[fiction] The Unicorn Man

heaven is a place on Earth with you

tell me all the things you wanna do

Jonny did not like his new home.  Mommy and Daddy lost their jobs to the poor Chinese people packed into the factories, the poor Chinese people that went to jail if they didn't work hard enough.  Then the bank people came and took the home away.

They moved from Springfield to a new village called Occupy and they lived in a tent.  Occupy was smelly, and there were no houses or lawns; only concrete and tents and people that smelled funny and talked like the bum near the drugstore in Springfield.  Mommy and Daddy spent a lot of time talking to people about how the world should be.

Jonny met a girl named Callista.  Callista's older brother sometimes bought them lunch, which was good because Jonny was hungry a lot.  It was also not good, because Callista's brother couldn't talk about anything else except why the president was bad and how he had worked so hard to get his job and the poor people should just shut up and work hard.  After all, he had worked hard for his good job.  And then something about welfare.

Jonny told his parents what Callista's brother said.  They taught him to say "structural unemployment" and "inflation" like he was some kind of parrot.  Jonny didn't know what they meant but those words made Callista's brother real mad.  He asked who Jonny's parents were voting for, and he said "Paul."

"Paul?  You mean Ron Paul?  Get out of here!"

Callista's older brother stopped buying him lunch.  That was okay, though, because someone more interesting moved into town--next door in fact:  the unicorn man.  The unicorn man was not like the others.  He didn't talk much and he didn't care if anyone liked him, and he never told people how the world should be.

Jonny called him the unicorn man because he had a funny looking mask, which he wore flipped up on his head like a hat.  The way it stuck out made him look like a unicorn.   The man had appeared in camp with that mask, a large shield with the word "POLICE" written on it, and a tank in his hand.  Jonny's parents said he was not the police, though.  Jonny's parents told him to stay away from the unicorn man.  Jonny waited until they weren't looking and and ran up to him.

"Hi!  I'm Jonny."

The unicorn man looked up from the book he was reading.  "'Sup kid."  He smiled briefly and nodded, then went back to his book.

"What's in your tank?"

The man glanced at him, trying to decide whether indulging or ingoring  would be the least annoying, and settled on indulging.  No one else wanted to talk to him anyway.  "Fire," he said.

Jonny's eyes went wide.  "Are you serious?"

" 'Called a flamethrower."

"Are you going to set people on fire?"

"No.  What?  No.  I use it to make people keep their distance.  No one gets hurt unless they get too close."

"My mommy says you're not a real cop."  Upon hearing her name, his real mommy rushed over to pull Jonny away from the unicorn man.

Jonny played just outside the tent but always tried to keep the Unicorn man in view.

A day or two later, Monny and Daddy were very nervous.  Something bad was coming.  They told him there was nothing to worry about, but they were lying.

It started with screams.  No, actually it started when Mommy and Daddy didn't come back from talking to the people in the suits.  They were trying to explain to them how the world should work.  They took a lot longer that day, because the sun went down and still they never came back.  Then the screams started.

The walkie-talkie next to the unicorn man suddenly started shouting directions, like "Fire team three to bridge street!  Fire team one to north side!"

Jonny ran to the unicorn man.  "Who's Fire Team?" he asked.

The unicorn man smiled.  "I am."  He pulled the mask down over his face and stood up.  Every move was steady and deliberate, like a cowboy from the movie.  The mask made him look like a bug, a big bug man with giant circles near his mouth.  Next, the unicorn man took the shield and fixed it on his arm, and then started attaching things to the tank he had.

There was a lot of commotion near the edge of Jonny's new home town.  Jonny ran to the edge of the tents but no farther, because he wasn't allowed to step off the side walk.  There were lots of people moving, but most of them were standing and staring.  There was shouting.  People dressed in black with white letters were shouting at them with bullhorns, and the people dressed in normal clothes were shouting back.  Then suddenly he smelled something awful and his eyes teared up.  He doubled over, feeling sick.

Someone grabbed his arm and lifted him up, dragging him away from the smell.  Jonny looked up.  It was the unicorn man.  He had a shield on his arm and a tank on his back.

"Stay clear of the fight, kid," was all the man said.  Then he walked away, towards the men in black with white letters.  People were screaming and running and the men in black were advancing with clubs raised.  Then a bright flicker of orange shot out from the unicorn man and they paused.  The orange appeared again, but this time in a long, bright arc that waved back and forth, licking their shields like a giant tongue.  The men in black backed and ran;  their lines broke.

More unicorns with flames joined the Unicorn Man, and there were more arcs of flame licking the men in black.

The men in black were beating someone with clubs.  The unicorns scared them off with their flames and dragged the man to safety.  The man was Jonny's Dad!

Jonny ran to him, ignoring the stinging.  His tears were washing it all away anyway.  Jonny gripped his fathers shirt, and vomited.  The bad smell was bad.  His Dad grabbed Jonny and held him close.

The unicorns didn't attack the men in black, even though they could have;  they just held the line.  Occasionally groups of the men in black rushed the unicorns, but every time they were beaten back with fire.  Then, suddenly, a whole horde of them rushed in from all angles.  All of the unicorns when down on one knee and suddenly the little arcs of flame became a giant torrent of fire so large you couldn't even see the men inside.  The men in black scampered back, rolling and trying to pat out the flames on their pants.

The siege continued for what seemed like the longest time to Jonny.  The men in black brought fire trucks and tried to drown the unicorns, but the unicorns hid behind their police shields, and somewhere else people with bandanas on their faces like cowboys opened up the hydrants to let all the water out.

Then the unicorns started running out of fire.  One of them retreated to grab another tank, but the bad men started rushing his friends and he came back before it was ready and they got him;  they bashed him in the head with their sticks and dragged him on the ground.  His head left a trail of red as they went.

Then Callista appeared from the other direction.  She brought her older brother, who pulled Jonny's Dad's arm around his shoulder and helped the man limp.

"Your mommy's in the hospital!" said Callista, "I saw them putter inna ambulance on the tv."

Jonny followed them to safety, but he turned around for one last look at the Unicorn Man.  The man was easy to pick out;  he was younger and thinner than the others, and he stood his ground, thrashing through fire and water and screaming back at the bad men.

Callista and her brother led them to the other end of the village, where unicorns were protecting the subway level.  The flames must have been extra powerful down in the tunnels, because none of the men in black were there.

"I can't believe it!  I just can't believe it," said Callista's brother as they walked,  "they shouldn't be using that kind of tear gas!  That shit can kill children!  What the fuck were they thinking?"

Jonny looked up at the older boy, saw him shaking his head under the flickering flourescent lights.

"Just awful," the boy continued.  "This is Obama's fault!"


Twenty years later:


John B looked down at his camera, tracing the cracked flame stickers on the plastic.  All of his friends said the flame stickers looked gay but he didn't care.  The small plane he was in hit a pocket of misbehaving air and lurched, jarring John out of his thoughts.  He looked up at his girlfriend.

Callista was lounging behind the wheel in a headset and a pair of aviators, taking just a moment to glance down at her map.  John thought she looked a lot like the girl pilot in Aliens.  Suddenly the radio squawked:

"Piper 3-3-1-2-alpha turn immediately to heading two, four, zero.  You are entering a no fly zone.  Turn immediately-"

The radio cut off when Callista flipped a switch.  "Everybody's in on it," she sighed.

John looked down at the ocean.  They were low enough to see the oil in the water and on the beach, and the checkpoints where the national guard were stationed to keep people away from the spill--to keep cameras away from the spill.  Everybody with money knew what kind of damage the right picture could do, so everybody with money was making sure no one with a camera got close to the spill.  The soldiers kept cameras off the beach, the coast guard kept them out of the water, and the FAA was keeping them out of the air.  But the FAA wasn't prepared for the flaming cameraman and his suicidal pilot girlfriend, just like the "men in black" had been unprepared for the Unicorn Man.

"You ready Jonny-boy?  The jets are comin.  We're only gonna get one pass at this."

John nodded, popping the cover off of the lense.  He tried to keep his smile to himself--this was heaven for him.

Suddenly Callista grabbed his shirt and pulled him close and kissed him, then shoved him back in his seat.  Then, in an action that was far more violent, she pushed the stick forward and put the small plane into a dive.  "We got clear air so Imma push it to 128 and then do a hard right..." she was going off with that pilot jabber again, but John was too busy white-knuckling the dashboard to listen.  "...so have that camera ready over the right wing," she finished.  The black-and-blue sea filled the entire windshield.

Then the plane spun, and his stomach sank, Callista jammed the throttle in and then another roll and more sinking stomach and all of a sudden, out of his window, he saw a seal choking on oil.  He raised the camera and started clicking.