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 on the very rocky road ahead? Then turn back.
Chapter 16 - 3
It wasn't until Maundy Thursday that something else happened to break the same-old, same-old. It was about nine in the evening, the foot washing was over - (I fear that Father Simon enjoyed the re-enactment rather too much. Less Christ in the Upper Room, more Graham Norton in a back street massage parlour) - and the chums were resting in preparation for the rigours of tomorrow. According to Father Simon, the biggest takings were always reserved for Good Friday - it will be an Excellent Friday, if I have any say in the matter. From my vantage point in the back garden - (I use the term in its loosest possible sense) - I could see and hear everything. I particularly remember the moment when young Father Peter burst in on the scene, flushed and damp and with an erection that even I would be proud of.
"Darlings. Just look who I found at the gym!"
The over-excited curate spoke in a falsetto screech and placed a proprietorial hand on the shoulder of a Muscle Mary from Prague. I had never seen anyone with such a peculiar torso. His pecs were so over-worked that he looked like Dolly Parton in drag. Who could possibly find this attractive? I soon discovered the answer to my very naive question. Quite a lot of people found it very attractive indeed.
I wanted to shout out, 'No!' But it came out as a ridiculous, strangulated 'Naaaay!' Thrice nay! I sounded like Frankie Howerd after a particularly naff innuendo. No wonder no one took me seriously any more. Powerless to intervene, I was - once more - the mute observer to the unfolding scene
Father Simon pawed the new comer, visibly drooling. If he hadn't been a eunuch, I'm sure I'd have been witnessing a rape. Oh, didn't I tell you that important fact? At some early, idealistic stage in his career, the old perv had chopped off his own balls. Presumably in an attempt to ward off libidinous thoughts. It didn't seem to have had the desired effect. The old git was about as libidinous as they come. He had the desire all right, by the bucket load, but his flabby old prick remained as flaccid as a jelly fish. Much to his fury and despite much vigorous wanking, by himself and others.
The curate, the acolyte, the pastoral assistants and their various, bleeding comrades were without the handicap of castration. They welcomed the new comer with open arms and open arses.
I am, of course, totally cool with homosexuality. You couldn't know my sister and remain a prude. In fact, some of my early cases (before I made the mistake of coming to London) were the defence of 'deviants'. And yet, not being the slightest bit that way inclined myself, I was at first rather queasy at the sights and sounds of the orgy unfolding right in front of my velvety nose. I tried to distract myself with thoughts of Astea, even of the pretty mare at the Stud Farm, but my eyes were somehow always drawn to the well-lit living room. Fuck it. Kinsey must have been right. We're all bi to some degree or other. And after all these months of enforced abstinence, any caress was surely better than no caress at all.
It was therefore, with something akin to excitement and some tentative stirrings down below, that I accepted the invitation to come inside to join in the fun. Moreover, a persistent rain had recently started to fall and I would have been more than satisfied with a roof over my head, central heating, a tot of rum and even a handful of cheese and onion crisps. But I soon realized that my role in the proceedings was not to be purely voyeuristic. After about five minutes, Father Simon stuck his tongue in my mouth and exclaimed:
"A horse, a horse! My kingdom for a horse!"
There then began a series of intimate caresses, of which I am to this day so ashamed that I am blushing furiously as I write. But, just as things were about to get really awkward, the boys suddenly flagged. They had simply run out of steam, or - more likely - of sperm. Instead of raping me, they settled down on the floor and lent in a row against my flank. They then started to watch some pretty hard-core clips of boys and horses in various states of undress, but at least they left me and my cock in relative peace. From time to time, a hand would fondle, but that wasn't really so bad. And some of the vids were quite diverting. Well, come on! It was the first TV I'd seen since the Horse of the bloody Year Show. I couldn't believe that I'd led such a sheltered life. I consider myself quite a man of the world, but I had simply no idea that such stuff was actually being made and sold. And watched. There was one quite good story about Chiron, the Centaur, as the tutor of a particularly cute young Achilles. The dialogue was in Hebrew, so I didn't get all the nuances, but a classical education helped. As did the very graphic close-ups.
The next day, Good Friday itself, saw the climax of the week's festivities. The procession was much longer than usual and my back began to ache with the weight of the turbulent, corpulent priest. There is clearly some truth in the old saying that only fools and horses work. This was a bank holiday. Easter weekend. I should be lying in bed with a beautiful woman, feeding her creme eggs and chocolate bunnies. I should be eating hot-cross buns with Mrs O-T and her BDSM secretary or drinking craft beer in trendy bars in Haggerston. I shouldn't be training for a gritty re-make of Warhorse. The sweat was pouring off me and I was getting pretty pissed off with the waves of council-estate kids pressing snot-caked hands all over me. At least I managed to bite the fingers of a particularly noisome urchin, who was trying to feed me used chewing gum.
I began to resent my new masters more than ever and got to plotting various means of revenge. As I trudged up the High Road towards Edmonton and Ponders End, I distracted myself with increasingly far-fetched revenge scenarios. My favourite fantasy involved me galloping off into the sunset, with Father Simon clinging on for dear life. The journey would end, a la Black Bess and Dick Turpin, in the centre of York. I would somehow convey the manifold sins and wickednesses of the pseudo-priest, who would be thrown into the nearest jail. I should then be hailed a hero, heaped with rewards and led off to the bucolic swards of the North Yorks Equine Rehabilitation Centre.
In the end, however, my 'revenge' was much more prosaic and back-fired spectacularly. The best laid plans of horses and men... In fact, it was on that very night, that most holy of nights, that I had my closest encounter yet with the horse-meat trade.
Friday night. Seven o'clock on the night of Good Friday. The most solemn day in the Christian year. Having preached till he was blue in the face on the necessity for fast and abstinence and on the utter sacrilege of eating meat of any sort, Father Simon sat down with the others for a real feast. Feast with a capital F. And it was, most definitely, a meat feast. Even I knew how wrong this was. My mother would never let us eat anything other than fish pie on Good Friday. But here were Father Simon and his cronies sitting down to steaks of every conceivable sort and size: rib-eye steaks, sirloin steaks, T-bone steaks, minute steaks, lamb steaks, venison steaks, steak haché, steak tartare, filet mignon. Steaks with onions, tomatoes and chips. Steaks dripping with blood and smeared with mustard. Steaks with sauce béarnaise. The works. I looked on hungrily. It was months since I eaten a steak. I had a sudden stab of agonizing nostalgia for the human world, for its food, its drink and (most of all) for its companionship. I remembered intimate, candle-lit dinners in Paris. I remembered steak night with the lads, after football, at the local. I was hit by such a wave of self-pity and envy that I nearly leapt through the French windows and helped myself to a heaped plate of hot, roast beef. Roast beef of old England.
I was actually sizing up the likely damage to my person from the broken glass, when I suddenly saw my chance. A one in a million chance to have my revenge on the fat, carnivorous hypocrites. As luck would have it, the very butcher who had generously donated the food, for the succour of non-existent refugees, happened to be passing the house just as the feast was reaching fever-pitch.
It was now or never.
I neighed as loudly as I could and drummed my hooves on the flag-stones. I beat my long, mournful face repeatedly against the glass to draw attention to the well-lit, cosy little scene. Bingo! Within a second, all hell broke loose. The shaven-headed, cleaver-wielding brute burst in on the scene with all the righteous anger of Christ confronting the money-lenders.
'What the fuck? What the fuck are you eating? You'd better hope you're not eating my steaks. The steaks I gave for them Syrian kids. Remember them? Them poor sods you told us all about, who were homeless, starving orphans. Don't see a whole lot of refugees round here, mate. Just a load of queens stuffing their fat faces with my prime cuts.'
'I can explain everything.'
Father Simon stood up, his chin wobbling.
'Save it for the Bishop, arse-hole. Or for the mob. They're not going to take this lying down. All that money you've screwed out of 'em.'
He shook his bald head in disbelief.
'The vigilantes'll be here by tomorrow night. Tops.'
With that parting shot, the butcher swaggered out of the room. Presumably to phone the Bishop's chaplain. Or to contact the local gang leaders. Or both. The party atmosphere was, naturally, somewhat marred by this unexpected turn of events. For a long while no one spoke. The fat congealed on the uneaten food. Ten long minutes passed before anyone said anything. The silence was finally broken by Father Jeremy (Dolly to his friends).
"Calm down, girls! Don't let that silly, cross man spoil your appetites. And don't be so emotional."
His smile was radiant, seraphic. As if he'd just met God Himself, not on the road to Damascus, but in a suburban vicarage.
"And you should be careful, Jake, dear, that the wind doesn't change and you're stuck with that ugly frown. Cheer up, all of you! There's really nothing to worry about! Nothing at all! What is it they say? Everything works out for them that love God? Well, they're jolly well right. The solution, darlings, is staring us in the face."
All at once, seven pairs of eyes turned to where I stood, innocently cropping the tufty grass. I had just been congratulating myself on the success of the master plan and was rejoicing in the fact that none of them seemed to realise my pivotal role in their exposure. I had just been day-dreaming about a nice new life with nice new owners, something akin to the life I had enjoyed at Dowsett Manor, before the Stud Farm debacle. I had long since given up the fantasy of being a man again. At this stage of my new life, I'd be satisfied with a nice warm stable and rolling, green fields (and maybe a leggy mare - or two - for a touch of horse play). This charming, domestic fantasy was cruelly and cataclysmically shattered by what I heard next.
"It's all so blindingly obvious! We sell old Dobbin to the charming butcher, earn a few sheckles and save our bacon into the bargain. What say ye?"
There was an immediate chorus of approval and appreciation. Father Simon dialled 'Kwality Meats' with a shaking finger and asked to speak to Darren. Since a full horse carcass was, apparently, worth about four times the stolen steaks, the butcher agreed to the deal. He also agreed to say nothing to the Bishop or the vigilantes of N17, if the priest would say nothing about horse meat masquerading as beef. The arrangements, so thoroughly satisfactory to both sides, were quickly concluded. An unmarked white van would call for me at five the next morning.
This was it. I was finally staring death right in the face. An agonizing and humiliating death at the hands of sadists in waterproofs and Wellington boots. This was the end of me, both as a horse and as a man. I couldn't see any possible way out. Huis clos, as the French would say. They would probably also say, with an indifferent, Gallic shrug, that it was all my own fault. Which of course it was. If only I hadn't attracted the attention of the itinerant butcher, life would be carrying on as normal. I'd be watching a bizarre 'adult' remake of Black Beauty and/or The Horse and his Boy, warm and reasonably happy. As it was, I was chained securely to the garden fence, shitting myself (all too literally, I'm afraid) and wondering about the current practice of slaughtering horses.
I remembered, with sickening clarity, a recent case taken on by a junior member of chambers. It was Miles' unenviable task to defend a sick bastard who tortured horses before killing them, castrating them and rogering them with broom handles, and who deliberately switched off the anaesthetic stun-guns. The defence was 'diminished responsibility' and the defendant ended up in Broadmoor. For life. Let's hope he wasn't sent to work on the prison farm. I had to believe that this sort of gratuitous cruelty was rare, that abattoirs were under regular and strict inspection. And at least Darren didn't seem likely to have any truck with Jews or Moslems. A stun-gun and a conveyor belt would be bad enough, but God preserve me from Kosher or Halal slaughter. From having my throat cut and being left to bleed slowly to death in a dark shed, my hooves kicking feebly against the slick floor.
As the long night wore on, I found myself praying. To God, of course, and to his blessed Mother, Mary. From some far-off recess of my memory, I dragged out the fact that Hippolytus was the Patron Saint of horses. I prayed to him, too. And to anyone else I could think of, including St Jude, Patron Saint of lost causes. Recent experience, however, had rather dimmed my already flickering faith and I doubted that my prayers would or even could reach the bright, serene Court of Heaven. Who ever heard of a horse praying? For God's sake, Luke, get real.
But somehow, somewhere, by someone or something, my prayers must have been heard. A miracle was granted. And I was saved. Just as dawn was breaking and the clocks were creeping inexorably towards five o'clock, I suddenly came up with the perfect, fool-proof, invincible solution. I must pretend to be mad. Rabid. Highly dangerous. And certainly not fit for human, or even animal, consumption.
As soon as the sinister van drew up, I slipped effortlessly into role. Not for nothing had I won the school drama prize for three years running. I foamed at the mouth, rolled my eyes, kicked my hind legs and threw myself on the ground. With a surge of super-human horse-power, I managed to break loose from the chain and charge at the driver. I curled back my rubbery lips and snarled horribly. The message was obvious: just one bite, sonny, and you'll be as mad as I am. The poor bugger - yes, I was almost sorry for him - ran back to the van, a gibbering wreck, and drove off. Never to be seen again. At least, I bloody well hope that I never see him again, unless it's in the dock or safely behind bars.
I carried on the performance for a few minutes more. Enough to convince those watching, horrified, from behind the vicarage net-curtains that there was a highly dangerous - nay, lethal - animal rampaging around the back garden. I then gave myself a good shake, drank a great draught of water and took myself off to seek my fortune once again.
© 2017 Mimi L. Thompson
Chapter 17 will be posted tomorrow
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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