Horse Play

Annie was still engrossed in the photograph when the car came to a halt and she was presented with the sight of the building that housed the Retreat. The driver deposited her in front of the red brick Victorian mansion and entrusted her luggage to a discreet porter who made it disappear moments later.

Left to her own devices, Annie climbed the steps and entered the foyer, her shoes sounding quietly on the black and white chequerboard tiles. She had to admit that her experience of such places was strictly limited and hoped that the similarities that seemed to exist between this and checking into a hotel might see her through.

Annie spotted what might have been a reception desk on the right hand side of the foyer, covered with a dark cloth throw and made her way towards it. As she approached she saw that there was no one sitting at the desk itself, but a woman stood with her back turned, engrossed in the contents of a row of old fashioned filing cabinets that lined the wall behind it.

She had at first taken the woman for a receptionist, but the sight of her clothes made Annie wonder if she had been correct in that assumption. Most receptionists she had dealt with dressed in smart business wear, but this woman was wearing a full length black dress that would have looked more appropriate on Morticia Addams. The dress had a high neck and began no more than a centimetre from the point where the woman's black hair had been gathered into a bun on the back of her head. The arms were covered as far as the wrists and then the hands concealed also beneath black fabric that so that Annie could not tell if the woman was wearing gloves or they were part of the dress itself. Below the waist the dress hugged the woman's buttocks and legs so tightly that there was nothing to do but admire the fact that she had an almost perfectly curved anatomy or else look away altogether. At her ankles the dress spread out over the floor like a black puddle, totally disguising her feet and hiding them from view.

Annie knew from first hand experience that the English had a tendency towards eccentricity, and if that was the level of oddness that the people behind this place were comfortable with then who was she to argue.

She tapped the bell on the table and watched the woman in the black dress glance over her shoulder, noting as she did so that the face was a perfect match for the body. The woman smiled warmly and closed the drawer in front of her before sitting down in a wooden chair on castors that Annie had failed to notice. She span the chair around and propelled herself across the small space between the cabinets and the desk, never once showing a hint of trying to walk in the dress that must have effectively hobbled her all the time she wore it.

"Can I help you?" Annie stood corrected; the woman's accent was nothing like the English ones she had heard since the airport. She might have guessed that the woman was Russian or came from one of those countries in the east of Europe that she admitted to knowing very little about.

"I'm a patient," Annie had no idea what the etiquette was supposed to be and instead handed over the letter she had been sent containing the particulars of her visit to the Retreat. That seemed to be acceptable as the woman took it from her and consulted a small desktop to her left briefly before handing the letter back.

"That's all in order," the woman nodded, "you're scheduled to meet with Dr Pickford tomorrow afternoon and until then your room is number 3a on the ground floor."

Annie found that there was something to reassure her in the person of Dr Pickford when she found herself seated in an armchair and nursing a cup of coffee the next morning. The man was by no means what she would have thought of if asked to imagine a doctor of any kind. Younger than she had expected and an energetic type with a wide smile, he put her in mind of the actor she had seen playing a time-travelling hero in a TV series from the turn of the century that Malcolm had insisted she watch with him.

But perhaps another element of the comfort she was able to draw from Pickford was the fact that he reminded her of Malcolm in some odd way. Physically there was no comparison between the black guy from Greater London and the slightly awkward white doctor who was rifling through his notes in front of her. But still she sensed a kind of cultural kinship that linked the two in terms of manners and the occasional turn of phrase. Those small and almost invisible ways in which the English behaved that distinguished them from their transatlantic cousins was an anchor for her at a time when she was sure her very person was about to become as fluid as the oceans themselves.

"Normally I'd be the one steering this whole thing from the start to the finish," Pickford glanced up from his notes, "but the sheer complexity of what we're doing here means that I'll be bringing in a colleague to handle some of the more intricate elements of the surgery."

Annie had to confess that apart from his efforts to put her at ease and explain what was going to be done to her in layman's terms; most of what Pickford had been telling her for the past half hour had failed to sink in.

"I'm sure you know what you're doing," she smiled.

"Oh, I'd hope so," Pickford seemed to be unaware of the trepidation that she was straining to keep out of her voice. "My own methods are more concerned with the overall shape and surface of the body and I like to be able to handle something like this in a number of stages in order for the subject to come to terms with what is being done a little at a time. But the problem here is that the process will be far more complicated and involve more than one approach to the whole thing. I'll be bringing in a colleague for a large part of the operation more skilled in the area of internal surgery than myself, a Doctor Ward. These requirements mean that there simply won't be any opportunity for you to acclimatise during the operation. We will have to make sure that everything is handled in one visit to the theatre."

"So no training shoes for me," Annie tried to sound upbeat. "You just slice me off at the waist and then sew me onto some headless horse, like that Booth woman?"

"I'm sorry," for a moment is seemed that Pickford was offended, "but you seem to be under the impression that I'm some kind of a taxidermist that deals in living specimens!"

"God, no," Annie realised that she had found one of the well --hidden spots in the armour of politeness that most of the English wore, the ones that would make them explode with suppressed indignation. She knew they were a reality after having seen the ones that existed in Malcolm's otherwise placid personality. It seemed to her that they were places where all the anger and rudeness that other people would let out constantly built up in the English, like volcanoes in the Earth's surface. They erupted when stimulated and were best left well enough alone.

"No...I'm sorry," she placed a hand on Pickford's knee. "You have to know that I'm a mess of nerves right now. I just don't know what to expect and it's making me run off at the mouth a little."

"Well," Pickford shook his head as his more pleasant demeanour returned, "I understand that and I'll do anything I can to help out with your all too understandable nerves, believe me. But what we do here is far more complicated and advanced than the hack job that produced Harriett Booth. On one level I have to take my hat off to the team that managed to overcome all of the obstacles to grafting a human torso onto the headless body of a horse and making sure the result lived. But we believe more in the philosophy of changing the physical form of the subject rather than splicing together a chimera."

"So what does this involve...I mean, where does the equine element come in?"

"Well, we like to sidestep all the issues around compatibility and tissue rejection by growing the required biological modifications before the process begins using genetic samples taken from the subject. You'll recall that we asked you for a swab of DNA? Well, so long as you didn't get someone else to take the swab for you, we've used that to create the elements that we will need to alter your physical form and we have them in storage on the grounds." Pickford's face became worried for a moment. "You didn't do that, did you? I mean get someone else to take the swab?"

Annie shook her head, amused at his sudden concern.

"Good," Pickford recovered and went on. "In essence we'll be reshaping the lower portion of your body and then marrying it to the equine body that we have created for the purpose. Our stance has always been that it is better to use as much of the subject's existing body as possible in a procedure such as this. We feel that the larger the portion of the new body that was once part of the original, the better the chances from both a physiological and psychological stance."

"So you'll be turning these into hooves?" Annie pointed at her feet.

Pickford nodded.

"I'd have thought they were too short to be a horse's legs?"

"Miss West," from the sound of his mock-serious tone it was Pickford who was now amused, "just how closely did you acquaint yourself with the very extensive reading material that was sent to you regarding this process?"

"Okay, I admit that I kind of skipped through it."

"Well, if you had taken the time to digest the contents you would have been aware of some of the more aesthetic considerations of your proposed new form. One of those is the fact that we are not going to be extending your legs by much. You stand about five feet and nine inches tall as an unmodified human being and you won't be much taller as a centaur either."

"You're serious?" One of the fears that had plagued Annie was the thought of towering over people and clattering about with the heavy step of a full-sized horse.

"Very much so," Pickford nodded. "The scale to which we have been working with your equine body is more in keeping with that of a small pony than a whopping great dray horse. I have to say as well, that I agree with the decision for my own part. It would be a shame to see you lumbering around with the body of something more suited to pulling carts full of coal. That sort of thing would very much spoil your feminine charms...if you don't mind me saying so."

Pickford did not blush as he paid her a veiled compliment, but he did rush into the next phase of his explanation of the process in a hurried and self-conscious manner that made Annie want to laugh out loud. Even after all the time she had spent with Malcolm, she was still baffled by the way in which English men seemed to perceive complimenting a woman's looks was somehow akin to openly asking them to make love right there and then in public.

Her most promising theory on the subject was that it was a part of the tendency that the English had for constant self-deprecation, their inability to put themselves forward where an American would have simply stuck out his chest and told the world to go to hell. Men like Pickford seemed to think that a woman would just laugh at them and brush their attention off in a second. It was more ridiculous than it was annoying in her mind when she considered the fact that had she been unattached, Pickford would have been a man she would not have been unhappy to spend time with over a casual drink or a meal.

But anyway, she was two for two with the English men at least.

It was not until the morning of the actual operation that Annie was introduced to Doctor Ward by a rather harassed Pickford. She had the distinct impression that there was some kind of friction between the two of them, Pickford's clipped language and Ward's flippant responses seeming to characterise their relationship. She might have been worried by the chance of a conflict going on amongst the medical men that she was about to be operated on, but the effects of the medication she had been given to relax her mind prevented her from truly processing the events going on around her.

Where Pickford had been personable and keen to make her comfortable, Ward seemed to be concerned only with the job at hand. He made no effort to speak to Annie and instead attended to his equipment from the moment that she was wheeled into the theatre on the gurney.

True to his character, Pickford paid her more attention as he directed the nursing staff to their tasks and prepared more of the medical paraphernalia in the room that defied Annie's clouded attempts to discern their purpose. She was sure that he did speak to her, but the words were lost as the effects of the drugs became ever stronger. Instead she was left with a sense of reassurance that battled with the apprehension at what was about to be done to her body.

The time between the drugs being administered and Annie falling into a state of unconsciousness seemed, for her at least, to have been a strange and extended period of time in which she drifted away from awareness. In reality the time had been no more than a few minutes and all the while the team had been preparing the final elements of the material they needed. As soon as it was ascertained that the subject was under, the operation began in earnest.

The first part of the process was Pickford's responsibility and he took command of the room in a manner that belied his normally placid demeanour. Here he was in charge and his word was followed to the letter as he ordered the theatre staff to various tasks. Ward simply stood back and seemed happy to observe as his colleague worked, as though he was an actor waiting for his call to the stage.

Annie was stripped of her gown and left naked on the gurney while a complex harness was lowered from the ceiling of the room and looped around her torso. There was no operating table in the room and the nature of the process would require her to be suspended in such a manner so that the doctors could have access to the areas of her body they were to work upon.

Soon she was hoisted gently from the gurney and suspended a few feet above the floor while Pickford fussed over the harness and made a last check over her body. The harness also held her head upright and pinned her wrists to her collar as if to keep them out of the way for some reason that was not immediately apparent.

The examination was thorough, but professional in every way as the doctor ensured that his patient was in good condition and had been shaved as he specified. Once Pickford was happy, she was pulled across the theatre on a network of rails that hung from the ceiling and would facilitate her movement from one spot to another as required.

Annie was brought to a halt above a bath of liquid that stood as high as Pickford's chest and at his direction, hoisted high enough to be then lowered inside. He called a stop as soon as she was immersed to the waist and now the reason for restraining her arms became clearer, whatever the purpose of the liquid in the bath, her arms and torso were not to be given the same treatment.

She was allowed to remain partially submerged in the liquid for a long while and in her state of artificial unconsciousness, Annie found that she was able to form thoughts in a dreamlike state where she was not totally in control of their ultimate form or direction.

The liquid in which her legs were submerged was warm and viscous, manifesting itself in her mind as an all-encompassing sense of well-being. The warmth seemed to seep into her body and fill her with the strange sensation that she was melting, becoming a liquid herself.

In her dream, Annie felt that she was somehow trapped inside something, pushing her head towards an opening like struggling to pull her head through the neck of a tight jumper. She tried to find the opening with her hands and realised that they were trapped inside as well so that she was forced to push as hard as she could before her head finally emerged from the hole.

She opened her eyes and stared in surprise at what she saw before her.

Annie's head emerged from the screw-top of what looked like a giant tube. Below she could see the white length of the thing pressed tightly against the shape of her body so that every detail of her form below the neck could be seen.

She saw something printed on the tube and strained to read the words.

Artist's Acrylic Paint, Colour No. 101, Annie West.

Annie pulled harder and more of her body seeped out of the impossibly tight neck of the tube, its end curling up and the shape of her figure moving up its length as she did so. As soon as it was free of the tube, her body assumed its own shape and she found that the description on the thing was accurate.

She was Annie West, and she was made of a thick, oozing liquid that resembled paint.

Once she had pulled her feet out of the tube, Annie sat and looked at the living pigment that made up her body. She was aware on a certain level that she was dreaming, but the sensation of her legs as they began to lose their definition and run into one another was so real that she was almost afraid.

She tried to stand, but she found that she could only rise to her knees as her lower body ran together into a mass of liquid paint. Annie tried to separate her legs with her hands, sinking them into the mass, but it was no good and she quickly gave up the effort. But when she pulled her arms out once again she was shocked to see that her fingers hand been stretched by the contact with the rest of her body and the digits pressed together into an undefined paw.

Annie realised that she was melting, losing control of her own body with every moment that passed.

She sensed a presence behind her and turned to see the figures of Malcolm and Pickford standing over her, shaking their heads in consternation. She tried to speak, but her tongue had merged into her jaw and no sound emerged from her lips when she opened her mouth.

The men conversed for a moment as they studied her and then nodded before Pickford produced a bucket from nowhere and Malcolm a shovel similarly plucked from thin air. The doctor kneeled down with his bucket while Malcolm calmly scooped up what he could of Annie's dripping form on the shovel and tipped it inside. As she was dumped into the bucket, parts of her body fell away from the rest and were only reunited when they too fell into the bottom of the pail.

Reduced to a pile of thick liquid in the bucket, which managed to hold her despite its being far too small in size thanks to the strange physics of dreams, Annie could do nothing as she was picked up and carried off.

The men continued to talk to one another, occasionally glancing down into the bucket as they walked as if making casual observations about its strange contents.

When they came to a halt, Annie could hear the sound of pipe organs and see glimpses of gaily painted wood. Despite the fact she was trapped inside the bucket, she somehow knew they were standing on an old-fashioned carousel filled with carved wooden horses painted in intricate and lovely designs.

Without a moment of warning, the men upended the bucket over the nearest carousel horse and watched as Annie's liquid form seeped and ran over it. Had this been the real world, liquid would simply have dripped over and off the wooden horse, but as this was a dream the rules were different.

As she oozed over the head and neck of the horse, Annie began to regain some of her solidity, her own head and torso becoming more defined and her arms emerging from the mass of her body. At the point where the neck of the horse ended, she seemed to stop covering the painted wood and the remaining liquid of her form seeped into the surface, absorbed like liquid by a sponge. She regained her definition as her face emerged from the liquid, followed by her hair and then the breasts from her chest and the individual fingers of her hands.