Chapter 1, or why Lyra isn't allowed near schools anymore

So then, you want me to tell all of you how I got to be like this, eh? That's it right? How I ended up with a blood soaked bandage on my head, sitting on a park bench by a schoolhouse like some sort of weirdo?

Of course I'm right, I'm always right about things I don't wanna do! Well this story is pretty special, and I probably shouldn't go around telling random ponies about it. I've honestly never said it out loud before, so I'm not exactly sure where or how I can even start this off.

Some people have stories that shake the lives of millions -- what? Why did I say "people" instead of "ponies"? Because, they're like... these weird things that walk on two legs. They make movies. They're cool. Anyway, sometimes they make heartwarming tales that show us that there's always hope in any situation, no matter how bleak things may look. Other times they tell tragic stories that let us all have a good cry, showing how lucky we are for not living in whatever shithole world the characters live in. People love to churn out romantic stories that show us What Love Really Is. What little foal didn't grow up wanting to marry a Prince and live in a spectacular castle? Others create pornography that show us what happens after the end of those romantic stories, with money shots that would make any stallion jealous.

What? Don't give me that look. Was it the porno comment? Everyone watches porn, don't act like you're some high-class asexual psycho-pony who never clopped before.

No, I don't care if you're eight years old. For all of the fucks I give you can tell your parents about how I talk, they already hate me. If you want a story then you get the story I give you.

Anyway, never mind what I've said so far, I'll start it differently this time. No no no, you interrupted me so I guess you don't want to hear about what kind of story this is...

Fine, only because you're all so damn cute. This story just kind of exists; not happy enough to be heartwarming, it’s not really all too tragic either. We did pretty well for ourselves I think... Who's we? Stop asking questions while I'm talking, kids. Uh, where was I again... Oh yeah, not a whole ton of romance to be had, and it only qualifies as porn if you have some odd kinks. Like leather... or something like that. Not my thing really.

I'll start from yesterday afternoon. Not that yesterday was the beginning of it all or anything, mind, it’s just the reason why I've ended up sitting on your park bench over here.

It was around 5:30 and the sun was starting to set. I had been practicing my lyre in my living room. I had the day off, so I thought that I might as well waste it in style. Or stylishly waste it, as the case may be. It’s not much of a living room though, it’s more of an every-single-room-in-the-house-rolled-into-one, and I live in it. Hence the name, which, now that I think about it, is more honestly come by than your traditional living room.

I was sitting in the middle of said room on my plush 3-cushion couch -- not a whole lot of "plush" left in it, it’s more of a patchy mess that I found sitting on the side of the road one day.  There's something shaped like a cone in the middle cushion that sticks up kind of awkwardly, I kind of just avoid that part of it. Anyway, the couch sits just in front of my coffee table which was covered in grease-stained musical papers, slimjim wrappers, and a few half finished cans Pony Blue Ribbon beer. I'm not exactly a big fan of slimjiims anymore, I kind of got turned off of haybacon recently, the stuff isn't great for you. I kind of just hadn't gotten around to tossing stuff out this month, I'll probably do that tomorrow. Come to think of it, I should down those PBRs when I get back, too.

I have a few posters on my wall covering up holes in the drywall from when a few parties went wrong. The posters are nothing too special, just some old Red Hot Chilli Ponies stuff. Not the most creatively named band, but I went through a phase where I loved them in High School. Smoked a lot of pot back then. Those two things are probably pretty related to one another.

The carpet’s alright I guess, just a regular old carpet. Has a stain in one corner that I’ll be getting back to in a minute. There are some lights hanging from the ceiling too, three to be specific, all hanging in a line above my head. One of them isn't as bright as the other two, so I put it in the middle so it's not as noticeable. Kind of creates a weird lighting effect, but I can deal with it.

In the back left corner behind the couch is the "kitchen". It has a counter and a few drawers with some half-dead flashlights and spare batteries. Next to the counter there's a fridge that heats things up and a stove that cools things down. The unicorn appliance guy was pretty out of it the day he installed all of my stuff, had some gold flecks around his mouth. I'll tell you about that when you're older, that's not something to tell little foals about. And yes, even I think that, what with the rest I’m telling you.

Don't ask about the freezer, the freezer is a dick.

The back right corner is my little welcoming area, a regular door with two locks and a "Welcome" mat outside that just says "We come" now. A friend of mind thought it would be funny to scratch out my "L".

Come means jizz in that situation by the way. Thought you kids should know that.

In front of me to my left was my bed, a full-size mattress on a twin-size bed frame shaped like a race wagon. Don't laugh, that shit’s fly as hell! Next to the bed, and pressed up against the wall are my drawers where I keep a few sets of dress clothes and party clothes in case I need them.  Above the bed was a window that formerly looked out into my backyard, but which is now shattered and destroyed. Mind you I didn't say broken; broken would mean that there was still some window left to be damaged. Well all of the glass is gone and the window frame got reduced to splinters. Take my advice, kids, there are certain things in this world that you really shouldn't piss off if you care about your home's resale value.

Now the area that formerly contained a window is just a garbage bag attached to the wall using duct tape. It's not pulled as tight as possible against the wall so sometimes the wind blows the bag around during the night and it makes a ton of annoying noise. You get used to it though, it’s not even the most annoying noise that's in the house. That honor belongs to the guy in the corner to my right.

Now this guy is a pain in the ass. Ever since I took something that I shouldn't have a year ago I've seen things that others can't. Look, before I get into describing him, I have to say this:

If I took you to my house and showed you exactly where he was sitting, you wouldn't be able to see him. You could walk right through him if you wanted to. Only me, my best friend, Time Turner, and a few other people and ponies can see and interact with cases like him, and only for awful reasons. Yes, Applebloom, I was talking about people on purpose there.

No Scootaloo, I won't tell you that story, not even when you're older.

... What was I on about again? Oh right, Corner Guy.

Corner Guy is an older grey stallion with a thinning silver mane, and he has a spotlight cutie mark. Not sure what it’s for. His most defining feature though is the fact that he sits in his corner all day puking over and over again into the same spot on my carpet. Just pukes, never eats or sleeps, just either pukes or heaves like he's about to puke. Its left a really nasty stain, it’s like some sort of ghost stain that I can't clean up. I think I need ghost detergent. In the meantime I tried covering the stain up for a while with one of those shag rugs, and he just puked on that as well. He's an asshole like that.

I think he probably died there not so long ago, and now he just haunts that spot like the spectral jackass that he is. By the looks of it he probably died of alcohol poisoning, not the most uncommon way to go in a neighborhood like mine. I'm pretty sure that if I, like, put his spirit to peace... or something like that he would just disappear and stop puking all over my floor. Don't know how to go about that though, it’s not like in kids stories where it’s some middle class parent whose one regret is never letting their child know how much they love them. If that was the case then we'd just go through some sappy hour and a half about learning the value of love or whatever the moral value of the day is and call it a wrap. Hell, I'd probably meet a handsome pegasus stallion along the way and we'd live happily ever after.

Sadly that's just not the case with Corner Guy. He probably died alone in his little corner with a lifetime of regrets.  Probably unemployed, one of those ponies with a talent for showmanship and just wasn't quite good enough to get into any decent shows. Maybe he worked a few odd jobs to pay rent over the years, but when a pony can't perform their special talent can they really be happy? Most likely he was thinking about what could've been, if he had gotten into one or two more shows, if he had stayed in touch with his distant family, or if he had just stayed sober. So he sat in his dark little corner consoling himself with his last remaining friend, Mr. Applejack Daniels himself. And he slowly killed himself with his poison of choice over the course of his last night.

What do you even say to a guy like that? Nothing, that's what I've learned to say to him. Nothing at all. Some sorrows just can't be consoled.

Shit, that was sort of depressing. Damn it, I forgot where I was going with this. No Sweetie, I wasn't talking about kids movies, that was just to prove a point... That's right Diamond, I was talking about how I got here, thanks... Geez kid, you don't have to be such a little shit about it.

Ok then, back to what I was talking about; it was late in the afternoon and I was playing my lyre in the living room of my apartment. It’s not the nicest place, but I like it there, it’s good enough. While I was having a jam session in my living room, I got a message. Now the delivery of the message was pretty simple: it was on a piece of paper attached to a brick. The brick was then thrown into my house through my garbage bag window, where it broke my garbage bag and landed on my carpet roughly three feet away from Corner Guy. That meant I would have to replace the garbage bag for the third time this week. Seriously. You can see why I haven’t bothered to replace the window now.

Stewing in a fit of angry acceptance I used my magic to pick up the brick and put it on my coffee table, and from there I was able to detach the note with my hooves and unfold it. The writing on the note was done in a scraggly, crooked handwriting that told me that it was written in a rush, and said only one thing:

"North side of town by the water tower, sundown, urgent, can't explain now, hurry"

It was at this moment that I realized I should be worried. You see, I knew who sent this to me. I knew that the message had been sent to me by my best friend. This wasn't the first time we had to go through this kind of thing. This had basically become a monthly routine for us.

Which was exactly why I was worried, because nothing good ever came out of this routine.

Sundown was in half of an hour. I dropped the note to the floor and started dashing around the house, picking up anything I might need, which was only one thing. I grabbed my saddlebags from underneath my bed. Thankfully I had gotten to the point where I was prepared for situations like this. Going over everything in my saddlebags one last time I made sure I had all that I might need: brass hoof dusters, a pack of cigarettes, a lighter, a portable tape deck with speakers, a Neighvana cassette with one song half recorded over by an RHCP song I liked, a pack of bandages, some rags, and a half-eaten slimjim.

There I was, prepared for anything. But as I started to head to the door I noticed that there was a note on the other side of the paper as well. I pulled it from across the room with my magic to see what was so important that it couldn't wait until I got to the water tower. My eyes darted around the paper. I held it upside down at first. I tried twisting it around with my magic, but wound up tearing the paper in half. I'm not the best with telekinesis, honestly. I can work with some medium sized things like carrying books around, but small and thin things like paper are hard for me to get a good grip on. I learned to play Lyre with my hooves unlike most unicorn musicians because of that. Regardless of how shit I am with magic I was able to piece the note back together after a minute or so. It only had one thing to say:

"Bring booze and golf clubs"

...

I could do that.

Heading outside onto my front lawn I went to go pick up the necessities from my shed. Making a quick stop inside the dark shed, I was able to find a few golf clubs and grabbed three bottles from my stash of emergency vodka, putting two in my saddlebags and carrying one with my magic. It’s actually not so much emergency vodka, I just sort of keep it there for when I want vodka. Emergency enough, I guess.

Carrying my saddlebags, lyre, driver, pitching wedge, and a brown bag bottle of vodka I started sprinting across Ponyville. I made it about two houses or so sprinting before getting tired and began moving at a more reasonable pace. I may look a little out of shape, but I do pretty well for a lazy mare if I say so myself.

Aside from drawing a few of the usual looks from the ponies around town there wasn't much to say about the trip. I think I saw Thunderlane on the way there, but that's not important now. Oh, and there was a musical number too. Apparently Mayor Mare had started singing about how nice Ponyville was and how much she loved her job. Everyone in the square did the usual song and dance. It was a pretty cool trip, I guess.

Anyway, I approached the water tower on the North side of town a little bit after sundown and saw my friend. Though the sun was just below the horizon, it still turned the sky a beautiful shade of violet and gave off enough light to see by. Underneath the water tower was my best friend, sitting on the bench where we usually sit around on when we hang out. From where I was walking towards her I could only see her head over the top of the bench, her multicolored mane hiding underneath a baseball hat. She had recently decided that she enjoyed wearing baseball hats now, she even left those silver stickers on the brim so they looked "fresh". Don't ask, I don't try to understand this mare. But as I was saying, as I approached her from behind I decided to get her attention.

"Hey."

Truly I am a master wordsmith. Upon hearing my voice, Vinyl's ears instantly perked up. In a flash her head whipped around and she gave me a cheeky smile.

"Yo Lyra, what's up?" the way Vinyl pronounced it though she combined the words "what's" and "up" into one word, it kind of sounded like "wassup". If that makes any fucking sense.

Now you're probably wondering who Vinyl is right about now, how we came to be friends, and why she made a habit of pulling me into her stupid ideas. That's another long story. The short of it is that we went to the same elementary school when we were young, started going after our cutie marks together, and just sort of stuck together after that. We both got cutie marks related to music, so it’s helped that we've always had something to bond over. Vinyl is a crappy DJ that plays music at local parties, and I'm a crappy... lyricist? I think that's a word for people who make song lyrics -- I mean playing the lyre. I kind of suck at writing words too if that means anything. Then there was the Sauce... Uhhuhhuhh...

But last night, let’s get back to last night.

"Not much, got your brick." I looked at the DJ's sunglasses, seeing myself inside their reflection. "What are we doing?"

Vinyl scratched her chin with her hoof as if she was thinking hard about it. She obviously knew what the plan was in her head, she just had a tendency to forget things for a minute or so. After a semi-awkward pause she began to speak.

"Found out about this haunted house at a rave last night, there's supposed to be some ghosts in there and stuff that kills ponies. Apparently these two stallions went in there a week ago and didn't come out," This would be a good moment to note that she seems to get all of her ideas at raves, which are famous for being some of the greatest think tanks in Equestria. "Wanna go check it out?"

"Sure," I stated, pretty sure that I had an idea of what we were in for. "Where's the house?"

"Over by the edge of the Everfree Forest. Whoever built the house was pretty hardcore."

"Well then, what are we waiting for?" I declared, confident that we had no idea what we were in for.

Me and Vinyl had some more conver -- okay, seriously Sweetie Belle, you going for your Grammar Police cutie mark or something? That what you want, to be that pony that goes around irritatin’ ponies by always correcting them? Do you have any idea how annoying that is?

Vinyl and I had some conversation on our way over to the house, mostly just shooting the shit. Nothing too interesting to tell the truth. This wasn't anything too new to us anyway. You see kids, as I explained before, me and Vinyl -- fine, fine, Vinyl and I -- can see things that other ponies can't. At least that is, you can't see if you look directly at them. Think of it like this: you ever walk through your basement and you're sure that there's something following you? As you walk towards the stairs in the dark, do you ever feel breathing on your neck, or see something unnatural at the edge of your vision, but when you turn around to face whatever is following you there's nothing there? Well those things are really there, there are monsters way worse than anything in the Everfree sitting in your houses right now. Most of them don't do much, just creep you out by following you closely in dark places, or sit in the corner of your house and stain your carpet.

Sometimes though, they're violent. Sometimes these monsters haunt houses or terrorize entire families. You probably heard about what happened to the mare who lived in the library before Princess Twilight. That old librarian Page Turner, do you remember how she apparently fell from the second floor onto her neck? Don't listen to whatever the local militia says, don't listen to whatever the newspapers say, and don't listen to what your parents may say about it. They can't explain why her spine was broken in three places, or why there was a hole in the back of her head, or why she had carved pictures of strange creatures into the walls of every room of the building.

Or why she started screaming during her autopsy.

Well I saw what did that to her, and Vinyl and I fought that ugly son of a bitch tooth and nail for an hour and a half. Most of that was spent running away, mind, but in the end we killed it before it laid eggs. Well, aside from the ones that were already in Page Turner anyway. That's what we do really, we deal with the supernatural shit that nobody else knows is even there. The Mayor herself once called us up to figure out why all of the faucets in her house alternated spraying either mayo or blood whenever she turned them on. It’s not the most stable job or the safest living, but it pays more than Vinyl's DJ gigs and my unemployment combined. And by the Sun, I will never work in fast food again, even if it means bringing golf clubs and booze to fight demons once a month.

We took a some long swigs of the vodka on the way. When we started to get close to where the house was we were both a little buzzed. Still sober enough to handle ourselves, but drunk enough to think we could take on anything that stood in our way with just our golf clubs.

"I'm telling you Lyra, if you took out his knees with your pitching wedge and got Big Macintosh on the ground I could totally knock him out with this thing," Vinyl assured me as she swung her driver back and forth with her magic.

"I'm not buying it. There's no way I could get enough torque behind this thing to do any real damage to that guy. He's built like a brick shit house!" Yes, that's your brother I'm talking about. I don't know what you feed him, but it might be too much.

"Eh, he's kind of a pussy," Vinyl spoke ill of her coltfriend. "He'd probably just sit there and take it till you could get in enough whacks to knock him down." Vinyl took another drink of my vodka before tossing it to me. "He might ask you to stop politely, that's about it."

Yeah Applebloom, your brother has a marefriend. You probably shouldn't tell Applejack about Vinyl though, Vinyl isn't really the type of filly that meets Apple family standards if you're catching my drift. As I was saying before you cut me off, it was about at that point our evening walk ended.

It was dark when we arrived at the haunted house, the waning moon in the sky casting long shadows across the yard in front of us. The house itself turned out to be as large as I had expected it would be, three stories tall plus an attic. From where we were standing we could see some of the lights were flickering on and off on the second floor, and a tall figure seemed to be darting around on the third. Clearly there wasn't any gardener to speak of as the tall grass of the front lawn had completely overtaken the front yard. There wasn't even any sort of path towards the house where the grass wasn't at least several inches above me and Vinyl's -- stop it! -- me and Vinyl’s heads. The top of the front door was barely visible above the grass. As I put the cap back onto the bottle of vodka, Vinyl motioned for me to stop.

"You stay here, I'll scout ahead." Before I could say anything to try and stop her, Vinyl began to make her way into the tall grass. Within seconds she had vanished from my sight.

I began pacing back and forth. This wasn't a good idea, because as all foals learn at a young age it’s dangerous to go into tall grass alone, wild animals can attack. Now I know we didn't really come up with a plan for how we were going to go about this, but we never really come up with any concrete plans. They have a tendency to fail when you don't know what you're actually going up against. Still, we had a rule about splitting up. We’re not the Power Ponies and the monsters we face aren’t megalomaniacal manedressers. Though tentacles are involved more often than I’d like to think about.

After about a minute or so of pacing I heard Vinyl's shout come from the thicket. I ran into the tall grass in the direction of the scream, holding my golf club in front of my face horizontally to try and push the long blades of grass away from my face. It was useless, though. Even with the club, trying to push my way to Vinyl was a crapshoot at best. All I had to go off of was a general direction from where I heard her screaming. All I'd probably end up doing is hurting myself out here as well. Vinyl screamed again.

Suddenly the side of my head exploded in a combination of red mist and pain.

I was knocked into a small clearing in the grass directly in front of the door. I could feel a stream of blood was flowing from the side of my head down across my face, some of the sticky fluid spilling into my eyes. I rubbed a hoof across my face to clear off some of the coppery liquid. To my right I could see the sadly all too familiar sight of the blood from my head beginning to mingle with the dirt. So odds are I was on knocked onto my side. Lifting my head up I could see a white blur moving at the edge of the clearing, which appeared to be about five square feet at one moment and twenty-five square-feet another. The blur darted around aggressively, standing out in the haze of darkness and grass, and I couldn't tell what it was.

"You DROVE me to do this!" The sound of a golf club hitting flesh instantly followed.

Vinyl. That was definitely Vinyl.

“I’d have another drink, but I’m driving tonight!” Thwack.

Slowly getting up, I tried shaking the cobwebs out of my head. Using my magic to grasp around for my pitching wedge I found it just next to where I had landed. No sign of the rest of the vodka, though. I looked up to where I had originally seen Vinyl. The two I found, I could see had a look of determination on their faces as they momentarily joined in my vision before splitting apart again. I tried calling out to her to ask what was happening, but instead I wound up making a noise.

"Aaauughguagh," I think it was. Or maybe it was "Urghleck." Either way I can't remember. I got hit in the head. Vinyl spotted me and pointed behind me with a foreleg.

"Lyra turn around! Assfirst McScorpionface is gonna kill you!" Vinyl said that, she seriously opened her mouth and released those two sentences upon the world.

Turning around I saw a creature that could honestly be best described with the name Assfirst McScorpionface. It was obviously a pony at some point before it became whatever it was now. There stood the orange flanks of a pony with a cutie mark of three horseshoes and by the semi-sizable meat dangling between those legs I assumed it was a stallion. In place of his regular pony-tail was a red stump surrounded by old congealed blood, from which extended a dripping white and red appendage that curled up in the air in a menacing ark. At the end of that sickening "tail" was whatever was left of the original owner’s head, now bloodied at the snout and having a dripping red hole where his right eye belonged. The forelegs and chest of Assfirst McScorpionface dragged limply across the ground as he pulled himself towards me using what were formerly his hind legs.

As I stood gaping at the creature in front of me, he reared his head back. Quickly realizing what had clobbered me in the head earlier, I executed a sideways roll. Which in my daze came off more as awkwardly falling over onto my left side, but since it had gotten me out of the way of Assfirst's quick attack, it went down as a success in my books. Lifting my golf club high into the air with my magic I took aim at Assfirst's neck and swung downwards as hard as I could. A detached part of me was amused to finally realize that it was the stallion’s spine I was swinging at, and that it had somehow ripped itself out of his body and flipped over backwards, head still attached. Weird.

In a spray of old rotten blood, the pitching wedge sunk into its target, forcing Assfirst to let out a wet, piercing screech in rage. I scrambled up to my hooves and drew my pitching wedge out of the mangled wreckage of his spine with a wet pop to try and strike again.

Assfirst McScorpionface whipped back his neck quickly, his spine sporting a noticeable fracture which now sprayed a small fountain of blood. Lashing out at me again, I was able to narrowly avoid getting hit by his battering ram of a face by jumping to my right just before he struck. As I raised my club to take another crack at his spine he pulled his head back much faster this time, finally realizing he had a fight on his hooves. Assfirst began to shamble himself closer to me now, his hind legs dragging the rest of his mangled corpse forward. Like I wanted this abomination of a pony any closer. I tried to back up and keep the distance between us, but I instead wound up backing into the outer wall of the haunted house. Assfirst let out a dripping, cackling laugh from his mouth and drew his head back slowly. At this range I couldn't hope to get lucky and dodge another one of his attacks, so I did the only thing I could think of and positioned myself to strike first. Lashing out before Assfirst could start beating me to death with his face, I aimed for the only one of his vitals within reach and popped it with my pitching wedge as hard as I could.

Right in the dick.

I know, I’m an awful pony for it, but what the fuck else could I have done? Tried talking about my feelings?

Anyway, after smacking my pitching wedge into his cock as hard as I could, Assfirst McScorpionface lost his balance, his left leg giving out beneath him as he succumbed to the worst agony known to stallions. Overcome with the all-consuming anguish his lower head was experiencing, his spine began to curl in and that brought his other head back into my striking range.

Taking my aim quickly I brought my club as hard across Assfirst’s face as my telekinetic strength would allow, a gruesome crack ringing out as the wedge found its target. Assfirst’s jawbone hung limply from his face. As he reeled in yet more pain I crashed the club across his face in the opposite direction, his jaw now separating entirely from his head and flying through the air like a bloody, unexploded firework.

As half his face spiralled away from him, Assfirst came crashing to the ground in a limp, defeated heap. His "tail" fell over what was formerly his hindquarters, twitching as it lay in the soft mud. A sloppy choking noise spilled from his throat as he tried to lift his head from the blood and muck where it fell. I stepped over to where the monster that was once a pony lay sprawled out upon the ground, bringing my forehoof up to end his existence.

While my hoof lifted itself into the air, it finally dawned on me who he once was. Before he was turned into whatever twisted creature he was now, he was in my elementary class. He was a little foal who once had hopes and dreams of becoming a royal guard. He would pick fights with all of the other colts on the playground trying to get his cutie mark in bravery. Everypony in class once laughed at him when he got an erection during sex ed. He never tried too hard in school and his grades showed it. His laziness would go on to permeate into other aspects of his life as he grew older. The last year of school he took me to Spring Fling Dance. He was an awful dancer, but it didn't matter to me back then. He was the first stallion that had ever paid attention to me, and few have done so since.

I brought my hoof down, caving in his already cracked and brittle skull. I ended what remained of Caramel's life.

For what felt like an hour, I couldn't breathe.

A head flew past me and broke one of the windows of the house behind me. I heard Vinyl's voice come from the grass.

“You need better drive or you’ll never get ahead in life!” Vinyl stepped out of the brush. Her signature sunglasses were missing a lens, her baseball cap was lost to the weeds, and she had a rakish grin as she rested her battered club across the back of her neck with her magic. Badass, that was my mare. "Hey Lyra! You’re alive!" A bruise the size of a baseball was beginning to form on her right shoulder. She was rough, but we had both been worse.

"Yeah, I'm alive." I looked back down at what was left of Caramel. "What do we do now?"

"We burn this fucker down, that’s what we do. I ain't going inside to see whatever the fuck could do this to two grown stallions."

It was a good plan.

Taking out the two surviving bottles of vodka we made separate Molotov Cocktails and tossed them into the house through the broken window. Sure, we could've gone inside and tried personally fighting whatever killed Caramel and his friend, but we're not stupid. There's no point dying over something that could be easily taken care of from afar.

With the light from the fire we were able to find the last of our first bottle of vodka. Vinyl was good enough to clean and patch me up while we split it. Sad to say, of the two of us she’s had more practice with that. We split my pack of cigarettes, too, as we watched the flames grow, licking up the walls of the haunted house. We watched as the flickering lights of the second floor were drowned out by the light of the inferno, and we grimaced as the tall figure on the third floor writhed about in agony in its final moments. I wished I had grabbed another bottle of vodka.

We didn't smile until that whole fucking building came crashing down on itself just as dawn was starting to break.

Vinyl and I didn't share a word until we got back into town, only saying our goodbyes as we went our separate ways. I didn't walk home though, I came here to sit on your little park bench next to the school. I'm not here to do much, just watch the little foals pick fights with each other to try and get their cutie marks, and feel a little nostalgic for back when I was your age.

Yeah, that's how I got here.

I think I'll head home now. You all should head back to class now too, I think Ms. Cheerilee is ending recess.