Supernatural Science

Lisa Walsh peeked into her lab office, hearing rummaging and rustling noises coming from inside even as she walked down the silent hallway of the work building. It was early in the morning, and even the guard at the entrance gate said that she was one of the first scientists to show up at the labs this muggy morning. Upon further inspection of her shared office, Lisa found her redhead partner, Nathan Kaspar, looking through drawers for something. The woman snuck into the room and quietly shut the door behind her, careful not to make much noise and startle Nathan. The brunette allowed her bag to slip off her shoulder and onto the ground before she shuffled to her desk, morning coffee in hand.

"Hi Nate, you're here early." Lisa sat down on her chair and spun around so she was facing her partner.

"Hey Lisa," Nathan greeted distractedly, digging through a drawer of his filing cabinet. "You see Kenzie 'round here lately? At all?"

Lisa looked to the ceiling in thought before coming to the conclusion that she hadn't seen her fellow scientist in a few days. "I haven't, now that you mention it. Has she been sick or something?"

"Boss just got a letter from her," Nathan muttered. He sighed and sat down in his chair, stretching his spine after being hunched over for so long. "She's on one of her stupid 'missions' again."

Lisa groaned and shook her head. She knew all too well about her younger co-worker's obsession. Everyone in the laboratories did. Mackenzie Nickels had an odd fixation, wanting to prove magic was real through scientific study and testing. Though she was undoubtedly one of the smartest scientists on the floor, everyone agreed that she didn't use her brainpower productively. Though she kept up with the projects she was given, she would always find time to try and prove the existence of all sorts of mythological and supernatural beings and happenings.

"What's she on the hunt for now, bigfoot?" Lisa asked dryly. "Or maybe she's up north searching for the abominable snowman."

Lisa watched Nathan's face light up before he threw his head back in laughter. "Ha, I don't know. Hasn't she been freaking out over unicorns lately?"

Lisa couldn't even think of biting back her laughter until it came out in shoulder heaving guffaws. She felt her stomach start to pinch in a cramp as her eyes started to water as her laughs only seemed to grow and become uncontrollable. Lisa gasped for breath after minutes of laughing, and even then the giggles still continued.

"You," Lisa gasped, "have got to be kidding me. Unicorns? Seriously?"

Nathan smirked and nodded. "Last I heard she was saying that unicorns had to be real, at least at one point if not now."

Lisa wiped her eyes. "What the hell makes her say that?"

"No idea." Nathan chuckled. "She's been making a bunch of nonsense connections lately. Mentioning rhinos and narwhals—stupid stuff like that. Ben's been working with her for the time being. Drives him insane."

"I don't doubt it," Lisa grumbled. "I had to work with her last month, remember?"

"It was mermaids then, wasn't it?" Nathan gave Lisa a smirk before turning to his laptop.

The brunette nodded and took a sip of her coffee. "Insisted evolution created mermaids. Y'know, the whole 'we evolved from fish before monkeys' thing that was being debated? Yeah, she had a field day with that."

Nathan wheeled his computer chair over towards Lisa and gave the woman a quick hug. "I'm sorry you had to go through that, sweetheart."

Lisa rolled her eyes. "If you're so sorry then you should work with her. Really find out what kind of hell I had to go through."

"I would," Nate pushed off Lisa's desk to roll back to his desk, "but who I work with isn't up to me, now is it?"

Lisa shook her head in disbelief, though she knew that Nathan would come up with an excuse to get out of death if he could. "Yeah, whatever."

Lisa heard Nathan's laptop whir to life, and decided to turn on her own computer. She had come down to her office in hopes of getting her days work done early. She hadn't had any time to spend with her husband in days, and hoped that they would be able to spend the evening together if she got through reports and tests early.

Suddenly Lisa remembered that she had walked into the office after Nathan had, a very rare occurrence. While her computer continued to boot up, she turned around in her seat. "Nate."

The redhead's eyes never left his screen. "Hm?"

"Why were you here so early?" Lisa rested her chin on the back of her chair, staring in the direction of her partner.

"I could ask you the same thing." Nathan glanced over his shoulder, giving Lisa a cheeky smile.

"I wanted to spend the evening with Charlie," Lisa answered nonchalantly.

Nathan snickered. "How sweet."

Lisa narrowed her eyes. "Nate, what are you trying to hide."

"Absolutely nothing," Nathan said, waving off Lisa's accusations.

"Then answer my question."

Nathan sighed and turned around in his seat. "It's nothing. Boss said he left me a copy of Kenzie's letter. That's what I was looking for. He said I had to read it. He said he sent an email, so I'm hoping that it'll have another copy of the letter, 'cause I can't find the one he was talking about."

Lisa perked up, her curiosity tickled. Before Nathan could say anything else the brunette pushed herself away from her desk, the chair rolling at his desk. She felt the back of it smack against the counter and looked to Nathan's loading laptop.

"I don't know if you can see it Lisa," Nathan hesitated.

"Since when do you care?" Lisa turned around in her seat and made herself comfortable. "What the boss doesn't know won't hurt him. You can trust me, Nate."

Nathan seemed like he was going to object before he saw that his computer was ready for use. He laid his hand on his mouse and stared at the screen for a moment before looking back at Lisa. To her surprise, Nathan's eyes were hardened and serious.

"Swear on your life you won't tell anyone," Nathan demanded.

Lisa raised her eyebrows in surprise but shrugged anyway. "I swear, I won't say a word about anything I'm about to see in that email. Jesus Nate, why so serious?"

Nathan chuckled nervously before turning to the laptop screen and opening his inbox. "Sorry. Boss just sounded so serious when I talked to him. Like whatever he saw really freaked him out or something."

Lisa bit back the snarky remark that edged its way to the tip of her tongue and patiently waited for Nathan to open what had been sent to him.

The email from their boss was the first one on the list of unread emails. Nathan clicked it to find only a file. There wasn't a message from the sender nor was there even a subject. Lisa looked at Nathan the same time he looked at her. The co-workers shared a surprised look, for their boss was known for writing walls of text when simply reminding them of a meeting they had to make an appearance at. Finding nothing, not even a single work or punctuation, either meant that the file they were about to see was too funny for words or too odd.

Nathan clicked on the file. The laptop quickly opened up to a media player.

"So it's a video," Nathan mumbled as the clip quickly loaded up.

Let's see what Crazy Kenzie decided to send us. Lisa thought to herself as the video started to play.

All that could be heard at first was heaving breathing and the crunching of leaves and twigs under the weight of the cameraman—most likely Kenzie. There was only a few seconds of what one could only assume was Kenzie running with her camera on before she stopped and turned the lens to face her.

Mackenzie looked frazzled, but excited nonetheless. Her curly blonde hair poked out messily from her ponytail, and her blue eyes were wide behind her glasses. It was obvious that she hadn't properly bathed in quite some time, for she was covered in dirt and sweat. Lisa figured that Mackenzie had decided to camp the old-fashioned way at wherever she had decided to run off to instead of renting a camper or getting a hotel room. She had her quirks like that.

"This is Mackenzie Nickels," Mackenzie huffed looking about and only occasionally glancing back at her camera. "This is my third day out in the woods, and man oh man have I got some news!"

The screen suddenly went from Mackenzie on the ground, to Mackenzie hiding in a tree.

"Sorry about that, I wanted to get a better view of this," Mackenzie explained to her camera as she adjusted herself on the branch. "Anyway, I've gotta really quick explain what's happened so far. I've been camping in the Boreal Forest out in Canada, trying to find my unicorns. I was told from a reliable source that there had been a sighting out here, and decided to start my own little investigation."

Lisa could hear Mackenzie giggle with enthusiasm. She shakily turned her camera around and focused it on what she had supposedly been trying to get a better view of. Lisa felt her jaw drop almost to the floor at what she was seeing.

There, chewing on the grass around the trees, was an off-white foal. The young horse looked like any ordinary wild horse—dirty hooves and coat, messy mane and tail—but there was one thing about the young horse that stood out like a sore thumb. Sticking out from the horse's forehead was none other than the distinct trait of a unicorn. The horn was spiraled, silver in color, and rather short. It didn't shine, or even look like it was in any way magical like most fables made it out to be. The horn was just as dirtied as every other part of the horse, and looked like it was completely natural.

Mackenzie zoomed back out from the creature she was stalking and turned the camera back to face her.

"Beautiful, isn't she?" Mackenzie whispered, still staring at the unicorn below. She flicked her gaze back to the camera. "She's young, and such a sweet little thing. Very curious, which is why I think she's here in the first place. I haven't had too much time to really examine her or any others of her kind yet."

Mackenzie giggled for a moment before composing herself once again. "But this isn't even it!"

The screen went from Mackenzie in the tree to a level image of the grazing unicorn. Lisa guessed that Mackenzie had climbed down from her place in the tree and was now standing on the ground.

You could hear Mackenzie whisper, "Watch this" before she tiptoed closer to the foal. As Lisa neared the unicorn, it became aware that she was slowly coming closer. The foal looked up to Mackenzie, its eyes wide and curious of her existence.

"Shoo," Mackenzie hissed. Lisa watched Mackenzie's hand slice at the air, urging the unicorn to go away. "Go on, shoo. Go back home, sweetie."

The unicorn jumped back from Mackenzie's hand, whinnied, and galloped straight at one of the trees surrounding it. Lisa thought that it was going to slam into the trunk and cringed away before she could watch it. However, all Lisa heard from the speakers was Mackenzie's excited squeal. Lisa opened her eyes to see that the young unicorn had disappeared from the area.

"What, what the hell happened?" Lisa demanded.

Without a word, Nathan rewound the video a few seconds back so Lisa could see what happened. When the clip started playing once again, the young unicorn was running away and towards the tree. Instead of the unicorn slamming into the trunk like Lisa had expected, the creature ran straight through the tree as if it was a hologram. There was a slight ripple against the trunk as the foal ran through it, but it stopped only seconds after the unicorn was out of sight.

"It's a portal," Mackenzie whispered. She started walking towards the tree trunk. "It's magic."

The camera soon was right in front of the tree trunk. Mackenzie seemed to step through the portal, following the young unicorn she had once been watching. The vision around the camera went blurry like being underwater. It only took a second for the camera to focus on the other side of the portal that Mackenzie had found.

The area was nothing extraordinary. It looked just like any other forest and didn't seem to have any magical looks about. However, once Mackenzie peeked through the trees, it was obvious that Mackenzie wasn't in the Boreal Forest any longer. Just past the few trees was a large meadow where hundreds of unicorns, all sorts of shapes, sizes, and colors, grazed and interacted.

The camera swung back to Mackenzie, her smile as bright as the afternoon sun. "I've found my fantasy."

The video ended there, the screen going black.

Nathan and Lisa sat in silence for only a few moments until Lisa couldn't help but say,

"Oh…my…god. Unicorns…magic…it actually exists."