“Hello? Hello!” With the calls of that oh so wonderful voice disturbing my restful slumber, along with light prods to accompany it, I began to stir.

Oh shit, my head… What the hell happened last night?

“What type o’ critter are you?” the voice queried before I felt another poke on my ribs.

I groaned as I opened my eyes. Then I immediately shut them a moment later as the invasive rays of the sun assaulted my sight. My head spun as I gritted my teeth with a pained growl. The grass was comfortable enough as it was, and for whatever reason the sun was beating down on my prone form incessantly.

Before I could bring my worn mind to question what I was doing outside in a hot meadow, I was interrupted by another annoying prod.

I swatted the object away this time, yawning a small “Gimme five more minutes, damn it.” as I did so, before attempting to nestle myself into the blades of the grass to once again return to my ever elusive siesta. I would have been successful if it weren’t for – For God's sake, another poke!

By this time I was beyond sick of being bothered. My bloodshot eyes snapped open, my vision swimming and tears forming in my eyes from the orgy of vibrant hues that danced merrily in my sight. If I wasn’t agitated before, I was certainly fuming by now.

Wearing my fragile patience on my sleeve as I shook my head and pulled myself to my knees, I opened up my conversation in as calm and collected a manner as I possibly could at the time:

“Listen, if you keep on touchin’ me, you’re gonna catch a hand to the fa-," then I cast my infuriated glare over at the one who was bold enough to wake me. My eyes widened shock as I took in the bizarre sight of a Stetson-wearing, orange, freckled pony that was staring at me wide-eyed, and by that I mean its eyes were huge, with barely contained horror. Yeah, just dwell on that tidbit of information for just a minute.

But the craziness didn’t end there! We were both staring at one another for some time, the pony with fright and I with unbounded perplexity, before she spoke. As in actually spoke. With words! Words that I could understand!!!

“H-howdy, partner?” it more so questioned instead of stated. “Y’all doin’ alright? Ya look as though you’ve seen a ghost or somethin’.” Its voice shook within its being as if it had just stepped out of a freezer or something, it was so nervous. It also had a quaint southern drawl when it spoke, and its voice was very feminine in tone. It, or rather she, I guess, had one of those accents you’d expect to hear coming from one of those cute southern belles from a 1950s sitcom or something. I’d’ve probably lost myself in that voice if it weren’t for how horrified I was at what produced it.

I can only imagine that I mirrored her earlier expression of barely contained horror as I froze from the shock brought on by the unexpectedness of this turn of events. I tried opening my mouth to say something, but no words would come out. I was stuck there looking like a deer in headlights.

Then, just as I was reeling my disbelief and utter terror back in, telling myself that this was some deluded dream brought on by some mad god, she spoke again.

“Hello?” she managed with only the slightest hint of trepidation in her voice. “S-should I… go an’ get somepo-“

“AAAAAAAAAUGH!”

She was interrupted by a manly, and not at all girly-sounding, shriek of fright by yours truly. What can I say? I handle pressure with all the grace and poise of a procrastinator who’s only recently found out that a 15-page research paper on the curative effects of men’s body wash was due the very next day of class… and he was informed at midnight of that day.

I fell back on my ass from my previous position on my knees at the combined force of my terrified voice and my flight response for some reason nopeing out at the outlandishness of this situation, crawling backwards away from the pony as fast as I could without breaking my line of sight on her – as though she was some Subject Zero who infected those that got too near with mind-maggots, flesh-eating flies, and the creeping need to listen to Taylor Swift and Miley Cyrus at the same time. So yeah, it was perfectly reasonable of me to want to get the hell out of dodge at that moment.

“H-hold up there! Where’re y’all goin’!?” Stetson Pony cried out as I hastily moved away from her. When she again began approaching me, I eloquently set the stage for how relations between me and the fair folk of this glorious land would fare:

“Oh hell no! Stay away from me, you hear!?” I gaily responded as I sprinted in the opposite direction. She, of course, took my ever so merry tone as an invitation to follow me as I turned tail, prompting me to push even harder to move quicker away from her.

Now, I ran track in high school, the hundred meter to be specific, and I’m not tooting my own broken horn when I say that I’m fast. Not record-breaking fast, but fast enough to have landed third place in my school for time in the hundred meter dash. Despite this, she was hot on my trail for the entire way. I tried to shake her by moving side-to-side as I ran, because I was smart enough to realize that four legs are faster than two, to ensure she wouldn’t grab at my legs or anything to trip me up. It seemed to be working as, while we neared a fence with a thick line of foliage resting behind it, she seemed to slow her stride.

“Wait!” she called from behind, as I neared the fence, and consequently the large forest. I started at her call, largely ignoring the words being said as I vaulted over the waste-high fortification of wood.

I kept on moving along the front end of the greenery until I was certain Stetson Pony was no longer in pursuit. I mean, I know I was scared outta my wits, but I still had enough presence of mind to keep from heading headlong into a forest of all places.

I had never taken wilderness survival and I sure as hell wasn’t no boy scout growing up, so I knew nothing about surviving away from civilization. I only knew that you followed where the moss on rocks pointed to get back to a human-run community, and that you couldn’t eat tree bark unless you were really desperate for indigestion. I had no weapons, no skills, and no food to even want to attempt to put my will to the test.

As I walked further along the brush, my heart pounding all the while from the recent adrenaline-rush, I spotted something. It seemed the rocks with the moss were right! I’d only found one along the way and it had actually directed me toward a place that I could get some kind of help from!

I had fished out my iPhone earlier to check for a signal so I could call someone, presumably the authorities, for aid, but for some odd reason there was none. I could only sigh disappointedly to myself for expecting Verizon to pull through for me this one time before guessing that the tall, somewhat menacing trees had effectively cut me off for now from the rest of the world in terms of communication. Whatever. I was headed towards a city anyway; I would ask the residents for the nearest map, possibly the nearest cab, and I’d be on my way back home before the day’s end. No talking ponies, no vibrant colors, nothing else strange to make my day any more exciting. It was a weekend anyway, dammit! I deserve to relax on weekends, not… wake up in meadows after being dragged out of my own house!

Yeah, I was gonna put all the strangeness behind me and everything would go back to normal. Either when I got back home if this was all real, or when I woke up from whatever disturbing dream this was if I was indeed dreaming.

As I continued down the outskirts of the forest, I approached what appeared to be a… village? Okay, that was weird, I gotta be honest. Of all the things I could have expected, I was not expecting a rural town such as this. Where did I wake up in? Germany? Because that place has a lot of timeless, out-of-the-way hamlets, doesn’t it?

Either way, my journey only got stranger as I spied the occupants of said town. Ponies. Ponies everywhere. Ponies of varying colors of the Roy G. Biv spectrum, even one that actually was Roy G. Biv incarnate, as it flew majestically through the sky, leaving a large rainbow in its wake.

…Wait, what?

Not only were there ponies inhabiting this village, but they had different species as well!? Flying ponies, ponies with boney protrusions sticking out of their foreheads, regular ponies. What the fuck!? What did I do, step out of La La Land and end up right in Uncanny Valley!? The houses looked like houses, if a bit rustic, the grass was grass-colored, and my sanity was near-broken.

I walked in thinking I would get home, but then I see some polychromatic pony with wings push a cloud and manipulate the skies as though the weather were a simple marionette to be toyed with? I walked in expecting to ask a few simple questions about directions, and I’m left with so many more. Too many more. Where am I? What world am I in? Did Ted Cruz muddle his chances at presidency even more than he already has!? QUESTION MARK??? EXCLAMATION POINT!!!

And it was with all of these pleasant, and not at all sanity-crushing, thoughts that I decided I’d be better off taking the forest. Screw that and all that it stands for, I’d take getting lost in some forest over grinding my already fragile mental state into dust any day of the week!