alittlepoison

You will see that the Trojan Horse has been brought inside the gates of your city. Its surface will be as dry as bone. If you touch it the white powder would stick to the moisture of your hands, as if it were paint. Horrified, you would frenetically rinse it from your hands as if a man had whispered to you that it was a carcinogenic. As you would wash your hands they would bleed a little. So you will stand at a distance and not touch it.

What you will not know is that as the outside of the Trojan Horse is dry, the inside is wet with alcohol. Like the centre of the Earth, inside the preserved, pickled bodies of the Trojans slump, their wet eyes open. Silently they will roll on each other as the Trojan Horse moves forward and away.

Another time the Trojan Horse will be wearing a thin, blue suit. The face will be the same, and this will be outside of a restaurant where people are eating and dancing. You will have eaten alone, and will be drinking cognac. He will be making a woman laugh. On a table across the way, you will not be close enough to hear the conversation, but you will have heard him say the word “erection”. The woman will laugh, and he will then lead her to where the music is played and dance in circles with her around the dead arboretum.

You will be drunk, and you will do something very foolish. You will ask the waiter to bring him a drink. The waiter, who will extinguish a splint after lighting the sickly candle in the orange glass jar will laugh and touch your shoulder. He will walk under the vines and inside, and after some drunken minutes you will see him approach the Trojan Horse, who will now be sitting between the woman and another similar woman, perhaps a sister. With a small bow the drink will be presented on its silver tray - it is a cognac - and with a small movement of the head the waiter indicates that it is you who has paid for it.

He looks at you. His equine face drops a little, as if he were pulling you into focus. His lips will curl into a smile. A hoofed hand will lift the drink and he will nod at you without blinking.

The Trojan Horse is terrifying because he is drunk, because he carries the dead, because he himself is dead. In your drunkenness, in the clichéd gesture of the drink, in the physical distance between you and he, he impresses you. He is dangerous because he acts without consequence. He is dangerous because he likes you.

He will be at the window of a room you will know is not his. You will see him from the street as you return to where you sleep. Behind the orange of the curtains his horse face will twist into something of a smile.