The Trotting Dead Ep. 3: Gone
Do the Dead Feel? Do the Dead Think?
Splicing pain and desperate cries...
Darkness...
Flying Free...
I am free! This is living!
A golden field before me, heavenly light glowing from the ground...
I am choking, I can't breathe.
I can't feel! Like a noose around my neck, and all it does is tighten.
I am falling...
NO! I don't want to go back!
Let. Me. Die!
I am dead.
Maybe not as dead as most would prefer...
This may not be the best way to introduce myself, but what else can I tell you?
My name?
Greet you with a hearty hug?
I should be so lucky to even remember my name.
I don't think you'd want a hug from someone of my...stature. I wouldn't be able to control myself around you...
Maybe you'd like to know...how I became...like this.
Please stay...Please stay and listen.
With honesty, I don't remember how I...turned.
I do have a good idea of how it happened, though.
First, let me start off by saying something...
The dead are conscious, in a weird, weird way.
We're empty, but at the same time, we are trapped within ourselves.
I'm different, I guess, but exactly how I'm different can wait.
The only memories I have shouldn't even classify as such... just vague pictures...memories of screaming.
I was in a barn when I "woke up".
I was scrawny, not much to eat. When I became aware, I was practically funeral parlor condition! Setting aside a few chunks off my legs and abdomen...
I could stand and walk.
The one next to me, I couldn't say he shared my fortune.
He was far meatier than me, attracting the creatures to him. Poor thing almost didn't have enough of himself to turn. In that case, he would have been luckier than I. He'd be dead. Really dead. Free, one may call it.
There were other dead things around us. Long deads, I call them. I think...I think they killed us. RED blood covered their muzzles, not the black gunk that fills most of us.
We can't speak, not even to each other, we just grunt. We don't have ambition, not even to go anywhere, so we just wander.
It is a fate that will befall every pony, and that...makes me feel weird.
But...the dead don't feel. Right?
I actually found myself caring about myself enough to find caution in wandering down a staircase. I was nowhere near graceful, I stumbled and tripped far more than comfortable. Still, I didn't just flop over and break my fragile bones, it was something.
The house, my home, was filled with so many memoirs. I was all but lost in them, though I was more clueless to their meanings than a pony studying ancient gryphon artifacts.
There were two things that gave me a weird feeling.
The first was a picture. In it was a large red stallion, a old green mare, a tiny filly, and from what I can presume, me.
I was beautiful...
An orange mare, with freckles dotting her cheeks. A blonde mane draping over her neck. In her lively, green eyes, there was the spark of life my kind craved.
I was alive.
It made me feel alive...well, almost. For the most part, the photo made me hunger.
The second thing was a shiny. A lace that was meant to choke me, or something. I cannot remember its name, but it was gorgeous. It was a brilliant shade of gold, with an orange apple (of all things!) being its centerpiece.
I felt a deep connection to the thing, I loved it, longed for it..
Was it magic?
It probably was...
It was just a thing, I passed it by with little thought...
I was alone, well, in a way. My kind were all around me, I wondered if I should feel welcome.
When I exited that house, I think I remembered something.
The sky was bright, and a large, hot object stood within it.
The grass was green, the flowers buzzing with bees and butterflies.
Mares and stallions were everywhere, laughing, smiling.
Alive.
The dead can't think, why did I know what this scene before me was?
Why?
In this scene, a bright pink mare with a fluffy raspberry mane and tail flounced into my vision. Her eyes brighter than the sky! Two foals travelled beside her in fanatical admiration.
She hugged the foals close, then flashed a huge smile towards me, and the scene dispersed.
The sky went dark and empty. The plants and ponies died and decayed, they were gone.
As for the pink mare, she shifted in the scene as well. Her coat became filthy with old blood. Her fluffy mane and tail flattened. Her bright eyes dulled, and filled with terror.
She stared at me in fear, and held her foals close. Water seeped from her eyes, she may have wanted to get that looked at.
Setting her foals on her back, the mare walked away, leaving me alone.
She was alive, but she smelled like us. We believed she was one of us.
But this mare was alive! I must apologize for the redundancy of my language, but it was hope in a bottled-up package.
This mare made me feel warm among the cold we can't ever escape from. No matter how aridly hot the air was, we were always so cold. It makes us hopeless, makes us....hungry.
I don't know why we're all dead, whatever makes us like this....Parasite, fungus, some complex virus, it wants us to feel the cold.
When those who live enter our area, we smell them. We want them. An insatiable lust for their warmth overtakes us, consumes us. We must feed, we must feed now!
Its the only time we feel as though the warmth is in our reach. We can almost feel it, almost taste it, when we grab them.
And then we bite them, and we get none of their warmth.
We gain nothing, but the blood that spurts from them, it makes us want more. We can't stop, we just devour them until their blood finally goes cold.
We hear their screams, feel their fear, taste their panic. We hate it, but we just keep going. Dooming another to our horrific fate.
I never really encountered many living ponies.
Though I have an interesting tale to tell about the one time it happened.
It was a fairly large sized group, a caravan of wagons. In the lead, two vaguely familiar pegasi.
One was bright yellow, with crystal eyes, and a light-tulip mane and tale. She looked cross. Her gaze fixated upon a cyan pegasus with a mane the color of a spectrum. A wicked grin over her muzzle.
They were alive, and I hungered for them.
A large herd of us obsessively trudged after the caravan, but we were quickly noticed. Many of us were freed from our bodily prisons.
I saw one of their fire sticks aimed towards me, but I did not relent. Her aim lined up, but the cyan pegasus aimed the barrel of the gun downward. Her wicked grin grew wider, if that was possible.
She laughed and took a rope. With careful and agile reflexes, she avoided my teeth long enough to hogtie me.
"Well," she snickered, "Of all the mares I've ever known, you were probably the one I least suspected to be weak." The last word was injected with so much venom I could taste it. This mare knew me, but their was no way for me to listen, the hunger had come over me.
"You've bested me so many times, AJ. Now you're just as mindless as every pony else in this dump. Now look at me! It's survival of the fittest, and see who's on top!"
Saliva welled in her mouth, and she emptied it into my eye. "You never admitted I was strong," she sounded incredibly arrogant, how did she make it this far? "You can't admit it now, but I'd like to say it, I'm better than you. I don't care what Scoot says about me. Scoot was weak, and now she's undoubtedly dead." How did I know this mare, again?
She pulled a shiny revolver from her belt loop. The name "Tank" scratched into it. She giggled, "Goodbye, old friend. It hasn't been fun."
she pressed the barrel against my head, but she was called back to the caravan when she realized the herd was closing in.
The mare scoffed and left. The yellow mare approached me, regret in her eyes. Taking a knife, she threw it at my rope in a way that set me free.
"I'm sorry," she whimpered softly. Why was this mare so sympathetic?
Her eyes went cross as I stood and started towards her.
"I hope I can see you again..." She backed away carefully, then glanced at the cyan pegasus. "And I hope you'll tear out her throat." There was a hint of surprise in me from her hostility. This mare was obviously not angered easily.
She galloped away, and the hunger faded.
As for today, there were more of the living among us, but they were far to small to be grown-ups.
There are three of them traveling through us. They are not careful, and I'm feeling the hunger beginning to awake within me. Lucky for them, their speed alone will keep them alive.
They do cross my path however, two keep running, one stops.
She was the filly in that photo, but she didn't have a bow on her head.
Her little, amber eyes twinkle with fear and sadness. Water is leaking from her eyes, like that pink mare. She has something tiny in her hands, a cross between a bow and a gun.
She aims it at my head, the filly is stirring something within me.
I'll say it again, I think I'm special...
Do the dead feel? Do the dead think?
No, right?
I can feel, I can think...
I don't know if I'm really a trotter sometimes. If I'm not, What am I?
We...we just wander. It takes longer for it to happen, but we do decompose. And because of that...we die.
We are freed.
I want that to happen. I want to see my family, my friends. I want to meet the queen we killed.
But...there's a piece of me that doesn't want that. A piece of me that doesn't want to fade away forever.
I don't want to die.
But that is a stupid request. Death is something that'll happen to me eventually.
I am dead,
I just don't accept it yet.
Author's Note
With honesty, I don't care much about this chapter. It's really just a way to dump exposition.
