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Muriel sat on her computer chair in the living room, staring blankly into space. Her eyes were heavy-lidded, and she could feel, if not hear, her own steady breathing. She longed to write a story that would entice at least one journal enough to find publication, and get acclaim, and maybe even a Pushcart nomination, if not a prize.

As she nodded off, her cat, Freya, leaped onto her lap and meowed. Muriel’s eyes opened. She now felt fully awake, but her attention was diverted by an almost magical tinkling sound. It reminded her of a bell over a shop door that had been opened. Muriel’s eyes shifted to the picture window. At once, the window exploded inward, with glass shards raining down onto the furniture and the carpet, sending Freya skittering away in terror. Muriel watched in fascination as a huge, macabre, humanoid creature burst through the broken panes of glass and roared thunderously at her.

“You’re a troll,” Muriel murmured with wonder.

The beast roared again, its stony limbs and twisted features writhing with menace.

“No,” Muriel corrected herself, “you’re not a huge troll, you’re a small hobgoblin.”

Muriel leaned forward to reach her keyboard, erased the previous line of text beginning with “The troll,” and typed in, The hobgoblin appeared in Penny’s living room. Instantly, the eight-foot troll shrank to a 30-inch, shaggy-haired creature with pointed teeth and lurid, bright red lips. The picture window was magically restored to its previous condition. The hobgoblin raised its hands, revealing tapering talons. It hissed sibilantly. It had been found out by a mere mortal woman of middle age.

The hobgoblin drooled on the Persian carpet. Penny was not frightened at the sight of the odd creature. “You are soiling my carpet,” she scolded him. “Wipe your face and then clean up the mess you made.” Penny fetched a wet-dry vacuum cleaner.

Instead of complying, the hobgoblin stamped its foot like a fairytale villain, and at once went into a weird routine. It tried to shock Penny by becoming first a harpy, then a dire wolf, and last a wisteria vine with gnashing teeth. Penny yawned and chuckled a bit. The hobgoblin’s antics were only mildly amusing. “Oh, I get it,” she said. “You’re a shape-shifter.”

“Bah, you think you know so much!” the hobgoblin snarled, and began to curse under his breath.

“I think that this is a much better sci-fi than the usual. Now what could the hobgoblin do next?” Muriel asked her Freya.

Freya was seated in a cardboard box on the floor near the computer. She gazed at Muriel with her usual calm, wise, Sphinx-like demeanor. She yawned a big, pointy-toothed yawn.

“Now, if I were Penny, how would I rid my home of a ridiculous, pesky hobgoblin?” Muriel asked Freya.

“Meow, Merrrrow,” responded Freya, as it licked its fur into place.  Its eyes danced with delight. Or was it mischief?

“Got it!” remarked Muriel, smiling at the cat, whose thoughts forged a mysterious corridor into the would-be author’s mind. “Great idea!” she exclaimed. Muriel began to tap furiously on the keyboard, lest the idea slip away. There was a sci-fi journal that Muriel wanted to submit her flash fiction to. The journal’s submission requirements mentioned it was looking for an unusual theme, a genre-bending fiction like a fun-house light-bending mirror. “Unexpected comedy in sci-fi might be the ticket, Freya,” remarked Muriel.

This is what she wrote:

The hobgoblin suddenly danced over to the sleeping cat. The cat continued to doze, even as the creature tried to torment her. The goblin metamorphosed into a small spider and dangled itself from a sticky, gossamer thread of web over the cat. The spider spoke in an arachnid voice, doing its best to imitate a squeaking field mouse. Yet, the cat dreamt on. In its dreamscape, it was outside catching mice, whether they were high or low, in the grass or up a tree limb.

The hobgoblin-like spider was having a lot of fun watching the cat twitch in her sleep. “I bet I can do a jitterbug on its whiskers, ha-ha,” the creature said. The cat, still in dreamland, smiled, reached up and grabbed the mouse, and smashed the creature into the carpeted floor.

“Victory over rodents. Yay!” exclaimed the cat in its sleep. The hobgoblin tried to shape-shift back to its humanoid form, but it was too late and went splat into a spot of blue mush on the oriental carpet. Spiders bleed blue, Muriel had noted after researching spiders.

The author added concluded her story: The cat yawned and smiled a contented feline smile.

“Done,” Muriel announced to Freya, who jumped up to join her at the computer. The cat twitched her whiskers and looked eagerly at Muriel, who realized that her next task was to research at least one worthy publication that would accept a story concocted by a cat mentally connected to its human servant.

“Well, Freya,” Muriel began, but then stopped as her eyes fixed on a curious blue splotch on the carpet where Freya had been lying. That wasn’t there before, was it? she wondered, then turned to regard her cat.

Cats are egocentric and like to be the heroes in stories; they both knew this, but Freya would keep their secret.