The Tethered Unicorn: Living Dreams, #1

By E.M.G Wixley

In the gritty underbelly of London, Mike and Rosie find themselves ensnared in a dangerous dance with destiny. When Mike's drug dealer fails to show up one fateful day, it sets off a chain reaction that propels the couple into an unpredictable and often harrowing odyssey.

Desperate to feed their addiction, Mike and Rosie turn to crime, targeting ruthless individuals who will stop at nothing to reclaim what's theirs. As they plunge deeper into this perilous world, the couple's lives become increasingly tangled in a web of deceit and desperation of their own creation.

Rosie, a naturally shy and reserved young woman, finds herself trapped in a relationship she never wanted. A seemingly innocent Valentine's gift from Mike becomes a haunting symbol of her entrapment. She had never planned to be with him, but now escape seems impossible.

Fate plays its hand, swinging their lives between extremes of love and hatred, loyalty and betrayal. "The Tethered Unicorn" is a gripping tale of passion, peril, and the relentless pull of fate. As Mike and Rosie navigate their tumultuous journey, they must confront the choices that have led them to the edge and decide if there's any way back.

Prepare to be immersed in a story of raw emotion and high stakes, where every decision can mean the difference between freedom and a fate worse than death.

• Language: English
• Publisher: E.M.G Wixley
• Release date: Jun 15, 2024
• ISBN: 9798227574305

E.M.G Wixley

Elizabeth Wixley was born in Hertfordshire in the United Kingdom but has moved many times during her childhood. She attended the Camberwell Art School and joined a design studio in Convent Garden. Moving to Bristol, some years later, she worked full time for the Local Education Authority supporting children suffering from emotional and behavioural difficulties, whilst ensuring that the transition into a mainstream school was done in a supportive and nurturing manner. Whilst providing children with a safe haven for learning, she raised two sons as a single parent while studying for a degree in education at the University of the West of England. Her love of fiction started at the age of six when Elizabeth’s grandmother died of cancer and to ensure that the rest of the family was safe, she would spend the nights roaming the house looking for the 'C' monster to make sure that he did not claim any more victims. One sunny bright day, her sister told her that fork lightning would come and strike her down after which she would spend her days hiding in the garage and when she heard that the sun was falling out of the sky, well needless to say, she very seldom ventured out. With trial and error, Elizabeth soon realized to fight her foes, she had to stare them straight in the eye, explore them and conqueror the inner demons in order to stand righteous. This helps fuel her love of horror and the many mysteries of the world. Creating a why and what if scenario that runs prominent in her fascinating fiction. Throughout Elizabeth’s life, creative arts have been her passion whether it is visiting galleries, painting or writing. She enjoys nothing more than sharing a compelling horror story with others and holding the sanity of her readers in the palm of her hand.

Book preview

Chapter One

It was a cold and rainy Valentine’s Day afternoon; Mike stood outside a pub in Whitechapel. He had given a dealer fifty pounds to buy some speed and had arranged to meet back at that spot. He stared up at a tall, forbidding block of flats opposite. His eyes sketched casually around the outline of the towering structure, and then he cast them over its brutal facade of cold concrete. He repeated the pattern three more times until it felt to Mike that the whole darkening sky was being blocked out by an unflinching forest of petrified tension.

Mike grew anxious as his man was late. He looked into the black eyes of the colossal blocks and saw the occasional squares of light. He imagined the featureless faces of the inhabitants, born over and over, the essence of thousands of thoughts and emotions.  As he copied every detail into his mind, Mike began to realise that there was remarkably little external evidence to prove that people actually lived behind the concrete; nothing seemed to move. There was only the presence of intense anger. At that instance, he stopped daydreaming as he realised that the panorama of looming greyness was a reflection of his own emotions.

He had been screwed; his man was not coming. Mike strolled up the street; he needed to pace to lessen the gnawing in his stomach.

He lingered by some terrace houses, and the giggling faces of four boys abruptly appeared at a window, suddenly grabbing his attention. They clung to each other as if they were balancing on something as their eyes shone out into the gloom.

One of the boys rapped on the glass and flashed a smile into Mike’s unguarded isolation. All the fixed memories that marked the passing of the years collapsed into oblivion as their eyes locked into alignment, and Mike focused on that point in time. Mike looked at himself from where the boy was clinging on as if he had journeyed back to when he also had been painfully poised in the present, waiting, tightening like a bow with the anticipation of growing up and escaping.

Suddenly, two fingers pointed into the air, and a string of random abuse came from the young but twisted faces, and then they appeared to collapse back into the darkness. The last layer of the moment’s contact with the boy and his own past peeled away, and Mike emerged back into the now rain-drenched street.

Feeling a growing unease, Mike decided to return to the pub and spend the last of his money on a pint. Back at the meeting place, he pushed through the door into the dull orange light and casual chatter, leaving the gloom of the evening outside.

‘Pint, please,’ Mike said, leaning on the bar. While the barman poured, Mike played nervously with his packet of cigarettes. The encounter with the boys had distracted him, and he pondered over the exhilaration that he had felt at leaving Liverpool. The reason had been his father; he was always running from his father. All those wasted years of his childhood, stalking the days, hiding, forever watching and never feeling safe.  The aching, wanting, the years looking for the lost key, that one thing that his peers seemed to possess that he was never allowed. Even at that young age, it was clear that he was an outsider; those other children had the privilege of belonging to something that made them all right and him all wrong.

Mike embraced his mood as though welcoming an old friend. It was dark, part reflective and part irritated by the clawing talons of anger and frustration. In addition to this, he felt trapped in his own head; the mental space created by having to wait and want forced him to remember things he had never shared. He was still angry about his childhood and his adult life not being much better. Most of his early memories were about the strategies he had devised to survive against a blizzard of neglect. From an early age, he’d learnt to fend for himself, find his own food and make his way to school, a little more of his soul being covered up with each step. He was the youngest of five, and his perception of himself had always been that of a useless appendix buried in the body of a sick family, an alien, and an unwanted irritation.

Hate filled him like concrete. He was unaware of what love truly was because his survival had been the only agenda of his life. However, he was aware that he felt something for his new girlfriend, Rosie, but perhaps it was more a need than a desire. After all, he preferred not to survive entirely on his own.

Consequently, due to his past, he had developed in his behaviour and thinking a labyrinth of infinite running and seeking, within which he was currently lost. Now, at the age of twenty-seven, he had been married, had a son, been divorced and was now on the run. Of course, one thing he now understood was that he had arrived nowhere that the only real freedom he was ever likely to feel had been stolen in the frantic instance of his fleeing. He would run and continue running but never arrive.

The beer was almost gone, and it was clear that his man was not coming. Mike mused to himself if ever he saw the dealer again he would take immense satisfaction in killing the creep, but now it was time to walk back to his tiny bedsit, perhaps Rosie, would have had more luck. However, he was aware that he was in a thunderous mood, and if she had failed him too, he was not sure that he wouldn’t slip into a rage.

Subconsciously, his bony finger traced over the confusion of sticky circles on the surface of the bar. He swallowed down the remainder of his drink and anxiously rolled the cold empty glass between the palms of his hands.  Then he put it down, picked up his cigarettes and strolled to the door, pulled it open and stepped out into a cold downpour.

Mike began to feel calmer; the walk in the cold rain was helping to clear his mind. He decided that from now on, he would never look back, only forward, and today was Valentine’s Day, a special time. Therefore, he was determined to make Rosie love him and turn a miserable day into a special night, something to remember forever. This new, more hopeful attitude had come about from an idea that was fizzling in his brain and holding his attention like an amateur time bomb set to explode at an uncertain time. ‘Some straggly old hippie had the cheek to steal from him, so in return, he would steal off the faceless junkies’, he mused.

He remembered back to a previous time when he had scored speed at the junkie’s flat and had thought he had worked out where the dealer, a scrawny, short weasel of a man, was hiding his drugs. A group of vultures always surrounded the dealer, hungry for the dregs of heroin that he passed their way. Mike worked out that, between them, he and Rosie had one line of speed left each, which would give them an advantage against the gouching junkies. In addition to this, they would need at least ten pounds to score for their entrance fee.

However, Mike had not gone far before he perceived the presence of someone he recognised in the gloom. The unfashionable ponytail was a giveaway, and it could have only been the hippie. Mike watched as the figure casually gave a backward glance. ‘It was him, the shit,’ Mike screamed in his head.

‘Hey, motherfucker! Haven’t you got something for me?’ Mike yelled against the wind.

Mike watched as the hippie’s mind reached towards the idea that he was being followed. However, he continued walking but at a noticeably faster pace.

‘Don’t ignore me, you fucking turd, you lying cocksucker. You owe me.’ Screaming caused Mike to cough, but it was at that moment he decided that he was going to retrieve his money.

Mike’s feelings of claustrophobia suddenly vanished, replaced by a highly charged alertness; at last, he was focused. His green eyes turned black as he scanned his surroundings, and he saw that they were the only two people on the street.

Here and there, windows lit up, and the streetlights flickered on, turning the pavement into a mirror. Balls of rain had turned to sleet, but Mike made no move towards shelter. Instead, he wiped his dripping black curls from his eyes, put his hands in his pockets, wrapped his leather coat more tightly around his body, and walked briskly into the storm.

Silver lights of oncoming traffic glared into his face so that he was momentarily blinded. As the brightness passed and the metallic rhythm died away, he saw that he was alone. He began to run.

Mike saw a left turn and slowed, skulked around the corner, and there he spied his victim, looking utterly lost. The hippie stood frozen, aware that all the familiar everyday shapes had been washed away in the downpour. He turned and stared.

The dealer was so close that he could feel the man's increasing heartbeat and blood flow. In addition to this, he could see the sweat break out on his forehead as his eyes madly sought a means of escape.

In an instant, the man was running through the tense side streets where, at every turn, black buildings reared up in their own agony, blocking his way like unassailable cliffs. Tendrils of terror lashed out, strangling him as he realised that he was about to be caught.

Trapped by indecision and defeated by his body’s own breathless panic, the hippie was forced to slow down and slip into an underpass. However, without looking, he stumbled into a group of milk bottles that fell together like Skittles. The peace was shattered as they broke or rolled, and trickles of stale milk spilt out and formed a pearly noose that knotted round dark shapes.

Breathlessly, Mike leaned against the wall at the entrance of the concrete tunnel, gasping in the stench of damp urine. He noticed a rusty piece of railing on a fence nearby. He grabbed it as he ran past. Anger surged through him, he felt his blood boiling with rage, and he gritted his teeth at the thought of the violence to come. With a damp gasp, he shouted.

‘Where the fuck is my money? Give it to me now, and we can forget all this? It’s your last fucking chance.’

The man trembled and gave his grovelling reply. ‘I promise, give me half an hour, and I will get you twice what I owe you. My man’s been delayed. I swear I’ve got a big deal going down. Meet me back at the pub, and I promise I will get it.’

Suddenly, a door on rusty hinges squeaked open, spiking the middle of Mike’s brain alive so that his eyes immediately panned towards the sound. A corkscrew of anxiety twisted in his gut as his sharpened sight corroded the thick night so that he was able to make out the shape of a man standing in a gateway to his right, further down the street. The stranger took one glance and retreated, shutting the gate behind him.

In this fleeting moment of distraction, Mike’s victim had tried to squeeze tighter into the shadows and was obviously praying that some other form of a miracle would intervene.

‘Please don’t, don’t hurt me. I promise, I swear,’ the hippie stuttered in a pathetic, pleading voice that only increased Mike’s anger.

Mike ran forward, and in the bruised moment of fusion, all the man's hopes of rescue collapsed. Carbonised, primaeval laws of survival fuelled Mike’s aggression. Great red waves of disfiguring rage threw him far out of the realms of normal behaviour into the heat of pure destruction.

The man was on the ground, curled in a ball, cowering under the stiff, sharp blows of the metal pole.

‘Stop! Stop! You can have your fucking money.’

Then, with a metal black mind, Mike reached for the knife he always kept in his back pocket as the hippie pushed himself up the wall into a standing position. Mike grabbed him, squeezing tight around his throat whilst pointing the knife at his face.

‘No need for that. I am getting it,’ the hippie said with a strangled gasp. Trembling, he fumbled in his pockets, trying as quickly as possible to retrieve the money.

A grubby bundle of notes was thrust in front of Mike, which he snatched up with his free hand.

‘Nobody rips me off.’ Mike stated as the raised knife could be briefly seen glinting in the darkness, and he consciously pressed down hard and emotionless as he dragged it down the side of the screaming man’s face.

Startled, the hippie crumpled up with pain, both hands clasped weakly over the wound as blood trickled through his fingers, dripping and blooming like poppies on the parched ground.

Now, all Mike could hear was his own hammering pulse. For an instant, he absorbed the horror of blood petals and black pain. Without thinking, he wiped the red stains off the knife and onto his jeans, closed it and put it back in his pocket. Then his body tightened with instant knowledge, and he ran, only half aware of the injured man’s desperate threats.

‘There is not enough pain in this world for a stinking shit like you. You’ve done it now; you’ve really done it. No place will be safe enough for you.’

All the edgy background noises died away, and everything seemed to move aside like an audience, allowing the actor into the arena as Mike slowed his pace. Cautiously, he stopped to examine the money in his hand and counted a hundred pounds. He wondered if perhaps the hippie had genuinely intended to match his investment and maybe the deal was only delayed.

However, at that moment, any regrets Mike might have had about his lifestyle choices or desires to lead a ‘normal life’ evaporated. Drugs never failed him-they had filled up all the empty spaces in his emotions and had provided him with a vague structure to his daily life. In addition to this, he held a belief that they enabled him for a short while to be the kind of person he would have chosen to be. Allowing him to escape his turgid, ugly world and feel like a sharp and free human being.

Once again, he felt a part of something. He would be a dealer and someone who could mastermind a crime. From the age of thirteen, he had observed the wealth and confidence of others. The dealers of his hometown, impenetrable men of marble, forged out of the heat and pressure of a volcanic and chaotic society. Out of nothing, they created the illusion that their way of life was safe, a place to belong. It was for those reasons that he had consciously chosen to be sucked into their quicksand like many other lonely and disillusioned youths. Being part of something had been satisfying: robbing houses with his brothers, forming their own gang and sticking up for each other until he was forced to leave Liverpool.

Mike felt something close to happiness. After all, it was Valentine's Day. Now, all he had to do was score. He decided to take the tube back to Kingston.

Chapter Two

Rosie sat cross-legged on the bed, dressed in the old shirt she used as a nightdress. Her long, auburn, corkscrew hair curled like snakes around her face as she surveyed Mike’s dingy but tidy room. The atmosphere was heavy; the dirty wallpaper of indistinct colour and the greyness from the rain outside pervaded every corner, inducing a suffocating feeling.

She sucked her thumb enthusiastically in an attempt at self-comfort.  As she did so, her internal voice drawled into the forefront of her mind like a train