dream horse
She came to me in my weakest.
I am hardly ever not there, mind you. I am very weak. My conviction towards my weakness is the only strength I have.
I held the razor against my arm, but I have never been one to openly revel in pain. I’d watched others dig deep into their flesh with knives, broken glass, and their own fingers, and here I was with a blade I’d broken out of a Bic Razor, not two inches long.
I didn’t cut the lacerations that lasted forever like they did. I did not leave permanent scars. I cut tiny little etchings of words, of shapes, and of occult symbols I’d browsed in the desperate hopes of help from beyond, and nothing ever came but blood and disgust.
And when they healed—as if they’d never been there—I started over again.
I did not think about why I did it. It felt just. I am a monster who hurts those who hurt him, and he had hurt himself the most.
But she came to me, a brilliant midnight blue and all moonbeams, through my window. Like a map of the stars.
Her mane glistened and glittered and shone with constellations, and I knew them; I could name every single one.
“There’s Sagittarius,” I said, voice soft. “And that’s Cassiopeia.”
“And this one?” she asked, gesturing to a belt of sparkling dots.
“That’s Orion.”
She smiled. “You know your stars.”
“When I was young I wanted to be an astronaut,” I confessed. “Figured I should know the places I’d go.”
“What happened?”
That stung more than any line I’d cut into my arm.
“You know. Life. It’s so—”
“—so-so. I know.”
There was a pause. “Are you real?” I asked her.
“Yes.”
“How do I know that?”
She smiled. “You can see me, can’t you?”
“I see a lot of things.”
“Do you see this one?” She’d gestured to her mane again, in a spot yonder her ear.
“Orpheucus.” I narrowed my eyes. “It straddles your crown.”
“Why, yes.”
“That’s important to note because he’s the serpent bearer.” I sat up in bed, and set the razor on my windowsill. “In Greek mythology—there was a civilization on this world thousands of years ago called the Greeks—”
“I know of the Greeks,” she said, her muzzle slowly settling a smile. “You don’t have to explain that to me.”
“Sorry,” I said. Felt like a fool. “I should have known.”
“You did not. And there is no shame in that.”
I scowled. “I don’t need to be treated like a child by a figment of my imagination.”
“I am real.”
I ignored this. “You don’t know me. I am hallucinating you because I am broken and cannot accept reality, and who must manipulate everyone and everything, including himself.” I shook my head, scoffing and giving the tiniest bit of a grin laden with condescension I hoped matched what I’d percieved in her tone. “I am insane. Leave me.”
“What do you gain,” she asked me, with an earnestness that made me balk, the ingenuine asshole I am. “From treating yourself like that?”
“Nothing.” I grit my teeth and curled a fist, watching blood bead along the “LIVE” and “WIRE” carved into my forearm. “I do it for fun.”
“That is not true.”
The desire to lash my hands out, grab them around her neck, wring it like a soaked rag, overcame me. I did not act on it.
“You can if you like,” she said. “I will not hate you.”
“How noble,” I spat. “Did you come here just to prove you were above everything?”
“No,” she said, and she meant it.
“Well, it was a waste to try and find anything else.” I bit the raw inside of my cheek that never healed. “I am Satan. Leave me alone.”
She stayed where she was, lounging across my legs, who hid under the blanket like twin trunks fallen in the forest to never move again. My bedsores ached.
“Why do you do this to yourself?” she asked again, and it hurt no less this time.
“I’m lashing at myself before anyone else can,” I snarled, voice saturated with as much viciousness as I could muster. “Is that what you wanted to hear?”
“If that’s the truth,” she said simply. I grit my teeth, grinding them slowly against each other, moments away from breaking them from my mouth.
A snort escaped me. “It sure would be pathetic if it were.”
“Perhaps. I have been pathetic as well.”
“It’s pathetic that you’re even here right now. Shouldn’t you be in your own world? Doing your own things? Instead of visiting a—”
She held up her hoof. For the first time, I saw what could be construed as a pained expression on her face. I sneered; I’d found my way in.
“Oh, does it bother you that I rightfully call your time wasted on me? Does it pain you that I cannot be anything better that some less-than pitiable failure who can only think of fictitious charactertures meant to entertain children? Does it hurt to know that no matter what you say or do or think or feel you will never be able to save me, and that any attempt to try and do so will be met with overwhelming vitriol and a complete and utter lack of gratitude for your oh-so-hard work?”
She did not look at me. “Yes.”
“And why is that, you spineless dream vouyer?” I cackled. The hate in my gut (although it might have been hunger—I hadn’t eaten in three days) stirred like the serpent Orpheucus held around her crown.
“Because I’ve said the same, about myself no less, and nothing could hurt me more than watching someone suffer as I have.”
I gaped soundlessly at her, finger clutching the sides of my sheets.
“And that is why I am here.”
And she threw her forelegs around me.
And she said nothing more, and held her hooves against my back, and when I tried to push away she held me tighter.
If she were a hallucination, she was the most vivid one I had.
I thought about everything that had lead to this moment, a crushed can on the side of the road, and I wanted to explain to her why this was impossible and why I was crazy and why it should all go away.
Then I remembered I already had and she hadn’t left.
I made the most aggressive argument against myself and she still didn’t believe it.
So she held me, and it hurt, and it was the best pain I ever felt. I broke down sobbing and I clutched her tightly and I didn’t even think to myself that in this world I only knew of her from fantasy.
“I cannot take this away from you,” she whispered softly as I dry heaved and bit my tongue to keep from wailing in utter sorrow. “But I can give this to you.”
I fell asleep in her hooves, so warm and something I had never felt—and dreamed I was a swan across the water, unbound and energized, dipping wings to glide glass ponds and soaring higher than the highest heavens.
And when I woke up she was gone, moondust across my blanket, and I decided not to kill myself that day.
Maybe tonight she’d come back.
And if she didn’t, that’d be alright, because there were others who needed her. I was not alone—we were not alone—no matter how hard we had tried to make it that way.
Even though I would have loved to have her here, I did not need her.
She could be proud of me for that.