Night of the Unicorn

Note:One night I was driving home in the rain and fog and saw a white creature standing on the bank. I told my husband I saw a unicorn and of course was laughed at. Later I found out there was an albino deer in the area and later saw it in the daylight. The other day I saw something white again the woods and recalled the unicorn theory. Thus a story was born.


The day the doctor told me the treatments weren't working, I wasn't surprised. It was hard to come back from stage four breast cancer. I thanked him for all his help and reconciled myself to finishing my life with dignity. I drove home slowly through the steady rain, wary of the heavy fog that was moving in and covering the road like a blanket.

As I turned into my driveway and glanced over at the woods, something white caught my eyes. I slowed down even more, eventually coming to a full stop. There on the bank stood a white horse with pink eyes that stared into my headlights.

I couldn't be sure of what I was seeing. The fog floated in and out, obscuring the animal. Even so, I could clearly see its white body, legs, and glorious long mane. Then when it lowered its head, I saw a black horn that touched the ground. I squeezed my eyes shut for a second. When I looked again, the unicorn was gone, lost in the rain and fog. I was alone again, wondering if my medication was causing me to see things.

The next day I was helping my older sister box up her things for the move to a nice living-assisted facility in town. Ever since her husband had died ten years ago, she'd been living with me. Now that I was dying, she had to find a new home. My children would be selling my house to pay the medical bills. I told her about the creature in the woods.

"White unicorn? Not likely, dear. I do believe you might have seen that albino deer the neighbor was telling us about last year. He said the head and half the body was white, but the back half and legs were brown. Speckled-like. That's probably what you saw, Harriet."

I mulled over her explanation. "I suppose you are right, Jane, and yet it seemed so real. You used to teach folklore at the university. What does it mean to see a unicorn?"

Harriet taped a box shut. "Well, that would depend on which culture you are talking about. Did you know the unicorn is mentioned seven times in the Bible? It was the first animal given a name by Adam. After the fall of man, it  followed Adam and Eve out of the Garden of Eden. Its compassion for humans made it white. During medievel times. unicorns were said to show themselves at times of peace and prosperty. They also were seen before the death of a great leader, leading them to a blessed eternity."

I stacked her box with the others by the door. "Then I would prefer to believe I saw a unicorn rather than some flower-eating deer," I told her. I heard her laughing in the living room. She suddenly stopped and called my name. I came back into the living room where she was standing by the large picture window and pointing out into the yard.

I moved to her side and looked outside. Where the yard ended and the trees began, a white creature stood half hidden in the brush. It was tall, resembling a horse. Its head was covered by the leaves of a tree.

"I told you I saw a unicorn," I said to Jane. "What do you see? "

She shook her head. "I'm not sure. What I can see of it looks like a white horse. Maybe it got loose in the woods and people are looking for it right now. We should call someone."

The creature moved away in the woods. I thought I saw a glimpse of a black horn on its head, but didn't mention it to Jane. She wouldn't believe me. Jane went back to her packing. Her daughter was coming that afternoon to pick her up and take her to her new home. I would be left to fight the cancer alone and to the bitter end.

After Jane left and all the good byes were done, I got into my car to drive to the lawyer's office where I had an appointment to sign final papers. I was heading down the driveway when suddenly the car swerved to the right as though I had no control. I screamed as the car charged into a large oak tree, and my head flew into the windshield. When I came to, I was outside the burning car lying in the wet grass. I crawled on my knees to get away from the heat of the car. When I looked up, I saw the unicorn again. It stood over me, its sad eyes gazing into mine. I stood up, my body stiff and painful. I looked back at the car and wondered how I had escaped the burning inferno. It didn't matter now. I felt suddenly free from my earthly worries. I reached out and touched the unicorn. It turned and let me rub the white fur on its back. Immediately all the pain in my body evaporated. The unicorn began walking down the driveway which was bathed in a bright white light. The world seemed to fall away as I walked beside the unicorn into paradise.

Insomnia

Note: This week's prompt is insomnia, a chronic condition I have been struggling with for four years now. The story just came to me (anywhere from 1:30 am to 4:30 when I seem to be up almost every night).

Night One: When the clock struck two am, I finally gave up the struggle to sleep and admitted defeat. I threw back the covers and found my socks on the floor. Then I slipped my bathrobe over my pajamas and got up. I moved around the dark room of my bedroom, stretching out my sore back. I wandered over to the window and pulled back the curtain. Just as the weatherman had predicted, snow flakes were falling fast and furious, covering the sidewalk below my apartment. I glanced across the street where a streetlamp illuminated the white storm and was surprised to see a man standing next to the pole. He was wearing a black leather jacket and matching ball cap. When he turned around, I saw he was smoking a cigarette, the smoke lost in whirls of white snow that floated around him.

I recognized him at once. He was Ned Green, owner and pastry chief at the Morning Sunflower Pastry Shop one block over. We often spoke when I came by everyday to buy muffins for the office.  I wondered why he was standing there at this time of night, all alone, with the snow piling up around his tennis shoes. He had to be cold. For a moment, he lifted his eyes and seemed to look directly at me standing at the dark window. I felt goosebumps rise on my arms and backed away from his glance. I knew he couldn't see me, but I still felt like I needed to hide behind the curtains. Finally, I got tired of watching him stand there and moved to the chair beside my bed. I flicked on the light and reached for my book. Later, when my eyes finally got tired, I decided to try the bed again. After I turned off the light, I returned to the window and discovered that Ned was gone.

The next morning, I walked to the Morning Sunflower Shop to collect my usual muffins and coffee. I was shocked to find the place closed with a note taped to the door saying that there had been a death in the family. They would be closed until after the funeral of Ned Green.

I saw Julie, my favorite waitress, inside the shop so I pounded on the glass. She came and unlocked the door. I could see her eyes were red from crying.

"What happened? I saw Ned standing under a streetlamp late last night in the snow. What was he doing there?"

Julie looked at me, puzzled. "Couldn't have been Ned, Donna. He was in Philadelphia last night visiting his sick mother at the hospital. He was killed this morning on his way home on Highway 63. His car was hit by a tractor trailor."

Again I felt the goosebumps. I went on to work, wondering if I had been hallucinating from the lack of sleep. It couldn't have been Ned. It had to be someone who looked like Ned, waiting for ride, I reasoned.

Night Two: The next night I managed to make it to three o'clock before I found myself staring up at the dark ceiling. I sat up, cursing my life and my body. I had tried all the drugs and nothing would put me under for long. My brain had long ceased to recognize night time. I was sentenced to endless day. While others slept soundly in their beds, I was awake with racing thoughts. Like the night before, I got up and wrapped my bathrobe around me. I moved to the window.

The snow was gone, the cold front now over Maine. It was cool, crisp night with a bright half moon overhead. I glanced at the streetlamp below and was surprised to see a woman leaning against the pole. She was dressed in a long black trenchcoat and brown boots, her purse dangling from her arm. I knew her immediately. It was Jean from the office. She worked in the cubicle next to mine and lived across town. She looked at me standing in the window, and I shivered from the imaginary cold.

I shook my head to clear it. Was I asleep or awake? She couldn't be there. It made no sense. I reached up to unlock my window, but the clasp was stuck tight. I went to the kitchen to find my hammer, but when I got back, she was gone. I never went back to sleep.

The next day when I got to work, I went first to Jean's desk. She hadn't arrived yet. Hours went by, and I kept checking but she never showed up. Finally, the supervisor came, called us together, and told us Jean had died in apartment fire that morning. I dropped my coffee cup, shattering it into a million pieces. Everyone looked at me as I jabbered on about seeing her last night outside my apartment.

"You do know how strange that sounds, Donna, don't you?" the supervisor said. "You must have dreamed it."

I wanted to tell him I didn't dream because I never slept. Instead, I went back to my desk and took an aspirin.

Night Three: I sat straight up in bed at twelve midnight. A whole three hours had passed since I turned out the light so I was disappointed when I looked at the clock. I had an overwhlming urge to throw it against the wall.

Eventually, I got up and went to the window, fearing the worst. It was another dry, but cold February night. Clouds blocked the moon. The wind whipped dead leaves and loose paper wrappers around the light pole across the street. I was relieved to see that no one stood there. A car drove by, and I watched  its taillights disappear down the road.

Out of the shadow of the alley walked my neighbor one floor down, John Bingham and his wife. They were dressed in their pajamas, his wife pulling their four-year-old son Sammy who was barefoot along the pavement. They stopped at the streetlamp and stared up at me at the curtain. Sam had a teddy bear in his arms.

I wanted to scream. This couldn't be happening again. No more death! I raced to find my apartment keys and flew out the door. I ran down the steps and pounded on Apt. 4B with my fists. No one came to the door, but I continued to beat on the door and yell their names. An old woman opened the door down the hall and threatened to call the police.

"Please do!" I hollared back. "Something is wrong.  Call 911!"

When the police arrived, they pulled me away from the door. One of the officers forced the door open,  and we all smelled gas. While I and the other tenants were shuffled outdoors into the cold to await the firetrucks, the police carried out the unconscious Bingham family one by one. I craddled little Sammy in my arms, trying to keep him warm.

"You saved them," the officer told me. "They would have died. How did you know the stove was leaking gas?'

I couldn't explain it without them thinking I was crazy. "Maybe I smelled the gas in my sleep."

The next day I returned to my apartment after work. The gas leak had been fixed, and the tenants cleared to return. Neighbors told me the Binghams were recovering in hospital and would be alright. I turned in after watching the ten o'clock news  and lay once again in my bed wondering who would be standing under the streetlamp tonight. But I never looked. Instead, I rolled over and slept the sleep of the dead.

The Blue Sky

Note: This is an example of prompt writing. I am using "Is the sky really blue?" that a fellow at a diner asked my husband and a Lowe's commercial where he said "All you need is a hacksaw." The background for the story is a previous story I wrote called "The Story of Jimmy Evans" which is on my web site and was the result of finding a whole saw laying on the sidewalk in NYC and finding a soccer ball in the grass of the Irish Famine Memorial. Crazy, yes, I know. Impossible? Not at all.

The Blue Sky

After three hours of talking, serial killer and death row inmate Jimmy Evans took a break. I looked up from my notes that would finally finish my doctorate degree in violence and trauma at NYU and saw Jimmy stretching his arms as far as his shackles would allow. He was surprisely upbeat for a man facing execution soon. Jimmy showed no signs of stress, joking with the prison guard and laughing at my attempts to make my recorder work. He was only twenty-nine and should have been working a job and starting a family like regular folks. Instead, he was locked up and charged with thirty-two murders. That was the official count anyway. He'd already confessed to me that he had begun his serial killing career by hacking up his soccer coach and staging a fatal accident for his mother. That would bring the number to thirty-four. I saw book possibilities.

"Anything else you want to tell me before we wrap up for the day, Jimmy?" I asked him while he finished his Coke. He took some time to answer, savoring the treat, and then set the can down.

"Nah, I'm good. Say, is the sky still blue?"

I frowned, puzzled. Jimmy was nothing, if not cryptic. "It was when I got here? Why?"

Jimmy leaned forward, his chains rattling. "Write this down. 1435 McCarthy Street East, Brooklyn. My old childhood home. I hear the bank put it up for sale since I stopped making the payments. You should have a look at my old haunt. It would make a great picture for this book you mentioned. Give you some insight."

"Sure Jimmy," I told him, still thinking about the blue sky comment. "What kind of insight would I be looking for in an empty house?"

He laughed, then motioned the guard he was ready to leave. As he shuffled to the door, he turned and looked back at me gathering my notes.

"You'll know it when you see it."

The next morning I arranged to meet the realtor at Jimmy's house and took a cab to Brooklyn. The old brick townhouse was in a nice neighborhood with trees lining the sidewalk. A large "For Sale" sign hung on the stair railing near the front door. Jean, the realtor, was busy adjusting the sign when I walked up.

We shook hands, chatted a minute, and then proceeded into the house. I snapped pictures as we went through the hall. She pointed out we were not alone in the house. Painters were slapping a coat of yellow paint in living room while plumbers were replacing the rusted pipes and leaky water heater in the basement. One of the plumbers, a hacksaw in his hand, greeted us at the basement door.

"We're going to have to rip off the sheetrock to get to the pipes. You okay with that?"

Jean nodded. "Do what you have to do. We got to have water. All that damp, moldy sheetrock has got to come out anyway. Do you need more tools for that?"

The plumber held up his hacksaw. "All you need is a hacksaw. That's my philosopy of life. For everything else, my partner carries a crowbar." He disappeared down the basement steps.

Jean had some calls to make so I wandered around on my own, checking out the kitchen and eventually climbing the steps to the second floor. I was standing there in the hallway guessing which room was Jimmy's when I heard a commotion downstairs. I ran down to investigate. Both plumbers were pointing to the basement and asking Jean to follow them. I went too, my camera ready.

There, in the corner by the rusted water heater, I saw an exposed section of the basement wall where the sheetrock had been pulled off. The plumber was showing Jean a small wooden door where the sheetrock had been.

"What in the world?" Jean peered in the hole with the plumber's flashlight. "A door to a crawlspace, perhaps?"

The plumber inserted his hacksaw blade between the door and the wall to break the seal. The door popped open, and a skeleton arm fell out, dangling down the wall. Jean screamed, then fainted into the plumber's arms.

I dialed 911 and shortly the police arrived. I flashed my ID to the detective who already knew from the police chief of my research on Jimmy Evans. I was allowed to stay while the police conducted their investigation.

I watched as the skeleton was carefully removed from its earthy crypt. It soon became evident that the head was missing.

"Jimmy's trademark. He always removed the head to slow down the identification process," I explained to the detective.

"And where do you think we might find it? Did he have a special place he liked to put them?"

I shook my head. "Not really. Public parks mostly. This is an old killing, probably one of Jimmy's first. Yesterday, he asked me if the sky was blue and asked me to come here for insight. He wanted us to find this body. I just have to put it all together."

The detective had the policemen tear out the rest of the basement wall and sent a man into the crawlspace to check for more body parts. They came up empty. I went back upstairs where Jean was pacing the floor.

"Is there an attic?" I asked her. She nodded and led me upstairs.

"This was the children's room," she told me. A ladder sat in the closet which she climbed to reach a ceiling panel. She shoved the panel aside to reveal a dark opening. "There's no light."

She came down and I went up, sticking my head through the opening. When my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I was able to see light coming from the attic vent. I could also a skull next to the vent, it's eyeless sockets turned to look out toward the blue sky.

When I saw Jimmy again the next day, I told him about the skeleton the plumbers had found at his childhood home. He didn't seem surprised, and at first wouldn't offer any information. He was waiting for me to figure it out.

I hoped I had. "I know of only one person in your life that is still unaccounted for and that would be your long lost father who abandoned you and your mother when you were a child. What really happened, Jimmy? When did your father come back?"

Jimmy sat down at the table and straightened his orange prison suit. "You got me, John. I knew you'd figure it out. My father showed up right after my mother died. He wanted the house and my mother's bank account. I let him in the door, but I never let him out. No one came looking for him, either. A little sheetrock, and the problem was solved."

"And that crack about the blue sky?"

"Well." Jimmy flashed me that evil smile. "The head wouldn't fit so I put it up in the attic. Used a hacksaw. He never wanted to see me in life, so I figured he could spend eternity staring outside at the blue sky."

With that, Jimmy leaned back in his chair and was silent. It was the last thing he ever said before he was executed ten days later.

He asked if the sky was blue

As I was sitting in the local diner on Saturday morning, a man turned around and asked over my shoulder, "Is the sky really blue? Help me out on this. Isn't it every color but blue?" At first I wondered if the man was mental and the question crazy. But, as it turned out, he was having an argument with the person across from him over the nature of ultraviolet rays. My husband must have looked smart so they hoped he would settle the argument. Sure enough, my husband told him how all the colors except blue are absorbed by the atmosphere. Who knew? My husband is a rocket scientist, or so he tells me.

As a writer, you look for opportunities to write stories. I particularly like to write about an ordinary happening in order to change it into a special event. Take this. A man walks into a bar and asks if the sky is blue. Or a chicken crosses the road to ask if the sky is really blue. Or, as he lay dying, he looked into my eyes and asked, "Is the sky really blue?"

Prompt writing is an excellent way to produce a story. Take an object, a conversation, or an observation and make a story out of it.  Most of my stories are based on things I observe on the sidewalks. Writing clubs like to give you a line like "My mother never . . ." or "The red plaid suitcase lay open on the bed . . ." and you fill in the rest. You can do this with anything. For example, after I left the diner, I went to Lowes to get some new towel bars for my bathroom. They had a TV on there demonstrating how to cut something. The man said "All you need is a hacksaw!" My husband then responded with "That's my life's philosophy!" How in the world could you put the two together?

Let's see. A man. A hacksaw. A life. A philosophy. Sounds like a serial killer to me. I wonder if he believes the sky is blue? Stay tuned. A story is unfolding . . .  Sometimes I just can't help myself.