Friday, October 07, 2005

At The Mercy Of The Night

An old dream. Written in third person although I experienced it in first.


She races down the dirt track, blood pumping through her head. She feels like her lungs are being torn apart, her legs burn like the pits of hell but she can't stop. She closes her eyes, willing her legs to move faster. Something tears through her shoulder, sharp and metallic, skimming the bone. She can't stop; they'll kill her if she does.
A dull rumbling fills her ears; she thinks her heart is bursting. She hears a high pitched scream and opens her eyes. Down the track, a blur of chestnut, muscle and mane, hooves pounding the dust. She reaches up with a trembling hand; she closes her eyes running faster. And then it comes, the brush of warm, smooth muscle; the whisper of long hair. She wraps her fingers in the horse's mane, it skids and swerves, throwing her onto its back and tears off back the way it came, lost for a moment in its own dust. Their swift escape followed by shouts of anger. A bullet whips past her head and she laughs.
She once again closes her eyes, drawing on the combined power of herself and the horse. A scream tears itself from her chest as she releases it into the air around her. The pair are instantly engulfed in a storm of red-gold dust; it stings her bare skin and sticks to the thick, dark liquid pouring from her shoulder. Shrieks and screams of terror reach her ears as some of her pursuers, lost in her storm, are found by the creature that dwells there. She wills the horse faster, distressed at the thought of meeting her creation.
The beast beneath her hesitates, gathers itself into an almighty spring and leaps into the storm. They are caught for a second in oblivion before bursting, choked and monochrome, back onto the road. They skid to a halt, turning to look at the huge, heaving, writhing mass that contains her dust storm and its occupant. She looks at herself, now the same chestnut hue as the horse she rides, at the wound in her shoulder, stinging from dust and exertion. She shrugs it off and urges the horse on as shouts of fury reach her dust caked ears.