The Perfect Story

CHAPTER ONE: The Problem With Unicorns

It had been a perfectly normal day until the unicorns came.

Kelly was reclining in a lawn chair on her balcony, sipping a glass of strawberry lemonade through a bendy pink straw.

The sun beat down on her as she looked out over the expanse of beach in front of the condominium.

Everything was perfect, almost too perfect. The world around her had a plastic, fake feeling.

It was unpleasant.

The waves in the sparkling ocean were too perfect and too blue, the sand was too white, the sun was just warm enough and there were no strawberry seeds in her lemonade-things that shouldn't bother someone, but seemed just plain weird to Kelly.

There was something not quite right about the world she lived in, a sort of imperfect perfection.

Everything was too perfect, too good.

And that's when she heard the sound.

Hooves, clopping along at an irregular beat.

She sat up from the warm chair cushion, setting her drink down on a glass table.

There, across from the condominium, was something Kelly had only read about in children's fantasy novels.

A unicorn, galloping across the parking lot, pink mane blowing in the non-existent breeze, golden horn sparkling in the bright afternoon sun.

What?

Kelly opened her mouth to call for her sister, but quickly changed her mind.

Who would believe her?

"That's it! I'm going insane," Kelly muttered to herself, throwing her hands in the air.

"True, the first signs of insanity are talking to yourself," agreed a bluebird that had perched itself upon the balcony rail.

----

Across the world from Kelly's room in the perfect condominium on the perfect beach, a very important meeting was taking place.

"It's happening," rumbled a rather large man in a pinstriped coat. "Unicorn sightings across America, pigs flying over the Sahara desert! Do you know what this means?"

A woman across the dark, wooden table nodded her head solemnly. "And don't forget the situation with the teenagers--throwing wild parties, falling in love--this all points to one thing, you know."

"Yes," sighed a pimply man with an exceptionally long nose. "I have read about this sort of thing. It's a Class 1 Emergency."

There was a collective intake of breath as the room considered this horrible possibility.

"Do you really mean-"

"Is it actually happening?"

"What do we do?"

"Who do we tell?"

The clamor of voices rose, echoing throughout the room.

"Quiet," commanded the large man in the pinstriped suit. "We cannot tell anyone. Our...'world'...is perfect, and if the people found out why-"

"But Simon," sighed an elderly woman with a face puckered up like a prune, "if this is happening to us, then other stories must be falling apart as well!"

"Our main concern is this story. And as law 104 clearly states, no characters can find out their role in their story, or the fact that the world they live in is no more than words."

A silence fell over the dark meeting room.

"So what do we do?"

"Simple. We try to eradicate all signs of other stories, and we tell no one--and I mean no one--that we are simply characters in a novel."