Applejack’s Special Day
I’m lying on my bed on a nice, fall morning. I fluttered my eyes open to the sunlight giving light and color to the natural autumn foliage. The fallen leaves gave a mysterious sense of beauty as they were scattered across my front yard, clustered into piles and soaked together in a beautiful heap.The blue sky was ridden with white and gray shaded clouds. A cool, crisp air blew through the area.
Yes, this was a start of a beautiful October day in good old, rural Vermont, which is where I lived my whole life. My parents were divorced when I was young, so my mother lived nearly an hour away into another town. My older sister was hanging around in her apartment, attending to the University nearby.
Me? I live with my dad in a hilltop neighborhood, five minutes from my hometown by drive. I am a freshman in college and majoring in an art degree, hoping to create a cartoon that would become famous, whether the people liked or not.
But I’m a 19-year-old who lives at my dad’s house, typing up MLP fanfics, looking at Yu-Gi-Oh! cards and usually have nothing else to do. I prefer to keep my love of MLP and other stuff a hidden secret from everyone else. I’m what people call a closet brony.
As “The Final Cut” played in my waking head, I wondered how I would go about my day today. Maybe work on the 21st chapter of the MLP fanfic I was working on? While I’m at it, maybe I could keep typing my Yu-Gi-Oh! fanfics in my spare time.
That didn’t matter.
What mattered was me getting up and exploring the Internet for any useful updates before I took my shower. And I did so with the laptop my dad gave me as a graduation gift and a Christmas present. My sister had a similar laptop herself, so she helped me get the hang of it quickly.
Subconsciously or slave to habit, I opened my laptop and logged into my name. It took a short minute for the laptop to switch on and a new email was notified to me. I was curious. Was it the people who were gonna help me get a job in merchandising in the town stores? Did someone send a BronyNet friend request to me?
Either way, I checked it out.
It was a strange email, sent in by an AJWorkhorse13.
It read:
“How in tarnation could you forget October the 1st!?
I know you said I was your favorite pony in the show, and I know you wanted to draw a picture of you and me picking apples at an orchard. Now I felt alone and sad for the past couple of days and it was because you didn’t send anything or even write a poem for my special day..
I’m coming over to see you right now. You’d better have a good excuse as to why you forgot Applejack Appreciation Day.
Signed,
AJ.”
At this moment, I felt terrified for my life. Some crazy, fanatical fan of one of the best animated shows I’ve seen in my life was somehow stalking me! Did he or she somehow get access to my emails? Was it a virus that snuck its way to my computer? How did he/she even know what my email was? I never gave it to anyone else, besides the websites that I belong to and the jobs I applied to.
What am I gonna do?
What am I gonna do!?
Then my brain hatched an idea. I saw my iPhone sitting on the table on the right of me. I picked it up and turned it to the emergency number...
KNOCK, KNOCK, KNOCK!
I froze.
I felt my nerves jolt and my breath shorten.
The stalker was here!
If my dad was here, he would’ve ran the stalker out of our neighborhood. But thinking lightly, I grabbed a golf club sitting at the corner of my room. I knew I wouldn’t kill the stalker because...well, that should be obvious, but I could drive him or her away with angry faces, snarls and swinging the club.
I slipped on my jeans, my white Nike shirt and my special transition glasses. Carefully, I proceeded downstairs, hoping to catch the stalker by surprise, like I planned. Hopefully it goes as planned, because whatever I had planned in my head always turns out a disappointment in reality.
The stairs creaked and squeaked.
Stupid wood.
I made it to the front door at the bottom of the stairs.
I quietly unlocked the door and turned the handle.
I yanked the door open and thrust my club back. At the same time, my field of vision caught a brief glimpse of orange, followed by a blow to my head and a quick surge of pain before my vision faded to black. As my eyes closed into unconsciousness, I saw four orange hooves in front of me before everything went dark.
My head felt like a merry-go-round, spinning endlessly in a dizzying and nauseating rotation. A feeling of pain throbbed in my head where my stalker pounded me hard. A small stream of liquid dripped from the corner of my mouth as my eyes opened heavily to my brain’s auto-restart function.
Everything I saw went blurry. The stalker took my glasses off just so he/she couldn’t see their face. Clever.
I moved just to stretch myself...only to be constricted by a felt of rough braided wicker around my torso. I felt my behind become flat and sore, so it was safe to assume that I was tied to a chair. My back felt uncomfortable thanks to the small wooden pillars, so I was probably held up in the kitchen chair. Trying to regain my strength, I struggled to get the rope loose. The feeling of the rope wasn’t going well with my bare arms.
“You ain’t goin’ nowheres, boy.”
I stopped my vain struggles to a familiar, female Southern drawl. The sound was coming from behind me, along with a crunch of an apple and the fridge alarm going off while it was kept open for a period of time. What made my nerves cold was the clop-clop, clop-clop sounds that came around me into my full view.
I gasped silently.
The stalker that knocked me out and tied my to the chair was no woman. It was female, yes, but it was not a female human.
The stalker was an orange mare, sporting blonde hair, ponytails tied with a red strap.
She wore a brown cowboy on her head.
She had big, green eyes and three freckles on both sides of her face.
Three red apples were plastered on her rear end.
To my shock and horror, my captor was one of the Mane Six characters on MLP; the Element of Honesty; and above all, my favorite pony here in my house for her sweet, citrusy vengeance.
Applejack.
“You. You’re not real. You’re not supposed to be real!” I shouted.
Applejack chomped on her snack. A Pink Lady apple that happened to be my breakfast for later today. She noisily chewed her food and swallowed it down, bringing up a loud, girly-like burp.
“If Ah’m not supposed ta be real, then how am I here?”
“You’re a dream,” I answered without hesitation. “You’re some sort of implanted vision that my stalker injected me in my sleep. It’s got to be a hallucinogen drug that induces hallucinations into the brain and makes people see and hear differently than in reality. So Q.E.D, you’re not real at all.”
Applejack bit her last piece of apple and tossed aside onto the floor.
“If Ah’m some sort of dream, then what does this feel like?”
Applejack rubbed her hoof across my face. She couldn’t fool me, I was too good with feelings to realize I was still hallucinating and not dreaming. What, with the big toe rubbing my cheeks and the keratinized...
I froze once more.
“No.”
“Eeyup,” she nodded.
I shook my head and started rocking side to side on my chair. In my panic, I started to shout for help, unaware that no one could hear my cries for assistance outside of my house. After my third cry for help, my voice choked. I felt moistness leak from my blue eyes. Never in my life would I have played a helpless hostage, held in his own household. I shouted what I was thinking then, repeating that I did not want to die.
Then Applejack’s hoof swiped across my face.
In a split second, all of my screaming ceased. All of my fears were wiped away clean like a Mr. Clean Magic Eraser. My eyes were still watering and I was catching my shaking breath, but my pain and phobias were all gone.
And I was staring face to face with my favorite pony.
She didn’t look happy. Not one bit.
She sighed.
“Look sugarcube, I’m not here ta do ya in. Heck, Ah wouldn’t even think about killin’ a critter like how you human folks always does.” Applejack’s voice was stern. Tender, but stern. “Ah came here only ta talk ta ya. About why ya neglected mah special day.”
“Your special day? Wha~~?”
Applejack facehoofed. “Oh, fer the love of Celestia. Mah day!? Mah special day!? October the 1st!? Remember!?”
I wriggled in my chair, struggling to unbind the tight knot rope around my waist. In my memory banks, I was trying to struggle with what was up with October the 1st. Maybe Applejack’s blow to my head wiped that tiny detail clean from my head.
“Nope.”
Applejack grunted and facehoofed. “Ah can’t believe ya. Fine, Ah’ll give ya a hint! AAD!? What does that stand for!?”
I pondered a bit for the answer.
“The American Academy of Dermatology?”
“What!? No! Ah’m talkin’ about Applejack Appreciation Day!! You remember!? You told yer friends all over the Web you were gonna do somethin’ good fer a day dedicated ta me and I totally believed ya! But when that day came, ya never showed up to the web with that ‘somethin’ good’ ya promised us!”
I became instantly confused. “What!? I never promised anything like tha--!” Then it hit me. Hard.
I recalled saying something about wanting to do something good for my favorite pony for the first of October. I wanted to draw a picture of me and Applejack walking from a Vermont orchard. I wanted to write a story of Applejack selling her apple products in a special autumn sale. But that thought never passed me until now.
I felt myself wrapped in guilt and felt the price of irresponsibility being paid. I felt myself wanting to slap myself in the face for being such a lazy jerk. That is if my hands hadn’t been tied to my chair.
“O-Oh God.”
I stuttered to find the right words for a solemn apology.
“Applejack, I...I’m sorry, I never thought...”
“Never thought what!? Ya never thought ta make good on yer promise!? Ya never thought how bad-like it made me feel when ya never did somethin’ nice fer mah special day!?” I could tell by her voice that she was upset with me. “Well, Ah’ll tell ya how bad it made me feel! Ah couldn’t stop cryin’ all day! All the other gifts and the support of mah friends weren’t enough ta make me feel better, so Ah had to tell Twilight to zap me here to confront a varmint like you! Well, Ah’ll tell you what, boy! Ah’ve never come across a human who was so ignorant as ta forget mah special day!”
I felt an overwhelming feel of sadness and self-hurt well up in my chest. I never thought that one little exaggerated announcement could badly affect someone as tough and hard working as Applejack.
“But I’m...sorry,” I whimpered.
“Yer SORRY!?” Applejack snapped back at me. She was giving a better snarl than I did in my head. “Yer not as sorry as yer gonna be! Ah want to know why ya did it! Ah want ta hear the reason why ya skipped out on mah appreciation day!!”
Like a child in front of an angry parent, I felt myself on the brink of tears. I felt my breath slowly escape my lungs in weeping. There was no reason why I skipped Applejack Appreciation Day, but there was no point in lying either. Applejack could deduce the lie better than my mom does.
“WELL!? What’s yer answer!?”
I inhaled loudly.
“I don’t know what to tell you, Applejack!! I never think of the consequences of my actions before I actually do it!! I’m just such an idiot for blowing off on your big day because it’s just a part of who I am! I’m sorry Applejack! I never did get you what I promised because I was so busy that day, but I never forgot all about Applejack Appreciation Day! Honest!”
Applejack seemed taken by what I said from the bottom of my heart. Now there I was, weeping like a child with no way to cover my face from the world watching my tears. I humiliated myself and embarrassed myself in the past before, but now this topped all of those cringeworthy times.
I felt the rope around me loosen. My arms felt the blood rushing back in as I tried to move them up to my face. I fell to my knees and sobbed on the wooden floor, ashamed and saddened by my ignorance that it all came crashing down on me.
A pair of forehooves wrapped around my torso. I felt a pony’s nuzzle next to my face and small streams of moisture down her fuzzy cheeks. She felt some sort of pity for someone as stupid and weak-minded like me.
“Aww, sugarcube. Ah’m sorry Ah snapped at ya like that. Ah never knew how sensitive yer feelings were. And now that you admitted how appreciative you were to me, Ah now realize how wrong Ah was until now.”
I sniffled.
“Y-Y-You are?”
“Ah sure as sugar am, sugarcube,” Applejack said, laughing sadly. “Ah’ve been gettin’ all these nice drawings from yer friends all over the Internet that Ah’ve completely forgotten somethin’ important. Gifts don’t always show true appreciation unless you’ve truly felt how appreciative you really are to somepony else.”
I heaved a choked sigh. I never had somebody admit they were wrong to something important in their life. Now Applejack apologized for her rash behavior and I felt like the weight of the world was off of my shoulders.
“So.” Applejack extended her hoof out to me. “Friends?”
I wiped a tear away before grasping her hoof and shook it.
“Yeah. Friends.”
The shaking was done. Applejack and I threw each other a warm hug as another symbol of our newfound and rekindled friendship. Unfortunately, my rumbling stomach ruined the moment. I looked at the digital clock on the stove.
Past noon already!
Where did the time go!?
Applejack gave a slight chuckle.
“Hoo, doggy! Sounds like some wolves are growlin in there! How ‘bout we chow down on some grub and we can talk about this place of yours? This Ver-mont place looks like Sweet Apple Acres in the middle of fall!”
I nodded.
“Sure. Let’s do it outside. It’s a nice day out, anyway.”
Applejack trotted to the back porch door in the living room and showed herself out. I went to the still open fridge and grabbed some Granny Smiths, Pink Ladies and half a gallon of good old fashioned Vermont apple cider. Of all the times to finally meet Applejack face-to-face and make up for a rash start, this warm and bright sunny October afternoon was the perfect, and beautiful, if I might add, time to do so.
As I went out to the back porch with Applejack, strange questions were wrapped around my mind.
How did Equestria inquire the Internet?
More importantly, how did Applejack find my email address?
