Exit Unicorns

by Cindy Brandner

  Duncan had tried to see it from both sides, being blessed or cursed (however one saw it) with liberal parents who had preached tolerance from the cradle along with a healthy dose of learning to think for oneself. Thinking was not, on the other hand, a virtue cherished in the household of Bernie McKoughpsie, beating one’s wife and children every day of the week excepting Sunday, religious zealotry and hatred honed to razor-like sharpness were the lessons well and thoroughly taught.

  More disturbing of late was Bernie’s worship of the rankly unendearing Reverend Ian Paisley. Reverend Paisley, zealot of the old and narrow faith, whose sermons veered along the edge of militancy but never outright sank into recommendations of violence. Paisley, who saw the IRA as nothing more than the minions of the Pope, Paisley to whom Catholics were aliens, whose paranoid rhetoric was thickly imbued with the idea of the savage Celt ready at any moment to burst out into barbarism. Duncan, having heard him speak, thought him purely demented and more surely dangerous than an entire squad of the IRA let loose in a building full of Loyalist hard-liners.

  Despite Duncan’s deep distrust of the man, even he had to admit that Dr. Paisley could not be blamed for some of Bernie’s more radical ideas. The word segregation had come off his lips several times.

  “We ought to do like the Americans done with the niggers an’ keep them separate.” Duncan thought it wisest not to mention that the Americans had reversed their policies and all to the better. He had had the great privilege of hearing Dr. Martin Luther King speak only months before in Atlanta and had been filled with humility at the greatness of the man. When Dr. King had been slaughtered by blind bigotry, Duncan had wept. The ‘them’ of Bernie’s hate were of course the Catholics, Catholic of any sort, political affiliations not required. Bernie seemed to be looking for a way to smash and annihilate anything he could not understand, anything that had an element of goodness, peace or beauty. The pinched, bruised faces of his wife and children were proof of that.

  After an afternoon of Bernie’s company and Bernie’s vile temper, Duncan had been relieved to get on the train, thinking only of parting company with the degenerate crowd with whom Bernie surrounded himself. Duncan had thought the train car was empty at first, hadn’t seen the couple in the end seats. But when he did see them, his relief quickly evaporated into panic. Especially when he realized that Bernie had already spotted them.

  Bernie could, he supposed, be forgiven for that. A man would have to be blind not to notice the girl and Bernie, unfortunately, was not blind. It was the way Bernie looked at her that frightened Duncan, though, like she was prey, as if he wished to devour that which was most precious about her and leave the blood to run down his chin.

  The events of the next few moments and the many, many moments that followed would be imprinted on Duncan’s memory for eternity, a silent horror film, where one is not allowed to leave the theater. It seemed to happen in slow motion, the girl turning her head, laughing at something her dark-haired companion said, or did he ask a question? For she had answered, ‘truly, madly, deeply,’ and then tossed her ponytail over her right shoulder. Had he asked, ‘do you love me?’ Duncan was to wonder later, for there had been a look of sweet happiness on the boy’s face. But as his gaze lowered, he saw with a wrench of fear in his bowels what it was that had so transfixed Bernie. For the girl’s muffler was green with white stripes, the colors of the team that had just so soundly beaten their own, a team made up of Catholic boys. And over her muffler, swaying to the rhythm of the train was a delicate, pale-gold crucifix. ‘Symbol of our Lord’s suffering’ thought Duncan wildly and about to become the cause of much more pain.

  Bernie had gone deathly still and in accordance so, like rats smelling rot, had his three other companions.

  The girl turned feeling, no doubt, burning eyes upon her and met them with a clear, undaunted green gaze. The boy had gone very still, a mask of nothingness pulled down over his face, his body ready in every limb and cell for movement. Even if the train were not moving, Duncan had a feeling these two would not run. The still and silence held for several more moments and though he could hardly breathe through the tension, a ragged hope was beginning to form within Duncan that the fraught atmosphere would gel and stay until they reached their separate destinations. It wasn’t to happen.

  At a lurch from the train an empty lager can rolled across the dirty floor and the noise from the rattling can was enough to break whatever uneasy truce had existed a second before.

  “What’s yer name beauty?” asked Bernie sounding no more harmful than the average drunken lout, Duncan thought uneasily, wondering what game he was about to play. The girl, eyes now held steadily to the floor, didn’t answer. Bernie rose and crossed the car, coming to a stop only a foot away from where the two were seated. The boy’s arm was around the girl now, offering what scant assurance it could.

  “I asked yer name princess,” Bernie said in a too congenial tone. Duncan began to shake.

  Her head came up slowly, steadily and she met Bernie’s stare head-on.

  “I don’t see that my name is any concern of yours,” she said firmly. Duncan’s heart dropped down into the vicinity of his knees.

  “The princess doesn’t want to tell her name,” Bernie said over his shoulder to his cohorts who had sauntered up behind him. “How’s about we guess? D’ye know any good Catholic names for a good Catholic girl?”

  “Maude, Molly, Colleen,” came the slurred and sneering replies. Duncan began to make his way slowly across the car, not trusting his trembling legs, uncertain of how closer proximity was going to alter the fate of these two young people.

  “I’m tellin’ ye boys, ye’ve missed the most obvious, a good Catholic girl is named after the queen of the virgins, this here is Princess Mary.”

  Bernie put a booted foot up on her seat, the polished steel toe insinuating itself brutally between her pale, naked knees.

  “Are ye named after the queen of virgins, Princess Mary? Are ye?” Bernie’s foot advanced, touching now the hem of her short plaid skirt. Duncan saw her fine-boned hand lay itself on the boy’s arm like tensile steel. She was warning him.

  “Are ye a virgin then Princess? Or is this little boy yer lover?” Bernie poked the boy in the shoulder and got a half-rise out of him before the girl pulled him down sharply and said, “Don’t he’s not worth it.” She faced Bernie, unblinking and slowly but firmly pushed his foot off her seat. “Please leave us alone.”

  “O-ho lads the princess said please. Do ye say please in bed princess? Please an’ thank you an hail Mary an’ all the rest. Do ye kiss a picture of the Pope before ye spread yer legs fer yer little papist boy here?”

  “Shut yer fockin’ mouth,” said the boy tightly, his face taut with fury.

  “What did ye say boy? I wasn’t talkin’ to ye, I was talkin’ to the princess here, wasn’t I princess?” Bernie reached down and caressed the collar of the navy pea coat she wore.

  “Ye get yer fockin’ filthy hands off her ye bastard, or I’ll break every bone in them for ye.” The boy rose from his seat, shaking off the girl’s frantic hand.

  “Break my fockin’ filthy hands, will ye?” Bernie said drawing the words out pleasurably.

  “We’ve done nothing to you, will you please just leave us alone?” the girl said her voice no longer calm, her face gone dead white.

  “Ye’ve done nothin’ to me then have ye? Well,” Bernie bent down so his face was even with hers, “I wouldn’t say that’s quite true,” he tilted his head until a long, puckered scar was visible just above the top of his collar, “now would ye, Jewel?”

  The girl gasped and Bernie reached down with one blunt, callused hand and pulled her up by her ponytail. “But I won’t hold that against ye. I think we should reacquaint ourselves though an’ let yer little loverboy here watch, maybe he’ll learn somethin’.”

  The boy lunged forward just as Duncan said, “Bernie do
n’t be such a bastard,” and smashed a rock solid left punch into Bernie’s face. Bernie’s face seemed to explode into a roar of crimson spray. It took all three of Bernie’s accomplices to grab the boy and throw him down to the floor, where Bernie, after wiping a torrent of blood off his face, kicked him hard in the stomach five, six, seven times. He turned back to the girl then, who stood paralyzed with fear against the wall of the train.

  “Come on then, Jewel, let’s have a little fun, you an’ me.”

  “No,” she said defiantly, her fists clenched hard by her sides, eyes wide with fear, the proverbial deer caught in the headlights.

  “No,” Bernie echoed and turned, drawing one booted foot back and delivering a kick to the boy that made him retch blood onto the dirty floor.

  “That’s what ‘no’ will get ye princess. I make the rules, d’ye understand? Ye do as I say an’ I spare yer little man the worst beatin’ ye can imagine. Understand?” She stood mute, defiance leaking out of her as she realized the trap was set on all sides.

  Bernie kicked the boy again and Duncan heard the sound of ribs splintering.

  “I think it’d be in yer friend’s best interest if ye answered,” Bernie said happily.

  “Yes.”

  Bernie kicked the boy again, this time with a steel point to the chin that sent his head snapping back, where it smashed hard into the steel frame of the seat. Duncan began to fear that Bernie intended to kill him.

  “Yes what Princess?”

  “Yes, I understand. Now please, please don’t hurt him.”

  “Good. I see we have a meeting of the minds here, now I’d like the introduce ye to the rest of myself.”

  Duncan reached out a hand and grabbed Bernie’s shoulder.

  “Don’t do this Bernie, ye stop now an’ we’ll get off the train in Belfast an’ no more will be said about it. Otherwise I’ll turn you in to the police.”

  “Ye’ll go to the police?” Bernie laughed, “Who the hell do ye think yer talkin’ to? The police in this country understand about lookin’ the other way. The police are on my side, Duncan.”

  He took a deep breath, trying to find some courage in the stale air. “You stop now, Bernie.”

  A backhanded fist caught him across the face and sent him flying to the floor.

  “Ye go to the police Duncan an’ ye’ll fockin’ go home to yer family in a body bag.” Bernie smiled and Duncan suddenly understood that he was a psychopath who was using his position of authority as a convenient excuse for mindless violence. Bernie could kill him here and now and feel no regret for it in the morning.

  “Take yer clothes off,” Bernie redirected his comments to the girl who looked with terror on her companion, who was facedown on the floor, firmly pinned with his arms twisted brutally up to his shoulder blades, squinting through a haze of pain.

  She hesitated for a second and Bernie kicked her friend in the face, the crunch of bone followed by a rush of blood down his face.

  “When I issue a command, ye obey it instantly, understood?”

  She nodded frantically, shrugging off her coat and beginning, with shaking hands, to undo the buttons on her white blouse.

  “Too slow,” Bernie shook his head and kicked the boy hard in the stomach again, then reached over and tore the girl’s blouse down the front and off of her.

  “Now take the rest off an’ do it quick or there’s more of the same for him,” Bernie prodded the boy in the ribs roughly, eliciting a low moan from the prostrate form.

  Duncan, seized by desperation, grabbed Bernie’s leg and tried to upend him. He barely managed to make him stumble and for his efforts received a brutal blow to the face. The rest of the events unfolded through a miasma of pain and nausea.

  The girl had taken her bra off and stood barebreasted before them, shaking hands futilely yanking at the zipper on her skirt.

  “Too slow again Princess,” said Bernie merrily and nodded at one of his accomplices, “break his arm.”

  Duncan heard the sickening crack of bone and a grunt of pain that belied the agony the boy must be in. Bernie pulled the girl’s skirt off and then pushed her down on her knees in front of him. Duncan closed his eyes when Bernie pulled down his zipper and only heard the rest of it. There was a small choking sound and then the boy yelled, “Don’t Pamela, don’t, I don’t care if they kill me, just don’t.”

  Another crack, a small cry of pain and the girl’s voice ragged and angry.

  “Shutup, just shutup.”

  Duncan squeezed his eyes shut as tightly as he could, the way he had as a child when darkness had frightened him, as if by not seeing it he could make the evil go away. But he could not stop his ears from hearing the pain and violation, nor his nose from smelling the blood or other smells he fought hard to put no name to.

  He dared to slit an eye some moments later, only to see one of Bernie’s friends on top of the girl, who lay now facedown in the dirt and blood of the train. Her eyes were open, focused with an inner resource, on the bottom of his own shoe. ‘They are taking my body but they are not having my mind’ her grim stare seemed to be saying, but then she looked up at his face and her eyes met his own for a minute and he saw something so fragile and broken in her face that he felt as though he were witnessing the murder of a child. Then she looked away again, staring once more at his shoe. Duncan turned his head slowly away, an agony of pain shooting up his neck and into his jaw. The boy, Pat, she’d called him, was watching the girl, his eyes not wavering, though tears ran in endless streams, commingling with the drying blood to ghastly effect. He’d likely be better off if Bernie did kill him, poor bastard.

  When the third of Bernie’s friends got on top of the girl and another took his place over top of her head, Duncan rolled over and threw up. The rest he mercifully blocked out. The sounds had degenerated from those of humans to mere animals taking their pleasure. From the boy and girl there was no sound.

  An eternity later, the train came to the end of its journey. The doors opened and there was the sound of men fleeing into the night. Then he heard Bernie’s voice, a chill hiss, “I don’t forget either you dumb bastard, you might want to remember that next time you brutalize a policeman.” Duncan felt the air charge and stir in front of him. “Open yer eyes ye damn coward.”

  He obeyed, one lid at a time, gingerly, carefully, terrified to the roots of his being of what he might find. The sharp point of a knife nicked at the base of his throat, Bernie’s breath was hot on his face, his hazel eyes electric with triumph. “No police, d’ye understand Duncan, I know where ye live, an’ I know where yer mam an’ dad are. Accidents can happen in all sorts of ways, don’t forget that Duncan if ye should go gettin’ any crazy ideas.” He stood, flicked his knife back into its casing and began to whistle a buoyant tune as he walked off the train and into the night.

  Duncan took a shaky breath, the silence pressing in on his head painfully. A minute passed, then two and he heard a small scratching noise, a scraping, flesh on floor and a mute cry that filled the air, that seemed to rent it and rip into his skin.

  “Stop it,” he begged, “stop making that noise.”

  “No one’s making any noise and your friends are well shot of here so you can quit crouching in the corner.”

  He turned to face her, she was kneeling, bloody, bruised and half-naked, but at least she was upright. The boy was not. His eyes were closed, his skin tinged a macabre blue under all the red and black, a stream of fresh blood trickling from a cut across his neck.

  “Jesus God,” he breathed in horror, “did he cut his throat?”

  “No, I believe he left his signature,” she said wearily and crawled across to the boy, clutching her torn and filthy shirt to her chest with one hand. She put two fingers to the side of his neck

  “He needs help, you’ve got to go and get help for him, I can’t leave him like this, you need to go now.” Dun
can winced from the harsh light of the train that backlit the girl, making her seem like some avenging angel, bloodstreaked, bruised and ivory-skinned.

  “Me?” Duncan managed to squeak out through his bruised throat.

  “Yes you, I cannot leave him alone, he might—he could,” she faltered, a long hard tremor shaking her body, the way a dog might a bone, and then with a visible effort to hang on to some shred of sanity she continued. “We haven’t much time, I can’t move him and it’s only a matter of minutes before someone finds us. That cannot happen, do you understand, it cannot. You must call the number I give you and ask for James Kirkpatrick, you cannot talk to anyone but him. Tell him Pat’s hurt very bad and that Pamela asked that he should come as quickly as possible. We’ll meet him under the bridge by the shipyards, can you remember all that?”

  “Yes, yes I can, but do you think it’s wise to move him?”

  “No, but we cannot stay here, if we stay here and someone finds us, it could go very badly for all of us, do you understand what I’m saying?”

  “Noooo,” Duncan said slowly, though it was terrifyingly clear what she meant. She told him the number then, slowly and twice over and made him repeat it twice back to her.

  “Here,” he said as he rose to go, “You’d best take my coat, it’s cold.”