My name is Fluttershy. I am currently a resident at the Canterlot Maximum Security Prison, more specifically in the Psychiatric ward. This place has many Nice Ponies with the Clean White Coats that work here. They talk to me a lot. I never reply, but they seem to like talking to me so I let them. They tell me I’m paranoid but I already knew that.
After all, the Voices told me.
There is one pony here who says he is a doctor. He talks to me the most. He tells me that I’m sick and I need help. He wants me to talk about what happened before I met him. He wants to know what happened back at the party. He wants me to tell him why I did what I did to Her. I would tell him, but I can’t trust him. He thinks I’m crazy.
The Voices told me that, too.
The Voices also told me what to do back in Ponyville. They helped me get over my paranoia. That’s what they were doing, when they told me to follow Her. I knew who she was, of course. I knew who She was more than most ponies. Most thought She was nice and funny, although a little clumsy. She wasn’t. She was mean.
The Voices didn’t tell me that. I learnt if for myself. Back at flight school.
Is that where all of this began? The paranoia, the Voices? I don’t think so. The paranoia, maybe, but I’ve always had the voices. For as long as I can remember, the Voices have guided me. They helped me hide when the Mean Pony came to my house when I was a little filly. They helped me hide from the Mean Pony but wouldn’t let me hide my family. They told me that we would all be found. They told me that my mommy and daddy would want me to hide. I don’t know what the Mean Pony did to my parents. I was never allowed to find out. I didn’t mind much because I knew that I had done what my parents would have wanted.
After all, why would the Voices lie to me?
They did more than hide me from the Mean Pony. The Voices helped me when I was living in the Orphanage. They helped me deal with the Bullies. Maybe my paranoia started then, when the Bullies would pick on me. Maybe. Maybe not. I know they started for sure when I was at flight school, first year. They started when I met Her.
I thought we were friends at first. We were both no ponies. No pony wanted to sit with us at snack time or play with us at break. I wasn’t very paranoid back then so I wasn’t as afraid of meeting new ponies. For almost the first full year, we were very close. We didn’t talk much but we spent time together. She didn’t mind that I wasn’t a good flier or that I was older than everypony else and I didn’t mind that She was clumsy, or that Her eyes were funny. Then New Student came.
New Student was popular. New Student was loved. I don’t want remember New Student’s name, or even what she looked like. What I do remember is what New Student did.
New Student came when there were two months of classes left. New Student instantly was the most popular. New Student had the fanciest clothing and an accent. New Student was from a faraway city. Everypony loved New Student. Everypony except me and Her. We didn’t like how New Student picked on ponies who didn’t talk much, on the ponies who were different. On ponies like me and Her.
This was a time when the Voices were quiet. They didn’t tell me what to do about New Student so I didn’t do anything. Maybe I should have.
New Student liked to pick on ponies. I was the type of pony she liked to pick on the most so I’m surprised that she waited almost a month to notice me. New Student took about the same amount of time to notice Her, but She was noticed in a different way.
It started when New Student found us. Or, New Student found me. New Student started to pick on me, call me names. New Student was mean. I wasn’t alone when New Student found me. I was with Her. I expected Her to try and defend me like She had done a few times before. Friends help each other, right? New Student called me names and I started to cry but She did nothing. New Student pushed me and still She did nothing. Then She did something, something I never forgave Her for.
She joined in. New Student laughed and She laughed with her. New Student insulted me and She added on. New Student started to like Her. She joined New Student’s group. She forgot about me. I never forgot about Her.
New Student kept picking on me. I became New Student’s favorite punching bag. It was easy for New Student to find things that hurt me because She told New Student. She was my friend and She tried to hurt me. I think that as years passed, She forgot that we were ever friends. Then She forgot that She hurt me.
But I never forgot.
The Voices always reminded me. They reminded me what She did. Maybe the Voices helped make me paranoid. I don’t know. I think that She caused it, even if the Voices helped. If She had never betrayed me, none of this would have happened. I cannot change what happened. If I could, She would still be my friend. Not that it matters. Not that I need friends.
Who needs friends when you have Voices?
Voices will never betray me. The Voices are my friends. Friends forever, not like Her. And now She’s gone but the Voices are still here. See what friendship means? It means you stay. She wasn’t nice so She had to go.
The Voices, they told me what to do. They told me that I would never be able to trust with Her still around. I wanted to make friends but I was afraid that they would do what She did. That they would betray me like Her. The Voices wanted me to have other friends. They know what is best for me so I listen to them.
I had other friends at the time. Five of them. One I had met before, back at flight school. She protected me from some Bullies once and helped me get my cutie mark. We talked a few times but she stopped when New Student came. The two of them became friends. That was back when we were fillies.
We were all mares when it happened. We had known each other for three years and gone on adventures together but I couldn’t trust them. I couldn’t know that they wouldn’t betray me like She did. I wanted to trust them but I couldn’t. The Voices told me that there was a way to get rid of my paranoia. I just had to do what they said.
It wasn’t very long ago that it happened. It was right after one of my new friends became a Princess. There was a big party after and everypony from Canterlot and Ponyville was invited. With so many ponies, it was easy for one to go missing. I had a hard time finding Her but I knew that was a good thing. It would take a long time for anypony to notice She was missing.
By then it would be too late.
I told Her that I wanted to talk to Her, show Her something away from the party. It was easy to lure her to the empty garden where there was no pony to hear her scream. Any shrieks were drowned out by the music and chatter from the ponies enjoying themselves.
She put up a good fight. She almost got away a few times but the Voices kept me one step ahead. It was almost fun. All the years I let Her control my life without her knowing and suddenly I was in charge. It was liberating. It didn’t take long for the Voices to realize that I knew what to do and for them to fall silent.
The fight was like nothing else. I only had a knife for a weapon and She had nothing. She went into the garden first. With Her back to me, it was so easy to strike. She didn’t see it coming. My blade glinted in the moonlight as I slashed it towards Her. It would have been a nice, clean shot if She hadn’t tripped. Who knew that Her clumsiness would save Her? Not that it did. It merely postponed Her death. Rather than sliding cleanly into Her back, the blade embedded itself in Her hind leg. I kept my grip on it and saw a chance. I quickly made a new plan. It was all too easy.
I jerked my head to one side, cutting through Her flesh with ease. Her screams of shock and pain freeing me from the pain she caused me all those years ago. I pulled the knife out and walked so that we were facing each other. There was pain in Her good eye as it locked onto the knife that dripped Her own blood. Then Her eye slid to me and She begged. She begged me to let her go. She said She was sorry. I asked Her what She was sorry about. In a moment of pity, I considered letting Her live if She got the answer right. Didn’t an apology make it all better? Didn’t it make the pain go away? I was ready to forgive Her if She remembered why I was mad and if She apologised. The Voices were mad at me for disobeying them but I just wanted an apology. I felt as if that was all I needed to destroy my paranoia. All I needed was for Her to remember.
She didn’t remember.
I told Her that She was wrong.
I turned my head away, trying to quell my tears. Why hadn’t She remembered? I didn’t think it would be that hard. When I turned to face Her again, She was lunging at me. She attacked me. She couldn’t use one of Her hind legs but She had wings. Wings that She used to try and get away. Wings that She forgot She was not the only one to have.
I don’t like flying. I never have. I will fly when I have to but only then. Usually I have to fly to save a life. A bunny that has fallen down into a deep hole, or a baby bird that fell from their nest. That night was the first time I flew to kill.
I flew into the air after dodging Her attack. She was trying to fly away and I could not, would not let Her. I lunged at Her again but She dropped and my knife only nicked Her ear. I plummeted after Her, wings at my side to reduce drag. I landed on Her back and the extra weight sent us both falling. Ignoring the wind rushing past us and the ground growing closer, I jabbed Her wings with my knife. Stab, Stab into the right wing. Slice into the left. Then I lept off of Her and let Her fall.
The height was not enough to kill Her. It stunned Her for only a moment and the Voices told me that She would try to flee again and I listened. I circled above Her, waiting to see where She would crawl. She chose Her direction and I landed in front of Her. Her good eye locked into one of mine as I stared, unmoving. Rage filled me as Her poor eye struggled to meet me. I was normal compared to Her! New Student shouldn’t have picked on me, New Student should have picked on Her! I would have defended Her, like a friend should!
The rage became uncontrollable and Her good eye became just as useless as Her other one.
I left Her like that. I left Her with tears in Her dead eyes and a knife in what was once Her good eye. I knew it had killed Her, or at least it would. The knife was buried up to the hilt. It was not a wound one could survive.
After I left, I went home. I later told my friends that I left because I had not been feeling well.
Then I waited.
I waited for the paranoia to leave me. I waited to be able to trust my friends. I still felt unable, even as weeks past. So I decided to test it. I decided to tell them. I would trust them not to tell anypony and if they didn’t then I could trust them and if they did I would just deal with them as I dealt with Her. I would send them each a letter saying what I did to Her, just without much detail. It was a simple plan.
Simple, but poorly thought out. Had I thought of it, I would have realized that if they told I would get caught. I wish I had thought it out because that is what happened.
They came to my house, two Nice Ponies with the Clean White Coats. They made me mad. I just wanted to stop being so paranoid, I just wanted to trust my friends. I thought that my friends could be trusted yet there they were, the Nice Ponies with the Clean White Coats. The Voices told me what to do. The Voices told me to kill the Nice Ponies with the Clean White Coats, then kill my friends. One of them had betrayed my and brought back my paranoia. I had no way of knowing which of them had betrayed me so I could not trust any of them. They all had to go.
I managed to hurt one of the Nice Ponies with the Clean White Coats before the other jabbed me with a needle and my world blacked out.
I woke up here, at the Canterlot Maximum Security Prison in the Psychiatric ward. I don’t know how long I have been here. Many ponies have tried to get me to tell them what happened, why I did what I did to Her. The Voices told me not to tell them anything so I didn’t talk. I still haven’t spoken since the two Nice Ponies with the Clean White Coats came to my house. I won’t talk until the Voices tell me to.
My name is Fluttershy. I am currently a resident at the Canterlot Maximum Security Prison, more specifically in the Psychiatric ward. I need to get out. I need to go find my friends and do to them what I did to Her. It is the only way to get rid of my paranoia.
The Voices told me.
Author's Note
One of two stories I wrote for my one-year anniversary on this site.
If you see any mistakes, feel free to let me know!