Thomas Pluck

The fact that unicorn droppings sparkle iridescent doesn’t make them any more pleasant to shovel than regular old horseshit. There’s a lot of it, and its saccharine scent catches in the throat like cheap perfume.

Miss Nibs has seven of the beasts. Her carriage gathers dust in the barn. The unicorns are ageless, graceful alabaster sculptures long of limb and silken of tail and mane, and I’ve got to shovel their shit for eternity.

Kai-Lun has taken to fouling his trough. Leaves a rainbow slick on the water, like oil. He’s curled up like a cat, having a snooze as I spoon it out. Amalthea bows in the back of her stall, crossing her forelegs. I pat her flank, and she nickers, but her heart’s not in it. She blushes as I scoop out her dainty leavings from the corner, as always.

I get to the last stall, lean my silver shovel on the door, and tap a smoke out of my pack of Maleficent Lights. Snick my silver Zippo and take a drag, slouching against the beam.

“Enjoy the fag, mate. I left you a bloody dung castle in here to clean up. ‘ave one ‘ere.”

That’s Spike.

“Can’t share anymore, big fella,” I tell him. “Fire hazard.”

His leathery nose with its nostrils like billiard pockets peeks out and I blow a smoke plume at it.

“Bloody tease.”

“No manners,” I say. “What, were you raised in a barn?” Only half a pack left, and nights get long and lonely.

“Funny man. For that I’m squeezing out another dollop.”

“Now or later. What’s one more scoop?”

“Getting to you, is it? The Herculean labor?”

“That big old Mary only had to do it once.” I puff a smoke ring at his golden spire. He takes a few stabs at it. “This is more Sisyphean. Endless toil.”

“Could be worse,” Spike says. “You could be pushing dung boulders up and down a mountain.”

“At least there’s that.”

I tap another smoke from the pack, light it off mine, and hold it before his stippled gray muzzle.

“‘Bout bloody time.” He lips it from me deftly, takes a deep drag. Waits for me to pluck it, so he can talk. “That’s the stuff. Old Saint Nicotine. You ever feel guilt, contributing to the delinquency of a symbol of purity?”

“I sleep like baby,” I tell him.

“Don’t you mean a Beauty?”

“You’re the funny one now.”

“Speaking of, how is the old bitch? She nick your cherry yet?”

Spike loves rhetorical questions.

“Course not. I’d smell the stink on ye.”

I let him have another drag.

“Still remember that lovely scent,” Spike says. “Me last day of freedom. That little hussy three stalls down was prancing tail high, the poor dumb thing. Beggin’ for it. And then there was that sparkle in the ol’ nose. Virgin. Nothing quite like it.”

I’ve heard it a thousand times, but I let him go on.

“Like the first clovers of spring. A hint of rain, in the dog days. Or a whiff o’ one of your fags.” His tail whips against the slats of his enclosure. His muscles are surely rippling down his flanks, alight with purple undertones. Majestic, that’s what you’d call him.

“And all of a sudden, I’m rod stiff. She nickers and rolls round in the grass, hikes up and presents herself. And that’s when I know. I trot right past ‘er quivering quim and follow me nose. The day has come. I’d smelt it before, mind you. That zing. But never felt the urge. I work myself up to a gallop. I’m on the hunt. Feel it in my blood. It’s me purpose,” Spike says. “Another puff, mate.”

I give it to him, and he drags greedily.

“I burst into the clearing, toss me mane and neigh triumphant. ‘ere I am, I’m saying.” He laughs. It turns into a neigh and then a coughing jag. He stamps his hooves, works himself out of it.

“And there you are, in the bushes. Looking… sheepish. No offense. Not like a sheep. Filthy things, those,” he says. His horn dips low. “And me, I trot up, and I bow. Like I was told I would. Can’t ‘elp myself.” A ripple runs down his flanks. “‘Cept you’re a fella. And you come out, pat me neck. A thing of beauty, you are. So I lay me horn in your lap. It feels right. Then your fella stomps out, and what’s he say?”

I shake my head, roll my eyes.

“C’mon, now. Do the voice. Me accent’s all wrong.”

I deepen mine as much as I can. “Well, that’s just great.”

Spike laughs, tosses his head back. “His Nibs looked fit to shit himself.”

“That he did.” I stub my smoke out on my boot.

“Pity what the Queen did,” Spike says.

I say it along with him: “Not the King queen, the queen Queen.” He laughs, I don’t.

I hear him sometimes, at night. Down in the dungeon. Shoveling shit’s not so bad after all.

“Think she’ll let him out? When she gets it through her ‘ead, that you won’t turn?”

“I don’t know.”

“The heart wants what the heart wants, Queenie,” he announces. Just a show. She hears everything, anyway.

Spike sighs, I offer the cigarette, he inhales deep. Blasts twin plumes out his nostrils. “Gotta show me how to blow rings, someday, Charming.”

I nod, and pick up my shovel.

THOMAS PLUCK writes unflinching fiction with heart. His stories have appeared in Shotgun Honey, PANK magazine, Crime Factory, Spinetingler, Plots with Guns, Beat to a Pulp, McSweeney’s, The Utne Reader and elsewhere. He edits the Lost Children charity anthologies to benefit PROTECT: The National Association to Protect Children. He lives in New Jersey with his wife, Sarah. You can find him as @tommysalami on Twitter, and on the web at www.thomaspluck.com.

by Andrew Frankel



I was desperately in need of a piss so I ducked into The Burrito Palace.  There were many people inside; I asserted my way to the counter and asked the girl behind it where I’d find the bathroom.  She shook her head, saying that it had been out of order all day.  I swore aloud.

“But there’s a unicorn out back, in the alley, who’s just begging to be pissed on.  You should go piss on him.”  She smiled, sexy.

This struck me as terrible, but I knew that I’d heard her right.

“But why?” I demanded.  “Why would anybody piss on a unicorn?  In an alley?”

The girl narrowed her eyes at me and spoke in a tone at once sharp and vague.

“You’ll see,” she said.

Out back, just a quick moment later, I was having the time of my life pissing on the unicorn in the alley.  I looked at the heavens and laughed a hearty laugh.  When I’d rushed into the alley and come upon this unicorn, I’d realized at once that the Burrito Palace girl had been right.  Here was a unicorn who truly was just begging to be pissed on; he spoke with a pissy rasp and had that defiant “piss on me” look set hard in his eyes.  The soot all over his coat and his Cockney accent suggested to me that perhaps he was a down-on-his-luck chimney sweep, one who had fallen from grace for the sake of cheap thrills.

“Well, what’s this then?  Man about town, out for an evening piss?”  He winked.

“You bet your unicorn ass,” I said.

And I pissed on him.  I think it delighted us both.  After, we had a seat, he in the piss and I beside it, and smoked cigarettes.

The unicorn seemed to revel in a feeling of contentedness.  He swayed, spoke of summers he’d spent in his youth.  When he paused to sneeze, I asked his name.

“Larry,” he said, “Larry Green the Third, sir.”

“But you’re red,” I said, chuckling at the small irony.

He turned his Cockney unicorn eyes to the night sky and drew long at his cigarette.

“That’s because I’m a bloody failure.”

He sniffled, coughed, and spat on the alley floor.

I felt as though maybe I ought to say something to Larry Green the Third.  His change in mood had been abrupt; perhaps he was unstable.  It had occurred to me earlier that this probably wasn’t the first time he’d been pissed on today.

“Listen, Larry.  It’s not all that bad.  You know.  Maybe you just need a change of scene.”

Again he sniffled.  His gaze looked thoughtful and I followed it, and saw two policemen rushing toward us with angry faces.

In the jailhouse, there were strange biblical screeds and illustrations scrawled on the cell walls.  I considered them.  Maybe I had gone wrong somewhere.  I had never intended to get locked up for something like this.  Larry smelled like pee.  The charges were public urination and eliciting a lewd act in public, respectively.  Larry looked crushed when they saddled him with his charge, and I understood.  There was nothing sexual about what we had been up to in that alley when the policemen happened by.  Just a unicorn who wanted to be pissed on, for reasons that were his own, and me obliging him.

“But why are you locking us up?” I asked the policeman.  “Can’t we just pay our fines and be on our way?”

“Yeah,” Larry added defiantly.  I glared at him, wishing he would shut up for a while.  He’d started running his mouth as soon as they cuffed us, and I felt this could only affect our situation negatively.  They don’t much care for Limeys in these parts.

It turned out my feelings of anxiety were not unfounded, as the cop got up from his desk, pulled his gun from his belt, unlocked the cell door and proceeded to savagely pistol-whip Larry.  The unicorn collapsed and spit blood on the cell floor; the cop turned to me but I only shook my head and raised my hands.  He returned to his desk and reclined into his seat, a look of disdain and repugnance on his face.

“The reason I’m locking you boys up,” he said, “is I don’t like the idea of some freak and some unicorn roaming the streets of my city and pissing on each other in alleys.  I don’t know where you degenerates come from, but that’s not how we do things around here.”

I felt the need to defend my honor.

“Sir!  Please, listen!  This unicorn never pissed on me!  The girl at the Burrito Palace said their bathroom was out.”

And then I stopped.  How could I make this policeman understand my story?  Until I’d tried it a few hours ago, I myself had never dreamt of the thrill that came with pissing all over a willing unicorn.

Larry spoke up again.

“Listen, please.  Do you have any Three Dog Night?”

The policeman turned slowly to face him, pulling his pistol and leveling it at the piss-soaked Cockney.  Larry shrunk into the back of the cell.  For a long time no one spoke, and I took advantage of the silence to try to clear the tequila from my mind.  There was no way in hell I was spending the night in this damned cell.  The smell was almost too much; it would have been too much already if the piss on the unicorn had belonged to anyone but myself.  I’ve always prided myself on the clean, somewhat minty aroma of my own urine.  But a fat lot of good that urine had done me tonight.

Some hours passed and, failing to come up with anything intelligent to say to the policeman to clear our names, I decided to get a little sleep.  I was dreaming about a cat that turned into a spider and wanted to bite me when I awoke to a quiet beseeching from Larry Green the Third.

“Shut the fuck up,” I hissed at him.  “You’ve gotten us into enough trouble already.  Just go to sleep.  We’ll figure something out in the morning.”

“But look,” he whispered, pointing a hoof toward the cop’s desk.  The policeman was dozing, his feet up on the desk, left hand tucked neatly into his pants.

“What’s your point?” I demanded.

“We have a chance.”

My gaze met his, and I fell headlong into his crystal green eyes.  All of a sudden, my bladder was furious, ready for action.  I guess one more couldn’t hurt, I thought to myself, and instructed Larry in whispered tones to assume the position.  Then, very quietly, I pissed on him once more.

With the morning light came the changing of the guard.  The new officer reviewed our paperwork and stared at us a while.  At length a smile cracked on his round face.  I feared trouble.  He sauntered over to the cell door and cleared his throat.

“Well,” he drawled, “I imagine you boys have about learned your lesson by now.”  He looked me in the eyes, and there was a flicker of something like kinship behind his glasses.  “You pay your fine, you can be on your way.  A hundred dollars ought to do it.”

I felt as though a great load had been lifted from me, and for a moment I was filled with happiness at this fortuitous turn of events.  Then I heard Larry shuffling around beside me.  It occurred to me that the policeman had said that I was free to pay my fine and go; there had been no mention of Larry’s charges.

“Well, then,” Larry began, trying to sound casual.  “How much will this little adventure be setting me back?”

The policeman looked Larry up and down, the slightest trace of a smirk detectable on his face.

“Well, son, your charge isn’t quite so light as your friend’s here.  But seeing as you seem to be an intelligent enough unicorn, and Cockney, I think we could work out some sort of work release program for you.”

Larry hesitated.

“Work release?”

The policeman opened the cell door and beckoned to me to step out, telling Larry Green the Third to sit tight a moment.  I paid the cop the hundred dollars and retrieved my possessions, and he told me good-heartedly that he hoped it would be a while before we met again.  As I left the jailhouse, I turned to look at Larry one last time.  He winked at me as the policeman entered the cell with him, hand to his fly.

After that night, I did a lot of soul-searching.  It seemed to me that my life was headed in the wrong direction.  Unicorns, Cockney accents, nights spent in jail—what was I hoping to accomplish, traveling such a path?  I decided to go straight.  It was really hard at first.  The urge would rear its ugly and relentless head on certain nights, and I wouldn’t know how to assuage it.  Once I cornered a cat behind a warehouse and pissed on it, but it wasn’t the same.  And the hurt look in the cat’s eyes as he ran away afterward had burned straight to my heart, telling me that this was not the way.  No, I told myself, harshly.  This will be the last time.

I went to see a therapist the afternoon after the episode with the cat.  He listened to my story with his back turned to me, gazing out the window at a lush courtyard below.  When I’d told all I had to tell, he waited a while and then spoke.

“You know,” he began, “your story is not such a unique one.  Since the dawn of man and unicorn, the temptation has been there.  And many great men were known to urinate on a unicorn or two at some point in their lives.  Abraham Lincoln, for example.  And Donny Osmond.”

I was relieved to hear this.  He went on.

“The thing is, all of these men, sooner or later, came to realize what you must come to realize.  Pissing on unicorns won’t solve your problems.  No matter how great the thrill, that is all it will ever be.  Look out this window.  There’s so much life to be lived out there, and it’d be a crime to piss it all away.  Even on unicorns.”

The therapist’s words struck a chord deep inside me.  He was right; it was time to pull up my fly once and for all, and step into the sun.  But first, there was someone I had to find.  I thanked the man sincerely, left the office, and headed downtown to the Burrito Palace.

It was night by the time I reached my destination.  Again it was busy, and again the same girl stood behind the counter.  I could tell by her eyes that she recognized me.

“Well, hey,” she said, eyelashes fluttering.  “I was wondering if I’d see you again.  Was I right about that unicorn or what?”

For a second I was overcome with nostalgia, but I fought it back and spoke.

“You were.  But it was all wrong.”

She gave me a look that said she didn’t understand.

“What do you mean?”

“Listen,” I said.  “Have you seen that unicorn?  I need to find him.  It’s hard to explain.  Has he been in?”

“Yeah,” she said with a confused smile.  “About a week ago.”

“What did he say?”

“Not much really.  He ordered a bean burrito and three margaritas.  Then he asked to use the bathroom.”

My eyes widened at the mention of the bathroom, but again I beat back the wave of longing and asked the girl: “And then he left?”

“Then he left.”

“And he hasn’t been in since?”

“Not while I was here.”

I felt at a loss, thanked the girl and on an impulse asked if I could use their bathroom before I was on my way.  She handed me the key and I made my way back and unlocked the heavy door, flicked on the light.  I couldn’t believe what I saw.  A giant mural drawn with a thick red pen spanned the entire wall behind the toilet.  There was Larry Green the Third, rolling on his back in ecstasy.  And there I was, pissing on him with a celestial smile.  The drawing was crude, but in a way I’d never seen anything so beautiful in my entire life.  The mural was signed, at the bottom, with a brief note.

“Drew,” it read, “here’s wishing you well, and a little something to remember me by.  We lived like kings in our time, but every king’s reign must sooner or later come to an end.  I’m hanging up the old piss racket, and I hope you will too.  Keep looking for grace, and I know someday you will surely find it.  Until then, keep the faith, and stay dry.  Larry.”

I reread the note a few times, then shut off the light and left the bathroom.  Never before had a unicorn so changed my life, nor has one since.  When I handed the key back to the girl at the counter, she flashed me another sexy smile.

“You want to go ice-skating later?” I asked her.

“Sure,” she said.






ANDREW FRANKEL was born and raised among the pines of Southern New Jersey. He lives in Boulder, where he has been studying the writing of fiction for the past several years at the University of Colorado. He is currently working on an honors thesis in creative writing.

by Noel Sloboda



Francis always took reviews hard. So when the local arts journal, Ovations, complained that his puppetry company, “Without Strings,” had become “rather staid, rather static, presenting work that was more slight than sleight of hand,” it really shouldn’t have surprised anyone that the puppet master soon after announced changes were coming. Still, the other members of the company did not know what to make of the direction in which Francis wanted to take their productions.

Trained by Old World masters, Francis had skills with mannequins none of the others had even dreamt possible before they saw him perform. The leader of “Without Strings” specialized in quadrupeds, from cows to dragons, wolverines to unicorns: creatures difficult for any but the most talented to animate. At his touch, a menagerie would trot, canter, and gallop across the stage. But the spectacles he produced went far beyond the work of other masters. In the hands of Francis, coyotes Cajun waltzed and raccoons Muay Thai kick-boxed. (He’d even been rumored to have performed a few after-hours shows during which arachnids coupled furiously.)

When the company assembled to learn about their new direction, a new addition to Francis’s bestiary was uniformly anticipated. But nobody expected Francis to unveil a giant left hand. Five feet long from its hirsute wrist to its sharp, yellow fingernails, the puppet was crafted with such singular attention to detail that it seemed the knuckles might crack if pressure was applied to them.

Francis insisted not only that the hand be worked into all of the company’s productions, but that it would also replace his other creatures. It wasn’t immediately clear to the other members of “Without Strings” how audiences would receive the hand, but they begrudgingly consented to Francis’s plan. The tale of Jack and the Beanstalk would now feature as its villain The Fearsome Five Fingers, a fist that lorded over the land of Sky; Hansel and Gretel, lost in The Deep, Dark Woods, would meet a terrible thumb with a hankering for pinching children; Sir George would joust with stained, jagged fingernails with old onion skins under them.

When word got out that “Without Strings” was presenting new material, its audiences—which, it must be confessed, had begun to dwindle—suddenly increased. And after a few weeks, the crowds attracted the interest of the critic for Ovations, the very same one who had so shaken up Francis. The critic visited the company one evening, in order to reassess its merits in light of the dramatic changes that were generating such buzz on the street.

Begrudgingly, the critic conceded the craft of the hand’s operator; Francis’s performance was called “a ribald but precise and exacting display of dexterity, unlike anything seen before” by “Without Strings.” Yet the reviewer wondered if there wasn’t something “slightly dishonest, just ever so slightly, about an art form calling for the manipulation of living hands to create the illusion of a living hand.”

As Francis studied the review the next morning, his face burned. He immediately called another meeting of his troupe. He promised his fellows another new innovation, one that would be revealed that very night, something sure to win over the critic, whom he’d personally invited back to the show.

When the curtain went up that evening on a variation of Red Riding Hood in which The Big Bad Wolf was to become The Humungous Hairy Hand, everyone was taken aback—including the other puppeteers—when Francis’s puppet hand emerged from the wings wrapped in black, glittering armor with foot-long spikes on its knuckles. The Humungous Hairy Hand that the company had planned to feature in this tale had become The Great Grim Gauntlet.

At first, it was fairly interesting to see Francis work the metal glove as it scraped and clanked through the trails of the forest, attempting to crush young Red. As the show progressed, however, the novelty began to dissipate. By the time Red drew close to her grandmother’s house, several repeat patrons were muttering that the armor concealed the far more expressive hand from view. By the time Red confronted Grandmother (really The Great Grim Gauntlet, who had who had pinched the harridan to death, then donned her wardrobe), a couple people had fallen asleep. And almost everyone else—including the critic from Ovations—was eying the clock, to see just how much time remained in the show.

Then suddenly everyone sat up when, in a flurry of plaid and unkempt facial hair, The Woodsman burst through the door of Grandmother’s cottage. The Great Grim Gauntlet, about to squeeze Red to death, jumped out of bed and threw off not just its disguise but its casing. The black armored glove flew into the air, revealing the familiar hand underneath. The Woodsman paused, as though stunned by the nakedness of the hand, which proceeded to catch the glove and turn it inside out, revealing a white liner underneath. The hand then flipped the liner upward, so that it soared almost to the rafters before dropping right onto the hand. Up again went the liner. Only this time the hand it had covered had disappeared. The audience was on its feet, cheering by the time the empty white liner descended, draping gently over Red’s head, like a bridal veil, as she moved to embrace her hero, The Woodsman.

The review in Ovations the next day called the performance “close to perfect.” The critic raved that nothing could top what he had witnessed “Without Strings” do the night before. In fact, he noted, the company’s shows were now so good that it naturally followed they must soon fall off: after last night, “Without Strings” had “nowhere to go but down.” The critic vowed he would return to the theatre that very evening, and every evening hence, in order to mark the company’s fall. He wanted to be there to ensure that everyone who cared about the arts was apprised of the imminent decline of “Without Strings.”

In spite of its unfavorable intimations, the Ovations write-up intrigued enough people to fill the house the next night. Before a full-capacity crowd, Francis brought forth the familiar hand to the expectant patrons, all waiting for something to go wrong. They bounced in their seats with anticipation. Several licked their lips, as though preparing to suck the enormous fingertips. Yet those who had seen the hand before noted, as soon as it started to claw its way across the stage, that something was different about it. The hand wasn’t costumed, but naked, and it wasn’t clear what its role was, or even what story was being told. Neither scenery nor other puppets appeared on the stage to accompany it. The hand moved to the edge of the thrust, then stopped, falling lifeless before the audience. And then Francis stepped into view from stage left.

The puppet master silently surveyed the expectant faces, studying the white-knuckled fists clutching armrests and the knees bouncing up and down. Everyone waited for him to act. As he looked out over the house, Francis paused only for a moment when his eyes met those of the critic from Ovations.

Without a word, Francis dropped to the floor, his face contorting as his jaw expanded; first one finger, then another, emerged from his mouth, until finally a whole right hand had appeared. It didn’t linger over the now inanimate shell of Francis, but scuttled toward the fallen hand puppet. The new hand paused before its limp mate for just a moment. Then, ever so gently, the hand turned the mirror image of itself over, so that its palm was toward the ceiling. It began to rise and fall upon the limp, imitation open hand, clapping in a soft, steady rhythm. Unable to move, the audience sat stunned. Everyone just listened to the unnatural but insistently regular clapping—everyone except for the critic from Ovations, who smirked as he began to scribble furiously in his notebook.






NOEL SLOBODA lives in Pennsylvania, where he serves as dramaturg for the Harrisburg Shakespeare Festival. He is the author of the poetry collection Shell Games (sunnyoutside, 2008).