Hooves slough off like stiff denim in the creek. I stretch one leg tight and long, feel skin drop noiselessly into the dark. Frail fingers of moonshine drag across the water’s surface and grip my flank. When I feel light enough, I start towards the shore. Newborn feet meet the bank, toes painted muddy and red. The wet grass licks them clean with each step up, up through brush and hill and mist to the Fresnel lens of my second-story window.
It’s hard holding your breath with monster nostrils, but I’ve done this before. I slip between the Kia and the Subaru, thumb bleached bumper stickers, climb the porch steps, coax the backdoor ajar, and follow the wooden banisters skyward. My ear flicks towards Dad’s bedroom, fishing for his apneaed lullaby. A hot blade of light erupts through the ajar door and stains the wall a sick yellow.
“Is that you?” Low, like rocks grinding together.
I collapse inward, wild and caught. I’d whisper something sweet, but these fat lips aren’t built for English. I lift a fist and rap it once, twice, in that way we always do, only not now, not this late. Each wooden knock rings for eternity in the damp night. But it works. He mumbles and the hall is a quilt of blackness again. With a hushed bellow, I flee.
The bathroom vanity reveals a pale horse head. Fat, woolly cheekbones, wet lashes, and a flawless spiral erupting shell-like from my brow. My eye falls to fleshy pink shoulders, stomach, hips hidden in the teetering, fluffy shadow of my face. I think of the bobblehead Terry gave me instead of a raise. I turn on the shower. I scrub and scrub, muzzle melting into chunks caught in the drain. Steam unbraids my mane from doily to thread. I’m stripped in sonic waves, melting torn layers of leaves and singing velvet whinnies. My horn snaps off in one slender piece like a rabbit kicking in my palm.
It’s instinct, then, to towel off, to collapse into unmade sheets. I have work today. I bury the last piece of myself beneath a pillow. Sleep clutches me painfully and is peppered with visions of cottontails, bumper stickers, and mountain laurels.
Callista White @cwunshine (IG, YT, Tumblr) is an aspiring artist-musician-poet-laureate and English major at CCSU. Her work has been featured in CSCU Manchester’s LitMag Shapes and DIY darlings Connecticunt, Unmagnolia Magazine, and Bawdy. Coming soon, words in Grotesk Press’s RIVAL. She can most reliably be found making zines in Coventry, CT.