A Unicorn's Tale, Part 10

10.

     “You double-bouncing candy blaster,” Mikey snarled. “I gave you another chance and you blew it and all my savings.”
     He launched himself at the blistered glass. The three guards that had incapacitated me held him back. Additional guards trotted in and pressed him down with their horns. His disjointed jaw looked like it was completely unhinged.
     However, Mikey still had enough energy to shout, “I’m pressing charges! You name it, you’re it: thief, swindler, con-crafting liar!”
     I started to say, “Mikey,” but Mikey shot me a glare so forceful that I realized he thought I was a knowledgeable partner of the scheme.
     “It wasn’t me!” I exclaimed.
      The burly unicorns started to drag Mikey out of the door.
     “The kid had nothing to do with it!” Larry yelled through the glass partition.
     “You’re dead to me!” We heard Mikey’s voice echo through the bowels of the building.
     “Octavian,” Larry said gently.
     “I can’t believe you did that to us,” I said, and shook out my mane.
     But the truth was I could believe it, and Larry knew I was lying. He made a wounded sound with his mouth, not a cry, but more of a wail.
     What more could I do? I turned my tail on him and walked out of the room, escorted on two sides by guards and really wishing that I had never left Pasadena.
     They did not have a better place to put me, so the burly unicorns placed me in the same kind of room where I had spent my first night. It might have been the very same. The sound was off, but the Sony panels were on. I turned around like a dog and knelt down. The panels kept flashing, but I closed my eyes and crossed my forelegs and listened to the mute static of my existence.
     Meals came twice a day for a week through an otherwise locked door. One guard, who it turns out was also named Mikey, came in to clean the room and clear away waste. He asked me how I was doing. This was the only time I spoke. When he was done he said, “I hope things get better,” and shut the door behind him, leaving me to stare at the flashing panels.
     At the end of that week Mikey the guard and two other guards entered my room. “Get up,” one of the guards said.
     I asked why.
     Mikey the guard replied, “It’s the day of the hearing.”
     I thanked him and got up. The guards had to help me down the hallway and into the elevator.

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