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It was an old-fashioned rocking horse, the molded plastic, spring-mounted type. The kind Misty had played on as a child. The kind some government agency had decided was too dangerous for children late in the last century. The kind Misty had never imagined could be wrenched from its metal frame so easily. Lying in the ER, she wryly, silently, admitted that for once the government watchdogs were right — the molded plastic rocking horse was dangerous.
“Look straight up,” the doctor said. He carefully pulled back her swollen eyelid and shone a light in her eye.
With a concert of nurses around him, the doctor examined the welts that formed burning islands of pain down Misty’s chest and ribs, wrapping around her left hip before trailing down her thigh. She stared at the light above her, moving when asked, responding to the pain-scale question again and again. Her eye was a six, chest a three-maybe-four, ribs another six. On the delicate inside of her thigh where the bruises were so numerous and deep that they merged into one massive contusion, the pain meter was pretty much pegged. She rated it an eight. She would have rated it higher, but her husband was standing behind the circle of nurses.
There were no broken bones. The doctor prescribed muscle relaxers and pain killers, and bed rest for a week. He wanted to take pictures of the welts, some of them already forming into perfect little hoof-print bruises, but the look his patient’s face made him retract the question immediately.
“This could have been a lot worse,” the doctor said as he handed the prescriptions to Misty’s husband. “I’ve seen a lot of critical horse-related injuries, some fatal. Your wife is lucky you were there to pull her out of the paddock.”
“Ponies can be so mean,” one of the nurses remarked wisely.
Especially the plastic kind.
On the jolting, painful truck ride home, her husband patted his breast pocket where the prescription orders were stored. “I’ll get these filled as soon as the pharmacy opens.”
Of course you will. They’re narcotics. You’ll get them filled and refilled as many times as possible, then you’ll make me call to get even more refills approved, and of course I won’t be taking any of them. Misty shut her eyes, but immediately opened them again. With her eyes closed, all she could see was the garishly red mouth of the rocking horse and its too-realistic eyes staring at her in panic (Panic? Whose? Mine?) as its hooves came down again and again and again.
“That was smart, telling them it was the horses,” her husband said when they pulled into the driveway. He shut off the engine and they sat there together in the pre-dawn haze, listening to the tick of the cooling engine. “I feel just awful about what happened, Misty.” His voice cracked. He almost sounded sincere. She almost believed him. “I swear, I’ll never lift my hand to you again. I know I’ve said that before, but this time I mean it. No matter how mad you make me, I’ll never hurt you again, sweetheart.”
Like randomly blinking Christmas lights, flashes of pain lit up one after another, sometimes together, sometimes not, all over Misty’s body as she reached for the door handle. “You were lucky no one at the hospital knows.”
“Knows what?”
“That we don’t have a pony.”
***
“What a damned mess.” The Sheriff discretely turned away to light his cigar. “Brains and blood all over that damned stall.”
The County Coroner shrugged. “It’s a big horse.”
“Doesn’t look like it was quick, either.”
“No, I’d say not. We’ll know more after the autopsy, of course.”
A puff of smoke hovered around the Sheriff’s face before the wind caught it, toyed with it, and swept it away. “I’d said that’s just a formality in this case. These folks have had horse problems before. The wife was down at General just last month, damned near trampled half to death.”
The Coroner considered this for a moment. “Will Animal Control put the horse down?”
“Oh, hell, no,” the Sheriff answered. “A big horse, a small space, something spooks it and — boom! Brains and blood. I’ve seen it before, just never this damned messy. I feel awful bad for the woman. So young. Damned pretty, too.”
The two men turned and looked toward the barn where their murder suspect stood. It shuffled side-to-side, obviously distressed by the unaccustomed multitude of men and vehicles. Misty held the horse’s lead and stroked its long face, murmuring endearments to the powerful animal. In her cut-off jeans and tank top, the bruised imprints of tiny hooves were vivid along her lean frame.
The Sheriff threw down his cigar and stomped on it. “Some people just have bad luck with animals.”
Deborah Winter-Blood is a writer, dog mom and displaced California Valley Girl. Her work has appeared in various print and online publications over the past 30 years. She’s recently completed her second novel.
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24 Responses to “STAMPEDE • by Deborah Winter-Blood”
Comments
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May 12th, 2010 at 12:03 am
“…the look his patient’s face…” – typo, missing “on”?
May 12th, 2010 at 12:20 am
An interesting take on a familiar theme. I liked the horse theme but thought the POV wavered in the first half and don’t think I needed the italicized exposition. Still, nicely told overall.
May 12th, 2010 at 5:06 am
I loved the twists and turns your story took me through in such a short piece. The horse theme was right on and suppported your overall message. Very good! I especially liked, “the bruised imprints of tiny hooves were vivid along her lean frame.” Swell.
May 12th, 2010 at 5:29 am
Perfect twist at the end.
May 12th, 2010 at 5:39 am
There’s a little revenge in all of us. How sweet it is here!
May 12th, 2010 at 5:50 am
Wow Deborah, I really loved this! I usually don’t comment, but felt compelled to after reading this piece. Great twists throughout and I love the way you described the demeanour of the battered wife and the powerful horse at the end, very necessary. Very well thought out and written. Congrats!
May 12th, 2010 at 7:17 am
Good title. Her revenge cave me a chuckle– despite how close to reality her situation is for many people. Good piece.
May 12th, 2010 at 7:33 am
I got lost. Not my cup of tea. Sorry.
May 12th, 2010 at 7:40 am
Poor Misty. This was an excellent story, sad and all too real. I had hoped Misty wouldn’t die, but I think in the end it made it all the more realistic.
May 12th, 2010 at 7:52 am
Sorry i must be thick but i just didn’t follow this at all…did the plastic horse turn into a real one?…is it all in her mind…how did she get tiny hoof marks if the horse was a full grown one?….sorry, whatever effect she was going for, i think it ended up blurry and kinda messy
May 12th, 2010 at 7:55 am
I loved it! The POV wasn’t an issue with me. Sometimes you have to write outside the box to give a story uniqueness.
May 12th, 2010 at 8:17 am
Terry, Misty’s husband was beating her. In order to cover up he claimed that it was their horse that was beating her, a real ferocious one that people in the community never sae. But they didn’t have a real horse, only a small wooden one.
May 12th, 2010 at 10:48 am
Jen, I have to disagree, based on what the story said. They did have at least one horse, probably more.
The husband said: “That was smart, telling them it was the horses.”
He also said: “That we don’t have a pony.”
So, I read it that he beat her with the plastic pony and then they told the hospital the hoof marks came from a real pony.
I think what actually happened to cause the horse to kill the husband is really immaterial to the story. As a reader, I can either chalk it up to bad luck or karma or Misty spooking the horse when her husband was cleaning the stall. Either way, the bastard is dead. A fitting end to the story regardless of how it happened.
May 12th, 2010 at 10:54 am
oops….correction…. It was Misty that said…
“We don’t have a pony.”
May 12th, 2010 at 10:54 am
Thank you all for your encouraging and constructive comments. My mantra while I’m writing future stories will be “clarity, clarity, clarity”.
And yes, Mickey, you pegged it. You provided a summary in a nutshell. Thank you!
May 12th, 2010 at 11:07 am
A well-worn theme, but pulled off with great freshness and skill. Fine work!
May 12th, 2010 at 11:27 am
Thanks Mickey, I didn’t get the difference in wording between “horse” and “pony.”
May 13th, 2010 at 7:55 am
I was a bit puzzled about how the plastic horse became a real horse(though quite prepared to believe in magic!),mainly because I couldn’t see them suddenly buy a horse where before they had none. Sticking to either horse or pony throughout would have been clearer. However, after reading Mickey’s conmment I finally got it in full and it increased my understanding and rating instantly.
I liked it. Well done.
May 13th, 2010 at 10:04 am
I’m very confused. I just could not follow this story and I did read it carefully like I read any story. I don’t think a reader should have to “guess” what is going on. So, for me this was a total miss.
May 14th, 2010 at 1:28 pm
I thought it was great! I did a double take on the “pony” versus “horse” issue as well, but figured it out quickly enough. Husband beat her with a plastic horse, and she allowed/caused their actual regular sized horse to trample him. Ponies are always smaller than horses.
May 17th, 2010 at 10:38 pm
I thought you opened up the story in a very clever and effective way. It was compelling and mysterious in that it made me wonder how Misty being in the ER had to do with the plastic pony and also how the plastic pony could be dangerous. The story grasped my interest from the beginning to the turning point where the husband apologizes for hitting Misty. For me, that was the most effective element of your story, the build-up of emotion and suspense in the reader in a couple short paragraphs. The transition to the climax was smooth and just right in timing as to not lose the reader’s interest. I thought the last part of the story (where the husband has died) were a bit dark and gruesome for me. The story seemed to shift from a real issue (domestic violence) to a gruesome murder reminiscent of CSI.
May 21st, 2010 at 1:31 pm
I’m not even sure “murder” was specifically inferred. Any number of things could’ve happened in that stall, the end result being the husband was dead. Readers choice.
June 16th, 2010 at 8:52 am
Yay for the REAL horse. Karma at the very least. Interesting idea of plastic horse verses real horse and lending it to his coverup of the beatings.
November 18th, 2010 at 11:47 am
Deborah, going through the archives to catch up on all the things I missed before finding EDF, I found this story. After reading it then the comments, I found myself surprised that so many people were confused. For me, it was pretty clear. Hubby beat her with the plastic horse badly enough to put her in front of doctors, and I’m sure it wasn’t the first time he hurt her. The only bit of confusion for me was if he brutalizes her so he can get the drugs or if he’s just a bullying jerk … probably both! He’s told her before that he wouldn’t beat her again. So true to life and so unfortunate.
I’m glad you didn’t spell it out, but I’m thinking she bashed hubby’s head in then covered it by somehow getting the horse to stomp on him. I doubt it was an accident … people can only be pushed so far before they snap. She, at least, was clever – using the medical history as an alibi.
I enjoyed the story start to finish and thought the writing was exceptional. Five hooves from me.