Every Beast of the Earth

Chapter 1There was no honor in killing unicorns. Yet on the morning of February 17th, 3015, that was exactly what Sheriff Paul Plowman had to do. He wasn’t even supposed to be on shift that morning. It was Second Friday, a bonus day to make up for the strange oscillating rapid succession of moons, which only happened once every three years. This was Paul’s third time experiencing Second Friday, and since he was tired from working a burglary case a week earlier, he opted to take this as his day off. He shouldn’t have been here, on his porch, with his morning coffee and biscuit as the screams of his neighbor sounded. He should have been at work, patrolling the streets and breaking up petty disputes common among this odd tourist-s***h-research planet called Fabula Rasa. He liked it here, he really did. The people were nice—mostly indigenous humanoid aliens who regularly researched earth humans who visited and owned businesses here as much as earth humans researched them—and the populations were not prone to violence, only passive aggressive stares and comments that sometimes spawned into a ticket or two. Really not much for Paul to do when he was at work other than keep that fragile calm and investigate a few nonviolent crimes every year or so, and maybe translate a few laws from one culture to another. He couldn’t even fathom that there was a unicorn in front of him until it was nearly on him, attempting to maul him with its horn covered in the blood of its previous victims. This had to be some sort of joke. Wasn’t Second Friday sort of like April Fools on Fabula Rasa? But that glossy fur, in a shade of purple-blue and with green blood on its stomach, was not a holographic spell or a bot. It was real. And it was almost on him. About to kill him. “Paul!” His neighbor, Maurice, shouted to him. “Watch out!” Paul moved out of the way as Maurice spilled off his porch. His neighbor was bloody from the neck down, a green viscous fluid. He’d been mauled by something else, not the unicorn, since the blood covering its horn was red. Human blood. Alien and creature blood was green. Paul repeated the rote biological facts to himself as Maurice collapsed onto his wrap-around porch, his hands twitching as he did. Maurice had been attempting to dial the police—his phone hung off his belt—and he’d also been yelling for his neighbor, the police. Yet both things had not saved him. The unicorn was still coming, now sniffing Maurice’s body, and kicking it aside. Paul snapped to attention. He pulled out his gun, always on his person since he’d served on earth, and held it up to the unicorn’s face. Just as the horn touched the muzzle, he fired. The unicorn let out a horrible screeching noise. Sort of like a music box that had been caught in a garbage disposal. She—for now Paul saw the teats under the beast as her hooves rose in the air—screamed mercilessly and bucked for some time. The bullet had entered through her horn, splitting that candy-color bone down the middle, and destroyed her left eye. The bullet eventually exited through her throat. Her blood, green and iridescent and gorgeous in the morning light, oozed onto Paul’s bare feet. He held the gun, shaking like a drunk, and ready to fire again. There was no need. The unicorn was dead. She flopped down onto his porch, her battered head almost folded neatly on her hooves. Paul let out a shaky breath and looked to Maurice. Gone. Dead eyes, just gone. He crouched down closer to Maurice, still determined to check for a pulse in the man’s thigh—where these alien’s hearts were—but he didn’t get far. In horror, he looked towards the morning light, where the unicorn had come from, and saw a half dozen silhouettes of other creatures, all mythological beasts. A chimera’s bat wings. A manticore’s head of a lion and horrifying haunches, ready to snare and attack. The many snakeheads of a Hydra. Then more and more, scales and wings and claws he could not place, all specimens of animal lore, all of them parading on the street, fighting with one another, fighting with the inhabitants, pecking over other bodies as they lay like Maurice, mauled and beaten and ready for release. “What the hell is happening?” Paul asked to no one. He heard his phone ring in his house over the chaos. He didn’t need to answer it to know who was calling or why. His day off vanished before him. His morning watching the dawn shimmer across the surface of Fabula Rasa—gone, too. He darted back into his house for more weapons, more ammo from his front hall closet, and of course, pants. He was still in boxers and a t-shirt, his sleeping gear. The sounds of animals and screaming inspired him to hurry into his uniform, hurry into more gear that would, maybe, protect him just long enough from a manticore’s lethal spit until he fired. He never once thought of how all of this had occurred. If he survived, and if any of the other detectives on his force survived, that would be a case for them. And if not, he figured he was going to go down with some honor. Even if, as he regarded the unicorn corpse on his porch, he believed he had none any longer.