It was nothing new, really. A parking lot. A minor indignity. The driver rolled his window down and a man of some sinister age breathed out into the cold. Something about him was spiritually misshapen. He gaped at me with eyes so wide you could see the white all around his irises; like a cartoon lunatic. He stuck his whole head out the window and just stared at me. Then he mouthed something too quiet for me to hear. After that, Avalon the Unicorn started showing up.
It was 3:00 a.m. and I was certain I was dreaming, but when I sat up and blinked a few times she was still there. A unicorn. Glowing white. Crooked spike jutting from her head so long it touched the ceiling. Nothing else was strange. Runny stripes of moonlight spilled across my boyfriend’s comforter. Daisy was curled up at the foot of the bed, snoring perfectly. I was hallucinating.
I thought of my medication. How many nights had I been at Dominic’s? I fumbled through the bedside drawer until I remembered I wasn’t in my own bed. All I found in his nightstand was a roll of condoms and an old receipt he’d emptied out of his pocket. It was beside the point. My mouth twitched at the allure of a fresh prognosis. Something new to worry my dad about. It had to be some sort of long-term side effect. One of those brain bleeds you hear about on Paxil commercials.
Dreaming, probably, I slipped back into sleep and in the light of morning Avalon had gone. Good. I had Pilates. It was Saturday and Daisy saw me to the door while Dominic slept. I smushed her yellow face and kissed her on the head.
Avalon met me at the studio, and by then it had stopped being funny. I didn’t like how much like a fucking horse she looked. She was albino, with cherry-red eyes and a pink nose like the color of human skin. She always had that name, too. Avalon. It almost rang a bell, and I wondered if it were the name given to one of my early attempts at conjuring an imaginary friend. Doubtful. I’d always liked flower names. Avalon probably came from a VHS cartoon.
It was a new gym. A new instructor. A small, muscle-y man I hadn’t looked twice at until he asked if I was okay with “hands-on adjustments.” I said yes. A lie. Who the fuck would be? But who would ever say they weren’t?
The room was sweltering hot from the last class. It smelled good—like bodies. But the reformer machine was still damp from the last person and then there were bugs under my skin. The machine was all dark padding and straps. The instructor made some joke about it being a torture device. He was right. Like the sleek, sterile ones I’d seen in the porn. I wondered if those rooms smelled the same way. I wondered if they cleaned the machines between actresses.
Stupid, fun music. I looked bad in the mirror. I liked that I looked bad. The elfish instructor strode over and suddenly he was touching my hips. Hands-on-adjustment. I thanked him.
Back in the mirror, Avalon stood by the bathrooms, watching me with those same disaffected, bovine eyes. I might have screamed if I hadn’t been used to her by then. She looked awful in the fluorescent gym lighting. There was a sallow tint to her colorless coat. An undertone of liver-failure-yellow. Holding some convoluted plank position, I looked hard into my own eyes to check whether they were jaundiced. I remembered the look from the last time I saw my grandpa. Mom hadn’t wanted us to see him like that, but Dad said it was important. It was real life. He hated my grandpa.
And Avalon hated my boyfriend. I didn’t blame her. I also sort of hated him. She watched from the corner while he fucked me from behind, shoving my face into his duvet cover until it was smeared with my drool. His bed always smelled like cum and laundry detergent—the kind that makes your nose itchy when you get a good whiff of it. I turned my face to the side so I could see Avalon glowing in the dark corner of the room. I thought about saying something to Dominic. That was the last time it would have made sense to do so. But there would be the inevitable “how long” and I didn’t really have an answer for that. Then the “you should see someone” and then they’d probably just commit me. Or they’d up my Prozac or add lithium and I already couldn’t orgasm as it was. Plus, I was starting to kind of like having her there whenever she decided to appear. I felt less alone. Dominic slapped my ass and muttered something incoherent in a too-high voice. Who’s fantasy was this? “Do you like that? Good Girl?”
I had initially liked Dominic because he looked sort of like a character from Game of Thrones. But he was one of those men with a computer job and a poorly concealed porn addiction. One of those men who pretends he likes giving head, but you can always tell from the vacant feel of his tongue that he’s just waiting for you to stop asking. He planned dates. He opened doors. Called me beautiful and texted me good morning. He fucked me the way I wanted—hard enough to feel like something interesting was happening. He held me when I cried. Liked my open-wound nature. He might pin me to spreading board if he were more interesting. He read books and spoke about his mom with respectful disinterest. He was dominant. I was probably going to break up with him.
But he had Daisy. A joyous, Yellow Lab I’d initially assumed was some kind of Hinge ploy. But he treated her better than he treated me. I liked it. She deserved it. Avalon liked her too. She often appeared when the dog was around, which I decided meant she approved of whatever psychic aura Daisy put out into the universe. She was so yellow, with big, dark, needy eyes. I loved her. I thought about moving in with Dominic just so she could be my dog too. I could try to recreate her with a puppy of my own but I didn’t have the time and I knew for certain any dog I adopted would take on my genetic neuroses. They would never be as sweet as Daisy.
“What’s up, Pen?”
Dominic startled me. We were halfway through a movie I’d forgotten I was watching. There were tears streaming down my face.
“Oh,” I said, wiping my eyes. “You know I just cry sometimes.”
He frowned. “That’s the third time tonight.”
I looked at Avalon. She’d been staring at me for a while, silent and still in the corner by the TV. Dominic pulled me closer, forcing my head against his chest so that my neck was at an odd angle. It was hard to breathe like this.
“I think I missed my meds or something,” I said. I couldn’t remember the other times I’d cried tonight. Maybe before sex? Avalon had been there. Daisy had been locked out of the room like always, pawing at the door.
Dominic’s friends were my friends, too. We loved to meet up with them at breweries on Sundays when parents bring their kids like it’s church. Dominic didn’t bring Daisy because it was too cold to sit outside, and because she sometimes got too excited around kids. She loved to bowl them over and set upon them with her drooly mouth.
But there was a big field with picnic tables where people were letting their dogs run around outside. Avalon was there, too. Out in the field. I took it that she liked dogs. But that didn’t stop her from staring at me. There was no way she could have seen me inside, so far away and through the big airplane hangar doors. But she stared, and I stared back.
“Fucking off-leash dogs,” Via grumbled, catching the direction of my gaze. She was Brian’s flavor of the year. I thought she was okay, and couldn’t think of a reason for Dominic to hate her so much that wasn’t a worst-case scenario. Brian seemed to hate her, too. I turned at the sound of her voice, and she must have seen something in my expression because she gave me a strange, sad look. Are you okay?
I smiled. “Do you have a dog?”
“No, not yet,” she answered. The boys were talking about something else. Brian was short so he was already drunk. “Do you?”
“Just Daisy,” I chuckled. “I’m going to steal her from Dom one of these days.”
“Dom, where’s Daisy?”
Dominic looked at her. I think he liked it when other girls called him Dom. I watched him turn to Via and felt a sudden, violent surge of fear. A flash of images. The thought of his hands on me. Soft and desperate. Begging. Pawing for something I wished I could cut out of myself. When I looked up, Avalon was standing over Via’s shoulder.
I didn’t hear what they said after that. My face played along with the conversation well enough. French Bulldogs are so cute. Did you know they’re the most popular breed in America now? Surpassing Labrador Retrievers? Sorry Daisy. Avalon’s dark, empty eyes. I felt them on the side of my face. My cheeks burned.
“These heaters are roasting me,” I muttered, not loud enough to actually interrupt.
“Free blow jobs,” Dominic finished saying.
I blinked. “What?”
He said it again, almost sheepishly, like he hadn’t been expecting to have to repeat it.
“That’s gross, Dom,” Via said, but she was smiling.
“Cheaper than the real thing,” Brian laughed. Via stopped smiling. “Just costs a little peanut butter. Everybody benefits.”
He was blustering. Drunk. Joking. But Dominic had said it first.
In the car, I asked him. I wanted to wait until we were alone. Until Avalon wasn’t watching.
“You were joking, right?”
“About what?”
“About getting Daisy to lick peanut butter off your dick.”
“Ew, what the hell Pen? I didn’t even say Daisy.”
“It was implied.”
“No, it fucking wasn’t. That’s disgusting. She’s like my child or something.”
“Then why did you say it?”
“It was Brian’s stupid joke,” he was getting angry now and knew it. He softened. “You know I would never do that. I hope you don’t think of me that way.”
“I don’t,” I said. We sped alongside a cow pasture—clusters of bovine white. They were all unicorns.
Daisy was there to greet us when we got back to the apartment. I fell to my knees in the doorway and hugged her while she jumped all over me. It was no wonder she couldn’t be around kids. She knocked me over on the kitchen floor.
“This is nice,” Dominic said once I stood up, brushing the yellow fur off my clothes.
“What is?”
“Coming back home with you.”
He was going to ask me to move in. I panicked and gave him a hug. It was enough. He locked Daisy out of the bedroom.
He gave me four minutes of mediocre head while I made the proper noises. Then, without warning he climbed up and thrust himself inside me. More noises. Daisy scratched at the door and suddenly all I could smell was Dominic’s breath. Sweet and sour with beer.
“Could you brush your teeth?”
“Yeah, yeah of course.”
He brushed his teeth with urgency. What was he going to say? No? When he got back, he turned me around. Compliant. He’d gotten the idea I liked it this way.
“Be a good slut,” he mumbled, slapping my ass cheek. I cried out in that way porn stars do when something hurts. He hit me again and I made the same noise. Too the-same, like he was pulling the string on a doll. Avalon watched from beside the bed. She was closer than ever. I could feel her breath foaming against the side of my face when Dominic shoved me down into the pillow. Detergent smell filled my nose. Dominic pumped away and I was sure if I asked him to stop now he’d hesitate. This was the worst part. Then he came, pulling out and shooting a rocket of cum across the sheets by my head.
After he fell asleep, I searched through his pantry until I found peanut butter. Jif. I popped the lid off and analyzed the negative space made by the knife. Was it hasty? Hesitant? Had his hands trembled when he took a glob from the jar? Or did he just make a sandwich? I thought of the way his fingers looked when they touched me. When the end of the movie rolled around and they inevitably found my knee. My thigh. Rubbing intrusively against my clit. He wouldn’t do that. He wouldn’t do that.
The next evening, I let myself in and saw that the leash was gone from its hook by the butcher block. They were back a few minutes later. Daisy nearly knocked me down when she saw me, jumping up to slobber all over my face. Dominic had already ordered pizza.
“Would you ever give Daisy away?” I asked when it arrived. South Park’s psychedelic colors blared over the coffee table.
He looked aghast. “No, never. She’s my dog.”
“You love her?”
“Yes, I love her.”
“More than me, right?”
He took the question the wrong way. I was crying again. I knew how it looked. I sensed Avalon in the corner, watching the exchange.
“What is this about, Pen?” he asked, pulling me close. “Is this about us?”
It’s about you, I wanted to say. But I couldn’t have begun to explain. No more than I could have explained Avalon. The room was warm but breath steamed around her nostrils. What did unicorns look like when they were angry?
“Forgive me,” I said, to Avalon, but then Dominic was comforting me. Daisy, beautifully oblivious, watched us from the floor.
“It’s okay,” he said. His voice was kind. He held my head against his chest until it was hard to breathe. He smelled like that same, goddamned detergent. “It’s okay. Are you asking me to give Daisy away or something?”
“No, not at all. Not unless it’s to me.”
He laughed. “Don’t worry, you’re still my favorite.”
I really, really didn’t think we’d have sex that night. Avalon had been there the whole evening. She followed us into the bedroom, glowing near the closet like an apparition. Daisy began pawing at the door from the moment it closed, her nails booming loud against the painted plywood.
I stared into Avalon’s dark eyes the whole time, but Dominic didn’t seem to notice. He was grabbing at me. I was reminded of zombie hands punching through the dirt. Hands emerging from the depths of the lake. A summer camp horror movie. A screaming final girl.
I looked down at him, feigning passion, and wondered if he was the sort of man I would want around my daughter. Teaching her to ride a bike. Giving her baths. Potty training her. Daisy scratched at the door and Dominic paid no mind. He was so much better at ignoring it than I was. I wondered if he was really the sort of man I would let have a key to my house. Let watch my dog for the weekend.
He pushed me off and turned me around, thrusting back into me once he got the angle right. He was rough. I made noises. Little noises. Loud noises. High-pitched, whiny noises. Avalon stood in the corner, watching me perform. Do you like it? Do I look sexy? Do I sound sexy?
Dominic started saying cruel, pornographic things. He slapped me. “Good girl.” Daisy pawed at the door again. I could hear the high note of her whine. Dominic shoved my head into the pillow, pinning me down hard enough I had to breathe through the fabric. Laundry detergent. I could smell it everywhere. On the pillow. On the sheets. And something else.
Peanut butter.
“Stop.”
“One second,” he said. Thrusting. Panting. The worst part.
“I said stop!” someone screamed. Daisy set to barking on the other side of the door. Dominic obliged, jumping back as though I’d struck him. Had I struck him? He was standing then. His skin was all blue in the curtain light. He looked baffled and angry, then his face changed. He’d seen Avalon.
“Don’t look at her,” I shouted.
“Look at who? Pen, what’s wrong? What’s happening?”
Daisy clawed at the door.
“I know what you did. I know what you fucking did! You’re a fucking freak!”
“Pen, please. You’re really freaking me out.”
I started gathering my clothes. Avalon watched, silent.
“The dog, Dominic. I know what you did.”
There was something in his eyes then. They looked back and forth. His throat bobbed. He opened his mouth and closed it again. “What are you talking about?”
“Daisy.”
“What about Daisy?”
“I think you should give her to me.”
“What the fuck, Pen?”
“You hurt her.”
“Jesus, Pen, I would never hurt her. What kind of guy do you think I am?”
I shoved past him. The door flew open and the room flooded with ugly light. Daisy lurched in, leaping up on the bed. Sniffing around.
“Daisy,” I called in a high, bidding voice. There was salt in my mouth. My body shook with sobs. I called for her again, making for the kitchen. The leashes were above the counter. Dominic tried to grab for me. His hands were ice cold, burning where he held me by the arms. I thought he might start shaking me.
“Pen, look, don’t. It’s stupid. She doesn’t know any better.”
I remember hitting him then, only to get him off of me. Someone was screaming. I thrashed for the leash where it hung over the butcher block but he grabbed me by the wrist, hard this time. Maybe he thought I was going for the knife. Someone was screaming. Daisy was barking excitedly, wagging her tail.
Avalon came across the room then, baring a wolflike jaw of teeth. Enormous canines brighter than bone. She tore into him and blood went everywhere. I could smell it. Taste it like it was dripping down the back of my throat. It was a true, honest-to-god mauling. I covered my ears and screamed and screamed and screamed.
They found us like that, and Daisy too. She was licking up the blood, I guess, because she didn’t know any better.
Sarah Goodman studied English and creative writing at the University of North Carolina. She works for an equine therapy non-profit and lives with her three dogs in the Blue Ridge Mountains. This is her first published short story.
Image: awalaufarm.com
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Heavy Feather Review 