“So how was it?” Comet asked me after I rejoined him in his car an hour later. I saw his telescope case and another bag in his back seat. He was wearing a blue hoodie with a yellow kangaroo on it with the hood up. It covered his ears surprisingly well.

“There’s a special kind of shame you get for showing up late, drunk and with dyed hair and pony ears to an AA meeting,” I said as I tried to slump in my seat but my tail wouldn’t let me.

“You’re not going to get into trouble, are you?” my friend asked, concerned.

“Probably not. I did show up. Being late is fine, shit happens,” I hesitated before continuing. “And... this wasn’t the first time I showed up with alcohol on my breath. And the pony ears and mane… well, that’s not breaking any rules,” I said with a shrug.

“Speaking of that,” Comet reached into the back seat and lifted up the flap to his bag; a white hoodie sat on top. Other than the white hoodie, in the dim light I could mostly make out yellow and blue clothing. Knowing him, he was coordinating with his future coat color. He handed me the white hoodie. “Put it on; it’ll cover the ears.”

I recognized what it was. It was the hoodie he wore when he was in track in high school to warm up. “LAWSON” was written across the front in red letters. Reluctantly I pulled his hoodie on over my head and let the back of my hair stay tucked inside. I pulled the hood up to cover my own ears.

“You can keep it, it goes pretty well with the dark red hair,” Comet complimented me as he started to drive back to my place. I pulled the bottom of the sweatshirt down all the way to check the size. It was a little big but it was warm.

“Yeah, well, maybe you should stay here and become the new mascot. You’re going to be yellow and blue, right?” I teased him.

“You know I wouldn’t like the attention,” Comet said with a smile as he watched the road.

When I thought Comet wasn’t looking I casually sniff tested the inside of the hoodie. While I knew it was clean, I had a strange feeling like the hoodie still smelled like him. I had seen him wear this countless times. It made me feel funny or something to wear this particular hoodie of his. Other than ‘weird’ I couldn’t process the rest of the feelings wearing it gave me. ‘Safe’?

My stomach growled loud enough to interrupt my thoughts and for Comet to hear. He caught me with the hoodie covering the lower half of my face.

“Hungry?” he asked me. I had been hungry for the last several hours but there had been more pressing matters.

“Actually, yeah. Now that I thought about it...” I said before I paused and double checked my memory. “I… I think I forgot to eat today,” I admitted.

“Berrrry...” Comet whined my name like I hurt him. I felt my ears under my hood fold in shame. “It’s no wonder you’ve been cold and shaking then.”

Without my input Comet turned into a parking lot to a fast food place still open and pulled into the drive thru.

“What would you like? Get whatever you want, I’m buying,” Comet reassured me with a smile. I really didn’t like the leverage of him buying me food while I was wearing his hoodie. I felt powerless yet coddled.

“No it’s fine, I’ll eat something when we get back to my place,” I tried to reassure him.

“What do you have to eat at home?” Comet asked. I tried to think of food I had on hand. Were there snacks left over from the party? Stale cake? Was thrown out. I had nothing to eat but plenty to drink. I looked over at Comet and could tell I was doing a bad job hiding from my face how shitty my answers were going to be.

So we sat in his car in the parking lot and ate because driving while in awkward, uncomfortable positions because of our tails and eating at the same time would have been too much. Just sitting in normal positions was uncomfortable. Comet was almost on his side and I was leaning forward to give the base of my tail as much clearance as possible.

My chicken tenders tasted wrong. I didn’t know how they could mess up fried chicken but they managed. The breading was great but the chicken itself tasted ‘sad’. Like it had been frozen too long and lost all its flavor. Maybe I had too much on my mind to taste it but I got it down before my friend finished half of his.

Comet was also picking at his burger and examining it as he ate it. It seemed like both of our meals were disappointments. We both finished our sad meals but neither of us seemed satisfied. Our situation didn’t seem any better with food in our stomachs.

“Are you still hungry?” Comet asked with motherly concern. “You don’t eat enough.”

“It’s fine; I drink plenty,” I quipped bitterly.

“Speaking of...” Comet began as he fiddled with something in his hoodie pouch. “You said back at the store you acknowledged you have an alcohol problem, right?”

“Um… yeah?” I agreed slowly. “Is this about the next step? ‘The greater power’? Did you get me a bible or something?”

“No. Nothin’ like that,” Comet shook his hooded head and turned to face me. “Berry Punch, you’re my friend,” he began. “And I’m your friend too, right? And so is Monica? And you wouldn’t do anything to harm yourself, Brianna’s brother, right?” My ponifying friend was scaring me.

“Y-yeah? We’re all friends...” I agreed slowly.

“Can friendship be your higher power? Can you believe in ‘us’ watching out for you? In keeping in touch with you? In us forgiving you when you slip? In Brianna’s unconditional love for her brother as she tries to help you? In us all trying to help you?” he asked of me in what sounded like semi-rehearsed but effective words. I took a moment to think about the words, let out a sigh and nodded.

My friend’s sharp blue eyes scanned the parking lot around us and then took a small bag full of a dozen pills out of his pocket. I recognized the mark on the pills: I knew white meant they were two milligrams. “I bought some valium from a guy I know on campus, for when you get withdrawal symptoms from alcohol.”

“Comet!” I smiled up at my wonderful friend. “You bought me drugs??” I felt so loved. If I was seriously cutting back then benzos would mean I could be functional while I detox. Maybe I wouldn’t snap at Brianna or yell at Mom. I went in for a hug and my hooded friend readily returned it. He was so warm. “I promise I’ll try,” I said while we hugged and I wanted to mean it.

With the pills now in my hoodie and our fast food trash taken care of, we headed for my place. My lower back was protesting all the walking and awkward sitting and Comet complained about the same when we got back to my place. We left Comet’s stuff in his car and went in with an empty suitcase and a backpack for me to pack.

Ian and Markus were both on the couch playing something when we came back in. When they saw us enter they paused their game; they were waiting for me.

“What are you doing with that suitcase?” Ian said when he got up to talk to me. I knew what this looked like, and I was basically doing just that. He knew what I was doing too. This was serious. I looked down at the suitcase, feeling extremely guilty.

“I’m… moving back home for awhile,” I admitted. I couldn’t look him in the eye. I knew they were both sick of my shit. The mess from the party probably annoyed them further.

“You can’t move out yet. The lease isn’t up for three months. You’re going to owe us four months of rent. And if all your shit’s still in there we can’t even rent it out to someone else,” Ian said as he crossed his arms. I forgot how big Ian’s arms were.

“Listen, I woke up with strange tattoos on me today, my hair and eyes changed a different color, I have horse ears and a tail, I’m growing fur, and I think it’s going to keep getting worse; I think we’re turning into ponies” I laid it out to him. Markus stood up from the couch and watched the situation curiously from the living room.

“What? Are you, like, roleplaying with your boyfriend? You expect me to believe that shit? You’re wearing contacts,” he said annoyed by the truth.

I put my hood down to show him the ears. I found I could swivel them decently if I ‘pretended’ I heard something behind me then in front of me.

Ian looked at me bewildered. Comet took his own hood down to show he was going through the same thing. Ian reached out to touch my ears and I didn’t stop him until I felt him pull. Hard. I yelled and smacked his hand away. Apparently he felt enough to believe they were real.

“You two need a fucking priest!” Ian said as he backed away slowly with his hands away from him. “I don’t want you spending the night here; you might infect us.” He headed for the kitchen, presumably to bleach his hands.

“You still owe us four months of rent if you’re moving out,” Markus picked up in Ian’s absence.

“You know I just don’t have that. I wouldn’t even if I sold everything. You’re just going to have to tell the landlord I left and can’t pay,” I told him. Markus looked down at the floor and nodded.

“I know, man. So that means if you leave you’re not going to get to come back,” Markus warned me. “And if all your stuff isn’t out soon Ian and I are going to have to toss what’s left so that we can rent out the room.”

I agreed to the terms and Comet and I headed upstairs to begin packing what wasn’t going to get thrown out. It was easier than I thought once I started looking around my room. There was nothing here I really wanted. My music stopped interesting me years ago, my computer was shit. My furniture? Chipped and stained. Trash. There was trash everywhere.

There was one book I was taking, my birthday present from last year from Brianna. It was an informational book on mixology and had a long list of recipes on cocktails in the second section. It was partially a joke gift but I found the talk about theory and balance very interesting.

“What did you pack?” I turned to Comet for advice.

“Well, I didn’t pack any more pants because I figured ponies can’t wear pants. I did bring my running shorts though. Those might still fit.”

“You didn’t have anything more flexible? Like sweatpants or pajama bottoms?” I asked him as I checked my dirty pile of clothes and hamper for similar items. I didn’t really own shorts but I did have sweatpants. Somewhere.

“Sweatpants are tacky. And I normally sleep in the nude,” Comet explained to me. I tried to physically shake that mental image from my head.

I ended up packing a few shirts, my found sweatpants, boxers, and an old backpack on top of those. Then I began to look over my birthday ‘presents’ sitting on my desk. Some of them weren’t even drunk out of yet.

“Do you think you’ll need those?” Comet tested me.

“Just in case. If I use a little booze to taper as well I can cut off more gradually,” I reasoned with him. In my head I knew I also wanted them just in case I needed a drink. I began to wrap some of the bottles up in the clothes in my suitcase.

Comet watched as I put them in my suitcase. I put in the Jameson, the absinthe, the moonshine grapes, the 25 year old port wine and the rum. Few enough bottles everything could get properly wrapped in my clothes.

“Are you sure you need all those?” Comet asked me with concern. I let out a long sigh as I looked over my chosen booze. Five bottles. But I was going to quit, right?

“I guess not,” I agreed in defeat. I set the moonshine grapes aside, as cute as they were they weren’t that high in alcohol. Then took out the port wine and rum and considered them both. My fellow hooded-friend quietly watched me decide to keep the rum and leave the port wine.

I zipped up my suitcase with three bottles in it. I picked up the port wine I had set aside. It would be a shame if wine waited around 25 years just to not get drunk. I gestured the bottle to him with a grin. “A toast to sobriety?”

A warm, amused smile spread on his face. “And friendship,” he added. I uncorked the re-corked bottle and gave the fortified wine a good, long pull and offered him the bottle. He took a small swig and set it aside on the ground next to him with the cork gently resting in it.

I took a look around my room one last time. Besides Fluttershy there wasn’t anything else: my life fit inside a suitcase with alcohol and room to spare. I tried not to care about this fact but I felt heavy.

“Alright,” I tried to pick up my suitcase. The wobbly balls of my feet could just hold it and keep my balance. “Could you grab Brianna’s present?” I asked my companion.

Comet took the box holding Fluttershy and I left that room for the last time. Abandoned alcohol sat on the floor and table.

The stairs were hell. By the front door to the house Ian and Markus were waiting for us. I looked around the living room one last time to confirm to myself that there wasn’t anything of mine down here. There wasn’t. And just some crappy furniture, old clothes and alcohol in my room upstairs. Everything that Comet and I weren’t holding was probably getting thrown out. That’s fine, most of the stuff in my life was apparently not worth bringing anyway. Everything I wanted or needed to keep in my life fit in a suitcase and the suitcase was half alcohol.

“You can throw everything else out if you want,” I told them. I could tell they heard me but had no reply to my words.

“I don’t want you to think we’re being jerks but you’re not exactly the most reliable person with rent and helping out around here,” Ian said. He was searching for his next words before he spoke. “The parties have been fun. We’ve had a lot of good memories and you’re a good friend but you haven’t been a very good roommate. You’ve never really pulled your weight around here. The bathrooms, the garbage, the kitchen, the cigarette butts...” There was a lull as he searched for how to follow that. “I hope you get back on your feet, Brian. I hope things work out better when you get home. Let us know if the pony thing gets any better.”

“Yeah,” I agreed with an awkward nod. I wanted to get out of this situation and that meant leaving for good. So with nothing left to say Comet and I left.

We couldn’t stay there and we couldn’t stay at Comet’s place; it was some cramped apartment on the third floor smack dab in the middle of campus. Both of us felt too tired to drive to our hometown now and we didn’t feel comfortable with crashing at Monica’s place. We also wanted to sleep before we had to explain what was going on to Monica, even though we both feared what could happen while we slept. And we couldn’t even sit in the car comfortably, let alone sleep in it.

While sitting in the car deciding on where to spend the night, as if reading the mood, the dark clouds in the sky finally gave up. A downpour started. The rain was loud enough to drown out my broken thoughts. I was thankful for it.

Comet was talking to me about the motel he picked. I could hear his words but they just washed off me. I didn’t want to respond. I didn’t want to acknowledge me. I was tired and wanted to hide. I wanted this terrible day to end. I focused on the rain. Comet must have got the idea after a while because the rest of the ride there was in silence.

Next Chapter: 7. Your Own Personal Demon Estimated time remaining: 15 Hours, 6 Minutes