Abigail, Horseman of the Apocalypse
Abigail, Horseman of the Apocalypse
Once upon a time, there was an otter named Abigail. Abigail was a very special otter because she was the unwitting Seventh Horseman of the Apocalypse. Fortunately, she remained unaware of this until a fateful night in February. Prior to that, she’d been an ordinary otter, playing in rivers, tossing clamshells at herons, and sleeping more than necessary.
She was lounging in the river one evening, when she heard a deep voice call her name. Curious, Abigail swam towards the dark figure near the river bank. She gasped as he came into view; she had never seen anything like this hideous creature before. His face was missing the important parts, like eyes,ears, and skin. He was dressed in filthy, yet fashionably tattered black robes and carried a knobbly black stick with an ugly skull carving on top. She wondered if he was one of those “goths” she had heard about on Oprah. He stood beside two enormous horses and watched her intently with glowing red sockets.
“BEHOLD!” he bellowed. “I greet you in sorrow, fellow Horseman.”
“Um … hi,” said Abigail. Yes, this was definitely one of those gothic characters, probably coming to bum a cigarette or invite her to a poetry reading. She didn’t fancy a night of poems about deep despair and dead black roses, and she mentally prepared a litany of polite excuses.
“I have come to deliver your steed to you,” the creature said, and pointed to the brown horse on the left.
“Oh,” said Abigail in relief. It was merely a delivery mix-up. “I didn’t order one of those. The Schwann’s order came on Thursday.”
The Horseman opened his mouth in equal bafflement, and then cleared his throat. “You will ride it during the Apocalypse.”
“Did you try the Thompsons down the river?” she asked, hoping to resolve this misunderstanding quickly without unnecessary tragic conversation. “They sometimes have things delivered. Maybe they ordered an Apocalypse - “
“SILENCE!” roared the man. “You will take your steed and prepare for the Day of Doom!”
Abigail drew her lips back in distaste, but wasn’t about to contradict a dangerously unstable, death-obsessed man ten times her size. “Fine, fine. How am I supposed to feed it?”
“It is no earthly beast. The dark night and the fear of mortals will nourish it, as well as the tears of the dying and the bereaved.”
“Night … mortals …tears of the dying …” muttered Abigail under her breath. She wished she had a pencil and notebook, as she knew she’d forget this all by morning. “Look, I’m late for, um, whisker-cleaning night. Can you just hitch the horse to that tree? I’ll see if I can rustle up some tears of the bereaved for his breakfast.”
“No. You must hear your instructions for the day of terror.” Abigail was relieved to hear that his voice was calmer and less imperious. She looked pointedly down river towards her den. She was itching to get back to it; she’d recently nicked it from a beaver and the place was in sore need of re-decorating and washing, and it was also past-time for dinner. However, the ghastly man ignored her and continued. “Ok, you have the brown horse. I’ve got the black horse, the Unnamed Beast has the red horse, Larry has the pale horse, Our Lord has the white horse, and Megan has whatever the hell that mule-thing is. Here, I printed this table from Wikipedia; it’s a nice summary to help you get acquainted.”
She studied the table as best she could in the moonlight. “This doesn’t say anything about a mule or a brown horse.”
“Wikipedia doesn’t always have the most current information. We added the mule for diversity’s sake, and yours was an afterthought.” He caught sight of Abigail’s raised eyebrow and hastily added, “But that doesn’t mean it’s not important, of course.”
Abigail was getting tired of treading water for this maniac, but she was keenly aware of the big knobbly thing perched above her head. “Why do I get the brown horse? You might have noticed that I am also brown. I’ll blend right in, if I can even stay on it to begin with.”
“The brown horse is Annoyance.” The creature primly spread his robe and sat down on the river bank, leaning towards her in a conspiring fashion. “Oh, I know it doesn’t sound as glamorous as Death or Famine, but think about it. Annoyance is a creeping killer. It raises stress levels, taxes the heart, causes emotional disturbances,divorces, fights, and vengeful waitresses. Everything else is so in-your-face, so bleeding obvious. Annoyance is suave, insidious. And to bond with the horse, you have to experience some of its essence.”
Abigail gazed skeptically at him. “You sound like my mom when she gave all the clams to my brothers because she loves them more than me.”
The Horseman coughed, looked the other way, and spoke unnecessarily quickly. “I assure you that Our Lord loves you just as much as he loves us. It’s just … we think your level of experience is better suited for Annoyance. The rest of us are seasoned terrorists. We know what to do. We don’t want to scar your tender heart before it’s ready for the heavy stuff.”
Her belly rumbled. “So why choose me at all? I’m an otter.”
“It’s been decreed.”
“By whom?”
“That’s on a need-to-know basis.”
“I can’t stay on that thing, you know.” She felt cross even thinking about the prospect.
“Sure you can,” said the Horseman, with what he probably thought was a kindly voice, although it was more nasal than anything, despite his lack of a proper nose. “You just need a little help and practice. That’s why I brought Clarence a little early. Here, let me help you up.” Before she could protest or squirm out of his hands, the Horseman had seized her and tossed her on top of the horse, who was unimpressed with this gesture and reared up. Abigail had no choice but to bite into his back to steady herself, but this caused Clarence to run.
“Shit!” she heard the Horseman shout. Through the bouncing blur of trees and stars, she thought she heard him chasing after them, but the sound quickly faded. Is this the Tribulation? she wondered. She knew little of Biblical prophecy but recalled the term “Tribulation” as referring to hard times. She was fairly certain that hanging onto a horse’s backside with her teeth as he tore across the countryside counted as “hard times.” Perhaps this qualified as “bonding” with the horse. But as her brain jarred in her skull, she wondered why on earth she was expected to participate in this bizarre human drama.
She was about to take her chances and open her jaws, when a voice thundered from the heavens. “CLARENCE, STOP.”
Clarence stumbled to a stop, and Abigail flopped from his back in a most undignified manner, dropping the Wikipedia table.
“IT IS I, SATAN.”
This seemed suspicious to Abigail. “Why is your voice coming from the heavens?”
There was a resounding silence, and then Satan said in a quieter voice, “I am a ventriloquist, actually. Anyway, I will answer your question.”
“What question?” Talking to a disembodied voice made her head ache.
“The one you thought of during your perilous journey just now. You must participate in the human apocalypse because you are part human.”
“Oh fabulous, of course,” she said, annoyed. Dinner was waiting at home, yet here she was, entertaining evil idiots. “Silly me, to look at my fur, whiskers, webbed feet and tail and not have realized.”
Satan must have detected the sarcasm in her voice, because he snapped, “You were abducted by aliens and your DNA was tampered with, foolish otter. You have inactive human DNA sequences waiting silently to be activated by the upcoming apocalypse.”
“I was not abducted by aliens!”
“You were, too. Don’t you remember last summer when you lost your den to another otter because you were away for 2 months?”
“I … I was traveling. In Spain.”
“Abigail, you are a river otter. They won’t let you on a plane.”
“I swam across the ocean!”
“You are not a sea otter. Your habitat is restricted to fresh water.”
“I’m an endangered species in Wisconsin!” Her voice shook with desperation. “I have special flight privileges!”
Satan packed an amazing amount of skepticism into his single, polite cough.
She hung her head and sighed, banishing the memories of pale gray creatures with large eyes and poky instruments. “Ok. Whatever, Satan. Will it be easier to ride this thing with alien DNA?” Clarence neighed indignantly at being referred to as “this thing,” and Abigail shrugged at him apologetically.
“Not really.”
“Why should I believe you, Satan? Isn’t the sole purpose of your existence to obfuscate the thought process of humans?”
The clouds gathered in the direction of his voice. “Yes, but you’re an otter so you don’t have to worry.”
However, Abigail had grown cranky with the delay of her supper, and she interpreted the darkening sky as proof of Satan’s insincerity. The wild journey, the unexpected personal revelations, and the presence of a diabolical being were too much for her recently-altered mind and body, and her growling stomach was the last straw that caused her alien DNA to suddenly became activated. She shot a laser beam from her mouth and incinerated Satan, who, despite his demonic power, was an earthly being and susceptible to alien technology (aliens don’t believe in Satan, despite all those devil-worshiping reptilian underlord theories you may have read on the Internet). It was all a bit confusing, as she could not see Satan’s incorporeal form, but her special alien DNA confirmed that his supernatural life signals had abruptly terminated.
“I just killed Satan,” she marveled. “I wonder what else this DNA can do?” She set off to find out, and Clarence followed. She had grand adventures doing so, but they are for another tale. Suffice it to say that having thus upset the plans for the Apocalypse, for there can be no Apocalypse without the Prince of Darkness to orchestrate it, she was disowned by the other Horseman, who mourned their lost purpose in life. God was not especially perturbed at her actions, being benevolent and all-accepting of mortal free will, and He ignored the pleas of the other Horsemen to annihilate her soul in a fiery pit of sewage. Abigail and Clarence eventually settled in a small Italian villa, because endangered species in Wisconsin really do have special privileges that include unrestricted flight travel. She resumed her life of clam-cracking, heron-scaring, and oversleeping, but this time she had a charming horse friend to share in her joy. Clarence was relieved to be rid of his Apocalyptic duties, as he was not a war enthusiast and preferred to spend his time pondering the mysteries of the cosmos.
At times, Abigail thought of the aliens and wondered if they had foreseen these events, or if she was merely a discarded lab-rat who had fallen into this earth-shaking destiny. Regardless, she really liked Italian clams, so she couldn’t complain. Clarence eschewed the tears of the dying and bereaved and subsisted mainly on The Night, although he occasionally indulged in mortal fear without mentioning it to Abigail. There they lived out their days, happily.
THE END
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