What I Really Want...

by Jack deMule

"Hello, I'm Doctor Ingram. Please be seated while I review your application, ah, Mr. Frank Schnare, that's correct?

"Yes, that's me."

I must tell you Mr. Schnare, we've had many people apply since printing the advertisement in the paper. I've interviewed over a dozen candidates just this morning. So far we haven't found a suitable subject. We'd really prefer animal experimentation, but with the new law, we can only use human volunteers. Now, you know this is an experimental procedure. You may be seriously injured or even die. Almost without doubt, you will not have any recollection of your past, and the process will be irreversible. Do you understand?"

"Yes Doctor, I understand. The advertisement was quite explicit. When will I know if I've been chosen?"

"All the information on your application is in order, but there are a few more questions we need answered. We're concerned that many of the applicants have been, well, unstable. Have you ever been under a doctors care for any mental disorder?"

Frank smiled. "No, never."

"Ok, do you want to volunteer for an experiment that may end your life and will certainly result in you ceasing to exist? Your memories, all of what makes you the person you are now, will be gone."

"That's exactly what I want. The advertisement said I could choose what ever animal I want. I want to be a horse."

The Doctor smiled. Another horse, don't these people have any imagination, he thought. "A horse, would present no problems, but you still have not told me why you wish to undergo such a procedure."

"So the dreams would stop."

The Doctor wiped his glasses and sighed. "I was afraid of this." Then he regained his official manner. "We'll let you know if you've been selected, thank you for stopping in."

Frank stiffened in his chair. "You didn't ask me about the dreams. Don't you want to know about them, before you make your decision?"

The doctor looked resigned to listening to another rambling discourse, about how wonderful it would be to live out a dream of being this or that animal. His face looked like he had just smelled a dead fish. "Oh, very well."

"It's always the same, although the order is sometimes jumbled. Some people say that when you have a near death experience, your life flashes before your eyes. Mine does so every night, only it's always those things I'd rather forget.

A little girl's shoe in the gutter, right where it had been when she stepped off the curb, and into the path of a car. The dump truck driver crying, and inconsolable. The body of the nine year old boy that threw himself under the truck's wheels.

A young man of no more than twenty, laying in the dirt. A friend frantically trying to close the young man's sucking chest wound with his hands. The sight of his back turned into shredded meat.

My mother's cracked and bleeding mouth as she gradually died of bone cancer. My father's ashen complexion when he had his last heart attack.

The trusting look of my Siberian Husky as I cradled his head in my lap. The pink stuff that was injected in his leg, and how his passing was so gradual that the precise moment is undefineable.

There's a lot more, a lifetime's worth...

Yeah, I'd give up all that to become a horse. To think only of grazing and humping. Living in the present, and being content with it. Does that make me unstable?"

Doctor Ingram stared at his desk calendar, avoiding Frank's eyes. "No, no I don't think so. Are you sure this is what you want? There must be many wonderful memories too, of things you'd want to remember? What about your friends?"

Frank relaxed a bit and smiled. "Sure there were some good times I can recall. My friends? They have their own lives to deal with, they'll soon forget." There was a tinge of regret in his voice.

The Doctor gathered up his papers. "Very well, please come with me."

The Doctor's assistant helped Frank onto the table and administered the injection.

"One little shot? That's it?" Frank asked in amazement. "You know Doc I do feel kinda funny. You didn't tell me what kind of horse I'll be."

The Doctor leaned over the examination table so Frank could see him, and smiled. "A miniature horse to be sure, you only weigh 180 lb. You can't weigh more as a horse than you do as a human Mr. Schnare. It's not magic!" Frank's arms and legs began to change first. Soft brown hair sprouted from his skin. His neck lengthened a little, just as his hands and feet had fully transformed into hooves. "A mini, huh! That's ok. You know Doc, I really want..."

The Doctor and his assistant lifted Frank from the table and lowered him to the floor. They lead him to the barn where the research animals used to be kept.

The assistant looked puzzled. "Doctor Ingram, what do you suppose he wanted ?"

The doctor watched as the little horse dozed on a pile of hay. "A good night's sleep, the rest of the innocent, another chance? I don't know, I just hope he found it."

What I Really Want... copyright 1996 by Jack deMule.