The Unicorn's Dearest Omega

by Marilyn Black

  "But why take it out on you?"

  "It doesn't matter who his punching bag is, as long as he has one." He wrapped his arms around his legs, pulling himself into a ball. "I just hope he hasn't found someone else on the way there or back.

  I swallowed.

  Neil called out after me, and before I could even stand, he was right there in the doorway.

  He said to Jason, "What are you talking about to Tommy? I heard you rattling off some big exposition." And he still sounded distrusting. Jason repeated what he said, and this time expanded on a few things:

  "If he can get an heir, he'll get the full family fortune. This is why he was fine with anyone, and I think this is why you were unable to bear a child. Your soul knew that he was just trying to use you for the money."

  I gasped. Even Neil looked shocked.

  "So that explains everything."

  "Yeah..." I nodded and looked to the clouds above. It was a mostly sunny evening, letting the trees become colored by the evening sunlight to the point they looked surreal and nostalgic. I had my suspicions before about why I never became pregnant despite Jonathan's efforts, but hearing that it was all about money made things so much simpler to understand.

  If he didn't care about my love, then of course my spirit would prevent him from getting a child. It was like a preemptive strike back.

  And I wanted to laugh when I realized that because it sounded so poetic. It was the best possible ending-- I was the one with most of the power anyway, but he had beaten me down so much that I didn't even realize it.

  Glorious.

  Halloween decorations started going up early that year, and the first jack-o-lantern I saw on the porch coincided with a very cool prop that had been set up outside a store just down from us-- throwing a willowy set of stilts and balloon arms under a white sheet and stilts in order to make a rudimentary, otherworldly-looking ghost.

  The sky was cold and grey, with a consistent gust blowing through but not enough to cause damage. The added wind made the air feel like ice on the skin. A few low clouds moved on by, but most lingered and made me feel as if there was a storm coming, even though this was all related to a front that had already passed.

  Leaves started piling up against the ground, and kids would jump inside. Well-intentioned parents shook their rakes at the kids, but they still got away with it.

  Michael came in with his Game Boy in one hand and a copy of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone in the other. Both of which had become his greatest infatuation.

  I didn't want to introduce him to my preferred music of the day, however, because his brand of music seemed to clash with my own. But that was okay. We all have our own preferences.

  Michael was always there in the morning and the evening to tell us what had happened in the book as if it were an exciting new installment of a movie or TV show. And through his knowledge of the book, he would say things like:

  "Tommy and dad are like such and such--" I didn't get their names other than something about a 'long bottom' and a 'Weasley' (or Wesley? I needed to read through the book again!).

  Either way, he seemed to enjoy it.

  That night, I got bought a little strip at the local drug store and decided to test something, because enough time had passed and both Neil and I were finally ready to see the moment of truth.

  After just a little bit of piss went on the end, I waited a while and came back to see what it said.

  My heart did a flip.

  Neil came into the bathroom.

  I ran to him and threw my arms around him, crying, unable to breathe from the revelation.

  He looked at the pregnancy test, mouth agape.

  I was definitely pregnant. All the optimistic talk we made, pretending with great hope that it would happen, indeed came true. We were a match after all. He swung me around and around and we danced in each other’s arms.

  On Saturday, another cold front moved through, and it brought some of the heaviest rain and lightning I had seen all year. It was so intense that I thought it was going to become a tornado at some point, but as it turned out, we just needed a lot of power washing from Mother Nature. The sky darkened at noon, and the first squall came through around 4 PM, and by that point we were seeing fewer and fewer customers anyway. But once the storm started, that was it. We were almost completely out of any service whatsoever for the rest of the day. Oh there were one or two cars an hour pulling into the drive-thru, but that was it. Listening to the rain run was orgasmic in its own way. By 7 PM, with the skies still getting darker, we decided to close up shop prematurely for the storm and retired to our bedrooms. At first, I tried watching a little TV before my dick started screaming out to me that this was a good opportunity for some relaxing action.

  I spooned with Neil as we lay in our bed while the rain kept blowing against the windows and walls. It felt so relaxing to hear raindrops fall atop the roof and against the window glass. There was no word for it back then, but each patter caused a bit of a good tingle to run through the back of my head.

  I wrapped my arm around Neil. He grabbed my hand.

  It felt so good to be with him. I thought of Jason in the shack and hoped that he was at least surviving. Michael, Scott, and Jasper were likely enjoying the high-voltage thunderstorms.

  It felt like a nice night to have a rest.

  Little did I know, it was probably the last normal night of my life. Whatever normal means, anyway.

  Neil

  Sunday was a strange day, in retrospect. When I woke up, the storms had passed and I was ready to check inventory to get ready for Monday. Yet, curiously enough, Tommy had beaten me up and was already well ahead of me. Thus, I let him continue by himself. The sunlight was so much brighter because it was glinting off of the puddles and shining right into my eyes.

  Then I saw I was out of espresso, and said to Tommy, "I could just wait for the next shipment, but I think I can get something good at a discount if I head out to the center now. And I won't even need to pay for shipping."

  It sounds odd coming out of my mouth, but my logic was that so many other services required some sort of delivery fee. Why not cut out the middleman? So, I went outside, immediately felt the frosty temperatures, and got in my car to go to the stores. Not the store, the stores-- the place where they kept all inventory until it was due to be shipped out.

  And then I left, figuring that it would only take a few minutes and I'd be backed within five minutes anyhow. Once I pecked Tommy on the cheek and went my own way, I didn't have much of a care in the world.

  That was until I got sidetracked by a pager notification that Scott had tried calling me several times, many of them being only seconds apart from each other. Immediately, I bolted away, tried calling Scott on a payphone, and got nothing in return other than several failed calls. Then I went to his house, but not even Michael was there. Thus, I went to the police station to figure out what was wrong, and when I got there, and officer told me:

  “Scott the unicorn? He’s been booked. He and his mother, and we took away their child to put him in State care.”

  “What? What happened? Why not give Michael to Jasper? Can I at least talk to him?”

  The officer was at least kind enough to send me to the booking block, and it was there that I learned his side of the story.

  I’d never seen him angrier or more red faced. “Some corrupt Grover police officer stopped Mama on a bogus charge of disorderly conduct. Never even said what she was doing either.”

  Most of the day had passed, and I realized I had left Tommy alone. So I skipped back to the store to get my sausage and came home and saw that someone had completely trashed the inside of the store.

  I dropped my sausages and ran inside, pushing through the broken glass and dented steel.

  At that moment, I swore at Scott's mother for getting arrested, though if my suspicion was correct, it was entirely possible that something even more nefarious had occurred.

  When I actually got upstairs, it
was too late-- Tommy was nowhere to be seen. And it was even worse than I could have imagined when I saw that one of my coffee machines, an expensive device that I had sunk quite a bit of money into, had been brutally dented and thrashed, with the contents poured onto my bed.

  I keep thinking, 'Tommy. Tommy, no. Please don't be true.'

  I fell to my knees in despair and screamed to the heavens. I clenched my fists so tightly that I was at risk of breaking the skin with my fingernails. And the rage that consumed me was so total that I could not help but shift.

  A mortal wrong had been committed against me, and I would lose face if I dared to not act. And much more importantly, the life of my loved one, of Tommy, was in grave danger.

  Without thinking, I burst through the window and hit full stride screaming down the street. My unicornshoes clopped and clopped all the way, louder than some cars' engines, and several of them screeched to a stop as I passed in front of them.

  It was reckless, yes, but nowhere near as reckless as coming into MY home and kidnapping MY boyfriend.

  But all at once, I stopped as a sudden realization swept over me: I didn't even know where Jonathan lived. I was running blindly through the night.

  Though it hurt me to do it, I turned back. Not in defeat. Rather, because I had an easy access to the answer.

  I got back to the shop and went out back to the shed. In there, I found Jason-- he was severely beaten up and bruised and seemingly left for dead. I ran to his side and helped him up.

  "What the hell happened?!"

  He coughed blood and said, "It's Jonny. He came back, and... I think he may have gotten back on good terms with his father. He knew about severing the bond and came back to take away Tommy. And he wants you dead."

  I looked up to the walls, seething. I knew he was going to learn that his bond with Tommy was severed, but I didn’t think he’d be this violent about it. Then I asked, "Where is he? Where does he live?"

  He moaned, delirious, before finally saying, "The mansion on Giverson Road. That's... his... place..." And then he went limp as the life faded from his eyes. I let him drop and stood before him. I didn't see what Tommy saw in him, any chance for real redemption. Still, the bastard at least went out repentant. When I got my boy back home safely, I was sure that he'd want to give Jason a burial.

  But what his death told me more than anything was that Jonathan had no compunctions about killing his own blood. If Jason was fair game, anyone was. And that included Tommy.

  The mansion on Giverson Road... That was an easy one to follow because Giverson Road was almost entirely undeveloped aside from a few mobile homes and one massive mansion. To think an asshole lived there all this time.

  I shifted once more and ran down the cold streets, ready to take the fight home once and for all.

  Tommy

  That Sunday started off like any other. I knew that Neil had to do some work in the kitchen, so just to make him happy, I got up to do it for him. It was going to be my little daily gift to him. I slipped into my cutest clothes and went downstairs at about 5 AM, and by the time he had woken up, I was already almost finished with everything. To my great pleasure, he was very pleased at what I had done. Just as I hoped!

  In the largest and most expensive coffee brewer, I decided to get to work on whipping up a batch of pumpkin spice just for the two of us. We'd get to enjoy the taste and aroma with no one else around on what was shaping up to be the crispest day of the season yet.

  I myself had snatched a twisted donut and chowed down just before the coffee was done. And so I waited for Neil to join me, but he decided to check the shop inventory first.

  "Ah, dammit."

  "What's wrong?"

  "Out of espresso mixes." He dropped a swear and went back to his shipment log. "I could wait for the next shipment, since it'll come in a few days, buuut... I can probably get something good at a discount if I head out to Bigamin's Shopping Center." He set the pad down. "No need to pay for shipment either!"

  "I dunno, you see those gas prices? They're over a dollar! That's insane."

  He shrugged. "I can handle it. I mean, so many other services require some sort of delivery fee, so why not cut out the middleman?"

  I didn't quite understand his logic. He was going to pay for shipment of other things anyway, so what was so important about espresso in particular? All he had to say was that we were out of it. The customers wouldn't mind. Well they would mind once, but they'd get over it. Then again, I didn't have millions of dollars myself, and I had heard that the logic of the wealthy tended to seem a bit alien to the logic of the poor. And that was even evident between different types of the wealthy. Neil was the kind of guy who genuinely earned his money, putting in so much hard work and long hours each day. But he also enjoyed doing this, so he wasn't completely upset by it.

  Jonathan was essentially the trust fund baby. The kind of guy who was born into wealth but thought he earned every penny through his own intelligence and diligence. So no wonder Neil acted the way he did. He knew exactly what he needed to do to keep things running without going broke, since he came from a background not unlike my own to begin with.

  I nodded at him and said, "Can you pick up sausages too?"

  "Eh? What for? You just want a sausage?"

  Oh god, oh no, I opened myself up for it.

  "Why not just wait until tonight?"

  Ohhhh, it was so beautiful. And he gave me a beautiful grin to boot.

  He opened the door and I got hit by a big blast of cold air for just a moment.

  "Brrr!"

  Then I switched on the radio and the first thing that came on was Cher’s “Believe”. I thought about how Cher was supposed to be a fairly old artist, to the point that I remembered by parents thought she was ‘contemporary’ before I was born. Afterwards, to continue with old artists making brand new music, I swept the floor to Aerosmith of all bands, who had this cool track called “I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing.” For them I was actually proud they survived the early ‘90s, which felt like it killed a lot of older rock bands. But here they were, in all their 1970s rock glory and hair in an age where rock bands now had much shorter hair or were trying to look like hardcore rap bands. That was kind of sad to me that rock bands were trying to look so everymannish when all the other genres of music were still going strong, but after how wacky bands in the ‘80s looked, maybe that was for the best. Not that most of our clientele were going to be fans of that music in the first place. In here, I heard more about artists and groups like PJ Harvery and Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds despite the bubblegum pop of boy & girl groups always blasting on the radio. It was a place where the Backstreet Boys and Spice Girls vied for attention with Bjork and the Melvins. That’s what made Steamy Cups so fun.

  Sunshine took on a lavender hue through the morning clouds, painting the ground a beautiful color that made the sweetness of Steamy Cups seem like I was living in a nostalgic memory. The only thing that really stressed me out was the loads of schoolwork I still had to do later that night just to have them finished for the upcoming week, but even then I could afford to put them off for a few days. A few songbirds braved the crispness to join in with the radio, and I do think that they may have given the better performances all around. It’s not like they were singing anything less profound: it was all love songs and screams about fucking dressed up in pretty tones and melodies. You know, the stuff that made life so fun.

  Life was good.

  I pressed my stomach and smiled, knowing that a baby was on the way. And I also started wondering if this was the time to finally start the logical endgoal: the spiritual bond. It wasn’t a quick deal to forge a bond, but our heat was the best time to start forging it because of our uncontrollable emotions being whipped into form by rutting Alphas desperate for their child. That’s how Jonathan got me, after all, even though once we had that bond, my soul realized he wasn’t suitable. Sometimes, I didn’t like that this ethereal mess within us held so much sway, but other times, I was gla
d that it was there at all.

  Neil and I had so much fun in bed and in each other's arms, and we were always there for one another. It had been weeks since that fateful day when we met. The atmosphere had changed so much around us. Back then, it was warm and always cloudy, still definitely summertime. And now we were in the thick of Fall. The jack-o-lanterns had started going up, as had cheap spider web decorations. Everyone was wearing a parka and turtle coat. The days were getting shorter, and the nights were getting longer. Soon it would be Halloween.

  Around noon, Neil had yet to come back, but I wrote it off since I was doing some homework and did need the quiet anyway. It was his life; he did what he did.

  As some crooning wannabe-Eddy Vedder music from Creed played, I looked to the ceiling and thought, 'A unicorn and a cat... I wonder what our child will be.'

  It was no different with Scott and Jasper, after all. Jasper was a cat, and I had been meaning to have so many conversations with him, but I never got the chance. As for Michael, well he was just the cutest little boy I'd ever seen, and I knew he was making great memories that would last a lifetime.

  Then I heard the backdoor open and figured it was Jason, so I prepared to get up to get him something to eat. However, I kept working on one particular word problem just to have it completed.

  "A unicorn and a cat!" I heard, aboutfacing.

  With blood on his hands and a monstrous scowl on his face, Jonathan strolled in.

  "Absolutely unnatural."

  I got to my feet and threw my chair at him. "What are you doing here?"

  "I saw that bitch Jason ran away, but he was such a dumbass bitch that he forgot I could follow him." That blood on him... I realized that must have been Jason's.

  "What did you do to him?"

  "You should be more afraid of what I'm going to do to YOU." Then his nose scrunched. He slowly turned, lifting his finger up as if about to chew me out. "What's that?" He stepped to the coffee machine. "What is that?"