'But horses are my friends'

The fear of the unknown grabs the blonde hairs that frame her face and holds them up high, tickling her closed eyelids that are twitching with dreams. The fear forces her eyes open, as she cranes to see the little creatures that are trying to torment her in the black night. She can never see them when she’s awake like this, so she doesn’t have a choice but to soothe herself back to sleep, trying to ignore the thoughts that are careering around and around inside her mind, a merry-go-round that is spinning faster and faster. But the normally joyous faces of the horses are twisted and warped, they bare their gums in an angry snarl at her, spitting saliva and thrashing against the worn leather reins that she clutches with sweaty palms.

Wrapped in bed accessories and pillows that bring initial comfort, she slips back into surface sleep, her heart tight with a web of fear that she doesn’t let unravel. In her dream the sticky spider web clings to her face and she can’t get it off, though she scratches mightily, nails that are bitten short leaving red marks on her cheeks. She’s no longer warmed by blankets that Mama had smoothed back carefully in the morning light; instead they are heavy weights that crush her lungs, the fear of the unknown bringing her back to the surface time and time again, wrenching gasps of air with panicked shudders.

There’s no clock in the room because the fiery gremlins feed off the ticking that it makes, and the black air becomes too thick when she can count the seconds in the night. This time she’s back on the merry-go-round, but the ground surrounding it is red dust, and the tinkling music that the horses are dancing to disappears into the empty landscape. Their faces relax, calm and at peace with the circles they gallop in. The silhouette on the horizon makes her uneasy but she is comfortable in the saddle now that the horses no longer snarl and snap at her touch.

Then the figure comes too close, and anxiety spreads like bloodstains on white fabric. ‘Go away,’ she wants to say, urging the horse to go faster and faster, to disappear in a thunderous cloud of dust. But the merry-go-round is slowing, finishing its giddy cycle, and the music is fading, so that all she can hear is the wind carrying the dust against the red sun. ‘Go away!’ she tries to shout.

Then she wakes up again, feeling the panic wash away as she sees the sunlight creep through the crack in the curtains. Little creatures of the night, spawn of the unknown, leave her be.