Thursday Stories: Dreams of Horses

Thursday Stories – A New Story Most Thursdays

Hello Friends and Neighbors, and welcome to Thursday Stories. Looking back over my herd of short stories, I realize that more than three dozen of the little rascals have appeared only in print. Some of you may have forked over the dough for this or that literary review, but I don’t expect everyone to buy all of the reviews all of the time. And so, drumroll please, I give you Thursday Stories. I’m not guaranteeing a new story every Thursday, but I will do my best until all the print-only tales have been set free.

This week’s edition of Thursday Stories features Dreams of Horses. This story first appeared in Concho River Review, published in 2022. Without further ado, I give you another edition of Thursday Stories. I hope you enjoy it.

Dreams of Horses

by Marco Etheridge

The girl materialized out of the warm Las Vegas night the way a phantom steps through a portal. A lesser daemon, she, or perhaps an angel of one of the lower choirs. He would find out that there’s not much difference between the two.

From empty sidewalk to a fully embodied girl was the span of one heartbeat. He saw her through the visor of his helmet, saw her smile and her white tank top and low-slung jeans, her bare feet and nothing else. No bag, no purse, no shoes, just a waif popped from nowhere and moving with a purpose.

Her bare foot flashed white under the streetlight as she slid a leg over the back of his motorcycle. He heard the click of the passenger pegs, felt her hands wrap around his leather-armored ribs. Her voice purred into the nape of his neck like she’d been there before, like she belonged there.

— Get me out of here, Lover.

The motorcycle idled at the end of a narrow alley, growling between the legs of the man and now the girl. The street before them was an empty Vegas boulevard a long way from The Strip. No headlights broke the pre-dawn stillness.

Until two heartbeats ago, he had been on the mellow edge of a long night with old friends gathered from all over the West Coast. Now he had a strange girl perched on the pillion. His thumb hovered over the engine kill switch but did not touch it.

He looked out over the empty boulevard, out to where he could see the future, or at least all the many ways the future could end badly. The night waited, and the bike and the girl. A waste of time to bother looking; he knew what he was going to do, what he always did, bad ending or no.

— Which way?

A lean bare arm flashed past his visor, pointing.

His thumb wrapped around the throttle grip, and he twisted it open. The bike roared and pulled as he leaned hard through a right turn onto the empty street. He heard the girl laugh, felt her arms wrapped around his chest, her knees pressed into his thighs.

The way led further from the glare and burn of The Strip, into the pre-dawn silence of shabby strip malls and rundown apartment blocks. The girl gave him directions, purring into his ear or pointing over his shoulder.

It was one of those cheap apartment buildings that look like a court motel. Cracked parking lot out front, everything that wasn’t paved was covered with crushed rock. Not a leaf or twig anywhere, not even a cactus. Metal stairways climbed to either end of an open-air walkway that ran the length of the second storey. Numbered doorways and blacked-out windows lined the deserted airway.

He took it all in from behind his visor, one foot on the pavement, the girl still on the back of the bike. Thinking the worst of it, he burped the throttle and rolled the bike to the side of the parking lot furthest from the building. He back-paddled the motorcycle into an empty spot, front tire facing out. His thumb hit the kill switch, but he stayed astride the bike.

She slipped off the left side of the bike and was standing at his knee, quick as a cat. Thumbs hooked into the pockets of her jeans, she stood there smiling into his visor.

He flipped the thing up for his first good look at her. Too short to be a showgirl, teeth just a little crooked, barely a touch of makeup. There were freckles on her cheeks, and they showed up dark under the mercury vapor lights that lit the parking lot. A gold chain around her bare neck led to a Saint Christopher dangling in the cleavage where her small breasts pushed up the white tank. Twenty-five, tops, not beautiful but pretty in a farm girl sort of way. She unlocked one thumb and waved a hand toward his helmet.

— You gonna take that thing off so I can ogle you back?

This was another point on the line, a chance to ride away and leave it be, but he didn’t take it. Instead, he reached for the strap under his chin. The helmet slid over his head, and he laid it on the tankbag. She gave him a good once-over and smiled her crooked smile.

— Well now, you’re easy enough on the eyes. A handsome knight in leather armor.

The girl raised her free hand and gestured over her bare shoulder. He saw no rings on her thin fingers.

— I got cold drinks upstairs. It’s a shithole, but you’re welcome to come up.

Another point and another clear warning. He looked past her hand, scanned the stairs, the walkway, the dark windows. There was not another soul in sight. His eyes fell to her face, and she was still smiling. He made no move to dismount the motorcycle. The girl nodded her head and the smile faded.

— Right, I get it, strange girl, strange apartment, some badass boyfriend waiting behind the door all set to thump you on the head.

She shrugged, dug her right hand into the front pocket of her jeans, fished out a thick wad of cash. She peeled off a fifty and held it out.

— Here, for rescuing me. A brave knight deserves a reward or at least a decent breakfast.

He looked down at the outstretched hand and the rumpled bill but made no move to take it. She laughed and waved the bill in the air between them, then stuffed it back into her pocket.

— Sort of ruins the look of my evil scheme, don’t it? There ain’t nobody up there waiting to thump you. You can believe that or not, your choice, but the invitation still stands. What are you gonna do, Cowboy?

The leather of his jacket creaked softly when he shrugged his shoulders. He pulled the gloves from his hands, stuffed them into his helmet, and swung up and off the bike. Helmet dangling from one hand, he stood a head taller than the girl and then some. She smiled up at him, then turned and led the way across the empty parking lot. He walked a half step behind her, his eyes on the silent doorways.

She padded up one of the stairways and he followed. As he climbed the concrete treads, the metal framework shifted and swayed under his boots. It felt like he was on a boat.

The girl passed by two doors and stopped at the third, number two-oh-seven. She pulled a single key from the fob pocket of her jeans. No ring, no ribbon, just a key. The door opened with a sound like sticking paint. She stood with her back against the doorframe so he could look past her.

— Nothing in there but dark, Cowboy.

He wasn’t a cowboy, not by any stretch, but it sounded as good as anything else. He stepped beside her, felt the closeness of her as he looked into the gloomy apartment. A scattering of second-hand furniture, bare walls, and the glow of the vapor lights leaking through cheap window blinds. The place was empty; he could feel it. Not just empty of guys hidden in the shadows, but empty of living. It was nothing more than a stopping place, and it felt familiar.

He stepped through the doorway, and she followed, pulling the thin door closed behind her. She spun the deadbolt but did not reach for the light switch.

— It’s better in the dark. The light just makes it uglier. You’ll see.

The light from the parking lot gave the room a silver glow. She waved her hand towards a sagging sofa. A saddle blanket was thrown over the back of it.

— Make yourself at home. I don’t believe I’ve got any beer, just colas and some sweet tea.

He looked down at her. She glowed silver as well, a white tank top stretched over her pale skin, freckled face framed by sable hair, and that upturned smile of hers.

— Don’t drink beer. Some tea would be fine.

She scrunched her nose at that like something just occurred to her.

— You don’t drink beer now, or you don’t drink beer never?

— Never.

— Huh. I bet you’re full of surprises. Well, sit yourself down and I’ll rustle us up some tea.

The girl disappeared. He heard a refrigerator open and the clink of glass on glass. He edged around a low coffee table and eased himself down onto the end of the sofa nearest the outside door. He listened past the sounds of the girl in the kitchen, but the whole building was silent as a held breath in a tomb.

When the girl reappeared, she held an enormous glass in each hand. She bent forward at the waist, and the glasses clacked against the coffee table. The Saint Christopher medal popped from its hiding place, and he watched it until she straightened up. Then she slid onto the sofa, leaving a gap between their thighs.

— Tell me about Washington. That’s where you’re from, right? I saw it on your plates.

— Where I live. It’s wet, wet and green, not like here.

— And you rode all the way down here?

He nodded and reached for the glass of tea. His hand stopped just short. The girl laughed and he felt the vibration of it.

— You can drink mine if you’d rather.

He picked up his glass and took a drink. The tea was cold and sweet enough to set his teeth on edge. He put the glass back on the coffee table.

— Are you from around here, from Vegas?

She shook her head and her dark hair shimmered.

— Nobody’s from Las Vegas, least not more than three generations. There wasn’t nothing here before that. It’ll be the same in a few more generations, you watch and see. The casinos will pump the aquifer dry, and then this whole shithole will dry up and blow away, guaranteed.

A lean white arm reached for his glass. She raised it and took a drink, then did the same from her own. She laughed again, kicked her bare feet up onto the coffee table, and leaned back into the saddle blanket.

— See? Nothing to worry about. Tell me a story, something about your ride down here. That’s a long damn way. Something interesting must have happened.

He looked at her bare feet and thought about all the things that happen on any long ride. Dodging the weather up north, knowing how to spot the speed traps, seeing old friends along the way. He weighed out what might interest this girl, then he told her about the wild horses.

It was late afternoon, and he was dropping down from the high country east of the Sierra Nevada. It was the open, empty land before the Nevada state line. He twisted through another spur of rocky foothills, just him and the bike, not another vehicle for miles.

A wide valley spread out ahead of him, miles of arid basin land. A caution sign slid past on the side of the road, the yellow diamond of it lit bright by the sun that gleamed over his shoulders. There were no words on the sign, just a black pictograph of a scruffy horse kicking up its back hooves. The meaning clicked in his brain after the sign passed.

A song filled his helmet, two guitar parts, and Mick Jagger singing about wild horses. The moto thrummed between his knees and the song played in his head. He watched the valley roll towards him as if he was sitting still and it was the thing moving. Then he saw them.

The herd was south of the ribbon of road, maybe thirty head of wild horses. The mares and a few foals were clumped together, feeding on whatever meager green they could find in that dry country. The stallion stood off by himself, head up and eyeing the road.

The noise of the approaching moto grew loud enough to spook the stallion, and it snorted and tossed its head. In a heartbeat, it was running, and the mares and foals were running behind it. The descendants of horses run off from the conquistadores four hundred years ago; they were still here and still running. Their hooves danced over the undulating ground and threw up dust as they galloped.

He loosed the throttle and raised himself in the saddle, turning to watch the wild horses disappear. Their long manes and tails flowed tangled in the wind of their passage. The herd of wild horses crested a low rise and disappeared, leaving behind a trail of dust that floated on the dry air.

His hand found the throttle, and he banged it open, dropping down into a crouch over the bars. The revs climbed and the toe of his boot snicked through two gears until the bike was screaming a buck-twenty across the empty blacktop.

His words hung in the air between them as he finished the telling. He looked at the girl and saw her eyes on his, her face silver-dark like a black-and-white photo.

— Damn, that’s a lot more than just interesting. I guess I expected you to tell me something else, some guy thing. I’d give about anything to see those mustangs. Are there lots of them? I mean, do you see them all the time?

— No, I’d never seen them before. They used to kill them.

The crooked smile disappeared from her face, wiped clean by something hard and cold. He regretted his words, but there was no fetching them back. There never was.

— Who used to kill them?

He wasn’t much for lying, so he told the girl about the roundups, the horses slaughtered for dog meat. He told her about the hired riflemen shooting the mustangs from helicopters. And as he spoke, he felt the heat of her anger growing, like a wood stove stoked too full.

When he was done speaking, he waited for the flood of her words, but none came. The girl rocked forward and back, her hands on her thighs, like a hunting cat coiling up to pounce.

Then the sound of a diesel engine broke the silence, filling the parking lot and thrumming through the window glass. The engine shut down, but the crankshaft loped and shuddered a time of two. The quiet that followed was the waiting kind and it did not last long.

A truck door creaked open, protesting a sprung hinge, then slammed hard and loud. From inside the apartment, he heard the footsteps, then the groaning of the stairs. Then the boots were on the second storey walkway, and he knew where they would stop.

There was a silence outside the door and then a pounding—Bam, Bam, Bam—that rattled the window blinds. An angry voice bawled through the thin door.

— Open up, May. Goddamnit, girl, I know you’re in there.

The girl beside him did not move or answer. He stared at the thin door, not even a chain lock, and cursed himself for a fool. One good kick would blow the door in like cardboard. Regrets ran through his brain while he waited for the door to explode.

The girl of course, first mistake, not throwing her off the pillion and leaving her flat. His K-Bar knife, heavy and sharp, tucked into the side pocket of his tankbag as useless as if it were on the moon. He tried to conjure a weapon. The best he could do was a huge crystal ashtray sitting on the coffee table, the kind you steal from a casino lounge when you’re dead drunk.

Bam, Bam, Bam—slower now, as if the fist behind it was losing steam. And still there was no kick, only the shuffle of heavy work boots. The voice again, mournful now instead of angry.

— Aw, goddamnit, May, goddamnit to hell.

A long pause, so quiet he thought he could hear the heartbeat on the other side of the door. Boots shuffled as if uncertain which way to go. Then the footsteps thudded along the walkway, back down the stairs. The truck door groaned, slammed, and the diesel engine loped and sprang to life. The truck whined in reverse, gears engaged, and then the sound of the diesel lurched away and faded into the night.

The girl did not move when she spoke, did not turn her head.

— He ain’t nothing.

He looked down at her profile.

— No?

— He ain’t nothing to me.

— Does he know that?

Then she turned and her eyes were fierce.

— I guess that’s for him to figure out, ain’t it?

She turned on the sofa, coiled her legs under, and leaned in close to him. He could smell the sharp sweet tang of her.

— You know what I always wanted, ever since I was a little girl?

— I don’t know. What did you want?

— All my life I wanted to be a cowgirl. I still do. I know lots of girls talk like that, but what they really mean is they want to be a prissy little princess with a pony. That ain’t what I ever wanted. I want all of it, the work and the sweat and the dust. Fixing fences and herding cows, wearing a pistol on my belt if I felt like it. Being saddle sore and never wanting to see another goddamn horse until the next morning when it’s time to do it all over again. You understand what I’m saying?

He listened to her words and held them, rolling them over to see the shape of them.

— I think I understand.

She nodded, her face close to his.

— Good. And if any man don’t like that, well, he can just go take a flying fuck at the moon for all I care. You understand that too, I bet.

He nodded and then her hand was on his cheek, forefinger slipping behind his ear. The warmth of her hand lingered even after it fell away.

— It’s a damn shame you didn’t show up sooner. Or maybe later. One of the two anyway. C’mon, Cowboy. I got money burning a hole in my pocket, and I believe I promised you breakfast.

He was long gone out of Las Vegas with the sun still low in the East. His head was ragged from no sleep and too much coffee with the girl. The moto hummed down a two-lane road that ran across the middle of nowhere near the California state line.

Scrub desert rolled like ocean swells, and the road crew that made this blacktop had not wasted a thought on flattening it. Maybe the cat-skinner had been drunk, or maybe he hadn’t given a damn. Whatever the reason, he just bladed up one swell and down into the next trough, and the pavers followed. The tarmac they left behind rose and fell like the back of a sea serpent.

The moto climbed and fell and his stomach along with it. Hit the apex, and the suspension fell away as the bike tried to leave the pavement. At the bottom of the trough the bike coiled taut, and his guts as well, then it sprang up the face of the next swell.

He laughed in his helmet and cracked the throttle open and the moto rocketed up towards the sky. The earth fell away and he was flying, along with five hundred pounds of motorcycle that was not meant to fly. He saw the future, an immediate future of mangled flesh and broken bones, but the choice was made, and he rode it out.

The moto landed true. The free-spinning tires chirped and smoked. The suspension compressed and the force of it pulled him down onto the tank. He tucked into the motorcycle as to the neck of a galloping horse. Two melded into one, they rose over the last crest and the valley opened ahead of them.

The road ran straight and true into the dry valley. The sun was behind his shoulders, and it illuminated the miles of arid basin. Scrub and rock cast long shadows to the West as he flew down the pavement. In those shadows, he saw more shadows, hundreds of them on both sides of the black ribbon he traveled.

Long manes flew in the wind and their tails streamed behind, a thousand wild horses racing their shadows into the West. Their hooves made no sound and raised no dust into the dry air clear as crystal.

He thought of the girl, how she should be here to see this, bare feet on the passenger pegs, hands tight around his ribs, her body pressed into his back. He closed his eyes and felt the touch of her hand on his cheek, the curl of that forefinger behind his ear. When he opened his eyes again, the valley was empty.

Fini

The Condo River Review is currently on hiatus, so I cannot list its website. I’m hoping they return soon.

That’s it for this week’s edition of Thursday Stories. More stories are coming your way. How will you know when a new story breaks? Glad you asked, Friends. Read On! Drumroll and… Meanwhile, don’t miss any upcoming stories. You can stay tuned for all the latest by following the MEF blog:

https://www.marcoetheridgefiction.com/whats-new-in-marcos-world-the-blog/

Marco Etheridge is a writer of prose, an occasional playwright, and a part-time poet. He lives and writes in Vienna, Austria. His work has been featured in over one hundred and fifty reviews across Canada, Australia, Europe, the UK, and the USA. Marco’s short story “Power Tools” was nominated for Best of the Web for 2023 and is the title of his latest collection of short fiction. When he isn’t crafting stories, Marco is a contributing editor for a ‘Zine called Hotch Potch. In his other life, Marco travels the world with his lovely wife Sabine.