A Certain Shade of Darkness

It's funny how a certain shade of darkness,
Can leave you a hollow shell addicted to death.
A special kind of darkness that never lets you go,
Until your final dying breath.

The trial is nothing special. Fluttershy cries through the whole thing. Rainbow Dash starts screaming at me halfway through her testimony and has to be dragged away by a guard. Twilight and her lawyer more or less hand me my flank on a silver platter, of course. The verdict is guilty. Not that I ever expected otherwise. The whole point of the murders was to be noticed. If I wanted to be seen as innocent, I wouldn't have stabbed two ponies to death in the middle of a crowded smoothie shop. I probably would have just plead guilty to begin with, but I wanted to see how everpony would react.

As I'm being led out of the courtroom, reporters swarm around me, all of them asking the same stupid questions. I don't answer. By now, they all know why I did it. They also know I'm guilty. They just want me admitting it on camera. I just smile and wave. Looking into the crowd, I spot my parents. They look shocked. I don't care. They never really loved me anyway. Next to them are my sisters. They don't matter. My family never understood me.

Suddenly, my eyes lock on something interesting. The one pony in the crowd who I give a flying feather about. An orange stallion.

In our letters, we always talked about finding a place to meet. We were going to set aside a day just for the two of us. We'd share stories of our adventures and maybe even throw a party. That's definitely never going to happen now. For one thing, I'm spending the rest of my life in a maximum-security underground prison. Secondly, Cheese looks completely and utterly broken. I've never seen anypony sad like this before. I'm not talking about depression, like I felt a few days ago. He's past even that. I'm talking about despair. Like he jumped into a swimming pool full of sadness and is currently drowning as piranhas eat him alive. The colors in his coat and mane are faded. He's holding his head so low, he could pass for the headless horse. As I'm being loaded into the prison cart, he looks up. His red, puffy eyes meet mine and he says something. I know he's talking to me, but I can't make out the words. I frantically search my mind for something, anything that can make this okay. tears stream down my face as I whisper the only thing I can think of.

I'm sorry.

The second those words leave my mouth, the iron door closes. Darkness fills the cart and those soul-penetrating green eyes disappear from my view forever.

The stone cell is cold and damp. A rat scurries across the floor. It looks like he's going to be my only company for the rest of my life. I've been thinking about what I said earlier. I've come to the conclusion that I meant it. My apology was heartfelt. I really do feel horrible about what I did. I wish I'd realized that earlier. I was blinded by my rage. I should have gotten help. I should have talked to somepony. I should have...

In a flash of realization, it dawns on me that if I hadn't killed Applejack and Rarity, I would have killed myself. No matter what I did, lives would have been lost. Ever since I first picked up that knife, it was a choice between two paths of evil. The real question I have to ask myself is this: Is my life worth more than the lives of two of my friends?

The answer is obvious. I made the wrong choice. I shouldn't have resisted the screaming. I should have killed myself when I had the chance. The screaming starts up again. This time, I can hear what it's saying. It's not too late.

After about five minutes of searching, I find some loose bricks in the wall. I can easily use them as footholds. When I reach the top, I grip the ceiling, taking care not to fall at the wrong angle. I carefully arch my back and tilt my head back towards the ground. I'm just barely high enough for this to work, as long as I let go with my front legs first. I take a few seconds to savor the last of my existence. I close my eyes count to ten, and smile at the thought of seeing my friends again. I'm ready now.

I let go.