BC+SL: A Nightmare to Remember

-Movement Two

A swirl of something conscious enveloped Twilight and the click and whir of magic-powered machines pervaded the private unconsciousness that she had been absorbed in.

She realized she was lying on a table, under a cushion whose paper cover crinkled as she drew in each ragged gasp of air into her lungs. A mask sat over her face and dry oxygen was being pumped into her immobile body. Trying to focus her eyes against the blare of the lights above her head, she realized she had no idea where she was. Images and words swirled around in her head and she could barely grasp the association of then and now.

“Miss?” greeted a stranger’s voice from afar. His voice seemed muffled and thick.

Scraping up every ounce of strength her broken body allowed, Twilight turned her head and her body towards the sound the best she could. A dribble of spit flowed out the corner of her open mouth and she winced at the pain that seemed to come from- everywhere.

A unicorn without a face was looking down on her. Only his eyes were visible from the blindingly white mask and hat he wore. A shock of a purple mane stuck out where his brown horn protruded and fell across a set of vibrant green eyes that searched the victim before him deeply.

He said, “My dear, do you remember?” His eyes tightened sharply.

“Do you even know your name?”

The mare could do nothing but stare as her mind overloaded once more. The doctor murmured a bit and shined a bright amber light from his horn into her eyes. Sighing heavily, he walked away, leaving Twilight helpless on the table once more.

After what could have been an hour, the doctor returned, and gently removed the mask from Twilight’s face. Propping her head up, he placed two pills on her tongue, poured some water into her mouth, and said:

“Take this, for the pain.”

Blindly willing, Twilight felt her throat contract painfully and stifled tears as she felt the liquid go down her throat and into her stomach. With a gentle sigh, her head was placed back down, and the doctor disappeared once more in to the grey ash that surrounded Twilight.

A great sea of nothingness picked up the injured pony’s prostrate from, and she was rocked back and forth gently into an ocean of inifinities. The last vestiges of panic inside her mind began to fade, and she was left hopelessly drifting, and bathing in a beautiful agony of a painfully painless existence.

Hot lead of anguish poured from the rim of a bucket and cascaded down into an ashen pit of sorrow. A searing sound pierced the air and the steam of bitter emotion floated back up to greet the empty vessel. She could barely hear the doctor that was calling her name from afar.

“…light. Twilight!” came the doctor’s calls. They had been growing frantic. Twilight reciprocated her name for a slight glance up at its origin.

“Yes.” The doctor didn’t seem convinced, though, as he looked at her skeptically. A clock ticked by the seconds on the nightstand by her bed.

“Tell me, does this hurt you?” he said, his face unreadable. He tapped an extremity with a little rubber mallet. A ping of pain shot up somewhere from her body; Twilight really didn’t know where.

“Yes.”

“Can you move all of your hooves? Can you try your best to stand?”

The last action led to something awful. Being pushed back into her bed, Twilight was howling with pain as monitors shrieked and rattled in their electronic cages at her pain and sorrow. A nurse rushed into the room to help as the doctor tried to lift her body back into the bed.

Artificial comfort took her weight. The monitors no longer blared and beeped and the nurse ran back out of the room to some other urgent event. The doctor went to the other side of the room while Twilight felt her agony grow tenfold; memories began to surface in place of physical suffering.

“Is everyone okay?” But he told her not to worry.

“Don’t worry.” And he turned and looked away as Twilight felt a very familiar sensation of weightlessness steal her body away from the world of the corporeal. In peaceful sedation she lay half-awake, and was lost for eternity in a wonderful misery.