Broken Prodigy | COMPLETED ✓

Chapter 9

Mars stares at me through the dim sunlight as it emerges from behind the trees lining the back of our property. He's still breathing hard, even though I've been sitting in the same spot for at least half an hour.

I'm sitting on the only slightly damp grass, my left leg sprawled out on the ground, and my right leg perched up so I can lean my head on it. The early morning warmth is decreasing as the prime hot month of December comes to a close descends, but it's not too cold.

Less than three weeks till Dad is 'dealing with' Mars. The sadness within me grows bigger by the day, and I know that if I keep this up I'll stop him from taking my horse, and instead I'll do what I did last time. I'll do the cowardly thing and choose for him to stay and suffer in this world.

Mars should have been put down months ago. He should've been at peace from the moment his horrors started. He should've let me endure all the guilt of the whole situation.

But in a way, it's worse him being here, alive. Because I have to look the poor animal in the eye and know that I'm the reason he was kept animate, instead of getting him euthanised so that he can finally have an end to the torment.

Then Mars does something I don't expect. He rears up, maybe to show me his power, and as he comes back down, the memories crash into me like a flood, swallowing me whole.

* * *

The audience applauds and twelve year old Ollie turns Mars in a circle to calm him down. Her father lightly holds the reins and looks up at her, then at Lucy, who's on her palomino horse, Coco.

"Now, girls," Jim says. "Remember, it's your first competition, so you might not do very well."

"Dad," Ollie sighs, as if he just didn't understand. "We've been practicing for months, even years. I think we'll at least be in top three."

Ollie's father chuckles at her confidence, then pats Mars. "Off you go,"

The girls both nod and walk straight to the entrance of the arena. Ollie takes the left box, and Lucy takes the right. They wait until the steer is in position, then they nod.

As soon as the steer bursts out of the chute, and the barrier opens, the girls kick their horses into action and immediately Lucy is swinging her rope. After a couple of seconds, she throws the end loop of the rope towards the steer's head. It catches perfectly, just like in practice.

Now it's Ollie's turn. As Lucy pulls the steer towards her, Ollie's rope is already in the air, and she throws it out at the steers' hind legs. If she's even a millisecond late, then she'll miss.

She doesn't. The loop of the rope somehow finds its way underneath the steer's legs, then it catches around them.

Once she's made sure the rope has secured the legs without fault, she frees it from her hands and lets the steer get rounded up into the chute. Lucy walks Coco up to her and they high five, and start having a fit of giggles whilst their horses walk uninstructed to the exit, where Jim and Lucy's parents now wait.

"And that's a fourteen-point-four-two second run, from Olive Bennetts and Lucy Gibson," the announcer says through the speakers. 

"Well done, girls!" Lucy's father, Aaron exclaims. They thank him, and talk happily to them, but no one notices the snake in the grass. No one but Mars.

He starts getting agitated, and Ollie tries to calm him down, getting stressed herself because she knows that Mars wouldn't be worried if there wasn't anything to be concerned about. She looks around, but finds nothing. Mars doesn't see nothing. Behind a horse float slithers out the head of a snake, its brown scales shimmering in the sun, blind to his rider and the others.