Horse Girl Rides Again

by John Larkin

  She smiled at herself in anticipation of all the good things that were going to come her way with her appearance on Big Bother.

  22

  Rebecca only had a week to prepare herself for the special tween and teen celebrity edition of Big Bother. School was obviously out until Big Bother had finished. Did you need an education when you were famous? Did you even need a brain when you were famous? Surely the idea was to pay someone else to do your thinking for you. Paris Hilton and Jessica Simpson seemed to be doing okay and they didn’t appear to have a spare brain cell to bang together between the two of them.

  Rebecca shook her head. Had she really just thought that? What was happening to her? Was she turning more and more horse-like? Or was it the prolonged exposure to the back episodes of Big Bother that was causing her brain to shut down?

  When Rebecca had agreed to appear on the celebrity tween and teen edition of Big Bother, the producers had given her all the previous series on DVD. The more she watched, the more she realised what Bianca had been talking about on the final day of Saddle Soar filming. Big Bother was utterly pointless. By the time she watched the entire back series, she found it about as interesting as watching vomit congeal. The mindless droning of a bunch of mindless drones had almost driven her loopy. She could actually start to feel the intelligence leaking out of her head. In the end she’d trotted outside with the entire boxed set of Big Bother DVDs and hurled the lot into the wheelie bin, which the non-existent Kevin eventually tipped over.

  ‘Are you ready?’ called the marine biologist from the kitchen, interrupting Rebecca’s thoughts. ‘Your car will be here soon.’

  ‘Yes!’ shouted Rebecca from her bedroom. She looked at her reflection in her dressing-table mirror and adjusted the angle of her beret slightly. The producers had let her keep her dressing table from the Saddle Soar set.

  Following the end of Saddle Soar, Rebecca had shut herself in her bedroom and had spent a lot of time going over the information pack that the Big Bother producers had provided her along with all the old series. Fortunately she didn’t have to tax her brain by actually reading anything; all the information had come in a special DVD. She was actually quite shocked to discover where the idea for the show originally came from.

  Big Bother apparently took its name from a series of psychological experiments that occurred at the beginning of the 1900s. The experiments were conducted by none other than the legendary Austrian smartypants, Professor Dr Friedrich von Friedrich. Professor von Friedrich hypothesised that if you stuck a bunch of rats inside a sealed environment with very little external stimuli, then the rats would eventually turn on each other. He believed that such living conditions would be a ‘big bother’ for most of the rats involved in the experiment.

  At the end of his twelve-week experiment, Professor von Friedrich opened up the Big Bother cage to discover that there was only one rat left. No one was certain what exactly happened to the other rats. However, given that the winning rat was significantly larger than it was when it first entered the Big Bother cage, people had a few ideas as to the whereabouts of the missing rats.

  The winning rat’s fame spread throughout the world. Unfortunately, however, it had become so stupefied by its experiences in the Big Bother cage, that it was incapable of little else other than running around inside a wheel and eating cheese, or appearing on morning talk shows.

  Professor von Friedrich’s dying wish was that the world should learn from his Big Bother experiment. Not that it should be turned into reality TV.

  ‘The car’s here,’ called Mum.

  Rebecca picked up her bag with her teeth and clip-clopped down the hall. Her mum was peering through the curtains at the car and the crowd of neighbours gathering around it.

  ‘Could it be any bigger?’ said her mum. ‘It practically stretches into next week.’

  ‘Don’t!’ chided Rebecca. ‘You don’t have to peek through the curtains. You can come for a ride if you want.’

  ‘No thanks,’ replied her mum. ‘We marine biologists prefer aquatic modes of transport. Now if it had been an oceanic salvage vessel, or a deep-sea research cruiser, then you’d have to hold me back.’

  Rebecca rolled her eyes. Her mum clearly wasn’t about to let go of the marine biologist stuff. She was like a dog with a bone, or a shark with a seal.

  ‘Aren’t you going to wish me luck?’ asked Rebecca.

  Rebecca’s mum folded her arms. ‘Yes, well, good luck. Do your best. If this is what you want.’

  Rebecca and her mum stared at each other for a moment. Rebecca wanted to run to her mum and give her a hug and apologise for the way that she had behaved towards them all.

  ‘Thanks,’ said Rebecca. She tossed back her mane and trotted out the door.

  23

  Thousands of flash bulbs illuminated the late afternoon twilight as Rebecca’s limo eased its way through the throng of media at the entrance to the zoo. When the driver had successfully negotiated the media scrum, he drove Rebecca down towards the Big Bother auditorium and house, which were linked by a small bridge that the housemates would cross when they first entered the house and again when they were evicted.

  Rebecca squeezed herself out of the back of the limo. She felt a bit self-conscious about being a horse at the zoo, especially in her pink beret and dark sunnies. She caught her reflection in the limo’s window and suddenly felt a bit silly. Since Saddle Soar had finished and since Rebecca had watched the entire back set of Big Bother DVDs, she found that she no longer really cared about what Jasmine might think about things. Instead she found herself agreeing more and more with Bianca and how she looked at the world.

  Now that she thought about it, Rebecca realised that she would have been quite happy to stay at home and hang out with her family playing board games. But she’d agreed to appear on Big Bother and a deal was a deal. Besides, what was the old saying? ‘Any publicity is good publicity.’

  It was dusk at the zoo and she could hear all the other animals braying, screeching, screaming, grunting, squealing, snorting, bleating, gibbering, and generally being wild animals. She figured that it must have been feeding time. Then she realised that the zoo itself was deathly quiet. All the noise was actually coming from inside the Big Bother auditorium.

  Pandemonium erupted inside the Big Bother auditorium as Rebecca made her way down the aisle towards the stage, surrounded by five burly bodyguards.

  She didn’t realise it, but she was the last of the housemates to arrive. The producers had planned it that way because Rebecca was the biggest celebrity of all the tween and teen housemates.

  Rebecca clip-clopped her way up onto the stage and was met with a huge cheer. If Rebecca thought that she was famous for being herself then she was in for a bit of a shock. Most of the audience didn’t know her real name and instead yelled out, ‘Go, Ricky,’ ‘You’re cool, Ricky Dixie,’ ‘Can I have your autograph, Ricky?’ Rebecca also noticed that a lot of the placards that the audience were holding up didn’t actually mean anything: ‘Go, Whoever!!!!’ ‘I’m on TV, Mum!!!’ ‘The Housemates Rule!!!!’ ‘Go. Oh!!!’ ‘This! Is! Totally! Zango!’

  Rebecca shook her head. This was all getting a little too weird for her. This was coming from a 300-kilogram horse who was standing on the Big Bother stage wearing sunglasses and a pink beret.

  She looked at the screeching crowd. They cheered when the stage manager held up a sign that said ‘Cheer’, they applauded when he held up his ‘Applause’ sign. They screamed when he held up his ‘Scream’ sign. They even said, ‘Ahhh’, in unison when he held up a sign that said, you guessed it, ‘Ahhh.’ Rebecca wondered if the stage manager had a ‘Roll Over and Play Dead’ sign, or a ‘Give Yourself a Kick Up the Bottom for Being so Dumb’ sign. The audience might have resembled monkeys in the way they walked and screeched, but they were behaving like sheep.

  Rebecca thought back to what Bianca had said: ‘Just as the human race can go forwards, it can also go backwards. Sometimes you just have to ta
ke a stand.’

  The Big Bother host made his way down the line interviewing the housemates in turn. They were all really excited about the prospect of going into the Big Bother house. They believed that it would be a life-changing experience for them, and they were just, like, so totally in love with the whole world.

  ‘And here she is,’ said the Big Bother host as he checked his running sheet, ‘Rebecca Yallop. Or as we all know and love her: Ricky Dixie.’

  Rebecca waved at the bleating audience with her right hoof.

  ‘Tell me, Ricky . . . ’

  ‘It’s Rebecca,’ she corrected him.

  ‘Tell me, Ricky,’ continued the host. He glared at Rebecca as if warning her not to interrupt him again. ‘Tell me, Ricky, how does it feel to be the biggest celeb on tween and teen celebrity Big Bother?’

  Rebecca shook her head. No wonder Bianca had refused to appear on Big Bother. Now she understood what Bianca meant about the human race going backwards. Rebecca composed herself. She took a deep breath and looked at the audience. Bianca was spot on – sometimes you just had to take a stand.

  ‘How does it feel being the biggest celeb on tween and teen celebrity Big Bother?’ she replied after a time. ‘It feels completely pathetic.’

  Everyone in the audience cheered wildly. This wasn’t because they agreed with what Rebecca had said. They cheered because the stage manager had stuck up his Cheer sign. Besides that, Rebecca was famous and you just cheered when somebody famous said something. For all they knew Ricky Dixie (or Rebecca, or whoever she thought she was) could just as easily have said that the moon was made of Froot Loops and only shone on Tuesdays, and they would have gone just as wild. When celebrities spoke it wasn’t what came out of their mouths that mattered, it was the fact that they were saying something. And then of course there was that man with his signs.

  ‘You mean pathetically exciting?’ said the Big Bother host, who obviously didn’t have a clue what he was saying or how to adlib.

  ‘As a dear friend of mine, Bianca – though you all probably know her as Daniela – once said . . . ’ At the mention of Daniela’s name, the audience started booing and hissing and jeering and gibbering. A couple of them even started throwing food at each other. Banana skins mostly, Rebecca noticed.

  ‘Oh grow up, you dolts!’ snapped Rebecca at the audience. ‘You are a bunch of gibbering, gormless animals. And that’s being grossly unfair to the animals.

  ‘Well, Bianca once said to me, “Just as the human race can go forwards, it can also go backwards.” I didn’t really understand what she meant at the time, but now I do.’

  Everyone in the audience kept smiling and waving their placards. They didn’t really know what Ricky Dixie was going on about – something about the world going back in time or something – but they figured if they kept smiling and waving hard enough, well then they just might appear on TV.

  ‘So,’ said the Big Bother host after a pause, ‘are you excited about joining your fellow housemates in the Big Bother house?’

  Rebecca turned to the host, shook her head and snorted. Then she reached into her pocket and pulled out some money, which was really difficult to do with hooves, even though she had been practising.

  ‘Here,’ she said. ‘Here’s twenty cents. Go and buy yourself and the rest of the audience a brain cell. And you,’ Rebecca stared down the barrel of the camera to the millions watching at home. ‘Do your mind a favour. Turn this rubbish off!’ And with that Rebecca clip-clopped down the auditorium steps where she was immediately mobbed by her braying, screeching, screaming, grunting, squealing, snorting, bleating, gibbering fans.

  24

  Rebecca crept quietly up the front steps to her house. Although it was quite late she could hear laughter coming from inside the house. The fossils let her and Kevin stay up late on Saturday night to watch a movie or play board games, so obviously Kevin had been allowed to stay up, though she hoped it wasn’t to watch the live cross as the Big Bother housemates entered the house.

  The Big Bother producers hadn’t allowed Rebecca to take the limo. Instead they’d had Rebecca escorted out of the zoo and had given her the bus fare home.

  She wanted to stay out on the patio a bit longer to enjoy the sound of her family laughing inside. But the security sensor had detected her arrival and because her dad had hooked it up to a disco light, it began to whir and flash and spin, and was starting to give her a headache.

  Rebecca opened the front door and clip-clopped over the polished wooden floorboards and into the kitchen. Her marine biologist mother, vulcanologist father and non-existent little brother looked up from the Cluedo game that they were playing on the breakfast bar. The TV sat black and glum in the corner of the lounge room. Rebecca was glad to see that they weren’t watching Big Bother.

  ‘Well, this is a surprise,’ said the marine biologist. ‘You’re lucky to catch me. I just got back from spoonfeeding a baby dolphin its Weet-Bix.’

  ‘You don’t feed dolphins Weet-Bix,’ said Rebecca.

  Mum picked up the die and threw a four. She moved her piece to the entrance of the garage. ‘Who’s the marine biologist?’ she said. ‘You or me?’

  ‘What are you doing here?’ asked Kevin. ‘If you can hear me, that is.’

  ‘I can hear you,’ said Rebecca. ‘I’m sorry about all that. It all kind of went to my head a bit, I guess.’

  ‘You think?’ said Kevin sarcastically as he threw a two on the die and moved his piece towards the cubbyhouse, where he reckoned the garbage truck driver had done it with a set of barbecue tongs – Dad had modified their version of Cluedo slightly to make it more realistic.

  ‘So,’ asked the vulcanologist. ‘What happened?’

  ‘You obviously didn’t watch the Big Bother live cross,’ said Rebecca.

  ‘I think we’ve had enough TV for a while,’ said the marine biologist. ‘Don’t you?’

  ‘Sit down,’ said the vulcanologist. ‘I’ll make you a mug of hot chocolate.’

  Rebecca plonked herself down on the floor next to the breakfast bar. She looked at the Cluedo game that was in progress. She reckoned that the postman had done it in the shed using a whipper snipper.

  ‘Just a sec,’ said her non-existent little brother. He reached into the Cluedo box and pulled out a game piece. ‘You can be red.’

  Rebecca gratefully took the piece in her mouth and placed it on the board. She had a bit of making up to do. ‘Thanks,’ she said.

  ‘Don’t mention it, horse face,’ said Kevin. He poked his tongue out at her.

  Rebecca swallowed the knot in her throat and sniffed back a tear. She’d behaved terribly towards her family when she’d been famous yet now it was all over they were happy to forgive her and make her hot chocolate and hand her Cluedo pieces.

  She couldn’t believe how lucky she was. Well, apart from being turned into a 300-kilogram horse by a Dingaling Brothers’ Big Top, Flying Monkeys and Sea Slug Circus Extravaganza sideshow freak, that is.

  ‘Your turn, horse girl,’ said Kevin. ‘Try not to get drool all over the board.’

  Rebecca smiled at Kevin. Happy to be back. Yeah, she was one lucky horse all right.

  She scooped up the die into her mouth, rolled it around with her tongue and spat out a six.

  25

  Rebecca trudged on through the snow that now came all the way up to her knees, or rather, the place on her legs where her knees, would have been if horses actually had any. The dreadful wind howled, thrashed and screamed about her like a dreadful howling, thrashing and screaming thing. A loose flap from her horse-sized tracksuit cracked and whipped like the spinnaker of a racing yacht caught at sea in a gale.

  The going was slow. Painfully slow. But she had to keep moving. If she gave up now she would just lie down and the snow would bury her alive in minutes. That would be some discovery in years to come. Especially way up here. Rebecca could imagine a group of palentologists palitentologsts those-people-who-dig-up-bones-for-a-living standing around
and scratching their heads. ‘Now how do you suppose a horse got up here? And is that a tracksuit it’s wearing?’

  Rebecca shook her head and tried not to panic. Hadn’t she read somewhere that people who got hypothermya hyperthmia hypothermmmia really, really cold started having silly thoughts – or became the worsest spellaz? Or else they believed that they were getting hot and would take off some of their clothes and roll around in the snow to cool down.

  She had to stay focused. Keep her mind alert.

  ‘How are you feeling, Kevin?’

  ‘Oh, duh!’ replied Kevin. ‘Would you believe I’m a bit chilly?’

  Rebecca smiled. She hadn’t heard Kevin complain about the cold for ages and she was starting to get worried. At least by trudging on through the snow she was moving: keeping her body temperature up, her blood circulating. She was worried that with Kevin just lying on her back like a sort of saddle, he might drift off to sleep and never wake up again. Okay, he was snuggled down deep inside his sleeping bag. But that sleeping bag of his was designed for camping out in the back garden, not trekking through a blinding sub-zero blizzard high up in the Himalayan Mountains.

  ‘C’mon, Kevin,’ Rebecca yelled; but her voice was swallowed by the swirling tempest.

  She turned her head around to face her little brother, which is a rather neat trick that horses can do. ‘You’ve got to stay awake. Remember what happened to Jack in that Titanic movie? He fell asleep in the freezing water and when Rose woke up he was dead. Had to practically pry his fingers off her with a crowbar to get rid of him, she did.’

  ‘I don’t care what you say,’ Kevin replied. ‘There was enough room on that lump of wood for both of them. It was huge.’