The Horses

Horrie

Horrie Short for Horrace, or Horrible AKA Black Regent, an old racehorse. He’s black, with a huge coffin head, big white blaze, always skinny, can’t put on weight and full of aches and pains. He’s big and gangly with a long body and sway back and a thin mane and tail. He has four white socks.

He’s very scatty and highly strung, always seeing monsters in the shadows, tends to ramble on for hours about his past moments of glory. Horrie won a few races in the city as a youngster and is now owned by an old fellow who trains him and takes him to small country race meetings. He’s always right up near the winners but doesn’t ever quite make a place.

His owner, Bugsy Brady (he’s got pop eyes) is always trying different remedies to get him “right” and they can be seen nearly every dawn, exercising along the sandy track that runs beside the creek. Sometimes Bugsy takes him to the beach for a swim and this is always an enormous trial for Horrie, who, no matter how many times he goes through them, is always petrified at first by the white lines of waves advancing towards him. Sometimes Bonnie and Sam massage him on their way home from school and he always goes to sleep.