Why can they not see us?
I think it’s something to do with the eyes. Those paradoxical things of sight, which can never see themselves. We are eyes, all of us; blind to our own blundering path across the flaming field of battle some like to call life. And what a battle, a struggle it is. But you know that. And you should know as well that even those who hover above upon the wings of the sun and the moon, those who believe themselves able to see Creation and its intricacies, cannot see themselves.
But mirrors? Can eyes not wander to the nearest reflection and gaze?
That is like asking another who you are. They do not know, for they are not you. The parrot repeats what it is told, and we speak only of what we remember. Only of what we can observe. And most of us keep who we truly are well tucked away from the sight of others. You ask the mirror to show you your eyes; the mirror does not see you, and thus you cannot learn from it.
So we cannot see ourselves. But why can others not see us?
Us in particular? That is the other nature of the eye that twists upon itself; it can see too little, and too much. In us, they see too much. We blind them. So their eyes pin a cover over themselves, and their hooves go to work in secret. They do things nopony could imagine, and because they see too much, they see – and remember – nothing at all. The eyes wash themselves of us, and we become invisible.
But what do they see in us?
…
…
A threat.
***
I am ushered into the room. Like a sheep I move, white shirt trailing across the ground, hooves clicking against the equally white floors. They make me feel like I’m standing on clouds made of marble. I can see the world stretched below us, sometimes, when I can actually see. You would think we’d be obvious.
But nobody notices us here, above but below them. The shoved aside, set aside, forced aside. We are invisible, but the ones in plainest sight. Ren says it’s the walls; that they painted them white because most ponies can’t see it. They put us right in the middle of everypony, and hid us from them all. I don’t quite agree with Ren. Not about the walls being white. They are. And not that most ponies can’t see white. They can’t (how can you see anything that bright? The glorious white?).
It’s just that the white isn’t only on the walls. It’s in their eyes.
***
A threat?
Yes. We pose too much of a risk to them. They believe it is safest for them, for us, in here. They can’t just kill us; that would make the threat we present even larger.
So you plan to rebel? And you would be martyrs?
Rebel? Against who? There isn’t anypony to rebel against! You mistake my meaning; we do not go about threatening them. If anything it is the exact opposite. We run and hide from them, find our little holes, and wait to be dragged out. No, we are not the symbol of a new order, and neither are we the bringers of war.
But the Sisters…
Have no qualms with us. They do not even know about this place, and they know about many things. Or if they do know, they choose not to remember it.
Why you?
Oh, for various reasons and none at all, the largest of them going back to my previous point; it is all to do with the eyes. We can see while they cannot.
And what makes you so special, that you can see?
Because. We are insane.
***
The door is shut after the rest of the group hobbles into the room. The final one to enter is an old stallion. He grips his crutches like the lifelines they are, for without them he would be forced into one of the chairs. One of the many generosities offered here. He knows enough to keep his sticks beside him, despite the pain; you can see what a struggle it is for him to move to his seat, back hooves almost dragging across the pristine floors.
We all sit down. The Wheelers come in next, their chairs being pushed for them. All of them stare blankly at us, and we stare right back at them. Through them. Sometimes, it’s best just to not see, but I can’t help it. The spit that collects on the front of their shirts, the stupid grins they wear constantly, the wheezing as they try to remember how to breathe, all of this I observe as they are moved to their spots.
The old stallion hugs his crutches even closer to himself as the vegetables are pushed next to him. The one nearest him extends a hoof, as if to give a hoofshake. The stallion smacks the offending appendage away from him, but it bounces right back into place, the pony in the chair oblivious to the stallion’s obvious disgust. It just keeps smiling, staring up at him.
The greatest kindness and the greatest curse here is to be turned into a Wheeler. No more pain, no more worry, and for the older ponies no more pulling yourself from one room to the next. But with the chair comes a plethora of drugs: vitamins and supplements, muscle builders, bone strengtheners. That’s what they pass them off as, saying that you ‘need’ them because you aren’t getting any exercise anymore.
But something is in those pills. I don’t even trust the ones they hand to us that can still move. I keep them in my cheek as they hand them out with water, and I spit them out behind my bed. Last year I had to make a daring move towards the bathroom in the middle of the night, afraid that the pile of pills had grown large enough to be noticed. Nobody caught me flushing them away.
***
Insane?
Oh yes. Quite so. We see things others do not, hear things others can’t hear. Some speak languages of their own, others are so clever that they trap themselves in mental mazes of their devising, and then walk about muttering to themselves on which way to turn. If you saw us on the street, you would have us institutionalized, would you not?
But none of that is true! Or rather, none of what you see or hear is false!
Then that makes you insane as well. And if you are not already, you will be by the end of the week.
Likely…
Be quite. You have not seen what she can do to ponies. What the ponies do to themselves. I tell you about the ones in the chairs, and you can see them now; some took those seats willingly, knowing what would happen.
Pills?
That is just a theory. It might be something in the chairs. Or it could just be that once you’ve become a Wheeler, you know that you’ve given up. You can’t even walk, so how can you be expected to keep up the rest of your body? The chairs trap you, keep you still. You cannot push them yourself; you are entirely dependent upon others. That is not living, but nothing in here is.
How can you think like that?
Easily.
***
The ones chained to the walls are moved in next. There are only two of them, both mares. One is blue with a grey mane, the other grey with a copper mane. Crimson stains their rides, their stylish transportation one of the only things of real color in this place. Their movable segments of wall. The tiny wheels which support the things squeak as they roll across the floor. These ponies even I try to look away from, but still I cannot; at least as a Wheeler you can’t feel the pain. And those nails which keep them aloft look very painful.
Finally, she walks in. The purple one, the only other seeable thing in this invisible place. She looks around like a teacher taking stock of her class, clipboard levitated before her. She sits as well, glasses tipping forward ever so slightly down. This she hates, this thing out of its place. As always, she pushes them back up, twitches her nose, sets the clipboard down. A daily routine so hammered into my skull that I will almost miss it when I leave. If I leave.
“Today, we have a new patient coming in,” she says.
And so my fourth year begins.
***
And that is where I come in, is it?
Yes, actually. These events happened right before you walked into the room.
But there were no ponies in chairs, or mares nailed to the wall.
So I am insane? Seeing things which are not there? If so, then you have proved my argument true, and you can be content knowing that you are now residing in the nuthouse. However, I would urge you to look very closely at the wall behind me. Concentrate. Your eyes will adjust after a few false starts.
Shit…
Yes, that is there too, though I find it interesting to know that you completely ignored the blood and the nails.
But… how?
Like I said; you saw too much, and your eyes saw nothing at all. It has taken me these long four years to adjust them myself. I would not expect you to have noticed them on your first day.
Adjust?
Adjust, train, desensitize. Whatever you wish to call it, I no longer blot out that which I do not wish to see. I am incapable of it. I can try to, but when I first arrived here I promised myself I wouldn’t ignore the others here like everypony else, oblivious to their suffering. Even most of the others here don’t see those on the walls, for they simply do not wish to. But for me, they are burned inside of my mind, and like a glaring light that stays burned into my retinas they remain.
Who put them there?
She did. The nurse who runs this circus of misfits, our masterful ringleader; the almighty Purple One put them there upon their walls.
Purple One?
Yes, we do not know her name. We only know her by the color of her coat. And she is our god here, our one constant.
You’ve been here for four years. How much could have changed?
117 dead. 5 corrected and released back outside. 2 missing after they tried to escape. And I say tried because they have yet to make it out of the building. New arrivals every other week, and no more than thirty of us at a time. Quite a lot has changed for me here. I’ve made friends and lost them. Currently, I hold position at second longest here.
Who earns the first spot?
Her.
***
I was scared my first day. More scared than I had ever been. The darkness around me wasn’t the soft blanket I usually found it to be, the soft filling to usher in sleep. This was an unknown darkness, one which for now seemed hostile.
They had prodded me with metal before throwing me in here. Hot metal, cold metal. Sharp metal, dull metal. It hadn’t exactly hurt, but it had been very uncomfortable. The stallion in the black glasses had watched as they did it, writing notes the whole time on his clipboard. I had managed to catch a glimpse of it before they had pulled me away. It was covered in lines which twisted and curved like snakes, writhing across the paper. None of it had made any sense.
The darkness is pierced by a beam of light. She stands in the doorway, though then I did not know her face. Her glasses are set evenly, her clipboard tucked into a pocket on her long white jacket. She does not look unkind as she enters the room and sits beside me. Rather, she seems… reflective. As if she is studying something which reminds her of something else. It is for several minutes that we sit there in silence, her gaze upon me.
“Do you know why you are here?” she asks finally. I shake my head, tongue glued to the top of my mouth with fear.
“Do you know where here is?” she asks. I shake my head again; I had been unconscious for the journey here.
“Do you remember your name?” she asks. I try to tell her it, my tongue freed temporarily by the calming tone of her voice. But as I open my mouth, I find myself not able to remember what it is I should say. Sadly, I shake my head.
In a place I do not know, for reasons I do not know, with a name I cannot remember, I begin to cry. She places my head against her shoulder and strokes my mane gently as the tears come forth. She mumbles comforts to me, and for several minutes we sit like this. When my body stops its shuddering, she raises my head to look at her.
“This is your home. You are here to get better,” she says. “And your name…”
***
Is irrelevant.
What?
She said my name was irrelevant. She said that this was where I would be given a new beginning, and with that new beginning a new name. I still have yet to achieve that new life.
So what can I call you? Chief?
You mock me for my longevity here? Most others call me Flygirl, because I am the only pegasus here who’s wings have not been clipped. Though with my rehabilitation, I have forgotten how to actually fly.
Flygirl… that just doesn’t fit you. Chief is a better name.
Whatever you so wish Mr….
Murphy. McMurphy.
That is odd. You remember it.
Most don’t?
No, they don’t. But then, you didn’t get here the usual way, did you? You have too wild a look in your eye to have been Processed. Do you mind me asking your story?
Not much to tell, to be honest. Got caught stealing a stallion’s bits, and I was put into one of the labor camps to pay off my fines. That place was terrible. Not nearly as nice as this place…
The wall?
…Yes, well. It still was not a good place to wind up in. So I broke my work schedule, started a fight, and got put before the courts again. I pleaded my insanity, and so here I am to ‘correct’ myself.
How did you not get Processed though?
I was just walked down the halls to this room.
No drugs?
No…
At least none that you can remember.
Shut up, Chief.
McMurphy, you have put yourself far in over your head, and you will come to regret the decision you have made. The fact that you alone among us remembers your name, the fact that She did not tamper with you in any way that you remember, makes you special. If I know her, she has something in store for you.
Like what?
This is no home for her. This is no place to start a new life. This is her workshop, her laboratory, her own realm of creation. We are clay in her hands, easily shaped and tossed aside. Those she deems worthy she fixes, and those she doesn’t she ‘fixes’. None of those 117 deaths were of natural causes, McMurphy. You will be tested, and if you are found unworthy, you will be broken.
She hasn’t broken you. And I won’t let her break me.
In both of those regards you are incorrect. It just takes time, and mine was up on that first day. She has yet to kill me, but in me she sees things others cannot. I have no doubt that the only reason I remain with my mind is because without it I would no longer be of use to her.
What use do you serve?
I react. I keep my eyes open. I do not give in, and I do not quit. I am her longest running experiment, but like a lab rat I am nothing more than something to collect data from. I do not need to be broken, for how can you break that which is not even a pony anymore? Do you not see this?
You talk a lot about sight for a blind mare, Chief.
Again you are wrong. I am not blind. I just see things differently.
Monitoring Subject 342.
Audio files.
Pictures.
Data collected.
Status.
Check
“How is he today?”
“Fine. He seems to be integrating well.”
“Good.”
Pause
“Well, aren’t you going to ask?”
“Ask what?”
“How your other one is doing?”
Resume
“Just keep monitoring this one. The other is fine. In fact, they are proving quite useful from what your reports have said.”
“Yes. They are.”
“Carry on. I have to attend to our subject in person.”
“Yes, Nurse.”
Status…
…
Stable.
Integration…
…
Successful.
Begin correction?
…
No.
