In Pursuit of a Mule

By Morrigan Byalin

​Shortlisted for the 2026 "London" Literary Prizes in the International Prose category

Content warning: Self-harm, suicidal ideation

Our facility has recently purchased a donkey. This decision isn’t as wild as you might think considering we already have eight horses dispersed across four stables, which we are obliged to muck periodically as a way of building character. It is also our job to feed the horses bales of hay bound with cord, but we cannot cut these cords with scissors or any other sharp objects—those are the sorts of instruments we might use to kill ourselves. Instead, we must find a spare cord somewhere in the vicinity and use friction—the chafing of our discovered cord against the tightly bound cord—to burn open the horses’ meals. We do this twice a day every day, and in the Utah winter, our hands go numb inside our gloves, our breaths illuminated by the big lights mounted atop the stables, allowing us to see after dusk. The hay bales are heavy and flop like dead weight over the fencing.

Our facility wants a donkey for the purpose of making a mule, so they purchase one and name him Dennis.

Our facility has horses in the first place because they are allegedly psychic. Elias, who is a very tall white man with dreads long enough to tuck into his back pockets, explains to us during equine therapy that sometimes police departments use horses instead of lie-detectors. We take him at his word, even though it makes no sense. Are the horses in the interrogation room? Are they behind the two-way mirror slowly shaking their head, muttering, This guy’s full of shit?

Our facility does a lot of equine therapy. If the horse doesn’t trust you, it’s because you’re hiding something. After a private session with Elias, one of us might return and say something like, You guys, my horse bit me right where I used to self-harm, isn’t that crazy? And we will all say, Wow, that’s deep. But why the donkey? Why the mule? It’s just one of those things they do without explanation.

Our facility also has an apple orchard. We prune the apple trees and collect the apples and they sell those apples at local fairs. It’s just an activity we do. And then sometime during the week we go to individual therapy, and they ask us if we still feel like killing ourselves or doing meth or throwing up dinner. Or has all that apple-picking sorted us out?

Our facility procures Dennis for no reason other than the love of interspecies breeding, keeping him in his own small pen. They then methodically bring him into the stables with one of the four female horses to entice them to mate. This proves difficult as, even sequestered in their own pens, the male horses torment Dennis. The horses are all geldings, and they resent the new donkey for his intact balls. They reach their long necks across the fencing and take small, painful bites out of his hindquarters. Some sadist decides to put Dennis and one of the purportedly milder geldings together in the arena used for washing, riding, and group equine therapy. This is meant to encourage healthy male relationships. Instead, the horse chases the donkey around in circles, much like a cheetah pursues a gazelle, pausing briefly to catch his breath before starting up again. This is not the only way the geldings display their machismo. Keep in mind, horses are sterilized as colts, so they never have the chance to mate. Unlike humans, horses seek only to reproduce, and in the absence of their testes, they experience no sexual longing. The mares still go into heat, and they’ll sometimes interrupt equine therapy to find a post of suitable height and proceed to rub themselves against it until they are at last made to stop. It’s fun to imagine a mare police officer doing this while interrogating a suspect, the Chief of Horse Police shaking his head, dismayed— This is why I didn’t want females on the force.

Our facility has four male horses to match the four female horses, and one of them—a young buck named Popcorn—decides to mount the oldest horse, Tessa, in front of Dennis to teach him a lesson. He is not a skilled lover, and we wince every time his clumsy hooves thump against her brittle back. She’s just an old lady, we say. He’s going to kill her. But Elias assures us the mares are built for this. Popcorn tries to penetrate Tessa for the full two hours we are out by the stables rinsing the water troughs and cleaning the mud-caked spigots, but he never manages to get it in.

Our facility is all-female, which is probably a mistake. Weird things happen when we’re all cooped up and angsty and wishing just a bit that we were dead. Like one of us might be brushing a male horse’s coat until it has that fresh penny shimmer, and he’ll get all relaxed and pop a boner, and instead of ignoring it, the girl giggles and says, He’s wild about me, it’s so crazy, he always does this. And we’ll say, My God, girl, that is a fucking horse, but Elias will show up and flip his sandy blonde dreads and say, No it’s true, horses are very in tune with gendered energy, they can feel female presence, even human females. And we have no choice but to find this normal.

Our facility is next door to a family farm, and it is the only interaction we have with the outside world, and more importantly, boys our age. There are at least four brothers who are always out in the yard pushing wheelbarrows and carrying burlap sacks and hauling haybales. We have no idea what they grow on their farm. Maybe it’s just for fun. In the winter we don’t see them as much, and when we do, they’re wearing layers of winter coats and hats or even ski masks and we can’t tell them apart. They don’t even look like boys, just bundled-up Martians hobbling around in the snow. But in the summer, it’s different. In the summer it might be 103 degrees, and they’re out there sizzling until they burn, shirtless and shiny. Elias tries to redirect us to equine therapy, but it’s no use. We speak about the boys scientifically. Humans have pheromones just like horses, one of us might say. Boys smell different from girls. Do you remember what they smell like? Elias doesn’t count. And then one of us who is younger and less experienced might reply, We’re all humans; we smell basically the same. We stay by the fence and watch, and surely the boys see us watching. Who do they think we are? Do they wonder why there are there so many girls living on this glorified horse ranch/apple orchard? It’s Utah, so maybe they think we are sister wives. Or just the dozens and dozens of daughters of one prolific Mormon patriarch. Or maybe our facility was required by law to inform them they will be living next door to thirty-something crazy girls. If one tries to run, don’t worry, we will catch her.

Our facility is dismayed because most of the lady horses hate Dennis and don’t want his babies. They decide to give it a final try with Midnight, our largest horse. They leave them in the arena, and Midnight is polite about the whole affair, but there’s no chemistry. He’s so small compared to her, probably couldn’t reach her cooch if he tried. That’s why there are no mules in the wild. They are exclusively bred by men as beasts of burden. They are the best of both species: sure-footed, strong, intelligent, and calm. They require less feed and live longer, with strong stomachs and boxy, injury-resistant hooves. Their only flaw is their 63 chromosomes, which render them sterile. It takes a man to make a mule.

Our facility is fed up with the incel donkey and decides to geld him. It’s a wonder they don’t just sell him off to someone else in pursuit of a mule. They explain the situation to us as best they can. They’re going to cut off his dick, one of us says. No, they just cut off his balls, says another. Elias tells us there will be no chopping off of anything, the veterinarian will simply vacuum the donkey’s testicles out of his scrotum. Dennis is very forlorn in the days leading up to his procedure. He doesn’t eat, his hay bales untouched in the corner of his pen. It’s a shame equine therapy is so human-centric. What about horses and mules and donkeys who need counseling? It doesn’t help that some of us have decided to be mean to Dennis for inscrutable reasons. It might be due to a misguided sense of loyalty to the horses—the only creatures in this whole facility with whom we can speak honestly without fear of snitching or punishment. Maybe it is because the donkey can have sex and we can’t, and it’s like he doesn’t even care, is throwing it all away. Dennis needs rest to recuperate after his operation, standing in his squalid little pen, dried blood crusted along the insides of his hind legs like a first menstruation. He seems to tremble. He stares at nothing. And then one of us comes along, and reaches out and grabs ahold of his ear and gives is a little up and down and says, Wait, why does it kind of feel like a dick? We take turns pulling on it, and it should go without saying, but no it doesn’t. It’s a donkey’s ear. It feels nothing like a penis. We are bullying him (as much as one can bully a donkey), but try not to judge us too harshly. We’re not bad people.

Our facility is built for girls twelve to eighteen, and most of us are here having lived no life at all. Those of us who have lived have done so poorly, in a haze of drugs we barely enjoyed and sex we hated entirely. One day, we will be talking about these wasted years with a boyfriend or a girlfriend or a therapist or someone reading the first draft of our shitty memoir or a pilot for a tv show called The Facility and we will have to explain how boring we all are, that there isn’t anything exotically chaste about the young ones who stare over the fence wondering what boy smell is like up close or scandalously debauched about the older ones who already have body counts like Vietnam snipers and can’t decide on their drug of choice, but what the hell, heroin’s always a safe bet. We will spend the rest of our lives trying to prove the facility is the least interesting thing about us, but no one will believe it. It’s all anyone wants to hear about. A great joke. Tell it again. And that’s why we grab Dennis’s ear and jerk it off and say it’s like a dick, because we want to prove that we are this entire world outside the facility, that we existed before and we will exist after. We grab it and laugh and say, Ooh, ooh, ooh, look, I’m an adult! I’ve been alive for ages! I’m real! I’m as real anyone!
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But these are just excuses. We only think about ourselves. Like Dennis doesn’t matter. And he just lets us grab him, unflinching. That’s the gift of donkeys, their sturdiness, the hooves-planted-in-the-ground reliability they pass onto the mule. He’s been very brave through this whole ordeal. No one asked him if he liked those mares or if he wanted to be a father or if he wanted to keep his testicles. The others drift on, but I stay behind. Are you okay? I ask, but he doesn’t respond. It’s okay if you’re not. You can tell me. But he’s being stubborn. It’s in his nature. Life is too hard sometimes. Might not be worth it. But I’m glad you’re still here.

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​Morrigan Byalin received her MFA in Creative Writing (Fiction) from Boston University and is pursuing her PhD in English Literature at the CUNY Graduate Center. She is the recipient of the Leslie Epstein Global Fellowship, the Blanche Colton Williams Fellowship, the Audre Lorde Award, and the Mary M. Fay Award in Poetry. Her work is published in Bending Genres, the Lowestoft Chronicle, Spoon Knife Anthology, and elsewhere. Read more from her at morriganbyalin.com ​