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I dream of a white horse that’s trotting around in circles. Its hooves kick at the ground while its lace white mane flaps wildly about. Its eyes are large and round, and sad as if they often overflowed with tears that had been trapped within since birth.

The images disturb me enough that I wake up. I find myself staring back at a wide set pair of black, bulging eyes that belong to a horse’s face. Its ears are unnaturally long and drooping, and its lips are curled back as if sniffing something foul, revealing black gums, sharp, pointed incisors and jagged rows of gray enamel. A thick thread of saliva drips down its chin as if this beast couldn’t wait to swallow me whole.

I scream, but I cut it short when I realize that I know this horse. The silence returns to my bedroom, and I hear the muffled sound of my neighbor snoring away. I switch on my bedside lamp, which illuminates Spike’s unsteady body as he balances himself on his hind legs, swaying slightly like an old drunk trying to stay upright. The hooves of his atrophied front legs gleam dully. The horse’s stench is overpowering and almost makes me gag; maybe he shat himself while he waited for me to wake up.

I grunt as I prop myself on my elbows. My lower back aches as if a giant was gripping onto my spine, and I’m coated in stale sweat. Why do I always wake up more exhausted than when I went to sleep? How does that make any fucking sense?

After I rub the rheum from my eyes and I take a deep breath, I complain loudly to Spike.

“What, now you are watching me sleep, like some unimaginative pervert? You ugly pile of shit! I would call the cops if I could figure out how to explain your existence.”

Spike’s eyelids twitch slightly. His head draws back, making his elongating thread of drool swing. He looks bewildered.

“You were sleeping…?”

Is this bastard mocking me? No, he seems genuinely confused. A sudden urge to laugh bubbles inside my chest, making my throat quiver and my mouth twitch uncontrollably. When my laughter subsides, it leaves behind a feeling of emptiness, as if my soul had fled somewhere far away.

I wipe a tear with the sleeve of my pajama top. As I toss aside my blanket to swing my feet off the edge of the mattress, the alarm goes off on my phone. It’s six in the morning. Nobody should be awake at this hour, but I do it five days a week. I have to get ready and head to my garbage job that stresses me out so much that I fantasize about blowing my head off. As if the mundane routine of struggling to survive wasn’t enough, I have to deal with a horse that insists on stalking me.

“Are you doing drugs now on top of being a hideous horse?” I lash out. “You malignant spawn! You better not be messing with my mind, because if you infect me with your creepy thoughts, whenever I find myself with a hammer, you are going to be the first on my list of victims, got it?! Fucking horse-faced freak!”

I stand up. Spike’s atrophied front hooves click together as he struggles to retreat on his hind legs towards my wardrobe. His mouth is agape with a silent gasp. The grotesque sight of that stitched wound where his horse dick ought to be makes me cringe. Such an image will get burned into my retinas, seared into the deepest recesses of my brain cells. Life is an endless stream of horrors that never end as my mind is slowly eroded by the accumulation of stress and anxiety until it will be obliterated and replaced with the collective consciousness of the dead.

I intend to leave my bedroom and prepare a cup of coffee in the kitchen, but this goddamn horse is blocking my way out as if trying to prevent me from moving forward with the rest of my shitty little life. If it were possible for this abomination to follow me into my dreams as well, then I wouldn’t hesitate at all about killing myself, because I wouldn’t be able to handle that crap.

I gesture wildly for Spike to move aside.

“Get out of here and never come near me ever again, you filthy, repulsive creature! You are nothing but a piece of shit that should have died millions of years ago. I hate you for existing, and for ruining everything that is beautiful on this planet.”

I’m on the verge of crying already. My heart is racing as if someone was squeezing it tightly. I can’t stop seeing those horrid, bulging eyes and that malformed face. I smell his rancid, nauseating odor, and I can almost taste that foul, toxic saliva dribbling down his chin.

Spike’s nostrils flare as he inhales deeply, as if filling his lungs with fresh, sweet oxygen to fuel his hunger for human flesh.

“You are really mean, Leire,” he says, sounding hurt by my words and tone. “Why are you so hateful when we are just two lonely creatures who are forced to endure our own personal nightmare?”

My voice trembles as I reply, “Because you are a horse, a disgusting horse, and a horse is a horse whether you are a horse or a rat or a cockroach or a fucking monkey! This is reality, asshole!”

“I am sorry for you, and for everything that you are going through right now, but please don’t blame me for your problems.”

Spike lumbers away from the wardrobe towards the wall beside my bed. He climbs awkwardly onto the mattress as he places his weight on his front legs. This damn horse rests his head against my pillow, then he holds his long neck at an angle to look at me with his dark eyes full of sadness, which remind me of an open wound oozing pus and blood, even though that is impossible since horses are incapable of bleeding at all due to their lack of a circulatory system.

I shake my head as I stomp to the doorway, but when I stop and turn around to insult Spike some more, he’s gone. I feel bad for a moment. Perhaps that horse has no other choice than to eat human brains to stay alive. In any case, there’s no point in caring about the feelings of a hallucination.

In the kitchen, as I wait for my coffee maker to finish spitting my coffee, I keep smelling my unwashed body and the lingering stink of the garbage sitting in my trashcan. I hear the engines of a couple of cars as their owners head to work. While I lean against the counter to drink my warm coffee, I feel like a castaway left upon a barren island to rot away and die alone.

Once I take off my pyjamas as I stand on the cold tiles of my small bathroom, I avoid facing in the mirror the dark circles under my eyes and the stress carved in my face, but I check out my pale, skinny body. Despite my sunken abdomen because of poor eating habits, my tits remain nice and big. They’re my only pride, especially for someone who often fantasizes about breasts being crushed by powerful hands and mouths devouring them while they are still soft and pliant and hot and sticky with milk and cum. I fondle my tits for a bit until I remember that I must wash off the stale smell of my body, then head to work.

No matter how hard I scrub my skin clean with soap and hot water, nothing can erase what is engraved into me by that horse’s weird gaze or his stench. But while I shampoo my hair, I make the mistake of closing my eyes. The dark theatre of my mind was playing, without my knowledge or consent, a vivid picture of Jacqueline wearing that apple red, wrap dress that she comes to our office in from time to time, the neckline so deep that it exposes the black center gore of her bra underneath. Her raven black hair cascades over her shoulders and caresses her large breasts that the dress barely contains. She is also wearing pantyhose that are pulling and stretching around her shapely calves and thighs. My breath thickens in my throat as I stare at the mental reproduction of that mystery wrapped in a sexy package like a chocolate cake with whipped cum on top.

Jacqueline’s cobalt blue gaze pierces mine, and it sparkles with a maternal love and compassion that also radiates out of her soft, pink lips, so moist and inviting to kiss and suck on for hours. She must be a goddess sent from heaven to rescue a lost lamb like me from this awful world where everything is ugly and evil.

Jacqueline approaches me, filling most of the darkness, then she strokes my neck and smooths down my hair while she whispers sweet words to soothe my troubled mind. My soapy hands belong to her as she massages my sides, then wraps me in a warm embrace. Her tongue licks my right earlobe, then its slides down along the side of my neck until she reaches my collarbone, where she sucks at the tender flesh while her hand moves lower over the curve of my hips to stroke the skin between my thighs.

As I rub my burning hot pussy, I remind myself that I’m not masturbating about Jacqueline: I’m masturbating and Jacqueline just happened to come across my mind.

It’s always the same routine: my fingers slide between the folds of my labia while I imagine that they are the tongue of an animal licking the juices of another female mammal, until I cry like an infant when the tension finally dissolves inside the warmth of my cunt. This orgasm makes me fall into an exhausted stupor. Jacqueline’s phantom touch has been imprinted into every inch of my being and is still seeping into my bones and muscles. How I needed yesterday to undo the buttons of her blouse and cup those large orbs of hers for a quick squeeze or two! Now I would have gladly returned to bed, but I snap out of it to face the horrible suspicion that I should have left the house already.

As the water running off my body drips all over the tiles, I check my phone that I put on the sink’s edge. I should have left five minutes ago. Although I often masturbate in the shower, I had never wasted time in the morning arguing with a horse.

When I run down the stairs of my apartment building and I exit into the cold October air, my hair is still moist, but more importantly, my Renault Laguna isn’t parked next to the garbage container as usual. A neighbor has raised the lid of the container to throw away a bulging bag, likely filled with human excrement and rotting food scraps mixed with cigarette butts and used condoms. I look around frantically, but most of the parking slots are empty, my car is gone, and the only other sign of human activity is a young guy rolling up the rusted shutters of his garage.

I bend my trembling knees as I nearly tear my hair out.

“Where the fuck is my car?!” I shout aloud, since nobody can hear me anyway in the fog of this nightmare. “I will fucking slaughter whoever stole it! Fuck this shit! Fuck this shitfuckthisshitfuck this shitfuck this shit…”

Oh yeah, my car is gone because Spike ate it and turned it to mush! That goddamn horse has to go to the dumpster and eat half a dozen tires and rusty mufflers and broken windshields and a couple of hubcaps and a whole bunch of other shit to stay alive. Then I remember. Yesterday I abandoned my Renault Laguna after I nearly crashed while driving back home, because I was too busy thinking about Jacqueline and how good her nipples tasted. No! The car nearly killed me by swerving by itself into another lane, and cars don’t do that unless they’re drugged or possessed by an evil entity from outer space or something equally ridiculous like that.

I bet Spike ate my thoughts and memories to turn them into sickening hallucinations without asking me first and without giving me any warning whatsoever. He’s a monster! If there’s such thing as a horse god of the underworld, then that’s him for sure. Even though I was getting used to him and started accepting his presence, he goes and fucks me raw like a wild stallion.

What can I do now? I’ll take the train. That’s how I intended to travel around from now on, I think. But how do I reach the closest train station from here?