It was 11 a.m. on a rainy Saturday morning in January when Macie Jenkins decided her life was no longer worth living. Her parents and younger sister had died in an automobile accident six months ago. Her best friend in the whole world had married a computer programmer and moved to Japan. Her boyfriend had left her for his secretary. Last month, the collie she’d had ever since she was a little girl had got lost in a thunderstorm and never returned. Last week, she had lost her job due to the ongoing recession. And this morning, she had found her two-year-old goldfish belly up in the tank. It had been the last straw.
With a shake of her head, Macie turned away from the living-room window. Now that the decision was made, she felt a curious sense of peace. How to do it, that was the question? A knife was too messy. She didn’t own a gun. Sitting in the garage with the enginerunning seemed too creepy. Sleeping pills, of course, that was the best way. And how fortuitous that she’d had her prescription refilled yesterday. Tomorrow, she thought, she would do it tomorrow. But today, ah, today she would indulge in all the things she had been avoiding. She would have a big bowl of warm chocolate pudding for breakfast, a Big Mac, fries and a chocolate malt for lunch, pasta and garlic bread for dinner, and a pint of chocolate fudge ice cream for dessert.
While stirring the pudding, she contemplated leaving a suicide note, and decided against it. No one she knew would really care why she had done it; most wouldn’t even know she was gone.
When the pudding was cool, she poured all of it into a large bowl, sliced a banana on top, then sat at the kitchen table and savoured every bite. Good thing she was dying tomorrow, she thought with a wry grin, since she’d just shot her diet all to hell.
She spent the next hour finishing the book she was reading, then she cleaned her house from top to bottom. She didn’t want whoever found her body to think she lived like a slob.
Lunch was perfect. She lingered over every French fry, even the little crusty ones at the bottom of the bag.
While fixing dinner, she listened to her favourite fifties oldies. When dinner was ready, she lit a fire in the fireplace and ate in the living room. She grinned ruefully as she again savoured every bite. Six months at the gym, wiped out in one day.
By six, the rain had turned into a thunderstorm. Lightning slashed the skies, thunder rocked the heavens, a ferocious wind rattled the windows. She had always loved a storm. What better way to spend her last night than walking in the rain? One thing for certain, she wouldn’t have to worry about catching a cold.
After pulling on her favourite sweatshirt and an old pair of cowboy boots, she went outside. For a moment, she just stood there, her face lifted to the skies. Was anyone up there? Was there life after death? Were her parents waiting to greet her on the other side, or was death the end of everything?
She’d know the answer tomorrow. She shoved her hands into the pockets of her jeans and then, with no particular destination in mind, she started walking. It was kind of spooky, walking in the dark. She glanced over her shoulder from time to time, making sure the lights from the house were still in sight.
A flash of lightning split the skies. Macie stared at it. Was that a horse, she thought, startled, and then laughed out loud. “You’re losing it, Macie,” she muttered, and let out a yelp when her feet suddenly went out from under her and she found herself falling head over heels down a rocky hill.
A shrill cry rose in her throat, ending in a groan as she slammed into a boulder at the foot of the hill.
And then everything went black.
Cold and wet, Macie woke with a groan. For a moment, she simply lay there, her whole body aching. Why was she so sore? she wondered. Then, in a rush, it all came back to her. She’d fallen down the hill at the far end of the property. If she’d had any luck at all, she thought glumly, the fall would have killed her.
With her eyes still closed, she took inventory and decided that, even though she hurt from head to foot, nothing was broken.
With a sigh of relief, she opened her eyes. She frowned when a thick grey mist rose up from the hill in front of her, let out a surprised gasp when a white stallion materialized out of the mist. It was the most beautiful creature she had ever seen. Even in the dull grey light of the overcast day, the stallion’s white coat glinted like liquid silver. A thin black scar, shaped like a bolt of lightning, adorned its right flank.
“Hey, boy, what are you doing here?”
There hadn’t been any horses in the area since Macie was a little girl. Most of the barns and corrals had been torn down, replaced by RV parking and swimming pools.
At the sound of her voice, the stallion lowered its head and nudged her shoulder.
Taking a deep breath, Macie grabbed hold of the stallion’s mane and used it to steady herself as she pulled herself to her feet.
“So, what’s your name? Snowball? No. Thunder? No.” She ran her fingertips over the scar on the stallion’s flank. “Lightning,” she murmured. “I’ll bet that’s your name. And you fell out of the sky, didn’t you? Or maybe I’m hallucinating and you’re not really here. But I’m going to call you Lightning, just the same.”
The stallion’s dark, intelligent eyes met hers, almost as if he understood her words.
“You don’t know it, horse, but you came along at just the right time. Thanks to you, I won’t have to walk up that hill.”
Macie didn’t know where the stallion had come from, but somehow, she knew that it had been ridden before. She hadn’t been on a horse in years, but it was something you never forgot. Grasping the stallion’s mane, she swung on to its back, and nudged its flanks with her boot heels. When she clucked softly, the horse turned and walked up the hill.
Macie shivered as the mist grew thicker, darker, until it blanketed the whole area, so thick that she couldn’t see a thing. Muttering, “I hope you can see where you’re going,” she clung to the stallion’s mane with both hands.
The mist grew thicker as they climbed steadily upwards. When they reached the top of the hill, the stallion came to a halt and the mist disappeared.
“What the heck?” Macie stared at the scene before her. Where was her house? Her car? The sidewalk? The neighbourhood?
She glanced from right to left. Closed her eyes. Opened them again. The world as she had known it was gone. “I must have hit my head harder than I thought,” she muttered. Because everything she knew was gone.
She blinked, and blinked again, but nothing changed. Buildings she had never seen before lined both sides of a dusty street. An odd ringing sound filled the air; it took her a moment to realize it was the sound of a blacksmith’s hammer. A number of horses were tethered to hitching posts up and down the street. Women in long dresses and floppy bonnets strolled along the wooden boardwalk accompanied by men in denim pants, leather vests and muddy cowboy boots. Somewhere in the distance, a clock chimed the hour.
A rumbling like thunder sounded behind her. Startled, Macie glanced over her shoulder to see a stagecoach bearing down on her. She jerked hard on the stallion’s mane, sneezed as a cloud of dun-coloured dust rose in the coach’s wake.
