The High Blue Ceiling & The Low Dark Everywhere

by Mr Ignorable

Rating: teen
Tags: Alternate Universe, Random
Length: 2175

Short stories from Trottingham City.

Short stories from Trottingham City. Some are random, some are parallel, and all are just trying to make it to the end of the day.

Published 1970-01-01 00:00:00 UTC
Last updated 2014-03-30 04:55:25 UTC

The one that got away

Hey, did you hear about the Nightwalker? According to the grapevine, it's a pony who comes out of nowhere and talks you out of suicide! Pretty not-cool, huh? Wait what? No! I'm saying that the suicide part is not cool. The 'showing up whenever you need him' part is totally cool. Kinda like batemare, or mare-do-well if, you know, they were the suicide-prevention hotline.

The rooftop view from the Currency Exchange building always calmed him down. Ponies passing along the sidewalk, on their way to wherever they were going, ponies sitting in traffic, taking a midnight joyride or trying to get home. The doppler effect cars made when they passed by on the road below, and the ambient noise of the city at night itself never failed to, at the very least, ease the churning, burning pains in his heart.

"Hey there! This seat taken?" He looked up and to his left. Standing there was a stoutish purple mare with blue curls, wearing an officer's uniform. Levitating in her magic was a large Mcdoneighald's cup, which she noisily slurped from.

"Yeah sure, nopony else here." He stated gruffly, making a 'go ahead' gesture. She settled in beside him quickly enough, pulling her officer's cap down over her eyes so the drizzling rain didn't get in her eyes.  He never understood why ponies always shied away from the rain or complained about how it wasted a 'perfectly fine day'. Rain was rain, how else was stuff supposed to grow? Then again, there was always magic, but magic didn't always work the way it was supposed to. Take cars for example. Arcano-electric energy has come a long way from the primordial Model-Ps that used to clutter the sidewalks. That doesn't mean that they're the pinnacle of modern technology. Heck, you always hear horror stories of what could happen if you mess with the power crystals or engine, or both at the same time.

"Like the rain?" She asked, he grunted, almost forgetting about her entirely. The generator behind him hums steadily onwards. The rooftop's not big, but a fall from this size would definitely leave a corpse.

"So is that a yes or a no?" She asked again, setting the cup down and staring at him. If he wasn't where he was, about to do what he was going to do, he might've acknowledged that she was cute, and subsequently hit on her. With the situation as it was, however, all he did was grunt and get up, moving to the edge of the building and sitting down so that his back legs hung off the building itself, lazily making figure 8s.

"I dunno, more like I don't care about the rain."

"Why don't you care about the rain?"

"Because it's rain. It's a scheduled shower that the city kept pushing back because of some parade or whatever."

"Did you know that Gryphons don't like scheduled rain?"

"Yes?"

He take a sidelong look at the mare who's managed to, in the span of that strange conversation, sidle up alongside him.  "Is there a point to this?" He asks. "I kinda want to kill myself."

"Aww, but you're so cute!" She giggled, brushing aside a curtain of his solid gray mane to look him dead in the eye. Funnily enough, his eyes were also dead and flat, like his mane. He sighed and pushed her hoof away, standing up and on the lip of the rooftop where he swayed precariously near the edge.

"Stop hitting on me. I have things to do."

"Like killing yourself."

"Yes."

"Oh. Why do you want to kill yourself again? Trouble at home? Work?" She leaned back, the flirtatious note gone from her voice.

"Nah."

"Then why?" She asked again. He rolled his eyes in annoyance.

"Because I get a pay raise."

"Pardon?"

"I work at the DeathCo." She made an 'ooh'ing noise as the realization dawned on her, followed immediately by a quirk of her eyebrow as confusion set in.

"Why does that matter?" He face-hoofed and stepped away from the ledge.

"DeathCo's job is to go out and collect dead ponies, right?" He asked, she nodded, so he continued. "Now, that's all fine and dandy, collect souls, get the bodies off the street. No fuss, no mess, not too much grieving. Especially since their bodies are going towards a better cause, and quite profitable cause." He continued, sniggering at the little dig. "So, ponies get paid on how many hours they work, right?" She nodded again. "There's this loophole where you get paid an extra 10 bits an hour if you're technically dead. Warrant and all. Plus, I can work the graveyard shift." He finished, cocking his head to the side. "Literally."

"... Okay. I think I get it." She stated after some time had passed. "You want to kill yourself, because a death warrant will prove that, well, you're dead. And that'll get you a raise." She finished. He nodded, relieved. He was about to step off the lip and end it all, when she pipped up yet again. "But isn't that just a job? It's temporary, right? What if you wanted to settle down? Get married, raise a family, and see the world? Celestia's sake, this has to be the dumbest reasoning for kicking the can I've seen! And I've been working this beat for 5 years!" She threw down her cap and physically pulled him off the lip of the building. "You know what? No. I'm not allowing you to kill yourself. You just need help." She muttered, using her telekinesis to pull a bag out from behind the generator.

"You know, I've actually seen the afterlife." He continued, completely unperturbed.

"Bullshit." She countered, thought, it sounded less like a retort, and more like a muffled garbling of words, considering that she had freed a pair of foreleg cuffs from the bag.

"How's that bullshit? I deal in death lady, it was just part of my job training." He continued, she stopped wrestling with the cuffs and used her telekinesis to heft him up.

"I'm saying that's bullshit because it just.. is, alright?" She continued pulling the saddlebag back onto her back.

"How is that bullshit?" He countered, mouth quirked at the corners in faint amusement.

"Nopony's meant to see the afterlife until it's their time." She more or less grunted. "Now move, I'm going to drop you off at a hospital, and you're going to do it unless you want to spend the night in jail." She muttered, roughly pushing him towards the door.

"Who decides when it's time?" He asks, laughing as she stopped dead in her tracks. Using the opportunity, he lunged past her, and over the lip of the building. Of course she lunged, but she was neither quick enough or strong enough to pull the plummeting stallion back to her.

As the blue and red strobe lights of her fellow officers cordoned the sidewalk off, and the crowd pushed and shoved to see the body, she sat there on her perch on the Currency Exchange building, looking down at the still grey lump that had just a few moments ago, been a rather witty yet melancholic living breathing being. Yet as she sat there, her thoughts kept going back to his final words.

"Who decides when it's time?"And try as she might, she could never answer that one question.

Any sort of certainty

"Have you ever wondered where the sun goes when it's dark?"

It was another cold, wet night in Trottingham when I asked myself that question. I can barely remember my own mother's face, let alone where I grew up or where I asked myself that question, but everything after that's as clear as polished crystal. You see, the rest of the kids were all asleep, and due to some pedophile caretaker harassing the fillies after hours, the help wasn't allowed to stay overnight anymore. The job of making sure we weren't up all hours doing Celestia knows what fell to a little old mare by the name of Pillowcase. This is all in hindsight, because at the time, I didn't know why all the big ponies had just up and left. I wasn't bothered too much though. In fact, I was actually relieved. It made my nighttime... actives much easier to do, and I didn't have to coldcook in a broken down pub anymore, so that was a plus.

I remember it pretty distinctly, actually. We all lived in one of those old fashioned Platinum Age houses. You know, the ones where the piping's made from crystal and the walls kind of glow with enchantments? Those ones. Anyways, all the younger foals were asleep, and the older bucks were out on their nightly rounds. I knew a couple fillies who pushed the local street corner. Pushing meaning 'selling drugs' for all you non-versed. There was one guy who I swore was seventeen, he used to launder money for the local Capos before he tried skimming some profit from Kayf's gang. That ended about as well as you'd expect it to. Needless to say, he isn't with us anymore.

Where was I? Oh yeah! So there I was, making what I like to call a Wild Card. See, what you do is, you take five or so sapphires, which are semi-precious so you can find them anywhere, really, you can use whatever semi-precious gem you want. It just depends on how much you can get, and what quality. Me personally, I like uncut sapphire, but each to their own. So, continuing onwards, what you do is, you grind them all up with magic or a magical grinder or just a plain old grinder, until they're a nice fine powder. If you're using uncut gemstones, then you can use a filter. It should be a fine filter, to separate the gem from the sediment and other minerals. Add a 30% liquid nitrogen solution, seven cups of crushed up Poison Joke, stir it all up, freeze it 'till morning, and voila! It's one of my more personal favorites, and I was just lucky enough to score some liquid nitrogen after Pop Rock, one of the Pusher fillies I was talking about earlier, came into some. She didn't tell me where she'd gotten it from, but she was a pretty cool girl, so I let it slip.

What it basically does, again, depending on what type of gemstone you used, is cause an... opposite reaction. Take the Sapphires for example, if you threw a Wild Card at a pony, they'd be a bit put out by someone throwing explosive glitter at their face, sure, but they wouldn't mind. Everypony else though, would mind, because the pony in question is fully on fire. They can't feel it, and it doesn't do any damage, but it's on fire. See, that's the beauty of it. The Poison Joke reacts in direct opposition to the gemstone's magical property. The concoction usually works best with Quartz because ponies usually use it as a magical amplifier, which means it doesn't have any specific properties of its own, which means the Poison Joke just makes its own properties, it can get fucking great.

Sorry, sorry, I'll get back to the point.

So there I was, sitting in little kitchen. The brew wouldn't be cold enough until morning, but I couldn't go back to sleep, which is why I was sitting there, cooking up another batch with some quartz, when the question hit me like a ton of bricks. I remember sitting down and just... thinking about it for the longest time. So long, that I ended up forgetting to add the liquid nitrogen, which just turned the quarts-joke paste into a catastrophe that melted into the countertop and turned it orange. I remember gazing out the window into the drizzling rain, out across the street to the giant, incandescent lights of the Currency Exchange building. I mean, really, where does it go? It's a giant flaming ball for Celestia's sake! Where does it go at night? If its a clear day, I can usually see the moon from afar, but I never see the sun at night when I look real close.

I wonder if the Sun's like one of Luna's stars, and it's just out here, shining on us and keeping us all warm and fuzzy.

Does it feel? Can it feel? What does it feel like to be put down at the end of the day and be sent to oblivion? Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of theories, not that Celestia's tried to disprove them, or even try to explain where it goes. I just don't know, nopony really knows.

And, as nutty, convoluted, and confusing as it all sounds, that's the story of how Equestria's first Anarchist came into being. Some may call it the road to truth, and others'll call it the road to redemption. Me? I'd like to call it the road to destruction, because that's... basically what happened.