Sorry About the Broken Fence

By Ani King

It happened like this; my sister called and said she was going to have to put her unicorn down. She said the unicorn was listless and wouldn’t eat. Of course I asked if she’d taken it to a vet and she laughed at me for thinking she could afford something like that, and then she said I don’t even know anything about her fucking unicorn. She says its hips have gone soft and its eyes have gone filmy and that it no longer seems to enjoy anything, not lying under the sprinkler, not chasing my niece around, and it obviously isn’t up for galloping around the high school track in the morning. Anyway, I think she was just upset that she didn’t get to fuck with the kids who think only virgins can see unicorns anymore.

I asked her if she needed money, because that’s the only reason she ever calls me, but she took it personally. She said it was bullshit that I always try to do this. She said anyway, it would be a waste to pay for something she can do herself. Her quote-unquote plan was to get some ketamine from a dude she used to sleep with who owed her one; she was going to borrow my brother’s rifle for the act itself.

I told my sister to at least let me pay for a vet trip, to make sure she needed to put the unicorn down at all, but she said she didn’t call so I could fix this for her. And I wanted to know, if not, why call in the first place? So anyway, I told her I think shooting a fucking unicorn in the backyard just because it got old and she’s too proud to take help was bullshit. So she told me if I was so worried about the fucking unicorn I could buy it from her, since I don’t seem to be having any money troubles. And then we argued about how I thought it was stupid she would sell me her sick, elderly unicorn, but not let me give her money to take care of it properly. She finally said it was the principle of the goddamn thing and I asked her if she actually knew what principles were, and she hung up on me!
​
And all I could think about after that call was this elderly unicorn getting its brains blown out in the backyard of my sister’s duplex and how then I’d probably have to bail her out of jail or at least help her get a lawyer, but when I called my mom she said it was my sister’s unicorn, my sister’s choice, and she’d probably take it to our brother’s farm anyway so no one would even call the cops. So anyway, no one else in my family would do anything to help this poor unicorn, so that’s why I stole it from my sister, and that’s why it’s living in the backyard. 

---

Ani King (they/them) is a queer, gender non-compliant writer, artist, and activist from Michigan. Ani is the first-place winner of the 2024 Blue Frog Annual Flash Fiction Contest, a SmokeLong Grand Micro Competition 2023 Finalist, and has had work featured in Split Lip Magazine. They can be found at aniking.net, or trying to find somewhere to quietly finish a book without any more interruptions.