Accidentally turned into a horse by his lover (who’s a witch) a young lawyer's plan to defraud a billionaire goes wildly wrong. Destined to see the cruel crazy erotic world through equine eyes, finally he manages to escape to become an animal rights activist.
Retranslated and (liberally) adapted in today’s world (of London) from the original Latin of Lucius Apuleius (a Tunisian Roman citizen), which itself came from the Ancient Greek he wrote it in.
WARNING: The Greeks and Romans had no problem with 'adult themes' and outlooks on life (from 2,000 years ago!) which are sometimes very different from today's and may shock some readers to the core.
As Yogi Berra said, "When you come to a fork in the road. Take it."
"Golden Horse" is your fork.
Afraid of what lies ahead? Then turn back.
Part Seven
After a couple of weeks, the inevitable became obvious. To me, as well as to everyone else. At first, I tried to explain the sickness as a dodgy prawn. And I tried to explain the alarming weight-gain as a spurt of comfort eating (although the opposite was in fact true - I could hardly manage enough calories to cover staying alive). I was pregnant. Of course I was. How could I not be? Contraception was the last thing on our minds.
I was forced to spend every minute of every day at home. In bed, to be precise. The morning sickness was so bad that I couldn't possibly risk being more than a couple of feet from the bog. Confined to my room, the inter-net became, once again, my only companion and my only hope. But even I knew that I was clutching at straws. There was nothing it could tell me. Its bright, twinkly screen mocked me, tempting me on with endless offers of fools gold. Ditto, my mobile phone. How many hours did I spend simply staring at its black, blank face, willing it, with all my strength to light up, with a message from him, and for my life to start all over again.
I had pretty much reached rock bottom, physically, mentally and even spiritually (the afternoon in Farm Street had proved woefully inadequate), when, out of the blue, a letter arrived. The cream, embossed and crested envelope, even the handwriting, were so heart-breakingly familiar that for some stupid, pathetic moments, I almost believed that it was from Him. Of course it wasn't. In some ways, however, the author was even more unexpected. His mother. In a few short paragraphs, she suggested that we meet. It is proof of my utter desperation and total lack of self-worth that I agreed. At least I remembered the sick-bags.
The meeting took place, as in all good spy novels, on a bench in Green Park. There was a bitter wind blowing and the forecasted rain had just set in. It couldn't have been more than two degrees and the Park was, for once, almost entirely devoid of tourists. I sat, as per the ridiculously complicated instructions, on the corner of a seat opposite the birdhouse and contemplated the absurdity of the situation. Why the hell had I agreed to meet his monstrous mother? Why the hell had I allowed her to become involved all over again? Hadn't she done enough damage for one book?
The clocks of Whitehall had just started to chime the hour when she arrived, swathed as always in arrogance and opulence. In a full-length marten coat, Dior shades, Dior scent and the usual aura of effortless, imperious superiority. There was, naturally, no small talk.
'You're obviously even more stupid than I thought. A stupid little fool, who can control neither her emotions nor her body. How old are you?"
"Twenty." I muttered, sulkily.
"Old enough, surely, to know about a clever little devise call a coil. Or some useful little men in Harley Street. You're behaving like a spoiled teenager. And have you bothered to look in a mirror recently? Your hair, your skin, your nails ...'
She trailed off in disgust, as I looked sadly at my bitten nails and sagging bust.
'But. As my son, for some reason known only to God, seems to be pining away with love for you, I am prepared to be generous.'
This was too much. Way, way too much. My anger bubbled up and threw me off the bench. I was soon standing right in front of her, shouting for all I was worth.
'You're prepared to be generous? You? And what the fuck's it got to do with you, you interfering old bitch? Your relationship with your son is pretty fucking weird. Isn't it about time you cut the apron strings and let him run his own life? Especially his own love life.'
The woman looked for a long moment at the flamingos and then at me. She blew a long plume of expensive smoke full in my face and finally deigned to reply.
"You have had a unique experience. An experience that many young women seek their whole lives without ever finding. In many ways you are blessed. In other ways, you are cursed. You must, at any rate, have realized that my son is not a normal young man.'
She paused while I sat down, still shaking with anger and confusion.
'And if you wish to have the slightest chance of a rapprochement, it would be exceedingly foolhardy to alienate me. Do we understand each other?'
She raised a perfectly shaped eye-brow and smiled.
'So. I am prepared to give you one more chance to prove your worth. My son and I have devised a test, a quest, a challenge. Prove your worth. Prove yourself worthy of my son. Think of yourself as a knight errant, Sir Galahad in quest of the grail. '
She barked out a short laugh, presumably at the absurdity of the comparison.
'You will find all the details on an e-mail. Even we, as you have by now realized, avail ourselves of modern technology. It isn't all scrolls and tablets.' Again she laughed. And I shuddered.
'Read it at your leisure. And be sure of one thing. Very sure. Failures need not apply."
With that, she stood up and abruptly strode off in the direction of the Mall.
I soon found the e-mail, subject 'Mission: impossible'. I read it. Again and again. I still couldn't believe what I was reading. How dare she? How dare that fucking, jumped-up cow think that she can interfere like this in her son's relationships? How dare she think that she can tell me what to do? And how the fuck did she expect me to be able to steal the Star of India? Of course, she didn't expect me to. That was the whole point.
Part Eight
You might think that typing 'How to Steal the Crown Jewels' into Google was clutching at straws. But, since my connexion with the criminal underworld was worse than non-existent, I didn't exactly have a lot of choice. I spent the whole of the rest of the day and the whole of the night learning all about the very latest in computer-aided security. The Bank of England. The Kremlin. Fort Knox. Swiss bank-vaults. Fine-art hide-aways in Lichtenstein. Kate Middleton's Range Rover. The Tower of London. You'd have to be bloody Blofeldt to stand the slightest chance of cracking this particular safe. But I refused to give up. Not just yet.
I was still scooting about the various sites, chatting to people called Fingers and reading all about an amazing bloke who, way back in the sixteenth century, actually did steal the Crown Jewels, when the penny dropped. Bingo! You didn't have to be Blofeldt to seal this particular bit of bling. You simply needed to be a sexy girl with zero moral standards. The oldest trick in the book. And pretty much guaranteed instant success.
Of course, the ground work took a few weeks. I had to get to know the security guards pretty damn well and I had to make the necessary contacts n the porn industry (not as hard - excuse the pun - as you might think). Within a month, we were all set to film 'Pimp and Circumstance'. The contract was pretty simple. I agreed to do anything (with anyone or anything) in return for the Star of India on a temporary, two week loan. The security guards would be allowed free rein (reign) over my body in return for handing over the said stone in absolute silence and utter secrecy.
The story-line was, as always in such films, simple enough. The young Queen Elizabeth, while preparing for her coronation, spends many hours trying on crowns and 'be-friending' their keepers in the Tower. Pretty soon, the be-friending takes on an overtly sexual tone. Most of the film comprised artistic shots of the young Queen posing, starkers, in a variety of crowns, bending over a throne and being beaten with the sceptre, rogering a couple of 'beefeaters' with said sceptre, squatting over an orb and rubbing her clit etc etc. Let's just hope the real Queen never sees this pile of shite - I'd be back in the Tower faster than a raven could shake its tail. This time for good.
We had been meaning to film a tantalising short to whet (wet?) the appetite- the execution of Anne Boleyn (complete with third bust) - but by then the sun was rising and the tourists would soon be queuing up to be fleeced. I rapidly dressed and thanked my new friends. It's amazing how such occasions draw people together, almost as well as the Second World War. In fact, I was so busy exchanging mobile numbers that I nearly forgot to get the bloody diamond. It was handed to me, almost as an after-thought, as I putting on my coat, by the head of security, aka Sir Roger Dick.
'Thank you. You've been a tower of strength. And rest assured, it will be back here in two weeks. Max. And no one will ever know. Especially those poor tourists whizzing past the displays on a conveyor belt. The fake's even better than the real stone. Much more sparkly.'
I kissed him messily on the mouth and was gone, dizzy with my success. And faint with the delirious, multiple orgasms. I was so euphoric that I was even contemplating a change of career (what career? I hear you bitchily ask) - having sex all day didn't seem such a tough way to earn a crust. I was soon sitting on a bench by the Thames and dialling a Knightsbridge number. An oily butler answered.
'The Josephs' residence.'
From there, I fear, it was downhill all the way. Mrs Josephs was not as impressed as I had hoped. Nor, it seemed, was the Star of India the key to unlock the door to her son. He would remain in his Rapunzel tower for the foreseeable future.
'How dare you contact me? How dare you? And do not think that I have the slightest interest in seeing you or your gaudy bauble. You have entirely failed to understand the point of the exercise. Quelle surprise. You have obviously had help. You have obviously cheated.'
She laughed humourlessly.
'I find myself forced, therefore, to set another test, another challenge for my very own knight errant, my own private Sir Lancelot ....
As you may or may not know, tomorrow is the Grand National. The favourite must not win.'
The favourite. The dead cert. There couldn't be a single person in the country who didn't know all about Pour the Dark Wine. His photograph was in every paper, together with breathless analysis of his near mythic prowess. He had comfortably won every single classic for the past two years. The chances of his losing tomorrow were miniscule. It would take the cunning of the devil himself to scupper the race. Or else ....
I quickly put the 'phone down before I laughed out loud and spoilt everything. At this one point in the whole sorry saga, Lady Luck had finally decided to smile on me. Not only did she smile, she laughed uproariously and led me in a triumphant tango round and round the Tower. Because, by a stroke of wild and maverick luck, it so happened that I knew the wife of Pour the Dark Wine's trainer. In fact, I had known her for many a formative year, in an intimately Biblical sense.
Felicity Brown Brown Skelicorn - ('No hyphens in the surname, please. My parents are neither black nor unmarried.') - was the most promiscuous and most perverted girl at St Winifred’s. Not for nothing was she known as Flick the Dick: with the judicious aid of a membrum prostheticum she had pleasured the entire Upper Sixth in one steamy summer night. She had also, of course, slept with every teacher, of both sexes and neither, and was just experimenting with the farm animals, when her father lost his millions and she was whisked away to the local Comp - wreaking, no doubt, similar havoc.
I still have a few clips of her more daring dalliances. They have cheered up many a wet afternoon in Tite Street. 'Wet' being, I'm afraid, very much le mot juste. And it was just these clips that were the key to my success in this second great challenge. Just call me Aneka.
All it took was one judiciously timed phone call. The newly minted Mrs fffffforbes had a sneaking suspicion that hubby - (one of the Queen's equeries as well as her fave trainer) - would not take kindly to pix of his wife sucking off a pig on the front page of the Sunday Sport. (David Cameron was not the only teenager with leanings towards porcophilia.) Nor, presumably, would he delight in an e-mail in-box crammed full of vids of his new wife in flagrante with various nuns of a famous French teaching order. It did not take long before she had agreed to ask the tomorrow's jockey - (with whom she was, naturally, having an affair) - to inject a phial of barbiturates into the favourite's sweaty back-side at just the right moment.
And before you all start to take the moral high-ground and accuse me of under-hand skulduggery unbefitting a woman of my moral stature, you should know that Felicity deserved all she got. It was entirely due to her that I missed out on a prestigious scholarship to Ruskin School of Art. She had hurt my arse so much the night before that I literally couldn't stand up.
It all went like a dream, like clockwork, like the master-plan of a criminal master-mind. Right in front of a packed race-course, in front of the world's media, in front of the Her Majesty herself, the poor old nag rolled over, stone-dead, a nose from the finishing line. I thought that was cutting things a bit blinking fine. I was so much on the edge of my seat that I actually fell off it more than once.
I was just having the beginnings of a guilty conscience - the BBC were showing some pretty graphic close-ups of the horse's last moments - when the phone went. It was Felicity. And she sounded pretty worked up. I couldn't understand what she saying for the first few minutes, but the word 'autopsy' was just about discernable amid the wails and sobs. Hmm. This was always the weak point in an otherwise fool-proof strategy. Why did the silly cow have to bring it up and spoil my moment of triumph?
'Calm down, Flick. Just calm down. Of course there'll be an autopsy, but it's that little squit of a jockey who'll swing for it. Maybe even you and darling hubby. Certainly not me. There is nothing whatsoever to link me to the horse, his rider or his trainer. In any case -'
I took a long, restorative draught of fizz.
'- by the time it gets to court, I shall be long gone. So, frankly, my dear, I couldn't give a damn.'
This feeling of Rhet Butlerish triumph did not, alas, last long. Within a matter of seconds, the news had reached mission control and the other bitch was on the line.
After a few preliminary niceties to came quickly to the point.
'Do not expect me to believe that you could have had anything whatsoever to do with that poor horse's epileptic fit. You have once again failed to prove your worth, as you always will.'
There was a long silence, as I fought back the tears.
'However.'
My cruel interlocutor somehow managed to stretch out the three syllabus to a drawl that lasted at least a minute.
'Since my son is now fading before my very eyes, I am, against my proper judgement, against all the rules, allowing you one last chance. One. Last. Chance. All the necessary instruction has already been sent. The courier will arrive within the hour.'
© 2017 Mimi L. Thompson
For previous chapters (some of which are posted as nsfw because of 'adult themed' content not photographs) please visit my blog page. Your support is much appreciated and comments are most welcome
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