"The Other Side" Prologue

The statue sat on a stone pedestal, surrounded on all sides by other stone figures. The difference between this statue and all the others was that it was not a pony. Instead, it was a horrible, grotesque combination of a slew of various animals. Its most prominent feature was its head; A goat's twisted together with a pony's, horns of different animals, eyes of different sizes, and a long beard. It was screaming in shock, the statue's eyes frozen in horror and surprise. It appeared as if it had once been alive, so real was the expression on its face. The statue sat in darkness, as the moon hanging overhead was obscured by a large pillar. Shadows seemed to play across its stony visage, whatever revolting monstrosity this thing was. The darkness seemed to twist and roil like smoke, moving in a seemingly alive fashion. As the shadows crept over the eyes of the horrified sculpture, a small crack formed in the stone that made up the creature's eyelids. The crack grew, sending small shards of stone skittering into the night. Two red eyes glared from inside their sockets, searching slowly and meticulously for something in the blackness.

"Finally. I was getting tired of that. But no matter... soon I will be free from this prison those insignificant little mortals made for me."

This came from a chuckling, low voice inside the statue. The statue's eyes squinted in an angry, venomous glare. The thin red slits narrowed into knifelike edges of crimson light.

"No more Mr. Nice Discord. All I wanted to do was have a little fun, break a few hearts, and throw the world into chaos! That's nothing! Fuck, that pisses me right off. I was making it rain chocolate milk, goddamnit! What kind of idiot wouldn't want it to rain chocolate... fucking... milk... Mmmm... Too bad I can't drink any right now."

The eyes opened wider, then blinked as the voice spoke again.

"Whoops, don't get off track, Me! Wouldn't want someone to hear, would you, Myself! What about you, I, are you done salivating? Do you all want to get us caught? Didn't think so. Now...to set my plan in motion! HEY! Of course Ol' Discord has a plan, Me, Myself and I. We may be the god of chaos, but we're not stupid! What? Of course it involves pain! Yes, suffering too. And death... And agony. Would you shut up and free up some brain power? I'm working on the plan, here. Tick tock, Discord, tick tock."

The voiced growled darkly to itself before continuing.

"The boss has a plan, and it's a masterpieeeeeeece! Celestia must be a retard or something, because she thought the Elements of Harmony were the only Elements that existed! Boy was she wrrrrrrong! Bzzzzt. Loser. That's like saying there's life, but no death! Ooh, death again, there will be plenty of that. But first, my ever-patient audience of Me, Myself and I, we must find the bearers of the Elements of Disharmony. And it would seem that none of them are from this world. Aww, fuck it, I think we could use some tourists. So let’s bring them on down already, I'm getting tired of waiting!"

Arcs of utterly black energy shot out from each of the Discord's eyes. The arcs flashed upwards into the cloudy night sky, disappearing into the blackness.

***

The man screamed; not with fear, not with joy, not with excitement, but with bottomless rage and sorrow. He knelt at the altar of a church, his hands laying on the floor with palms upwards. His spine arched backwards, and his shoulders scraped together, drawn back, as if to bare his chest at the world. His head pointed straight upwards at the ceiling. His face was the worst of all; Bared teeth, a wide open mouth, bloodshot eyes, tear stained cheeks, and a look of unimaginable misery. With a sudden jerk, the man stopped his screaming. He was quite young; he looked to be around eighteen years old, with auburn hair, piercing blue eyes, and pale skin, as if he avoided the sun like the plague. He had a wildly growing beard, and it looked as if he hadn't trimmed it in months. Kneeling there in front of the altar, he began to speak, though he was the only one in the sanctuary. The church's pastor had gone down into the basement, knowing that the man wanted to be alone.
The man began to speak, in a low, deep, rasping voice, hoarse from screaming.

"God, what have I done to deserve this?"

he looked up at a statue of Jesus, splayed out on the cross. Jesus' eyes seemed to look right at him, and they would have cried, had they not been made out of metal and colored with paint.

"My mother was murdered in my own house... and it was my father who killed her... She was so sick, so weak; I don't know how she held on so long... She was in so much pain, so much torment! One part of me is glad she's not alive anymore; she didn't deserve the pain. The other part of me hates what I just said; it would do anything to get her back. Anything." this last word was a growl, like that of an animal. But at the same time, a single tear rolled down his cheek.

"But you know that's true, you're the master of everything, after all." he barked.

"You know what I did after that? After she died in my arms? I looked up at my father... that smiling, evil bastard... And then do you know what I did? I looked into his soul, I smiled back, and I stabbed him to death. Over and over again, I stabbed him... He didn't smile after that." the man's mind filled with images; a bloody knife, a woman's broken form, a crying boy, a man's corpse.

The man remembered how the police came, how they cuffed his hands, how they kicked and pushed, calling him names. He saw his brother, who was three years younger than him; he was crying and he was so pale that his face seemed translucent, as if it was made of plastic. He had fought like animal as the police grabbed him, but as he looked at his brother, he stopped fighting, and he cried. He cried like he had never cried before, his whole body spasming as if an electrical current ran through it. That wasn't far from the truth, as one of the officers had drawn a Taser and fired it into his back. Twitching there on the concrete, the police dragged and threw him into the back of a squad car. He didn't remember much after that, except that he had been released from jail a few days later, after a trial at a nearby courthouse. The verdict was that it was self-defense, and he was sent, with his brother, to live with his aging grandfather and schizophrenic uncle. He couldn't live with himself after his mother's death, and the only thing that stopped him from committing suicide was his brother. His brother was one of the only people he really connected with, aside from his best friend, who had moved far away from where he lived. This led the man to his current situation, kneeling in the church and baring his soul to the heavens. He was not a religious man, per se, and rarely spoke of his faith, but he would die to defend it. Now, it seemed as if he was becoming distant from his god. He still felt extremely passionate about his faith, but a man can only take so much before he breaks. Tonight was one of the few times he felt abandoned, and his mind was struggling to comprehend the past few days.

As he looked upon his savior on the cross, he began to feel the hairs on the back of his neck prickling, standing on end like a thousand tiny soldiers. He looked at his watch, "2:37 am" it said in electronic text. He turned his head, craning his neck to glance behind him. At first, it was nothing. Then slowly, what looked like ripples started to form in the air. They were black; not the black you see in nature, not the black that you see made by man, but the black which makes up the empty, cold, unending, unloving void of space. The man's eyes shot wide open and he spun around to face the darkness. His heart felt as if it had crawled up into his throat, and his tongue became numb. He tried to scream, but before he could, the blackness opened up before him. As he stared into the impossibly black portal hanging in the air, it stared back, though it had no eyes to do so. With a crackling, buzzing roar, it screamed at him. Tendrils exploded outwards from the portal and snaked and writhed their way forwards, pulling the man into the blackness. Finally, he screamed.

The portal closed behind him as he flew through what could only be described as "indescribable". The tunnel never stayed the same for long. It shifted and twisted in mind-destroying ways. Images were constantly flashing into existence, but were gone before they could be recognized. The man, still screaming, began to increase the volume of his wailing as his clothes and possessions were torn to shreds, exploding into dust as they were ripped from his body. His mind seemed to be trying to hold itself together. It began to fail, insanity being forcefully hammered into his brain as if by some sick carpenter. Just before he lost what was left of his mind, he saw a light, literally ‘at the end of the tunnel’. The light seemed brighter than anything he had seen before, but it was quickly clear that he was nearing whatever mind-bending, impossible, nightmare inducing destination that waited at the end of the tunnel.

The first thing that was seen by the man was trees. He was above them. This shocking fact started his screaming anew. By that time, the screaming had reduced his voice to a low, painful, gravelly sound.

"Oh, fuck! Shit, shit, shit!" was the only thing he was able to say before he crashed into the forest canopy.

He fell facedown, his arms flailing in the air against the momentum of his rapid descent. He slammed into a branch, which hit the front of his legs, flipping him forwards. He heard and felt the wet, meaty thump as he impacted with the hard wood. Tumbling forwards, his vision blurred, and nausea overcame him. He crashed down on his back, landing on another branch before rolling off with a yelp of pain. He managed to grasp a tree limb before he could fully impact with the ground. The bark dug into his hand, and he felt the skin being ripped off in deep furrows. He almost dislocated his shoulder by grabbing the branch with one hand at such speed, but luckily, it snapped partway, making his stop less sudden. With an unceremonious crack, it gave way, and he fell to the ground, which was fortunately only around a dozen feet away. He vomited violently when he finally crashed into the hard-packed dirt. He sat there gasping there on the hard-packed ground for a few moments.

"Where... the... hell... am I?" he said to no one, between puking his insides out and cringing in pain. It wasn’t ‘no one’ who glared at him with hungry, evil eyes...

AUTHOR'S NOTE
Well, this is my first MLP FIM fiction, and I decided to go in a different direction than most stories I see based in MLP FIM. Derp. Give me some feedback, I would LOVE some input on my writing. (P.S. All of this is written on iPod touch 2nd-gen, then edited on my PC before submission. Hope you enjoyed the prologue.)