Horse Play

He supposed that it was odd for a man who had grown up in Tower Hamlets to be fascinated by horses; most of his friends had never seen one in the flesh until they were old enough to leave the place behind. His first inkling of his interest had come when he sat and watched show-jumping as a child, seeing a woman riding astride a graceful mount. Somehow the desire for the woman and the power and poetry of the horse had become intertwined in his developing mind.

The first time he saw a female centaur on the cover of some faded comic it changed his world. In the mythical creatures that combined human and horse Malcolm saw all his desires embodied right there and then. For years as a young boy and then a teenager he had guiltily hoarded anything he could find that contained an image of or was written about centaurs of the fairer sex. As an adult he had realised one of the disadvantages of his predilection in that if you were turned on by mermaids, snake-women or even Barbie dolls there was always someone out there who made a clever costume that would bring your fantasy to life. But no one made money selling centaur costumes, which was fairly understandable when you considered the challenges it entailed.

Pony-girls were something of a thrill to Malcolm, and he had spent some time and money on that area of interest over the years. But when he had secured a position on the island as a project manager and seen the resources they had available, he had made it his personal vision to take the girls that had in the past worn bridles, fake tails and boots that ended in hooves to another level.

The Pony Pal girls were one of his major hits with those who vacationed on the island. People were into the retro charm of the old franchise and no one came to the island as a paying customer if they were not interested in being aroused by the attractions. The strictly hands off policy of the island meant that the women employed to temporarily become the ponies were free to explore the experience for themselves and it seemed that most found it acceptable and some even found it a riot. Indeed the sight of the latex-skinned ponies had even resulted in some of the island's guests making quite requests to take their own turn in the stables when the audience had retired for the night, man and woman alike.

Annie had been the only woman that he had secretly wanted for the project right from the start and that was a fact he had never let her in on. Malcolm had started to become blasé about the charms of the women who worked on the island until he spotted her one day while making his usual rounds of the various parts of the island where his charges worked. He was not responsible for the pools, caves and grottos where the mermaids worked and as the buggy drove by one day he caught sight of Annie for the first time. She was reclining on an actual rock that had been placed in the middle of one of the swimming pools, resplendent in a silver tail that looked very convincing in the distance and a pair of nipple caps in the shape of shells no larger than pair of coins. From that moment he had known that he wanted her in a way that he found surprised himself and he had made sure she was offered an enticing incentive to sign on for his Pony Pals project.

It had been an unexpected joy to find that they had a chemistry that extended well beyond the bounds of work and a few casual drinks turned into a relationship that both were now committed to in a real and passionate way. Malcolm found that his own rather reserved English personality contrasted rather than clashed with Annie's own, which was pure Southern USA, heart on sleeve and passions to the fore. Best of all he had discovered that his interest in centaurs intrigued rather than confused or repelled Annie and he had found himself sharing his thoughts on his work with her and using her as a sounding board for his ideas.

As far as he knew as well, he was the only man able to say that he had bedded one of the Pony Pal girls and had not paid a large sum for the privilege.

"She did it," Malcolm shook his head at the news story, "she got into the Iberian Riding School!"

"You're kidding?" Annie raised her head a little to see the screen. "I thought the school was all male, only stallions allowed?"

"I guess she got in on the technicality that she's can't really be classed as a stallion or a mare," he sounded both exasperated and amazed. "But then you have to think that the school has been struggling to keep the interest in its tours over the past decade; this could be the thing it needs to bring itself into the latter half of the twenty first century. They'll be clever about it though, keep her on the tours and make sure she never sets hoof in the actual school back in Dresden and that way they can still convince the purists that they never turned their backs on tradition or turned the whole thing into a freak show."

On the screen a press conference was underway in front of a stately white building with a small group of formally dressed people standing on a raised platform to address the assembled media horde. Most fitted the stereotype of buttoned down and terminally reserved Austrians and spoke in polite German, which was translated for the viewer as soon as it was spoken. The only figure that stood out did so because of the fact that she towered over the others, but she was still dressed in a similarly formal manner. When her turn came to speak, her voice spoke of the eastern USA, good breeding and all the benefits of growing up as part of a wealthy and influential clan.

Malcolm hardly heard the words as he already knew the content of what was being said. He had been following the career of Harriet Booth for some years now and knew her as well as was possible from the distance he maintained from her.

To him the woman represented the combination of the Holy Grail and a proverbial poisoned chalice.

Harriet Booth was widely acknowledged as the world's first centaur.

She had been famous before she became a centaur though, the eldest child of an old and very wealthy family. Intelligent and considered by many to be a picture of aristocratic beauty, Harriet had also been without doubt one of the most gifted professional riders of her generation with success in jumping and dressage at the Olympic level. The horse that she rode to those victories was almost as famous among those in the know as the rider; a Lipissan mare known as Rhapsody from one of the oldest bloodlines and a picture of elegance.

But then the accident had changed all that; during a private training session a jump had gone badly wrong and resulted in the permanent injury of both the horse and the rider. No details had been released, but speculation ran that Harriet's spine was snapped and the fall broke the neck of her horse. What emerged afterwards still divided the world into those who thought it was a miracle and those who thought it was the most monstrous perversion of nature ever seen. Rather than see two lives lost and people said at the behest of Harriet herself, surgeons at a private medical facility had performed a procedure to remove the woman's leg's and graft her torso onto the now headless body of her horse. The process was said to have been difficult and fraught with problems that pushed the boundaries of medical science, but after days of surgery and a period of recovery that spanned three entire years, Harriet Booth emerged as a media sensation and a centaur for the entire world to see.

Malcolm had often though that he should have been in awe of the woman, but there was something about her attitude, the way she looked down literally on the people around her and the visceral accident that had created the creature she now was that turned him off. There were always rumours about the circumstances of the accident as well, jokes floating around about the ways in which her entourage had to find "a real stallion" to satisfy her and the cult of fame that she encouraged and seemed to love.

There was also always the fact that he'd tried to hire her to work on the island and her people had told him in no uncertain terms what they though of that idea.

A thought that he had kept in the back of his mind since the rejection by Harriet Booth suddenly popped up again and began to grow in size and change its shape as he watched the press conference. It was fuelled by the sight of the centaur that he had been denied and the fact that Annie was laying warm and close to him.

"I want the island to have its own centaur," Malcolm got the words out before his better judgement could stop him, "and I want it to be you."

Annie sat up in the bed and gave him a stare that seemed to ask if he was serious. It would have carried more weight if she had not still been wearing the purple latex skin of Daisy-Anne, but Malcolm got the message all the same.

"I mean it," he turned the TV off and faced her, "it would be a coup for the island and one in the eye for that bitch Booth." He regretted mentioning Harriet Booth, but he was committed to his suggestion and not willing to back down.

"And what about me?"

"A step up the ladder, maybe even the chance to become famous?"

"Oh really?" Annie laughed and he noted the slightest hint of interest behind the indignation. "And two pairs of Armani horseshoes, a Louis Vitton nosebag and my own penthouse stable as well?"

"It's not that ridiculous," Malcolm tried to get a grip of the part of her mind that was open to his crazy suggestions, after all she was currently for all appearances a human Pony Pal and that was his doing. "I have contacts with a clinic back home that are very good with this kind of thing, their record is almost spotless. Remember that Dream Princess thing a few years ago? They were behind that, did all the surgical work."

Annie considered his example in silence for a moment, remembering the media sensation that a Japanese company had created when they had paid to have an actress physically transformed into a replica of a mermaid doll that they marketed. The idea had caught on with a number of films being made featuring the man-made mermaid and the company had made millions out of the gimmick before some reporter had discovered the woman in the role of the mermaid had a past in the adult entertainment industry. She recalled the way in which the PR people behind the erstwhile mermaid had managed the impossible and turned the scandal into a coup by re-launching her career as a reality TV star in her own series where she struggled with the trials of life as a mythical creature. The Playboy centrefold had been an interesting one, that was for sure.

"My source at the clinic also tells me that the process is reversible," Malcolm applied more leverage as he watched Annie digest the idea rather than simply push it aside, "and as for the sum that I could negotiate for your agreeing to the position, based on the Island's policy..."

He wrote a figure down on the notepad by the bed and held it up for her to read.

Neither of them said a thing, but he did note that Annie's eyes widened after she saw the figure on the paper.

Annie stepped under the head of the shower in the bathroom of her own cabin, only vaguely aware of the feel of the water as it rained down, soaking her latex-coated body. In the hours that had passed since Malcolm made the offer, it seemed that she had not been able to think straight and concentrate enough to really wrestle with what he was actually asking her to do. But in the shower she always found that she could remove her mind from the here and now and gather her thoughts on another level.

As the water soaked into the purple skin of Daisy-Anne, it began to slowly loosen, break down and slide away to reveal the dark tones of Annie's own skin beneath. A container of specialised solvents had been screwed to the showerhead where the water emerged in order to deliver the substance in a diluted form and free her from the Pony Pal costume once her shift was over. As time passed, more and more of the latex was removed until she was standing in the shower, dressed once more in the bizarre collection of under-garments required by the costume. Annie slipped these off as if in a daze and dropped them on the bathroom floor without a second thought.

Her initial shock and surprise had faded away and she was left with a more complicated mixture of feelings that ran the entire length of the spectrum from basic fear all the way to an odd sense of pleasure that made her feel somewhat guilty and even a tad perverse.

She was well aware of the fact that Malcolm found the idea of female centaurs to be the biggest fantasy imaginable and was loathe to admit that she was somewhat jealous of the fact that Harriett Booth had something over her in those stakes. Annie understood what a compliment he was paying her in his own strange way by asking her to do this thing, but was she prepared to take such a drastic step simply because she was flattered by Malcolm and could go one better than Harriett Booth?

For her own part, Annie was intimidated by fear that she felt at the prospect of agreeing to something that would change her life on every level. Right now she could do what she did secure in the knowledge that all she had to do was walk away and it would end. She was in charge and the process that Malcolm wanted her to undergo would mean that she was simply physically unable to walk away. Annie had never liked to be in a situation that her mind could conceive as her being trapped, and on so many levels the proposition of undergoing surgery to radically alter her body was just that.

But then there was the little voice that kept whispering in the back of Annie's mind, the one that urged her to jump when she looked down from a great height. It kept reminding her of the fact that she had once listened to it in the past and tried to become an actress before she let her common sense get the better of her. This was the real reason she had quit the acting profession, it tried to convince her, not because of the bitching backstage and the cruel words of the critics. She had quit, it suggested, because deep down she had known that those roles were beneath her. And now she had been handed the opportunity to play the greatest role of her career, one that she was truly worthy of.

Perhaps there was something to that thought, now that she had the chance to examine it from all sides. The Booth woman might be seen as the first centaur the world had seen, but in reality she was just half a woman that had been stitched onto four fifths of a horse. It would be kind to call her a curiosity of medicine when the blunt or cruel would probably call her a freak instead.

Annie, on the other hand, had been asked to adopt the mantle of her own free will and because of that she surely had a more legitimate right to think that she would be a far better example of a centaur than Booth? For one thing she knew how to portray a character and keep that role alive for hours on end, whereas the Booth woman was still as distant and cold in public as she had always been before the accident. And was that even right? Should the embodiment of a centaur be a woman for whom life seemed to be a series of cold exhibitions of talent, of applause received with a stiff upper-lip?

It was certainly not the way that Annie would have presented the character of a centaur. In her youth, she had often ridden horses through the wide open country and though she was not by any means a serious rider; she fully understood the thrill of being on horseback. For her the experience of sitting astride such a graceful and powerful creature was a feeling that could only bring a smile to her face.

Annie smiled as she recalled the times that she and Malcolm had found time to ride through the virtually untouched interior of the Island and the wonderful memories that she had of those times.

In a sudden moment she had a vision of a future trip into the same location, but this time there was one less animal involved in the journey.

It was as she daydreamed about the memories they might create on that imaginary journey that she made up her mind to say yes to Malcolm's offer.

She would become the woman of his dreams in one more way; she would agree to become a centaur.

The week that followed saw both Annie and Malcolm trying to continue with each day as normal. Both struggled to keep their mouths closed about the issue that was always there like the proverbial elephant in the room whenever they were together. After she had said yes, they had felt the awkward need to celebrate in some way and a pleasant meal had been followed by some of the best sex they had had in months. Annie had teased him whilst they were lost in the depths of each other and more than a little drunk, dropping hints about what she would be capable of and what she might demand of him when the transformation was complete.

In the morning though, the whole thing had started to feel a little uncomfortable and the jokes from the previous night started to feel like laughter at the funeral of a vague acquaintance. Not the most heinous thing imaginable, but not to be taken lightly either. So they avoided the subject when possible and tried to simply get on with what was in front of them at the time.

Annie was brought out of her own soft denial by the arrival of a package via courier one evening after her shift had ended and Daisy-Anne had been consigned to the showers plughole.

The label identified it as having come from the mysterious Retreat clinic.

Inside were polite but brief instructions printed on good quality paper, two test-tubes with screw on caps and a small booklet with perforated pages. She scanned the instructions and used the cotton bud in the first tube to swab inside her cheek for skin cells, obviously for the purpose of a DNA sample. But the instructions for the booklet were more interesting as they explained the pages were each filled with examples of the colours and patterns that were most common amongst modern breeds of horse. Annie didn't need to read any further to know that the instructions were asking her to pick out the colours that her equine body would possess once the procedure was complete.

Taking her time to peruse the booklet, Annie felt a sudden resurgence of the fears that had come with her first consideration of the procedure, but she mastered it and flicked on through the pages as if she was shopping for new shoes. Finally she settled on a choice of a light grey with a delicate white dappling that reminded her of the horses that she had ridden back home.

Before she had the chance to second guess her decision she tore out the page, sealed it in the second tube and returned the box with both tubes in to the courier who had waited outside for the package to be returned.

Annie had never been to England and her knowledge of the country was based on what she had read, watched and the stories that Malcolm had told her about his life there. Through the chaos of the airport and the contrasting quiet of the afternoon drive through the greenest countryside she had ever seen, Annie found herself wishing that he was with her and there could be more to the visit to his home country than a solo trip to a clinic.

As the last of the small villages went by, Annie pulled the photo that Malcolm had given her before she departed out of her bag one more time.

It was a shot of them together, beneath one of the largest trees in the interior of the Island, taken on a riding trip and on it he had written: "Remember that the woman I love is in this picture and no matter what happens she is still the woman that I love."

She was grateful for the sentiment, but she was also aware of the fact that no man in the course of history had ever been faced with the situation of adjusting to the fact that his lover had become a centaur.