Ground Unicorn Horn

by Rich Baiocco

Cliff won’t share the ground unicorn horn, just sniffs tiny piles off the back of his fist, clicks his jaw like a typewriter and we drive too fast on some back roads up north. “Come find me when a Unicorn rams its horn through your father’s breast, alright hippy!” “He’s my father too,” I mumble and Cliff says “Step,” as if that makes it not real. Our headlights slice across the antlers of a large Elk on the side of the road and Cliff becomes enraged and whips the Nissan into a 90 degree skid on the wet grass, reaching for the crowbar under my seat when we stop. “It’s just a deer,” I try to say but my mouth doesn’t seem to work after slamming my head on the dashboard when Cliff hit the brakes, and he’s already outside with the crowbar yelling “I’ll kill every last one of these unicorns. Lynch ‘em all from these trees with their own damn rainbows.”

6S

Rich Baiocco is a writer living in New York City and the author of the short story collection Julie In Mittens.