It’s going to be a good day for Chatterlips. For the past five years he’s worked in the palace and he loves his job. As one of the faithful attendants of Princess Celestia, every day always goes off to a bright and sunny start. Just like her. He wonders how she does it.
Today she doesn’t. Chatterlips is waiting outside her room when Celestia emerges. Frowning she slinks out of her royal quarters and slams the door, muttering something about weak creatures that need sunlight to live.
Chatterlips tries not to say anything, he really does. He can see today is going to be a difficult day and Celestia is in no mood for it. But he’s named Chatterlips. And sometimes in the mirror he notices he does have pretty big lips and that makes him sad.
Chatterlips says, “Looks like somepony’s a bit of a sourpuss today!” He immediately slams his mouth shut.
Her eyes meet his. Celestia’s frown deepens. The wrinkles almost make her look her age. She shrieks, “Banished! You’re banished from the castle! The only thing you’ll be guarding now is a cellar!”
He’s not a royal guard but this time Chatterlips doesn’t say anything.
So now Chatterlips has been reassigned to guard the cellar in the basement of the city hall at some coastal town. It’s named Ponysmouth, and its city hall is an old stone tower. Probably because it’s really tall.
The cellar is moderately bright from the one lightbulb and is pretty big. He sits at the base of the stone steps and sometimes he shivers. Not because he’s sad, that really only happens when he looks in mirrors. It’s just a bit chilly down there.
Today nothing happens and when his shift is done he goes back to his room at the town inn. There’s really no one to watch that he does his job but he has nothing better to do. He was also given time forms to record his hours.
Tomorrow when he takes up his post, there’s a hole in the far wall. He spends the first hour staring at it with stiff legs.
A squat wrinkly goblin climbs out. He yelps as he sees Chatterlips.
Chatterlips doesn’t know who he is. He says, “Who are you?”
The goblin looks around carefully, then answers, “You should not have seen me. I’m Chubbins, a goblin. We live on the other side of the walls, in Goblin World.”
“Wow!” Chatterlips exclaims, pressing his hooves to his cheeks. “There’s a whole world of goblins right under our noses?”
The novelty has worn off for Chubbins. “Yeah, sure.” He digs in his raggedy pocket and pulls out some bits of copper and pencil erasers. Holding out in his outstretched palm, he says, “Buy or sell faggot.”
“Oh, I don’t have any money. The Princess took all my stuff away.”
Chubbins swears. “Then go get someone who does. Damn you, I’m trying to run a business!”
Chatterlips thinks carefully about the situation. There is a certain integrity to be maintained, it seems to him. He giggles. “Sorry but I am guarding this cellar. No one can go in or out. But me, when it is time for me to leave.”
“I’m gonna get my crew and we’ll beat you into pudding.”
Chatterlips is daydreaming. “What?” he asks.
“Nothing. Eat a dick.” Chubbins waddles up to him and pushes his hand in Chatterlip’s face. “Buy something, sell something, come on!” His nose is fleshy and has dirty hairs in it.
“Please.”
Chubbins screams, “Want a hairnet? You’ll get a hairnet!” He pulls a hairnet out of his packet, leaps up, and pulls it on Chatterlip’s head. Chatterlips has a blue mane.
Chatterlips sees this. “I didn’t really want a hairnet...”
“Now pay up!” Chubbins does not really care whether the pony wanted a hairnet. He supposes that is a bit greedy but it doesn’t really bother him.
It does bother Chatterlips and he has an epiphany. His hoof raises. “Those not self-conscious and self-willed are constantly acting from self-interested motives, but clothing these in various garbs. Watch those people closely in the light of the sun’s teaching, and they seem to be hypocrites, they have so many good moral and religious plans of which self-interest is at the end and bottom; but they, we may believe, do not know that this is more than a coincidence.”
“I had a crush on my ten year old daughter! I put cum into her pudding!” Chubbins confesses, putting his face into his meaty hands.
“There, there, it’s alright. Thought that isn’t really alright.” Chatterlips places a hoof on the little goblin’s shoulder.”
“Ah, knock it off,” Chubbins says in between sobs. “Or, or, I’ll put pudding in yer ears!” His sobs increase.
Chatterlips is prepared though. He hasn’t forgotten all he learned from observing the princess and he asks himself what she would do. “Put your faith in what you most believe in. Two worlds, one family.” That is what he says to the goblin.
And Chubbins thinks how ogres don’t get time for bathroom breaks. He is a goblin but he thinks of the ogres. One such thing was that the ogres never took any breaks—they never celebrated anything. He now knew that all the ogres cared about was destruction and invasions. They loved to take what didn't belong to them and they loved to cause chaos. Because the ogres were always prepared for whatever whim their bladders could have at any given time, he had to be ready, as well, and he knew shutting his shop would give the ogres the very excuse to try something messy. And, unfortunately, the people around the city weren't exactly keeping his bathroom habits a secret—they believed that their attendance was a small way of showing gratitude toward life. Because of this—even though he had preferred for the bathroom breaks to be a quiet affair—he hadn't been able to stop the entire city from talking. He knew the ogres were aware of the festivities.
It seems to Chatterlips that this troubled soul might have a paranoia complex. That is one the intuitions he is good at picking up on.
“Okay then,” Chubbins says. And with one final glance over his shoulder, Chubbins waddles back to the hole and crawls inside.
Chatterlips goes home that night and does a crossword puzzle.
Three months later
Chatterlips just couldn't stop looking at the doll in the corner of the cellar. It had been there this morning out of the blue, who had put it there? There were two boxes in the room as well but Chatterlips knew that that those were there before.
The next day he returns with a doll of his own. The old doll from when he was a colt, it was the only possession he was able to salvage from his junked stuff.
"Oh Tina, this is going to be the best fun ever," Chatterlips said to his favorite doll tucked under his arm. Talky Tina only smiled vacantly in her usual fashion.
Chatterlips loved children but had been told that a case of the mumps in his teenage years had made the prospect of fatherhood unlikely for him. He had been devastated by the diagnosis, but in his dreams he had envisioned marriage to a mare with a child or children and the hopes of fulfillment as a stepfather.
One by one Chatterlip's moments ticked by, and finally it was time for the party to begin. Chatterlips grabbed the doll from the corner and he gave a cry of delight.
Inspecting it, it was a very lifelike doll with soft brown curls and a sweet smile. There a special button on the doll's backside that would make the doll cry 'mama' and wave her forelegs and kick her back legs. The doll's name was Wonderful Wendy, and although she couldn't talk like Tina, she could do so much more than Tina could. She could cry, laugh, and even wet her diaper. Chatterlips thought that she was wonderful. "Thank you so much, mysterious universe," he said, kissing each doll on the cheek.
Chatterlips was engrossed in Wonderful Wendy. Then he remembered he had left his other doll on the steps. He walked over and picked it up and looked at it. Absentmindedly, he pulled the string that made her talk. "My name is Talky Tina, and I don't think I like you very much" she said. Chatterlips was startled but recovered quickly. "Well that's too bad, because I happen to love little fillies," he said, gently lying the doll back down.
As the days passed, Chatterlips and his new doll Wendy had a lot of fun together. When off duty Chatterlips took Wendy with him everywhere he went and showed her all the places in town. Wendy slept with him in bed every night. At first he kept both Tina and Wendy in bed with him, but then it seemed like the bed was too crowded, so he started leaving Tina on the shelf for the night.
One day it occurred to him that he hadn't really played with Tina in a while. He picked Tina up and pulled her string, expecting her to say "My name is Talky Tina and I love you very much" like she usually did, but this time the doll didn't say anything at all.
"Are you all right, Tina?" Chatterlips asked, pulling the string again. Tina still didn't say anything. Chatterlips felt so sad. He decided to be as nice as he could be to Tina from now on in hopes that Tina would start talking to him again.
That night Chatterlips was getting ready for bed and couldn't find Wendy. He had looked everywhere in the inn for her and was starting to panic. He knew that he couldn't sleep until he knew where Wendy was.
He was just about to give up and go back to search his room again when the innkeeper asked him, "Chatterlips, why did you throw your new doll away?" Chatterlips saw Wendy in his hooves. Her mane looked sticky.
"I didn't throw her away! I've been looking all over for her!" Chatterlips exclaimed.
"How did she end up in the trash can then?" the innkeeper asked softly. Chatterlips could see the hurt in his eyes and she could hear the hurt in his voice. He felt terrible and wished that he could make the innkeeper believe him.
"I don't know! Honestly I don't!"
"All right then," the keeper said gently, handing the doll to him. Chatterlips took Wendy into the bathroom and tried his best to clean her up. Then he took Wendy back to the room with him. Talky Tina sat waiting for him in her usual spot. But was that a wicked gleam in Tina's eye?
Several days later Chatterlips was in the cellar guarding when he heard a scream from outside. Startled, Chatterlips went up the stairs, and in a few moments a pony appeared with a towel wrapped around his hoof. He left a trail of big drops of blood behind him.
Chatterlips was alarmed. "Oh, mister, what happened?" he asked.
"I was doing some work out back and I was sure I had turned the saw off when all of a sudden it came back on again by itself! I think I might be needing a stich or two."
Chatterlips anxiously unwrapped the towel from around his hoof to see the damage. Luckily, his hoof was still attached, but there was a huge gash in the side.
"Oh, I'm going to have to have you take me to the doctor pony," the pony said. "You better go use the bathroom first because it's a little bit of a walk."
"Can I take Tina and Wendy too, please?"
The pony gazed at him. "Only if you come right away."
Chatterlips ran down the steps, snatched up Wendy, and looked in vain for Tina.
"Oh man, I can't find Tina anywhere!" he cried.
"There's a doll behind the building right next to where I keep my tools," the injured pony said. "Chatterlips, were you playing with her behind the hall?"
"No!" Chatterlips was shocked.
There wasn't time to fetch Tina before heading to the doctor, so only Wendy went along. The pony and Chatterlips had to sit in the waiting room for several hours, then the pony's injured hoof was stitched up, and it was after dark when Chatterlips was allowed to leave. Chatterlips went upstairs to his room to get ready for bed. To his surprise, Talky Tina was back in her usual spot on the shelf. Chatterlips picked the doll up.
"Tina, did you make that pony hurt his hoof?" He pulled the string, and an evil laugh came out of the doll. Enraged, Chatterlips flung her to the floor. "You shouldn't have done that, Tina! That was a nice pony! I think he's probably the best dad in the whole world!"
From the floor Chatterlips could hear the doll's piping voice. "You shouldn't have done that, Chatterlips."
It was autumn and the leaves were falling from the trees. When it got cold enough Chatterlips doused a pile of socks with gasoline and threw a match on top. He wouldn't let Wendy help with that part because it was too dangerous.
"It's getting chillly out here," Chatterlips said to himself. "Why didn't I bring a coat? Maybe I should get one..."
He decided to real quick, heading for the inn.
As soon as Chatterlips entered his room he noticed that it smelled funny. He barely had time to notice since at that instant he tripped over Talky Tina, who was lying right in the doorway, and slammed his head into the bedpost. Unconscious, he slumped to the floor.
A few minutes later the innkeeper was wondering why Chatterlips wasn't back with his jacket yet. At the same time he noticed the black smoke coming from upstairs.
"Oh my God, Chatterlip's still in there!" he screamed.
In a few moments a fire truck and ambulance had both arrived. The innkeeper and Chatterlips both had to be taken out of town to the nearest hospital and treated for smoke inhalation, and Chatterlips had also suffered a minor concussion, but neither one of them had suffered any permanent damage.
Six months later
Chatterlips now lived in another inn, but the innkeeper had had to move. All the furniture, clothing, appliances, toys, dolls, and everything else had been completely destroyed in the fire, so he had had to start all over again from scratch in accumulating material possessions. Chatterlips had no other possessions. Much more important to them was the fact that they had both survived and that none of them had suffered any permanent injury.
The construction crew had come to clear away the charred and blackened remains of a devastating fire. One of the men, Hammerhooves, thought he saw what looked like part of a doll leg sticking out from under a piece of debris. He moved the debris and to his amazement, there lay a filly doll in what appeared to be nearly perfect condition. With a good cleaning up to remove the black smudge she would be as good as new. He would take her home to his own little filly, Lemonhearts, who loved dolls. He noticed a string on her side and pulled it to see what would happen. "My name is Talky Tina, and I love you very much," the doll said. With a grin the construction worker tucked her under his foreleg and continued with his work, thinking to himself how thrilled Lemonhearts would be to see her new doll.
8 Years later
Canterlot had been no better than the rest of Equestria, and Ponysmouth-- Ponysmouth was stupid.
Chatterlips takes solace in the fact he was spared both, conveniently omitting the fact he'd been "cast out" to sit, perfectly alive, in this cellar. Enduring ponykind's more annoying mistakes was better then the dumb tortures the one princess implemented or the boring serenity of the other. His cellar is his haven, though he wishes sometimes that it hadn't kept him captive for so long.
At one point he'd sworn that he could not die. Countless suicide attempts and near-misses from frantic-for-revenge-captives only served to cement that in his mind as a Fact. Something always distracted him—the bag of pus always lay dead at his feet, not screaming or crying or gagging through profanities—and he was always as screwed up as before. And, despite these slip-ups, he never managed that release, that cold plateau of perfection; he believed this just as much as he believed he could never get caught.
Well, he'd been dead for the better part of an hour before being dragged back to the world of pungent personalities and restless functions: one more thing in his life down the drain.
He remembers the burping fat thing people prayed to, the cheerless lazy-boys spread across an empty plain. He remembers the cheer-leader, coat-stealing succubus.
Chatterlips remembers the clamminess of arriving in his own skin, the blinding pain that preceded the opening of his eyes and followed with every flicker of light; he remembers being born again into a used body and realizing he has no chance. No second chance.
If he belongs here, without a warm blanket or answers, he'll accept that, because there is nothing else to do. And if he does not belong in either places, he wonders what'll happen when he runs out of time or sanctuaries.
Will he—is he an immortal? Chatterlips chews on this sometimes and concludes he cannot pin-point whether it is a good or bad thing to want that. But emotions are pointless. Having an eternity of dealings with that is…annoying, trivial.
Will he be a ghost?
The implications of this theory are not lost on him. He gets visits, or got them, from some strangers and they used their time to mock him, like Sombra. They are listless shades speaking in monotone fragments or strange creatures from other place, drained of what made them deserve the death they were dealt. Nearly perfect. But could he still wield a purpose? Would he still hear the voices?
Did he want his hunger gone?
Would the cellar let him go or would he be bound to it still, to the impulsive needs of an out of touch monarch?
And what of the civil service ponies above? The poor ponies would be lost without Chatterlips there to protect them. If he were not able to in life (which he doubts) then he'd rip through walls with ectoplasmic hands, put said hands down the criminal’s throat and drag out a very real heart, that's what he'd do. A buddy. A buddy to torment. The mayor would be terrified no doubt, but all the better for it.
But that's the kind of thinking that got him here in the first place.
He smiles his chapped lips.
It's a good place to be.
