At The End Of A Long Day You're Just Sitting There Resisting The Urge To Ask The Question Of How You Got Here
“Sit still, dammit.”
Sweetie Belle was trying, but the cold floor was distracting. Her bum was freezing. It seemed awfully inconvenient not to have chairs or couches. And to do whatever it was they were doing in a giant empty space that only seemed to be populated by the occasional drifter.
The only feature of this place was the floor; it was a tile floor, hard and, as previously mentioned, cold. This expanse seemed to drift off in endless directions either way.
The person who was addressing Sweetie Belle was just that; a person. He was fair skinned with short choppy black hair, and wore a medical coat that was obviously far too big for him.
He stuck out a tongue depressor. “Open your mouth,” he instructed, and Sweetie complied.
The boy looked inside her mouth for a few moments, then shook his head. Sweetie Belle looked at him with an expression of concern. “I-is it bad?”
The boy looked past the pony, his eyes tired and bloodshot. “Nah, you’re fine,” he deduced, and got up. “It’s nothing to be worried about, just take one of these.” He handed her small white pill-shaped objects,
“These are PEZ candies,” Sweetie Belle said, looking at the objects in the boy’s hand.
“Just take them, okay?” He told her, groaning. “They’ll help.”
Sweetie Belle took the candy in her mouth, crunching them. They were slightly sweet, but dusty as well. The powder got in her nose, and she scrunched her snout in a futile effort to expel the substance. The boy smirked, and left.
Sweetie Belle lied down on the floor, and closed her eyes. She counted what she had been told sheep looked like, hoping it would help her to sleep. After about three hundred, she slipped away blissfully into the unconscious.
The next day she awoke, with little to do. She could explore the enormous existence she occupied space in, but all it seemed to be was tile after tile, column after column. A huge bathroom floor of a universe, with no signs of a bathtub or toilet anywhere.
Sweetie Belle couldn’t just lie there bored; little fillies needed something to occupy their growing minds, of course, so she set herself to work counting the tiles on the floor. It was monotonous work, but at least it was work. Counting was something she was going to have to get accustomed to, it seemed.
The unicorn foal had no idea how she got here; she always assumed that she had been born here. This, however, couldn’t be true, because she had memories of a place that was outside this ceramic infinitum.
After an undefinable amount of time, he returned. His coat was still too big for his body, and he still had the same tired look about him. She felt her heart beat faster as he walked over towards her.
He had a sphygmomanometer, which was a weird strap with a pump connected to it and a small dial on the front. Sweetie Belle wasn’t sure what it was for, or why she knew what it was called, but decided to give it the benefit of the doubt.
“Not sure if ponies work this way, but I’ll give it a shot,” she heard him say. He placed the strap of the odd device on Sweetie’s arm, and then pumped it up. The strap inflated, pressing on her foreleg.
“Ow!” She squealed, her voice cracking. The boy smiled again, but it was a soft smile; Sweetie Belle had a feeling he was smiling at the voice crack, not the pain she was in. At least, she hoped that was the case.
The boy felt just above her fetlocks on the leg that had the sphygmomanometer on it, looked at the siel, and slowly began to release air from the sack. As the pressure on her leg released, Sweetie Belle could feel blood rushing back to the constricted leg. After the air had been fully let out, the boy produced a sucker for Sweetie Belle.
“Here, sorry I put so much stress on you,” he apologized. “This’ll help.”
Sweetie Belle didn't object. She took the lollipop into her mouth and enjoyed it from the moment it touched her tongue. She hadn’t had a lollipop before, but she was glad that she had been given the opportunity.
The boy left.
Sweetie Belle fell asleep on the cold floor that night, just like she did every night.
When she awoke, there was nothing to do. There wasn’t much to do anyway in this vast, tiled emptiness. She had already tried counting the tiles but found that to immeasurably boring. She was tired of counting. So instead, she waited patiently for the boy to arrive again, to give her her checkup.
He didn’t come.
No, instead a small group of men in white lab coats that fit them just fine showed up. They each had doctoring instruments of their own, and for whatever odd reason, one had a telescope.
“Where’s the boy that usually comes?” she asked the group of men.
“Gone,” the one with a stethoscope wrapped around his neck somewhat too tightly, as his face was going blue.
“Gone?” Sweetie Belle said in a completely disbelieving tone.
“Gone,” confirmed a man with needles hanging from his fingers lick ersatz rings.
“He can’t be...” Sweetie Belle stared at the floor, in shock from this revelation. The doctors stared on at her, with blank expressions. All except for the one with the telescope, who was busy staring off in all directions.
They did their rounds on her, just as the boy would have done, only with far more people. They felt cold and mechanical, just like the floor which she slept on every night. Sweetie Belle was not happy with this at all.
Halfway through one of the doctors inspecting her nostrils, the one with the telescope made a noise. The noise was an odd one, halfway through a gurgle and a sneeze. All the other doctors stopped what they were doing at once, and turned to see what the one with the telescope had seen.
“Not gone,” he announced.
“Not gone?” Sweetie Belle said hopefully.
“Not gone,” repeated the telescope doctor. “Dead.”
Everyone was silent. The doctor from before shined his light up Sweetie’s nose one last time, and then the group left.
Sweetie did not sleep that night.
She lay on the cold tiles for so long she lost track of what little idea of time she had here. No doctors came, no drifters passed by in her vision. She simply lay on the cold ceramic tiles, barely breathing, not moving a single inch.
She lay, waiting for something she knew would never come. Eons had passed, she was certain of it, and there was no change whatsoever.
Until she felt a warm blanket fall over her.
Sweetie Belle opened her eyes. She was in a hospital bed, looking up a a nurse with a smily face mask adorning her face.
“Am I... am I free?” asked the foal cautiously.
“Of course you are,” the nurse told her, the blank eyes of the smily face staring down at her. “Of course you are.”
“Is he here?”
The nurse, though still appearing to be smiling because of the mask, shook her head. “I’m afraid I have no idea who ‘he’ is, dear. We’re just glad to have you back.”
Sweetie Belle decided to hazard another question. “What happened to me?”
The nurse’s answer was simple. “You were forgotten.”
“Forgotten?”
The nurse nodded, her mask slipping slightly. She took a moment to correct it. “But don’t worry, we remembered about you just a few moments ago. Your family will be here to get you any moment.”
The nurse left the room, and Sweetie stared up at the ceiling, cold as ever before even though she was wrapped in warm hospital linens.
