*BZZT* *BZZT* *BZZT* I slapped the alarm clock, I was already up. I looked at the clock, it read 6:30. I had been up for the last thirty minutes just lying there. I didn’t remember turning on my alarm clock, so I must have forgot to turn it off yesterday. Wait, that doesn’t make sense either, yesterday was Saturday. Why was my alarm on? Why was I up before my alarm on a weekend? I am by no means a morning person, the earliest I wake up naturally is 8:00, and that’s on a good day.
Well if I’m up I might as well actually get out of bed. I heaved myself out of bed, I felt a rush of energy as I got up. I felt like I could do anything, it felt nice to wake up with energy instead of stumbling around drearily. As I got dressed the energy died down to an energetic buzz, it’s like instead of rushing around, now the power was being moderated throughout my body. I threw off my pajamas and looked through my drawers, I pulled out a pair of jeans. I walked over to my closet and pulled out an orange flannel button up shirt, I didn’t usually wear it, but it just seemed right.
I looked into the mirror and saw that I was missing something, something that would complete the look. I pulled out a Stetson out from my closet, I had used it for a costume last year and forgot about it. I placed it on my head and laughed, I put it back and continued to chuckle as I thought on how I looked like a cow girl. I walked into the kitchen to see my mom snickering at me.
“you wake up good?” she burst out laughing. Who wants to guess who set my alarm? If you say my mom then you are correct.
“yeah, nice try, but I was awake before it went off,” I flashed her a grin, she stopped laughing and looked at me.
“were you now?” she let out a similar grin, “look at you, miss early bird!” my mom knew as well as I did that I’m not an early riser. We both laughed at the prospect of me getting up early, it was a pretty ridiculous concept.
“but really, I was up,” I finished laughing and turned to the pantry. I pulled out some tomato soup, I have soup instead of cereal in the morning. I have nothing against cereal and will have it sometimes, but I usually just have soup. Because I’m weird like that and find it better to have warm food in the morning. Well I guess you could have warm cereal, but that just sounds nasty.
“is that so? Well, I highly doubt that, but whatever you say,” my mom got up and rinsed her own dishes. I just shrugged as I put a pan on the stove and put the soup in. “you're not going to use the microwave?” I looked up to see my mom looking at me curiously. She was right, even though she hadn't corrected me on anything. I did normally make my soup in the microwave, but it was already cooking in the pan.
“i guess not,” I shrugged and turned to the pantry to grab the bread. I plopped two pieces into the toaster and grabbed the out of the fridge, it was cherry. I put the cherry on the table and impatiently looked over to the toast. I reached back into the cupboard and pulled down a plate, when I looked back at my soup I saw my mom was still standing there looking at me. I shrugged it off and turned to the toaster, it was still toasting. That's what annoyed me about toasters, you can't see how the toast is doing. That would be a good invention, maybe I should patent that; window toaster, now you can watch your toast toast in the toasty toaster. I laughed at my brain antics, I pulled down a mug and turned towards the coffee pot.
This is where my mom finally decided to intervene, “whoa, slow down speed racer. This coffee isn't for you. Besides, you seem to have enough energy already,” I snapped back to reality as my hand was slapped away from the coffee pot.
“wait, what?” I looked from the mug to the coffee pot why was I getting coffee?, I finally looked over to mom. She seemed to be giving me a concerned look, she had good reason too. I wasn't allowed to drink coffee, mom said it was bad for me, she never said much more than that, just that it was bad for me and I didn't need the extra caffeine. It never mattered that much, she never had to tell me, ever. I hate the taste of coffee, that's all the incentive I need not to drink it. So then why was I about to some coffee like it was my routine? I don't have the slightest idea.
“you feeling okay?” my mom pulled me out of my thoughts.
I shook my head in a feeble attempt to rid myself of these concerning matters. I was obviously just tired and it was clouding my decisions, maybe that hadn't been a surge of energy like you're energized, but the surge of energy you get when you stay up past midnight. That surge of energy right after you stay up past when your body wants to sleep, when you resist the sleep your body goes into double time and exerts extra power just so you can stay up longer. This drains your reserve energy and makes it hard to stay awake all day, the energy only lasts long enough to get well into the day and then your body quickly drops from the extra exertion. But I didn't feel the normal symptoms that came with that, usually there was a feeling in your eyes and a general sluggishness, I didn't feel tired in the slightest. I felt completely ready to attack the day, I was feeling spritely, not nightly.
“yeah I'm fine, I don't know what I was thinking. Must just be tired,” I knew that wasn't it, but I turned to my toast so she couldn't see my expression. It must have popped up when I was thinking, I placed the toast on the plate and turned to my soup. I poured the creamy soup into my bowl and placed the pan in the sink. I then switched my mug out for a cup and filled it to the brim with tap water. I took a sip before carefully carrying the cup over to the table and sat down.
I began to put jelly on my toast when I heard mom speak up, “morning buddy, you sleep well?” I turned around to see my brother wander into the kitchen trying to rub drowsiness from his eyes.
“no, Alice's alarm clock woke me up,” he whined, I laughed at his accusation.
“y'all can thank mom fer that one!” I turned back to my breakfast.
“why are you talking funny?” my brother spoke up, I turned back to see them both looking at me, I couldn't exactly tell what type of look they were giving me.
What's with the accent?” my mom asked after a while, she could clearly see I wasn't getting it.
“what're ya talking about? I ain't got –” that's when I noticed it, “an accent.” I could hear myself drawl out the last word in a thick southern accent. I adjusted my voice carefully as I spoke again, it was almost a struggle to find my old voice without the accent and revert to it. “I-I Don't know where that came from...” I stuttered as we all continued to stare awkwardly at each-other. Eventually I turned back to my breakfast to finish in silence, unfortunately for me, silence is the last thing I get.
“hold on will you look at me for a sec?” my mom walked around the island towards me. I turned back to her and she looked at me, she stood across the table from me. She leaned in and grabbed my face, pulling me close. She gasped and let me go, I rubbed my cheeks where she had grabbed them. I looked at her confused, “your eyes...” she trailed off, what about them, they're blue with twenty-twenty vision, whoop-dee-fricking-doo I thought, but I kept my mouth shut. “I thought it was just the light playing tricks on me before, but when I pulled them in for a closer look there was no mistaking it. Your eye's are green,” she finished after a while, I just gave her a skeptic look.
“seriously? You need to work on your jokes. I think I would know if my eyes are green” I said turning back to my breakfast, I had a feeling it was growing cold from all these interruptions. It had stopped steaming, with any luck it will have cooled down enough to eat without burning my mouth.
“have you seen your eyes recently?” she questioned, I looked at her for a moment. Why can't I just eat my breakfast in peace?
“no... I guess not,” I sighed and got up from my seat, maybe if I humor her then she'll leave me alone. If I don't she might not let up and it'll just waste more time, then my soup will get cold or sure. I walked into the bathroom with my mom and brother trailing behind me, I sighed as I entered the bathroom. “there see... I paused for a second, I looked at the mirror closely and my breathing stopped. I could feel my heart and lungs pounding and stared, “my eyes are green!” I cried diving for the mirror. I looked deep into the emerald irises, my eyes weren't a hazel, or a slight aquamarine. My eyes had no trace of blue, they were a bright and intense emerald green. I inspected them closely for several minutes, my breathing had returned, but it was frantic and irregular. I tried to calm down and steady my breathing, “okay, my eyes are green. It's not bad is it? It's just a color... it's just a color...” no matter how many times I repeated it I couldn't convince myself that I wasn't freaking out.
When I turned around I saw that my mom and brother had abandoned me to flip out in peace, the one thing I didn't want to do alone was what they let me do. What great family they are, but I can't blame them. I'm sure they're taking this hard too, how are you even supposed to react to your eye's changing color one day out of the blue. That's funny because out of the blue isn't just saying it came out of nowhere, but my eyes were blue before. That's not actually as funny as I thought it was, it did nothing but make me more panicked. In any case, the correct course of action is probably to calm down and ignore it. That's usually how I deal with things, maybe this isn't any different than most other problems.
I turned to glance one more time at the mirror before setting my priorities straight and walking back into the kitchen. I found both of my parents and my little bro sitting at the table, my brother was eating breakfast and my parents seemed to be waiting for me. When I walked in they halted their conversation and looked up to me, my father got up and looked me straight in the eyes. I expected some questioning or some sort of exclamation pointlessly pointing out the obvious change, but I got nothing. He pulled away and stalked off towards his room without so much as a single word.
“what was that about?” I asked hesitantly.
“well he's a little confused; I put your breakfast in the microwave, it should still be warm,” she got up from her seat at the table and followed my father into his room. I got my soup out to find it was in fact still warm, that meant that at least one thing was going my way. I ate my breakfast and put my dishes in the sink, I went on with my normal Sunday morning routine. It consisted of brushing my wavy dirty blond hair, brushing my teeth, and then doing whatever else I felt like doing.
Maybe it was just nerves, but my normally dirty-blonde hair looked more blond than it usually did. It also seemed straighter, but as I said before, it's probably just nerves. Obviously my eyes going from baby-blue to emerald green had shaken me, and this was just causing me to over-analyze other things.
When I was done with the brushing of my teeth and hair I tried to put my eyes as far back in my mind as I could. I watched television for a good part of the morning until I got bored, at which point I resorted to playing some video games. I am by no means a gamer girl, but I do enjoy games; I play a variety of games, but first-person-shooters aren't my forté. It's not that I'm not good at them, I'll play them occasionally with my gaming buddy's, and let me tell you, I totally smoke them. I believe last time we played Call Of Duty together I got 46 kills and the next person up was my good friend Zack with 24 kills. So it's not that I'm not good at those games, I just don't find as much joy in them as I do with, let's say my all time favorite, Portal 2. I continued to play games, occasionally changing the disc out for others, up until eleven O'clock. I was still full of energy so I decided to go for a walk, it was near lunch time and I had some money on me, so I decided I'd walk somewhere for lunch.
I left my house and walked down the hill towards the busier part of town, I looked at the park on my side to see only a single person. There was nothing especially eye turning about him, it was a man in his middle ages walking around the field. He was wearing a striped button up shirt and jeans, his hair was jet black and put into a ponytail. The ponytail reached his lower back, it was about as long as my own blond hair. Except his hair was completely straight, I don't know why I noticed this man, I just did. I continued walking down the hill, I passed a house with a cat on the porch. It was a orange cat, I waved to it, but it ignored me. I continued on past ht school on my right and reached the end of the street. I looked to my right to see the walkway that stretched over the road in front of me. I turned to the left to see some apartments lining the street, farther down there was a stop light and I knew that just out of view next to the light is a police station. This intersection marked where all the big stores were, at least it did to me. I walked down the street towards the intersection, it wasn't that far away.
I went to the closest place, it was a jack in the box just across the road with the stop light. I entered the restaurant and was met with the smell of grease, it was a familiar smell to me, it put me at ease. I ordered the usual from the restaurant, I recognized the cashier and he recognized me. Since my house wasn't far away I was a regular customer, he greeted me warmly and I smiled. As I ordered I felt an unusual tingling in my stomach, I'm glad I’m ordering food because my stomach is starting to feel weird. My number was called and I grabbed my lunch, it was a spicy chicken sandwich with curly fries. They handed me my cup and I made my way over to the soda fountain, I made my signature drink of two parts Brisk, one part Dr. Pepper, and one part Apple juice. I took a sip and smiled as my crazy concoction, I retreated to a booth.
I raised my sandwich to my mouth and cringed, I don't know why I'm hesitating, I mean it's just a sandwich. It's a sandwich that I eat frequently too, I bet it's just stress making me feel weird. When I eat something the stress should lessen, so I just have to ignore what my brain is telling me and take a bite of the dang sandwich. I spit out my bite immediately in disgust, It didn't taste good, it didn't taste safe. I inspected my chicken sandwich and found nothing wrong with it, I took another bite from the sandwich; this bite was no better than the first. I took apart the sandwich and tasted the condiments individually, the sauces all tasted fine. I tried the cheese and the lettuce, it all tasted fresh and normal. When I tested the chicken I cringed, it was the cause for my distaste.
I pulled out the meat and inspected it, it looked completely fine. I found another customer eating a similar sandwich. “hey... um, how's your sandwich?” I asked as non-chalantly as I could.
“it's fine...” he eyed me suspiciously and I just turned back to my sandwich. I decided I wasn't dwelling on the subject anymore, I just left the chicken out and finished up the sandwich. As I finished eating my sandwich minus the chicken and started on my fries at a leisurely pace, a man that had been watching me walked up. I hadn't actually thought he had been watching me, I had noticed him earlier, but I just thought he was thinking or something, so I brushed it off. When he walked up I saw a grin that gave me the shivers. I tried to act cool like I didn't notice him, but he didn't pass me by; he sat across from me, I turned to him as he sat down.
“enjoy your meal?” the man asked, his voice set off a signal in my brain saying it sounded familiar, but I knew I didn't know him.
I nodded hesitantly, “why do you ask?” I looked around to make sure he couldn't try anything. I hoped he had enough sense not to pull anything in public, but with that smile I couldn't be sure how much sense he had.
“you seem to have left out the meat,” he mused, he picked up the offending piece of food.
“it was rotten or something,” I replied defensively.
He split the meat open, “seems fine to me,” he popped it into his mouth. “see? Perfectly good,” he looked at me once more with his shiver inducing grin, this guy sure knows how to be as creepy as possible.
“hey!” I exclaimed, how dare he come up and eat my food.
“oh? Were you going to eat that?” he looked at me with a knowing grin. It looked the same as his creepy grin, but you could tell he knew the answer.
“well... no, but that doesn't mean you can have it!” this guy was really starting to grind on my nerves.
“my apologies dearest friend, surely you can forgive me AJ?” he smiled back with a mock bow. it was an awkward bow because he was sitting in the booth across from me.
“friend?! I'm no–” I was interrupted by him, he shushed me and pointed to the television in the other corner of the store.
“oh, but AJ. Let's watch the news. This is the best part,” that was another thing I needed to ask, how does he know my initials? Before I could ask the television in the corner flickered to life and everyone looked over to it. It was showing the news, the whole restaurant went silent as the television spoke, we were all captivated by it's message.
“Lauren Faust, creator of hit series My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic has been found to have been turned into the show's matriarch. An Alicorn Princess by the name of Celestia, she was taken into questioning earlier by the CIA and has been confirmed as the real Lauren Faust. Another Alicorn Princess from the show has been taken into similar questioning, she claims to be Tara Strong. She urges anyone with information to contact her, and she has called for the same respect to these people turned ponies that you would give anyone else. She held a press conference earlier with some important names, these names included the president himself. These are not the first confirmed sightings of any ponies however, there seems to have been an incident yesterday in a small city in Arizona. There is assumed to be more cases later if not right now, if you find yourself in this situation you are urged to contact so a correct count on the number of cases per day can be found.”
the message droned on about a sighting in an Arizonan gas station. There was a brief clip of an an encounter with a silver unicorn, the imposing mare was discussing something with the cop when she started to leave. As she was about to leave she turned to a camera, she gave the world a message. “hello there world! Nice to see you! Now as I'm sure you noticed, I am a pony. But I highly doubt I'm the only one. Now if you find yourself in a similar situation, I would like to hear from you. I have a Facebook that you can reach me on, it is Starlet Mint. We may be able to fix this if we work together. I really must be going now though.” she turned to leave and the it looked like the cop tried to stop her by force. She didn't look the least bit intimidated by a gun being pointed at her. “well, I don't think you can stop me. So ta ta,” the unicorn flashed away with what I assumed to be teleportation.
As soon as everyone saw this the restaurant was filled with talk of what had just been shown. I turned back to see that the mysterious man was still giving that shiver inducing smile at full force in my direction.
“come on applejack, why don't you come out and talk to me?” I looked at him, I didn't know much about what had just been shown, but I knew that this guy had a lot of interest in it. They mentioned connections to the show My Little Pony, I don't know all that much about the show, I do know what I remember from the couple of episodes I watched with my cousin. Let's see, there were different types of ponies, there were unicorns like the one just shown, and pegasi, and earth ponies. There were six mane characters, I didn't know most of their names. There was a rainbow one, a pink one, one with an R, a shy one, and a purple one. There was one more, she was some sort of fruit, they called her AJ, I remember that cause I found it odd she had the same initials as me. Apple! Applejack! That's it. Wait... Applejack? Isn't that what mister creepy just called me?
“I'm... I'm not Applejack...” I stuttered looking towards the nearest exit.
“you sure? Green eyes, Blonde hair, your even dressed the part!” he was looking me over.
“I'm not a pony, I'm not applejack,” I got up and walked backwards towards the door. He showed no sign of pursuit, when I reached the door he hadn't moved an inch, I dashed out of the shop and away as fast as I could. The stoplight was working in my favor and I didn't even have to stop running. As I neared my street I looked back and stopped to catch my breath. I didn't see him anywhere behind me, I must be safe, I was away from that weirdo.
“well that wasn't nice, leaving without saying goodbye. Very rude if I do say so myself, but it's okay. I forgive you, after all, I'm sure you didn't mean to just abandon me. You are always the most reliable. Now I hope I can rely on you to help me get my good friend to talk to me without a struggle,” I froze as I heard his voice at my side. I slowly turned my head to see him standing beside me leaning against a fence. I gawked at him and he just continued to give me his signature smile.
“you... who are you?!” I backed away from him towards my street.
He let out a sigh, “I had wished you'd be more cooperative. Terribly sorry it had to be this way, but I direly need applejack to come and play,” he just stood there, with what he was saying I expected him to attack me.
“I'm not Applejack!” I yelled running across the street, I made the mistake of not checking for traffic. I was swept off my feet as I heard tires squealing and felt myself fly a couple of feet off the ground. I saw the impact before I felt it, when I felt it it was unbearable. The pain hit me with the force of a rocket and the shock of lightning. I heard the engine pick up as the car sped away from me, I was just a drive-by. I saw the man giving me the same grin, I couldn't believe he was that sick as to smile at my demise. He turned away from me and walked down the street, he called out to me as he walked away.
Well, I have business to attend to, until next time,” he turned back to me and tipped hi hat, “Arrivederci!” with that he was gone, he didn't even walk away, he was just gone in a poof. As he vanished from that spot I recognized the voice, I recognized the last line from the show. The character was from one of the episodes I had watched with my cousin, I tried to remember the name. I remembered who it was, it was the main antagonist, the god of chaos himself.
“Discord...” that was the last word I uttered before I blacked out.
