Greg woke abruptly, and without reason. He bolted upright in bed, heart in his mouth, one hand groping in the dark until it touched the warm, sleeping body beside him. A thump echoed up from downstairs. He spared a moment to feel envious of Jacob's ability to sleep through anything. Most of him, though, was remembering his mother's anxious phone call a few days ago, fretting about the rash of break-ins her favorite news program had reported in his area. Greg swallowed hard and eased himself out of bed. There was a baseball bat propped against Jacob's side of the dresser, which Greg picked up on his way out of the room.
Because the bedroom was always the warmest in the house, Greg slept shirtless, and he shivered when he stepped into the hall. He almost reached to turn on the hall light, but stopped himself as his fingers brushed the switch. Taking a two-handed grip on the bat, he crept down the stairs, towards a dim glow shining through the den’s entryway. Greg frowned. It wasn't the warm white of the standing lamp or the bluish flicker of a television left on. It was too steady to be a flashlight. Did burglars bring lanterns to break-ins?
In the hallway, just out of sight of the den, he paused. His spine crawled and his guts twisted, cold and sick. His heart was beating faster, climbing up his throat, and it was getting hard to breathe. It occurred to him suddenly that he should have called the cops before he came down, or at least woke Jacob up with instructions to call 9-1-1 if he didn't come back soon.
It was too late for that.
His rising panic was interrupted by a bright tinkle of breaking glass.
Gritting his teeth, Greg brandished the bat and leaped around the corner. “Hah! All right, get the fu...what the hell?”
He did not see the ski-masked, black-clad figure that television (and his mother) had led him to imagine would be standing in the middle of the room with a flashlight in one hand and a sack full of his belongings in the other.
Greg lowered the bat and raised a hand to briefly cover his eyes. When I look again, this will make sense, he told himself firmly. He dropped his hand away from his face.
There was still a unicorn standing in the middle of his den.
The steady, soft glow radiated from its lovely white coat. It had a golden mane and tail, with a horn like pearls and hooves of silver. The unicorn shifted its weight, one hoof thumping on the floor. That must’ve been what woke him up. On its back were saddlebags which looked like soft, red silk. There was a scatter of broken glass on the floor before it, and a horn-shaped hole in the middle of the television on the wall.
“How did a unicorn get into my house?” Greg muttered out loud, shock leaching his voice of any apparent emotion.
“Uh...neigh.”
Greg's grip tightened on the bat. “Did you just say neigh?” he asked incredulously.
“...Nooo.”
“I'm calling the, um, I'm calling... ah....I'm calling animal control,” Greg stammered.
The unicorn heaved a sigh. Its breath was fresh and sweet and reminded Greg of the summer afternoons of his childhood.
It leveled the sharp point of the horn at his face and said, “Put all your valuables in the saddlebags or I'll put a new hole in your head.”
C.J. Dotson (she/her) has been reading sci fi, fantasy, and horror for as long as she can remember, and writing for almost that long. She's bi, and is a wife, mother, and stepmom. Before the pandemic she worked in a bookstore and co-hosted an SFF book club, and will hopefully do both of those again someday. In her spare time, she paints and bakes. She has previously had flash and short fiction pieces published with idleink.org and cabinetofheed.com. Visit cjdotsonauthor.squarespace.com or find her on twitter as @cj_dots