Demon Tamer

Demon Doesn't Wear Prada

"Surgeon General's Warning: Horses have been found to be expensive and addictive, and have further been shown to impair the use of common sense in humans."

~Anonymous

“Just so we’re clear, there will be no bucking, no spinning, no accidently tripping and throwing me in manure, no drifting under fences, no jumping over fences, okay?”

Buttercup said nothing. Not even a perfectly timed snort.

“And no running under low branches, and no going up on your hind legs to eat leaves off the branches. Are we clear?”

Buttercup repeated himself.

Demon, however, snorted loudly and kicked his stable door. He was imprisoned in there until the fence was fixed and the ground was dry (or, at least, not muddy enough to give him ground for a repeat performance). I liked to think of it as solitary confinement. But that was only because The Pig could not see over the stable door so I was able to pretend Demon had no bullied both me and my Dad into allowing them to share a cell.

Not that being trapped with a hyper active piglet in a small space was not punishment. Served him right.

Demon tossed his head at me. I wasn’t sure if it meant he was angry that I was cheating on him with Buttercup or if he was telling Buttercup exactly how to hurt me.

Buttercup snorted at Demon.

Oh, God, the two are talking now? They’re giving each other ideas? That’s it, I was doomed. Good bye, life.

“Don’t you dare listen to him, Lucifer,” I muttered. I had decided that Hell Spawn was not a good nickname for him, so I had gone one level up. This horse was the devil. Demon was nothing compared to him.

At least, in the bucking part. No horse was as ingenious at evil as Demon.

Sticking my nose haughtily in the air like I’ve seen Sally do, I grabbed Buttercup/Lucifer’s reins and sauntered over to the mounting block, ignoring the sounds of a bored Demon.

Of course, ignoring all Demonic sounds meant ignoring all sounds, he was so loud. Which meant I did not hear the car coming up the drive. I had my left foot in the stirrup and was just about to swing up into the saddle when Buttercup noticed the car. My right foot had left the mounting block when he turned.

Don’t get me wrong, usually when a horse moves while I’m mounting, I just move with them and swing up quicker—the look of surprise on their face when they realize they didn’t beat me makes it all worth it—but this time I wasn’t far enough into the swing and lost my balance. To my credit, I didn’t fall over. I managed to get my right foot back on the mounting block in time. There were a couple of questionable seconds as my left foot suspended in midair, then fell slowly to the ground. In the end, it just looked like a step off the mounting block, no worries.

Buttercup did not see it that way.

He stared from me to the car behind me in horror before throwing his head up and going up on his hind legs. Instinctively, I pulled on the reins, my brain not even sending the message to my hands. That only made Buttercup pull harder on the reins, unbalancing him more.

And suddenly, I saw the ground move. It had rained. Wet sand was not the best of surfaces. It was slippy. It was bound to happen.

Buttercup’s right hind slipped out from under him and he went toppling over backwards. The reins yanked free of my hands and I could just stand there, dumbfounded. He landed half on his side, half on his back.