The stallion, yes, I recognized it like it was something I’d seen several lifetimes ago. Disjointed memories flashed in mind, mostly of ice fishing. I'd seen the stallion beneath the glaciers and in bouts of childhood illness. I'd found him in a place deep beneath the Earth. The psychologists had tried to warn me. When the operators sat for too long, it was all they would talk about. It would always come back to this. I thought I could understood just from paying close attention, just to listen to them speak in fractals. I was very good at listening and in spite of what you may think, I was good at imagining. All of this paled in comparison to the real thing.
The tips of its ears were carving lines into the cloud cover. Its coat was awash in blue light. Each part of its musculature seemed to act as a lightning rod for the storm. I could read out the voltage even from where I stood, felt it prickling against the back of my neck. Sparks were filling into the fingertips of my gloves, giving off the harsh smell of burning leather. I felt this awful terror welling up the longer I watched, because the light was strobing and the stallion was galloping in slow motion. The storm trailed behind it like a kite.
The horse kicked up onto its back legs and stood up so tall that most of it couldn't be seen anymore, the upper half of its body disappearing into the clouds. It was at that exact instant that the hyperreal image on the back on my eyes began to blur at the edges. Fog was coming out of the canyon. I recognized it because I had been trained to. The haze of Saint Rosalia more closely resembles milk than water. It looks soft and pliable, easy to push aside. It clings to your mind like chalk.
I rubbed my eyes against it, aside myself. The colors stood out against the back of my eyelids. I forced myself to see through it. The jets peeled out of the sky as if they’d been unstuck from place. They'd materialized through fields that only one faction has mastered. The jets were small fighters, precision killers. I recognized every one of them. I’d spent too many mornings scraping the dead birds off of the paint.
They deployed drones larger than any pilot might have been and each machine in the storm circled the head of the stallion like vultures. Though I could not see from that distance, I knew that if I had gotten close I would see their mounted harpoons and their fast acting poisons. I’d see the bright white Cobra printed onto each frame. Though the stallion ran on, they kept up quick. And from there it was a quick kill.
It was an awful sight, its legs propelled forward without a motor and then crumpling up beneath the torso. The sound of the massive body hitting the ground, muffled my the blood in my ears that appeared at the same instance. The rain was its heaviest and its coldest at the moment of death. It stung my eyes, made me unsure of what I was seeing. But the rain died down and the body was still motionless in the dirt. The jets descended onto the scene. The cover-up was tedium, torture. It was my thousandth time bearing witness to the autopsy, but the first I had ever seen of death.
I hit the ground hard, balance completely oblitered because of the inner ear trauma. The storm had sucked all the energy from me and turned the air to vapor. I’d forgotten to breathe through it. Micah came to my side; I had forgotten he was there. Little shocks went through my brain, the start of a terrible headache. When I came to my senses, I realized Micah was apologizing, that he had been apologizing for the last couple of minutes. It probably would've taken me longer to catch on to what he had done if he had just shut up.
The events of the last few weeks replayed in my mind and in the shade of the storm. My first field assignment had fled, taking everything I had ever given her without so much as a note. Micah had dragged me across the country, seemingly for his own entertainment, leading me no closer to her. Now we were here, in the desert at the peak of August. Please remember that I’d lived in the Arctic Circle since I was a baby. This excursion read to me as a genuine attempt on my life. And he had done it for this. To see the stallion, then to see it killed. To bear witness to a familicide, to briefly glimpse Gehanna. To teach me a lesson.
He said, “I didn’t think it would be that bad, honest.”
It had been a field trip. My eyes were burning from the humiliation of having been taught anything. When he saw my expression, Micah backed up. He moved all the way to the other side of the dead fire. He busied himself tending to the soaked wood so that he wouldn’t have to look at me.
What I wanted to tell him was that he hadn't *really* taught me anything. I was not ignorant to our operations, even if I'd never seen them. I could've told him that a cut is a cut no matter what lightshow it takes with it, that the horse was a hazard to all the people of the valley. That I had probably cut up nine of its relatives and put their arteries under a microscope for an author credit all before I was twelve. He was trying to complicate my job morally, which is the worst way to complicate a job. I had wanted him to be wrong and I had wanted badly to compose myself. Blood was still gushing out of my ears, so I couldn't exactly stand up straight, and when I finally spoke my voice sounded very far away.
“You conniving little fucker,” This was me losing my temper, though I still could not bring myself to yell. I was speaking through gritted teeth. “Are you trying to destroy me?”
I was hurting badly and wanted to get him back. I went for the only thing I could think of.
“Is this why she left you?” I asked him, trying to take on some shadow of affect.
He only blinked, confused.
“I left her.”
Of course he had. Both times, I bet. Things began to click into place. I cursed myself. I was basically about to pass out. I stood up to pace, which was a bad idea. The ground was spinning beneath me. I was too angry to see straight. The moment of death was still seared into my vision. Across the canyon, they had begun the clean-up. The wind carried the sound of bonesaws, the smell of blood, all too familiar.
“I’m sorry you had to see that,” Micah decided it was his turn to speak, “I thought you might want a primer, though. Before we go find her.”
“I fucking get it, Micah. You made your point,” I paused to spit out the saliva coating the inside of my mouth. I really didn’t want to be sick right then. I thought of hooves landing uneven and being made into glue. I’m back on the ground.
“I honestly didn’t think it would affect you that bad,” Micah said again, "I was hoping-"
He trailed off, but I knew what he was hoping, even if he wouldn't say it in the same words. He was hoping to trigger enough of a shock response to make me rethink it all. At the time, I couldn't think of anything. My thoughts still smeared together like wet paint, experiencing memories of things I knew had never happened. I wondered if he knew, suspected that he did know, and this made me a little afraid and hateful towards him for a little while afterwards. But he couldn't have known what the stallion would mean to me. He didn't know I would recognize it from a life that wasn't mine, the last vestigal memories of my mother. The Stallion would not recognize me for what I was if I had gotten any closer, but the same sulfric blood was in us both. And the ones who raised me had brought it crashing down in the middle of the deadland.
The betrayal felt limp in my mind. I had known, always, but I’d never been so close. My face was hot. The last drops of rain were turning to steam.