He's Got A Little Captain In Him
I walked my bike up to my apartment door. Christ, I was tired. It had been another long night of my coworkers being incompetent and me bailing them out. As I was fond of telling the only guy I liked at that place, they all worked slower than coma patients on oxycontin. That had overdosed on oxycontin and died. I wasn’t entirely sure my manager didn’t go down each aisle of the grocery store where I worked and moved their rigor mortis-stiffened limbs for them. You think I’m joking, but really, I’m not. I was tragically born without a sense of humor. Seriously, if you had seen the blank stares some of them have while they lurched around aimlessly, pointedly not doing their jobs so I could do it for them later, you’d be hard-pressed to not have the coroner on speed dial, like I do, just in case.
Right, negativity. I’m trying to work on that. Even bought a coupla cheerful self-help books on meditation and having a happy outlook on life. I usually made it past the first few sentences before burning them, too. I tried to, anyway. I’m already on my third Kindle. They’re surprisingly difficult to set on fire, and burnt plastic smells really bad. And I’m also prone to distractions, so I’m getting off point.
Right. Crappy job, although I’d actually like it if my coworkers weren’t, you know, corpses. I sauntered up to my door, my ~~trusty steed~~ cheap-ass mountain bike at my side, like a boss. Actually, no. If I start in with the meme-talk, you have my permission to execute me with extreme prejudice. Shit gets old after a while, you know?
Distractions. Oops. Continuing on, all I wanted to do at that point was slip inside to my icebox of an apartment. Live in Arizona for a while and you- Hah, wasn’t distracted that time! Just...give me a moment.
I just wanted to get inside, make sweet, sweet love to my raging alcoholism with some cheap swill, and maybe get started on the next chapter of this story I was writing. It wasn’t that good, to be honest, but it was at least decent, and I was getting better as I went. I actually had a long list of things I had to fix with some of the earlier chapters that I was totally going to work on except I started writing out all this instead. I was-
Holy shit, side-tangents really are one of the problems I need to fix. I think it’s because I’m retarded, but if I was retarded it probably wasn’t a good idea to trust my thoughts anyway. They’d cancel each other out like double negatives which would make me magically smart enough to finally get through my apartment door after six damn paragraphs of blathering. Just gotta do it quickly, like pulling off a bandaid or learning to not suck at writing! (The latter actually takes quite a bit of time to be OH FOR FUCK’S SAKE!)
Key jammed into keyhole. A click of locks. Door open, bike inside, shut door. Three strange men sitting on my couch. Immediately head to refrigerator for a beer. Stop at refrigerator. Turn back around. Three dudes in weird costumes sitting on my couch, staring at me.
One guy was dressed in Popeye duds (minus the freakish forearms), only his shirt had horizontal blue and white stripes. Even had the cane pipe and everything. He was a bit on the small side. ‘Petite’ would have been the wrong word. ‘Looked like a lithe little monkey that could have passed for a member of the female’s Chinese Olympics gymnastics team if he wasn’t Caucasian and if he possessed an unhealthy fondness for crimson one-piece bathing suits’ would have been the right word. Uh, words.
Anyway, sitting next to him was a fairly large fellow in blue overalls and a yellow hard hat. His arms were coated in a thick carpet of manly hair—look, I’m a terrible writer, he had manly arm hair, use your imagination. Every bit of exposed skin seemed grimy and soot-covered. He had on a pair of thick glasses, and I wasn’t entirely sure he was staring at me so much as through me. The glistening trail of saliva escaping his slackjawed mouth suggested he might even have been dumber than I am, but I digress.
The last guy was just some old dude with white hair and a manly beard—this is my story, I’ll reuse ‘manly’ as often as I want to avoid having to actually, erm, think about things. And also, em dashes. My em dashes will blot out the heavens, such that you will have to read in the shade. Also, I’m hoping that at least a few editors die from coronaries at some point. Just wait until I start in with the semi-colons...Okaaaay, back to the old guy, he was just dressed in a simple black suit, sports jacket left unbuttoned to reveal a plain white shirt.
So. Two guys in weird costumes, one old guy in regular clothes. On my couch, staring at me. I know I’m recounting all this fairly calmly now, but at the time I was scared shitless. My hand tremored as I reached for my workplace boxcutters and backed towards the door. I wasn’t even thinking straight enough to reach for the cellphone in my back pocket. If this were a horror movie, I’d be the eponymous black dude that died first. I probably should have at least tried to get make-up and a perm to fake the role, but I’m a terrible actor, and my clammy hands were too busy fumbling for my boxcutters to Google which level of Hell I’d be put in for using blackface acting just to die. Seriously, that’s just racist, and my best friend is black. Probably.
My brave tactical reversal was halted by a feeling on my back that was decidedly not-my-apartment-door-leading-to-the-freedom-of-not-being-murdered. (Those hyphens killed at least three prereaders, I promise.) I turned to see a big red jacket with golden buttons. I looked up and my vision was consumed by a pair of maniacal eyes and a leering grin. Thankfully, said grin did not literally consume my vision, as I’ve grown attached to my eyes. I backed away slowly, trying as best as I could to take in the guy who had suddenly slipped in behind me. He was huge. Now, I’m 6’1”—just shy of a coupla meters for everyone that doesn’t live in a surveillance state built upon freedom and civil liberties and the ability to ignore freedom and civil liberties when the government decides it’s convenient to do so. I’m pretty sure the top of my head didn’t even reach the bottom of this guy’s chin. He must’ve had at least a third degree black belt in ominous looming, this guy.
I backed away from the crimson giant with threatening, sanguine grace, like a jungle cat dangerously circling its prey and praying to whatever Gods that would listen that it didn’t void its bowels and collapse into the fetal position as it wretched and sobbed like a prepubescent girl. Which I totally didn’t do. Mostly because I was too shocked by the guy in front of me.
“Holy shit, I’m being mugged by Captain Fucking Hook!” I shouted.
“No, you didn’t,” he responded, his voice possessing a smoky, threatening timbre. He kept up the homicidal Cheshire grin. I don’t actually think I’ve seen him without it, not once. “You mostly just babbled, and mewled like a bag of kittens being keelhauled.” He’s such a nice guy. I didn’t have the heart to tell him you couldn’t hear kittens that were underwater. “You can if you put enough of them into the sack. Also, what is a ‘threatening timbre’? Do you even read the crap you vomit onto the screen?”
Just ignore him, he does that sometimes. I’d get him to stop, but you try telling some seven foot freak with a sword that he’s not allowed to break the fourth wall.
Right, summary. Four weirdos in my apartment. Sailor, metal worker, old dude in a cheap suit, and ~~Satan~~ big red pirate guy. Big red pirate guy pushed me back into my living room. I’m now being stared at by four men that I could only assume were a generic brand Village People cover group. Except for that old guy with the white beard in a suit. I swear he looked familiar.
“I’m Captain Morgan,” the pirate said. “And this is an intervention.” Oh, well that’s a relief. I figured it was a rape-train in the making. Unless they were intervening between my ass and its virginity. That’d be bad.
“Y-you’re not gonna rape me?” I said with cocksure bravery, my voice built off the foundation of molten steel, courage, and other manly things that did man. Like beards. I flicked my eyes towards the old dude before I went back to being completely fucking terrified.
“If you want a little captain in you, you’ve got the wrong captain, boy,” the nice Mr. Morgan growled. Yep, I was definitely gonna be raped. I think I started to cry a little at this point, but my memory is pretty hazy so I’m just going to say I was defiant and angry and didn’t put up with their bullshit. I did the exact opposite of what my new foes expected of me; I plopped down on my bed and stared blankly at my wall, hoping that last semi-colon killed at least one critic before I met my end.
“Just do whatever,” I said blankly. “Please just make it quick.” I still hadn’t remembered my cell phone. I am not an intelligent man.
“Mate, what we’ve got to do won’t be quick.” A small squeak escaped the back of my throat. I barely even realized it was Midget Popeye on the couch that had spoken. Weird Australian accent, too. “We’re your muses.”
“I don’t think I’ll be inspired by anything but antidepressants and therapy for the rest of my life after tonight,” I replied with a defeated croak.
“I do not always speak up,” the old man said, “but when I do, it is because you have the wrong idea.”
“You’re an idiot,” Captain Morgan said.
“Glurb!” the steelworker added cheerfully.
The mini-sailor just sighed. “No, look, kid, we’re literally your muses. The things that prod you to write. Well, we’re not all here. The firebird didn’t think it was a good idea to show up, given the presence of so many flammable spirits.”
“Oh, I’m going to be raped by ghosts,” I said, my voice distant. “That’s nice.” There was a terribly interesting piece of lint on my carpet that I was trying very hard to stare at. I really should vacuum, you know, after the rape-train barrels through the tunnel of-
Right, not gonna finish that sentence. Everyone likes to think that, under dire circumstances, they’ve somehow been able to conceal a badass beneath the drudgery of their daily lives. We’re all just normal people, until you push us too hard and we snap, becoming invincible superheroes that can overcome all odds in a sudden berserker rage.
Complete bullshit. My inner berserker was too busy pleading with that piece of lint on the ground to save me. Maybe I could flick it into the Cap’n’s eye, distracting him long enough for me to bolt for the door. One thing that’s very true about fear is that it impedes one’s rational judgment. In my haste to weaponize lint, I had still yet to remember my cell phone and had completely forgotten about my boxcutters. Hell, I have a gaudy Luna keychain that doubles as a bottle opener that I got for purchasing one too many My Little Pony t-shirts. Even that would’ve worked better. But something broke in me. I was resigned to my fate. And my fate rested in a small ball of lint on the floor of my sloppy apartment.
The little bastard didn’t even deign to stare back at me. Or to inform me that I had just gone on another side tangent. Fucking inconsiderate bastard.
“Not ghosts, you dolt,” the jolly red sociopath said, “spirits as in alcohol. I’m Captain Morgan, that’s Sailor Jerry, that’s Steel Reserve-”
“-Steel Reserve is a malt liquor,” I interrupted. “A very nasty, very cheap malt liquor that I only turn to when I’m broke.”
“Which is always.” Sailor Jerry snorted derisively.
“Glurb!” Steel Reserve nodded enthusiastically.
“Even still, I’d rather not have it known that I actually drink the shit. It’s embarrassing as fuck.”
“Glurb...” Steely said sadly.
It occurs to me now that I didn’t actually have to write that last bit out. Later revisions of this story will replace Steely with Sam Adams. Only I don’t actually know anything about Sam Adams, and it takes a lot of effort to type ‘wikipedia.com’ and search for historical information, so instead I’d just make him say, “The Red Coats are coming!” a lot. Fuck Paul Revere for not making my life easier and having his own brewery.
“What about that guy?” I asked, pointing at the old-timer.
“I do not always introduce myself, but when I do, I am...Antonio Banderas.”
“No, you’re not.”
“I do not always lie, but when I do, it is to avoid telling people I am Dos Equis.”
“That’s annoying as Hell. Stop it. And I don’t even drink Dos Equis. I’ve never even had one in my life.”
“I do not always get invited to interventions, but when I don’t, I show up anyway.”
By this point, I was pretty sure I had just completely lost it, or one of my coworkers thought it might be funny to slip me bath salts or something. I had just pleaded with a piece of lint to save my life, so at the time, it made perfect sense. None of this was real. And Dos Equis was annoying as fuck.
“Not fucking around. Stop that shit.”
“I don’t always fuck around, but when I do, I use Rohypn-”
I screamed violently and grabbed the old fucker by his shoulders. He was surprisingly easy to lift, and the glass on my windows was surprisingly easy to break into a thousand pieces as Dos Equis learned with surprising ease how to fly for a couple seconds before falling 3 stories and thudding to the ground.
He struggled to lift his head, a trickle of blood coming from one corner of his mouth. “I do not always get defenestrated, but when I do, I glarghlb-” he finished with a wet gurgle and then died. If I managed to off him that easily...I glanced at Captain Morgan. He grinned down at me, his knuckles white as he clenched the hilt of his sheathed rapier. I decided I was the bigger man, metaphorically, and that he should be allowed to live as I immediately scurried back to a corner, away from the three remaining avatars of alcohol.
Captain Morgan propped his foot up on my ottoman and struck his infamous pose before saying, “You don’t even own an ottoman.”
Shut up, I’m setting the scene here and you’re ruining it.
Captain Morgan propped his foot up against...a thing. There’s a thing in my apartment and he propped his foot up against it to strike that pose he does.
“You,” he said finally, after staring at me with his manic smile and his mad eyes for a few moments, “are not a good writer.”
I breathed a sigh of relief. I was afraid he was going to tell me I had a pretty mouth. Instead he was just Captain Obvious.
“But, we here are your muses,” he said, motioning to the other two alcohol-ghost-thingies that had taken me captive. “And it reflects poorly on us when you don’t perform.”
“Look, I tried to have a stripper pole installed, but the landlord shot me down.”
Cap’n Morg shot an accusatory finger at me. “That is exactly what I’m talking about. No one talks like that. Reading your dialogue is like watching a bad buddy cop movie.”
“Why not a good buddy cop movie?” I asked.
“There is no such thing as a good buddy cop movie,” he replied disdainfully. “At least when it comes to writing.”
“I find that very difficult to believe.”
He sneered at me. “How many unnecessary adverbs have you used to describe the dialogue in this fic alone?” My mouth snapped shut and I searched desperately for my hero lint ball. He snorted. “You have...slowly...gotten better. Your dialogue isn’t a collection of monologues thrown haphazardly at one another under the vague framework of a single topic of discussion. Whereas before, an individual character might drone on and on ad nauseum, pausing only for the wooden prompt of whatever character they were speaking at-” I winced at the italics “-your characters now seem to interact much like awkward puppets, the wooden flow of their speech drunkenly banging off one another but at least recognizing they hit something before the conversation careens to the next point. You still have no idea how to handle large group conversations. But I know how to fix that. You see, your dialogue has gotten better because you’ve put more focus into characterization. You’ve actually started thinking about how characters should react in certain situations. But you haven’t gotten into your characters' heads enough for it to flow.”
“Uh, are you trying to bait me into providing the prompt for your next monologue? Because I’m pretty sure that was just a monologue, and I’m kinda writing this, so...”
The edges of Captain Morgan’s mouth curled upwards ever more slightly. “You need to know the characters to write them. When was the last time you actually watched My Little Pony?”
I thought back. It had honestly been a while. I fired up an episode maybe once a week or so, but mostly I was too busy ~~putting off writing my next chapter because I knew the earlier ones needed work~~ browsing the interwebs and getting drunk.
“And why are Steel Reserve and Sailor Jerry so quiet?” the Cap’n that was makin’ things happen continued. “They’re sitting right there.”
“Oh.” My eloquence could have felled entire nations with the dextrous undulations of my silver tongue. Later revisions of this story would include Steely encouragingly spouting “Glurb!” at random intervals, and Sailor Jerry being rational and speaking in an Australian accent even as his physical form shrunk further. I shot a look his way. He looked like he may as well be Tyrion Lannister dressed up like a sailor at a Halloween party. I made a mental note to write him bigger. I probably already pissed off a few African-Americans with this story, and I found it prudent that I did not also anger little people in the process.
Because I value having my kneecaps not bitten off. And they probably owned fewer guns. Maybe I could throw them at Captain Morgan’s face like attack monkeys and oh, God, I’m not helping my case for when I have to explain to St. Peter why I just wrote that.
“This...yes, this is a dire case,” Captain Morgan informed me, his hands behind his back as he paced through my living room. “You are so terrible at characterization, I’m afraid a more direct approach is in order.”
“Glurb!” Steely agreed, an angry tone in his voice. There, I included someone else.
“You really are helpless,” Sailor Jerry said with a sigh. At second glance, he was decidedly less midget-like and more involved in the conversation than before, because I’m an awesome writer.
“You’re going to Equestria, Feng,” Captain Morgan finally stated. “You’re going to interact with the ponies, and you’re going to learn how to write them.”
“I...okay, that sounds awesome?”
“And if you don’t, you're going to have a big captain in you.” He somehow managed to leer harder at me. I don’t know how, he just did. Ask him. “Ask your author to learn descriptions better, or to learn how to write so the readers can envision the scene on their own.” Alright, don’t ask him. Fuck him. Fuck him with a splintery railroad tie. “You’d best not be givin' me more ideas for when you fail, boy.” Also, he’s a pirate, right? Shouldn’t he, like- “Yaargh, matey,” he interrupted flatly.
“So, how am I getting there, anyway? Discord? An intergalactic spaceship that discovers a planet of ponies? Maybe I’ve been in cryogenic storage for a long time? Uh, err, Discord?”
“There is a mirror-”
“Fuck, no. I’m not touching Equestria Girls until I know it’s a decent movie.”
“-in your bathroom. I just thought I’d tell you.”
“Yeah, s’what I thought.”
“Have sword. Will stab annoying, incompetent writer.” Since I’m awesome, I didn’t cry like an injured rabbit about to be eaten by a bear at his words. Mostly.
“No, really, how will I get there?”
“In approximately 3.2 seconds, Twilight Sparkle will botch a spell.”
“What?! Oh, God, no, that’s so fuc-”
The world turned white.
* * * * *
The world turned less white and more small-town-park-colored as a lazy hyphen string put another critic into intensive care. I found myself sitting on a bench. In a small park that might be found in any small town in America. Minus the surveillance drones, of course. Although some of those birds did look a little iffy...
Anyway, by this point it was abundantly clear to me that I had gone off the deep end, and had either completely snapped, or had been struck by a car on my way home from work and was in a coma. While most people, on an intellectual level, are rightfully completely horrified by such circumstances, if you ever find yourself in them, it is exhilaratingly liberating. Nothing you do matters! You can do whatever you want! Nothing can truly hurt you! You might even be able to trick your brain into giving you super powers!
I gasped to myself. Super powers...If I was truly in Equestria, even if it was only in my brain, maybe I could use magic! I focused my mind on levitating a small pebble on the ground in front of me, tightening every muscle in my body as I focused on moving the tiny thing just a smidge.
I stopped several minutes later, hopefully right before I prolapsed my colon from the strain. Okay, no magic. But also, no consequences because I was in a coma or an extremely well-detailed padded room! Yay! And no homicidal Captain ~~Mort~~ Morgan or mostly mute side characters that I had written poorly! Double yay! And someone’s warm breath wafting across my left cheek from an uncomfortably close distance as I sit on this park bench! Crazed homeless rapist person yay!
I turned to my left and immediately jerked my head back. Huge golden irises followed my shocked retreat. The periphery of my vision was filled with a minty green color. Oh, shit.
“H-hands,” a voice urgently wheezed out, accompanied by that uncomfortable warmth of something being entirely too damn close to my face and breathing on it. Wait, how does something ‘urgently wheeze out’ words. I guess maybe they could be having an athsma attack. Or dying of emphysema. I took a break from writing the next few sentences so I could have a smoke. Mmm, delicious, delicious cigareeeeeh aaaand I’m totally not distracted. But seriously, ‘urgently wheeze’? Again with the fuckin’ adverbs, man. I’m gonna have to figure out how those other writers get by with just ‘said’ and ‘ask’. Or pretend I’m gonna try to figure it out.
Whatever, I’m nose to snout with Lyra. And her eyes are crazier than fuckin’ Captain Morgan’s right now.
“Are those...are those hands?” She said ‘hands’ like they were some forbidden term, like she had inadvertently spoken ‘Yahweh’ out loud or some shit. Whatever, I was crazy, what could possibly go wrong?
I wrote that last sentence so something could conveniently go wrong and my readers would pat themselves on the back for recognizing the foreshadowing. For I am a gracious writer, my gifts to my readers—right, a distraction. Something went wrong. Namely, I was reasonable for a second.
“Uh, I’m not sure what’s so special about hands, Lyra.”
The mare gasped and drew her head back, finally giving me the space to breath in air that wasn’t recycled from a psychotic unicorn’s lungs. “You know my name?!” The reverent joy in her voice should have scared me, in hindsight. In regular sight, it scared me. My foresight ability thankfully functioned admirably, and everything worked out. With my cognitive abilities, anyway. The situation itself was a disaster waiting to happen.
“Yes, I do.”
“Show me your hands!”
“Uh, they’re right fuckin’ here?” I held them up. Her pupils shrunk to pinpricks. I sighed. Thank SuperBuddhaSpaghettiGod I remembered this was all fake and/or a mental breakdown, because my fear evaporated enough to say, “Why are these so surprising? Minotaurs have hands, right? So do dragons, even if they’ve got claws at the end of ‘em.”
“But they aren’t,” she gasped, hyperventilating at this point, “human hands.”
I stared at her. Dully. Fucking adverbs, man. I leveled a flat gaze at her? I shook my head sadly? I did something or another to express my aloof aggravation over her behavior. “Really? Hand-obsessed Lyra? Can’t you be a hidden badass like you were in Xenophilia instead?”
The mare looked confused for a second. “Xeno...Xenophilia?” she asked. I felt a wrenching in my chest as I realized I might have just made a terrible error. “Like, the story?”
Oh, God. I tried to explain.
“Look, I only read it for the plot.”
Her eyes widened and a dangerous grin appeared on her face. My brain was laughing at me because it likes the fact that I never listen to it and thus always find myself in more trouble every time I open my mouth. It has made me a very quiet person when I’m not having a mental breakdown resulting in delusions of cartoonhood. But mostly it’s made me hate my brain.
“No, like, seriously, the literal plot.” She wasn’t listening. I still kept trying to explain. “I only read it because people raved about the world-building. I skipped over those...parts. I didn’t even really like the characters, except for Lyra.”
“You...like me?!” I’m going to kill Captain Morgan. And whoever the fuck decided that Twilight should botch spells enough to summon creatures from different dimensions. Seriously, you’d think Celestia would keep an iron hoof on things from different worlds that could just pop up out of nowhere because a unicorn messed something up. I bet that’s what Tartarus is for. Haha, oops, someone knocked on the princess’s door at the wrong time, messing up her Greater Spell of Cake Conjuration, and now they have some smelly hairless ape on their hands! To Tartarus with them! As a studio audience laughs at the grieving human being dragged away to some god-forsaken hellhole, torn forever from their family.
I’m a cheery guy.
“Can you-” oh, God, Lyre-Unicorn-Thingy was still talking to me. “Can you turn this into a clopfic?”
I stared at her for a few seconds before I slapped her. It was a weak slap, but a slap nonetheless.
“You. Do. Not. Break. The Fourth Wall. In My. Story.” A manic gleam reentered her eyes, and I slapped her again for good measure. A black-gloved hand decided that this was a slapping contest and my face was the target. I flew a few yards as Captain Morgan’s hand connected with my face.
“You sometimes have to write things outside of your comfort zone to understand aspects of your story within that comfort zone,” he lectured. I imagine Sailor Jerry and Steely were somewhere around but I couldn’t be assed to write about them.
I spat out a bloody tooth and got to my feet. “This isn’t teaching me anything about characterization! Lyra’s just acting exactly like everyone else expects her to act in every bad human fic ever!”
Captain Morgan grinned harder. Yes, he grinned harder, fuck you, that psycho is always grinning, I dunno how you expect me to write that he was somehow grinning more of a grin. I could put something more flowery and prose-like here, if it would sate your UNREASONABLE READER EXPECTATIONS.
Captain Morgan’s ever-present grin widened, and the mischievous fays of mirth that danced constantly in his wild blue eyes pranced about with renewed vigor. There. Bastards. If I wanted to write bad fantasy prose I’d be writing my other story. I hope you’re happy.
Fuck it, simplicity for the win:
Captain Morgan grinned. “Now you’re getting it. We’ll see how you handle Pinkie Pie, next.”
“But,” Lyra interjected, “the clop? And what he can do with those hands?”
In lieu of looking for Pinkie, I headed towards Sweet Apple Acres. The farm was bound to have some sort of drill. And a funnel. And bleach. If the trephination didn’t kill me, the brain-bleach would.
Author's Note
Oh, God, I'm doing that thing where I write random ass shit again.
Too Lazy To Think Of A Witty Chapter Title
Alright. It’s my weekend. Time to be productive. Well, as productive as I can be sitting on my ass for hours on end and clickclacking away on my keyboard. I loaded up Google Docs, navigating to my newest foray into narrative failure. ’Alright,’ I told myself. ’This is just for fun. No need to worry overmuch about quality.’ I have no idea why I had just used italicized thoughts; I could have just as easily written the thought out in first person. I convinced myself that the literary awkwardness could be followed up with a sentence containing a semi-colon. Somewhere, a critic’s eyes had just flicked across said offending semi-colon and they were sent into paroxysms of fury before dying, a white foam frothing out of their twitching lips.
Yes, my children. So great is my grammatical incompetence that even glancing upon its twisted form can kill. Kind of like Death Note, only indiscriminate and lacking an interesting mechanism for the wholesale slaughter of people actually schooled in proper writing. I guess that made it more like The Ring, then. Read this passage, and seven seconds later, you will die! I’d have to look into crawling out of people’s computer screens and stealing their souls after they read some of the shit I put into words. Like the last two paragraphs.
By this point, the blank Google Docs™ document was giving me an accusatory glare, waiting for me to actually, you know, write something. I hovered my hands over the keyboard for a moment, before deciding that now would be a good time to grab another beer and a smoke. It had been at least five minutes since I had a smoke in my bathroom, the ventilation fan whirring angrily. I don’t smoke on my balcony in daylight anymore. There are bees out there. Fuckers terrify me more than anything. So much so that I break my lease agreement and smoke in my bathroom.
Time for another? I looked at the blinking cursor on the empty page. Yep, time for another smoke! My next chapter would still be here, waiting for me to write it when I came back. Just as soon as I checked my several bajillion notifications on some social networking sites. And hit up Reddit. And pointedly refrained from detailing my actions while browsing r/gonewild lest I have to go through the effort of changing this story’s tags from “Teen” to “Creepy Guy Engaging In Self-Administered Carnal Ministrations”.
They have a tag for that, right? I’m sure they do. If they don’t, they should. It applies to half the stuff I see pop up on most pony sites. Twilight/Rainbow Dash/Cadance/etc. has an itch they can’t scratch and blahblahblah sexytimes ensue!
Where was I? Oh, right. I needed a smoke. I pushed away from my desk and stood up, stretching a bit before taking a swig from my beer-
My apartment door exploded inward, peppering my tiny studio with wooden shrapnel, all of which conveniently avoided me because I’m the one writing this and splinters suck. What didn’t avoid me was the furious gaze of the looming figure standing in the ruined doorway of my humble hovel. I screamed like this.
A pair of black leather jackboots hammered into the floor as the figure trudged forward. My downstairs neighbors were gonna be pissed. I, meanwhile, did my best not to piss myself. A hand in a black leather glove shot forward, and a single finger jabbed me in my sternum harshly, pressing me back into my computer chair as I fought bravely against my bladder’s attempts to void itself into my pants.
“Boy,” the giant’s voice growled. “I know you didn’t just hyperlink something instead of describe it.”
I stammered something amazingly intelligent out. Or unintelligible. I was too busy gaping at the angry red pirate to really note the difference. He simply stared down at me, his characteristic leer deepening.
“When was the last time you saw Brandon Sanderson hyperlink a youtube video? Or Robert Jordan? Or Stephen King?” Captain Morgan asked, a dangerous tone in his voice. Well, more dangerous than usual, anyway. Despite his constant grin, it was hard to imagine him ever being in a good mood with that psychotic glare he’s always flashing about.
“B-but they couldn’t hyperlink because books don’t do that!” I protested weakly.
“Exactly. And yet you just did.” His grin darkened. “And how did my grin darken?” Fuck if I know, man. I was too busy regretting never purchasing a pack of Depends fifty years early. Maybe his eyebrows furrowed angrily, or his lips peeled back to emphasize his canines more? “Close enough. But there’s still the matter of you linking a YouTube video in my story!”
His story?
He swung my chair around and rested his hands on my shoulders, gripping them tightly. “Yes, my story. You don’t think this is about you, do you? Is your life really so interesting that people would want to read about you?” I answered with a resounding maybe. Which is to say, I let a frightened moan escape my lips before snapping my mouth shut. He was right, my life was pretty boring, but I liked the quietude. Although there was that one time I threw an old man out a window and watched him die. I’m hxcore like that, motherfuckers. So hxcore that I don’t even have to spell out ‘hardcore’. I’m edgy and dark, like all the best story characters are.
I was still really regretting not wearing adult diapers.
“You seem tense, Feng.” He clenched his gloved hands tighter on my shoulders. “Why are you so tense all the time?”
“Please don’t kill me,” I whispered with a shuddering breath.
“Kill you?” He burst out into a mad cackle. “You’re too useful to die. For now.”
“So you’re not gonna hurt me?” More voice tremors, fear seeping through my tone, yadayada, I was fucking terrified, I probably should stop reminding you all since you’re not stupid and you get it already. Well, most of you aren’t stupid. Statistically speaking, at least one person who’s reading this is doing so aloud, sounding out every syllable of every word with excruciating slowness, then looking back over their shoulder and beaming happily at their caretaker when they finally get a word right. Because they’re retarded. (Just thought I’d make that last bit clear for the retard, I’m sure the rest of you got the point.)
Captain Morgan waited for me to finish my vomitous diatribe about mentally deficient people before continuing the conversation in a way that was totally not awkwardly paced at all. “I promise I will do nothing to harm you. Ever, Feng.”
I breathed a sigh of relief.
“I’ll let the ponies do that for me.”
“Wha-” Twilight Sparkle interrupted me with a botched spell and I remembered that I was already in Equestria at the end of the last chapter, making all this noise about me being back in my apartment a bit disorienting. Because I’m an awesome writer and never have problems with continuity.
Right, botched spell.
* * * * *
Shortly after the five asterisks, I walked down a dirt road towards Sweet Apple Acres, wondering if I could shorten the length of line breaks instead of using asterisks. I had been too lazy to try.
200[/hr]
I tried. Apparently some bbcode is evil, and "[ hr ]200[/ hr]" doesn't work like it would on any self-respecting format that used BBcode. No, we have to write our stories with the simple, touched little brother of BBcode. Our BBcode is the Leonardo DiCaprio in What's Eating Gilbert Grape to sanely customizable mark-ups. Like plain HTML. Seriously, it wasn't that hard to use, so why all this BBcode nonsense?
Why am I talking about BBcode instead of how I magically know where Sweet Apple Acres is? I should probably rectify that.
"Sweet Apple Acres is that way, mate," a tinny voice said into my right ear. I looked over, and perched on my shoulder was a pixie-sized Sailor Jerry, pointing conveniently in the direction I was already walking. The sign of good writing is that a deus ex machina will always favor the ~~Gary Stu~~ well-developed, deep, interesting protagonist. Which I clearly was.
"So, why did I decide to make you smallish and Australian again?"
“Well, the small thing was mostly so you could make an unfunny joke about me dressed up like a Chinese gymnast,” he replied.
“It wasn’t unfunny.” I sulked.
“The Australian accent was just you being too lazy to actually describe my voice. You just assumed all your readers would think I sounded like Crocodile Dundee or Steve Irwin.”
That’s totally what most of you thought, don’t lie. At least until I described his voice as ‘tinny’ a few sentences back, anyway.
Whatever, with Jerryminy Cricket pointing the way, I was almost to Applejack’s farm. Hopefully, she wouldn’t be a goddamn xenophobe country hick like most of you fuckers write her, and would be willing to help.
“I could get them to like you, you know? All the bronies...” a hot breath whispered into my left ear. I flinched and twisted away from the voice, jostling Sailor Jerry from my shoulder. His pixie wings buzzed to life and he gave me an angry look, clearly annoyed that I reneged on my promise to start writing him bigger. Instead he was now Tinker Bell in a Popeye costume. Right, that whisper in my ear.
Lyra stood uncomfortably close to me, her bloodshot eyes pleading as they flicked between my face and my hands.
“It’s not hard, Feng,” she continued in a ragged voice. “Well, not yet, anyway.” I shuddered and backed away from the crazy snarl she probably thought was a smile. “You saw how many horrifying shipfics become popular. If they could make it, even your awful prose would have a chance. You just need to switch some things around on your story, maybe give a few lurid descriptions of my winking-”
A dirt bike fell onto her from above, crushing—and more importantly, silencing—the mint-colored unicorn. A pair of socked feet in sandals hit the ground behind her. Attached to those feet was some guy in khakis and a Red Bull polo shirt with a popped collar. His skin was orange from either an over-judicious application of spray tan, or a burgeoning case of jaundice. He wore two pairs of sunglasses, one over his eyes, the other pair propped on his forehead.
“Dude! Did you just see that gnarlicious stunt I just pulled?!” I was too busy immediately hating this guy and wondering if the question mark goes before or after the exclamation point in sentences like that to respond.
“Ah, Christ, not this idiot bogan,” Sailor Jerry muttered miserably.
“What’s your problem, brah!?” the Dudebro asked. “Everyone knows that Jager is the shit!” He summoned an empty beer can and slammed it into his skull, crushing it.
“If I write you bigger, can you kill it?” I whispered behind my hand to Sailor Jerry. He nodded solemnly. I immediately wrote him to be my size, and he was back to looking a bit like a gruff sailor instead of a pixie-sized member of the Village People. Wait, I used that joke last chapter, lemme think of a better one.
I didn’t think of a better one.
“So, like, what’s up an’ all? You two broskis lookin’ to party?!” He smashed another beer can on his forehead before tossing it behind him. Sailor Jerry winced, but a flicker of revelation alit in his eyes. (You all do know what a ‘flicker of revelation’ looks like, right? Good, I was afraid I’d have to tell you all that it just amounts to a knowing spark or some shit. Because eyes spark and shine like fireworks, apparently. You know what, fuck you, this is my story.)
“Oi, cunt,” Sailor Jerry said stereotypically. “Why’re you drinkin’ beer instead of Jagermeister?”
Jager stared at Jerry for a few seconds before his eyebrows shot up. “Dude. Dude! You’re, like, a genius! A brolicious brodigy of brodom!” He summoned a fifth of Jager (of...himself?) from somewhere and chugged the bottle. He went to smash the emptied bottle against his skull, but it just bounced off with a dull thunk. He stared confusedly at the bottle like it was some sort of magical monolith that defied explanation before smashing it against his skull harder. It shattered violently. Captain Dudebro had a stupid grin on his face. “Fuck, yeah! Jagermeis- err, I mean ‘me’!”
“Well, mate, I tried.” Sailor Jerry gave me a sympathetic look.
I sighed. It was going to be a long day...
* * * * ~~*~~
After retrieving one of the asterisks from the conveniently placed chapter break, I hurled it at Dudebro like a ninja star. It caught him right between the eyes and he thudded to the ground like a bag of potatoes. Fuck, yeah, an asshole-in-one! I pumped a celebratory fist. Which was just me pumping a fist, the celebratory nature implied without me actually having to write it. But I did anyway because I suck at this.
It was about that time that Lyra groaned and started shifting underneath the dirt bike. Me’n’Jerry noped the fuck away from the area posthaste, entering Applejack’s farm and looking for the orange mare.
With a quick search and a humiliating lack of imagination, Jerry and I found the mare applebucking in a field nearby. It was spring. I looked around and noticed a grand total of zero apples on the apple trees. Applejack bucked a tree and a cataract of apples rained down, filling a bunch of buckets beneath its broad boughs. Because blunt alliteration is best alliteration. She noticed two strange bipedal creatures approaching her and cracked a warm smile, trotting over. Oh, thank God, she wasn’t some racist freak.
“Weyuhl howdeh thar’, pahrdnur!” she exclaimed happily.
“I have no idea what you just said.” In response, she twisted and bucked Sailor Jerry into a nearby tree. He rebounded like a rag doll, with a bunch of crunching sounds that I was fairly certain did not come from the tree. Whatever, cartoon physics, I’m sure he’d be fine.
“Mate,” he said weakly. “I can’t feel my legs. Why can’t I feel my legs?” He coughed up blood.
No, seriously, when shit like that happens in cartoons, you just wrap the person up in white bandages for a while and they make a full recovery without any debilitating disabilities, ever. They don’t even need surgery to repair the internal injuries, just magical anime bandages. He’d be fine.
“Help...me...” he croaked. I waved him off dismissively, then turned back to Applejack who had remained politely quiet for an awkward stretch of time so I could hack out more unnecessary prose.
“Why did you do that?!” I asked. Suddenly. As my query was quite sudden.
Suddenly, she responded, “Weuhl, shucks, shoohguhrcyoob! He wuz uh monstuhr. T’ain’t nuthin’ that Fluttershah cain’t fix.”
“I can’t understand a word you’re saying.” This was starting to seem like a bad idea. “Can you, uh, talk normal?”
“Ah never know what ta’ say in sitchyations like this,” she said guiltily. I recoiled, recognizing some of her words finally. I had actually written that exact line in another story. I really should go back and start fixing that story up, but instead I was traipsing around avoiding psychopaths and unicorn nymphos. Thank God this was just some weird hallucination. Or maybe I was dead and this was Hell. Or, quite possibly, I was just letting Applejack sit in awkward silence while she waited for me to respond without interrupting the story’s pacing. I was about to open my mouth to continue the conversation before someone else beat me to the punch.
“Glurb!” Steel Reserve shouted in alarm, rushing over to Sailor Jerry’s crumpled form. I didn’t need to be told what the heavy thumps approaching me from behind were. (It was Captain Morgan, for the retard or two who managed to make it this far without suffering from an aneurysm.)
“Applejack,” he said with hearty cheer. I gawked. I wasn’t even aware he could express pleasant emotions. “My...friend, here, is writing a story about ponies.”
“Uh, okay?” she said. I smiled inwardly. I understood her that time.
“And a human that goes to pony lands.”
She twirled her hoof, motioning for him to get to the point.
“It’s his first fic.”
“Oh.” Her green eyes looked me up and down. “Well, not much to work with, but I reckon with enough buckets of ale in me we could make a passable shipfic-”
“I’M NOT WRITING A DAMN SHIPFIC!” I shouted in Caps Lock for added effect.
Captain Morgan sighed. “Steel Reserve, please get Sailor Jerry to Fluttershy. It was supposed to be Feng who got bucked and needed healing.” He shot Applejack an annoyed glare, his grin morphing to a grimace momentarily before shifting back.
“Hodor!” Steely responded enthusiastically, scooping up Sailor Jerry.
“Wait.” I cocked an eyebrow at the steelworker. “Did you just-”
“Glurb!” he responded, clearly offended.
“Never mind that, Feng.” Captain Morgan turned on me. “And turned you on.” I don’t care what the crazy bastard said, I wasn’t turning this into that kinda story. And that was a bad joke on his part, anyway. “You wrote it.” I wished he stopped responding to me with the spoken word. Applejack was looking at him like he was crazy for talking to himself. At least she hadn’t broken the fourth wall, yet. That shit was getting old. Maybe, with her help...
“Actually, sugarcube, I know he’s crazy,” she said dryly. Or drily. Or fuck you. “I just think he’s crazy for what he’s thinkin’ of doin’. I got a lotta work to do, though, so I trust you learned a valuable lesson about dialogue?”
“What, you mean that my readers aren’t retarded and already imagine you speaking in a Southern accent without me bashing them in the face with it?”
“Yeah, that.” She smiled. “Well, most of ‘em ain’t retarded, anyway.” Somewhere, in a hospice on the East coast, a man with Down’s Syndrome turned to the nurse standing at his shoulder, asking her what ‘retarded’ meant. Meanwhile, in an arid city in Arizona, I secured my place in Hell. I don’t know why, one of my best friends has Down’s Syndrome. That means I can be as crass as I like about it. On the internet.
“Your side tangents have gone on long enough, boy,” Captain Hannibal lectured. Applejack was long gone before his words brought me out of my reverie. I slurped up a string of drool and wiped my chin off. “But you did learn a good lesson today, and I think it’s time you’re rewarded.”
“If you try to turn this into a clopfic again, I will try and fail horribly to kill you with your own sword-”
“Nonsense, boy.” I didn’t like what his smile told me. Which was nothing. I mostly just didn’t like the words that escaped his lips next. “We’re going to turn this into an HiE fic!”
“Uh, isn’t it already-”
“And to do that, we’re gonna be bringing your good buddy Kyle here to hang out with you!”
I paused. Kyle was my closest friend back in the real world, and the only coworker I liked. And if you think I chose the name ‘Kyle’ just to fuck with you, you’re wrong. That really was his name. Even if this was a bath salt-fever dream-coma-afterlife hallucination—and even if one of my prereaders spotted all those hyphens from a nearby tree with binoculars and thumped to the ground with a sudden case of lifelessness—things would be a lot more tolerable with Kyle here. Only guy I know who hasn’t managed to truly anger me, in spite of me knowing him for over three years. Yeah, I guess I was okay with hanging around him.
“Glad you’re willing to play along,” Captain Morgan said with a sneer. “Because Twilight just botched another spell, which accidentally freed Discord, who went back in time and altered space-time in the past such that a magical portal would appear for a few nanoseconds in an alternate reality with humans right as your friend threw himself on a grenade or a landmine or something to save his squadmates before waking up here even though he should be dead.”
“Yeah, that’s interesting,” I said. I stopped listening after ‘Twilight botched a spell’. I turned around with a smile. “Kyle, buddy! How’s it go-”
A very muscular man in jungle camouflage and dark green and black facepaint stared down the sights of his assault rifle, an assault rifle he rudely pointed at me. He also had a couple bandoliers of bullets crisscrossing his chest, a pistol grip shotgun peeking out over one shoulder, a rocket launcher peeking out over the other, no fewer than three sidearms in various holsters around his body—all of them .50-calibre Desert Eagles—an assortment of throwing knives, including a lot I probably couldn’t see, and finally, an honest-to-Amanomurakumo samurai sword hanging at his hip. This was on top of a comical amount of tactical gear and grenades and D-clips strung about his form, seemingly at random.
This was not Kyle.
“I am Colonel Sergeant Kyle von Steelhunter, of the U.S. Army and Navy S.E.A.L.s and Delta Force and Green Berets and Brownie Scouts! Put your hands on your head and identify yourself immediately!”
I shot my hands into the air immediately. “Whoa, whoa! Don’t shoot, I’m not a threat!”
“Identify yourself!”
“I’m Feng of, uh, America?” I offered tentatively.
He slumped slightly, relaxing, and dropped the barrel of his rifle. “Oh, good, you’re not a foreigner. And you’re white. That means you can’t possibly be evil.”
I chuckled nervously. “Uh, heh, yeah, right. Perfectly normal, red-blooded American who doesn’t wanna die.”
He stared at me with haunted eyes, before dropping his gaze. “No one wants to die, Feng of America. And yet they always do.” Oh, God, he was starting a monologue. “The Mwabari children of the African village me and my squad were sent to protect didn’t want to die, but...I still see them, the accusatory stares in their dead eyes as their malnourished forms lie still in the filth of their third world village.” I glared at Captain Morgan, silently mouthing, ‘I hate you.’ He smiled back at me. “Sometimes I wonder if I have so much blood on my hands that I don’t even deserve redemption.”
“That’s kinda cool, but-”
“For what is man if not a constant struggle to keep that blood inside, that seething rage of violence bottled, so that we can go on to live our lives in peace, always fighting to keep the darkness at bay,” he mused philosophically. I considered reaching for one of his pistols to end my own life.
“If only there were a world where my murderous expertise was unnecessary, that the violent monstrosity of my own humanity could be juxtaposed against a happy, innocent world without war. If only.”
I ignored him, turning to the ~~lavender unicorn~~ big red pirate. “What did I do to deserve this?” I asked, if the question mark didn’t give it away. “I’m a mostly good guy. Sure, every once in a while I’ll look up something slightly out of the norm on redtube, but for the most part I’m decent. Why must you subject me to this?”
“I’ll make sure to let Lyra know about your more random redtube reviews.” His grin was more not-so-nice than usual. Kyle von Steelhunter continued his painfully awkward monologue in the background. “As for why, how much time have you spent writing these four thousand words?”
I shrugged. “I dunno, a morning? If I get on a good kick, it’s not too hard for me to spit out five to seven thousand words in a day, so long as I don’t get distracted.”
“And yet you’re sitting here, listening to Gomer Kyle here rant about the value of human life like a middle schooler, instead of working on your own story and making it better?”
I was about to offer him a scathing rebuttal that involved me rolling a couple smokes and retreating to my bee-free bathroom to avoid actually having to write a rebuttal when I was interrupted by a voice.
A scratchy voice.
“Hey! Think you monsters can steal from Applejack’s orchards, huh?!”
I immediately dove behind the stereotypical commando as he finished his oration with, “Maybe, man is the real monster.” He was promptly slammed into by a cyan blob trailing rainbows. I was starting to feel a little hungry, so I wrote in Skittles dropping from the rainbow trail and chomped down on the candies hungrily as Special Forces Kyle and Rainbow Dash hurtled and ricocheted off the ground from the impact. I like Skittles. I hope Colonel Sergeant Kyle broke something that killed him.
Instead, the mean military guy and the pegasus wrestled for dominance on the ground, shooting up clouds of dust. I hovered my finger over the Backspace key in case their wrestling turned into something that might get this fic to the featured box. Thankfully, after a time their sparring ended harmlessly with the pegasus pinning him and the man commenting something about how much stronger ponies were than humans. He acted abashed for a bit before Rainbow started letting up her guard. Then he cracked a joke or something before she laughed and let him up and they both began trotting back to me.
This is mostly just an outline of their actions, so I don’t forget. I’ll start detailing the, uh, details just as soon as I proofread the earlier bits I just wrote. Just need to...holy Hell, I’m drunk. Good thing the fanfiction site I post stories on didn’t put the Edit button right next to the Publish button, amirite?
Anyway, just need to check on some of my BBcode formatting and
Author's Note
Next up, uncharacteristic Rainbow Dash waifuing and Pinkie Pie meets the fourth wall. And whatever else comes to mind. Eventually, I'm going to make every trope my bitch, in as much as I've become a bitch to bad writing tropes.
Revenge shall be mine!
I should probably edit this before publishing it, but
