A Dot of Red On White

As I came out, holding my wet laundry and fiddling with the zipper on my bag, I felt a strange sensation. It was quiet, nothing like New York’s main street is supposed to be, a rush to my head said something was happening. I rushed into a crowd of people I saw, who seemed distracted by something. I coiled through the people, to see a white horse standing in the middle of the junction. A man next to me, in uniform was mumbling quickly into a phone. The horse, obviously spooked, didn’t move, it’s muscular body rigged and stiff, I saw a line of blood trail down it’s white back leg.
Vehicles stopped still, but no one beeped their horns, they just all watched. The horse began to become restless and more confused, just as we were. It hesitated to lift it’s muddy hooves, it was out of place, like a dot of red on white, like an orange tree between the towering apples ones. Or a tropical poison fish that had hidden between the grey salmon.

I heard rubber race on tarmac, coming speedily towards the area, and so did the stallion, his ears raised immediately and his legs quivered. Flashing lights and loud ear-aching noises lined up around the junction. The officers were trying to box him in. Three policemen stole from their official cars with lassoes in hand, eyeing the huge mammal. He knew what was happening. His eyes wild with fiery fear, it watched as loops of rope captured over his sleek neck. He wretched the rope holders, while he raised to his majestic hind legs, letting one of the men tumble to the ground and let him lay there. The other lost grip, out of fear the horse would do the same and rush back to his squad car. The last man, huge in size and confident, twisted the rope around his arms to gain grip, the horse wheezed as the noose tighten round his neck. He screeched and then bucked the last man, kicking and slamming him to the hard cracked pavement. He howled with the pain as others came to his side.

The horse rushed in circles, until climbing on a car and crushing it’s roof as people gasped in fear. It sprinted away, turning in to a smaller street, and plaiting through the dirty alleyways of New York. He came the way he went. From nowhere back.

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