by Evan James Sheldon

The girl sees the horses, dark as the inside of a soul, with burning coal eyes and teeth as sharp as sin. She sees them trotting behind her, never galloping or moving at a canter. Never coming any nearer, but never lagging behind. Even when the girl’s mother drives them up, up, up into the mountains to get away for a while, they trail behind only a few yards, trotting and trotting.

She first noticed them…well she can’t remember when. Maybe they have always been there, nostrils flaring and giving off steam as if wherever they are is cold. But that can’t be, because where they are is with the girl and it is not always cold where the girl is. Most people can’t see them. Sometimes an animal is able. Once, when it was cloudy and threatening to snow, the girl walked slowly up to a flock of geese landed in a park and they all flew away. They flew away before they should have, or would have, if the horses weren’t there. She imagined that without the horses she could have moved unnoticed among the birds, brushing her small fingers along warm feathers and beaks. She imagined that, if the horses weren’t there, she could have felt the flight bundled up in those feathers, that the possibility of it might have drifted into her.

*

The girl sometimes bites her lips so they turn a bright red or pinches her cheeks so they flare like a blush. Sometimes she does it too much. Sometimes she does it too hard.

*

The horses follow the girl everywhere, even into the toilet. Sometimes she hates the horses.

*

Once, when her mother was at work a man knocked on the door to their apartment. The girl knew never to open the door for anyone particularly when her mother was gone. Particularly if the person was a man. Particularly if the man sounded like her father. But she did quietly place a chair right by the door so she could climb up and stare out of the peephole. The man knocked and called and yelled and pleaded, looking around while he did and never guessing the girl was just inches from his face while the horses trotted and trotted behind her. See tried to see the man’s eyes but she couldn’t. The girl did not tell her mother about the knocking man.

*

Her mother says the end of the world will come soon. She says that we will deserve everything we get. She says that everything is crumbling, crumbling. She says He will come like a thief with a blood-dipped robe. The girl watches for Him often.

*

On the way up into the mountains her mother stops at a gas station. The girl steals lipsticks with names like Lust, and Burning Desire, and Wicked Intention. She knows that she shouldn’t keep these little bits of evil, and she never intends to use them, but there’s something lovely about holding Wicked Intention in her pocket. It becomes transformed, not some cloudy idea, floating out in the world. It is hers. It is in her pocket and she holds it.

*

Her mother lies. The girl can’t tell when, or why, or the exact moment that the lies escape her. But she can tell, and she wonders if the lies swirl around in her mother’s belly like minnows, nearly fully-formed, and waiting to leap from her mouth.

*

Once, after her mother left her alone for a very long time in the apartment, the girl became angry with the horses. Why didn’t they just leave? Why stay just far enough away that she could see them, but never touch? Why could they never just be still and silent? Why must she hear their constant clopping? Why? And she tried to chase them, to hit them with her balled fists, but of course, she couldn’t catch them. She screamed at them and threw bathroom magazines and cheap stinky candles and used coffee mugs at them. If the horses noticed they didn’t show it. When her mother came home, she was not happy.

*

Her mother says that they must be kind to the Unfortunate. She says they must be willing to live with a little less that others might live at all. The girl thinks this is foolish. They already don’t have anything. Would her mother have them share their nothing? It doesn’t really matter what her mother says, only that now the girl must hide the things she wants to keep.

*

The girl remembers her father’s eyes. They flashed lightening no matter if he smiled or not. Sometimes the girl stares into the bathroom mirror for hours at a time, looking for that same lightening flash.

*

Not long after they stop for gas on their way up into the mountains to get away from it all, the sky darkens. The clouds lower, bustling along near the asphalt, angry and about to burst. The girl loves dark clouds. They don’t care what anyone says. Dark clouds do what they please, and what they please is loud. The horses trot behind the car, in no hurry to find shelter from the coming storm.

*

The girl has seen her mother wear lipstick once. It was a bright color, and the words she spoke when she was wearing the lipstick were brighter too. She thinks about giving her mother one of the lipsticks in her pocket, but knows what a terrible idea that really is. She pops off the cap to one without looking—maybe Burning Desire—and twirls the lipstick up and down slowly. She doesn’t know what the actual color of it is, she swiped it fast in the gas station, but she imagines it bright, the brightest, like a flame or sun or star. She smiles at the thought of all that brightness in her pocket while surrounded by the dark in the back seat of their car. It begins to rain.

*

The girl’s mother drives slow in the rain, so at first the girl doesn’t notice the car slowing. When she does, she leans forward between the two front seats to get a better look. There is a man standing on the side of the road with his thumb out. It is hard to tell what he looks like in the dark of the storm and the brightness of the cars headlights. The girl sees that he is wearing something long, that hangs down to his ankles, long enough to be a robe. The horses seem to be moving faster, perhaps at a canter.

*

The girl tried to tell her mother once, about the horses, but her mother’s eyes glassed over like when she’d had too much wine.

*

Her mother stops the car for the man. The girl guesses that he is an Unfortunate that they must help, but she is afraid that this is Him, the thief, even if what she thought to be robe is actually a long, straight coat. He doesn’t get in the front door, though the seat is open. Instead, he flops in the back and the girl scoots away, all the way away, and presses her back up against her window. It is cold, and though she can’t be sure, she thinks she feels icy streaks where the rain is running down on the other side of the glass.

Where you headed?

Wherever you’ll take me.

Well you are most welcome here. We are on our way to get away from it all. We don’t mind at all.

Everything feels dark and the girl holds onto the lipsticks, that brightness in her pocket.

What have you got there? He points a finger at her.

She takes one lipstick out and holds it out at arm’s length. Like a sword, like a shield. The man reaches out so fast and pops the silver twist-top off the lipstick exposing it. The girl expects a flash of light, something bright enough to repel the man, this thief, but when nothing happens, she sags a little. My favorite color, he says, and the horses behind her begin to gallop, their hooves as loud as thunder. When the man smiles at her, she sees lightning and she can’t tell if it comes from his eyes or the storm.

∼

Evan James Sheldon’s work has appeared in CHEAP POP, Ghost City Review, Pithead Chapel, and Roanoke Review, among others. He is a Senior Editor and Editorial Coordinator for F(r)iction.

You can find him online at evanjamessheldon.com.