Double Feature

by Vernon D Burns

  Blaine laughed as he watched the whore waddle painfully from the room. After she slammed the door and he’d finished laughing, he wiped his member off on the sheet. He was due home in half an hour; there was no time for a shower. He giggled at the thought of shoving his bloody, shit-covered dick into his wife’s shit-filled ass. His phone rang.

  “Yeah,” he said, his voice silencing the custom Journey ringtone when he answered. It was probably just his bitch wife. No, it wasn’t. It was his secretary. “Oh, hey baby.”

  He climbed into his pants. “You got a new what?” he exclaimed, growing excited. “I’ve got to see this! No, she’s not out of town, but fuck it. This is a special occasion, right? There’s a PTA meeting or something tonight. I’ll just call and tell her I have to work late. No big deal. I’ll see you in twenty. Start getting warmed up.”

  Blaine ended the call and dialed his home number. He got the machine, which was a relief to him. “Barb! Pick up the phone! You’re not there? Probably out spending my money. Listen, unlike you, I have a job to do. I’ve got a big case and have to work late tonight. I’m going to miss the PTA meeting. Not that it matters, anyway. I’ll be real late. Big case. Kiss Mandy goodnight for me. Bye.”

  Blaine hung up the phone with satisfaction. He’d played that one perfectly. Now his whole evening was clear. He rushed out to his car, eager to help Candace, his busty blond secretary, try out her new nipple clamps.

  Dejectedly, Carrie walked. She was hungry. With her food stores missing, she felt completely lost, like none of the work she’d done made any difference. She walked aimlessly through the streets, her long face turned down so as not to meet the eyes of others on the streets. She found herself at the city park, which was just as well. While she preferred human flesh when she was bored or having a psychotic episode, she could easily subsist on grass and other plants.

  Before bedding down with a patch of grass and clover, Carrie decided that she needed a drink. If she was still in her human form, she’d have opted for a nice wine cooler. But since she was a horse and unable to fit through the door of the liquor store, she’d have to content herself with a draught of water from the man-made lake. She moseyed up to it, like a horse in a John Wayne film.

  She closed her eyes tightly as she bent down to drink, eager to not see her reflection in the murky water. Misjudging the distance and the length of her face, her nose dipped beneath the surface and resulted in her breathing some of the water into her substantial sinus cavities. The discomfort was immediate. Involuntarily, her eyes snapped open. As she coughed and sputtered, she was forced to look herself in the face.

  She was ugly. Fucking ugly. It was no wonder the professor had given up on her, no wonder Blaine had caused her death. Her large eyes looked more like marbles than windows to her soul, a thing so ethereal that she wasn’t sure it was even there anymore. She had her consciousness, sure, and her regret, but did animals even have souls? She was an animal in a literal sense and it confused her a great deal. She eyed the brown dried blood that coated her face and wished she could wash it off, but knew that she couldn’t.

  Carrie let out a sigh and turned away from the lake, completely forgetting about her beverage. I wonder how far it is to the Grand Canyon, Carrie thought. She figured that she could just walk off the edge and end her life. What was the point of living as a loveless horse?

  Just as she was about to turn west and head for that great gap in the mountains created by the water erosion of the Colorado River, she paused. There was a strange scent in the air. It smelled familiar, but dead. She turned on her heels and looked behind her. Out of the bushes surrounding the lake emerged a small unicorn, covered in fresh blood. The creature walked up to Carrie and nuzzled noses with her. The small thing smelled of death, but Carrie didn’t care. She was so happy to have some contact from a living thing. The unicorn nudged Carrie, beckoning her to follow. Carrie obliged.

  She followed the unicorn through the bushes and around some playground equipment to a soccer field. The grass had been poorly maintained, as soccer wasn’t a very popular sport in San Francisco. The city had tried to start a youth league several years prior, but it never took off. The fees were so exorbitant that none of the low income participants could afford to join, and there was a dearth of low income would-be participants because living in the city was already so expensive.

  Unfortunately, the city had built the soccer field with grant funds. Without the soccer registrations, there was no way to maintain the facilities. Because of that, the field went to seed, tufting over with weeds and debris. For a while, the plot became something of a small cardboard city for the homeless, where they used the soccer goals to hang their laundry out to dry. They were run off by the newly founded neighborhood watch organizations nearby, though. Once the area was properly vacant again, some hippies tried to start a community garden to provide produce for Food Not Bombs. But, like all hippy endeavors, the plan was poorly executed and fell by the wayside. There was a great prevalence of good, cheap mary jane at that time, which the hippies naturally gravitated to. The chronic ruined their initiative.

  The town petitioned to pave over the soccer field a few years ago, citing a need for downtown parking. Everyone agreed that the forty car lot would be a good thing for all citizens. The paperwork was submitted, but was misplaced by a careless worker who was later indicted for fraud and served seven years in the pen. It turned out that he was smuggling out the petty cash and using it to buy lotto scratchers and pay his rent. He lived alone and had one cat. When he was carted away, his sister adopted the cat. Turned out she had a pretty severe allergy, and that’s how she ended up dying.

  Carrie was surprised to see the sight that the small unicorn showed her. Standing in the darkness of the park, covering every square inch of available space, were unicorns. Carrie’s mouth hung open as she surveyed the crowd. They all looked to her like they were waiting for instruction. She turned to the small unicorn and did her best to convey her confusion. The baby creature smiled sympathetically and extended her horn. Carrie tilted her head down, knowing intuitively that the unicorn wanted to press their horns together.

  With a flash and an electric shock, Carrie saw it all. Through the psychic connection of the unicorn, she saw herself, crazed and biting. Whenever she bit or killed anyone, that person turned into a unicorn. But not just any unicorn! A unicorn with a taste for human flesh and the ability to turn humans into other unicorns. It would be a total epidemic. Every homeless person, diner eater, and bus stop child had turned and had, in turn, turned others. She saw this small horse, Mandy was her name, drive her horn through her mother’s head. She saw the really pretty-decent-for-her-age breasts flop as she hit the shower floor. She heard the alarming skull crack as if she was there. She could feel herself smile with Mandy as the child’s mother rose from the dead and transformed into a unicorn. Very clearly, Carrie understood everything.

  She was their leader. She commanded this horde of zombicorns, and they were hungry for orders and flesh. But what to do? As if in answer, all of the unicorns’ eyes flashed red like Christmas lights on a timer.

  Blaine, they all thought. And the Dr. Cunningham!

  With a vicious stampede, the zombicorns mobbed in the direction of Blaine, who was, at that very moment, balls deep in his secretary’s colon.

  Part 2: The Fires of Redemption

  Chapter 1

  Dr. Cunningham shook his head with frustration. The idea had seemed so good at the time, but his grandest schemes had a habit of going sour, and leaving a taste in his mouth that could only be washed out with a quart of brandy. Why had he not seen the hole in his logic before now?

  The giraffe with a woman’s brain was stumbling through the hallway, the komondor, or ‘mop dog,’ attached to its head squirming as the giraffe tried to dust with it. Frustrated and afraid of heights, the komondor barked and shat again. The shit fell nearly two stories before splattering upon the hardwood floor of his winery. Then, as the dog scrambled to try an
d get down, its sharp little claws scratched against his ceiling. No, this plan really wasn’t working. It gave him horrible memories of his other failed experiments, the largest of which was his life. What had his life been but one drawn out, catastrophic failure to achieve what he had attempted?

  “Look, Rachel, maybe it will be best if you whack the dog against the ceiling to knock it unconscious before you dust. Maybe that will get it to stop shitting all over the place.”

  The giraffe nodded its head in agreement. The komondor, frightened by being suddenly shaken, peed. Dr. Cunningham was sprinkled by a golden shower, and that was not a turnon for him. How does such a small animal produce so much waste? he pondered.

  “I told you, asshole, I’ll be back in the K.C. by Monday. God, don’t get so bent out of shape, you cocknobber. I’ll give you your money once I’ve won it back in this poker game tonight. A lot is gonna be riding on this.”

  Seth flipped his coin, catching it out of the air as he sat on the bench at the park, birds flitting around in the trees. Green bushes and other plants were all over the place. He crossed his legs in his skinny jeans, flipping the coin again. “Oh, you’re gonna break my kneecaps? Well, I’d like to see you try it! You can’t threaten me, I know people! I know everybody! I will end you, prick, I WILL END YOU. Fuck you, Dad, I’m hanging up!”

  Seth hung up. He sighed, crossing his arms. He had to bring his best game face tonight if he wanted to ever pay back his dad. And also Blaine, his good friend who lent him some money to start up a new online business selling buttons. Turns out the button business isn’t as lucrative as it seems on its face, especially when you can’t stop withdrawing company funds to go play poker.

  “Fuck all of you,” he said. “I’m gonna be the best poker player ever.”

  That was when he noticed the foliage seemed to be getting closer. Throughout the whole conversation with his asshole father, and with the creditor before that, and with his sister Glenda before that, the bushes had gradually been moving closer and closer to the bench. Now, he was basically surrounded by a ring of bushy shrubberies. One of them right in front of him inched forward again. Subtly glancing downward, he saw little hoofed feet beneath the greenery.

  “Who sent you, and what do you want?” he said, trying to keep the worry out of his voice.

  The shrub sighed. With a flick, the bush was tossed away, revealing a really slimy looking unicorn. It had either been wearing the bush on its horn or clamping it in its mouth. Either way, it didn’t look happy.

  Seth didn’t want it to know how worried he was. After all, he hadn’t smoked anything in days. Why would hallucinations kick in now? No, this had to be a true-to-life unicorn. Of all the fucking days to be surrounded by mythological beasts.

  He stood up and waved his arms, trying to look big. “What do you want? Speak, dammit! Who sent you! Whoever it is, I’m not afraid of them, and I’ll pay them back later! After the poker game!”

  The unicorn stepped closer, staring into his eyes. Suddenly, recognition flooded over him. “Oh, god! Carrie? Is it you? God, what happened to you? You look. . . well, like a really ugly unicorn!”

  Carrie hung her head, sad to know that she had somehow managed to become a unicorn that people didn’t think was pretty. She looked like an ugly, homeless unicorn who wasn’t comfortable in her own skin. Because, really, it wasn’t her skin: it was the skin that had been forced upon her by a man who thought only of himself. By a twisted doctor who drank all day and night. No, this was not her own skin; if she was ever to get revenge on those who did this to her, she would need to claim it, though. She would need to accept her new body, and her new army of zombie unicorns, and use them to get what she wanted. It was time for Carrie to start demanding respect. And then start stabbing some people to death with her horn.

  “Well, are you just going to stand there like some kind of fucking farm animal, or are you going to say something? How did you turn into a screwnicorn?”

  She shifted her head forward, pressing it against Seth’s chest. She gradually shifted forward, forcing him to sit back down. Even then, the pressure didn’t let up: she pressed until he screamed, a little blood trickling from the wound.

  “No, don’t kill me! I’ll. . . I’ll take you to Blaine! He’s the one you really want! He . . . he killed you! Everybody knows!”

  Carrie let up. She nodded her head at him contentedly. True, she had different abilities than when she was a human. But a long, pointy metal horn could sometimes do more talking than a mouth with a tongue in it.

  “He went back to his wife, but he’s cheating on her with like nine other women. And that’s not counting the prostitutes. I swear, he gets his dick wet more than any guy I know.” As he said this, he couldn’t keep the admiration out of his voice. Carrie whacked him across the forehead with her horn. Blood trickled from the wound, red and damp.

  “I know, right? He’s an asshole,” Seth said, hoping to get her back on his side. “Look, this might go faster if I ride you. Is that okay? Or is that, like, sexist?”

  Carrie sighed and bent down slightly, allowing the bloody gambler to climb onto her back.

  She used her metal horn to communicate with the other unicorns, the metal vibrating with her thoughts. We must travel quickly to Kansas. That will be the place where we begin to get revenge for the misdeeds that have been taken against our kind. Of course, by ‘our kind,’ she meant only herself, but this was beside the point. We must teach Blaine the wrongness of his ways. He is an asshole, and you will all agree once you’ve met him.

  With that, the herd began galloping through the park, most of them still disguised with bushes.

  Troy shook his head, his afro jiggling. “Dude, I’m horny as hell! Fuck, I need a girl with a big ol’ ass to sit on my rod and let me penetrate her!”

  “I know, baby, I know,” Marcus said, laughing as he sat by the stripper stage. The hip hop music was loud and the lights pulsing, but the stripper they had been watching had left and not returned yet. They were both quite irritated, their boners shrinking by the second as they were faced with the stark reality of being in a strip club at 11 AM on a Monday.

  “C’mon, where my bitches at?” Troy shouted, waving a handful of one dollar bills around. “I’m ready to see some dancing, bitches!”

  “God,” said Marcus. “These are some slow-ass bitches. By the time they come back out here, I’m gonna be reading the classifieds again, trying to find a job. These dolla bills don’t grow on trees.”

  “I hear dat,” Troy said, adjusting his tie. Shouting louder, he said, “Hey bitches! You got some paying customers out here!”

  “We must have scared them away,” Marcus said, lighting up a Parliament. “Fuck it, man, let’s go down the street and get some burgers at Hooters. It ain’t as good, but I like those little orange shorts.”

  The two men got up and turned to leave, then stopped dead in their tracks. The whole club was abandoned, it seemed, other than a large number of bushes scattered around the whole room. Walking slowly toward them, they saw a unicorn with blood caked to its face. A man was riding it, blood caking his face as well. It was not a sight that was very encouraging.

  The ugly unicorn stopped and glared at them. It was clearly a glare because of the way the horse was angling its head. The man reached down and grasped the unicorn’s sharp, metal horn. Then, the man’s mouth opened and he said, “My unicorn wants you guys to know that you’re pigs, and that you’ll be much better people once she has poked you full of holes and brought you back as zombie unicorns.”

  Marcus’s eyes widened, but Troy was quick in responding. “We’re only here to apply for a job. They, uh, they might need cooks. So, I came here, just to get a job, and I saw my friend Marcus here, watching the bitches--the ladies, I mean--he was watching the ladies jiggling their, umm, buttocks and their titties, and I had nothing to do with that shit. I got a girlfriend, and I respect her like my mama, and I ain’t never donkey punched her. Not once. ” He then dropped to
his knees. “Honest! I’m a good man!”

  The man on the unicorn said, “My unicorn says she is very horny, and wants to penetrate something with her rod.”

  With that, Carrie charged. Her horn plunged into Troy’s stomach, then emerged with intestines twirled around her horn like a fork in spaghetti. With a gesture, she looped the intestines around his neck and began dragging him along behind her. Troy grasped at his throat, feeling more and more of his innards spilling from his stomach. It was pain unlike any he’d felt before, even when he had his wisdom teeth removed.

  “Don’t you want to teach that other dude a lesson?” Seth said to his pony.

  She thought into her horn, and to his dismay, Troy was able to hear the thoughts since his intestines were wrapped around the horn. No, the other one just learned the only friend he trusted was a total skeezbag who would throw him under a bus to save his own ass. No, as long as they both suffer, I’m happy.

  Chapter 2

  Marcus sighed a deep sigh of relief. As the air left his lungs, he felt his body relax. He fumbled in his pocket for a pack of cigarettes. He tapped the bottom of the pack and slid one out, lighting up even though it was clearly posted that it was not allowed. Greedily, he sucked the smoke into his lungs.

  “Wwwwhiiiiibbbbbbbpph!” Carrie whinnied as she charged toward the smoking man. She drove her screw through his chest, pinning the two perverts together.

  “Gah!” exclaimed Seth. “I thought you said you were going to leave him alone!”

  “But then he started smoking. I can’t remember why, but I hate men who smoke,” Carrie explained. She lifted her noble head and began to shake the shady characters off of her face. Blood dripped on her long snout as wisps of smoke left her nostrils.