Winning post.
A Demon’s Kiss
I’m sure most people born on Halloween absolutely love it. Free candy, cake and presents, what’s not to love? However, when it comes to Lee Anderson, it’s a dreaded time of year.
For the first 6 years of his young life, Lee was around horses all the time. One of the perks of growing up in a racing family. His parents, John and Katrina Anderson, were very well known for their top of the line Paint stable. He spent his time watching them train champion after champion, year after year, and he loved it. He dreamed of one day being a champion rider, celebrating victories with Mom and Dad by his side. It was a great life…until the day of his 6th birthday.
Before we get to the events of that day, we need to go back a little bit. It was the day of the Rebecca Rose Hepburn “Everybody has a price” lease auction. John and Katrina had their eye on Red As Blood. The result of the lease was a black foal with one distinct feature, the mark of a rose. It was at that moment that you could tell something wasn’t right. The still very young Red As Blood died while foaling, the strange part was that her eyes were completely white. All of the color was gone. The other horses were uneasy around the new foal, the workers complained about strange happenings going on near or in his stall. Lee’s parents just brushed it off as coincidence.
One year later, on Lee’s 7th birthday, tragedy struck again. With his father setting up for his birthday party, his mother, Katrina, was out talking with a worker about how the black rose-marked yearling named Kiss From a Rose was doing. The worker went to grab some notes that he had been taking and when he returned, he found Katrina lying face down on the ground with a pitchfork in the side of her neck. He knelt down to check for a pulse and when he looked at her face, he noticed her eyes were completely white. Lee’s father told him that there had been an accident in the barn and his mother had died.
After a year of dealing with his mother’s death, Lee was still not himself. As his 8th birthday marked the anniversary of mother’s passing, he told his dad that he didn’t want to celebrate his birthday this year. He came up with a plan to cheer his son up and told him that he would be right back, he just had to talk to one of the workers. On his way out, he saw two guys on the roof of the barn, fixing a leak. Mr. Anderson went to the stables to check on some complaints from the workers about Kiss From a Rose. By that time he was 2 years-old and had the fastest workout times that Mr. Anderson had ever seen, but the staff was still reporting odd happenings. A loud bang startled everyone and a stable hand ran out to find that one of the workers fell off the roof of the barn. His eyes were completely white. John stayed behind when he noticed something tucked away in the corner of a stall. It was his wife’s scarf, and it seem to have appeared from out of nowhere. When the worker rushed back into the barn to let Mr. Anderson know what had happened, he found John hanging from the rafters with his wife’s scarf around his neck. Just as with all of the other’s, his eyes were completely white.
The barn closed down, the horses were sold off and Lee was sent to live in the city with his Aunt Elizabeth. Ten years later we find Lee living a seemingly normal life with his Aunt. However, his birthday was no longer a day he celebrated, no matter how hard his Aunt tried, she couldn’t shake him of the tragedy of that day. He was off at college, working at a horse farm on the weekends.
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Lee tipped a ration of grain into the last stall. He grinned and walked briskly over to the feed room and placed the scoop and bucket in their proper place. Even though it was eight at night, an hour later than he usually worked, he still made sure the barn was cleaner than it was when he came in. The Jeffersons would bite his head off if he so much as sneezed on a pile of manure. A familiar pang of anguish stirred in his heart – if his parents were still alive, he wouldn’t be stuck dealing with snobs that worked him to the bone. A sad smile spread across his lips as he imagined himself training alongside his father, learning the ropes from the best in the business. Instead, he was treated as a lowly worker and had to get his info in the form of gossip and second-rate trainers.
He trudged along the barn aisle towards the dim light that spilled out from the office door. It wasn’t like he could quit even if he didn’t have an intense love for horses and a passion for the racing world. His Aunt Elizabeth helped out whenever she could, but she wasn’t rich enough to pay for his college tuition. There would be money from his parents if it hadn’t gone to pay for his mom’s gambling debts. Lee shook his head. Dwelling on the past did nothing for him now.
A speck of red flashed in the corner of Lee’s eyes. He spun and stared into the dark stall across from him. Just as he took a step forward to investigate, something slammed into his shoulder.
“Holly hell!”
Lisa giggled. “I didn’t know you scared so easily. Next time I won’t tap your shoulder without saying something.”
“You call that a tap?” Lee glanced back over at the stall. An uneasy shiver ran down his spine.
“Lee? Are you listening?”
“Er –sorry, what?”
“I asked if you were doing anything for Halloween.”
“I’ll watch ‘It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown’, pass out candy, and go to bed.”
“But it’s your eighteenth birthday!”
Lee shrugged his shoulders. “I’m over it.” Who wanted to celebrate their parents’ deaths?
Lisa sighed. “You’re always grumpy on October thirty-first. I should know better than to talk to you on Halloween.” Lee’s friend departed with a cold good-bye.
The teen ducked into the office to make sure there weren’t any special requests left on the desk. Satisfied, he snagged his hoodie from the coat rack and closed the door behind him. His finger snagged on a splinter. Lee watched the blood run down his palm, puzzled. When he turned around he saw a note tacked on with a rose stapled onto it. He took a moment to glare at the thorny plant before reading the message.
Lee –
A new horse just came in. Turn on the night lights for the track and gallop him. Stall number 31.
-Mr. Jefferson
Lee frowned. He always exercised horses at the crack of dawn. He could never ride a horse without being heavily criticized by the owners afterwards though, so why the special circumstances? He shrugged. It wasn’t the first unusual request that the owners had made. Whistling, the young man retrieved the black horse and put him in cross ties. Lee started grooming and froze at the horse’s flank. His hand hovered over the rose etched into the stallion’s side.
The horse reared, snapping the cross ties with ease. Red eyes glowed at him from beneath a sinister skull mask. A flaming mane and tail crackled with rage. Tortured souls, trapped by the monster, whispered tortured thoughts in the boy’s ear. Lee rolled to the ground to avoid being hit with the fiery tail. The glowing eyes lowered and locked with a pair of scared, brown ones and the boy was swept into the past.
A promising two year old frolicked in the pasture. The black colt challenged a chestnut to a race and drew away easily. He moved effortlessly over the ground and looked bored. He squealed loudly and pawed at the air, as if saying, “That’s the best you can do?”
“Dad, that’s going to be my horse! I’ll be his jockey and we’ll win the Steward’s Cup! We’ll win it every year and you’ll be super rich! Emily Shields will visit our farm to congratulate us.” Lee, eight years old again, grinned happily up at his father. Mr. Anderson chuckled at his son and ruffled the boy’s hair. “I’m sure you will.”
The vision shattered. A metal nameplate clattered to the ground, still red hot from being submerged in flames. Hooves echoed in the aisle way and a pair of pure white eyes stared up at the rafters. Freshly branded on Lee’s left arm were the words “Kiss From a Rose”.
The horse:
http://s1219.photobucket.com/user/eclip ... sort=3&o=0