Psychedelica – Pastel Ponies
A pony story by Joseph Raszagal
As inspired by stuff best kept away from children
Chapter Twelve – Remembrance (Flying on the Wisp of a Mental Wind)

Imagine swimming in the vacuum of space as though it were an ocean, the bright stars around you close enough to touch.

That's what Zecora's spell felt like.

For a moment, Gilda and I just floated there in stunned silence. She cast me a couple awkward glances, kind of like the looks that you get from your friend when they're waiting impatiently for you to jump-start your car.

Gimme a break, birdbrain, I've never done this before.

Luckily, just as the griffon was about to open her beak and (assumingly) urge me to hurry things along, our surroundings began to fade. The star-speckled midnight sky shifted and coalesced into an image of the inside of a house.

My family's old house, in fact.

Two children scampered back and forth tossing pillows at each other, one a little boy and the other a slightly bigger girl. Despite his best efforts, the boy wasn't going to win any gold medals in pillow-fighting and took more than a few fluffy projectiles to the face. They continued on like that for a few minutes, waging their own little war, until a shout from several rooms away caught their attention. Together, they ceased their battle and fled the scene of the crime, pillows and couch comforters left strewn about in a scene of chaos that only two kids could cause.

As they darted out of sight, however, the room recovered from its state of disarray and two teenagers entered. Again, one was a guy and the other a girl, but this time their bickering was less of the innocent childlike variety and much more aggressive.

“You have to stop this,” said the girl, her voice low. “It's going to kill you.”

“I'm old enough to live my own life and make my own decisions!” the guy shouted back.

“And that excuses you to make decisions that could put you in a coma?”

“You're not my mother, Emily!”

My jaw dropped open as the name thundered through me like the shock wave from a cannon's peal.

Emily.

…

Emily.

…

Emily.

…

“Oh god,” I whispered, tears sliding down my ethereal face. “Oh god, no.”

In a flash, I remembered. I remembered everything.

“That doesn't mean I don't care about you,” Emily pleaded as she placed a hand on my past self's shoulder. “Won't you at least consider it?”

“Rehab's for addicts,” the other me bit back, his tone bitter. “I'm not an addict, I can quit any time I want.”

“Dammit, Jeremy, you're smarter than this! Did you even hear what you just said? That's the same old line that every addict says right before they fucking die!”

“You're right, I am smarter than this, I should have known that this conversation wouldn't go anywhere! You sound like a broken record, and you know what, I'm turning the player off! Get the fuck out of my life! You went through ROTC because you wanted to join the Army so fucking bad, so why don't you do us both a favor and go and get yourself shot?!”

After a few seconds of stark silence, Emily ran crying out of the room, then the whole scene began to dissolve. I didn't need to see what was coming next, I didn't want to, I knew that witnessing it repeat even one more time would kill me, but I had no control.

Helplessly, I watched as a funeral march and a granite tombstone materialized before my eyes. A volley of five rifles roared three times, jolting my griffon companion, but not me.

I was numb, just as numb as the young man who stood beside the grave watching as his sister's casket was lowered in.

I wanted her out of my life. I wanted her to leave me the Hell alone. I wanted her to die.

Well, I got my wish.

Emily joined the Army and was sent off to stand as a guard at the American Embassy in Iraq. I received the news of her death on a day that I'll always remember as the coldest, rainiest day of my life. A suicide bomber waltzed through what was supposed to be some of the tightest security that our government could afford and detonated 27 pounds of C-4 that he had hidden under his coat. He did it smack-dab in the center of the building. Five dozen innocent lives were blown to smoldering bits, my sister included. Emily was on guard duty at the time and through several letters that I had never replied to, I learned that her post was at the front desk.

At the very least, she never felt it.

I tried my hardest back then, and I suppose I was trying my hardest right now, to take some comfort in that fact.

I couldn't.

Maybe I wasn't the one that personally flipped the switch and leveled the building, but I was the reason she was there in the first place.

I killed my own sister.

Zecora's words echoed in my head.

“I have seen the look on your face many, many times before. Though you may not remember, there is something that you have yet to forgive yourself for. And while I would like to believe that your words speaking otherwise are true, it is clear to me that the target of your rage is both now and has always been... you.”

It's almost funny how wrong she was. I wasn't really angry because I couldn't remember. I couldn't remember because I was so angry, angry with myself for getting killed the only person who sought to save me from what I was becoming.

Forgetting her was my damaged psyche's coping mechanism.

“You claim to have recovered from your failings, but still, there resides a deep hatred in your heart. You must let go of this anger before the real healing may start.”

Hate.

Yeah, that's a good choice of words. I hated myself. I wanted to die.

Which was what my memories decided to show us next. In a flash, my darkened apartment appeared before our eyes and hanging down from the ceiling was the noose that epitomized all of the self-loathing and pure, unbridled hate that I felt for myself. I didn't even remember Emily at all by then, but there's no arguing against the fact that she was the one I was committing suicide for.

Heh, because nothing says “sorry” like a rope necktie, right?

Gilda stared speechlessly and put a talon to her beak to stifle a gasp, her eyes as wide as saucers. She turned to me, horrified, and asked, “You tried to kill yourself?”

When I opened my mouth to reply, nothing came out.

All I could think as a river bled from my eyes and washed me away was one, single, solitary word.

“Tried.”

We try all sorts of things sometimes. We try to do good things, bad things, and other things so morally complex that they're just too difficult to categorize in black and white like that.

As everything began to fade and I felt myself returning to the farmhouse floor, another thought occurred to me.

I tried to do something, but I was saved.

I failed in my attempt. I shouldn't have.

“I should have succeeded.”

To be continued in Chapter Thirteen – Guilt...

Author's Notes:

This next chapter is going to be a pretty long one, so don't be too angry with me if it doesn't get posted as quickly as these past three have. There will, however, be another brief intermission. Anyway, hope you enjoyed reading!

- Joseph Raszagal