The Horse

By Facundo Romephuevos

Collage by Madi Parsley @thiscatcollages

No one believes Picos saw a horse that day while he was tripping on acid.

But that's the problem with being drunk and on acid. You lose all credibility as a reliable witness, let alone a reasonable, well-functioning human being. It was Picos and the homie Mozzy. They called him Mozzy because "MOZ" stood for Morrissey and he was a big fan. Picos was called Picos because he was a punk with spiky hair.

They were going home after ditching high school and spending the whole day getting drunk and high at their friend's apartment on Sepulveda Boulevard near Oxnard Street in Van Nuys. It was the common spot to escape to—either from school, a shitty home life, the cops, angry boyfriends or girlfriends, their accompanying trauma, but mostly to escape sobriety. Picos, Mozzy and all their friends spent most of their time escaping. But they had to get back to their respective homes by 10 p.m. That was the perfect hour to come home all fucked up after supposedly going to school because their parents, who were also usually fucked up, would be asleep by that time. Getting fucked up was shared and trans-generational but both parents and kids didn't see it that way. Self-destruction was their own separate private property, not meant for the other. 

  As they were walking up Oxnard Street, passing all the gray and sign-less store fronts, they decided they needed to take an even more discreet way home. The acid was working so their paranoia was borderline psychotic. They stopped at a store front but this one had a sign. It read: Eros Station. It was the local sex shop—one of several in Van Nuys and the larger San Fernando Valley, porn capital of the world. Underneath the sign was a large display window to showcase their merchandise: whips, sex toys and two silhouettes of presumably naked women in lingerie. Picos and Mozzy stared at the silhouettes, their eyes fixated. Then they started moving. One silhouette had small hands with pointy fingers. Her hands grabbed her hips and, with her fingers, slowly traced her figure up her waist, ribs, breasts, throat, stopping at her face. The silhouette succubus clawed at her own face and ripped off chunks of two-dimensional blackness, all while slowly dancing to unheard music. Picos and Mozzy's eyes widen in freight.

Without realizing it they had been standing in front of the sex shop for three hours.

"Bro, are you..." Picos said. "Are you seeing this shit?"

Mozzy didn't say anything but Picos knew he was. He couldn't look away. Picos couldn't either. Then Mozzy started crying. It was too much. But they both couldn't move. They were heavy with fear. The ground trapped them like gluey gravity. The sidewalk underneath their feet was no longer made of cement; it was malleable like rubber. Mozzy was the first to try to leave. He lifted up his right foot and stepped out of the line of sight from the succubus in the window.

"Help me," Picos whispered.

  Mozzy turned toward Picos, grabbed his hand and pulled it toward him. They ran up the street in silence save for their hurried breathing. 

Then they were attacked by a flurry of small dark bugs. They both thought, were these locusts?  Was the world ending?

The bugs fell heavy on their heads, chest and shoulders, like little kamikazes. Their eyes couldn't focus on them. They kept running which made them blurrier. So Picos stopped. They were small and wet and disappeared upon impact. They weren't just attacking them but everything as well. Buildings, the sidewalk, the street. Upon closer inspection they weren't bugs at all–they were dark red rain drops. The world was stained blood red, leaving only traces of their little terrible corpses. Truly, the world was ending.

"Let's go, man!" Picos said and turned into the next street and went into an alley.

The blood rain seemed to slow down. It was terrible still but more bearable. Mozzy looked at him, his face drenched in blood, his eyeballs nothing but black pupils. He was horrible and ugly. He frightened Picos, but he didn't want to show it because if Mozzy tasted his fear he would certainly kill him. This is how the world ends and this is how I die.

They walked quickly, trying to stay alive by staying close to the walls of the buildings in the alley and underneath the overhangs. Most of the buildings were small warehouses, factories and autobody shops. Then they came to a building which had a bigger opening than the rest. There were no car or car parts, no boxes or loading docks. The smell was strong and it reminded Picos of his family's rancho in Zacatecas.

"Huele como México," Picos said but Mozzy acted like he didn't hear him.

There was hay covering the ground and inside the building. Inside, you can see the walls and ceiling were made of wood. It was a stable. And toward the right, half covered in the darkness of the stable was a big, red horse with a long and silky black mane.

"Hey," Picos said. "Are you seeing this shit right here?"

"What?" Mozzy said.

"What do you mean 'what'? Picos said, pointing at it. "The fucking horse!"

Mozzy didn't look around. He refused to look at the barn, or at any of the other buildings in the alley for that matter. He just kept looking forward.

"Hey—hey man. Are you seeing this horse right here?"

But he was concentrated on something else. He only cared about what he saw in front of him. But he knew. He willingly ignored Picos and the horse. Motherfucker can see this. Don't play stupid! The end of the alley up ahead. He was—they were—spiraling into a bad acid trip. All Mozzy wanted was escape. The demon strippers in the store front was bad enough, but the blood rain made it worse, and now the horse? Well, that's one horse too far, Mozzy thought.

But not for Picos. He walked into the stable. The horse was eating hay from the ground. It seemed unbothered by their presence. He walked up to it and extended his hand. He touched the top of its hip with his index finger, feeling its course and dusty hair. He placed his hand on his side and patted it gently, waiting for a reaction. But it went on eating. So he stroked its hair with his palm. Picos turned around to tell Mozzy the horse was real, but couldn't see him in the alley.

"Hey, Mozzy! Where'd you go?" Picos said from inside the stable.

But he didn't answer. Picos stepped out and into the alley. Mozzy wasn't there.

He panicked. He went back into the stable and said goodbye hurriedly to the horse. Picos thought Mozzy must have gone ahead. Picos left the alley and went back to Oxnard Street to see if Mozzy crossed the street going home. Instead, he saw Mozzy in front of the sex shop. He called out to him.

"Hey Mozzy!"

But he didn't turn around. He was just standing there looking at the window. Picos called out to him again.

"Yo, foo!"

Nothing. Mozzy stared at the window with intense concentration. Picos walked toward him.

Just then Mozzy slowly raised his hands to his head and then began clawing at his face, digging in his nails deep into his cheeks. He pulled out chunks of flesh—skin, muscle and all. He jabbed his index fingers deep into his eye sockets, popping and ripping apart his eyeballs and pulling off more flesh. But he didn't make a sound.

"Mozzy!" Picos screamed.

He stood still with extreme fear gripping his heart, momentarily forgetting he was on acid.

After Mozzy was done clawing off his face he moved his attention to his torso. He took off his shirt and ripped off handfuls of fatty flesh from his stomach and sides. He ripped apart his chest. He took off his pants and underwear. He ripped apart his gentles more easily than his face or torso. He ripped off chunks of his thighs and biceps. Somehow and for some reason he stopped and turned toward Picos. Picos was paralyzed with fear. He couldn't take his eyes off Mozzy's torn-apart face and body. Picos, then, saw something beneath the little bits of skin and flesh still dangling on Mozzy's ravaged body. There was something inside Mozzy. He was turning into something else. He began changing shape. He fell to his hands and knees. His back arched and his sides and stomach grew. His arms grew longer. His hands and feet turned into hooves. His legs grew thicker and muscular. His head elongated, his forehead flattened, his eyes grew back and larger and shifted to either side of his new hairy face. His nose grew wider and lower right above his new mouth. It became a muzzle. Course hair sprouted from his head and spine. His ass exploded into a furry of thick black hair, wet with blood. Then his transformation was complete.

Before Picos stood a horse, around six feet tall, wide and muscular, its eyes black and mesmerizing. Picos was surprised that his fear had quickly melted away. After all, a horse wasn't scary. It was marvelous and majestic. It was western poetry, wild with green rolling mountains. But he didn't know whether the horse would understand him.

"Let's go home," Picos said.

The horse snorted loudly and nodded its massive head as if agreeing with Picos. The acid still coursed through his veins. They walked home in silence. It had stopped raining.

Facundo Rompehuevos is an activist, writer, husband, father and recovering alcoholic and drug addict born and raised in the San Fernando Valley. He writes poetry, fiction and nonfiction. His work has appeared in independent literary and poetry journals, such as Unlikely Stories, Rusty Truck, A Thin Slice of Anxiety and the political zine Red's Not White. He has two books of poetry: Irreconcilable Contradictions (2017) and Grabbing the Stars from the Sky (2021), both published by Fourth Sword Publications. His books have been sold at Stories Books & Cafe, the Last Bookstore and Skylight Books. He is currently working on his debut novel.