The Cow and the Bull

He awoke to the cracking of ice. Startled, he quickly got to his feet and nearly fell backwards, realizing that he had been laying on a frozen pond. It took him a minute to survey his surroundings.

He was in a forest.

It was snowing. A 3 inch layer covered the ground. This tapered off near the pond, leaving a large indent in the ground.

Something about the forest’s lighting was strange. It was as if the forest floor was illuminating, but the trees wouldn’t catch the light. So he could clearly see, but the trees looked ominous and black. The source of the illumination, the moon, hung beautiful and bright in the otherwise barren sky.

Suddenly there was a noise from behind him, like a wet whistle and the crunching of compressing snow.

He spun around to see the shape of a cow appear from behind a tree, almost as if the tree hid some entrance to another place. The cow trudged forward at a slow, but even pace. He was instantly reminded of the saying “hanging on by a thread” when looking at the cow because it’s head was just that.

The cow’s head dangled by a thread of tissue. It dragged along the ground as the cow moved, slowly. Blood and viscera dripped and oozed from the nice cross section of the cow's neck. Her esophagus contracted, struggling for air in a weary, wet gasp that whistled ever so gently. The sight was horrific, and he almost puked staring at it. As the cow moved forward, toward him, it almost seemed as though the string of tissue connecting the neck and head would snap, but for its size it was impossibly strong and the head dragged on. Behind it, a trail of boiling blood was left in its wake, pooling and bubbling.

The cow began walking menacingly toward him. He wasn’t sure what to do, and he wasn’t sure what the cow could want with him. But he knew that letting the cow touch him could not be a good idea. He turned, and ran back across the pond, it cracking away at his heels. He only made it about 20 feet past the pond when he heard a much louder crack.

The cow was stepping on to the pond, and it’s weight seemed like it might already be too much. But then the blood trail hit the pond, and the ice instantly melted and boiled. The ice under the cow’s front left leg was first to go. It tried to scream, this time as a louder gasp and contracting of the esophagus and muscles. The ice melted strangely and created a jagged edge which the cow fell onto. Fresh blood pooled from where it stabbed, further melting the ice and sinking the cow even deeper into the watery abyss. 

While the cow sank, somehow the blood hadn't.  As though drawn to itself, it formed a red circle on the surface of the pond. After a few seconds, it began to bubble once more, boiling itself and the water surrounding, until a shape began to rise from the red pool. First horns, than an elongated head and finally a torso with four powerful legs, a blood soaked bull had risen from the blood pool.

The bull made direct eye contact with him, huffing. It was impossible to tell if the bull was coated in blood, or was simply made of it, either way, blood dripped down off of it in rivulets. Suddenly, it charged, closing the distance between them in seconds, and knocking him out once more.