The Survivor

I amputated my other back hoof. Strange. All through the operation I was drooling. Drooooling. Just like when I saw the gull. Drooling helplessly. But I made myself wait until after dark. I just counted backward from one hundred . . . twenty or thirty times! Ha! Ha! WORKS!

And then what happens to the hoof?

I kept telling myself just a sandwich just a sandwich just a sandwich just a sandwich

New day. Rain the last one or two days. I don't even know my DATES well anymore. And high winds. I managed to move some rocks from the central pile, enough to make a hole I could crawl into. Found one small spider. Pinched it with my hoof before he could get away and ate him up. Very nice. Juicy. Thought to myself that the rocks over me might fall and bury me alive. Didn't care.

Spent the whole storm stoned. Maybe it rained three days instead of two. Or only one. But I think it got dark twice. I love to nod off. No pain or itching then. I know I'm going to survive this. It can't be a person can go through something like this for nothing.

There was a priest at a small church when I was a filly, a little runty stallion, and he used to love to talk about Tartarus and mortal sins. He had a real hobbyhorse on them. You can't get back from a mortal sin, that was his view. I dreamed about him last night, Father Hailly in his black bathrobe, and his whiskey nose, shaking his hoof at me and saying, "Shame on you,little mare . . . a mortal sin . . . damt to hell, boy . . .damt to hell . . . I found out later he was institutionalized. Didnt know what that was back then. I see why now.

Now, I laughat him. If this place isn't Tartarus, what is'? And the only mortal sin is giving up. Survival is a birth right. Half of the time I'm delirious; the rest of the time my stumps itch and the dampness makes them ache horribly.

But I won't give up. I swear. Not for nothing. Not all this for nothing.