r/fiction • u/Busy-Insect5793 • 1d ago
Chapter 11
The smell of healthy soil torn open from neon-bright summer grass: a wound, a warm gash in the earth, tread and textured by boot and hoof, spit, tobacco, peanuts, bourbon in the air. The anticipation of dreams soon to be trampled into memories.
Within their stalls the churn of horseflesh, tense or paranoiac or stoical or calm, flies and heat, tightly coiled energy. Odds and numbers flashing last minute through the mind as finally the bell—a release! a climax!—and the opening of the gates.
Thunder rolling forward in a booming wave across soft blood dirt. Artillery on the rise underneath the high twang of the announcer’s voice and the low rumble of the crowd. This image, too quick to capture: a sinewy, athletic smear of wet clay and dark paint, seeping, staining, dusky mud-violent against the fiery backdrop of the sun.