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Member
Join Date: Sep 2005
Posts: 1
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The Horses
Pounding hooves sounded from the race track like the beating of the heart, and two sisters perched quietly on the white ribcage-tiered seating encasing it. They huddled close together in the cold and watched the horses running under heavy clouds that threw a dull glare down onto the earth. Sascha wearing white, and Tori with her red hair, in her faded red jumper, looking like a lonely speck of blood.
“You know, the horse is the only creature that can run so hard its heart explodes” Tori commented idly, her eyes still on the track. After a moment Sascha replied,
“ Rabbits’ can too. If they’re afraid enough, if you frighten them enough. Their hearts explode” And they were both silent again.
Growing up they had often gone to the horse races as a family. It began when Sascha had been denied the Horse riding lessons that she so wanted, and that her parents couldn’t afford. As a consolation, they had taken her to see the horses run at the races, and they had gone every year since, their mother wearing her best hat, and the girls wearing matching dresses that she had sewn. Now that they were almost grown up, the sisters still went together, on occasion. However Sascha’s new love was her greenhouse, and tending to the plants inside. Her favourite was the Jasmine that had once been situated in their garden, but had eventually so smothered the other plants that she transferred it to a small pot in the greenhouse. Now years later, Sascha still tended to it everyday, including that very morning
As they awaited the next race, Sascha became aware of her hand cramping, and realised that she held it in a fist. She unfurled her fingers and a little feather escaped from her grip, carried by the wind. She had picked the feather up that morning in the greenhouse. When she had checked on her plants that morning, she had discovered that a bird was trapped inside. Little birds were always being drawn in there and finding that they could not get out. It seemed the more often she went inside, the more often the birds became trapped.
They would beat their wings against the glass walls repeatedly, able to see the freedom they desired but unable to understand why they couldn’t get through the invisible barrier. The little things would exhaust themselves until they gave up, and trembled somewhere, their little chests heaving. Sascha feared that one day one of those little birds would fly to forcefully at the glass and break its neck.
Sitting now beside her sister, Sascha noticed how cold she had become. The numbness was driving deep into her bones painfully, and she shrunk closer to Tori. Mostly Sascha liked the cold, she would lie down on the tiles in the greenhouse and let the cold support her body like it was a shell, and the rest of her would sink like a dead weight, into the tiles, becoming flat beneath her own body. She’d lie there motionless for what could be an hour or a minute, and a thought would rise from the deep recesses of where she had sunk, ‘this must be what it feels like to die’. The thought reminded her painfully of the day at the beach when she had waded into the ocean and stood there in the icy water, her body shaking like thunder, until the rest of her sunk, this time beneath the water, and with a sigh of relief.
Tori glanced over at her sister, shivering against her. The downy hairs where raised on Sascha’s arms that were bare despite the cold, and the skin had turned blotchy yellow, purple and pink. Tori flinched at the sight, for the memory it provoked was one she tried to forget, but never, never could; Sascha’s limp body lying on the shore, her blonde hair plastered to her scalp in salty tendrils, her skin glistening and blue-white, her lips purple. She’d looked so sick; Tori still wondered if for a moment that day, she had been dead. It wasn’t like how she had heard it would be; Sascha hadn’t looked like she was sleeping. She had looked like an unfamiliar shell that used to contain her sister. Tori had felt a feeling of loss, of absence, that it sent a chill down the back of her neck. Sometimes these days she looked at Sascha and felt that hollow feeling again, as though part of her sister had gone away, or died for a little while.
The morning of the drowning, Pilot whales had beached themselves at the bay near their home. The previous day there had only been one, but overnight more had been abandoned by the tide. It was a mystery as to why this was happening, but it was though that perhaps the others had pushed themselves up to be with the dying one, and they too had become stranded. Tori remembered because it happened the morning she had packed her bags, ready to leave for good. She had decided that before she left, she would visit the bay. It was one of those typical acts of human nature – a masochistic curiosity that makes you peek at the thing you’re shielding your eyes from. She knew Sascha would be there too, she assumed for the same reason. She hadn’t expected to see the lifeless form of her sister bobbing in the waves.
After that day she had unpacked and put the suitcases in the attic, where they would stay, gathering dust.
The voice booming over the loudspeakers wiped Tori’s thoughts, and she noticed the horses lining up to race again. Both girls attention was drawn to a commotion in one of the cages, as one of the horses had begun to panic. It stomped its hooves and nodded its head violently, blowing air from its nostrils and flicking its tail. Tori watched anxiously as it began to buck, and its jockey fought to restrain it. How she wished they would let it out, it might panic so much from the claustrophobia that it’ll injure itself.
Sascha too, watched fearfully, thinking that the sound of the gun would frighten it to death, that they shouldn’t make it run for the poor thing was obviously too frightened. Maybe it was not wearing the blinkers that hide what is too much for it to see. As the commotion continued, she thought absently to herself, that she should open a window in the greenhouse, to let that bird out.
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I'm entering this into a short story competition TOMORROW to PLEASE give feedback, any is appreciated, I need to know what needs fixing/improving etc.
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