Balancing On a Straightedge
-One
Vinyl Scratch awoke abruptly to the sensation of a firm kick in the ribs.
Coughing thickly, she dragged her face slowly off the hot black asphalt of the street. She realized grimly that the taste of tar was mixed with the metallic tang of blood. Her own or another’s, she couldn’t hazard a guess. Thoughts had seemed fuzzy and distorted recently.
Her sunglasses lay skewed upon her face, the right lens shattered from last night's wild revelry. Wincing at the effort, she picked her aching body up and turned to see who her assailant was.
A cursory glance from her crimson eye revealed a very, very tall unicorn stallion towering above her. His beard was clean and neat, but his azure mane stuck up in the wildest fashion around his horn. His deep purple face was etched with a grimace that showed a clear and disgusted upset.
“Hey, get your lazy flanks off my property, eh? You’ve been sitting there since last night, you weird mare. I don’t like your kind around here, you got it, eh? Scat!” He charged a few steps at her with the sharp crack of hooves on hard concrete, scaring Vinyl thoroughly. Heaving herself up, she took off down the street in a roll of hoof beats, leaving her cracked glasses sitting by the strange stallion.
Buildings and ponies rushed past her, and Vinyl’s sight pushed itself into an eerie tunnel vision as she sprinted desperately to get away. After nearly getting hit by a speeding taxi cart, she stopped as her burning lungs gasped for ragged breaths. Doubled over, she grabbed her side with a hoof as the world spun around her, and bit her lip to the point of drawing a few fat drops of blood. Stars danced around in her peripheral vision as oxygen screamed to get to her suffocating brain.
Through tear-blurred eyes, she looked down the street as ambivalent ponies pushed their way past her with such inattention as though she were a sidewalk feature. Her view rested on grand billboards that clamored for any form of attention, selling miracle products and guilt-free entertainment. Fluorescent lights and bouts of magic-infused displays battled further for anypony’s cheap glances.
This was Manehattan. The Big Apple.
The roar of a symphonic waterfall crashed down around her, and a familiar craving overtook her mind, clawing its way into consciousness. This wasn’t the first time she had woken up in the street like this, but this time, it had been worse than them all. As her face screwed up in agonizing pain, she remembered through a bright clarity that seemed to sear her mind's eye.
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The boom seemed to be a very part of her. Vinyl could almost feel her heart adjust itself to the deep bass as it rocked the entire room. The amorous muscle fluttered and beat to the tiniest changes in rhythm that rolled like waves from the speakers.
“This song is simply wicked!” Cherry Stem screamed as the very air in the bar was ripped clean across the pair by the undulating bass.
Vinyl had to agree. Though it wasn’t exactly her desired style of music, she loved the bass that rumbled the very earth beneath her hooves and the very air she breathed. She looked on to her friend with merely a smile of agreement - the blue-maned unicorn wasn’t a pony of many words, and didn’t speak unless she necessarily needed to.
Cherry Stem grabbed her drink, and promptly downed a good half the glass of thick liquor. With a deep, strangled breath, she slammed her cup back down on the wooden table. The glass shattered under the effect, spilling the drink everywhere. Cherry glanced at it dumbly with a fleeting “whoops” that was washed away with the rumbling bass.
Vinyl rolled her eyes. Her rosy unicorn friend always drank too much, and especially too early in the night. Hay, it was almost ten o’clock, and here she was, already soused.
She nudged her friend, a bit harder than she probably meant to.
“Hey, Cherry, let’s get out of here, alright? I do have work tonight you know,” Vinyl Scratch added, almost as an afterthought. Her rosy friend’s face fell drastically.
“Uh, no? Come on Vinyl, the night’s still young. ‘Side’s,” she slurred, grabbing Vinyl’s untouched drink, and took a hearty sip of the almost-syrupy liquor, “you don’ got work until, like, ten. Right?”
Vinyl frowned as her friend proceeded to down the large majority of her Buck Rogers. Four bits down the drain there.
“It’s past nine thirty, Cherry.” Her friend’s face dropped sharply over the almost-empty tumbler.
“Oh, hay? Really?” Cherry looked down, face blank and with her mouth agape at the broken glass on the table. The odd lights in the bar seemed to catch it in prisms of blue and gold light. “I’m already drunk, aren’t I?”
Vinyl nodded. Her friend’s mouth opened in a disparaged look as she sat back in her chair, defeated. The way Cherry's head hung back over the edge of the chair and her eyes rolled back in her head made Vinyl giggle even more at her over-dramatic friend.
“Fine, we’ll go,” Cherry Stem groaned. Dropping a hoof full of bits on the table, the pair stood up and promptly left.
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As they exited the tiny club, a full moon lay just behind the low-rise buildings of Ponyville. Vinyl shivered slightly; the temperature had dropped considerably since they had set off earlier that evening. She glanced sidelong at Cherry, and couldn’t help but laugh as she tripped and stumbled her way down the pathway. The inebriated unicorn glanced at Vinyl angrily.
“Shuddup, you,” she said drunkenly. Vinyl smirked.
“It’s your own fault you have a drinking problem, Cherry.” She knew this would get her friend riled, and smiled slightly as her expectations were fulfilled perfectly.
“No! I do not have a problem, Vinyl! I am a very responsible drinker. I just sometimes don’t, er, gauge my alcoholometer correctly…” Cherry hiccupped loudly, and a cream-colored mare looked unfavorably at the rose-red unicorn. She trotted by, nose held high in the air.
“Right. Because that’s a real word, Cherry.” Vinyl giggled at her friend’s antics. Cherry Stem just rolled her eyes and kept walking forward. Or, more accurately, stumbled forward.
Finally, they arrived at their house: a cozy little loft in the eastern part of town. Vinyl saw Cherry up the stairs safely, and bid the mare goodbye as she stumbled into bed.
My bed, Vinyl thought with a grimace. Oh well. She’ll be up by the time I get home, she figured, and glanced at the clock. Its digital face glared 9:49 down on her in the moon-glow darkness.
I’m going to be late! she thought frantically, and shut the door behind her as she clambered down the stairs and back out to the grassy yard in front of the cheery little homes.
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A single neon sign was hung out in front of a non-descript business promenade: a long, looping “3” was lit in bright orange. Vinyl bounded up to the door, and threw it wide to reveal a wall of sound coming down the narrow hallway that ran down to the dance floor.
Vinyl only shot a cursory glance at the plaques and surrealistic art that hung down the crimson corridor. She glanced at the artfully pragmatic clock that hung on the wall: nine fifty-nine.
Right on time, she thought with a cocky grin. She stopped at the end of the hallway, adjusting her shades ever-so-carefully, slicked her mane in the right position, and checked her breath- only a tiny hint of Apple Family’s Best rode on the mist of her breath.
“Alright, guess I’m ready,” she murmured to herself with just a little bit less effort than she would have liked. A thick red velvet curtain was draped across the entryway before her.
The music changed to a pumping beat. Lights dimmed, and a pony’s voice came on over the PA system.
“Ladies and gentlecolts, coming at you right from here in little old Ponyville, I give you the queen of the beat, the princess of pop, and the sickest mare you will ever meet…Vinyl Scratch!”
As her name was called, Vinyl stepped out from behind the curtain. Her dazzling smile was matched only by the brilliant spotlight that lay on her body, but to her, the physical gesture was starting to feel particularly heavy. She watched as some fifty ponies of various shapes, sizes, and colors turned to look at her. They cheered and hollered at her as she pushed her way through the crowd up to the turntables.
Flipping a pair of records in the air on the spark of blue magic, she clicked them in place, dropped the dials, and proceeded to drop the beats.
Same as every night, she realized with a small sense of irritation. Pushing it aside as she did every night, she went on with business as usual.
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Where’s the apartment building?
The thought was frantic, but seemed starkly comforting. The gnawing was starting to overwhelm her mind, but she couldn’t help it. Since that damn drug had gotten into her system…well, like every other colt, mare and stallion, she was its slave.
With a dim recollection, she managed to trudge through the crowded streets of Manehattan to the downtown junction where a murmur in her consciousness told her that she lived. Or maybe it was the drug that was directing her. The only reason she came here was for the Sour Hay, anyways. That’s why all the other mares were here, too.
Stumbling up the sidewalk, she spotted it: the torn poster that blew in the breeze, the little flag that both promised shelter and betrayed a private hell. A morbidly run-down apartment building, painted deep red like blood and crumbling like a mummified corpse in the sun sat vehemently before her. She didn’t want to come here, but it was her only choice. Music, Hay, bits. That was what it all came down to now, and she wasn’t sure how long she could string her body along for the masochistic ride.
Vinyl jumped up to the cracked intercom box. It was a lioness’ leap upon a defenseless prey which knew no better that it had given the predator the key to kill again.
“Nickel. Nickel, it's Vinyl. I need to come in now.” The sentence was a sob, a degraded, foalish utterance. Vinyl hated herself for saying the words, but she had no choice. The aching hunger was indomitable.
“Whatever, Vin. Get your flanks up here. Faide wants to see you, anyways.” A buzz and a sharp click announced the lowering of the drawbridge to the dragon’s castle.
Vinyl Scratch, no knight in any sense of the word, strode against her will into the misty lair of a dark place that she had no desire to ever go into again.
