Wondrous Strange

V

Exhausted, muddy, and soaked to the skin, Kelley kicked the apartment door closed behind her and yelled out for her roommate. There was no answer-Tyff must be out, she thought. Just as well. At that moment she didn’t really feel like launching into a recap of her strange adventure in the park. The cold of the Lake still gripped her bones, even though she’d jogged the last few blocks home. It made her thought processes slow and sluggish.

Shivering hard enough that her teeth rattled, Kelley shed clothing in a trailing heap on the floor, tugged the afghan off the back of the couch, and wrapped it around herself as she stumbled to the bathroom and turned the shower taps on, setting the temperature as hot as it would go. She knew that the only thing that was going to drive away impending hypothermia was the longest, hottest shower she’d ever taken, followed by a large mug of even hotter cocoa.

The shower was about as close to heaven as she could imagine. Steam billowed in clouds around her, and eventually the chattering of her teeth stopped and her muscles unclenched enough to let her stand upright. Once the heat had restored her mental faculties sufficiently, Kelley allowed herself to mull over the evening’s bizarre turn of events.

She’d come to her senses lying facedown on the lakeside path, retching out murky water, with the horse nuzzling at her shoulder. By the time she’d regained her bearings and struggled to her feet, the creature had vanished into the darkness, and Kelley was left with nothing but a few strands of long, reddish horsehair clutched in her fist. Sodden and shivering, she had gathered up shoes and coat and all the stuff that had spilled from her bag and headed for home.

That was what she remembered.

Only…

There was confusion in Kelley’s mind. She could recall, from the moments before she’d blacked out, a jumble of images. Fleeting impressions of lights and sound-strange, beautiful music…

Or, to use the technical term, oxygen deprivation.

Kelley leaned her head against the tiled wall. At least she hadn’t actually drowned. What was that old cliche? Right: “Fortune favors the foolish.” Stupid horse. She hoped it had found its way home. With the water starting to run lukewarm, Kelley reluctantly turned off the taps and slid aside the shower curtain.

And screamed.

The “stupid horse” was standing right in front of her, filling almost every available inch of her tiny bathroom with its big, lanky frame. The horse’s back feet-in fact its entire back half-was still outside, as it stood half in her bathroom, half out on the landing of the fire escape. Kelley could see steam rising up from the horse, dissipating into the cold night air. It whickered softly and pushed at her shoulder with its velvet muzzle.

Kelley scrambled for something to cover herself and tried not to panic.

When she’d hoped that the creature had found its way home, Kelley hadn’t meant her home! She wrapped herself in a towel and edged around the horse, out of the little room. As soon as she could, she shut the door with a bang and leaned against it, her heart pounding.

This is impossible, she thought. This is not happening.

She was imagining things. She had brain freeze. Uber brain freeze-not just the kind you got from drinking a Slurpee too fast. No. The kind that you got from jumping into a lake in late October. The kind that made you hallucinate wildly.

The horse whinnied softly.

“Stop that!” Kelley clapped her hands over her ears. “You’re not real! I can’t hear you because you’re not real!”

There was another little burble of equine noise from behind the door, followed by shuffling and thumping sounds. Then nothing. Kelley sank down to the floor and sat with her back to the door. This really wasn’t happening. Because if it was happening, Kelley was in for a world of trouble.

Her roommate was going to kill her. Or kick her out.

Oh, God-if Tyff kicked her out, she might have to move back home! It wasn’t as if her aunt Emma had wanted Kelley to move to New York in the first place, and it was only the fact that Kelley’d found such a great place to stay that made her agree. Tyff Meyers was a model-more than a little high-strung-and Kelley could recall the wording of her craigslist ad with absolute clarity:

Available to Rent: outrageously expensive, ridiculously tiny room with no view, in Upper East Side walk-up, w/shared kitchen/bath/living. Must be single female. Nonsmoker, nondrinker, nonannoying. No late nights, loud friends, parties, or general weirdness. You must be neat, you must be civilized, and you must not touch my stuff-food and bath products, especially. Interview required. Must answer skill- testing question. Serious inquiries only to: [email protected].

NO CRAZIES. NO PETS.

A horse in the bathroom would pretty much violate both the NO CRAZIES and NO PETS, Kelley thought, still trying desperately not to panic.

She stayed crouched against the door for a long time, her mind racing like a runaway train. This couldn’t possibly be happening. After a long few minutes of silence, she dared to hope her fit of hallucination had run its course.

Then she heard the sound of water running.

Kneeling, she put an eye to the antique keyhole in the door and, feeling dazed, noted that the horse had climbed entirely-impossibly-through the small casement window and was now standing in the tub.

It also seemed to be running itself a bath.

“No, ma’am, I’m not drunk,” Kelley said for the third time.

This, after the eighty-five minutes she had spent trying to get a real person to talk to at NYC Animal Control. “Like I said, he must’ve come up the fire escape-”

The receiver clicked in her ear.

“Hello? Hello?”

Exasperated almost to the point of tears, Kelley hung up the phone and began to pace. Maybe the Animal Control lady was right. Maybe she was drunk. Okay, so she hadn’t had anything to drink, but that made about as much sense as a full-grown horse following her home from Central Park like a lost puppy, climbing up the fire escape, and squeezing itself through a tiny window into her bathroom, didn’t it? She stopped pacing and went to check on it. Still hoping beyond hope that she had, in fact, been hallucinating, she cracked open the door. The horse rolled a big, brown eye at her inquiringly.

Kelley sighed in weary frustration and decided to attempt to physically remove the creature from the tub herself. She tried pushing from behind, pulling from in front, poking, prodding, enticing with a withered carrot she’d found in the back of the refrigerator vegetable drawer…

The horse remained sweet-tempered throughout-and stubborn as a mule.

It-he, she noticed-affectionately snuffled her shoulder, nuzzled at her fingers, and remained entirely disinclined to budge from the half-full tub. Kelley leaned on the edge of the sink and dropped her head into her hands, still dully disbelieving that any of this could actually be happening.

Then she caught a whiff of lavender and jerked her head up to see a glistening white froth swirling around the horse’s legs.

It was only then that Kelley’s state of shock evaporated, and the panic set in for real.

Never mind the fact that there was a horse in her bathtub. The only thing that mattered to Kelley in that particular moment was that the horse had tipped over a bottle of her roommate’s