The Last Moron On Earth

I awoke with a start, thrashing about in tangled sheets. As prior dreams faded from memory, I fought to control my breathing and free myself from the linen prison. Successful in both endeavors, I was content to simply lay in the newly cool bed. Life is just a series of hard nights and awful mornings, I thought to myself. Despite being a Saturday, I knew I’d be going in to work, and would therefore need to prepare for the day; I brought a hand to my face, dreading the drive out and job ahead. Or, at least, I attempted to do so, and was rewarded with a very hard smack.

Fully awakened and alert (and holding in tears, that friggen hurt!) I was aware of a soreness permeating through my body, and a frightening numbness in certain areas. No, not a numbness, rather a....lack of feeling.

Something was very wrong.

I gasped, a deep chill running along my spine as I peered down and found an alien body below. The offending limb was not a hand  clumsily maneuvered in a drowsy stupor, but an odd looking hoof affixed to a furred leg. ‘My’ body lay sprawled unnaturally across the bed, legs bending at different angles as I attempted to move them.

Muscle systems and limbs I was not accustomed to flopped almost lazily in strange ways as I attempted to climb out of my bed, only achieving a very undignified flop to the floor below. I decided to try learning how these new extremities worked from the undignified safety found lying on my side. After spending much longer than I’m proud to admit, I felt comfortable enough to try standing up, and, with a determined grin, slowly shuffled over to an upright mirror kept propped up against a wall.

There was a strange little horse staring back at me; tongue sticking out the corner of its mouth rather dumbly, massive emerald eyes narrowed and gazing across the smooth brown fur of the creature I had become. Hardened eyes flew open in shock, and the strange reflection did a rather good imitation of a goldfish. The, or rather, my head turned to further examine its features; my snout, or muzzle, or whatever the heck you call it, wasn’t as long as a horse’s was. As a matter of fact, from the neck up I barely resembled a horse at all, rather looking like a caricature found in a toddler’s spelling book. A short, shaggy chocolate mane and matching tail bounced at every turn, punctuating movement almost comically. I guess I had rolled out of most of my shorts, having only my underthings and a loose shirt clinging awkwardly to my new form. The horse in the mirror almost grinned, and shook its head in disbelief at the ridiculousness of the situation.

I turned away with a snort, thinking this to simply be some rather odd dream-within-a-dream hilarity. Maybe my subconscious was trying to tell me to reconnect with nature, I reasoned. Or, maybe the horse thing was symbolic of eating oatmeal for dinner the night before, and a warning to not do that again. Yeah, pretty shaky theories, but what was the alternative? Being turned into a goofy looking horse? Yeah, right....

A sudden rattling of the nightstand broke me out of my stupor; my phone’s alarm had finally gone off. I bit my cheek and waited to finally awake from this dream. All I was left with was a sore cheek.

I tried grabbing it, and only succeeded in sweeping it and my glasses off the nightstand to the floor below. With an exaggerated groan, I lowered myself awkwardly and eventually managed to scoop up my phone in the crook of my....wrist?

Horse anatomy is weird.

It was then that I realized that without fingers, silencing the alarm was going to be rather difficult. Nevermind that the phone continued vibrating in my weak grasp, almost causing it another trip to the floor. Remembering a co-worker’s desire to text despite dirty hands, I eventually settled on tapping the screen with my nose; God, did I feel ridiculous.

I was able to disable the alarm, but even with the touchscreen’s massive dialpad I knew I wouldn’t be able to accurately punch in a phone number, so calling in sick on my cell was not an option. With a heavy sigh I found an old pair of gym shorts that I could tighten around my frame, and discarded the t-shirt altogether; there was nothing to hide anymore, I reasoned.

I shakily exited my room, and called my boss with the phone kept on the coffee table in the living room of the apartment. I take pride in only dropping the pen twice whilst dialing. It was well past 7 AM, he should have been able to take the call, but I was left leaving a simple message. (“I guess I overdid it last night. Can’t make it in today. Sorry.”)

With no response from work (and therefore, no responsibilities for the day) I went to talk to my roommate, assuming that whatever antics we were up to last night ended up with descrating some Native American burial ground or pissing off some Aztec horse god or something. Figuring she’d be hung-over, I burst in as noisily as I could, slamming the door and shouting a greeting.

An empty bed greeted me.

I checked beside it, knowing she was just as prone to rolling off the bed as I was, but found nothing. I called into her bathroom, and being greeted with silence in return, searched there too.

Again, there was no sign of her.

“Becky, if you can hear me this isn’t funny. I dont want to know how you pulled this crap off, but I really need to pee and I’m scared, okay?” My shaky voice reverberated throughout the apartment, but my calls, unsurprisingly, yielded nothing.

A frightening thought came to me: What if it wasn’t just me? What if, like, a whole bunch of people turned into horses? Becky probably woke up and discovered it earlier, and just went to a hospital or something. Yeah, that made sense....okay I was grasping at straws but it makes more sense than aliens, which was my next guess.

Thinking that I could at least try and enjoy this horse thing before seeking a solution, I turned the TV on. Instead of Good Day, LA, I was greeted with some re-runs of some terrible popular show I’d never gotten into. Yeah, figuring out how to use a toilet as a horse is better than this garbage.

Okay, toilets are not made for horses, we know that now.

I hope to never have to do that again.

After washing up and discovering the only available sustenance was half a bag of stale bread, I decided a trip to the market was in order. Might as well check up on the local populace, see how they were taking this whole horse thing. A thought came to me; what if no animal was off limits? Maybe people were turned into all sorts of wacky animals? That’d be pretty cool, I mused; much better than just a bunch of dumb horses. Despite its difficulty to use, I loaded my cellphone and wallet in a laptop bag, draped it around my neck, and set off, not bothering to lock the door behind me. The crappy TV and my crappier bass guitar were the only obvious things worth stealing, and even those wouldn't be worth much.

While I’d gotten to be coordinated enough to walk at a good speed (though I think I was still outclassed by some newborn foals I'd seen on the internet), the apartment stairs proved too great a challenge. I managed to slowly get down a whole floor, before falling down a flight, stumbling to my hooves across the landing, and then falling down the last flight of stairs. Surprisingly, the only thing damaged was my ego, though my embarrassment had me wishing I snapped my neck in the fall.

Despite all the swearing and thumps associated with falling down stairs (and believe me, there was much of both), there was no rushing of other tenants to investigate, and the lobby desk was unattended.

What a bunch of assholes, I thought. Someone could have died and nobody gives a damn.

I continued on outside. The ever-shining sun had me shielding my massive eyes while they adjusted to the new world beyond the door.

My ears surprised me, twisting around to try and track any sounds coming from my surroundings. I was greeted with a subtle whistle of a light breeze cutting through the nearby streets. As I lowered my forearm, er, foreleg I guess, I was rattled by the obvious lack of cars; motor traffic was usually borderline nightmarish, even this early in the morning. There weren't crashed or stalled vehicles, flashing service lights, or any of the general pandemonium associated with the usual apocalypse scenario, so I quickly ruled out zombies, or lion-people attacking us horse-people, and was left standing alone on the sidewalk.

A heavy twinge in my gut followed the hair raising all along my neck and back, but I shrugged it off and slowly made my way to the nearby market. Setting off, I noticed clear sidewalks in both directions; pedestrian traffic was always usually light, but never like this. Each step I took only worsened the tightness I felt, as each hoof-fall produced a light clip-clop that echoed across the street; cities should not be this quiet this late in the morning. My slow, unsteady gait made the trip take much longer than it should have, but even half way to my destination and hadn't encountered anything.

No people, no animal-people things like me, no animals, nothing.

With an unsteady voice, I began calling out for anybody to show themselves. That whatever the aliens did affected me too, and they had no reason to hide. That they didn't have to be alone. My increasingly panicked shouts yielded no others, and I began running. Er, what one could call running: a repeated, uneven leap is a more apt description.

I think I was crying by the time I was greeted by the chime of the automatic door; the two-toned chirp a deafening chorus in my head as I scrambled inside, seeking some semblance of normalcy. Not wanting to be judged any more than a snuffling, stumbling horse should be, I quickly blinked away my tears and tried to stand as proud as possible.

A hesitant glance at the unattended register brought my attempts crashing down.

I pleaded, asking that God, or the aliens, my roommate, or anybody stop all this and let someone come out to talk to me; to call me a doofus for over-reacting and laughing at my expense.

I laughed weakly, waiting for this massive prank to be over. I don't know who or how it was done, but shutting down all traffic in a several block radius, grounding nearby air transit, and turning me into a dopey looking horse would be pretty funny to watch on YouTube later.

I broke down in a fit of tears, begging to just let somebody come out and end this ongoing silence, to show me I wasn't alone.

Weak sobs echoed across the opposite building's facade.

A television played static; a nearby radio was silent. A potted plant hanging from the ceiling dripped rainbow colored water, pooling it into the carpet below. I stared through a foggy window into an eternal sea of black.

I blinked, and could make out a distant figure standing under a flickering streetlight.

The figure sat down, proving to be another funny looking horse.

I turned from the window, and the figure appeared on the television screen.

She spoke for some time, her image distorted and discolored. Only a piercing static came through the speakers.  She fell silent, looking to me for response.

i shrugged as well as I could in this form.

Her gaze fell, looking down with ears flat.

It was several minutes before she began again, static roaring all the while.

She paused, met my gaze with narrowed eyes, and opened her mouth to speak.

I awoke with a start, baking in the afternoon sun in the doorway of the market.

"Well, that was new," I remarked to nobody in particular. I suppose all of today's occurrences could be chalked up as 'something new', but I've never taken solitude that harshly before; I'm antisocial as hell. I barely talk with my co-workers on site, and if it weren't for my roommate I would barely interact with anyone this side of a computer screen. Regardless, I had more important things to deal with than realizing I was being a bitch; A bread sandwich, it turns out, is garbage sustenance.

Determined to not let the day's events beat me again, I left some money on the counter and filled a sturdy plastic basket with various foodstuff.

With the sun at my back and a new spring in my admittedly awkward step, I began the trek home. I only tripped twice.