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Mr. Wendig challenged his readers to write a story about something you’d find at a flea market. Word limit: 1,000.

A friend at work challenged me (for reasons best unexplained) to write a story titled “Bald Pregnant Women With Bras and Unstoppable Telepathy.”

I searched my soul. Could I do both at once? Was it possible to write a flea market story that also had that title?

Spoiler alert: yes.

Bald Pregnant Women With Bras and Unstoppable Telepathy

With a belly full of McNuggets and three hours till Sociology, I was precisely the target audience of the sprawling, newly-arrived flea market. It was a warm Monday afternoon, and dozens of tents covered grassy Franklin Square, each with a sign lovingly crafted by its own resident marketing genius:

GIT R DUN – DIY solutions for every household project from tracheotomy to taxidermy

PAIGE TURNER’S LIBRARY – Exquisite literary classics, sold by the pound

CELEBRITOPIA – Every single object you own should feature LeVar Burton’s smiling face

The KITSCHY CRAP tent drew me in with sheer honesty.

I examined a leopard-print salad shooter, a MacGyver mousepad, and a gumball dispenser shaped like Argentina (!) before a bemused repulsion led me to a VHS wonder entitled Bald Pregnant Women With Bras and Unstoppable Telepathy. 1972, PG-13, 99 minutes of cinematic glory.

The proprietor’s FUCK DA PO-PO wrist tattoo doubtless signified a prior stint as a middle school guidance counselor. I brandished the video at him.

“The hell is this?”

“The hell does it look like?”

Sixty seconds later, he had my two dollars, and I had possibly the greatest B-movie treasure this side of Plan 9 From Outer Space.

I watched it that very night. It was accurately titled. Vodka helped.

***

At 2 a.m. a voice in my head spoke my name.

Marcus.

“Grrrrnggghh?”

Marcus, I want to talk.

“Wuzzit?”

Are you listening to me?

I sat up slowly. “Who are you and also what the fuck?”

Marcus, I know perfectly well you watched that documentary.

“Documentary? You mean you’re actually a – ”

Yes.  I’m a bald pregnant woman with unstoppable telepathy.

“And a bra?”

That’s personal.

“You’re in my brain.”

Marcus, we need to talk. About us. Sometimes I wonder if you’re giving me the support I need.

“And you are…?”

Crystal.

“Krystal?”

With a C.

“You heard the K?”

I’m in your brain, dumbass.

“You sure are.”

Marcus, promise you’ll never leave me.

“Is your last name ‘Meth?’ Cuz that would be really funny.”

That’s hurtful. I’m not speaking to you anymore.

“Darn.”

No more Crystal.

Certain questions simply cannot be answered at 2 a.m. “Am I schizophrenic?” tops the list. I fell back asleep.

***

Most of Tuesday passed telepathy-free, and I chalked up Crystal to a ramen-induced hallucination. That evening found me on my couch watching a Futurama rerun, my non-imaginary girlfriend Megan curled up comfortably on my lap.

Marcus.

“Crystal?”

Megan stirred. “What?”

Who the hell is Crystal?

“Who the hell is Crystal?” echoed Megan.

Only one way to have this conversation without seeming crazy. I held my cell phone up to my ear.

Quiet about your other women. I’m Amber.

“Sorry, Amber. You sound a lot like Crystal.”

“Who the fuck is Amber?”

I raised my hand in a gesture that was either placating or papal.

Can you get me a jar of pickles from the store?

“Isn’t that your husband’s job?”

I’m divorced, dickweed, thanks for asking.

“Why are you bald?”

Do you really not know how telepathy works?

“Is that a serious question?”

Vlasic. Kosher. After you buy them I’ll give you my address.

“Is your last name ‘Bock’? Cuz – ”

Fail me and die.

Amber was out. I glanced around. Megan was out too.

I don’t even like Futurama.

***

Wednesday was rough. Samantha’s persistent soliloquy – Will it hurt? How much will it hurt? I bet it won’t even hurt that much. Oh God, I’m going to die – severely hampered my Riemann sums. Over lunch, I assured an invisible Jada that her boobs looked just fine, earning a Scrooge face from the decidedly male McDonald’s cash register professional. I skipped English Lit entirely as a preoccupied Clara expounded on the relative merits of Fisher-Price and Little Tikes. By 5:00 I knew what the word “Desitin” meant.

Thursday was worse.

***

I reclined on Jim’s futon as he scrutinized his Corona Lite.

“So Megan hasn’t called you back?”

“Jim, do you think it’s possible to stop telepathy?”

He didn’t even blink. “Depends. If it’s Star Trek, and the telepath’s a Betazoid, then you can stop it by, like, being a Ferengi.”

“This isn’t Star Trek.”

“What is it?”

“Bald Pregnant Women With Bras and Unstoppable Telepathy.”

“Unstoppable telepathy?”

“Yeah.”

“And you’re trying to stop it?”

“Ideally, yes.”

He swigged. “Marcus,” he said, “you’re an idiot.”

***

For sheer surreality, few things exceed being accosted by a bald pregnant woman on a crowded campus lawn.

IRL, Amber was five foot negative one, very third trimester, and wielded a pink leather purse roughly the diameter of her unborn child. She was rocking some serious Patrick-Stewart-grade baldness. I would describe her emotional state as “dissatisfied.”

“You want to play this game with me?”

My adrenal glands experimented with their “overdrive” setting. “Amber, I just checked Walmart. They’re fresh out of Vlasic. I can look again next week.”

“You’re a lying sack of shit. You don’t think I’ll cut you? I’ll fucking cut you. I’ve got shit in this purse you can’t even imagine.”

“Amber, I hesitate to suggest this, but I’m reasonably sure I can outrun you.”

“YOU MOTHERLESS GOATSUCKER YOU THINK YOU CAN KNOCK ME UP AND THEN THROW ME TO THE CURB WHILE YOU’RE FUCKING SOME OTHER LITTLE SLUT – ”

“Dill?”

“Yes please.”

Fifteen minutes later, I returned with her prize.

“Amber, I deeply respect your inexplicable super powers but I think you are a terrible person.”

“Stuff it. I’ve been this way for nine months. You could be free tomorrow.”

“Go on?”

“Someone else watches the video, the curse transfers to them.” She waddled away.

Freedom!

But who (besides me) would voluntarily sit through the film in question?

I needed someone who would keep watching a screen no matter how bizarre, how senseless, how unrelentingly awful it might be.

Suddenly I knew.

***

“It’s open.”

Old buddy of mine. I stepped into his apartment. “Hey, man. Can you take a break from C-SPAN for a second?”

The story below is based on another of Wendig’s weekly prompts. This week: write something about unicorns! Limit is 1,000 words again.

Everything But Rachel

“There is only one road…” he murmurs, but the words burn his cracked lips and he can’t say it all. He finishes in his mind:

There is only one road as there is only one pilgrim. You must give up everything but Rachel.

Here the road is no more than a trail, winding across the rocky wasteland. Broken gray stone extends forever all around, a petrified ocean. A black sky flickers with flame. Vast, impossible, swirling pillars of darkness migrate across the waste. He is far, far from home, from Rachel. He has followed this road a long, long way: longer than all the roads on all the continents in all his old, half-remembered world. He follows still. This is the Master-Road, the template by which other roads are made, and what is there to do, but follow?

But someday he will reach the end of this road, and then he will kill the Polymancer. And perhaps – he plays this game hourly, savoring the delusion – perhaps it will be today.

You must give up everything but her.

“But I have,” he murmurs painfully, a sound that is barely a sound. I have sacrificed…

For comfort, he runs again through the litany of what he has lost.

His body, of course. That’s an easy one. That cruel-eyed mass of talons and scales bit him three weeks ago, and now slowly, slowly, the poison is spreading through him. It started at his left ankle, and it’s blackened that whole leg. The skin is all tender scales, pink underneath. Now his other leg blackens, and a patch has formed on his left hand. Slowly, but all too quickly, it spreads. In a month he will die. He smiles weakly at the thought. The end of the road.

His weapons, too. He lost the scimitar…when? Before the poison bite, certainly. And the knives, someone has stolen those, in some village where he spent the night. The road wound through villages, too, ages and ages ago.

His own name, sacrificed, gone from memory. He fancies it began with a “C,” but that’s something he’s invented – just another game. He does not know his face. He raises his fingers and feels the rough beard at his chin, but this awakes no memories. That’s all right. Identity is a burden, and that sacrifice was easy. Rachel knows his face, Rachel knows his name. That is enough.

Follow the road, pilgrim. Kill the Polymancer.

He wonders how he will kill the Polymancer like this, when he can barely walk. The pillars of dark slide lazily on the horizon, fifty leagues distant in the dry air.

You must give up everything but her.

Still he walks. He reaches into his pants pocket, pulls out the brass pocketwatch. It has long stopped ticking, stopped answering when he winds it. The dust and the grime. But the back is engraved with a name: Rachel.

Rachel. The warmth of brown fingers on his arm. The dark and curling hair. Laughing in the kitchen, crying in the rain, running across the yard to greet him. Rachel, the reason for the road.

He crests a hill, as he has crested countless others, and he stops once more to survey the land ahead. Always he hopes, at last, to see the Dark Castle of the Polymancer up ahead, the sable towers, the savage keep. But this view is like all the rest: only more rock, and more dust, and the fire in the sky and the pillars of darkness that whisper mockingly. He catches his breath. For the thousandth time his legs threaten to halt. For the thousandth time he forces them on again. There is only one road –

He stumbles, crashes on the rough black stone below. Pain flares in his chest. A rib broken, surely. His mouth moves, forming the scream but not setting it free.

Slowly – slowly – he stands.

“What else do you want?” he cries, not for the first time, a voice raw with thirst but steady as the miles behind. “What else is left – to sacrifice – ”

The unicorn appears.

No motion, no sound: only now there is a unicorn, where none stood before. If he is dreaming again, it is at least a new dream.

The unicorn is white and stark and stern, and he sees no weakness in it, and he knows it has come for him. He staggers, remains standing. Now the words are silent, a bare motion of lips: “What else is left – ”

The unicorn stares at him. He catches in its eye another dream, a dream’s dream, a vision of the future:

The Polymancer, red robes billowing, angry as the pillars of darkness and deadly as the sun. Himself – a rough face he hardly recognizes – climbing rocky steps inside the dark castle, struggling, failing. A cruel light from the Polymancer’s hand. As he watches himself falling, he already knows he is dead.

Thus the road will end. He will fail. He will die.

In his heart, the last embers of hope go cold. Nothing, nothing remains.

Nothing but her.

He laughs. His broken rib blazes with the motion, breath sears his throat, but he laughs and laughs. His legs shake as he mounts the beast, adjusts himself wearily on its bare, rough back.

Now he looks up around him, sees once more the final plain: the shuddering pillars, the flickering sky, the endless ocean of rock, and all ahead and behind the eternal, impassive road. He looks down at the unicorn and its solitary spike, the lone weapon glistening in that strange lightning, beautiful and deadly where it shines peerless as fire on the waste.

“On,” he whispers, and the unicorn leaps forward, carrying him down the road with tireless legs, lowering its terrible horn, never blinking those twin obsidian slivers, never hiding their benevolent lies.

Onward to Rachel.