My failure in taming the unicorn, though not entirely my own
fault, meant a need to return to how it was always going to have to be. To be in it for the fun of the chase. A kind of chaste relationship. Too wild to tame, we would have to be friends
larking about.
If she would ever see me again. This was worse than the worms had been, I
believed. It would surely take a
lot. Or so I thought. I cooked up a whole apology routine only to
find it was not needed at all. The
unicorn seemed to have forgotten the whole thing and we got back into the swing
of things with a ball game that I steered out of the clearing and attempted to
steer into the van. After her eyes
followed the ball into the prison van she rolled them and shook her head before
trotting away.
And that was how it would always be. Nothing I tried could ever succeed because I
needed to drug her to do so - that was all that would ever work. And the end result was to gain something
unreal or something angry. She would not
ever be what I wanted her to be.
The once used and now empty stable in my garden was a
constant reminder of this. It riled so
that I took an axe to it, as if it was to blame. I chopped and chopped until splinters flew up
into my hands. Then I set fire to what
was left, trying to forget with my family over for fireworks.
The house seemed to get larger and larger at this time, the
eternal silence hissing annoyingly at me like a snake that was always close at
hand but out of view. And at work, my
reasons for having left temporarily had not been forgotten and people would
frequently ask how my quest was going.
While wearing wide grins.
And laughing.
That's when I started snapping. First at home, at the silence and
nothingness. I would get suddenly very
frustrated with it and start kicking things and throwing chairs whilst first
shouting at it as if it were a person standing in the corner of the room and,
later, while listening to angry music and muttering.
Then at work, finally biting back when things were said,
retaliating in my own stuttering and confused way. They only kept on laughing as I became like
an angry little gnome, red in the face and comical to all but myself.
All the anger built up within and I found myself entering
the clearing with all this baggage on my shoulders and I began to hurl it at
the unicorn.
For example. And this
was an expensive plan to just piss about on.
Thus showing what a dick I became.
Anyway, one time when I was going 'off road' to explore the forest for
places I could maybe trap the unicorn I stumbled across (quite literally) a
river running through the forest. I
followed the river and found it eventually led out of the forest and under the
road I parked by on each visit. While
walking along it to get back to the van I started to formulate a plan.
Many months later (or was it years? it certainly felt like
years), a bitter man spent a whole day dragging a rowing boat along that river
to the point where it was nearest to the clearing and left it close to the
water's edge with half a bag of oats inside.
A week later and I led the unicorn to that place with a
trail of oats and a promise of more. She
was happy to get into the boat, to let me offer her another new
experience. The unicorn looked about
herself eagerly as I rowed her downstream.
At the river bank moving sedately past and the down into the clear water
and the fish.
I only thought of when and how she would get away. Would she steer the boat to the bank and jump
sprightly out? Or would she make it sink
and walk away? I thought of the laughing
the next week and my mind became clouded.
I stopped rowing and began to rock the boat. Just gently from side to side and then harder
and harder with a horrible grin on my face, reflected by a look of worry and
fear on the unicorn's.
Eventually I tipped the boat and we both fell in. She got pissed and stormed off, flicking her
wet, matted hair in disdain. I just
laughed, happy to have found a new way of dealing with it.
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