Attempts to Capture and Tame a Unicorn (43): Domestication: The Stable, From Design to Build

It needed to be spacious but small enough to be collapsed so that it would fit in my van.  It needed to be comfortable, warm and dry and small enough to leave the rest of the clearing as a garden.  It needed doors I could lock at night and ventilation that could be opened and closed.  It needed a lot of things and I set them all out in pencil drawn designs.  First working on the basic shape, (I tried a few fancy designs but it was only ever going to be a shape that was basically square with a simple triangle roof) I slowly added all the features as the plans grew more detailed and a ruler, a set square and scale were employed.  Now all I had to do was convert this idea into something real that was also easy to transport and assemble where it was needed.

I made a frame from MDF and walls and a roof of plywood before waterproofing the roof with the same stuff Randy had had on his hutch.  In essence I built a prefab stable I would be able to set up in the forest and later on back home when she was ready to come back too.  If she ever even would be that is.  It was very simple.  Six side parts - a bottom, three walls and two roof pieces each slotting into the frame.

A door completed it.  One like you might expect - two parts meeting in the middle and leaving enough room above for the unicorn to put her head over.  And it had a latch that was attached to the right hand door and lifted over to keep the other closed.  Bolts low down stopped the doors moving forward or back when this latch was on.  The windows were kind of similar.  There was one on each end with simple shutters like you sometimes see on houses (I seem to remember having them for Lego houses, if that helps) that could be locked open or shut. 

On the inside, I would cover the floor with hay that I would change every week, though it was already looking like it would probably be more often.  At one side was a trough that was divided into two sections and would be half full of water and half oats.  Porridge would be served, to begin with, when I made my visits.

I built the stable in my back garden first and practiced taking it apart and putting it back together again.  And then I tested it out, sleeping inside it when rain was forecast.  A whole storm, actually - the stable was smacked by fierce winds that did nothing but rattle it (a little too fiercely for my liking, I made a note to wedge out the slots with rubber piping).  Overall it was cold but dry so I insulated it a little more, gluing stuff to the inside of the walls when I rebuilt the stable in the clearing and I changed the shutters to the kind that are hinged at the top and can either be lifted right up and locked or only opened a little bit.  Much like glass windows.

Which I did the following weekend on my first visit to the clearing in quite a number of weeks.  I was worried it would have become a little too overgrown for my purposes but it was all as I had last seen it.  It took quite a while to carry and shunt all the parts to the clearing.  Once there it went up in a jiffy, I’d become quite a dab hand.  And I was pleasantly surprised to see just how much space was left about the clearing for the unicorn to move about in.  Quite a bit more than she would get at my house, which seemed a bit unfair. 

Then I began to fuss about getting it all ready.  I filled the trough with oats on one side and the imported tap water she would have to get used to for when I would take her to its source.  Finally I spread the softest hay all over the floor, building it up in one corner.  I kept moving it around and around, trying to get it perfect.  Over and over I shifted it about, moving through every arrangement I could think of and never knowing which was the best.  Looking back on it, it reminds me of my mother rushing about the house preparing it for visitors, desperately seeking to make the house ‘presentable’.  I always thought she looked real silly, mainly because the visitors were friends and family who I didn’t think would care how the damn house looked, but no doubt I looked just as silly that day in the clearing fussing about my crazy cause.

I kept at my daft shuffle until that good old mid-afternoon moment came around quite unexpectedly, a time I had felt a certain numbness at since stopping (even on weekdays I felt a tingle and a regret at this time, thinking about the attempt I had made the Saturday before and looking forward to the one I would be having a crack at next), when a unicorn nose nudged me in the small of the back and the other feeling returned.  That one of hope and expectation, full of nerves and excitement.  I closed my eyes and smiled broadly, the happiest I think I had ever been, and I clicked into action.

250 Words: Don’t Care was made to care 1 & 2

On a medieval torture table, Don’t Care was converted, having finally pissed everyone far enough off the chart, his attitude to life being so grating that those around had taken action.  Why should all else invest emotionally while he leaned back in his chair with that smug look on his face and detached himself from life?

So Don’t Care was taken by the hair to the torture rooms and burned and stretched and cut and crushed as those who knew him put forward arguments to change this heathen non-believer into someone who would connect with the world in a ‘proper’way and not with his usual shrug of the shoulders.

But Don’t Care was a blooming hard bastard set in his ways.  For years he resisted until the moment his body cracked and Don’t Care began to care.

**
 
On the seventh day God was enjoying a well earned rest having created the world and everything in it.  He spent most of the morning in bed, occasionally farting, occasionally scratching his bits.

Then, eventually, He rose from bed and began to prepare the first roast dinner the world had ever seen.  And He set up a table in the Garden of Eden so he could share this treat with Adam and Eve.

And they ate and drank wine (perhaps a little too much) and over coffee and a tipple silly conversations ensued until God made his first mistake and, egged on by Adam and Eve, created Don’t Care as a paradox.

George Joy’s Guide to Faerytale Creatures, No 12: The Whatsit McJiggernuts

The Whatsit McJiggernuts is a confused creature, forever unsure of itself and its surroundings.  And that confusion is something it broadcasts out from its body to us.  Hence the name- both the strange phrase, bringing to mind something half remembered and just out of reach of one’s memory, and the needless pluralisation.

This is almost all of what’s known of the Whatsit McJiggernuts.  Except that it lives on land, in the countryside and urban areas of Britain, sitting on or behind walls or in hedges or trees; and that it comes out at night, generally showing itself only to those returning home late at night from the pub, who, the next day, can’t quite put a finger on what they’ve seen.  They know what it wasn’t- but what was it?  They knew at the time for it told them but all they can think after is that it was, “a… a… Whatsit McJiggernuts!”

Many have tried to help these beleaguered beasts but those who actively seek it rarely find it.  And so even the most straight-laced of these crusaders end up dowsing their innards with vodka in order to find their quarry, invariably finding themselves without memory and getting nowhere.

Those wily enough to succeed have all been driven mad by their confused captive, gaining no new information whatsoever before ultimately freeing it without knowing that they have done so.

So we see that the Whatsit McJiggernuts is unknowable and that is why I have never tried to discover more.

George Joy’s Guide to Faerytale Creatures, No 11: Gargeloyles

At one time, hundreds of years ago, in the waterways of Europe lived microscopic creatures that lay in wait for people to collect up and gargle the water containing them - for only when being gargled were they able to do their bidding.  Which was to attach themselves to the oesophagus of their victim and from there find their way up past the nose to the brain where, in their millions they were able to take over a person’s brain and control them. 

These creatures, known as Gargeloyles, aimed to one day take over the entire human race.  As they infected one human, so that human would encourage another to gargle infected water, thus increasing the number of Gargeloyle puppets. 

Only a few areas are known to have had Gargeloyle populations that managed to take control of a number of humans.  There was one village where an infected boy of seven was able to convince first his siblings and friends to join him in gargling to make funny noises and then several adults before something strange was suspected.  Elsewhere a whole district of a town became Gargeloyle before they were discovered.

Initially, seeing these events as an invasion of evil forces, the victims were slaughtered and their bodies burned.  Although this probably did successfully kill the Gargeloyles present, it was not ideal for the victim.  But then how could a microscopic being be stopped before anyone knew creatures so tiny existed?

Gargeloyles were eventually stopped by a wizard passing through one of the affected areas.  Using the powers only wizards have she was able to feel and then see these tiny creatures both in the water and in the brains of the infected puppets. 

She then removed them all by force before enlarging each and turning them to stone, showing their grotesque forms to the world, including the relieved victims.  Most shattered during the process, creating great hills of stone, but many remained and were used in municipal architecture and churches as water spouts, their names soon being corrupted into gargoyle.  The wizard then travelled the world searching out and destroying Gargeloyles and other troublesome microscopic beings.

And that is both how a menacing little beast was made extinct and a cornerstone of gothic architecture invented.

Attempts to Capture and Tame a Unicorn (42): Domestication: An Introduction

I've never really told anyone about this but I’ve been here before.  When I was eleven I found an injured rabbit in the woods.  He had been in a rather nasty fight and his hind legs had been so badly gashed he was unable to move very far, or at all to be honest.  I felt for him, decided I could be his saviour and ran home, found a box to transport him in.  Much easier than the unicorn.  Sometimes I used to almost wish I was capable of harming her like that.  It would have made my life so much easier.  Less fun, perhaps, but easier.

*

domes'tic  a.  of, in the home; homeloving; (of animals) tamed....

  -domes'ticate  vt.  tame

Never was sure why I looked it up in the Collins English Dictionary and Thesaurus 2 in 1 (1992 reprint, p63).  I knew what it meant already.  Ultimately I didn’t know how this plan would work.  It was all the wrong way round, never mind if I’d done something like it before and succeeded: it was supposed to be capture and tame.  This was a fall back, an almost-last-ditch effort.  Maybe I looked it up for reassurance, to help tell me that was the plan.  Or, at least, one worth continuing for.  "Of, in the home," though.  That really summed it up nicely.  Helped a great deal.

*

We lived on the edge of town when I was eight.  Right on the edge where the houses stopped.  On the other side of the evergreen hedge at the bottom of our garden was a large country estate that the kids from our suburbian estate would explore regularly.  On the far side was an old, abandoned cottage that must have once been occupied by an estate worker.  For some reason, very few kids had found this, or maybe they just assumed it was still lived in, which meant I was able to hide the rabbit here because, in the garden, there was a hutch, still in good enough condition for habitation.  Here I kept the rabbit without ever having it discovered.  Those other kids were so uninspired.

I lined the hutch with new straw and heaped a pile of grass in there to start as food and put Randy (yes, I called him Randy; I don't think I knew what it meant at the time; or thought it meant lively or something like what I hoped the rabbit would become once I had nursed him back to health) inside.  Slowly I weaned Randy onto dry rabbit food from the pet shop.  Mainly by force through a lack of choice, though I still fed him plenty of grass through the bars and by hand.  But because I wanted him for a pet, I slowly gave him more pet food and less grass.  I felt that was an important part of the distinction between wild animal and tame.  Whether they ate man made food or au naturel. 

*

It was the porridge made me do it.  That, indirectly, had first made me go off with John at that horrible and pointless tangent in the first place.  And now it gave me the idea to first tame.  I had already figured that it was the porridge that had scared the unicorn into employing John as a sneak rather than just a food taster.  Because she had really wanted that porridge I had cooked up but was, for some reason, too scared to try it.  I thought it must surely therefore be the key.  I just needed to get it to her on her home soil to be able to use it as a key to draw her out.

*

I had found Randy at the start of the summer and devoted the holidays to him.  Every day I ambled off to spend time with him.  At first I would pick him up and check his wounds, cleaning them.  And then I would hold him and stroke him, trying to let him get used to me.  I put him down too, in front of me to see if he would try and escape.  But he was too injured or shell-shocked to bother and so with me he stayed.  As he started to heal, I built him a run from wire I found lying about so that that he could heal properly, building his leg muscles back up.

*

I felt it needed to be about more than just food.  There needed to be a whole setting to it.  Every tamed creature will have its artificial home.  However much it is made to appear like a natural habitat, it is still ultimately manufactured.  Any polar bear living on dirty white stone in 30 degree European heat will tell you that.  And especially a lion living under an oak tree or a guinea pig in a hutch. 

They have borders, basically.  Actual, real and hard, sometimes electrified borders.  Not the natural ones a wild animal will allocate itself, created along the lines of the lay of the land and the climate but fences or walls designed to pen them in.  I, therefore, not only needed a new home for the unicorn but a means of keeping her within its boundaries.  Like with many tamed creatures, a hutch or a cage, or a stable as it would inevitably be, would not be enough on its own.  You couldn’t keep a unicorn in a small box alone.  They need some space to live and to breath.  The clearing would need to gain borders.

I would use food and shelter, then, to try and get her to switch.  I wasn't quite sure how exactly I would manage this.  Or go about it, even.  But I did feel sure I would need to be the third and final ingredient.  Every tame animal has an overlord human behind it.  Whether it's a kitten held by a toddler, Randy in his run or a lion cared for by a whole team of zookeepers.  This plan would need my total commitment.

That part could wait a little, though.  I had to set up and see if she would take to it first of all.

*

Eventually he got better and by that time he had warmed to me, the provider.  And we stayed together for years, Randy and I, until I told some other kid about him and he killed him, skinned him, cooked him and fed him to me, telling me it was a chicken he'd poached from the estate's little farm.  Don't worry, I beat the shit out of him, real fucking bad.  In my head at any rate I did.  No, instead I went a bit morbid, stopped exploring the estate and moved along the road that took me to the ouija board.

And so I would embark once more to try and tame through habitat, food and presence.

First things first, though, and I needed a habitat.

Attempts to Capture and Tame a Unicorn (41): A Weekend at Home, Alone

I stayed at home the next weekend, disconsolate yet determined I could carry on my life as it had been before, without unicorns and missions.  Instead I filled the weekend with as many meaningless activities as I could muster. 

Friday evening’s activity was watching television.  Whereas I would normally spend the evening preparing, by going over notes and ensuring I had everything, I was instead able to simply sit in an armchair with a bottle of ale, The Guide and a remote.  And there I stayed until Jools Holland wished me good night.

I woke early Saturday morning and went out for a paper, walking the long way on the path by the river and through the trees.  And I bought some croissants for breakfast which I ate while they were still warm with fresh coffee and spread with a thick layer of strawberry jam while reading the colour supplements.  And I had watched the free DVD before lunch.

The afternoon was whiled away in town shopping.  Proper shopping for music and clothes.  Something I hadn't done for such a long time.  I had already made a wish list during the week and I went around all the independent record shops (and then HMV and Virgin just in case) looking for the best deals.  Then I went and bought some pants and plain t-shirts and new, harder wearing trousers.  It was pretty cool to be out doing this sort of thing again.  But it still didn't feel right somehow.  There was a certain emptiness to wandering around alone which I didn't enjoy too much.  A feeling that became all the more acute when I saw the crowds going to the football and noticed what time it was nearing.  But I put it firmly behind me in the evening by going out for a drink with some old friends. 

We went for an Indian out on the A38, just like in the old days.  I had chicken tikka rogan josh and keema naan washed down with several pints of Kingfisher.  It was wonderful.  How we laughed and joked and talked and talked.  Which felt much better - normal, even.

Sunday started much the same as Saturday.  It was a little later, though, that I rose for the morning's walk to buy a newspaper.

I cooked myself a roast for lunch before it all began to slowly die away.  I listened to the records I'd bought the day before, lying on the sofa, eyes closed to take it all in, letting the sounds waft all over me and inside me.  But every time I opened my eyes I got the feeling that something was missing. 

Eventually I ran out of tunes and watched a film or two while eating roast chicken sandwiches for my tea.  I should have watched some action film full of shit being blown to bits and bad people being righteously slaughtered.  Instead I watched Big and Groundhog Day simply because they were on.

That is when I began to run out of things to do.  Or, at least, I became too lethargic to think of anything and instead I started to walk around the house, peering into the empty rooms for something to do.  I found only space and much of it filled with nothing but air.  And I dreamed a dream I'd dreamed before of how full the house could be if I shared the space with another.  A dream I dreamed at least once a week.  And I reminisced of the plans I had put into action and how the results had gone astray.

I had tried a long time to capture this unicorn before taming it.  For quite a long while I had even accepted that it might not be possible to do so and so I had gone along for the sport, to muck about and be somewhere, do something at the weekend.

That sport had been wrecked for me a little because, of course, not terribly deep down even, I still longed to capture and to tame.  A need I was now seeing again whilst wandering around the empty house and looking down into the spot in the garden where she would one day live.

But how could I capture her?  She was clearly too much of a livewire: far too wild and independent. 

Dejected, I sat down and fed myself four bowls of porridge (I still had sackfuls and sackfuls of oats leftover just from the 'Too Many Oats' and 'Porridge' episodes) before I realised where I should go next.  My aim, after all, was to capture and to tame.  If I couldn't capture, maybe I could try to tame her first.

250 Words: Praying for rain

It’s 3AM on a stormy summer’s night and a man sits naked on his plastic garden furniture.  Despite a chill in the air he sweats, the skin on his back glistening in the light coming from the house as he prays for rain to wash away the remaining stains of what he has done.

The body has already been buried with colonies of maggots and worms to strip it to the bones he will later burn and crush.  But across the lawn from the last place she was alive to her grave is a dark tell-tale trail.  And so he prays for rain to dissolve the coagulation and remove those sticky marks, let them be swallowed by the earth as well.  He prays quietly and under his breath to God, the Devil, the unseen stars and moon, to anything and anyone that comes to mind.  Or else the morning light will reveal his night time deeds not just to the cold realities of day but the mutual friends expected later.

A distant rumble of thunder and the rain starts to fall on his skin and lawn’s bloody mess.  As it runs over his naked body soothing the shifts in his soul, he can feel an insane smile prick at the corners of his mouth.  But above this he already knows his eyes are bloodstained and can feel the fear that will always reside deep in them as he waits every day of his life for the knock at the door.