School Daze

I woke up damp with sweat from a dream that haunted the inner recesses of my subconscious. A dream where I was hunted by a monster with tentacles and I heard its dragging motions right behind me. Whenever I tried to turn my head, there would be nothing behind me but my shadow.

A dread filled me as I saw my shadow elongate and wrap its tentacles around my face. Then a shift would happen and I would be sitting in a faraway glade bathed in light. It was the happiest thing I could think of. This would protect me for a while but the shadow would always  creep in and corrupt the light-glade. Only once did I try to stop it and when I went up towards it, it turned and I saw, with horror, my face.

That was what scared me the most in those dreams. That realization that I was afraid of myself.

I jumped out of my fear dream and found myself in a unfamiliar place. I was nine years old and I hadn’t had that dream since I was a filly and I was not a filly anymore if what my father said to me in the nights was true.

It wasn’t like my cozy bed at home where I could crawl into my mother’s calming embrace and drift off to dreamland unhindered by fears and reality. I loved those nights because she would run a comforting hoof through my hair and she would sing me lullabies to  make me calm. I knew that the monsters couldn’t get me then.

But I was in an unfamiliar place stuck in a sleeping bag. I remembered where I was. I was with the real monsters on my father’s camping trip and I really needed to go to the bathroom. I heard  the friendly banter of my father’s friends.

“So she’s a whore, Mosely. You don’t need to worry about her.” Ponzi Scheme’s dripped honey as I tried to unzip the tent and leave this realistic nightmare.

“Yeah, what Ponzi said. Don’t worry about your illegitimate child. Lie out your teeth and the little filly won’t be any wiser.

“Insurance Fraud. That child is sleeping in the next tent over and I want this problem gone. I think I might give her a job watching her daughter.” Mosely laughed heartily and he began having a coughing fit. It had been happening more often lately since he started smoking cigars.

“Man, I don’t envy you. Mosely, this happened because you couldn’t keep your business out of your pleasure. If I had a problem with a whore I would kill her and hide her body.” Ponzi laughed.

“So you’d kill your wife?” The friends chuckled at this. “Mosely, what would you do if Valencia slept around like you did?”

I needed to run out in the bushes and relieve my bladder. But I was scared cause they were drunk and that made the monster from my dream haunt my mind again.

I saw their shadows on the tent . Shadow puppets blown up to insane proportions, their grins ghastly and ready to eat up a small filly. My father’s words came out in a dark monotone. “I would kill anypony that would dare touch my wife in that way. I would use this.” My drunk father twirled his foot long knife, almost a sword, and stabbed it into the nearby ground. I later saw him gut a deer with it. I never knew what my father did with the meat. Maybe he sold it to gryphons or something, but I remember what he did with the head. He had it stuffed and mounted on his office wall. The beady, dead eyes always judged me. “I heard of this thing the buffaloes do with their unfaithful women. They cut a notch in both of their ears and send them to die in the wilderness. Its called the Buffalo ear job.”

I was terrified. I wanted to be back at home in the embrace of the mother figure that I loved but the dreamlike stupor I was in glazed over the memory and I could just see my mother living on the streets homeless.

“That was to make sure that no buffalo would ever want them again. It was a sign of ownership and masculinity. These buffalo women live in little settlements where they moan about their infidelity.” I heard my father wiggle his knife out of the ground and begin sharpening the weapon. Shikt. Shikt. Shikt.

“Man that’s hilarious. If we did that, Manehattan would have three quarters of the mares looking like that.” Ponzi and Fraud chuckled.

“Not my wife.” The laughter died with the dark void that my father’s voice had become.

“Dude, we’re just kidding.” Insurance Fraud passed my father the bottle and he knocked a draught back.

“I’d shoot my wife’s brains out.” Ponzi said quietly.

“I’d drink to  that.” My father chuckled happily.

I couldn’t stop myself. I ran out into the November air and my fur bristled as I tried to dodge the cold air. I was gripping the side of the tent flap with a hoof and let the leaves announce my presence. The whole conversation felt like an unreal dream and I wanted to crawl in between my mother’s sheets and have her hold me in her arms.I did that when my father left for his job in the mornings, I snuck into their bedroom and my mother would move over and I just felt her hot breath on my mane and I would drift back to sleep.

I didn't want to be in the middle of nowhere with my father.

My father turned and I can’t forget how he looked. His green mane was tucked under a woolen cap and he gripped his knife. Beard stubble that he only let grow when he was on these trips made him look dangerous and rough. He looked at me and I froze. The conversation stopped as if they were scared that I might have heard the laughter.

“I gotta go to the bathroom.” I tried to grin but I frowned  involuntarily.

“Then go.” My father waved a hoof at the nearby bushes.

I tried to go but it took a very long time. It was like it was a ball of fear that wouldn’t loosen its grip of my insides. Then it came out in a flood and I felt relieved. I quickly walked back in my tent and shamefully fell asleep. They forgot that I was there and they were talking about the war,. All of them had been in the war with Gryphus and they traded stories of warriors that drank the blood of their enemies.

My dad killed that deer a few days later and I watched him kill it. He just trapped the thing in a cave and stabbed it in the in-between muscles of neck and shoulder. It died with a scream on its lips and I slipped a little in its blood.

My dad was happy and he put his legs on either side of the stomach of the deer and gutted the dead body. I puked up my breakfast and my dad was disappointed with me. I knew in that moment that he had wanted a son but he got me. I was a failure in my father’s eyes. I never went with my dad hunting ever again.