I woke up the next morning with my head on the kitchen table. I almost fell out of my chair as I got up and went for my coffee machine. I flicked the switch so that it was "on" and then stumbled my way into the bathroom to take a shower. I undressed quickly and turned the water to "cold but not freezing" and got in. I washed my hair first, then the rest of my body, the coldness of the water waking me up slowly but surely. I turned off the water, dried myself off and tucked the towel around my waist. I patted down my hair so it wasn't crazy-looking and then left the bathroom with a towel around my waist to go get my clothes.

Walking into my bedroom, I saw the empty bed and remembered the previous night. I went through it in my mind, trying to discern the exact moment when someone spiked my drink or something, but came up with nothing. Maybe I had developed schizophrenia?

Trying not to think about last night, I went to my closet and grabbed a clean t-shirt and a pair of pants, and then went to my dresser to put on some underclothes. Once I was dressed, I went back out into the kitchen and finished off my coffee. I saw my old journal lying on top of my computer, and I opened it and flipped to the most recent entry and read through it. I snorted when I read the part about feeding the “pony” tomato soup. If there was a “pony” like that, why hadn’t I taken a picture with my phone? On second thought, where was my phone?

It wasn’t near my computer, nor was it by the coffee maker, so I went into my room. Wasn’t by my bed or in my dirty clothes. A little worried, I went to my computer and ran the “find my phone” thing my parents made me install before I went to college and was relieved to hear a dinging noise from my room. Upon entering my room I could tell that the dinging was coming from under my bed. Must’ve dropped it some time last night.

I got on my knees to look under the bed for the phone, but the first thing I notice is not the little glowing and dinging rectangle of light just under the edge of my bed. No, what I see is the very same pony I had brought to my house the night before, cowering in the far back corner where the bed meets the corner of my room. In the dim illumination provided by my phone, it looked like the little pony was covering its eyes with its... hooves? Feet? Arms? I took a moment to just stare before grabbing my phone and turning off the "find my phone" thing, and suddenly, the room was practically dead quiet. Without the light from my phone screen, the pony under my bed looked more like a weird shaped blob. A shivering blob. I quietly got back to my feet and tiptoed out of my bedroom, closing the door behind me with a barely audible click. I went to the kitchen and took a seat in my chair, pulling my computer towards me. I opened up the web browser and typed in miniature pony. Then I proceeded to sit there and just stare at those two words for a solid minute, not really believing what my eyes had seen. Instead of pressing enter, I got back up and quietly went back to the door of my room with my phone in one hand. I opened the door quietly and poked my head in to see if the pony had moved around while I wasn't in the room, but that didn't seem to be the case. I opened the door just enough for me to slide through before closing it again as silently as I could. I stepped over to my bed and got down on my knees again, peering under it into the darkness. It took about three seconds for my eyes to adjust to the dark enough for me to verify that the pony was still hiding in the corner. Good. I fumbled with my phone for a second before I managed to turn on the flashlight function, and I shined it towards the floor so as to not blind the little pony while still providing enough light to see it clearly. Sure enough, it was the very same pony I had rescued the night before. It was probably scared of being in a new environment with someone it was unfamiliar with, which would explain why it was hiding under my bed.

And I had to get it to come out.

I had tried everything I could think of short of crawling under my bed and pulling the pony out or calling animal control. It didn’t want to come out for food or for a ball of paper, and it gave me a what seemed to have been a horrified look when I tried talking to it. My internet searches for “miniature pony” or anything like that gave me pictures of tiny ponies that looked much more like miniature chubby horses than whatever was hiding under my bed. I was out of ideas, so I decided to continue talking to it because that was the only method that had given any results. So, I grabbed a chair from the kitchen and put it down in my bedroom right next to the door. I opened my mouth to say something, but the words died in my mouth. So, I just sat there for a while, chasing ideas and thoughts round and round in my head until I came to a conclusion.

The pony, as I decided to call it for now, had not had a good owner. Its previous owner had most likely mistreated it for all of its life up to when I found it in the alley. Mistreatment from humans is all that it had known, so when the pony looked at me, it would just see another human that would hurt it more, even though I would never dream of hurting it. I just had to prove it somehow.

So, I talked.

“You’ve probably never ben treated right, have you? You poor thing... I don’t know what you had been doing in that alley or who put you there, but whoever they are, I hope they get hit by a bus or something. What kind of horrible person-“ I stopped myself suddenly as I saw a small fuzzy nose poke out from under the bed, but as soon as I stopped talking, it disappeared back under the bed to where I could not see. So, I continued. “What kind of horrible person would ever willingly mistreat a little thing like you? I don’t know if you understand me, but if you come out I have some more tomato soup for you. I won’t touch you at all, I-“ I was cut off by a knock at my front door. Frowning, I got up and left my bedroom, going to the front door. I opened it and was surprised to see my friend Doug. Before I could say anything, he spoke.

“Hey Jay! Didja forget we were gonna go to that club I talked about? From what I heard, they got free wings if you do karaoke!”

Before I could form a reply, I felt something fuzzy push in between my ankles, and then saw a little cyan and white pony running out across the road and then turning down the sidewalk I used to walk to college. And like that, the pony was gone.