The Golden Horse!
A golden horse descends from the heavens. Its dazzling horseshoes kick the faces of those around me until everyone except for me is a bleeding, twitching, crumpled mockery of what they once were. The horse alights next to me without making a sound. In fact there is no longer any noise, just a distant tone that overrides all other noise. The horse stands on its rear legs as if it were planning on trampling me with its front legs. I back away and notice that it is not falling upon me. Its hooves grow fingers that push out the horseshoes, which strike the asphalt, bounce and settle like tossed coins, again, soundless save for the mid-range tone that is the new entirety of the aural landscape. It grows toes, sheds its golden hair and opens its mouth to what seems to be the absolute limit of its physical capabilities. The half-horse, half-man picks me up by the neck with its undeveloped fingers still moist with gestational mucus. I laugh, but the pathway the air would usually take is constricted by some kind of golden horse hand. The thing continues to transform, seemingly despite its will. The head splits in half along the ventral surface, its eyes roll up into its head, revealing a small part of the white of the eye along with pulsing blood vessels that feed into the back of the eye. The halves of its head split apart and rotate, loosening the shining skin and rumpling it down its neck. Its legs rip apart as if spring-loaded, throwing muscle and tissue in every direction and for every leg that was destroyed, six new ones take its place. The hand that was so securely throttling me just a moment ago loosens and trembles. My hands find his and pull at the fingers, but the hold is still secure. The skin on its arm ripples with unknown forces shooting underneath it from hand to shoulder, back and forth, until the skin tears and bleeds, strips of flesh become untethered to the tissue beneath it. The face is an upside down, mirror image of half a horse’s head in unknowable agony. It drops me to the ground once its fingers no longer have the muscle required to hold me aloft. I land on my right side and watch as the being before me rotates, explodes and peels itself in ever-changing ways. It lands on all 14 limbs and throws its head forward, both halves of its separated jaw wide open, demanding blood. As its head nears me, it rearranges and begins to flip inside-out. I am given a tour of its digestive tract as its insides become its outsides. I am showered in stomach acid, unknown fluids and a good deal of fecal matter before I am face-to-ass with an inside-out, golden horse of unknown origins. It stands in one place for near a minute as I breathe heavily. The tone fades and the horse begins to walk away, flinching every other step.