Date Night: Short Stories

On Attaining One's Childhood Dreams

He was a man who had always dreamt of centaurs. Ever since he was a small boy, he had longed to run free like a horse, while retaining the soul and mind of a man. Even when he came of the age to wear a toga, this dream did not fade away. It still burnt in his heart, sustaining him through his day to day life.
He had always passed off his dream as unattainable, something that could never come to pass. But this day was different. Instead of hurrying past the temple, as though trying to avoid the gods, he slipped inside. As he walked through the hallowed sanctum, he gazed in awe at the mighty columns towering up into the nothingness above him, and smelt the pungent resin of incense.
When he reached the small altar at the far end of the building he reached into his money pouch. Pulling out a few silver coins, he set them on the pile, lit by a pair of flickering, smoking oil lamps. The man bowed his head for a while, one thought consuming his mind: all he wanted was to become a fusion of man and steed, a human-equine hybrid. As he left the temple a vague sense came to him that his wish would be granted as he awoke tomorrow morning. He could not explain this, but it somehow seemed right.
That evening, he went to bed early, hardly daring to hope for what tomorrow morning could bring. He doused the oil lamp and lay down, and found he could not sleep. Only many hours of tossing and turning exhausted him enough that he could slip into a weary slumber.
The next morning, he awoke, conscious only of blurred confusion, then a uncomfortable pressure inside him, building to a sharp pain. This did not last for long: he blacked out after only a few seconds. Blood trickled from his mouth onto his sheets, and his skin bulged grotesquely as he lay there. It started to stretch and tear, revealing his viscera, spilling them slowly, oozingly, onto his now stained and sodden bedsheets.
The capricious gods had given him his wish, in a twisted way: the outsides and bones of a man, but all the internal organs of a horse.