Three Twisted Knots

I have been sleeping really well lately, which is why last night’s dream was so incredibly weird. It was one of those dreams that didn’t feel like a dream at all, you know, like the one where you dream that you’ve woken up and got ready for class, or work, or whatever, and you’re already there, only to be startled awake when something weird happens and you wake up for real– in your bed, not ready to go at all, fifteen minutes late? Like that.

Anyway, I woke up, in my dream, and I had to pee, something fierce. Like if I didn’t get up and pee I was going to soil the bed, and gods know when I’d get the chance to get the sheets changed on that fucker, so, yeah. Up I got, and nothing felt right. My hands weren’t working; I had to push the door open with my head. Luckily(?!) there are no locks here, so I could push right out the door. The ground didn’t feel right, either. I stopped for a minute and listened to the wind. I felt my ears twitch forward, then back. That felt weird, so I tossed my head. That felt weird, too. And then I looked down.

At my hooves. Because I was a fucking horse. I don’t know shit about horses, except that some police have them in my part of London and there’s a police stable in Lewisham somewhere. That’s when I realised it was a dream, and it didn’t matter anyway, because horses pee on the ground, right, so I just lifted my tail — I kid you not, I knew exactly how it felt to have a tail! — and it felt so much better after that. Then I walked over to the stable and got neighed and nickered over by the other horses. They were pissed off I was visiting in the middle of the night, but one of them suggested my kind were shy. I was definitely a pale silvery-white horse, which fits with my usual colouring, I guess. I whinnied, and the mare, what a bitch, said she’d never heard of a being like me using that kind of language before. Imagine! So I apologised and said I’d never been a horse before, and then she started laughing. Oh, dearie, she says, you’re in for a shock, she says. Go get yourself a drink of water, she says, the trough gets moonlight, she says, and make sure to look at yourself good, she says.

Fuck me up the backside with a rainbow, I was a goddamn, motherfucking, shitkicking, cocksucking *unicorn*.

OK, first of all, unicorns are plush playtoys for little girls, and they belong in My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic playsets that are coloured lavender and have SPARKLES FOR DAYS and shit. I was so pissed off I nearly kicked the trough over. She’s behind me in the stable, laughing her stupid horsey arse off. She laughed so hard she woke up the gelding, and then she said something to him, and he started laughing, too. Stupid, asshole horses.

Look, I said. This isn’t funny. They just kept on laughing, so I turned around, reared up, and whinnied really loud, and they were all like, Ooh, show us your big horn, you big magical unicorn. That pissed me off I so much I pawed the ground, worked up a cloud of dust, and had a sneezing fit. Jesus Christ on a pogo stick. Look, I said, seriously, can you guys help me out here, because I am not having the best night of my life. I went to bed as a person — a fairy — whatever, and I woke up like this. OK, says the bitch mare. OK, just don’t sweat it. You’re cool. We’re cool. She and the gelding exchanged A Look. The gelding says, sure, you’re cool. Look, you need to figure out how to hide that horn, or every Unseelie fae in the woods will be gunning for your arse. At least he told it like it was. I’m like… OK, but I never heard of unicorns being able to hide their horns, and he’s like, look, girlie, you just said you’d never been a horse before, so you’re just going to have to listen to us. Have some of my feed– it’ll calm you down.

He had hay, which looked disgusting, but he pointed me over to a bag of oats. You can pierce it with that bitchin’ horn, he says, and then we can all have a midnight snack. OK, fine, I thought. The price of info from these idiots is you get them into the oats. No problem. It took a few tries — have *YOU* ever tried piercing a burlap sack with your forehead? SHUT UP! — but I got the sack open and all the oats poured down onto the stable floor. The mare jumped her fence like a cat over a kitchen counter — who knew she was so spry? — and then we all stood together, eating oats and not saying anything for a long time.

THEY WERE SO GOOD. They were the best thing ever. I could have eaten forever, but I figured I’d make myself sick, and I don’t want to be a colicky horse, or whatever that thing is when horses don’t eat right and they get sick and fall over and die, so I stopped. In between mouthfuls of feed (Have you ever heard a horse talk with its mouth full? It’s fucking disgusting), the gelding explains to me that unicorns are so magical they have to hide, that most of them have figured out how to hide their horns so they don’t get caught out. But, he says, some fae can still tell — they can smell a unicorn like anything, and they’re drawn to it like dogs to horseshit.

I rolled my eyes and made a rude noise. You make horseshit too, girly, says the bitch mare.

Yeah, I guessed that I did, so I went with it. So some fae, I said, some fae can tell I’m a unicorn even though I’m hiding my horn? First you have to figure out how to hide it, says the gelding. You’re some kind of fae yourself, says the mare, right? Can’t you just make it disappear or some shit like that? So I thought about it for a minute and the gelding says, hey, that’s good! Looks like you just got a bump under your forelock or something. Look, he says, it’s cold up here at night. Why don’t you sleep in the stable with us? I swear to you, he wiggled his eyebrows. I said, is that some kind of horse come-on? He’s like, I’m sorry, have you seen my balls? I myself have never seen my balls, and I’m pretty sure they don’t exist. But don’t worry, stallions will chase you, but they’ll never catch you: you’ll be too fast when you’re running. Or flying, says the bitch mare. I heard you fuckers can fly. I’m like, Jesus, bitch, you were going on and on about my language? She says, you’re a unicorn, girly, held to a higher standard than the rest of us farm beasts. I’m like, fuck that, let’s get some sleep. So then I fell asleep — standing up — in the stable, and that was the end of my dream.