Angela Payne
Encounter with a Unicorn
“So my unicorn has cancer,” I vividly hear in the back of my head.
All of the sudden my head snaps up, and I remember that I’m in
algebra class. Stupid algebra. It always puts me to sleep. Why do I have to
have it right after lunch? I then realize that my teacher, Ms. Dore,
was the one saying “So my unicorn has cancer.” I try to act cool and
I look to my left, where Bobby also has heavy eyes, and so I know Ms.
Dore’s statement has awoken him as well. I look to my right, and
Alicia is sitting back in her chair as if she has just shifted out of a deep
sleep.
I don’t know what it is about Ms. Dore’s class. Maybe she has a
hard time keeping our attention with her methods of teaching. Maybe she
doesn’t know how to teach algebra. But this isn’t the first time she
has burst out with a random statement. Last week she woke me up by
saying, “So I got robbed last night.” It never fails. I think she knows
that some of us fall asleep. After I had jolted up last week, she went
on to explain the whole situation.
“I was eating dinner, and I heard the handle of the back door being
messed with. It was locked, so I didn’t worry. Then I heard a gunshot
through the window, and this made me jump up out of my seat. A guy in a
black-hooded mask forced his way through the door, and looked at me,
holding a gun. ‘Where’s the expensive stuff?’ he asked me. I just
pointed toward my bedroom and watched as he went back and stole my
grandmother’s jewels. Anyway, getting back to fractions…” And that
was it.
Today is no different. I sit up and stretch while listening to Ms.
Dore’s story about her unicorn. “I found out yesterday afternoon. She
has cancer in four places on her body. It’s very sad because I was
going to give her to my grandson this weekend when he came down to visit.
I just hope there’s some form of chemotherapy to heal her before he
gets here. So if you look at your calculators, sin and co-sin are at
the top…”
Ms. Dore continues on with her lecture, and I begin to notice that the
things she is writing on the board begin to move. I look at Bobby and
Alicia, but both of them have their eyes forward and don’t seem to be
bothered by the fact that the writing on the chalkboard is morphing
into different things. First the chalk becomes a hamburger, and the
chalk-outlined hamburger begins to move toward me, quickly. I duck out of
the way and follow as it barely misses my head and flies through the
window. When I turn around to watch it leave, no one is looking at me. What
is wrong with me?
Ms. Dore goes on with her lecture. She writes more on the board, and
as she is writing, she tries to explain to us. “So the sin of a number
is twice that of its product, and the co-sin of a number is three
times its sin.” She begins to write numbers on the board, but all I see
is squiggly lines everywhere. There’s a dog. There’s a cat.
There’s an apple. I have to move so they can fly past me.
I look up at the clock over the door, but then I spy something
else—a rainbow-colored horn. It’s as if something is trying to come
through the door, but is blocked by it. I raise my hand, but Ms. Dore seems
to ignore me and goes on talking about our homework assignment. I yell
at her. “Ms. Dore! Something is at the door! A huge horn!”
Finally some recognition. Ms. Dore stops what she is doing and stares
at me. But wait. That’s all she does. I repeat to her, “Ms. Dore,
there is something outside our room.” But she continues to stare
straight ahead, right through me, as if she’s in a trance or something.
The horn finally gets longer and longer, revealing the head of a
beautiful white unicorn. The colors of the rainbow are on the unicorn’s
horn: pink, yellow, blue, green, violet, and orange. They all seem to
swirl together, like a painting. The animal’s fur is silky and
smooth-looking and the eyes are a deep hazel green. I would say that this mare
is a girl because her hooves are pink. Everyone knows that the hooves of
a male unicorn are blue. She walks into the room, fully revealing
herself. Her tail is the only thing that matches her horn, and it is
multi-colored. It flutters about behind her, and she stares straight at me. Her
pure white wings look like they are made of the feathers of a swan, but
ten times larger.
The rest of the class must be zoned out or something because everyone
seems to be frozen in time and not moving. I hear the quiet hum of a
guitar coming from somewhere in the distance, but ignore it. I continue
to try and get Ms. Dore’s attention, or even Bobby or Alicia, and I
stand up on top of my desk and start yelling. “Do any of you hear me?
There is a unicorn in the room! Does no one think this is strange but
me?”
I look at Alicia. She is looking right at me, but her face is blank.
Her features are solid. Only her hair is blowing back and forth from the
air conditioner. I get off my desk, and begin to shake her. Her eyes
begin to blink. Her face begins to move, and her eyes look around. I’m
glad she’s out of her trance so I can tell her about the unicorn.
Meanwhile, the rest of the class still is in a trance.
Alicia comes out her coma-like state, and she asks me, “What
happened?”
“I don’t know. Apparently you fell asleep.” She gets up out of
her seat. We both look at Ms. Dore, whose eyes are fixed on my desk,
where I should be sitting. We just begin to laugh.
“Look,” I tell her, and point towards the unicorn. She looks with
fascination, and then looks back at me.
“How in the world?” We both walk in between desks, and are careful
not to disturb our coma-zoned peers. When we reach the unicorn, I look
into her eyes. She seems calm, and so we both reach out our right
hands to touch her. Her fur is as soft as silk, and she simply looks at us
from the corner of her eye.
The unicorn begins to move away from us, and our hands are still
outstretched so we can continue to pet her. We then realize that we are no
longer in the classroom, but somewhere else. We are now in an open field
of grass with rolling hills and the sky is blue with no clouds in it.
I turn around to survey the scenery, and it seems to change. Now there
are tall oak trees around us. They go hundreds of feet above us, and I
can only see the light of the sun in-between the branches and leaves of
the trees.
I turn around to face the unicorn, and she stands elegantly before me.
Alicia is no where in sight. I begin to be scared, and huddle closer
to the unicorn. I look around, and the forest seems to be getting darker
but also scarier. The trees are wilting before my eyes and turning
black. A swamp is in front of me now, and it is a gooey puke-green color.
The unicorn’s ears perk up, and she begins to run off. I follow her,
calling out, “wait up!” I do not want to leave her here, because I
have never been to a place where the scenery constantly changes before
my eyes. I want to stay with her, so that perhaps I can get back to
familiar ground. She begins to gallop, and I begin to sprint. I catch up
with her, and she gives me a look in her eyes that is welcoming. She halts
just long enough for me to get on her back. She canters, and all of
a sudden I hear a nasty, creepy laugh. It sounds like the laugh of a
hyena. I look behind me and see what looks to be a leprechaun running
after us, carrying a small axe. He looks like he is only four feet tall,
but has amazing speed for a man of his size. He is wearing a green
top-hat and has a long red beard. His eyes look evil.
The unicorn begins to flap her wings, but I have no idea where she
will be able to fly us with so many branches in our way. The leprechaun
look-alike begins to jump onto the branches of the trees, and is
practically parallel with us as we fly low through the deserted forest. He
reminds me of Spider-Man by jumping from tree to tree and flying and
leaping through the air with amazing speed.
I look up ahead and see a small opening of light. As the light gets
closer, I begin to get sleepy. I have a hard time keeping my eyes open,
and begin to doze off. I am terrified that at any minute the leprechaun
will jump onto the back of the unicorn’s back and chop me up, and I
try to maintain consciousness. The light gets brighter and brighter.
The unicorn looks back at me and says something to me. I can barely make
it out. It is slurred and my vision is getting blurred. She seems to be
talking about the leprechaun. I finally hear something comprehensible.
“So my leprechaun escaped.”
I jump up and hear snickers around the room. Alicia is giving me the
strangest look, and she and Ms. Dore are the only ones in the room not
laughing at me. What happened? I ask myself. Bobby is laughing. “You
were talking in your sleep!” he says to me. I smile and try to laugh
along. The bell rings, and I begin to gather up my things. As I leave the
room with Alicia, Ms. Dore says something to me quietly: “So I see
you met my unicorn.”
©2008 by Angela Payne
