by Nathaniel TOWER

He was born of mare and stallion.

Three days af­ter the birth, he was adopt­ed by Robert and Es­tel­la Pat­ten and dubbed Michael Alex.

The foal would not feed from his moth­er’s teat, nor did his moth­er of­fer. Cast aside, the foal wait­ed in the cor­ner of the sta­bles for the nec­tar of life.

Es­tel­la did not breast feed Michael Alex be­cause her breasts were dry of milk. In­stead she pro­vid­ed the foal with for­mu­la milk. He seemed to en­joy it, suck­ing out of the bot­tle with a vam­pire-like hunger.

Michael Alex’s par­ents taught him how to walk on two legs rather than four. They trained the oth­er two legs as arms, and they taught him to ma­nip­u­late his malde­vel­oped hooves in­to ful­ly func­tion­al hands. Michael Alex was a very fast learn­er, which made sense con­sid­er­ing his life ex­pectan­cy was ap­prox­i­mate­ly one-tenth of a hu­man-born child.

His body de­vel­oped quick­ly. Michael Alex walked, jogged and gal­loped all by the age of four weeks. Robert dis­cour­aged him from gal­lop­ing, but Es­tel­la said, “Let him gallop.”

“The oth­er chil­dren will make fun of him if he gal­lops,” Robert told his lov­ing wife over dinner.

“Hon­ey, we need Michael to be himself.”

“No son of mine will gal­lop. I won’t have it.”

Michael Alex, sit­ting on the floor be­side the ta­ble, did­n’t com­pre­hend any of what they said, but some­how he knew they were talk­ing about him. Sad­dened, he gal­loped away in the mid­dle of the night, in­stinc­tive­ly find­ing his way back to the sta­ble where his birth­par­ents lived.

At the sta­ble, Michael quick­ly learned that his fa­ther had re­turned to the race­track and his moth­er had been put to sleep, what­ev­er that meant. Michael Alex un­der­stood that it was a per­ma­nent con­di­tion, and he vowed nev­er to al­low any­one to put him to sleep. He al­so vowed, with the drunk­en sta­ble­hand as his wit­ness, that he would aban­don the horselife for­ev­er and be­come a full human.

Deep down, Michael al­ways knew who he was, but he over­came the ob­sta­cles (and sci­ence) to be­come the top of his high school class. Al­though his body had not de­vel­oped quite like the rest of his peers, he looked hu­man enough, cer­tain­ly more hu­man than some of the hideous chil­dren. He at least looked hu­man enough to gar­ner the name “Horse­man,” a moniker he al­ways at­trib­uted to his great speed and un­usu­al gait rather than his horse­like ap­pear­ance. His long face, brown mane, leath­ery skin and buck­teeth all gave him that look, but when he looked in the mir­ror, he just saw a pim­ply-faced teenag­er — in spite of the fact that he was bare­ly three years old and a se­nior in high school.

Michael Alex had nu­mer­ous schol­ar­ship of­fers, which was won­der­ful for him since no one from his fam­i­ly had ever at­tend­ed col­lege — or even lived past the age of six. His fa­vorite sport was foot­ball, but he was clear­ly most gift­ed on the base paths of the ball di­a­mond. He was more than fast enough in foot­ball, and there was­n’t a soul who could tack­le him, but he was no­to­ri­ous for fum­bling at in­op­por­tune times. In base­ball though, the boy played flaw­less­ly, of­ten reach­ing sec­ond safe­ly on a lazy ground­ball hit to the sec­ond base­man. He round­ed the bases like a nat­ur­al, so it did­n’t mat­ter much that he held the bat a lit­tle fun­ny or could­n’t swing for the fences. There had been a bit of con­tro­ver­sy the first time he went up to bat; he did­n’t quite fit in the bat­ter’s box, and the hel­met did­n’t sit square­ly on his head. The coach of the oth­er team even ques­tioned whether or not he was hu­man, but the um­pire had heard this rou­tine many times be­fore. He ex­plained to the coach that some peo­ple sim­ply seemed to de­fy what hu­mans were ca­pa­ble of; he spout­ed off the names of dozens of pro­fes­sion­al ball play­ers who seemed far from hu­man. The coach shook his head and said that was­n’t what he meant, but the um­pire would have none of it and tossed him from the game. So Michael Alex went to bat and man­aged to turn a sim­ple base hit in­to a triple. It was the first time in the his­to­ry of base­ball that a boy had got­ten a triple in his very first trip to the plate.

The triple was cer­tain­ly a har­bin­ger of things to come, and Michael Alex went on to rack up every record there was to rack up. No mat­ter how good he was though, there was some­thing emp­ty about the game of base­ball. He felt too ex­posed, and deep down he knew that the coach of that team had been right. He was­n’t re­al­ly hu­man, but on the foot­ball field it did­n’t mat­ter since every­one seemed to call every­one else a beast or a mon­ster or a tank all the time any­way. He laughed at the idea of a tank play­ing football.

On the day that Michael Alex was sup­posed to ac­cept his base­ball schol­ar­ship to Stan­ford, his girl­friend de­cid­ed it was time they took their re­la­tion­ship to the next level.

“I’m so proud of you,” she told him, stroking his coarse mane as he smiled his goofy grin at her.

“Thank you,” he neighed even though he had taught him­self not to neigh. It was a vul­ner­a­ble mo­ment for him. He had heard about sex from his friends, and al­though he was cer­tain­ly con­fi­dent about it for ob­vi­ous rea­sons, he was al­so scared of the naked­ness. Sure, he could dis­guise him­self when he wore clothes, es­pe­cial­ly in a sports uni­form, but when he stood be­fore his girl­friend in the nude, sure­ly she would no­tice that he looked like a horse.

“Well, let’s do it, Horse­man,” she said, com­pli­cat­ing the sit­u­a­tion even further.

They were in the back­seat of his Mus­tang at the time, parked in an in­con­spic­u­ous spot that over­looked miles of open fields. He was­n’t sure why his adop­tive par­ents had got­ten him such a car, but it sure did help to at­tract the ladies. Not that Michael Alex need­ed any help with all that he had go­ing for him.

Michael Alex looked away from his beau­ti­ful girl­friend, out the win­dow of the Mus­tang and in­to the open pas­ture. He looked back at his girl­friend, who had bared her breasts for him. They were cer­tain­ly won­der­ful breasts, creamy and round, just the way he had heard they were sup­posed to be. He nuz­zled the breasts with his face for a mo­ment, his leath­ery skin and tan­gles of hair tick­ling her in the process. She laughed so hard that she backed away, and again he glanced out the win­dow. The open pas­ture, with its lus­cious fields of green, was far more invit­ing than those per­fect breasts. He knew then that he could nev­er ful­ly be a hu­man; af­ter all, what kind of hu­man would pass up per­fect breasts and teenage sex to chomp on grass?

His girl­friend closed her eyes and leaned in for a kiss. Michael Alex bolt­ed out of the car, strip­ping off his clothes as he slow­ly tran­si­tioned from two legs to four, his hooves pound­ing vi­o­lent­ly on the rain-soft­ened ground. His stride was clum­sy at first, as if he were learn­ing how to run prop­er­ly for the first time, but soon his hooves struck with such force and con­fi­dence that the ground be­low must have feared his steps. Al­though he had orig­i­nal­ly es­caped to have a bite at the grass, the run felt so per­fect, like he was him­self for the first time, that he just kept on go­ing, his clothes now tat­tered rags yards away. It was the finest mo­ment of his life, this free­dom, and he knew he could nev­er again try to be a hu­man. He was­n’t a Horse­man af­ter all — he was a Man­horse, and he was go­ing to be the best Man­horse he could be.

From a dis­tance, Michael Alex’s girl­friend ad­mired him from the Mus­tang, but deep down, she was glad that she had­n’t gone any fur­ther with the boy.

Filed under Fiction on March 4th, 2011

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