The Unknown Visitor
“So you have finally come.”
“O, I do not believe we have formally met before.”
“You’re here to take me away from this world,”
“Yes most definitely,” the figure purred with malicious glee.
There I sat on the cold kitchen floor staring up at the face of the stranger. Whatever the man was wearing, it was a suit of some sort, it’s color a deep dark sapphire. The outfit itself seemed to undulate slowly around his thin frame, threaded with blue wisps of smoke rather than anything solid. One could say that he was handsome, with those clear sky blue eyes and the casual elegance of his white blonde hair. The most disturbing feature of his otherwise striking appearance was the large gaping hole on the left side of his chest to which his suit had been fashioned around. I could see straight through it, observing the background of the kitchen behind him.
“I didn’t expect to see you in this sort of condition, though it would certainly cut down the time needed to convince you,” the figure sniggered.
“My life is already over,” I choked; a trickle of blood ran down from my mouth.
Blood, lots of it, had already spread across the kitchen floor, slowly oozing from the deep wound on my left side. My right hand which was pressing down on the wound had rapidly lost its strength, my breathing becoming slower and slower. Right, what the hell is happening now? Is this the angel of death? Looks like heaven is going to be one big ass circus.
“O? I really don’t think your time is over yet,” the man chuckled.
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Wait; hold on for a second, I should start from the beginning. Sorry, just got caught in the moment.
Who am I? I am just your typical totally uninteresting son of a farmer who lives in a community that is gradually disappearing to the suburban expansion of the city. I have a totally boring life filled with back breaking labor every day, doing the same chores over and over again. It doesn’t help much when your only classroom is in the form of a laptop spitting out useless dribble at you because the school had closed due to lack of staff. I am the youngest member of the family, having four brothers and one sister. Every one of them, except for my oldest brother, had left to seek their fortunes far away from this mundane farming life.
Since my sister had left, I was given the task of packing up her all her things and to place them in the attic. Her larger room would become mine, my old bedroom being the small reserve laundry room. After I had removed that dreadful flowered wallpaper and scrapped off the countless cutesy stickers on EVERYTHING, I began packing her old books and clothes into boxes. That’s when I found a copy of season 1 of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic which was stored in her small CD collection. Having finished my chores and nothing else to do that day, taking the laptop to my new room, I was amazed how deeply enthralled I was by the characters. They seem to spring into life on the screen, full of joy living in a world that was not mundane but adventurous at every turn. I hadn’t been able to watch the full two seasons yet, afraid that my family would ridicule me of my lack of maturity. Plus I had more than enough chores with three siblings gone to the suburbs.
That leaves one question. Why am I still here?
A few years ago, a totally untameable young black mare, strong and defiant, had come across my life. My mother and father have had enough of this horse, thinking her to be useless and fearing an outbreak of wild horses in the herd, they proceeded to put her down. After hearing this I begged them not to kill the mare and to let me take full responsibility of her. It was a full year before she finally stopped being aggressive to me, and what’s more, I was the only person able to ride her without being bucked off. That’s when I finally decided on the name for the resilient mare, Black Grace.
Things have turned out greater than expected when I first brought her into town. From the suggestion of my old classroom teacher, I entered her in a racing competition, with me as her rider. Words cannot express the pure joy I felt as we won that first race. With the winnings able to improve and update the farm, my mother and father were ecstatic over our change in fortunes. My older brother didn’t say much about it but convinced me to compete with Black Grace in more races. We won every race so far, every town we went, every city we visited, Black Grace and I were able to scrape a win no matter where we went.
This was all about to change on one particular day, when my father and mother were away from home to buy more supplies from town.
“We are only interested in the horse, nothing else matters.”
The group of burly men, all wearing shades and matching suits entered through the farm house door.
“I told you before; she’s not for sale to anybody.”
“We didn’t come here for a yes or no,” one of the men spoke, adjusting his shades.
“A race horse of that quality should not stay in a shit house like this.”
“Get out,” anger slowly rising in my voice.
“Get out before I call the authorities.”
“Not likely.”
It took me a few seconds to register the man’s words before he drew from the inside of his jacket a silver object. Pointing the gun at me, he fired.
Pain, unendurable agony rocked my body. Screaming loudly, clutching the deep wound on my body, I slumped onto the kitchen floor, blood pouring from my side. The group of men left the room, opening the back door of the house, approaching the stables.
“MUST NOT LET THEM TAKE HER,” was all that rang through my ears.
Struggling to get to my feet, I staggered to the telephone, blood pouring on the tiled floor. Upon picking up the phone I dialled 000.
No dial tone.
Those fuckers.
Losing what little strength I had, I slumped to the floor.
The sound of loud whinnying could be heard loudly, along with several yells and screams of pain. Then her struggling stopped, the air became eerily quiet. The sound of a large truck could be heard reversing across the noisy gravel. Then it was moving back to the road, leaving behind the soft song of birds in the air.
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“What did you say? Can u repeat that?” I said, looking up from the cold kitchen floor.
The old man grinned pulling a kitchen chair towards me avoiding the pool of blood, before sitting down, arms crossed.
“Would you like to go to Equestria?”
A list of questions flooded into my mind. “Isn’t Equestria just a cartoon?” “How is it possible for me to travel now?” “Is this some weird dream before death?”
“I assure you,” the figure replied, reading my confused expression, “What is real and what is not cannot be answered with an easy yes or no.”
“All I ask is if you are willing to leave this world in seek of new pastures with full knowledge that there is no turning back.”
My vision is blurring. The old man seems to drift in and out of focus, was it just me or did his eyes actually glow with that weird yellow colour? The words that left my lips would determine the fate of my very soul, echoed in the silent kitchen.
“Do what you must.”
“Very well then”
With a snap of his fingers, the whole world turned pitch black, leaving behind the sound of soft chuckling in the void.
