I am Cursed (and it's Horse Related)

Each Night a Horse Appears in my Bedroom

We both hunger for knowledge. We both hunger for a solution.

He's just as confused as I am, perhaps even more. God knows he probably understands even less of this situation than I do.

Behind those dumb animal eyes I see a yearning to be anywhere else but here. This horse should be somewhere out in a meadow, or sleeping in a stable. He shouldn't be on the seventh floor of an apartment complex. He doesn't deserve this fate.

My temper might be bad, and I do rush to speaking without proper thought, but I don't think I deserve this fate either.

I have repented for my sins yet, each and every night, the horse still wakes me from my dreamless sleep.

He's looking down on me right now as I write this impotent reddit post. I can feel the heat of his snout on the back of my neck.

I am a proud man, and it pains me to ask for help, but this strange corner of the internet is my last bastion of hope.

I need help.

A man and a horse were never meant to be trapped in a bedroom this small.

My landlord knows nothing of my curse, but the amount of damage, the smell— it surely will alert him soon. For the past three days I have prayed for a night without the horse, I have put all my hope in the animal simply not showing up one day, but my faith was misplaced.

Every night, around midnight, the horse appears in my cramped bedroom.

Tonight the beast has split my phone charger in half with its hoof, so I fear this is my last chance to speak to an audience that might understand, that might not call me mad.

If you know how to make these nightly visits stop, if you have even a shred of advice on what I am to do; please, help me.

The evening before this terrible curse fell upon me was a beautiful one, but then again, most evenings in Prague are. Having spent most of the past two years in the Soviet era housing projects that circle the city I decided to treat myself to a lamp-lit stroll through the historical part of town.

Walking past the dark gothic structures, seeing the results of nigh a thousand years of civilization, it all brought a sense of calm into my soul. What further pleased me were the obnoxiously colored signs advertising tourist traps.

For years I have hated how the specter of revenue has twisted our culture to normalize 'massage parlors' next to cathedrals and stomach churning 'pub-crawls' in quiet residential areas, yet the return of the tacky advertisements signaled something more than an utter lack of taste— they signaled the return of the tourist industry.

Prior to the plague I worked as a tour guide. The past year has not been easy, but all of the pain has been muffled beneath a promise that things would one day return to normal. The man covered in silver paint pretending to be a mute Michael Jackson in front of the 15th century astronomical clock was a sign of that promise being fulfilled.

As I walked through the streets I loosened my facemask and let my mind be taken by the impending promise of normalcy. I dreamed of coming back to work; of the rapture of a crowd, of the well-earned money, of the stolen nights with women from places I would never visit.

Yet then, with no warning, all of those dreams were whisked away.

I saw the horse.

It stood in the old town square, right next to a towering statue of a priest who was burned alive for criticizing the Catholic Church. The horse was harnessed to a carriage covered in fake gold and fake velvet. No amount of tacky decoration could hide the animal's pain. It was dripping spit on the cobbled streets, breathing breaths that seemed terminal.