Don't look a gift horse in the mouth

Don't Look A Gift Horse In The Mouth

2nd place in "Invalid Item"  short story contest

It was a cool October morning at the Jackson tracks. The wind was blowing lightly giving the air a slight chill, but that was how Don Merinder liked it. He was a thin man about five and a half feet tall with very little hair and what was left was completely gray. He always wore the same thing, a gray over-shirt and navy blue dress pants. He owned a stable about fifteen miles down the road where he raised horses that were the fastest and strongest in the entire state of Kentucky.
Today, Razor, one of his finest was racing. A roan thoroughbred with a luxurious mane, this horse was his oldest and most experienced. Everyone in the stands turned towards the track as the trumpet blew, announcing the beginning of the race. As the gates flew open, Razor took off into the lead immediately. The horse’s hooves never seemed to touch the ground. Everyone was standing and yelling, some in delight, others in rage, the latter having bet on another horse. All the other horses seemed to run in slow motion compared to this magnificent stallion. His body rippled while he ran, his every muscle straining to get that extra bit of speed. At the slightest movement of the jockey, the horse responded moving inside or outside without breaking his perfect stride.
Razor was the winner by a long shot. All except one man were staring in awe at the winner. This man, John Carone, was looking at the owner of the horse. He knew that he would have to infiltrate his stable and find out what made the horses so exceptional. His superiors at the FBI suspected steroids or drugs, but that just could not be it. They checked all the horses for drugs or other illegal substances before the races. It could just be good lineage, but not likely. He checked in with his contact, bought some work clothes, and drove his beat-up blue pick-up truck into town. He checked in at the nearby Holiday Inn wondering why something like this would be of interest to the FBI. The room was nice, not great, but nice. Then again, he thought, “I don’t mind spending some time at a stable; I always liked horses.”
At 10:00 in the morning the next day, John talked to Merinder about getting a job. It turned out that he was just in time. One of the workers had recently quit.
John asked, “Why did he quit?” Hoping he was not being too forward as to make Merinder suspicious. Luckily, it did not.
“I don’t know, really. I guess he just got tired of the job here,” answered Merinder.
After a couple more questions, John was hired. Merinder led him out of his office and from the porch showed John where everything was.
He pointed to the west and said, “Over there are the bunks. They are a little too small. The boys will tell you what the deal with that is.” John just nodded looking at the nice little log building.
He was looking around to see if he could spot anything suspicious. Merinder then pointed to the south and east saying those are the stables, and supply building. He seemed to be running quite a sophisticated operation. The supply building was built so that a truck could just back up unload and then drive away, without a hassle. The stables were big, too. A system of walks with gates allowed the horses to be moved into the different fenced off areas. After noting everything he thought was important John said goodbye and walked towards the bunkhouse.
When he arrived and opened the door, he was greeted well; everybody introduced themselves and shook his hand. Dan Hassock, a muscular man with blue eyes and thick black hair, explained to John the daily schedule. Also how every week they switched who would sleep outside in the stables because there were not enough beds or room for everybody. Everybody agreed at Dan’s suggestion that John would get a bed the first week because he was the new guy. It was not a bad job. John cleaned out the stables and while he did so, he snooped around, but found nothing unusual.
The next day, after morning mess, he went out and helped put up new fencing. While they worked, John decided to try to acquire some information.
“So…how’s Merinder as a boss? “ Another worker called Jack replied, “He’s ok, he’s not a slave driver. He gives us days off and if we work real hard he’ll sometimes give us a whole weekend off.”
John then asked, “Is anyplace off limits that I should know about. Before I go there and get in trouble my first week?” Jack replied, “Nope, at least there is isn’t anyplace that we’ve been told about or have gone he didn’t want except for his house.”
“That’s good. “ John answered and continued to work.
He had hoped to find some clue as to where to look but it seemed to be clean so far. When they took a break around noon, he began to walk towards the bunkhouse.
Jack yelled after him “Where ya’ going its lunch time, not quittin’.” John yelled back “I forgot something I’m just goin’ to grab it.”
Jack seemed to accept that. John was not worried, but it was good that he could use a half-truth for he had forgotten his drink. He then walked past the bunkhouse checking quickly that he was not being followed or watched. He began to check around for something that he might have missed. While going over an area that he had not had time to check out previously, he noticed something flashing near the trees. Looking at his watch and seeing he had only five minutes left he started back, but told himself to remember to check it out when he had more time. He entered the bunkhouse through the back door and exited carrying a Pepsi.
As he arrived back at the field they had been working on, Jack looked up an asked, “What took ya so long?” “Couldn’t find my drink,” replied John.
The next day they still had more fences to put up, so he did not have time to check out the spot. H also had the time to notice that the flashing object was gone. During his lunch break for the next few days, he kept his eyes on that spot when he could, but never saw the flash again. Late on the fifth day, they completed the fence and then there was free time for the weekend as a reward.
The next morning after mess everyone headed towards the trucks to drive to town, John told the guys that he had to get something from the bunkhouse and would catch up with them later.
Jack called jokingly after him, “You getting to be a real forgetful fellow, huh?”
John laughed but kept walking towards the bunkhouse. He entered through the front door and moved towards his bunk. He waited until he heard the trucks start and begin to move down the gravel road towards Jackson. He then jogged to the edge of the field and through the sycamore trees where he had seen the flash. When he stepped through the trees, he saw another fenced in pasture with only a few grazing horses. John thought it was strange that he had not been told about this pasture before, but it was not anything bizarre, probably Merinder’s private horses for riding or breeding. He looked around to figure out what the flash could have been and saw a metal bucket that had fallen off the fence. It now lay on its side, but could have caught on the fence post and reflected the sunlight.
“Hey can any of you tell me what you’re doing here?” John said to the horses jokingly. To his surprise one of the horses snorted, it seemed too perfectly timed. “You say something?” John said. The horse stamped his fore hooves and then walked away, apparently in disgust. “Weird,” John thought aloud.
It had been a month since he was hired and he had nothing unusual to report, so he only called his contact to check up. He was told to wait two more months and keep checking around for anything suspect. The only thing John found suspicious is that the FBI even after a couple months of finding nothing was still interested. John would have argued but it would not have made a difference. Dismal, he walked back to the bunkhouse from the main ranch house. Surprisingly, it was not a lavish multi-storied house John thought Merinder would enjoy. It was quite humble, a one-story ranch house with only four rooms. It showed that Merinder might not be such a corrupt person, maybe.
The next two weeks were too busy for John to look around; they had to break in new foals, just now yearlings and old enough to be started. Every night everyone was too tired to stay up late. It was intensely hard work. Then on the third week, Merinder in one of his more thoughtful gestures gave everybody two days off. On the first day, everybody except John drove into town. John stayed because he said he did not feel well. Really, he just wanted the day to look around uninhibited. First thing first, he told himself, and fed and watered the horses in the stables that he was assigned. Then he quickly ran up to the ranch house where Merinder’s office was located. Finding it coincidentally unlocked; he went inside and spent the next four hours looking through Merinder’s files and expenses. The only thing he found atypical was an order for some laboratory paraphernalia, but maybe he was working with artificial breeding. Then feeling very dispirited he went back to the bunkhouse and laid there thinking, until the others returned at dusk. The rest of the second day, he spent enjoying with the others in town gambling and drinking. At the end of the week, there was a race. The ranch hands helped load up horses to take to the track, including one of the horses from the mysterious pasture. A solid black standard-bred Arab named Dark Streak.
It was a perfect day for a race. The sun was shining with a slight breeze; it was still warm enough not to wear a jacket. John was enjoying the day; he decided to treat himself and bought some of the delicious foods that he smelled as they approached the tracks. He was put in charge of unloading Dark Streak; he expected some resistance from the horse. What he did not expect is the horse to walk out as soon as he opened the back gate of the trailer. Then the horse walked over to the stall door marked with his name and waited there. John’s jaw dropped, eyes wide and staring.
"What a well trained horse," was his first thought. Then he remembered the horse in the mysterious pasture.
"I wonder if this is related...nah," He said to himself and let the horse into the stall. A little bit confused and his intuition working, he decided to watch the horse more closely during the race. He had an hour before the race officially started so he went to the bar for a sandwich and drink.
"There is something strange going on, but I can't put my finger on it. These horses are definitely better behaved and smarter than most horses. I'm going to have to take a closer look around to see if I can find something I missed," John thought as he drank his beer.
The announcer said on the loudspeaker that race twelve was about to begin. That was the one John had been waiting for. John then walked down into the stable area to help get Dark Streak out onto the track, but the horse again walked without any pushing or convincing. The Jockey mounted and was led to the gates by a woman on a mousy dun mare. John watched while the other horses were led into the gate. Every one of them seemed wound up and full of energy and one even un-mounted his rider before they got into the gate.
"Stranger and stranger,” thought John. The air was full of energy as the trumpet sounded, the gate was thrown open, and the horses took off. All the horses seemed to be fairly matched. It was neck and neck through most of the race, but then Dark Streak began to weave in and out speeding up and moving through opening after opening. He seemed to do this on his own. The jockey looked like he was only along for the ride. Dark Streak pulled ahead and won the race. Again, the audience was awestruck. John knew something was up now, that was not dumb luck. He had seen Merinder smiling throughout the entire race, not surprised at all when Dark Streak had made the comeback and taken the win. It was John’s last month and now it was time to look into this more closely.

He called his contact, Terry, and told him that he may be on to something and he would contact him if he found anything or at the end of the month. John returned to the bunkhouse in time to find out that it was his week to sleep in the stable. That was perfect. It would facilitate checking around at night. The next night after a card game in the bunkhouse John walked down to the stable. As soon as the last light went off in the bunkhouse, he crept out of the stable being as quite as possible. He used a small flashlight and began to check out the perimeter of Merinder Stables hoping to find another clue like the mysterious pasture. As he was about to finish his hour-long check he noticed some broken weeds. They looked like it was done by something alive. John thinking this might be a breakthrough walked into the trees where the weeds were broken and then he found a small barn.
"At last," John thought.
This was what he had been looking for. He checked his watch and saw that he had been gone an hour and a half. He decided he would check it tomorrow night.
“It’s not like it’s going to walk away or anything,” John thought. The next day he continued to work but could not concentrate. The others noticed but did not say anything, figuring it was a personal matter. That night he waited for three hours before he was sure, everyone was asleep. He used his tiny LED flashlight so as not to be noticed. Luckily, it was a full moon that night. Therefore, he could find his way to the path without using his flashlight. He slipped silently through the opening and again came upon the barn. He went to the door and found it unlocked. He thought to himself that Merinder was either very sure, of his hiding places or that he would detect anybody who might figure his secret out, whatever it was. He opened the door and was relieved to find that it did not make any noise. Once inside, shining his flashlight in a circle he saw a couple of horses eating stalls on one side, tack on two and hay stacked on the fourth, still nothing out of the ordinary. Looking closer at the wall with the hay, he noticed a wooden ladder leading to the hayloft. He looked at his watch and decided he had plenty of time. He climbed the ladder testing each rung in case they were as old as they looked. Once he made it to the top, he shined his flashlight around to discover a plethora of science equipment: beakers and Bunsen burners and many, many vials of bluish green liquid. He grabbed a vial and a rubber stopper and put it carefully into his empty flashlight holder on his belt loop. He went back down the ladder and stepped off. His shirt flapped, revealing the green vial. All three of the horses began to whinny and neigh all at once.
"Quiet down, calm down,” John said, but to no avail. They were too distressed. He looked out the barn door in time to see lights flicker on in the bunkhouse and a light turn on at Merinder's house. John swore to himself and then hurriedly ran out of the hidden barn, taking time to close the door to make it look less suspicious. Then he ran back to the stable and was able to crawl into the hay stall that he was supposed to be sleeping in as Merinder ran by towards the small barn. When Merinder arrived, he found the door closed. "False alarm," he thought but then he opened the door and went inside to check. Flicked the light switch and the barn lit up in pale light, enough so the barn was lit but it couldn't be seen through the trees. All the horses and all the tack were there. "Strange," he thought then proceeded up the ladder, everything seemed to be there, but then he noticed an opening in the rack of test tubes. He did not remember using it.

"Maybe I did and don't remember. That must be it.” He rationalized.

John lay in the empty stall in the stable where he slept, waiting as Merinder walked by and then breathed a sigh of relief when he heard the door close. Everything must have been was well because he heard nothing about it.
The next day he mailed half the vial in a sealed film can, hoping not to raise any attention, to Fairway lab in Lexington. He kept the other half as an afterthought. The lab sent him an analysis a day later indicating it was a complex carbohydrate solution with bits of messenger RNA (Ribonucleic acid) stuck on. They could not find any known steroid solutions in it; it reacted with none of the indicators, it seemed that it was not a drug or a steroid. This was very odd, what would RNA have to do with horses. He racked his brain to remember if it had any medical uses, he could not think of any. He contacted Terry and gave him a report for their superiors that he had found an unknown solution that was related to Merinder. Terry sent the report via a secure telephone line directly to a government repeater station where it sent to Washington D.C. A few minutes later a message was relayed back to Terry who then read it to John. The orders said to find out what the chemical was any way John could without raising suspicion. John was once again surprised by how interested his superiors were in a case on horseracing, "Shouldn't this case be placed in the hands of the thoroughbred racing commission,” he thought.

John had his orders, but how was he going to figure what the stuff was. I was not as if he could just ask Merinder. He went to the bunkhouse, got a beer, and poured it into one of the glasses he had brought down to the stable with him. The vial was hidden under the bed of hay eh had made for himself. He set it on the table next to his drink.
“Why can’t I figure this out?” He asked to the air furiously and slammer his fist on the table.
When his fist hit the table the cap to the vial bounced off and some of the strange liquid spilled into his beer, it immediately dissipated. John then slammed his fist two more times when most of the liquid had now fallen into his beer he hit the table one more time and the vial rolled off and smashed onto the floor. The tiny bit of liquid that was left was quickly soaking into the ground. John grabbed another of the film cases and scraped the remaining liquid off the table where it has spilt as the vial rolled and sealed it.

John sat down in his chair, picked up the beer glass, and drank it in one long gulp. That was when he noticed that there was a small green smudge on the inside of the glass. He dropped the glass, which hit the table but luckily did not break. He tasted a strange taste in his mouth. He swore silently and then sat down on his make shift bed to wait. He could not call for help since that would involve telling at least part of his story. He did not notice any strange effects; nothing seemed to happen, therefore he decided it must be some strange energy drink to hype the horse. It was getting late and he was done with his work for the day, so he walked outside and towards the main barn. Since it was the second last day for him to sleep in the barn, he went to sleep thinking that he would soon have a much more comfortable bed in the bunkhouse. He woke up later that night feeling hot and itchy. His first thought that he was coming down with something. "The perfect end to a perfect case, a cold," he remarked to himself. He looked down at his arm and was startled to discover it covered with dense gray hair. He just stared in astonishment as his fingers began to liquefy and melt together with his hand. The skin began to turn black and glossy, first in patches then it spread across his entire hand. He looked at his other hand and the same thing was happening. He thought, "This is one weird dream, must be from that stuff.” He was about to lay back down when his face bulged out. His nose was the front of the snout and his teeth grew to fill his mouth; his eyes shifted to the side. He could not balance on two legs anymore since his weight increased around 500 pounds and then shifted. He fell forward and fell onto all fours his arms and legs expanded and then his knees reversed while his elbows did the same. All this time the hair spread across his body. As his girth expanded, it ripped his pant and shirts into pieces. While he was concerned with standing his ears extended to a point and a tail sprouted as his spine extended to fit his body. After this, his body was completely covered by hair. Sometime through the changes, the realization that this was not a dream dawned upon him. His first thought involved yelling and running, but then he felt an extreme feeling of calm take over. A soothing inner voice told him to relax and that is just what John did. The rest of the night, he took the time to piece everything together. After that, he lay down on the straw and fell asleep. As he slept his memories faded to dim reminders, then completely, and were replaced with memories of a horse, but his human-like mind expanded these. He was a horse, but not an ordinary horse.

In the morning, the other workers searched all over, but could not find John. They thought he must have left very early in the morning, why they could only guess. Another thing they thought was peculiar was the new horse that appeared that morning in the stall John had slept in. They would have been more surprised had they found the scraps of clothing that were mixed in the hay that John had been wearing and his ID card, but this had happened before so nobody gave it a second thought. Merinder went to the barn to check up on his horses. That is when he discovered as strange new horse, a stallion with a dappled gray coat. He was confused until moving the hay around he found the clothes and the ID card in the stall. It all fit together now.
Merinder laughed at the thought and said to John, "You will make a fine race horse, but what to call you...How about Tempest? Yes, I like that. Don't you?” John could only whinny in return and Merinder just smiled and went to his house to make a fake lineage card. Then he took John and led him to the field in the corner to graze. During the next few days, the agency sent another agent, Terry, to locate John; but all the agent found was fine horses and a film case with a drop strange green liquid in John’s pack. He decided that it was his job to figure out what the stuff was and then he might find a clue to where John is or was.