It was a long day in the desert sun, you wipe the sweat from your brow as you lean on a tree. After the crowd of childless seniors disperse after the senator’s raving speech against the gays and the wokes as he calls them. The balding senator waves at them as they go and looks around before leaving the city park up the winding path through the green turf fields. As he makes his way up the path he loosens his red tie that doesn’t remotely match his oversized grey suit he picks up the pace.

You give him a few seconds to not make it too obvious finishing the water in you bottle before throwing it away into a trash bin. You shudder at the waste but anything Eco-friendly was another tentacle of the wokes that Senator Holt railed against. You didn’t think about this much before you gave chase.

You’d never seen someone take a more complex route down a straight street. a long pause outside a closed bookstore, making a loop around the liquor store shelves without buying anything and going up one side of the street then down the other. Trailing people is not what the movies chalk it up to be. Following in a car with cool air conditioning in this one horse town would be too obvious so it has to be by foot. This means a lot of wandering aimlessly while your feet start to hurt and you build up thirst. The senator made these three detours before ducking into the laundromat at precisely 8:16 p.m.

You pretend to read a flyer for a missing cat. Your hands were sweating. Your not new to this work and have be on more dangerous cases but this one was different, this one was personal. You followed him inside the plain building. Inside, the place reeked of detergent and humming machines lined the walls. A clerk glanced up, then back down, uninterested. Holt was already at the back, he approached a crooked door with a “Staff Only” sign. He knocked—not loud, but precise. A rhythm. Tap-tap, pause, tap, pause, tap-tap-tap. Then he leaned in and whispered something.

The door opened.

Just like that, the most powerful bigot in the southwest vanished behind the door.

your heart beat like a timpani as you waited ten seconds. Then grabbing a hamper of clothes you walked to the same door and knocked, hesitantly repeating the rhythm.

The man who opened it had a pierced brow and tired eyes.

“You don’t look like Vernon,” he muttered. You show him the hamper smiling.

A long stare. Then he stepped aside. “Don’t be weird.”

As the door shuts behind you let out a sigh of relief. As you make your way down the stairs choked with incense and covered with velvet wallpaper, the hum of music grew louder. Before you reach with a doorway with a rainbow sigh with the letters reading The Colourful Vernon. You scan the crowd of men with provocative colourful clothes Laughter spilled like smoke over old furniture, leather booths, low tables. The ceiling was low and the secrets hung heavy.

So, this was the reason, Senator Granger Holt, the man whose venom had laced the airwaves for a decade, whose voice fuelled a thousand bonfires of queer books and pride flags. Frequents a secret gay club.

Looking through the crowd you found him hiding in a corner booth behind a hat he hadn’t worn upstairs. Coward.

Then the lights dimmed further, and a voice crackled to life on the speakers: “And now, kittens and colts... sugar, spice, and everything sinful—give it up for your favourite fantasy... Sugar Hoof.”

I turned just as the unicorn stepped onto the stage. Lean, elegant, glittering with confidence. I was captivated as he danced on the pole slow, sultry swing with a pulsing beat.

But then his eyes met mine.

And he paused.

Just for half a second. But long enough for me to know I’d been seen.

The show burned itself into my memory. By the time the final spin ended, Sugar Hoof bowed with a wink and vanished into the velvet drapes.

Ten minutes later, he was walking among the tables, chatting with regulars like old lovers. And then, somehow, he was at my table.

“You’re not here for laundry, and you’re not here for the dancing.” He leaned in, his voice low and silk-soft. “You’re here for him, aren’t you?”