Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence

by Broseph_Stalin

Rating: teen
Tags: Slice of Life, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Dark, Alternate Universe, Sad, Original Character, Twilight Sparkle
Length: 13871

A journey inside our illusive mind.

Six individuals are unwilling victims to the dreadful psychological disorders that loom over us all. Their painful experiences show Twilight that, through these Six Degrees, one can only overcome mental anguish through compassion and understanding.

A careful weaving of a story through lyrics, and a tribute to a beautiful album. Based off of the songs in the album Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence by Dream Theater.

Published 2012-04-04 06:04:03 UTC
Last updated 2012-07-18 06:54:12 UTC

Overture

Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence

~By Sabre

Chapter I. – Overture

A rolling, bubbling sensation at the pit of Spike’s stomach forewarned him of the arrival of a very important letter from his beloved Princess, and he quickly set down the dusty pile of books he had been carrying. Bracing himself, he felt the gas rise and let out a hearty belch.

With a swirl of misty smoke and the sharp snap of wintergreen prickling at his nose, the baby dragon reached out and caught firmly the delicate scroll that had been transferred from the Office of the Princess right here into his claws.

Breaking the seal with a deft slice of his claw, he grinned as he read the letter to himself. His face fell slowly, however, as he took in the contents of the seemingly impromptu letter. Finally looking away from the confusing memo, he called out to his unicorn friend.

“Twilight? Hey, Twilight!”

Padding down the steps with the swish of scales, he went to go look for the Princess's student.

. . . .

“So, what does it mean, exactly?” Spike inquired of Twilight as the unicorn held the parchment aloft in magic’s sparkling grip. The pair was sitting at the table, snacking on hay fries and waiting for dinner to be ready.

“Well,” she began, slightly distracted as she re-read the letter, “the Princess wants me to go to Neighsville, and visit the sanatorium there.”

“But…why?” the baby dragon asked as he fidgeted nervously with the little spike on the end of his tail. The more obscure letters that the Princess sent to Twilight were always the most awful, and as far as he was concerned, the less words Princess Celestia sent to Twilight, the worse that things seemed to be.

“Dunno, Spike. All it says is, and I quote, ‘My dearest student Twilight. I would like you to travel to Neighsville tomorrow morning to visit the Sunny Pastures Mental Hospital. You will be meeting a doctor by the name of Looking Glass, who will be showing you around the place. While you are there, you will learn about the Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence. I expect you to pursue this assignment with an open and inquisitive mind, and I hope you enjoy yourself. Signed, Her Royal Highness, Princess Celestia.”

Twilight rolled up the letter with a shimmer of magic and set it neatly into the little white saddlebag that was sitting next to the kitchen doorway. She looked down on Spike’s nervous form with a self-assured grin.

“Is that something to do with the Elements of Harmony?" the little dragon asked. "What does that mean, ‘The Six Degrees of Inner Tumblance?’ With his nervous mind alleviated by the prospect of food, Spike shoved a mouthful of fries into his mouth and looked up at Twilight expectantly. She chuckled at her friend's silly mannerisms.

“Turbulence, Spike.” She laughed again at the little dragon’s “Oh,” as he sprayed bits of fries everywhere from out of his mouth. “And it means…well, I don’t know what that means, exactly. I guess I will find out, won’t I?” A grin spread wide across the unicorn’s face at the thought, and her mind worked in a fervor as it tried to figure out what the Princess had meant.

“Guess so,” Spike managed huskily through another mouthful of fries.

Twilight could only giggle lightheartedly at her friend.

. . . .

After a night of curious thoughts and suspicions, Twilight sat quietly at the Ponyville train station, waiting for the ten-thirty locomotive to pull in to its stop. Rifling through her saddlebag, she snuck a glance at the Princess's letter, and beheld the three words that had produced so much confusion for her. Unrolling it carefully, she saw the curious letters lit up by the early morning sun: “The Six Degrees.”

With a sigh, she rolled it up, put it back in, and shuffled further through her other belongings. The unicorn dragged up a worn-out copy of a medical book that had been buried under a stack of reference manuals in the library. With a sparkle of magic, she flipped through the pages of her copy of the PP-DSM-IV: the Pony Psychological Diagnostic and Statistics Manual, version four. It was, essentially, the unerring guide to every flaw, fault, oddity, and error of the pony mind. After looking through it last night, she had been shocked at the multitude of disorders, complications, and conundrums that the natural mind could bring about.

Even now, she had gotten caught up in the mystery of the distressed mind once again. It took a twinge in her neck and a sensation of soreness in her flanks to realize she had been sitting stuck in the same goofy position for almost forty minutes on the bench, flipping past page after page. As a fog of mist swept into the station, Twilight smiled at the train and packed up her things. Clambering up onto her cart, she looked back at where she had been sitting.

Caught within wisps of warm steam, the wooden bench seemed so alone and out of place on the plain, flat station floor. It was a marvel of ochre-hued difference amongst the unimpressive wash of the plain yellow-stained station. It caught her mind in an odd way, and she felt her smile crack even wider as her mind set itself in a novel little decision.

Struck with a profound sensation, she decided that no matter what she found at the hospital, no matter the diversity or the unnatural things she experienced, she would approach them with an open mind, a loving heart, and of course, a little help from her psychology text.

. . . .

After a long and pleasant trip through roving hills and farmland, Twilight Sparkle finally arrived in Neighsville. As she exited the bustling train station, she spotted the sanatorium through the steam of the locomotive from a short distance away. A green pony bumped her accidentally, leaving her with a short “Pardon” as he continued on his way, and Twilight made a private note to move with a purpose within the packed train station.

Collecting her bearings, the studious unicorn stepped off the long platform and let her gaze fall further on the little township. It obviously revolved around the goings-on at the psychiatric hospital, as the town itself seemed such a small and insignificant location, tucked next to the rolling green fields of farmland.

With a pleasant smile, she left the station at a brisk trot. As she approached the hospital, she noted that its expansive grounds were enclosed in a high brick wall that seemed quaint and peaceful from the outside. As Twilight was admitted inside, however, she realized as the façade fell away that this place was more like a prison than a retreat. A grimace sat on her features as she spotted heavy-set guards dressed in plain black clothes standing at various key points on the grounds. An uncomfortable thought set a wave of nausea in her stomach as she spotted the "L"-shaped police batons that sat menacingly upon their belts.

Feeling increasingly more disheveled, Twilight looked around once more with a careful amethyst eye at what they could possibly need to use those formidable clubs on. As she trotted forward, she spotted various ponies dressed in yellow coveralls that were bounding around the long pastures with the casual indifference and airy demeanor of a group of foals. Other ponies sat listlessly in worn white wicker lawn furniture that looked older than the weathered book in her bag. Two earth ponies sat unmoving at a table, playing what she assumed to be checkers, but a second glance revealed it to be chess, much to her mild surprise.

As she continued up the neat little cobblestone pathway to grand oak doors, she saw a sawdust-colored unicorn in neat square glasses who seemed incredibly out of place amongst the guards and patients. He was standing smartly in a blanched white overcoat at the top of the entryway stairs, and he extended a hoof as she approached him. Twilight took it professionally, and greeted the doctor with a curt nod.

“Hello, Twilight Sparkle. My Name is Doctor Looking Glass, but you can call me Dr. Glass, for short.” He smiled keenly at her and released her hoof. “Welcome to Sunny Pastures." Peering over his glasses, he held his smile solidly upon her. "Is it as you expected it to be?”

A second glance revealed that his square face was set with slight wrinkles, which were framed by his neatly combed and grizzled mane. He looked on at her, patiently awaiting her reply. The purple unicorn merely glanced sidelong at a black-robed guard that stood next to the heavy-looking doors.

“Yes, I...think it about fits the way I imagined it, Doctor” she said finally, picking her words carefully. She broke her gaze from the muscular guard and indicated to the thick doors with a nod and a plastered smile. “Shall we begin?”

“Yes, of course! Follow me, please, if you will.” Dr. Glass said, returning his guest's pleasant smile. He turned to go inside enthusiastically, pushing the large door far easier than Twilight had expected it would move.

She trotted inside after the doctor, and felt the professional smile on her face fall slowly. Nervous thoughts prickled at her mind as she wondered what she would possibly find here, in a place where burly guards with clubs oversaw ponies who seemed as content and nonthreatening as little fillies.

About to Crash

Chapter II. – About to Crash: Golden Flash

"What goes up...

...must come down." -Anonymous

. . . .

The first thing Twilight’s eye fell upon as she walked into the bustling main hospital lobby was a pegasus, who fidgeted nervously with a seemingly pent-up energy. Even though nurses, doctors, and other yellow-garbed patients filed through the lobby nonstop like little cells through an organism, the pegasus' gaze struck Twilight with an intensity of love and compassion, and her bright silver eyes were framed against her aquamarine coat and long, wind-swept golden mane in a heartily becoming manner.

With another curious glance, Twilight saw revealed inside the pagasus' windows of the soul a curious image: the pain of a pony that could only have known the bounds of two opposites of mental anguish. Her cutie mark stood out boldly from the crowd, and showed upon her flank a bright shining sun, cut in half by a swath of the full midnight moon. Beside her was a brown pegasus who sat looking for all the world as though he had not slept in a week. A large purple bruise sat ringed around his left eye, and the cloudy green orbs reflected a mirror that held the aquamarine pagasus in a sense of fear and degradation.

The energetic mare shot a nervous glance at her surroundings and suddenly lept up with a tearful cry, jarring Twilight a great deal at the sudden outburst. Several ponies around her merely turned their heads for a moment, and then continued onward, completely nonplussed.

“I’m alive again! Darkness far behind me!” the pegasus shouted. She turned to the brown stallion, her face lit up in wild excitement. He merely coughed awkwardly, and responded weakly.

“Now, Golden…”

The mare wouldn’t have any of it, though. Her face was set in absolute surety.

“I’m invincible. Despair will never find me!” With a kick, she flapped her wings, hard, as she tried to take off. The brown pegasus, pea-green eyes wide with fright, tried to jump on her to stop her frantic flight. He recoiled backwards with a crack as the mare sent an unintentional kick to his jaw, and bowled backwards right into the chair he had been sitting on.

Black-clothed guards seemed to appear out of nowhere, and, grabbing ahold of the wildly elated pegasus, proceeded to hold her wings so she could not move. She screamed out loud with a desperate, piercing sound that scared Twilight further.

“Boundless energy! Euphoric sensations!” Her face cracked under the strain of the struggle, and her silvery eyes glanced about, moistened with fear and anxious with fright.

She finally broke into flooding tears as the situation became far more than she could possibly handle. Weeping heavily, she relaxed her body, and let the guards place her, limp as a rag doll, back in her chair. The brown pegasus joined her, his face more sullen than Twilight could imagine anypony’s could be as he ran a hoof numbly through her long mane and nursed his bleeding mouth with another.

Twilight's eyes were wide as her face stood in barely controllable shock. But still, she felt oddly drawn towards the golden-haired pegasus. The unicorn turned to Dr. Glass sharply, and dropped her shaking voice to a low whisper as the din in the entry hall subsided to the normal chatter.

“Doctor, what can you, ah, tell me about her?” she inquired, subtly pointing a slightly quivering hoof at the pair. The mare was weeping quietly, and the aura of boundless energy seemed to have drained from her form completely.

“An interesting first encounter, wouldn't you say?" He chuckled slightly as his guest's eyes darted back and forth nervously.

"That would be Golden Flash. A very new arrival, I believe they’re just getting her into processing. Her husband there, Matthias Bane," he pointed to the tired-looking pegasus, “is admitting her. She has bipolar disorder, and he is worried her bouts of mania are too much for him to handle alone, as you may tell from what you saw. The black eye, as well. Completely by accident, but something she has no control over. So, that’s why we offer help.” Dr. Glass beamed at Twilight, appreciating a chance to show that the hospital offered a benefit to society.

“Ah, I see,” she said as her articulate mind filed away the bit of information. Her gaze returned to the brilliant mare. The pegasus' spirit seemed...trapped. Ensnared within the form of a physical manifestation.

All she wants is freedom...

. . . .

...And of course, it can't possibly be easy for her. Especially for a young pegasus with a mind split straight down the causeway of emotion. I can only imagine what her life could be like.

She can’t stop pacing.

“I’ve never felt so alive!” Golden Flash proclaimed breathlessly. Her thoughts were racing now, and set on overdrive.

Running around the house, she left an easily-identifiable wake of destruction behind her, as pots boiled over and objects lay strewn about haphazardly. She tripped over an overturned rocking chair, dusted herself off, and fell into a fit of unexplainable giggles. Suddenly, her face hardened, dead serious.

“It takes a village,” she mumbled to herself. This she knows is true, and she's said it so many time before. With a sudden burst of inspiration, Golden ran into the laundry room to grab her husband Matthias’ formal suit for alterations. Sure, the Cloudsdale Charity Event began in less than a half hour, but she didn’t care. They’re expecting her, but she’s got work to do!

Matthias Bane helplessly stood by, his mane slicked back and his form half-dressed in his sharp suit, save for the long, black overcoat that Golden was now going mad with. He watched in shock as his wife ripped his tailored suit cleanly in half as she attempted to vigorously apply some insane new idea that her mind had thought up. Matthias took a step forward to attempt to wrestle his already-ruined jacket from the aquamarine pegasus, but stopped himself short with a grimace.

It’s meaningless to try, he thought disparagingly. As he rubbed his red-rimmed eyes, he said to himself,

“I’ve never seen her get this bad.”

She skipped from the sewing dresser, piled high with ripped and shredded fabrics, over to the kitchen, and proceeded to stir pots and pans. In her wild bout of euphoria, she glanced right over the fact that some pots either had no water left in them, or that they were boiling over furiously, setting the flames hissing and spitting. Another notion caught and held her, and she dashed back to the laundry room, rummaging through a pile of dresses.

"Hon, where's my purple dress? Where's the purple dress!?" she cried to the weary brown pegasus. The stallion took a step forward and opened his mouth to speak, but shut it as soon as she burst out of the closet, scattering a multitude of wrinkled dresses. Hugging her favorite purple gown close to her chest, she danced and skipped around, pirouetting with the dress to music that only she could possibly hear.

Matthias did not move from the spot.

Even though she seemed so high, he knows that she can’t fly. And when she falls out of the sky, he thought with a sigh...

He’ll be standing by. He always is.

. . . .

Things hadn't always been this bad, but they hadn't started off grandly, either. As Golden Flash wriggled into her flowing purple gown with the occasional squeak, Matthias’ thoughts fell back to when he had first met his beloved wife.

From what he had told her, he knew that she had been raised in a small Midwestern town, by some charming and eccentric loving father (rest his soul). She had been praised as the "perfect teenage mare," and everypony had always thought very highly of her.

But she cried, every day. And with endless drive, to make the grade, she worked her hoof to the bone to keep up that image. She had told Matthias that it was no small task, and he believed her.

Then one day, she woke up to find: this perfect pony had lost her mind. Her father moved with her to Cloudsdale, and she had become a shut-in there, hell-bent on ensuring she saw as little of the light of day as possible.

But Golden's spirit was not one to be tamed, and after a little more than a year, she had found the air under her wings again. The first time she had taken off from her home, she fell-- and bumped straight into a young, strong-willed brown pegasus named Matthias Bane.

From there, it had been like a dream for the pair. Her willingness for novel experiences was richly refreshing for Matthias, who had grown up in the same cloudy city for his whole life.

. . . .

After having struggled into her long, violet dress, Golden now sat at the mirror, washing her face with brilliant colors and shadows that enhanced her beauty ever-so-carefully.

"Hon..." Matthias said gently to his preening wife as he checked his watch. The Event had started over twenty minutes ago. "I don't have a suit to wear tonight, it seems you, ah..." He stopped as she whipped around with an angry look on her face, makeup halfway-finished.

"Mathi! I'm busy, can't you see! I still have to do my mane!" Turning back around with a flash of golden hair, she started rustling through drawers, throwing things out with a careless hoof. Matthias' face fell with a grimace. He recollected on a time when she had been like this, her mania seeming to engulf everything she did, like when she would drag him outside to fly daily, even in the frigid and pouring rain.

Dodging a bottle of Mane n' Tail, Matthias took a leave of absence to go lie on the couch. Painful thoughts stung at his exhausted mind as he remembered the last time she had been so full of energy...

Because even though he knows that she gets so high, and thinks that she can fly, he knows that she will fall out of the sky eventually.

She has to.

. . . .

In the cloudy haze of a painful memory, Matthias, decked out in the white uniform of a pegasus workhorse, floated on a gentle breeze to his home, his body sore but face split in a wide grin. Even though he had had the longest day of his life at the Rainbow Factory, it was time to relax. It was his and Golden's one-year anniversary, after all!

Armed with an assortment of fresh roses, he alighted in front of his home, and awkwardly shifted the effort from his white hard-hat to the bundle of sweet-smelling flowers. After fumbling with his keys, he looked up with a smile as he held the shining ring aloft to the door. The smile fell fast, though, as he saw that the door was, in fact, flung wide open, a tiny crack forming along the top hinge where it looked like it had been busted open.

"Golden?" he cried inside the darkened hallway. His voice was caught now with surprise- what happened here? Setting his white hard-hat down with a clatter, he saw where a whole dish of hayseed had been thrown in the umbrella holder, as if they had been completely forgotten and tossed aside.

"Oh..." he breathed. "Oh no." Throwing down the beautifully-wrapped bouquet, he took off in the air to find his beloved wife.

He first searched the pine forest that they the pair always loved to fly together in. Soaring and swooping as low over the trees as he dared, he called out Golden's name fruitlessly into the unyielding treeline. It wasn’t until late into the night, by the moon's merciful light, that he found her unconscious form at the foot of a tree, blood dripping from out of her nose. Her wing was broken in a gruesome manner, and her eyes were half shut and glazed over. Her face was caught in a scowl of surprise.

Picking up her broken form, he took off slowly into the air. Flying by the stars, her whipping mane mixed with his tears as he cried the whole way home, carrying her gentle body in his forearms.

After the aquamarine pegasus found out what had happened to her in the forest, she spiraled downwards. Once barely taking a break, she now slept her days away. All she wanted to do was cry. Food tasted like ash, water was acid, sunlight was an acrid bane. No one ever knew she could be so sad.

And all Matthias could do was stand helplessly by. He knew that it was meaningless to try.

But, in the face of misery, she found hopefulness. Feeling better, she had weathered this depression. Her wing healed. She returned to her usual self, riding the locomotive of mania up to the point of where she was now.

. . . .

In the present day, Matthias stood by, watching carefully as his wife jumped in the shower with her dress still on, makeup running fast down her smiling face in a gruesomely weird way. The Charity Event had ended almost an hour ago, but she was still clamoring around the house getting ready.

He had to do something to stop these destructive fits.

. . . .

Much to her advantage, Golden resumed a frantic pace. Fresh out of the shower, the house was her stomping ground as her mind surged in euphoric mania. Parading around in a soaking-wet dress, she knocked over furniture, priceless family objects, and even managed to spill a whole pantry-full of daisy-bread on the floor, and proceeded to dance on the slices to some unhearable symphony.

Boundless power, midnight hour.

"Mathi, don't look so glum! Just wait for the party!"

She enjoyed the race.

War Inside My Head

Chapter III. – War inside My Head: Silver Star

"What the horrors of war are, no one can imagine. They are not wounds and blood and fever...They are intoxication, drunken brutality, demoralization and disorder on the part of the inferior..."

-Florence Nightingale

. . . .

As Twilight and Dr. Glass wandered further down the hall, something caught the unicorn's keen eye as she walked down the long corridor. The carpeted grey walls were lined with plaques for doctors and awards for the hospital’s effective application of modern medicines, but this one stood out to her like a tell-tale beacon on a moonless night.

Coming closer, she dodged a nurse that was cantering down the hall in some sort of hurry, and looked on a plaque of ebony marble set on dark mahogany. A picture of a stoic-looking soldier stood alone, dressed in the uniform of the Equestrian Marine Corps. Across the side of his head there was a large wound that looked like a nasty burn,and it looked as though his short brown mane would never grow back where the scar zig-zagged across his skull. The kingdom’s flag lay behind him, its bold colors in stark contrast with his sharp, grey suit and tight-lipped grimace.

A single silver dog tag sat mounted on the plaque. Twilight spotted the small, rust-colored spot that lay stained upon its polished surface with a curious look.

“'Lance Corporal Silver Star,’” she read out loud as the doctor approached her from behind. “'Father, husband, son, and a loyal Marine to the end,’” she read further upon the plaque's inscription.

“Yes, he was patient we had here. He was a combat veteran and, as I am told, the bravest stallion his squadron had ever seen. He lived his days like any other pony would want: a family and a simple home in the small town here, far outside the bustling city. A local, he visited once in a while after he complained of nightmares and acute irritability, but he shortly stopped coming.

"From what I have learned about him, a fatal attack left every pony in his platoon dead, save for him." Dr glass shook his head morbidly. "Dragging his best friend’s body across a blasted tarmac would certainly leave its fair share of mental scars. It was a very clear-cut case of posttraumatic stress disorder, if I ever saw it,” the doctor said, reminiscing. “As far as I can remember, he had a wife and a filly, but I couldn’t say what became of them.”

Blinking back shocked tears that formed over her moon-glass eyes, Twilight brought forth the manual from her pack to distract herself, and flipped absentmindedly to the right page. After scanning over the doctor's described affliction, she settled it back into her pack.

“And what happened to him?” she asked a little shakily, without turning her gaze from the stallion’s portrait.

“It seems the stress had gotten to him...you could almost say that a literal war raged inside his head. It happened recently, in fact. Not some two weeks ago, we got a letter from the police station stating that the patient had been found dead in his home, as is protocol for all deaths relating to hospital patients. Suicide was the culprit, as a recently fired handgun had been found in his hoof."

At this, Twilight gasped aloud.

"S-suicide?" her startled voice said as a wave of nausea washed over her. She glanced quickly from the rust-colored spot on the dog tag and back to Dr Glass, who just nodded calmly.

"That spot you see there is actually his own blood. The very last blood he spilled for his country, in fact. The police chief, whose son had served with Silver Star some years back himself, showed up with that very same dog tag, retrieved from the poor stallion's body after it had been cleared from use as evidence." He paused, and looked at Twilight curiously.

"You seem awfully put-off about that, Ms. Sparkle." Twilight attempted to remove the grimace from her face, but an odd mix of remorse was rocking her stomach in a painful way, and she felt as though her knees were going to lock.

"Erm, well doctor," she coughed, "I've never really been around something like this. In fact, I have never heard of a pony committing suicide, much less with a gun." Her face darkened as she felt her insides churn once more. "A product of a sheltered life, I guess?" She laughed awkwardly.

Dr. Glass looked over his spectacles at the unicorn before him.

"You would be surprised I think, Ms. Sparkle. The world can be a dark place."

Twilight nodded, attempting to swallow her nausea. She stared into the stallion’s eyes and felt her mind captured. The pinpricks of ice that glanced out from below the stallion's dress cap seemed to emanate with a power of surety, and with the strength necessary to stand by in such a dark world and watch over his country while other ponies slept soundly.

A life cut short before his time...

. . . .

...And a mind twisted beyond all recognition by the Horrors of War. What could possibly have happened to him?

Napalm…

Napalm…

Napalm showers!

Showed the cowards weren’t there to mess around.

Heat exhaustion, mind distortion: a military victory mounted on innocent ground.

. . . .

Ret. L.Cpl. Star sat up with a blaring shout. The sound reverberated off the walls, hurting his ears as he awoke screaming.

His wife, Berry Cream, awoke with a gasp and turned on the lamp right away. She found her husband with his face in his hooves, sobbing, and she comforted him as he shook uncontrollably.

“Silver, my love, what’s wrong?” she asked gently. Her husband’s shaking seemed to be calming down at her touch.

“Just…a bad dream,” he gasped, wiping his eyes. “It’s okay. I’m okay,” he added as he saw the look of concern on Berry’s face. Her unkempt mane fell across her shoulders, red and white.

“Again?” she sighed. Silver nodded morosely. Both ponies cocked their ears as they heard a foal crying in the other room.

“Guess I had better make sure Blue Berry is okay,” Berry sighed as she got out of bed. Silver lay back down, staring up at the ceiling blankly. He knew this wasn’t the first time this had happened, not by a long shot. And it was getting worse. A whisper echoed in his blank mind:

A war inside my head…

. . . .

The next morning, he found the dream still stinging at his consciousness with an animal fear. He tried to shake it clear, but couldn’t jar it from his head.

Seated at the breakfast table, he thought back to the sessions he had had at Neighsville Psychiatric, but shook it away. They never seemed to do anything but bring up more and more thoughts that haunted him. He had promptly canceled them, unbeknownst to Berry, who had suggested them in the first place. With a surprising prickle of anger, he finally decided to distract himself in the morning paper.

Berry Cream walked in with Blue Berry in one arm and set her in her high chair.

“Well hello, my big strong filly,” Silver said to his daughter. She cooed and burbled at his call. Laughing to himself, he glanced over as Berry began to prepare breakfast. A smile spread fast across his face as he realized what an incredibly lucky pony he was to have such a beautiful family, as well as a local manufacturing job near his house in a rural part of Equestria.

He finally settled into his paper, smile still etched on his lips. As he opened it, he came across a column on the war that raged in the far east of Equestria. His face dropped slightly as he saw the report of fallen soldiers in the past week: 24,030 had lost their lives fighting so far, and that number was steadily rising. Anger rose up in his mind as he read the drivel that the reporters tried to use to paint a picture of a hopeful war against the imperialistic Griffins.

Hearing voices from miles away- the ghosts of his fellow soldiers seemed to scream to him that the idiocy these stupid ponies were writing about wasn’t at all what the war was like. Rage spiked in his mind, hot blood burning his face.

He threw down the paper angrily. Berry Cream noticed his frustration.

“What’s wrong dear? Apple stocks not rising this quarter?” she joked lightheartedly as she stood whipping a bowl of cream.

Silver snapped at her, shouting at the top of his voice; the volume shocked him. He ignored it.

“No, you wouldn’t bucking understand. So how about you just shut up and get out of here you stupid cow!” He whipped around to his wife, whose normally tranquil face was modeled in shock. A gruesome, haunting fire burned in his tearing eyes.

Berry's voice sat steady as she replied. This had happened before, and she was here to help. The doctor had told her what to do in these situations.

“Now, Silver. It’s okay, I promise.” She put as much care and compassion into her words as she could manage, and stepped forward around the counter.

Silver jumped up in surprise, more furious than ever, and knocked a plate off the table. As it smashed against the floor with a resounding crack, Blue Berry burst into startled tears, though Silver didn't even notice. Ghosts of the ponies he had shot and killed loomed on his manic mind. He felt the breaking point approach as machine-gun fire screamed away somewhere in the distance.

Berry’s form seemed to flow like mercury in his vision, her peaceful features melting away to a demonic mirage. His mind was set to panic as lines and curves turned to jutting skeletal angles. He ran over to the counter, grabbing a knife, and faced the dreaded spectre in front of him.

“Don’t! Don’t you dare get near me! Get out!” he screamed hysterically, menacing the gruesome vision. He felt the wood of the knife handle crack in his white-hoofed grip as he waved it wildly.

Saying things never said…

The world crashed into focus around him with a deafening roar. The knife dropped from his hoof, clattering to the floor. Blue Berry's cries were shrill and high pitched now, not having been attended to. The sink that had been running flowed over dishes in a waterfall's cascade of sound. He realized far too late at what he had just done.

“Oh Celestia, Berry, I’m so sorry, I don’t even know where that came from,” he pleaded with her quickly, hoping he sounded as sincere as he was. His face changed quickly to degraded panic as tears sprang up.

Berry’s lavender eyes mirrored his as thick drops flowed down her face.

“I’m going to go,” she said thickly, and grabbing Blue Berry, left in a hurry out the front door. Silver sat numbly, dumbfounded at what had happened.

Seeing shadows in the light of the day... Raging a war inside my head!

. . . .

Berry Cream didn’t come back. Silver had waited half the day for her, and finally decided to just sit up in his room. He never had gone to work that day, and didn’t particularly plan on doing anything until she got back. He let his mind wander aimlessly.

Somewhere, a tractor backfired on its way to the farms at the other end of town. At this, Silver’s mind snapped in at attention and he hit the floor with a resounding thud.

His mind sent words to his body. Single, direct orders burned in by reflexive use:

Drop. Crawl. Kill.

Silver obeyed. What else could he do?

He felt his mind back in the jungle as bullets whizzed past his head. Thoughts and visions fired away faster than the machine-guns that screamed in the edges of his estranged mind.

Years and years of bloodshed and warfare. Our only mission was to get in and kill.

A free vacation of palm trees and shrapnel? Merely trading innocence for psychotic ill.

Waging a war inside my head!

. . . .

The sun had just set, leaving an eerie twilight inside the dark house. Shadows sat twisted and strange within the stallion's room as Silver sat stiffly on the edge of the bed.

Faces seemed to claw their way into his sight as he glanced in the direction of darkening corners. He shook his head violently as he tried to clear them away, but they always sat there, watching.

He flinched at the sound of hooves on pavement as a pony passed by his house, and let out a shuddering sigh as he looked sidelong at the bed. Next to him sat a revolver. Point-three-thirty-eight magnum caliber, standard issue. A single, gleaming bullet lay next to it.

He held his head in his hooves and wept silently, his body wracked with great sobs.

Cries seemed to resound to him from beyond this life. The voices of his buddies Tate and Brown Barrel echoed in his empty mind. He sat, weeping harder. More ghostly thoughts raised in his mind.

Feeling strangers staring my way. Reading minds never read…

Earlier, he had heard the whispers of two ponies right outside his house, on the sidewalk. He had peered, agitated, out the shut blinds. The figures stood not a foot away from each other, just outside the reach of the lamppost’s warm glare.

They’re here to kill me! his frenzied mind shouted in protest. He had promptly screamed at them through the crack in the blinds, threatening their lives if they so much as got near his home.

He realized with a grimace as they passed into the amber light that they had simply been lovers meeting at twilight’s embrace. Guilt had engulfed his panic-stricken mind.

Tasting danger with each word that I say, he had thought morbidly.

Raging a war inside my head! shouted the same voice.

Thoughts crashed back to the here-and-now.

Fumbling, he picked up the revolver, and dropped in the single bullet. The click of the cocked hammer resounded in the empty room. This was the last strain his mind could take, and he heard it moan in strangled anguish.

A war inside my head.

He laughed bitterly at the idea as he pulled the trigger.

Good Night Kiss

Chapter V. – Goodnight Kiss: Willow Bough

“It's so much darker when a light goes out than it would have been if it had never shone.”

-John Steinbeck

. . . .

After all the patients had been situated inside the sun room, Twilight followed Dr. Glass onto the grounds. She realized that Patient Group Four must have included all the ponies capable of enjoying themselves outside. Those that remained in open air all sat around listless and unmoving, or simply stood around, not really sure of what to do.

She felt the familiar sense of her view being drawn in a single direction, and allowed it to take over as her eyes rested on the prostrate form of a lilac unicorn on a white wicker couch, and spotted the unicorn's cutie mark upon her flank: a pastoral butterfly. Twilight realized with a shock that her left wrist was bound in a snow white bandage and red scars seemed burned into her skin all up and down her forelegs.

Behind a gentle curtain of flowing white curls, the mare's ebony eyes stood out bold and endearing to Twilight. She nudged Dr. Glass, who was talking with a white-garbed assistant.

“Who is that, over there?” she murmured.

“That would be Willow Bough," he replied with a heavy sigh. "Poor mare...I doubt there’s a single scribe in Equestria that could write out her story as tragic as it truly is.” He nodded slightly at the bandage. “She is the kind of pony that would never hurt a fly, but suffers from a very acute case of depression. Post-partum depression, to be precise. Losing her two-and-a-half year-old filly foal out of the blue couldn’t be easy on her, let alone on anypony.

“The bandage,” he said, indicating with a nod once more, “is actually from last night. We had found her in her room with a shard of metal she had picked up around the grounds…She’s been in infirmary since late this morning, due to traumatic blood loss.” He nodded at the large assistant who stood just apart from Willow. “She has been on close watch ever since.”

Twilight felt her violet eyes go wide at this, but she was so thoroughly enraptured that she felt strangely drawn at the unicorn’s plight. Her story was something straight out of tragedy, after all. But at the same time, Twilight felt grossly uncomfortable shame at the unicorn’s self-destructive habit that stood blatantly across her arms. Finally making up her mind, she asked the doctor:

“May I go talk to her?”

“You may, just be sensitive about what it is you say,” the doctor confirmed sternly.

Twilight walked slowly over to the unicorn. As Willow regarded her visitor's approach, Twilight was struck at her most prominent feature: her ebony eyes seemed to capture the very light of the day and hold it lovingly, but also seemed dried out and tired, presumably from incessant amounts of crying. The purple unicorn put on the very best smile she could muster.

“Hello. A beautiful day, isn’t it?” Twilight looked around at the rolling green pasture. The lilac unicorn sat up lazily, paying special attention to her bandaged hoof against the white wicker chair. Twilight caught herself staring out of the corner of her eye at the scars that riddled her arms, and quickly looked away.

“I suppose so,” she said in a husky tone. She eyed Twilight with a casual indifference. “Who are you, if I may ask?”

“My name is Twilight Sparkle,” she said, and offered a hoof carefully.

The lilac unicorn took it delicately. “I’m Willow,” is all she said, and dropped the proffered hoof listlessly.

“So how long have you been at Sunny Pastures, Willow?”

Willow’s ebony eyes looked around as she dredged up thoughts from the depths of her mind.

“It would be four years this Tuesday,” she said finally. “Apparently I get a cake. That’s really nice.”

There was nothing hopeful about the unicorn’s tone. Twilight’s face dropped slightly at what she said.

“Well, that does sound really nice." An awkward pause held over as Twilight grasped for something to say. "What are you here for, if I may inquire?”

Willow shot an arbitrary glance at Twilight, and readjusted herself with a sigh. “The doctors tell me I’m depressed. Of course, that wouldn’t be so bad, would it, if I weren’t so prone these.” At this, she lifted a scar-ridden arm, showing them off like jewelry. Twilight was taken aback at her flagrancy, and almost took a step back at the shocking display. “Something I can’t really help,” she added morosely. Her mouth fell to a slight frown as she saw her listener’s reaction.

“I suppose not, no,” Twilight said quickly to cover her embarrassment, and readjusted her footing anxiously.

A thick pause was held in the air for a brief second. Finally, Willow broke it.

“And what, exactly, are you doing here at Sunny Pastures? You seem just fine.” Her tone was flat and slightly scathing, but Twilight smiled kindheartedly as she tried to counter the unicorn’s negative vibe.

“I’m just here to visit, to meet special ponies such as yourself.”

Willow sighed, and sat up, finally at her full height. Opalescent white curls fell around her face, framing it in a way that reminded Twilight oddly of her own mother.

“Honey, I’m no ‘special pony.’ I’m just a silly filly who’s lost her mind.” Her voice held a deep, maternal air, and as she said this, she looked off into the distance; tears clouded her brilliant eyes.

Twilight took it as a silent notion of being the end of their conversation. With a slight bow, and a “Thanks for your time,” she slipped off to meet back up with Dr. Glass.

As she trotted over to him, she found the doctor giving her a curious glance from over his shining spectacles.

“And how was your conversation with Miss Willow?” he asked, genuinely interested.

Twilight could only shake her head at his question. “I don’t know if I could say for sure.” A heavy pause held still as the sounds of chirping birds punctuated the air.

"Doctor?"

"Yes, Ms. Sparkle?"

"Do you know...why she does that? With her arms?" Twilight said awkwardly. Hot emberassment rose up as she realized that she wasn't sure how to address the unicorn's cuts. The doctor's eyes seemed to light up as a memory flooded to him.

"I well tell you, Twilight. This is something Willow had shared with me some time ago. She said that for her, cutting meant consistency. Every time the metal slid across her skin, it was the same feeling. Every time the blood let...it was the same. I believe that, in her eyes, it replaced the mindset that was her lost foal, and instilled upon her something of a solid ground for her shattered mind to alight unto." He paused, and glanced over at the reclining mare with a careful eye. "Do you get what I'm saying, Ms. Sparkle?"

Twilight nodded.

"I think so, Doctor." She let her gaze fall on the poor unicorn too as her voice dropped to a whisper.

"I hope so..."

. . . .

"...I can only imagine what could have happened to bring a mother to such desperation."

In the murky embrace of the previous night, Willow Bough was alone. Caught helpless in the darkness of her room, she cried relentlessly, face buried in a tear stained pillow. Between sobs, her mind drifted back in time…

A velvet colored little philly was prancing around the backyard, her hooves muddy and mane sandy from the simple red sandbox that stood in the middle of the green yard.

“Look mommy, I’m building a house,” she giggled gleefully, pointing to the bricks and sand castles she had constructed in the sandbox.

Willow let out a slight sigh of strangled ecstasy, and said with a smile “Yes you did! Good job, my little pony!”

“Uh oh...It’s falling down,” the tiny red unicorn said. “Timber!”

Rose Petal ran around the yard, her peals of laughter seeming to come from the springtime grass itself.

These were the best of times.

. . . .

“Good night, momma.” Rose Petal’s expectant eyes searched her mother’s face lovingly as she snuggled deeper into the comfortable bliss of her brand-new big-filly bed. Stuffed animals lay piled around the tiny unicorn.

“Good night my silly philly,” Willow said with a whisper, taking extreme care to lay a delicate kiss on the little unicorn’s forehead. “I love you.”

Goodnight kiss in your night gown, lavender in your bed…So innocent as you lie down, she thought, a pining smile touching her lips. Oh, the sweet dreams that run through your head!

It had been the very last time she had said I love you to her daughter.

. . . .

Willow choked on sobs as the enchanting memory faded away into black mist. She looked out the barred window, the moon a brilliant silver bauble hung in the dark sky. A resounding ache settled in her gut as she knew that even the moon had the stars to keep it company…

She reached out with her thoughts miserably.

Are you lonely without mommy’s love? I want you to know I’d die for that moment. You’re just a poor foal, afraid of this cruel world. Taken away from it all!

Her head shot straight back into the cold pillow, and her eyes burned as tears streamed out of them. It was like this every night, as far as she could remember.

It’s been five years to the day and my tainted blood’s still the same, she sobbed, mind reeling in a familiar sea of depression as the blame shifted to her own self. She felt trapped on a sinking ship in the tumultuous ocean of regret.

Willow felt a hoof glance over the cold glint of metal under her pillow- a very recent companion, and the only one she allowed in her dark thoughts as she lie alone under night's watch.

Can’t help acting this way, she thought to herself miserably, as her mind focused on the razor shard of steel. A crack of lightning sounded inside her mind now. The bounds of the impetuous sea rushed into a far off land as anger took over her thoughts: Those bastard doctors are gonna pay!

It was they who had killed her foal, her poor little Rose Petal.

. . . .

She had woken up that fateful night to find Rose Petal gasping for air. Her purple face had sent waves of horrifying shock through Willow’s psyche as she grabbed her choking foal and sprinted as fast as her hooves could take her to the hospital.

She had burst in screaming, pleading hysterically through tears to help save her baby foal. The nurses made short work of the intrusion, and had Willow seated, sniffling in the waiting room as her Rose Petal was put into intensive care.

After what seemed to be half a lifetime, the doctor came in, face stoic and voice level. The poor mother broke down as the nameless doctor told her flatly that her daughter had died in surgery of complications.

. . . .

I’m just so lonely without baby’s love…

She felt the cold metal slide across her skin, ever so delicately. It was against everything they told her, ordered her, but she did it anyways. She had to. It had been far too long since the last cut, since she had felt the surety it gave to her in this storm of fear.

I want you to know I’d die for just one more moment.

She gasped as she felt the blood let. Tears of ecstatic pain replaced those of sorrow.

I’m just a poor mare, afraid of this cruel world…

She had been screaming. The guards burst in, proceeding to hold her down as they took away the bloody shard of metal and hold fast the flow of hot crimson liquid as it splashed upon the white sheets; a virginal snow, tainted.

Taken away from it all…

Solitary Shell

Chapter VI. - Solitary Shell: Briar Bush

"Only in quiet waters do things mirror themselves undistorted. Only in a quiet mind is adequate perception of the world."

-Hans Margolius

. . . .

Twilight joined the doctor as they journeyed back inside the hospital. As they entered the rumpus room, her eyes rested keenly on a brown stallion that sat scribbling away madly with magic into a very large book. She stopped, smiling, and pondered at what she saw before her.

He seemed no different from the rest. Twilight's eyes hardened as she focused on his wildly-flailing quill. Just a healthy, normal pony. Content that he seemed regular enough, she started to step forward to talk to a fellow wordsmith.

Doctor Glass stepped up behind her. “Ah, I see you’ve found Briar Bush,” he commented lightly. Twilight stopped in place.

“Yes,” she answered, and turned around to face the doctor. “But he doesn’t even look like there is anything wrong with him, doctor. In fact, I was going to go talk to him about what he's writing. I always enjoy talking with other authors.” A large grin spread across her face at the thought.

“You might be surprised, Twilight.” He looked up past Twilight, a private smile spreading across his sawdust-colored face. He glanced up, and then looked back to his guest. "Here, watch now, if you will," and he pointed gently in the direction of another pony that had walked into the room. Twilight and turned back around to look to whatever the doctor was indicating.

A rosy mare, a patient dressed in yellow plainclothes, had stopped directly in front of him. The stallion was fast at work; his thoughts were ablaze as his horn sparked to keep up with the furious amounts of writing he had been doing. He looked up suddenly with a jolt, as though he had been shaken awake from a dream.

The mare smiled widely, a milk-white wildflower grasped in between her teeth. The flower looked as though it had been rooted from out of the ground in the garden, as clumps of loamy dirt still clung to the ripped out roots. The mare's misty azure eyes seemed to steal Briar's very breath away as he squirmed incessantly.

“Hi,” she said plainly, her mouth still full of flower and her mind far away. “Hi. Hi. Hello,” she said over and over again. The brown unicorn's mind was in a blind panic, and he stumbled around as it tried to fix this inexcusable interruption in his story.

"I got this for you." The rosy mare dropped the flower she had been holding in her mouth onto the paper that Briar had been working on. Bits of dirt spilled on the paper, and stained the virginal alabaster parchment. Briar's mouth went agape in a look of intense horror at the action.

"You can be my coltfriend now, right Briar?" The quirky mare merely looked slightly past a stunned Briar, and her smile was a goofy crack across her face that betrayed her simple mind.

“T-t-Tear D-Drop!” he stammered dumbly to the white-garbed guard. As quickly as he called, the large, snowy stallion came over to escort the mare away from Briar.

“Come on now, Matilda, let’s leave Briar alone okay? Let’s go see what’s going on outside,” Twilight heard Tear Drop say calmly as the two walked outside. The mare's eyes got moist as she was led away.

"B-but I was askin' Briar to be my coltfriend, Tear Drop. Oh-honest! I even g-got a flower for 'im." Matilda simpered as she was led outside.

"Mm-hmm, that's right, ma'am. But he's usually busy, so I don’t think he could be a very good coltfriend for a gal like you, okay Matil’..." The assistant's deep voice trailed off as the pair disappeared behind the wide screen door outside.

Finally contented that he was to be left well enough alone, Briar jumped back to where he had left off with a methodical twitch of his right hoof, and a shiver of his tail. Back to the furious scribbling.

"A normal pony, would you say, Twilight?" came the doctor's voice behind the addressed unicorn. Twilight merely glanced back with a deeply puzzled look on her face. That was certainly not what she had expected.

"A first glance certainly isn't the best to go off, now is it?" the doctor chuckled. Twilight's face became even more confused as the doctor's words revealed that there was more to the simple statement than what he let on. “Here, I’ll start from the beginning so you can understand, okay?” Twilight nodded affirmative. The doctor cleared his throat patiently.

“Well, his mother always did her best, and he was daddy’s pride and joy. He learned to walk and talk on time, you see, but, he never cared much to be held.” His face dropped slightly. “And, steadily, he would decline into a solitary shell.

“As a colt, he was considered somewhat odd. Kept to himself most of the time. He would daydream in and out of his own world…But in every other way he was fine,” the doctor said, adding particular emphasis on his last word. Twilight nodded along.

“He’s…well, a Monday morning lunatic. Disturbed from time to time, he's simply lost within himself...in his solitary shell. A temporary catatonic madman, on occasion, if you will,” he finished with a chuckle.

Twilight looked on at the brown pony with a face etched in deep concern.

“When will he break out of his solitary shell?”

Doctor Glass shrugged.

“Nopony could say for sure. It all started out normally, but soon he struggled to get through his day, and he was helplessly behind. So, he poured himself on the page,” he said, indicating with a hoof at the intense writing that Briar was working on. “He just sits there, writing for hours at a time.” The doctor's aged face dropped again slightly. He began again with a sigh.

“As a stallion he was a danger to himself…Fearful and sad most of the time, he was drifting in and out of sanity. Eventually, his parents passed away, and left him in our care indefinitely. We have found that he cannot form solid connections with another pony. We even have to switch out therapists every few weeks. But, again, in every other way he is perfectly fine.”

Twilight pulled her PP-DSM-IV manual from out of her pack with a sparkle of magic, and flipped through the pages methodically. Finally she stopped, scanning the page.

“Schizoid Personality Disorder?” she asked carefully. Dr. Glass nodded.

“Yes. Well, to a certain degree. We are still learning more about him and his life through therapy.”

Twilight scanned the page further, reading over her notes.

A momentary maniac, Twilight reflected to herself, with casual delusions.

When will he be let out of his solitary shell?

She looked to Briar again, who paused for a brief moment to ink his quill and turn the large, blank page of the book he was writing. She was struck with an arresting sensation as she wondered with a feeling of disquiet how a pony could lose such a large part of themselves, only to retain the brilliant ability to think and live in an entirely fictional world.

And boy, she thought to herself, does this strike home. With almost a physical wince, she grimaced as she thought to her own writings. Of course, she loved to write, but what could it possibly be like to be stuck like this for your entire life? Was mad brilliance worth any price, including permanent solitude?

Twilight sighed.

Another thought to add to today's seemingly unending pile, she thought morbidly, and followed the doctor out through the colorful rumpus room.

Losing Time

Chapter VII. – Losing Time: Juniper Berry

"Time is a cruel thief to rob us of our former selves. We lose as much to life as we do to death."

-Elizabeth Forsythe Hailey

. . . .

As the pair moved on, they entered the therapy wing. Rows upon rows of doors stood in long, inescapable hallways. Twilight glanced casually at the clock, and laughed to herself as she realized that the exact same clock stood over every other door down the entire expanse.

As they cantered silently down the carpeted hallway, the pair stopped as a white mare wrapped in a black shawl exited a door hurriedly. Her face seemed pinched and worried as her black mane fell unkempt around her shoulders and stuck out from beneath the tightly wrapped shawl.

“Ah, Juniper Berry, my dear! How was therapy today with Dr. Tune?” the doctor asked expectantly. His voice flowed smoothly with a well-practiced cheer.

The earth pony grabbed even tighter at the black shawl that sat draped about her shoulders, seemingly in shock at the two unicorns that stood before her. She eyed Twilight skeptically.

“Good.” Her voice sat plain and unemotional. It seemed a heavy grey brick of noise compared to the doctor’s jovial greeting, but latter pushed on with his same enthusiasm.

“Very glad to hear it. May I introduce Twilight Sparkle?” he said, turning slightly to let Juniper have a look at the purple unicorn. Twilight smiled sheepishly.

“Good to meet you,” Juniper said diffidently. Her face seemed to drop slightly as she shifted her body weight from one hoof to the other.

“If you could, Juniper, please be sure to remember to ask-” The doctor was cut off.

“I’m not Juniper. It’s Midnight,” she said scathingly. Her gaze flowed over Twilight judgmentally. “Ugh. Your mane is beyond disgusting. A bob? Really?” She sneered cruelly as Twilight blushed uncontrollably at her disparaging remark.

“Now, Midnight. Go see Nurse Lily for your medicine, okay?” The sentence wasn’t a request, though. It was a command as the doctor’s cheery voice switched gears to a professional tone.

“Whatever,” she said, and took off down the hall the way Twilight and Dr. Glass had entered. As they watched her round the corner, the doctor turned to Twilight.

“I suppose I am safe in assuming you would like an explanation?” He smiled slightly as Twilight nodded her head dumbly.

“Well, Juniper Berry suffers from Dissociative Identity Disorder, or, more commonly referred to as Multiple Personality disorder.” He paused as Twilight flipped through her manual with a sparkle of magic. Her eyes glanced over the thick text.

“And how many other ponies exist inside her mind?” she finally asked as she settled the book away into her pack.

“Seventeen.” He chuckled as Twilight’s eyes widened. “At least, as far as we have been able to discern. There may be more. Only time will tell,” he said, shrugging.

Time. Twilight glanced at the clock absentmindedly; she realized with a shock that nearly twelve minutes had passed since she had last looked; it had felt like five.

She looked down at the doctor’s face. He seemed intrigued at her surprised reaction.

“It’s funny you happen to look at the clock, Twilight. There is a particular idea I want you to think about now. You saw not one but two ponies today in this hallway. And directly down the split that defined Juniper appeared Midnight. Now, in the twelve minutes that has passed since we first met Juniper, each part of her has only experienced six minutes apiece.”

He glanced sidelong at Twilight, to ensure that she was following what it was he was proposing to her.

“Do you get what it is I’m going at here, Twilight?”

“I think so, doctor.” Her face was screwed up slightly as she tried to piece together what Dr. Glass had said. “You mean that Juniper, the primary consciousness, only experiences what she can consciously process. Even though her mind runs for twenty-four hours a day. Correct?”

An appreciative nod acknowledged Twilight’s intuitive reply.

“She’s losing time, Twilight. Far faster than either you or I are, or even can. This is the result of detachment- dissociation from reality. It’s one of the reasons we devote so much time and effort into solving these mysteries that take over our minds.” He tapped his head lightly, as if to prove a point. “Sanity is a relative term. Make sure you never confuse it for what it truly is.”

Twilight nodded in deep agreement as her gaze shifted back up to the clock. She could feel the queer sensation of weightlessness envelop her as she watched the second hand drag unyieldingly across the clock’s blanched white face.

It is a clock that slays time...

. . . .

...But only when the clock stops, does time actually come to life. Imagine realizing that you are only losing time.

In the past, within the quiet room of a hospital, Juniper Berry remembered the first time it had happened.

"I snapped to attention to find the eyes of a hoof-full of ponies staring at me. I realized with a hot flush of embarrassment that I had been rolling in the fountain in the middle of town for what seemed ten minutes. I remember, what shocked me the most was that not a second ago I had walked past the spa, noticing that there was a sale on body crèmes..."

"I stepped out, soaking wet. I remember my black mane clinging wildly to my wet body. 'My, what an awful mess I must look!' I remember thinking. I had apologized profusely to everypony around me and ran home, crying the whole way.

“I see,” the bearded grey earth pony said from somewhere out of sight behind her. His voice was even and firm, imparting a due comfort on her. “Please, if you can, tell me more about this ad you saw.” The question seemed innocent enough, if not a bit strange. Juniper felt her mind spin uncontrollably.

. . . .

Doctor Tune sat behind his patient. The roster read Juniper Berry, Earth Pony, Age: twenty-three, possible Dissociative Identity Disorder. In all the years of psychiatric counseling, this is the only case like this he had tackled. He looked over his patient with a keen eye as she answered his question.

She dresses in black every day…She keeps her mane simple and plain…She never wears makeup, he noted off on his pad.

But nopony would care if she did anyway, he reasoned evenly. She never got out to spend time with anyone recently anyways, she had said.

His face furled in deeper thought.

She doesn’t recall yesterday. Faces seemed twisted and strange. Both mind and quill raced as he thought more about what she had said.

But she always wakes up, only to find she’d been miles away.

He looked down at the notes he had jotted on his pad:

Absence of awareness … “Losing time”… A lapse of perception … “Losing time…”

She had said that in passing more than twice. He considered it the most important notation.

Dr. Tune looked up as he realized Juniper had stopped talking. He was more surprised to see her turn around, eyes peeping over the top of the recliner like a curious filly.

“Juniper, eyes forward please,” he said calmly.

“Who’s Juniper? My name is Midnight,” Juniper said darkly. “Why don’t you back off?” she added, almost as an afterthought.

Though he was shocked, he tried his absolute best to not show it.

“I don’t know what you mean, Juniper, I-” he was cut off by a deep, guttural groan.

“I hate it here. I hate this place. I hate myself. I hate my life. And Mother would not approve.”

“What?” Dr. Tune said, preparing his pen and notes to write, and glanced up expectantly. An odd look overcame Juniper’s face, and she refocused back at him.

“I guess that’s why it affected me so much, doctor…The ad, I mean,” she seemed to finish quietly. The white mare realized she was looking at him, and settled back down quickly to look at the surrealistic painting at the other end of the room that she had been staring at for the past half hour.

Dr. Tune laid back in his chair, face puzzled and thoughts ablaze. What in the name of Celestia is going on with this mare? he thought.

. . . .

Through time, therapy became the truth teller. Dr. Tune had shortly identified after their first session that Juniper did indeed suffer from Dissociative Identity Disorder. Throughout three years of counseling, he discovered that there were seventeen unique identities existing in her split mind.

He had listened, enraptured, as each identity told him of her traumatic childhood. Though the same story came from seventeen different entities, the voice from a single mouth that told the story was an eerie reminder of how incredible the natural mind could be. He winced as he learned the dark things her parents would do. Being sadists, they had enjoyed devilish ceremonies in which their only daughter became the victim of their maddened rancor; drugs played a very large part in this.

He listened, almost at the verge of tears, as the youngest personality, Spirit, told him about how they had tortured her at three years old with the skeletons of her pets and the belief that her soul was too clean for them. He sat on the edge of his seat through every gruesome detail of her parent’s sick and twisted activities as they occurred in different points of her childhood.

Wanting to escape, he realized, she had created a way to survive. She learned to detach from herself, a behavior that kept her alive.

Dr. Tune was glad her parents had died long ago. The urge to strangle them himself overcame him quite often for what they had done to their poor filly.

He realized grimly that the thoughts he had about this scared the living hay out of him.

. . . .

One thing he came to realize: this mare was losing time. As long as the twenty years that she had lived, she barely recalled or experienced half of these.

“Juniper, may I ask you something?” he questioned thoughtfully one day.

“Hm?” the white mare replied mildly.

“The troupe that lives with you, in your mind. Midnight, Spirit, Otto, Grey Goose and the rest, do you ever feel like they are in control? Like they take over a part of you that should be yours?”

There was a long pause.

“Well, doctor…yes, I suppose they do. We all know that we are seventeen lives trying to breathe within a single body. We suppose there’s no confusing the fact that We all feel pressed for time. But that’s just it.” Dr. Tune watched her face drop significantly in spirit. “A heart is nothing but a timer, beating to every second and counting down until it runs out of all it can give. We are, all of us, losing time.” She looked to the bearded doctor, a pleading look haunting her pinched features. “And we’ll never get it back.”

Dr. Tune could feel an eerie shiver of revelation overtake his body. It took the entirety of his will to focus it down to just a twitch of the head, a twitch of the hoof.

“I see,” he said flatly.

Another long pause held still in the air. Dr. Tune could feel his mind panic as he realized the timer in his chest slowly beating down to nothing.

“That’s all for today, Juniper. I’ll see you next week at the same time.” The dismissal was well practiced, oiled to fit perfectly at the end of any session. Dr. Tune stood up stiffly, and saw Juniper out the door. After he had shut it quietly behind her, though, he sank slowly down to the floor. Grief tugged at his weary heart.

What she had said had struck him unlike anything he had heard from her or any other patient in his long service to Neighsville Psychiatric. The thought, the idea of losing time…It depressed him on a fundamental level as he realized she would never get it back.

Nopony would ever get their time back, in the end.

Tough line of work, he thought with a sigh. He buried his face in his hooves

I need a drink.

The Test That Stumped Them All

Chapter IV. – The Test That Stumped Them All: Beetle

"A person needs a little madness, or else they never dare cut the rope and be free." - Nikos Kazantzakis

. . . .

A walk further inside the sanitarium took the pair to what Twilight guessed to be the sun room. Grand windows took up entirety of all four walls, and seemed to engulf the viewer in a great wave as the windows passed far up and over one’s head and ended in a stained-glass apex. A beautiful view of the rolling hills that made up the hospital’s grounds was visible through the unobtrusive glass.

There wasn’t a single pony in the room, save for a deep blue stallion seated in a wheelchair at the far corner. As her gaze fell on him, a strange sensation of curiosity crept up in her mind.

“Well, this is the sun room, but there’s nopony here.” The doctor frowned as he glanced at his watch. “It’s a quarter past three. The assistants should have brought the fourth group in here by now…” The ever-professional unicorn trailed off as his analytical mind processed charts and timetables. He excused himself to go find out what was going on, and left Twilight alone in the sun room.

But, not quite alone. The sensation of unadulterated curiosity finally won over her mind, and she found herself walking quietly up to the wheelchair-bound from. Twilight glanced at him sidelong, and her gaze fell on a middle-aged blue pony that lay lazily in his chair. His azure mane looked as though it had been combed neatly, but she could tell where it naturally stuck up by the poor way it had been prepared.

Though his rose-colored eyes stood placid and unmoving, she could tell they captured a mad brilliance. Twilight realized with a shock as she spotted a single, brilliant tear that stood on his cheek, a rainbow of light magnified through it. Against her better judgment, she gently reached out a single hoof and gingerly wiped it away. The face remained unmoving; not a single reaction betrayed any awareness to what she had just done.

“Twilight Sparkle?”

Twilight jumped only slightly as she heard her name across the room. She turned to see the doctor, followed by a large white-clothed assistant who walked in to set up chairs and tables. The doctor approached her calmly.

“What are you doing?” he asked enquiringly.

“He was crying,” Twilight said plainly. The answer seemed self-explanatory, but at the same time, ludicrous.

“Really?” The doctor’s face seemed to light up. “You got a response out of old Beetle there?” Twilight shook her head.

“It seemed that a tear was there before I was.” She watched carefully as the doctor’s face dropped. He seemed crestfallen.

“Ah. I was hoping to hear something out of him. He’s been here six years, and we’ve not been able to get a single response out of him. His mind seems, well, shut down.” He shrugged, seemingly in an admittance of defeat.

“Why? What’s wrong with him?” she asked, probing for some more truth to the story.

“All we know is what we’ve learned from his stay here, and the medical records that were taken from the Emerald Ocean Sanatorium in Whinnysota, after it was shut down. Neither has really painted much of a picture as to what exactly happened to this poor pony.”

“Well, what do you know, in all?” Twilight asked. She was determined to find an answer, for some reason far beyond what she understood.

“As far as we have been able to tell, Beetle suffers from paranoid schizophrenia. Or, at least, he used to, after Emerald Ocean decided that using electro-shock therapy and frontal lobotomy surgery would be an effective way to cure his disorder.” The doctor’s normally pleasant persona dropped sharply, leveling off at the point of being dangerously icy. He put a disgusted emphasis on each word describing Beetle's treatment.

“They tortured the poor colt. There’s a reason ES therapy is illegal in Equestria. The evidence is clear in front of you!” He gestured severely towards Beetle’s listless form. “It doesn’t work. It’s a dead-end solution to the test that has stumped us all. Erm, schizophrenia is currently an untreatable disorder,” he added hastily at Twilight’s questioning look. He glanced over his shoulder as his name was called, and excused himself once more, leaving Twilight with Beetle.

She looked on angrily to the poor pony that was sitting dressed in ridiculous yellow coveralls and stuck as helpless as a newborn filly.

A vessel now left lifeless in pursuit to the answer to the test that stumped them all. Twilight looked on, her mind working away vehemently as she watched various ponies file inside, preparing to enjoy their afternoon activities. The lavender unicorn let out a deep sigh as she tried to drive outraged upset from her mind.

A once-wild mind, broken and trapped behind the form of an immobile body...

. . . .

...All in the pursuit of an answer to the test that has stumped them all! What could he possibly have done to deserve this!

The blue colt was standing in the darkness, shivering violently, and waiting for the light.

They’ll be here any second now...

The smell of pure adrenaline was burning in the night, and Beetle felt his mind break.

Random blinding flashes are aiming at the stage! They want him. The shadows all want him for themselves.

The intro tape begins to roll, igniting sonic rage!

Beetle’s face turned to a smirk as he dove into the black sea of shadows.

And still they take me between these hollow walls, he thought. Hoping to find in me the answers to the test that stumped them all!

. . . .

Beetle remembered through the brilliant clarity that his momentary coherence brought forth. As he wrestled with his sheet-white straight-jacket here in the soft, padded room, his thoughts raced back to when he had first come here as a young colt.

He recalled sitting in his best clothes in the head doctor’s office. He remembered itchy, dress-up clothes, and the fact that his parents had neatly combed his azure mane for the meeting with the nice doctor, but that now it was mussed wildly from the ordeal they had endured on the way to the doctor’s. His parents had had to wrestle him into the office as he called out to the shadow that chased him inside. They honestly had no idea what it was he was screaming about.

. . . .

His mother and father sat now on either side of him in the doctor's office. The office smelled of stale sweat and disinfectant; the former seeming to drive the latter into submission.

Young Beetle's ears pricked up as he heard the sound of their voices. They seemed to intertwine in his mind, coalescing into a stereo discussion.

“The colt’s just simply crazy” his father said firmly.

“Suffering from delusions…” his mother added with a sniff.

“We honestly think that, maybe,” his father started, looking sidelong at his wife.

“He might need an institution…” she sobbed.

“He lives in a world of fiction!” Father cried dramatically, bringing a hoof down onto the wooden desk.

“And really could use some help” Mother added tearfully into her hankie.

A pause, as the white-maned doctor adjusted his thick glasses. He finally stood up, a considerable effort allowing for all the bulk that hung on him. He looked thoughtfully out the window for a time, and turned to say:

“We have just the place to fix him, to save him from himself.”

His glare came down on Beetle’s head. The little colt got the strange sensation the doctor’s eyes burned with a ghostly fire.

Beetle stared right back, unblinking.

. . . .

Now he flew back into the present. The white knights had come and gone. Beetle sat, curled up in the darkness, unable to move, searching for the light. The smell of stale sweat and shit sat streaming through the night.

All his subjects had gone. He did not know where, or for how long.

He reveled in the deaf silence as his lucid mind took over for him.

It had all started out quite methodically:

Random urine testing. Pills: red, pink and blue. Counseling and therapy. Not one could provide a clue.

Still, they keep me between these hollow walls, he thought intuitively. A grimace spread across his face.

It seems that they’re hoping to find in me the answer to the test that stumped them all.

He laughed maniacally as he felt the rush return. Spirits began to coalesce inside the room with him, and subtly hid the gut-wrenching horror he felt when they were around. They must not know how afraid he was. They must never know.

. . . .

Another memory:

The fat doctor stood around Beetle’s unmoving form, joined by his nurse. They think he’s unconscious after what they’ve put him through, but he’s just very good at acting like it. Voices mixed again in a stereophonic discussion.

"We can't seem to find the answers,” the doctor said, voice nasally. He fixed his thick glasses.

“He seemed such a clear cut case…” the other mare said disparagingly.

“We cannot just let him leave here…” began the doctor.

“And put all this work to waste?” she finished. The doctor nodded slowly.

“Why don't we try shock treatment?” she added gleefully. Beetle’s heart raced at this. “It really might do some help,” she added with a wink.

The fat doctor walked over to the sink, washing the saliva and blood off of his hooves; a testament to Beetle’s unwillingness to give up his subjects without a fight. The very same colt watched as his mind’s eye formed a cruel sneer on his face at this thought.

“We have just the tools to fix him” the doctor said, coming back. He looked on irately at Beetle’s form.

“To save him from himself!"

. . . .

Beetle sat strapped to the bed with thick leather braces, a stinging spot on his arm where the nurses had shot him full of insulin. A wire sat inside his nose. The filament reached deep into his sinuses, and rested along his frontal lobe. It itched horribly.

Nurses flocked around the bed and the humming machine that sat nearby; sunlight streamed through the haphazardly closed blinds on the other side of the room. The doctor walked up to him, smiling, his body awash in the brilliant sunlight. Specks of dust swarmed in the ray of light about his head as Beetle willed them to attack the fat pony’s face. He watched the smile turned to a frown of disgust as the doctor flinched at the dazzling light.

“Close those blinds!” he barked sharply. A small pink nurse nodded curtly, and rushed over to snap the blinds fully shut. The sunlight disappeared, replaced by the harsh fluorescent lights. Visions danced on the edge of Beetle’s mind erratically. His gaze focused as the fat pony’s jovial smile rested on his still form. The blue colt could still see the dust ensnaring the doctor's balding head.

“You’re about to make history, son. The very first electro-shock patient in Equestria in over thirty years!” The doctor's face darkened as the smile on his face turned cruel.

“Congratulations.”

Before Beetle could even think of reacting, the nurses shoved two tongue depressors into his mouth, roughly covered with surgical tape and cotton.

They cracked and splintered in his mouth as his body shook violently from the waves of pure electrical energy that flooded each and every one of his billions of synapses. His red-diamond eyes shot wide in an expression of pure and utter animalistic fear- the first instance he had ever known to have experienced- and he let out a fierce scream of howling pain.

Beetle could feel as every single one of his nerve-endings seemed to scream louder, drowning out his pain in a bloody dirge to show a pure and unimaginable anguish.

. . . .

A worn-out wheelchair sat in front of the large window, looking down on a multitude of ponies dressed in yellow plainclothes. In the wheelchair was seated a blue stallion, his form unmoving and his eyes placid lakes, seemingly frozen over in the winter of detached consciousness.

He did nothing all day except sit there and stare, until the nurses came and put him to bed, change his catheter, or, on occasion, wheel him over to medical for his special prescriptions. On occasion, a sawdust-colored doctor in glasses spoke with him, but Beetle never gave him the benefit of a reply.

A single tear fell from the stallion’s rose-colored eyes as he spotted specks of dust swirling around in the sun’s rays. He had won.

The test that stumped them all.