Cherry Syrup Mania

tw: violence, murder of unicorns, suicide

There she is, standing still amongst a sea of unicorns passing her on the street like a steady current, her mind scrambled from an unexpected journey to this strangle land. She stands there, wide-eyed like she was forcefully awakened from a dream where she was a ballerina or elementary school teacher or something equally palatable. In actuality she is Mariah; Mariah the Maniac. Mariah the Menace. Mariah of the Macabre. Mariah the Human. Marinara Mariah. Too Fiya Mariah. Mariah Vacher. 

She is all of those things, or none of them. But she’s unaware of that right now. All she knows are the sounds of click-clacking from the hoofs of the pink unicorn people walking around her. Pink unicorns with rainbow-colored manes, most walking along the street on their hindlegs like they’re humans while others fly wingless past rooftops and among rainbow-colored clouds with sparkles trailing their booties. Why aren’t all of them flying? Who decides which unicorns fly and which unicorns walk? She’ll never get the answers if she doesn’t ask the questions. 

CLICK-CLACK-CLICK-CLACK-CLICK-CLACK-CLICK-CLACK!

And then there’s Tom Goroum (human). He’s a few feet away, staring at the back of Mariah’s head. He hums “Hedonists” by Dreamgirl to himself. He’s swaying from side to side. Now he’s lightly bouncing in place. He spies with his little eye a particularly plump, pink unicorn wearing glasses and a Letterman jacket. It walks past him. Probably named Travis. Travis is a freshman in college, Tom fabricates in his mind. Has a full ride from playing football. But his pink unicorn dad raised him to study hard, keep his GPA high. Dad wants a career-oriented overachiever. All Travis wants is to party and get his horn polished by his economics professor, Mrs. Gre—

Hold that thought. Travis is two inches past Mariah. Tom reaches behind him (from his…back pocket? From the back of his waistband? From out of thin air?), pulls out a .45 Colt and shoots Travis in the head. His gun is put away as soon as he fires it, then he runs off because he knows what happens next.

Blood splatters from the entry wound onto Mariah’s face. She blinks a few times. A little of it enters her mouth—it tastes like cherry syrup. It’s the cherry syrup that snaps her out of her trance so she can hear the high-pitch screaming from one of the unicorns next to her. Then the mumblings: “Wut happened ova here?” “She killed dat kid.” “She’s shootin’ people.” “I think I’m gonna be sick.” “We can’t let her shoot anyone else.” They speak in Brooklyn accents. Some of them walk with Brooklyn aggression toward her. 

Panicked, Mariah pulls out a wooden baseball bat with nails sticking out of it (from her butt or something) and starts swinging.

“Qu’est-ce que c’est ? Qu’est-ce qui se passe ?” she cries. She’s French, by the way. She runs while she swings the bat. The unicorns make way to not get struck, except for one poor thing who isn’t quick enough. The swinging bat smacks it in the face. Mariah tries to pull the bat out but one of the nails is stuck through the eye socket. The unicorn falls and dies.

“No! Not Samantha!” cries one of the unicorns. “She was a pilla to da community.”

A unicorn throws a wild right hook that Mariah ducks. Another unicorn charges Mariah horn-first but she sidesteps out the way. She pulls out nunchucks. She spins the nunchucks like helicopter blades and the unicorns hesitate. They know they can’t handle her if she’s a kung fu master. Mariah tries to do that thing with the nunchucks where you swing them into your other hand from behind one of your shoulders, but she ends up whacking herself in the back and drops them. She’s exposed as a kung fu fraud. One of the unicorns takes the opportunity to smack her across the face with the back of its hoof. She falls to the ground. Other unicorns start stomping on her, like a band of hoodlums from Brooklyn. One of them gets shot in the chest and falls over. The others back off when Mariah stands up, badly bruised on her face and arms, holding a smoking .44 Magnum revolver. No, wait, TWO smoking .44 Magnum revolvers, and although she has one eye swollen shut, the other one squints so she looks like she’s about to do something dangerous, and there’s a slight breeze that moves everyone’s hair slightly for dramatic effect, and the perspiration dripping down her chest, nay, her cleavage, nay, her visibly pronounced F cups, is very…titillating. Scratch that, no F cups. Giant breasts weigh protagonists down. But her hair is disheveled, which looks quite sexy on her. 

Okay.

She starts blasting aimlessly with her two revolvers. Her eyes are closed and she’s screaming. The angry mob of unicorns shoot multicolored laser beams from their horns at her. The revolvers explode in her hands. Pieces of metal fly in different direction and she’s startled. She runs away, still screaming. “Mon Dieu ! Mon Dieu !” she cries. The unicorns chase her, at least the ones already trying to kill her—others either yell obscenities or ignore the chaos completely. Lasers beams surround her. Some connect with her and feel like stiff smacks to the back, although not stiff enough to knock her down. Horn beams are only meant to be as painful as a human slap.

Her left butt cheek vibrates. She reaches behind her to pull out her cellphone, with a number on the screen she does not recognize. She answers it.

“Au secours ! Au secours !” she cries. “Les licornes, ils sont racistes ! Je vais mourir !”

“What? Sorry, but I only speak English,” says the voice on the other end. It’s Tom Goroum. 

“Tu peux m’aider ? Je suis en da—”

“Look bitch, I just said I only speak English. Now list—”

“Va te faire foutre ! Je me battaient pour ma vie !”

“Listen to me. You’re approaching a deli. To your left. Go in there. It’s a safe place.”

Mariah, who conveniently understands English, sees John’s Deli to her left. It has a line going out the door. 

When she turns toward the deli, one of the flying unicorns speeds up to try to gore her with its horn. Luckily it misses, but it still collides with Mariah, who ends up flipping onto the unicorn’s back. The unicorn flies in wild zigzags to get her off its back. She’s holding on to its mane for dear life. She manages to use a free hand to pull out a knife and stab it in the neck. The unicorn screams in terror while covering its neck with a hoof to try to stop the bleeding. The wound is too severe. It falls from the sky. Like, straight down from really far up. Like, so high you can make that falling whistle sound and it would be appropriate. You don’t have to make a splat sound, though. Mariah and the unicorn make the sound effect themselves with their bodies.

It just so happens that Mariah lies dead on the ground right next to the booty of the unicorn that fell with her. The dead unicorn’s muscles are loosened, so it releases poop that its bowels were holding. Glitter poop, actually—poop made entirely of glitter. The glitter poop sprays from the dead unicorn’s booty onto Mariah’s face. It is an awful fate to befall on someone by unicorn standards. But by human standards it’s the best thing that could happen, because the glitter poop magically brings Mariah back from the dead! 

She springs to her feet in shock from being alive, but her aches and pains and bruises are still intact. 

“There she is!” a unicorn cried from a distance. It’s the angry mob still after her head. She landed near the deli, so she hobbles toward it.

“Excusez-moi, laisse-moi entrer, s’il te plaît,” says Mariah when she approaches to the entrance from which the extended line sticks out like a tongue. She manages to squeeze her smaller frame inside John’s Deli past the unicorn standing in the entrance way.

“Fuck outta here!” the line unicorns are saying. “I smack you in da face!” “Who does dat?” “You kiddin’ me? Line cuttin’? Wi’ dat fuckin’ hair?” They wag their hoofs in the air as they speak. Those already seated and eating harass Mariah in the same manner. “You buggin’, ma.” “Fuck you doin’, bitch? They been waitin’ in line fo’ hours. Hours!” 

“Je veux pas un sandwich. On n’est pas en lieu sûr ?” 

“You mad corny wid dat ‘menage-a-twa’ shit, mami.” “No one fuckin’ wichu.” “You a fuckin’ dub. Fuck outta here!”

The jeering comes from all directions. One unicorn wearing hoop earrings even stands up to confront her. Mariah panics. She pulls out a hatchet and swings it at the approaching unicorn. The blade slides off, so she cracks it in the nose with the handle. Then the angry mob chasing her forces its way in, shoving the unicorns in the deli line. The deli unicorns feel provoked and swing at the mob unicorns. John’s Deli quickly devolves into an all-out melee. Hoofs smacking teeth. Horns stabbing guts. Tables and chairs summersaulting. 

Mariah pulls out her knife but it gets knocked out of her hand. She gets punched in the face. She attacks with a chancla. It is not very effective. She gets punched in the face. “Qu’est-ce qui se passe ?” she cries. “Pourqoui suis-je ici ?!” She tries to use a bow and arrow when given enough space, but the bow drops to her feet when she pulls the string back. A unicorn wraps an arm around her throat and puts her in a chokehold. She is loss to the chaos, likely to not survive. It’s hard to keep track of her at this point.

Tom Goroum skips toward the deli, as if everything is going according to plan. He manages to avoid getting sucked into the madness and makes his way up to the front counter. The unicorns working behind the counter start to put away their meats and breads and toppings for the day when Tom calls for their attention.

“Don’t you see the fuckin’, uh, battle royal going on in here, pal? We’re closed,” says the cashier.

Tom pulls out his .45 Colt and aims it at the deli workers. “Lemme get a Johnny roast beef with a side of gravy.”

“Okay, but dis da last fuckin’ sandwich today, ya heard?”

Tom watches the violence out of the corner of his eye. He takes great care not the make eye contact with anyone. He steps out the way of a pair of unicorns wrestling each other near him. He allows himself to watch one of the cooks operate a meat slicer to cut pieces of savory blue roast beef, then layer the beef and circular cuts of rich green provolone on top of a yeasty red hoagie roll pre-sliced down the middle. He scoots further to the side when the violence spills over onto the counter. The cook places the sandwich in the oven for three minutes. Some unicorns run out the deli when they can no longer handle the fighting. Other unicorns lie unconscious or badly injured. The melee rages on. One of the cooks take the sandwich out of the oven. God, it smells like Thanksgiving. The toasted sandwich sizzles like a siren’s indie rock concert. Another cook tops it off with a generous amount of golden onions and a lathering of gravy that’s practically pornographic. Tom wonders how they can do all this without fingers, but does not wonder long. 

The sandwich is complete. Tom catches himself before falling into a trance by the sandwich’s aroma, yet a little drool still drips down his chin. He pays. The sandwich is wrapped and bagged along with a plastic cup of extra gravy, which feels like it had been giftwrapped with a pink bow and a card that says happy birthday, or Merry Christmas, or I love you, son. Tom reaches for the sandwich, but then a gray-haired unicorn wearing a nose ring and a hentai hoodie snatches the bag with its mouth and begins to devour it all like a savage. Tom watches this, this lowlife, limp-horned, piece-of-shit hipster consume his hopes and dreams right in front of him. The unicorn’s mouth is stuffed with tender roast beef and gooey cheese and hearty bread and soggy paper, and its lips and chin are soaked in delectable gravy.

Tom, with a tear rolling down his cheek, pulls out his gun once more and shoots the hipster between the eyes. It poops glitter in seconds.

But the pain of losing his Johnny roast beef is too much to bear.

“I’ll see you in hell,” he says. Then he raises the gun to his temple. “Do I really have to shoot myself? Just like that? Can’t I have a cup of coffee instead?”

You wanna flip a coin, Tommy?

“Sure.”

Tom pulls out a coin with his free hand. Heads he shoots himself. Tails he buys coffee. He flips it, lets it land in his palm. It lands heads. He corrects his posture. “I’ll see you in hell,” he says again, this time with more flair in his voice. BANG! He dies before he even hits the floor.

The cashier looks at the pair of dead bodies in front of him, then the mess everyone else is making, and shakes its head. 

“Only in Brooklyn,” it says.