A Thunderlane Trip

The Blue Line train stop by my place is the stop I like the best because it smells the most harshly of piss. There is no equal. All the other stops aren’t as harsh. It’s like, this stop has the best piss smell, because no other piss smell tries this hard to be so condensed and so—just so new.

And I get off the train to walk home, enjoying the piss smell. I made sixty bits doing a study on smoking after lying about smoking.

At home, my roommate is sitting on the counter in the kitchen playing a video game on his calculator. He sets the calculator down on the kitchen counter. “Battery died,” he says.

I’m with this mare I had sex with a few months ago (and then now again just recently). She lives in a first floor apartment here in the same building. I have my head in her lap, and we are on the couch in her livingroom. Her apartment smells like garbage, just like mine.

It’s afternoon and the room is lit but not too bright. It’s nice to be with her. My head is burnt badly from trying to shave it last night without shaving cream and her legs feel nice and cool against the skin on my head.

“Your head looks bad,” she says. “Does it hurt.”

“It hurts.”

She leans in different directions to see more of the flaking. She is nice to me in a way that makes me uncomfortable. That’s probably why I mostly avoid her. And anyone like her.

“Why didn’t you put lotion on it,” she says. “Or like, you could’ve dipped a towel in water and then wrapped it around your head.”

“I don’t think I’d like having a wet towel over my head, even in private. When I think about doing that, I mean, I see myself shrugging,” I say. I wince.

She takes her hoof away. “Did that hurt,” she says.

“Yes, pretty bad.”

“It hurt when I touched it just now,” she says.

“Yeah that made it hurt,” I say. “What did you do.”

“I pressed my hoof into it a little. I’m just trying to fix it. Do you want me to fix it even?” She presses her hoof in again and she says,

“Boop.”

“That makes it hurt more. Much much more. Think ‘badly,’ but even more.”

She presses her hooves lightly into my head. “Boop. I can’t imagine anything more than badly,” she says. “I get lost after that.”

I move away from her hoof. “Think of a piece of black construction paper,” I say. “And like, someone jabbing a pen through it a lot, all mad.”

I stare at the carpet between her feet.

“The flakes peel right off,” she says. She drops a piece to the carpet, past my face. “Did that hurt.”

“I couldn’t feel it, actually.”

She lets another piece of skin fall to the carpet, past my face. “You were being a baby then before,” she says.

I watch the piece of skin hit the carpet and become a part of the carpet. “Yes I was,” I say. “A big baby.”

“You fucking baby,” she says.

I begin to make up a song in my head. The song is about being a big fucking baby.

She continues to peel off pieces and drop them to the carpet and I watch each piece fall. “It’s a snow-day,” she says.

She drops a few more pieces. She laughs. The laugh is small. It seems like she did it out of fear no one else would.

“It’s a snow-day,” she says. “Let’s have a snow-day here. We’ll stay in.” She peels off more flakes and I see them fall in front of my face, to the carpet.

This is the moment I realize that she is a real pony and I will never be what she needs to have. This has happened before. Another piece falls.

“Soon I will be too small to see,” I say.

“Be thankful for what’s left of you,” she says.

I watch more flakes. I say nothing. Which means I agree. Yeah, and we are there for three-million years. Still there right now, three-million years later. Yeah, and the room is still the same size. And so am I.

I can’t sleep. I’m too hungry. It’s really late but the way the traffic is starting to sound outside my window means it’s almost going to be light outside. In my dreams now I walk through fields populated with much smaller versions of myself and they are easy to smash with my hooves. Waking up hungry is shitty I guess but it doesn’t matter.

I leave my room and go down the hallway to the kitchen. All we have in the fridge is some peppermint ice cream. If I eat it though, I might be able to fall asleep before I get hungry again. That could work.

My roommate is sleeping on the couch in the livingroom. He looks dead. I imagine a plausible series of events that results in me being accused of killing him even though I didn’t, and then me accepting the accusation just because I’m too tired to fight anything. I get the ice cream out of the freezer and put it in a bowl and walk around the apartment eating. For a little while I check the peephole leading out to the hallway. No one is there. Where are the people coming to find me.

My roommate breathes in quickly on the couch. I eat a bite of ice cream.

“Hey, pssst,” I say. “Hey. Wake up.” I tap the spoon against the bowl a little.

He wakes up and turns over. “What.”

“I’m eating ice cream,” I say. Then I point the spoon at him. “And I can see you,” I say, kind-of singing.

He coughs a little. “Do you like the ice cream,” he says. “Is it wonderful ice cream.”

“Yeah, it’s really good. I had to tell you. You’re the first pony I wanted to tell.”

“I’m the only pony here,” he says.

There’s a pause. “I’m glad you’re not dead,” I say.

“Me too.” He coughs more then closes his eyes to go back to sleep.

I eat some more ice cream and stare at him. It looks like I could just walk into the livingroom and jump on his head. It looks like me and him are dust in somepony else’s carpet and we can’t say hello for fear of having to come up with a good reason.

When I leave the room there is just the dark quiet of the livingroom behind me and I have done nothing wrong. When I shut the door to my room, I’m safe.

I imagine a large pony playing with a replica of our apartment as a dollhouse—me and my roommate for dolls. I want to say to this pony, “What’s bothering you, tell me.”

And I’d be fine with a million tomorrows if I could plan them all out right now and if they all began with me jumping into a large container/vat of puppies with Dutch accents.

A stallion and a mare share the platform with me waiting between trains. They are twenty feet down, doing that hugging-swaying thing couples do when they are still happy together. And they each have a fountain drink in their hooves, hugged behind the other.

I’m watching them. Don’t let them escape. Oh I won’t. No, I’m kidding.

Sometime in the near future, I will have no money. I understand that. At that point, my access to the world will lessen even more. I understand that too. I also understand that if there really were a force of evil, it would make sure I lived a long life, since that would mean badness for other ponies and myself too. No, I’m just being dramatic.

The couple disengages from their hugging sway and the stallion walks up to the tracks. He’s laughing and so is she. He pours some of his fountain drink onto the electric rails.

The mare, staying behind, she cranes her head forward. “Nothing?” she says.

The stallion says, “Nothing.”

He goes and stands by her again. And the train pulls up and before it fully stops I say, “Nothing” and nopony hears.

I smell sort of bad.

My roommate is letting me use his car to go pay our electric bill. We did not mail our electric bill on time and now I have to pay at city hall because otherwise it will be late. His car smells bad and it depresses me but the fact that I am in a car going somewhere to fulfill a task that will have real consequences is enough to make me feel justified in having a day at my disposal.

I feel ok. Pretty much the mega-champion of all conceivable tests. At city hall, the mare behind the counter doesn’t make eye contact with me while I pay. I like it. It’s ok. It feels like practice. I see the word “mega-champion” scroll through my head in neon letters.

In the lobby, just before the street exit, there is a mare on a cell phone and she says, “Well then kiiiiill the bitch.”

Back at the apartment, I park the car and sit in it, staring through a window into the empty laundry room downstairs. I don’t feel like getting out of the car.

For some reason, I remember this one time when I was on a little league baseball team in fourth grade. In the dugout during a game, my teammate kicked the coach in the dick and then hit the coach on the back with a bat, and the coach was the colt’s dad. It’s funny for me to remember that.

I try to smear some dirt off his windshield but I realize the dirt is on the outside. “You win,” I say. “You always win.”

And I get out and walk across the parking lot. My landlord crosses the parking lot at the same time. The rent check is in the pocket of my coat. I forgot to drop it off before I left. Now, seeing her, I know I have to actually go into her office.

She has some vague expectation of her tenants, where we all act like family, rather than ponies with no interest in each other. I’m trying to say she is delusional and I don’t identify with her as a person.

She stops and she smiles at me and I hope in vain for a rattlesnake or some kind of poisonous snake to emerge and bite me. It wouldn’t be bad. I would accept it. I’m just an asshole. It feels like practice.

“Oh hey, come on in to the office real quick,” she says. “I want to show you something. Come on.”

I follow my landlord into her office and she shows me a Nightmare Night decoration she recently bought. The decoration is a plastic werepony dressed in felt-clothing. It’s like, February, I think.

“Sale,” she says.

She bends the plastic werepony over, trying to get it to do something. It’s supposed to do something. Just stand still and look at the thing and wait for it to do what it is supposed to do then react the same way your landlord reacts. Ok, I will. Then leave the office quickly, without running or tripping. Ok I will. Believe in yourself.

She continues to try to get the werepony to activate, lifting up the back panel of cloth/fur and flipping a button a few times. Minutes pass. During the minutes, I see the words “just walk out” scroll through my headhole in neon letters. I see myself walking out of the office, a bird landing on my shoulder, kissing my cheek. I see myself free and happy.

“Come on Mr. Tricky Pants,” my landlord says. “Oh, here we go.”

The werepony starts to move, plastic limbs creaking. A Nightmare Night song comes from the small speaker between the werepony’s feet. The werepony dances and mouths the Halloween song.

I immediately say, “This is great.” And I smile and look at my landlord for a few seconds.

When I leave the office, I don’t turn around until I am back in my apartment. The apartment seems unrecognizable. Looking around, I can’t recognize any of the things on the floor or anything. It seems like somepony else moved in while I was out.

Goddamn.

What if all our keys work for any apartment and we’ve all just been trading constantly. “You win,” I say. “You always win.”

I walk back outside and sit in my roommate’s car again. It still smells bad. That’s the only comforting thing about the day. I try to fall asleep with the back of my head hanging over the headrest.

It gets darker and colder out. This is my backdrop. And I hum the Nightmare Night song to myself, laughing about the way the werewolf danced. So good the way the werepony danced.