffee table in front of me, along with a napkin and a spoon.

“That smells good...” Duncan mumbled from his corner.

“Do you want some…? I can…” Nicole continued, but I’d stopped paying attention, out of habit lifting one of my forelegs to take the spoon, before stopping several inches away, frowning at my smooth, useless hoof. I tightened my stomach muscles in a momentary spasm of indignant rage, and simply held my hoof in the air, clenching my foreleg’s muscles to the point of discomfort, dreaming for a moment I could will a human arm to burst forth from inside it.

Nicole turned around to return to the kitchen, and noticed my impotent tableau. “Ohmigod! Unicorn! Of course! I’m sorry, I should have realized.”

Unicorn. Of course. My rage and self-loathing melted faster than the face of an Ark-opening Nazi. I laughed a little too eagerly, “Hahaha! Noooo, it’s fine!” I replaced my foreleg under my chest, causing Nicole to ever so slightly wrinkle her nose as she no doubt guessed I was simply going to tuck in like an ordinary pony. I bubbled over with eagerness at imagining how surprised they’d be.

There was thumping from across the room. Derek clambered down the stairs, the skinniness of his legs emphasized by oafish, stained cargo shorts. “Hey, Blue Shift, you’re awake! Sorry we ate without you. I wanted to wake you up but Nicole and Duncan outvoted me. At least you got food now and... seem pretty good.”

“That’s alright…” I could smell how clean he was, and my nostrils automatically flared.

“I left to take a shower because I turned out to be al...um…,” he trailed off.

I looked back and forth to Nicole and Derek to prompt them to continue the explanation, but it was Duncan who stepped in. “Derek turned out to be allergic to you.”

“What!? Oh man, I’m sorry!” I squeaked. “I’ll...I’ll help clean this couch and vacuum or anything you guys need later!”

Derek waved his hand. “Don’t worry about it, it’s not bad. I should have remembered I’ve had reactions to horses before. When I was real little my mom used to take riding lessons and I couldn’t hug her when she got home.”

“Maybe that’s why you’ve got a problem with me training horses,” Duncan offered.

“No, that’s because I’m a dirty vegan or whatever.” Derek smirked. “And I don’t, really; you’re blowing what I said that night way outta proportion.” He turned to me. “Aw shit, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t say anything. You’ve got more of a dog in this fight than I do.”

“As it were.” I grinned and cocked my head. “Whatever, though—I gotta eat! I’m starvin’!” And about to blow some minds, I thought with a smile.

Derek started back. “Aw shit, the spoon… Uh, with hooves, how do you wanna…? Are you just gonna…?”

Nicole began striding towards the kitchen again. “I’ll get a rubber band, you don’t have to—”

“No no no—shhh. Watch this! OK… Word of warning: I’m about to do something kinda... impossible, so don’t freak out or anything, alright?” I cleared my mind and concentrated on the fork.

Nothing happened.

“...Shit,” I mumbled. “I was doing it earlier, I swear…” I sucked my teeth and then it clicked in my memory. “Oh, duh. Other way around!” I recalled the sensation in my horn, then tried to flex it lightly, and was immediately rewarded with a glow at the top of my vision, and an amazed gasp from the assembled humans. “Pretty cool, huh? Now…” I extended an invisible arc of magical energy and withdrew a veil of the colorless magic ‘material,’ wrapping it around the fork.

“Whaaaaaat!?” Derek was astounded, and I saw him move to record it on his camera. “I gotta Vine this…”

“Wh—C’mon, man! No!” I scolded him from across the room, still trying to keep my eyes on the fork.

“Yeah, Derek.” Nicole backed me up. “That’s amazing, though…” She stared at the hovering spoon, encased in its blue foxfire. “I thought for a minute you were just gonna bury your face in there, or that I’d have to feed you like a baby, but I guess I should have expected more from a magical unicorn.”

Damn right you should.

“Aww, we all would have loved to see that scene, though!” I said. “Alright, heeeeere comes the airplane! Nyeeeeooowwwr!” I gingerly maneuvered the spoon in a figure-eight in front of my face. “I’m a big girl!” I said with a mock sense of accomplishment. For some reason I felt a swell of pride of how automatically I’d been on the ball, taking my voice as a cue to not give away any gender fuckery without skipping a beat, and I made to swoop the spoon towards my mouth, but in my enthusiasm and inexperience with both magic and a muzzle, I placed the spoonful of curry directly up my nose.

A sneeze blasted it back onto the table, and as my eyes closed and nose burned I failed to noticed my horn field had switched off, and the spoon dropped to the floor to smear the remainder on the carpet. I was too mortified to notice if anyone laughed.

Unthinkingly I yanked my forelegs out from under me, eerily pulling against the grain of the coat on my chest, and held my fetlocks over my nostrils. My eyes filled with spicy tears, making it uncomfortable to keep them screwed shut. Slowly I opened them and blinked away the scintillating, wet blurriness, still in too much discomfort to mutter “fucking idiot” under my breath, no matter how violently I was thinking it.

Out of habit I grabbed for the spoon on the carpet, but pressing a hoof on it just caused it to jump between the coffee table’s legs to halfway across the room like a silver tiddlywink. “Dammit!” My voice sounded to me like I was about to cry, even though I was at least more composed than that. “I’m so sorry, that was real, real stupid.” I nearly compounded things by wiping the mucus beginning to drain out of my nose onto my own fetlock, but caught myself and concentrated once more on my horn to maneuver the napkin up to my nose. It was hard to get the pressure right without tactile feedback from a limb, but I managed to clean myself off to a reasonable degree.

Derek had retrieved the spoon and was examining it as if he expected his gaze to squeeze out some remnant of the blue plasma that had surrounded it a minute earlier.

Nicole walked out of the kitchen with some damp paper towels she proceeded to press into the carpet where the curry had fallen, before looking up for a moment. “Are you OK? I told you it was spicy.”

I sniffed to momentarily slow the evacuation of my sinuses. “Heh, yeah. Cleared my sinuses out, at least. Again, I’m really sorry about that. I don’t have as much control with magic...here...as I thought.”

“Was that… really… you know, magic?” Nicole asked, continuing to press a wet towel into the carpet as if another stain would have stood out.

“Well…” I didn’t want to open the floodgates to just any kind of nonsense, but at the same time I knew I had to play my role or else face their painfully earnest interrogation. “Sure, why not?” I said, settling on a compromise. “That’s as good a name as any. But, say, what would Archimedes have thought about... radio waves zipping around and summoning voices or, uh, controlling Predator drones? There’s definitely a rational order to what we do, I just don’t personally know what it is. Yet. But I’m not particularly magical as far as unicorns go.”

Duncan hummed with some degree of skepticism, but neither Nicole nor Derek seemed too interested in my explanation. “I guess so,” Nicole shrugged.

I gave a weak smile as a thought occurred to me. “I guess that’s part of what I’m doing here. I unwittingly played with forces I didn’t understand, and now I’ve got to learn the rules if I want to get back.”

“It’s still like...wow, though… You probably know this, but humans can’t exactly levitate things like that. Is... there anything else you can do?” Derek had sat down on the couch opposite me and was leaning forward in curiosity.

“That’s about it. No wait—I can make like a firecracker-y, spark...thing, too. Check it out! Uhhh… How did it go, again?”

Nicole leaned forward slightly, indicating her concern. “Maybe you shouldn’t, considering. The lack of control you mentioned earlier, I mean.”

“You’re probably right…” I felt like a fool. I could have maintained my image so easily if only I hadn’t gotten cocky just because I thought I was gaining some mastery over my condition. Any idiot can remember what sex they are without effort; I hadn’t deserved to feel that capable for avoiding such a simple break of character.

The rest of the meal passed mostly in silence. I was able to levitate the spoon to feed myself without further incident, and no matter how carefully I paid attention, I couldn’t detect any difference in the taste or a licking-a-battery sensation or anything else caused by the magic aura surrounding the spoon—At least nothing I couldn’t discount as just my imagination. Except for giving off light uncannily similar to a plasma ball toy, it seemed to have no presence in the physical world.

It was a good thing it hadn’t colored my perceptions, however, since the curry was more than delicious enough on its own. I’m no foodie, but I can appreciate good cooking when I come across it, and Nicole was not exaggerating about Derek’s vegan cooking skills. Little wafers of carrots, broccoli, and ground tofu were mixed in, giving it an even texture without reducing the whole thing to the consistency of mashed potatoes. It was the equal of anything save the Ethiopian place downtown where I usually took first dates to impress them with my worldliness.

The meal wasn’t quite filling, but it still quashed the hunger pangs that had been building up, and I levitated the napkin to dab at my mouth. Duncan had finished his as well, and when the both of us noticed, we sat in uncomfortable silence for several seconds while Derek cleaned in the kitchen, thankfully declining my token offer of help. Suddenly Nicole spoke up. “You should put the horse hat on her!”

“Horse hat?” I over-enunciated.

“You mean the top for the coverall? I’m not sure it’d fit, especially with the horn,” said Duncan.

“Yeah, that… that onesie or whatever it is. C’mon, at least give it a try!” She suddenly blinked and turned to me. “Of course, you don’t have to put it on if you don’t want to, I just think it’d be fun.”

“Well… I don’t know what it is. But sure, why not?”

“Haha, alright.” Duncan sidled towards the front door, before looking directly at me with an open smile. “Be right back.”

“This is gonna be super cute…” said Nicole, leaning towards me a little bit as if this were some secret Project Adorbs into which I’d been recruited.

Duncan softly closed the door behind him, and the two of us were momentarily alone. I was a little surprised at Nicole’s behavior. She’d been so serious and proper earlier regarding my possibly being in danger or otherwise traumatized, but now it seemed she’d finally loosened up and was almost giggly at the possibility of seeing me in this getup Duncan was going to bring in.
I shifted on the couch, folding my front legs cozily under my chest. “You know, you’re way more, I guess, girly? Than I thought? The tattoo sleeves kinda threw me off.”

“Well, you’re a lot less girly than I expected a coiffed mini-unicorn to be.”

“There’s actually a good explanation for that,” I blurted out.

“Oh? What is it?”

Think fast. “I... am... one badass unicorn.”

“You think someone can’t be girly and badass?” She tried to hide the edge that involuntarily crept into her voice.

“WellnobutI…” Pausing and then shaking my head vigorously, I managed to recover my wits. “Ohhhhhh no. I’ve seen the blogosphere—You’re not going to get me playing that game.”

Her challenging reply had a practiced immediacy. “What game?”

“Christ…” I stage-whispered.

“Relax, you’re not some dumb guy trying to tell women how to be. Wait,” said Nicole, “Blogosphere? You really are just full of surprises. I never thought… I mean, how many comments are… I mean, how do you, you know, get online… where you’re from?”

“It’s really nothing special or strange or foreign, I swear.”

“You know I’m still dying of curiosity. Really, I still can’t believe this is happening at all!”

“R-right...but like I said, I really want to make a clean break from… my current situation. No offense to you guys—you’ve been super nice—but I sorta… ummm…”

“Things are complicated. I understand.”

“They aren’t really, it’s just… I’m not quite what I appear to be.”

“Oh believe me, I figured that out.” Nicole chuckled, just as Duncan came back in carrying a stained blue milk crate that smelled strongly of… agriculture. He set it down on the floor by the stairs, then pulled out what looked like a faded pink-orange vest. Was this the infamous horse hat? I wasn’t going to like this, was I?

“Here!” Duncan said while stepping over some pizza boxes, before holding it up for me to look at. It was really more of a horse balaklava than a horse hat, a little bit like the masks they sometimes wear in races, with two large holes for your eyes, an open bottom that no doubt fastened around your muzzle and neck, and two little footie-like socks on the top for your ears. I leaned forward and involuntarily sniffed at it. It smelled stronger of horse than possibly anything else in the Solar System, and I pulled back with a mild frown.

He lowered it a little bit. “Sorry. Of course it’s OK if you don’t want to put it on.”

“No, it’s fine…!” I didn’t want him to think I didn’t appreciate some random crap he owned. “It’s… horse...y… like, a lot…smell.”

“If it bothers you I can wash it.”

“No, it would… I’m not a hypocrite.” I snapped back to cogency and grinned, before conspicuously raising my foreleg to my nose for a sniff. I grimaced again, fighting off an oily mixture of alley dirt and the realization of what a mare’s B.O. smells like. How had I gotten so stanky? “Shoot, you know, maybe I’m the one who needs washing,” I said, my ears flopping to the sides.

“Well, you know the shower is available,” said Duncan, “Although I’m no slouch when it comes to grooming hor… um, equines. Look, I already brought a curry comb.” A what? He held out something that looked like the head of some kind of anti-tank toothbrush. Was that supposed to comb… me? It was going to hurt, wasn’t it? “I bet you could go for a good brushing. Looks like you got yourself into a bit of trouble out there…”

I glanced down at my sides. While I was no longer perspiring, my coat had dried in place, leaving little triangles and whorls where sweat had stuck it together. Tiny grains of sand and grit were caked into it around my knees and fetlocks. “You know, I think I will take that shower,” I said, “...If that’s cool.”

“Of course,” Nicole beamed, “I don’t think Derek used all the hot water, either. There’s fresh towels under the sink… I dunno how many you’ll want, though… Because of the…” She waved her hand up and down over herself to mime fur. “Anyway, here, let me show you…”

She stood up and absent-mindedly I stood up to follow her, and then froze as their eyes all fixed on me. I was standing on my back legs, my forelegs dangling uselessly in front of me like an especially limp-wristed T. Rex. I must have looked like I was getting ready to prance in a circus act, with a unicorn horn in place of one of those fluffy ostrich feathers.

I was seized with fear that I would fall over and injure—Or worse, embarrass—myself, but a lifetime of bipedalism found me instinctively using my head and neck to help maintain my balance. Not having any toes made it difficult, but my increased weight kept me firmly sunk into the carpet.

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