Demon Tamer

News Flies

“Speak your mind, but ride a fast horse”

~Bumper Sticker

I stared at the school newspaper numbly. It has dramatic words in it like “brave” and “fantastic” and sounded like a comic book in written form. It was accompanied by a picture of riding a rearing horse silhouetted against the setting sun. It was titled ‘Demon Tamer.’

I had known that it would appear eventually. Demon had raised a lot of publicity when he out-ran the hunt and impressed the visiting famous rider. And they had seen or heard of other antics. Three hours to load him. Him killing a car. A stall that was totally broken after only five minutes of containing him. Him fighting off a mountain lion (I doubted that one as no one could say they were there to see it and, unlike the other stunts, I didn’t suffer for it but seven people swore to me that it was true).

Then I had gone and idiotically added to it by showing that the monster could be tamed. But the people hadn’t seen it as an accomplishment on Demon’s part. They had heard that he was related to a famous dressage horse and decided that I just had an ability for getting the ‘inner horse’ out.

And when Charlie from the school newspaper had come to me asking to do a little article, nothing special, just something for the Op/Ed section, I had shrugged and said sure. It wasn’t like other journalists hadn’t thought about the idea.

But the other journalists hadn’t had to try to write an article that would please their teacher and entertain a high-school full of kids. They had done a quick little column and moved on. Charlie had made a full-fledged novel.

Demon Tamer, the Story of a Girl and the Horse She Saved From Itself.

It gave the story of a girl, who unfortunately had my name, finding a horse stranded in a field, stuck in barbed wire. And for some reason a Doberman was there attacking the horse. The girl, for some reason decided she could take on a fully grown Doberman and fought the dog away, finally scaring it off by throwing rocks at it (this field seemed to have an unlimited supply of rocks). She struggled for hours to untangle the horse and as a thank you, it kicker her and ran away in the direction of the Doberman. After hours of begging her father, she borrowed the family truck and horse trailer to find the horse and bring it to her loving home. Understanding what was happening (it was also hinted that the horse had been fighting the dog and, having won the battle, was ready to go with her), the horse quietly walked into the trailer when she opened the door and even nuzzled her, showing its soft side.

The saga ended with the promise of more to come. It was going to be a story stretching from one edition to the next.

It had mine and Demon’s name in it and that was where reality ended. Charlie should be in creative writing class, not newspaper. I thought newspaper were supposed to give nothing but fact. Now I would be the girl who fought for a horse she didn’t know. And this story made me look like I belonged in a flowing white dress with windswept hair as she rode a freaking unicorn!

Charlie was going to pay.

But no one read the school newspaper anyway, did they? The only reason I picked it up was because I was in it. And besides, even if they did, they wouldn’t believe it, would they? Of course not, there was no way it could be believed.

Charlie came walking out a classroom door and I hurriedly worked my way through the crowd to yell at him. What he was doing in a classroom ten minutes before the first bell rang, I’ll never know and never want to.

“Charlie!” I yelled. He turned around, automatically taking a defensive look to him face. Poor kid. But he deserved it.

He grinned when he saw me, “Hey, Heather. What’s up? Did you like the story?”