Waking up.

Was she waking up?

Berry Punch stirred groggily in what felt like her bed. What felt like sheets. Her whole body was warm, like she'd been sleeping in a sauna. One of these damn quilts tangled around again...

She dislodged after a few kicks. The pillows had made their way to the floor overnight. Bedside glass of water luckily not knocked over. Bedside bottles not so lucky.

First she checked for broken glass. There was none of that. Her hoof winced, all the same, remembering.

Then she checked the time. 2:52PM? That can't be right. She'd gone to bed at...

Had she gone to bed?

Berry Punch made her way to the bathroom slowly, dragging her hooves along with her body. Nothing to drink so far this morning... so why was everything so far behind?

She got to the mirror. The same one that was there yesterday. Would be there tomorrow. Stuck out her tongue, long, looked at the long white patches. Pulled down the skin below one of her eyes, bloodshot. Sandpaper, or cardboard boxes, she'd been chewing on them last night. Or she'd been finishing the last bottle of...

Slip. She caught herself on the towel-rack, but that didn't have anything to catch itself on. The bathroom floor, cold tile, and the slightly damp, sticky towel falling on top of her, followed by the light metal bar. Thwack. It clattered noisily as it hit the ground, rebounding off Berry Punch's head.

The toilet seat was up, and somepony had thrown up in it. Berry Punch wanted to give them a piece of her mind.

Fridge. There was water in there, maybe ginger ale. Maybe another bottle. Berry Punch got up from the bathroom, slowly, with considerable effort, and started towards the kitchen. She kicked absent-mindedly at the towel clinging to her leg, and sent it flying against the bathtub along with the metal bar, clanking loudly against the porcelain. Berry Punch winced and put a hoof to her forehead. Painkillers too, somewhere...

Bedside. Why did it feel like staggering? Move one hoof. She would tell her head, and then it would... move one hoof. Eventually. She watched it. She could see the little trickle of energy move from her eyes to her head and all the way down, watched it go, slowly lifted the hoof and hovered in air and moved it forward and planted it uneasily on the floor...

Stutter. Shake. It would be easier just to go to sleep right here.

She made it back to the bed, but began to fall before she wanted to. Hit her head on the headboard, clunk. Feels like one of her teeth is arguing now.

"Bed," she says out loud, reaching for the scrambled blankets, falling helplessly forward, hooves scrambling for a hold. She finds the bed. Stumbles next to it for a minute. Slowly, arduously, raises one hoof and places it atop the bed. Slowly, arduously, raises another hoof, and places it there. Throws herself forward. She's in.

Yesterday there was somepony there... somepony she was talking to. She remembered sitting up in her bed, bottle in hoof, pillows tucked between her and the wall. Eyes watering, unfocused, staring into somepony's eyes.

"What did you do yesterday?" they had asked her.

No good at thinking. Or remembering. Berry Punch took a sip of something that tasted unlike water, and that was perfect for her. It was the tingle of her tongue, her brain firing to process whatever had been left on her tastebuds and would soon wreak havoc on her liver. If she said the brand, it would bury into her consciousness, and creep up at inopportune times. If she kept just a bottle there, it was much safer.

"You were here yesterday, I think," Berry Punch said, swaying lightly back-and-forth under one of the scattered blankets. "Didn't we play Jenga?"

The pony, who was too blurry to make out now, but at the very least was coloured some kind of way, pink and blue, maybe, shook its head. It shook, anyway. Blurred lines. Berry Punch began to sway more enthusiastically, balancing herself barely with a hoof on the mattress.

"It's not yesterday yet," Berry Punch said, raising the bottle and eyeing its fill line. Same, higher, or lower. Well, lower. She took another drink.

"This isn't a dream," the voice said. "You're not going to wake up from this."

"That's what you said last time," Berry Punch said, swigging back the last of her drink and throwing the bottle haphazardly onto the bedroom floor, where it landed with a clank before skidding along into a pile of neighbouring bottles, settling with the soft chime of glass rubbing glass. "But I did wake up. I'm pretty sure."

"You don't know if this is being alive or dead," the pony said, the border of its body wiggling insubstantially.

"It's the same thing either way," Berry Punch said, and hiccuped. "I woke up once before and there was nopony there. I stopped waking up and nopony came to find me..."

"What does it taste like?"

"Huh?"

The pony raised an ethereal hoof towards Berry Punch's new bottle, that had slipped into her hoof without her even realizing it. Like a magnet that had found its missing pole.

"Oh... peaches. This one is... it's peaches. Peach."

"Peachy," the pony said.

Berry Punch nodded. She unscrewed the lid, and the scent of fermented fruit bundled up into her sinuses. Her nose wrinkled before she tilted her head back and took a long swig of the new, fruity beverage. She coughed as she pulled the bottle away, sputtering slightly, and sending a tiny fleck of peach-flavoured alcohol in the direction of the pony at the foot of her bed. It pass through, landing somewhere on the already slightly-sticky floor.

"They need me," Berry Punch slurred, rocking slightly now against her pillows and headboard. "I have to be standing... uh, somewhere, tomorrow, for a thing, with the, uh..."

"Who?"

Berry Punch woke up. The room was empty. Well, there was a bed. There was her. What was empty? She took another swig of the bottle.

Gone now too.

There was the bed too, always, and it was spinning. The warm-hot against the cool-inside, she was laying in it, letting her head rest against what was probably still a pillow, feeling her stomach dance and churn and beg not to go back to sleep. The vision fuzz, or her eyes crossed, or remembering somepony very far away waving at her from over the horizon...

"My stomach hurts," she said simply, and began to throw up into her bed.