The Lion & The Unicorn

Author’s Note

We were never ones to get things wrong, police officers. I should know, I was one for the best part of my life. And, while no official account was ever recorded, I know for a fact that it has been two years and fifty four days since what happened started to happen, at the cold, tail end of my fifteenth year on the force. For almost all of those years I truly believed we were making a difference. The following events changed all of that in almost every way. A lot of people died. I killed some of them.

Forgive me if my writing is shaky. I’m writing this on the train as it rattles north through tiny provincial towns, shuttered windows and empty cafes staring back at me from the stations. I thought it best to set this down before I arrive. I want to get my thoughts in order. Although, I don’t seem to be thinking as clearly as I once did. Every day now, I can feel my mind beginning to break open, like an egg shell.

As we race through empty fields, trees standing bare at their edges, one final thought comes to mind; as a child I remember going to see the giraffes, the lions, the hyenas, at the zoo in Regent’s Park. I remember eating candy floss and riding on the carousel. Later, when I’d long since grown out of these visits, when the Revolution was at its height and the nights were filled with smoke and broken glass, the animals disappeared. Set free by persons unknown, they escaped their cages, into the wild. Into urban myth. Ask anyone with a long enough memory, and they’ll tell you about the jaguar that still roams Epping Forest, its black coat part of every shadow. But my story doesn’t start there. It starts 15 years later, in 2054, when the animals, freed from their cages, had long since grown wild.