Psychedelica – Pastel Ponies
A pony story by Joseph Raszagal
As inspired by stuff best kept away from children
Chapter Fourteen – Everypony Hurts

This chapter is in canon with another story of mine, "Psychedelica – Welcome to the Party". It's recommended that you read it, but it's not really necessary. The day I command you what to read is the day that ponies fl~ Oh... wait. Never mind.

After trotting into Twilight's room and explaining that I was ready to... well... explain myself, the purple pony and I decided to relocate to the kitchen downstairs. Humming a tune quietly to herself, she set about heating a kettle on the stove and preparing two cups of tea. A few minutes ticked by as she paced back and forth between the two halves of her task, stopping with a cheery smile when a loud whistle announced that the steaming water was ready to be poured.

Sensing (with a great deal of accuracy, mind you) that I was still several thousand miles away from a word like “composure”, Twilight placed a mug down in front of me and graciously offered a compromise. Rather than simply forcing me to dredge the murky waters of my past alone, she proposed sharing with me some of her own personal tales as well.

Nodding sheepishly, I took a greedy drink from my tea to steady myself before kicking things off.

I spoke of Emily, of course, diving back into a plethora of old memories that I had only recently regained; from the countless heated games of Street Fighter and Darkstalkers that I almost always won to our daily wrestling matches that I unfortunately almost always lost (those stupid growth spurts never seem to come when you're in a headlock and tapping out for air). Every detail that I could remember was included, down to the most mundane drivel. Food fights, favorite cartoons that we watched together, theories on life and the universe that only two children could come up with, Seinfeldian debates over whether Batman could beat Spiderman in a gentlemanly round of fisticuffs... anything and everything. I earned more than a few laughs along the way, sending my lavender caretaker into a particularly powerful fit of giggles upon reminiscing about a legendarily disastrous conflict my big sis and I had gotten into at a beach in Charleston, South Carolina.

I'm still not sure how we got that surfboard embedded in the lifeguard tower, but I heard it took them a week to fix it.

Unfortunately, as I drained the rest of my cup, it occurred to me that stories from the happier, bygone years of my life were not what I was supposed to be divulging.

Like it or not, I had to move on to the rest.

“When I first came here, I had a drug problem... a big one,” I stated, Twilight nodding along silently as I spoke. “Well, you weren't the first to try and help me, key word there being try. The first was Emily. I can't say that I was being very secretive about it, but in hindsight I guess it did seem a little strange to me that my parents never really noticed before they kicked the bucket.”

The immediate look of sympathy that flashed across the unicorn's face spoke volumes.

Shaking my head, I gave her a small smile and said, “Hey now, that was a long-ass time ago. Car accident... or, I guess it would be a carriage accident around here. Either way, I had quite a bit of time to deal with that already. As far as I'm aware there was next to nothing that I or anyone else could have done to prevent it, short of asking for divine intervention maybe. Still, that's another barrel of monkeys entirely.”

Another nod, albeit a sad one, signaled for me to continue.

“My sister though,” I choked, my voice losing a bit of its timbre, “I feel like there's a lot I could have done. Or maybe not have done.”

“I take it she died as well?” Twilight cautiously ventured, her tone soft.

“Yeah,” I answered, glancing down at my empty mug in search of additional liquid support.

Catching on, a violet aura encased it and whisked it over to the still-steaming kettle on the stove. After refilling it and adding another baggie of tea, the purple pony then returned it to me.

Licking my lips, I proceeded to spend a minute and a half preparing to say something, only to stop myself before the words could properly form. Looking down at my steeping beverage, my mouth curled into a tight frown and I released a heavy sigh that I wasn't aware I had been holding in.

“Dammit,” I groaned.

“Take your time, I can wait as long as needed,” Twilight said soothingly.

Rubbing my head with a hoof, I replied, “Until this cup is finished?”

“As many cups as you'd like, so long as you're comfortable.”

“Said the date-rapist.”

“Excuse me?”

“Huh?” I replied, spacing out. “Oh... sorry. I'm sure you've noticed it before, I tend to fall back on humor when I'm stressed. Doesn't really matter what kind of stress either. Sad, angry, scared, confused... sadfused, scangry. However I'm feeling, if I'd rather not feel that way I try to make light of something. Anything, really.”

“Yes, I've noticed,” the librarian retorted, cocking an eyebrow, “but still, that one was a little dark for my tastes.”

“Noted,” I chuckled anxiously, letting out an irritated snort. “Alright, alright, I swear I'll tell you what's going on inside my head in a minute, I just need to calm down. How about... how about I tell you what made me decide to come and talk to you in the first place?”

“That sounds like as good as any a place to start, but given the way you're segueing into this I'm guessing that it wasn't a matter of simply deciding to?”

“No, not really. I kind of... started hallucinating... I think.”

“Hallucinating?”

“Yeah.”

“You... think?”

“Yeah. It's complicated.”

“Alright, well like I said, take as long as you need.”

“Heh, I know,” I smirked sourly, biting my lower lip. “Well, you know I was in there for a while. I was sort of forcing myself to stay awake. I don't really know why, maybe because I didn't want to be in a crisp state of mind at the time and sleep deprivation sounded like a good way to spin some cobwebs in my brain and slow things down.”

“Ah, hence the hallucinations.”

“Yeah, I think.”

“You think?”

“That's the strange bit. It all felt really... er... real, but at some point I blinked and then suddenly woke up in my bed. Stranger still, I can remember most of what happened as clear as day, which I know shouldn't be the case for a dream.”

After considering this for a moment, recognition sparked in Twilight's eyes for a moment so brief that I could have sworn I'd imagined it.

A microsecond later, she shrugged and stated, “The dream state is hardly a predictable thing. Perhaps the intensity of your dream and its relevance to the things that have been weighing on your mind helped imprint it into your short-term memory.”

“Sounds believable,” I returned, giving her a shrug of my own, “though I have to say, it looks like you might be withholding a bit from me. Anything I should know?”

Rolling her eyes, Twilight sighed, “Let's just say that I know a certain somepony who can enter the realm of dreams and mold them to her own liking.”

My jaw dropping, I stammered, “A-are you serious?”

“Quite,” she said in return, nodding, “though I would like to say that she usually does so with the best intentions, just as it seems she did with you. Still, I'll have to have a word with her involving the breaching of other pony's privacy, good intentions notwithstanding.”

“Wouldn't this person have to read my mind in order to know what's wrong and how best to advise me?”

“She can.”

“Oh, well... that's... interesting. Is this pony someone I know?”

“It is, but in the interests of keeping relations amiable I think I'd like to keep her identity anonymous for now.”

“Even though I apparently couldn't keep anything hidden from her to save my life?”

“I~

“Joking, hun, joking,” I laughed, lifting a hoof to stop her. “Whoever this pony is, they lent me a hand when I really needed it, so I can't say I'm in a position to complain. I will, however, go out on a limb and make a few wild assumptions while I'm still trying to avoid the main subject. Do you mind?”

“Not at all.”

“Alrighty then, let's see if I'm as smart as my English teacher thought I was,” I said, scratching the scruff of my chin in concentration. “This pony was capable of reading my mind and both entering my dreams and altering them as she saw fit, so I'm guessing she's got quite a bit of clout when it comes to power. Also, she's apparently a 'she', right? Thanks for letting that slip early on, by the way.”

A quick hoof to the librarian's forehead punctuated my statement.

“If I had to take a wild stab in the dark, I'd say it's one of your princesses, they seem to be the ones capable of all the really impossible stuff. Probably not the pink one though.”

“Cadance.”

“Yeah, probably not the pink one.”

“You really don't like her, do you?”

“I'll give her a chance later, you know, once I'm less sadscangryfused,” I smirked, waving it off. “Anyway, as far as I'm aware that leaves the other two. I... can't say I know enough about either to accurately pick which one, but I'm pretty sure it was one of them. Besides, ever since I mentioned them your poker face started failing harder than a patch of wet cement during a rainstorm.”

Immediately adopting an expression devoid of absolutely anything, Twilight replied, “Oh?”

“Totally.”

“Huh, weird.”

“I love it when I'm not stupid. Still, you're not going to let the cat out of the bag, are you?”

“I'm quite certain I have no idea what you're talking about.”

Grinning, I remarked, “Thought as much.”

“Well, moving on, what was this dream of yours about?”

“Now that's just the thing,” I answered, narrowing my eyes as I stared back down into my newly darkened tea. “You know those things that came with me through the portal, right? The ones that you've been wanting to tinker around with?”

“The electronics, yes. I can't say I've seen anything like them before.”

“Well, I hooked a few of them up so I could play a game to pass the time and, I dunno, keep myself from thinking about anything,” I continued, thinking back on the surreal experience. “The game sort of changed during the ride here, going from human version to some kind of pony version 2.0, and in the dream I was playing the game with a character from the game itself sitting right there alongside me. She'd pester me every once in a while, I'd tell her to take a long walk off a short pier, and she'd point out things in the game that I didn't even know yet.”

Taking that bit of information in, I watched as the lavender mare's eyes steadily widened.

“Yeah,” I said, taking a sip from my cup, “more than a little weird, right? The thing is, that's just what she would do whenever she wasn't trying to get me to open up about the stuff that I'm supposed to be telling you right now. The stuff about my sister. Eventually, after I stopped grumping at her to fuck off, she started telling me some things about herself... some really heavy things. I know she wasn't real, or at this point I think she wasn't, but it looked like the stuff that she was saying cut her pretty deep. I kind of lost track of the meaning of the word 'hypocrisy' and told her that it was good to share with others sometimes, if only to vent.”

“And that's when it hit you?”

“Like a ton of bricks. I felt like such an idiot.”

“Hmmm,” Twilight pondered aloud, “if I really wanted to logic my way through this, I'd say it was your subconscious trying to soften you to the idea of seeking some outside help... but... that still doesn't explain the part about her enlightening you to facets of a game that you yourself haven't explored yet. As far as I'm aware, that should be impossible. Then again, Pinkie's proven to me time and again that precognition, no matter how unexplainable, can still occur.”

“Pinkie Pie can predict the future?” I gasped, looking up from my tea to lock eyes with the unicorn.

“In a rudimentary way, yes, but it tends to waver at times between the vague and the oddly specific.”

“Sounds frustrating.”

“You have no idea.”

At that the two of us shared a quick laugh, Twilight's portion more than a little strained.

“Could this mystery pony of yours have taken a peek into the future?” I asked, tilting my head.

“Honestly, I don't know,” she answered.

“Well, the game was still on when I woke up,” I commented, searching for a way to make sense of things. “Maybe she played a bit and used that as a starting point.”

“That sounds more reasonable.”

“Impressive too. A goddess and a video game fan. One that's capable of learning how to play a game that didn't even exist in her world a few months prior. A tad too heavy-handed, given the heart-wrenching story I was fed, but still, impressive all the same.”

“Goddess?” Twilight innocently questioned.

Deadpanning at her, I maintained an unimpressed expression for every bit of six seconds before breaking into another bout of laughter. Failing to hold her composure as well, the librarian quickly joined me.

Once our mirth died down, however, a stifling silence moved in to take its place.

Noticing the lapse, Twilight cleared her throat and said, “How about I take over for now and tell you a few things about myself that you haven't heard yet?”

“O-okay,” I mumbled, blushing at the knowledge that she'd clearly stepped up to the plate when I had failed to do so myself yet again.

“To start off, what's your concept of the word 'insanity'?”

“Wow, that's where you'd like to start? You don't pull any punches, do you?”

“I try not to, no.”

“Uh, well, I'm not sure. If I were to dig back into the jokes, I guess I'd say something like 'myself', but if you're going where I think you're going with this then that would be in pretty bad taste.”

“It's alright, I take no offense.”

Wincing as I hit the nail on the head, I pointedly looked away and commented, “I don't really know how to keep going in this direction. It's a two-way conversation, but everything I'm thinking just sounds awful in my head. I'm... sorry?”

“Don't worry about it, I'll handle this part,” she said in return, smiling tiredly. “I sort of... hmm, how to word it... peered into the unknown? I took a look at something that I wasn't supposed to and, for a lack of a better way to explain it, it took a look back at me.”

Leaning back in my chair, I coughed into my hoof and retorted, “It took a look back?”

“I was experimenting with a device that would let me see another pony's thoughts,” Twilight explained, her expression glassing over for a moment as something else seemed to dawn on her. “There was more than a little magic woven into the process, but come to think of it, the science involved was rather esoteric and complex as well. Interesting that the devices that came along with you, things that you yourself wrote off as simple recreational tools, would catch my fancy when I've already explored things best described as 'forbidden'.”

“Hey, that's science in a nutshell,” I offered. “You already did that, so it's behind you. The stuff that I brought with me is still a mystery, so you're curious. Makes sense to me.”

“Good point,” the purple pony agreed before changing tack and resuming where she had left off, “but as I was saying. In my haste, I... I bit off more than I could chew. More than anypony could likely chew, actually. Peering into this mind came at a price that I had no way of preparing for. I found my mind immediately sundered, vivid hallucinations following suit and threatening to consume me. I was lucky to have the pony who's mind I had entered there to care for me, but really, there was only so much that they could do. What I'm going to tell you will sound silly, I'm sure, but it was nonetheless the most terrifying thing I have ever experienced. And mind you, I've come close to death more than once, so I would like to stress that despite the strange innocuousness of the imagery, these hallucinations were no less paralyzing to me at the time.”

“I'm all ears, Twi,” I stated, giving her my full attention.

“Everything...” the librarian began quietly, closing her eyes and hesitating for a second, “everything around me turned into candy and I turned into candy along with it. I watched as my body transformed right in front of my own eyes, fur and tissue morphing into the various layers of a single dessert. It looked like the sort of thing that would have come out of a horror story meant to frighten little foals, but in place of the blood and gore was an unending stream of sugar that somehow managed to be even more grotesque. Music played at volumes that I was certain would rupture my eardrums. It played all around me and nightmarish voices sang along with it, all in celebration of an everlasting party that I couldn't escape. At first, I couldn't speak or even close my eyes, even as the bright colors threatened to blind me. It felt like sewing needles were being jabbed into my brain through my retinas, sharp spikes of a thousand different pink hues. I tried to scream, but for what seemed like an eternity I couldn't so much as breathe. Once I could, however, I wasn't able to stop myself from screaming. I just laid there, wailing and thrashing, until I passed out from overexertion. When I regained consciousness, rather than finding that everything had returned to normal, there it all was again, bright and piercing and too pink to ever even begin to fully describe.”

At a loss for words, I wracked my brain during the silence that followed and eventually mustered, “Okay, first of all, I think I should say that regardless of however you thought I might react to that, the word 'silly' doesn't come to mind. Are... are you alright? Did it stop?”

“Alright?” Twilight inquired, opening her eyes and leveling them on me. “That's another good question. I wish I could answer it.”

Yikes.

“The second one, however, I can answer,” she picked back up, taking a moment to sip from her own neglected cup of tea. “No, it never stopped. It's all around me right now.”

Double yikes.

“It would be an understatement to say that I fell apart for a while. I just... I wasn't sure what to do, how I could function with all sense of normalcy thrown out the window like that. It felt like it was everything I could do just to hold on to the fraying ends of my sanity, and even then I wasn't sure how long that was going to last. I was offered medication after spending some time under observation and receiving a diagnosis that I would rather not delve into, but that... that was even worse. To be terrified and confused at all times was one thing, but feeling completely hollow was another. The hallucinations were gone, but along with them went everything else. I had no drive, no desire, no life in me. I was free from the madness, but that freedom itself was pointless. I couldn't feel anything. My friends all came to support me, but even then I just didn't care. Sometimes I would sit and stare off into space thinking and feeling absolutely nothing for hours on end, catatonic to the rest of the world around me. In the end, I decided that the illusions, no matter how viscerally horrifying and painful, were preferable to total emptiness. I just~

Cutting her off, I stood up from my chair and crossed the short distance between us in a matter of seconds, wrapping my forelegs around her and pulling her into a tight hug.

“You can stop, Twilight,” I whispered, tears trickling down my cheeks. “I don't need to hear more if you don't want to share more.”

Returning the embrace, the lavender librarian nuzzled my cheek and replied, “No, it's alright. My story, well, it doesn't end on what one might call a happy note, but at the very least it's a happier one than the rest.”

Gently nudging me away, she placed a hoof beneath my chin and drew my eyes up to meet her own.

“As I said, the party isn't gone, but I have learned to... not ignore it, per say, but focus through it. If I concentrate hard enough, I can see the world as it was always meant to be, just as it was before, though everything still tends to bleed through my peripherals tinted somewhat... pink. It's actually kind of funny. The one who taught me to subdue the hallucinations was hardly somepony that I expected to ever seek aid from. Then again, all things considered, there really wasn't a better tutor for the job.”

“Who?” I found myself asking.

With a wistful expression, Twilight chuckled and answered, “When Pinkie Pie mentioned that she was leading a group that had once counted Discord amongst its ranks, I was precisely as frightened as I'm sure I seemed. I know him all too well, the things that he's capable of and gladly willing to do.”

“You're not saying wh~

“I am,” she stated, shaking her head. “Chaos filled my mind, so I sought out the King of Chaos to better understand it. We've built some sort of amiable relationship since, perhaps not friends and most definitely still enemies, but... something genuine all the same. In his own twisted way, he wants to help me, if only so I survive my insanity so he can destroy me on his own should he ever escape again.”

“That's... disturbing.”

“That's Discord.”

With a huff, the unicorn took another sip from her mug and leaned back in her chair, stretching out languidly.

A few minutes of stark, uncomfortable silence stretched by as the weight of the unforgettable story I had just been made privy to kicked open the doors to one of the houses in my head's long-term memory residential district.

Feeling as though Twilight had made good on her compromise far more than she needed to, I cleared my throat and broke the awkward quiet with, “The last time I saw Emily, she was trying to convince me to go to rehab and get clean.”

Turning her gaze back towards me, the purple pony nodded, motioning for me to keep going.

“The last thing I told her was to get out of my life and go die in a war.”

Aghast, Twilight's mouth dropped open ever-so-slightly, words clearly on the tip of her tongue but refusing to come out.

Instead, I said it for her.

“I got exactly what I asked for. She joined the military and was shipped off overseas. Not long after, a suicide bomber blew up the embassy that she was stationed at. She was only a few feet away from the center of the explosion.”

A lilac hoof made its way across the table to place itself atop mine.

“She'd wanted to join the armed forces for a long while before then, but given the circumstances of her death, it wasn't much of a stretch for me to blame myself. As a result, I dunno, I guess the guilt was just too much for me to handle, so my brain picked the easiest defense mechanism it could grasp at, selective amnesia, and blanked her from my memory entirely. Out of sight, out of mind, I guess. Or maybe it's the other way around? Either way, as I'm sure you found out from AJ and the others, Gilda and I took a trip inside my mind to figure out what it was I was forgetting and... I snapped.”

Taking a deep and steadying breath, I chugged the rest of my second cup of tea and shut my tired eyes.

After a few seconds trickled down the drain, I laid my head down on the table and let out a muffled, “Whoever that dream pony was, goddess or whatever, she was right.”

“Feeling a bit better having let all of that out?”

“Kinda. How about you?”

“I haven't told that story for a while. It was just as painful as every other time I told it, but yes, it helped a bit. I'm sorry if it was a bit much. I hope it doesn't stain my image any, I don't want to come off as a mare more fit for a psychosis ward.”

Lifting my dome long enough to flash my purple friend a grin, I snarked, “Don't worry about it. We can be crazy buddies together. It'll be our new thing.”

“Sounds like a plan,” she chuckled, warmth filling her tone despite the less-than-merry implications. “Now, how about five more cups of tea?”

“Drown me in it, yo.”

“Are you two alright?” queried a young voice from the library's main room. “I didn't just walk in on another one of those conversations again, did I?”

Glancing out a window to find the sun cresting the distant hills to herald the dawn, I shrugged and said, “Eh, you missed it, it's cool. We'll tell you when you're older. Or when we're older. Whichever comes first.”

To be continued in Chapter Fifteen – Well, I Can't Say I Was Expecting THAT...

Author's Notes:

So, yeah, this one came out a lot more wordy than all of the rest. Sorry 'bout that! Even worse, I promised myself it would be a lot lighter on the EXPOSITION EXPOSITION EXPOSITION, but being the most dialogue-heavy chapter yet, it kind of worked out that way regardless. Again, my apologies for being terrible at beating my keyboard like it owes me money. Here's hoping the next chapter is a lot less... this.