June 1st, 2015
??? since Event
“Hmmmm,” I hummed as I woke up.
As I was waking up, I noticed something was different. I could hear so much. I could hear the breathing of my dog, as well as his heart beating. I could hear insects flying around my window. And I could hear a leaking faucet in my neighbor's home. I could smell better as well. So well that I could smell the fact that my dog needed a bath. I could smell the stench of sweat covered bedsheets Things I normally could not smell.
I tried to move my arms or legs but found them numb. I could not even work up the willpower to speak! My mouth felt scratchy and dry. I ran my unusually thin tongue over my lips to find fangs sticking out of them.
I opened my eyes and found even stranger things. I lifted my arm and found a stump where my hand should be. While the rest of my arm was black, and filled with holes of various sizes. Looking at myself further, I discovered all of my limbs were like this! There was only one conclusion.
‘This is one of my stranger dreams.’
As much as I would like to stay and experiment, I had things to do, so I decided to wake myself up by punching myself in the face. I missed my face though, the stump which I had discovered was actually a hoof, sailed above me.
“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHH!” I screeched in pain, startling my dog.
‘IT HURTS! OH GOD! MAKE IT STOP MAKE IT STOP MAKE IT STOP!’
I lay panting from the now dull pain, my arms wrapped around my head as if it helped it stop.
‘OK, this is real. I don't think I have ever felt something that hurt so much.’
This was real. I was a horse-shaped… thing. I had something sensitive on my head. And I had no idea how this happened.
Then I felt a tongue drag across my cheek.
I looked over and saw my dog, ‘Blitz,’ licking me. Probably concerned about me. But how did he know it was me? Do I have the same scent? I pushed these thoughts behind me, making a mental note to try and figure it out later.
“(Blitz, stop. I’m fine.)”
‘Woah what?!’
I had said that in a series of clicks and chirps. And I was not sure what I found weirder, that my attempt at speaking turned out like that, or that I knew what the sounds meant. Blitz stopped licking, but he cocked his head, showing his skepticism.
I leaned over towards my desk, then went to pick up my phone. I sandwiched the device between my hooves and brought it over. After setting the phone down on my lap, I started to lean over for a smart screen stylus, only to find the phone still attached to my right hoof! I moved it back over my lap and tried to get it off without success.
That is when I noticed a feeling in the attached hoof. A sort of ghost feeling that extended just beyond the hoof. Calling upon some sort of instinctual knowledge I didn't know I had, I managed to pull the feeling back into the hoof, causing the phone to fall off of it and onto the bed. I looked at my hoof, almost not believing what I saw and felt.
Deciding to test this ability, I lowered my hoof to the blanket. I pushed the ghost feeling out of my hoof, then lifted it. And the blanket rose with it, connected fully to the hoof. This eliminated the struggle to hold things with a hoof, but made it no less strange.
‘Strange, could have sworn it was the middle of May.’
Pushing my confusion aside, I opened my contacts menu and called my mother’s number. Doing all of this was surprisingly simple with the ‘ghost’ feeling in my hooves.
“We are sorry. We cannot reach this person at this time. Would you like to send a bug report to—” my phone said as I ended the call. I did not have time for bug reports.
“We are sorry. We cannot reach—” Dad’s phone not working either?
“You have reached Christian Webb. Please leave a message after the beep.” At least my step-brother’s phone still works.
“Christian! I don’t know if you can understand this! But I got turned into some weird horse thing! I need you to call me back so you can help!” I said in that weird language. Hoping that he would understand it.
I continued calling people for some time, everyone else getting the same errors as my parents did. Even nine-one-one did nothing for me. This was a good reason to start panicking, but I forced myself to remain calm. I needed to handle this situation carefully.
I stood up on the bed, moving to the edge in preparation to jump off. But as I was about to jump, my front legs slipped off. In that moment of surprise, I closed my eyes, preparing for pain. Though it never came. Instead, I felt the ghost feeling in all four hooves. I opened my eyes, looking straight at the ground. I looked at my body and where I was. I was again stunned by this body.
‘Holy shit.’
I was standing on the side of the bed. I was defying gravity and standing on the side of something like an insect on a wall. I… This changes nothing. All it means that I am lighter then I look, and these parts of mine that give the feeling are strong. My surprise died down as I prepared land.
Though being prepared to land and actually being able to are two very different things. I only landed on my front hooves, the rest of my body came crashing down, toppling my landing hooves like they were nothing. Luckily, nothing seemed to be broken. My only pain being a dull sting all over my body.
Getting back up on my hooves, I looked towards the wall closest to me. Having an idea I wanted to test, I walked up to it, then placed both front hooves on the wall, feeling the ghost feeling activating. I then pulled my back hooves up and placed them on the wall as well. With the feeling coursing in all hooves, I started walking up the wall, the feeling activating and deactivating while I went.
Right front.
Left back.
Left front.
Right back.
Right front.
Left back.
Left front.
Right back.
Right front. Left back. Left front. Right back.
I had to keep track of which hoof went after the other. But after some time, I managed to even get up to the ceiling, here I got a good view of my room, with Blitz watching me from the bed.
‘Wow, this is cool.’
I was so concentrated on how cool I thought it was and how nice my view was that I did not notice the feeling start to falter. This caused me to detach from the ceiling and fall, turning my elation into panic.
I landed on my back, causing pain to shoot up from it. I yelled out as Blitz jumped off the bed and made his way towards me. Not wanting to lay on a body part that hurt so much, I rolled over onto my belly and laid there, trying not to cry while Blitz started licking me again.
“Uuuuuuugh,” I moaned.
‘This sucks.’
I was looking the mirror, getting a good look at the damage. This also gave me a good time to look over my entire body. My black exoskeleton had no gaps to permit movement in a hard shell, but the skeleton itself was made of a soft material that could permit fluid movement. This made me doubt its ability to protect me though. The various holes in my legs seemed arbitrary and did not serve any purpose as far as I could tell. On my head were grey fins that felt fine and soft, and I could make them twitch and move as if they were separate limbs. Atop my head was a thorn-like protrusion, which was the thing I punched when I first woke up. And touching it made me realize that it is extremely sensitive. I settled on calling it a horn, as calling it a thorn made me feel like a plant. My eyes were solid blue with a white area following the movement of my vision, which caused me to think of it as this bodies equivalent to the pupil. In my mouth rested a blue, thin tongue that could stretch out nearly a foot in front of me. Aside from the fangs, my dental structure was similar to my old body. None of this mattered in comparison to what was on my back though.
‘This is why I can't have nice things.’
On my back was a blue carapace, sticking out from that were two transparent wings with a blue hue. The problem? My fall had broken the wings. They rested on my back all crumpled up like a ball of paper. Had I weighed as much as I look, the wings could never support flight anyways. But judging from the fact that the hooves were able to support my weight, I thought that this body is very lightweight to allow these abilities. Making me hope that once the wings healed, I could learn how to fly.But for now, they would only taunt me for what could have been.
I moved on to other concerns. Mainly, checking on all my neighbors. None of them had answered their phones and I needed to check to see if they were alive. The abilities of my body had distracted me long enough!
I would then spend another 20 minutes staring at my ‘groin plate’ as I discovered that I could use it to cover up my penis is a shell like the rest of my body. This solved the problem of public indecency, as my clothes were far too big for me now. Made sense, I was the same size as Blitz now. And while the Alaskan Husky was larger than average, he seemed like a beast now that I had his perspective.
I would find out that there was no one to be indecent to though, as all the other apartments were deserted. One building was completely destroyed, by a fire if I was correct. Some apartments had things strung about in such a way that it looked like they disappeared in the middle of the night half eaten meals and such, making me think that someone left the stove on when this happened.
Not only that, but every building had no power or water. Nothing worked, along with a layer of dust on every surface in those apartments, things in fridges and freezers were rotten. It’s as if Blitz and I slept through the end of the world, and now we are just realizing that shit got real.
I was back in my apartment, thinking about what I should do first, when my stomach started growling.
‘Food’s a good start.’
Leaving Blitz at the apartment, I jumped in my car and set off! Or was about to before I realized that driving as a bug was going to be harder than everything else about this body so far. I had to adjust the seat as low to the ground and as close to the wheel to reach to pedals. And I could just barely see the road in front of me. After making the adjustments, I was off to Albertsons, the local supermarket.
The suburbs I went through to get there were a mess, trash cans knocked over and some windows broken. Apparently, some raccoons thought they owned the place now with all the humans gone, which was kinda true, sadly. There were no abandoned cars on the road, the poster boy of the end of the world, what was shocking was the empty road in California. That just did not happen in this state. Apparently this apocalypse was polite enough to remove all the cars, but not enough to turn off a stove in a building.
Soon enough, I made it to the strip mall where Albertsons was located. I left the car on, not expecting to take long getting all the food. The doors to the store were open, and the entire store was pitch black, the power being gone and all. Walking in, my eyes immediately adjusted and I noticed that the store had been looted!
Not much had been taken and most of the shelves still had most of their things on them, but the fact that looters had been here, along with the lack of power, gave further evidence that I was a little late to the end of the world party.
Then I heard something. My powerful new ears picking up something from the middle of the store. Making my way over there, I felt something strange. My fins twitched, and I felt something, something different. I felt something foreign within me, like I had exited the airport of a distant land. Mixed in with what tasted like a perfectly made grilled cheese sandwich. And then I learned what I felt.
The feeling continued to grow, as I continued toward where I heard and felt it.
Them, it was them, not it.
Not even trying to remain quiet, I continued toward where that wonderful feeling was coming from. As I got closer, I started feeling other things.
The feeling from before was replaced with unease, mixed in with a strange sensation. Leaving me hungry, as if I had been just forced away from a buffet.
Then the feeling changed again, now it felt like some sort of monster was behind be, about to rip me to shreds.
These feelings, the ones I am sensing and those that I feel, why?
“You hear that too, right?” I heard a voice say.
“Yeah, be prepared for anything,” another said.
“Another survivor maybe?” the first suggested.
“Maybe, just be careful and stay behind me,” the second ordered.
The love flow resumed as I inhaled air, the feeling flowing into me and filling me. I drank deep, my mind too far gone to question what was happening, too far in bliss to care about what I was doing.
I came to the entrance of the aisle I felt everything coming from, and what I saw shocked me back into the present. Two ponies were standing in the aisle, one red, one blue, both in brown shorts, both aiming flashlights down the aisle, and both looking at me in shock. But I felt far more from them. So strong that I could identify what they felt.
Revulsion
Fear
Anger
All these feelings confused me. Why was I feeling them, and why did it feel like they were coming from the ponies?
“You get out of here, you freak,” the red one said to me in disgust, but I felt the fear he was hiding from me and his brother. He then pulled a handgun out of the cart they had next to them and pointed it at me with his mouth.
I did not even think he could pull the trigger, fire it without breaking his jaw, or be accurate enough to hit me. But I could not gamble with my life, and the fear I felt from him meant that he was probably not thinking straight. I had to do this carefully.
I opened my mouth to try to calm him down, but then I felt my body stiffen up. My eyes widened and my mouth closed. I stared straight at the ponies as I felt their fear increase. Then everything went black.
Chapter 2: Friendly Faces
June 2nd, 2015
??? since Event
I opened my eyes and saw stars.
All around me was the blackness of space lit up with stars and nebuli. It was the most amazing thing I had ever seen. The beauty of the dream I was probably in was unmatched.
My observation was interrupted as I sensed something. A weird mix of emotions that I could not quite identify. I felt a being that was calm, curious, and anxious at the same time. I could only imagine how one could be calm and anxious at the same time.
As the presence got closer, I saw a shape start to take form in the distance, sort of outline, shifting as I felt it come closer and closer.
Suddenly, a whine sounded off, followed by shaking the ‘world’ I was in. I felt panic spike from the being as I felt it rush towards me. The shape becoming distinguished from the world around me.
As I felt myself waking up, I heard the first words from this being as the shape in the distance became vaguely recognizable. I had no time to identify it, as the collapsing dream was shook by a voice that sounded like it came from God himself.
“NAY! NAY!”
Then I woke up.
I woke up to Blitz pawing at my prone form. My heightened sense of smell overloaded my new nose (or was it snout now) with a stench. A stench I knew well.
“God damn it, Blitz. Please tell me you didn't pee on the carpet,” I begged.
I sat up on my rump and looked around, trying to identify the source of the smell. Unfortunately, Blitz had indeed peed on the carpet. Some damp spots near the walls as well as a yellow stain on them confirmed my suspicion.
‘Damn it, I should have taken him out before I left.’
It was then I noticed the emotions I was sensing from the guest room I had. That feeling, just as… tasty as it was yesterday. I walked over to the guest room and pushed open the door.
There, in green pods, were the ponies from Albertson’s. Both of them looked fine, no injuries I could notice. They were floating in liquid which I assume was to keep them asleep and alive, given that there did not seem to be anyway to breath in there. The pod itself was soft to the touch, but did not yield much. Sort of like my exoskeleton.
The things I felt from the seemed subdued, in favor of a heightened sense of that feeling. My fin twitched as I began to… do something. Eat? Drink? I didn't quite know, but I consumed the feeling they felt for each other as one would physical food.
And it tasted good.
I couldn't describe what it tasted like, but it tasted amazing, and it seemed endless. I felt something moving around on my back, but I didn't care. I was only focused on my feast. After the thing on my back stopped moving, I felt something inside me being filled up. Like I have some sort of ‘feeling battery’ inside me.
What was this feeling? Was it emotion? I could ‘sense’ other feelings than this ‘tasty’ one. I could even identify what emotions they were feeling when I got close enough. But they did not taste good, unlike this one. Was it love? The sensation felt like it was being directed towards each other, and I was pretty sure they were brothers.
‘I guess I could call it love, if only so I can stop calling it “feeling”.’
It was only when I was ‘full’ when I stopped and looked at the two probable brothers I just fed off. What I saw shocked me.
They looked like they had not eaten for days now.Their ribcages were plainly visible through the skin and fur. There cheeks were sunken in. And the love in the air was much less potent.
“Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit, shit.” I swore aloud.
‘What if I killed them? What if they can't feed me anymore? Will physical food even work for me? DidIjustdoommyselfbyeatingsomuch?WhatifIcan’tfindanyotherminihorses?’ I rapidly thought as I panicked.
My thoughts were interrupted by my phone ringing over in my room. Either telemarketers were still around, bothering the survivors of the apocalypse. Or someone I knew was alive!
I rushed past the still whining Blitz over to my room, where my phone played its ringtone. My brother’s name lied at the top of the screen. I grabbed the stylus and accepted the call, putting the phone up to my ear as I did so.
“Christian! You're alive!” I chirped into the phone.
“I should say the same thing to you,” He chirped in the same language.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“It's been about a week,” he answered.
“What do you mea—”
“There's no time to explain. Austin and I are at my apartment. Can you come get us?” My brother asked.
“Yeah, I’m on my way. Be there as soon as I can,” I answered.
“Be sure to bring food! We’re starving.”
The phone clicked as he hung up. My fear for his safety leaving me as I heard that he was alive. Not only that, but Austin was alive too! I just needed to bring food, which I assumed was the love I stored within me.
“San Francisco, here I come.”
Blitz whined again.
“Right after Blitz takes a piss.”
I walked over to the front door and opened it, dodging Blitz who rushed out like a bullet. I walked down the front steps of my apartment complex as I looked for my car, but I could not find it. Even after the four minutes it took Blitz to relieve himself, I could not find my car! As Blitz sat next to me, there was only one thing to say.
“What happened to my frickin’ car!”
One hour and thirty minutes. That's how long it took me to get my car at Albertson’s, walk to a gas station, get the gas to my car, stop at a car dealership, install extended pedals so I could see the road, and then get on the highway.
And now I had a six hour drive to San Francisco.
‘Not getting anything else done today,’ I thought with frustration.
My thoughts were interrupted when Blitz, who was sitting shotgun, pawed me, then moved his head towards the glass window.
I smiled at him, then pressed the buttons on my door, opening the windows of my seat and his. He stuck his head out and enjoyed the air rushing against his head. I enjoyed the air rushing past the window, cooling me a bit.
Like dogs, my new body could not sweat, and I felt like I was about to get heat stroke multiple times while preparing for this trip. This told me something about the state.
My new body could not survive here.
Already I could not survive here with California being a desert made paradise by large projects to get water into the state. It was too hot for my new body, and today wasn't even hotter than average! The love feast I had earlier had healed my wings, but buzzing them to cool myself off did not do much.
I would end up spending most of the trip thinking about where I could go to survive. The pros and cons of each location I knew.
I would also need a lot more than just a location. I would also need to set up renewable energy sources at the location, and find ways to get clean water. I would also need to get a server for Wikipedia, and download all of the articles I can from it. It would save me and any other survivors a lot of trouble trying to reinvent everything.
Or I could go through the horror of raiding a library.
Books are boring.
When I finally got to Christian’s apartment building, the doors to the lobby were missing, allowing me easy access. With no elevators, Blitz and I had to climb 8 flights of stairs before I made it to his floor. When I got close to his door, I felt the emotions of those inside. Though this seemed more like a ‘link’ rather than the sense I felt with the mini-horses. I felt a mixture of feelings and thoughts that I identified as Christian and Austin, and I knew that they felt me as well.
I opened the door, and rushed in, feeling how relieved they felt, knowing that I was here. They were both on the couch, looking semi-starved, with the same green substance on the pods back home on a wall. Seeing them here made me want to make some sort of comment.
So I did.
“I’m back, bitches!” I announced.
I felt a bit of amusement from them. Blitz then ran over and started bathing them with his licks. Apparently he recognized them too.
It was then I noticed how… malnourished they looked. They were very thin, much more than what was probably healthy. They seemed like they could barely move, and their eyes drooped as they attempted to focus on me.
“Are you guys ok?” I asked.
Austin’s stomach growled. “No,” he exasperatedly answered.
“You know what we eat now?” Christian asked. “Because regular food doesn't do anything.”
“Uhh, yeah. But, it's kinda hard to explain, and I don't really know much about it,” I replied.
I had no idea what to do. I didn't know how to transfer the love I had to them, and they were starving. Faced with having to feed them, I decided to just do what feels natural and work from there. And what felt natural was to hug them.
When I hugged Christian, I felt a bit of surprise from him and Austin, but soon after, I felt some of my love stores empty, and transfer to him. His fin twitched, and he accepted the love even through his confusion. When Christian was done, I did the same to Austin, and soon, both were healthy and ready to tackle the day. Even though they were still confused.
“What did you just do?” They both asked, the near synchronization of their words causing some amusement to make itself known in the ‘link’.
“I transferred some of my love store over,” I answered.
Seeing them open their mouths to say something, I stopped them. “And before you ask, it's a long story. I’ll tell you on the way to my place,” I told them.
Sensing their agreement, the three of us and Blitz moved back down the stairs to my car. Christian taking shotgun while Austin took the back seat with Blitz. Soon, we were back on the road to my place, with the sun on the horizon, signalling the end of the day.
“So what did you mean by ‘It's been about a week,’ Christian?” I asked.
“It's been about a week since all this happened. You and Blitz have been missing since May twenty-third.” Christian answered. I felt his nervousness. He was probably not expecting me to react well to the news.
“...Odd, but this whole situation strange as hell,” I answered, surprising them.
“Only you could act like something impossible didn't just happen,” Austin told me.
“Yeah, but I think that all three of us would call our situation impossible before it happened. Besides, all this does is just confirm that there is some intelligence behind this whole thing.”
“Since when did you start believing in God?”
“I never said that. I just think that there is something behind this whole thing, not sure what though.”
The trip continued in silence while everyone digested the new information and the implications it brings.
The silence was broken when Christian spoke again. “So we eat love then?”
“I think so. It's more like a ‘feeling’ that I call love because calling it a feeling does not fit into conversation well. It tastes good though, like my favorite food.”
Austin spoke up, “Tasted like steak for me.”
“Tasted like a cheese burger for me,” said Christian.
“Where you get it from?” he asked.
“Well, the day I woke up, I had gone down to the store. When I was down there, I ran into these technicolor mini-horses. Some other part of my body must've took over then ‘cause I woke up at my apartment with both ponies in pods in my apartment. Got breakfast from them, then got your call,” I explained to them. Their confusion matching my own about how it happened.
“You think they used to be human?” Austin asked.
“I assume so, they were speaking English and one had a gun,” I answered.
Silence reigned for a few minutes.
“Does anyone else find it weird that I see nothing wrong with keeping those horses in the pods?” Austin asked.
“No, because I don't find it wrong either,” answered Christian, who felt a little disgusted with himself.
“No,” I answered, as my thoughts ran miles a minute.
“I think that's because of the new bodies. Maybe we have different instincts,” Christian said, mimicking what I had been thinking and giving me confirmation. He was a psychology major after all.
Some more time was spent in silence before I asked them a question. “So, how have you guys been doing during this whole thing?”
We continued this line of conversation for hours. Talking about what we were doing since the event and even talked about what we were up to before the event. Austin had managed to get a bunch of hard drives from Best Buy and download almost all of Wikipedia before the power went down, which saves me from having to track down a server that hosted the site later.
When we got to my apartment, the sun was gone and nighttime had begun. With our better eyes, the lack of lights did not stop me from feeding Blitz and getting some blankets for my guests to sleep on my couches for the night.
They had expressed their surprise at the colours of the mini-horses. Austin had also explained that we could puke up the green substance and mold it before it hardened. He thought that it's what our bodies do with regular food now, which would normally suck, but I had also confirmed we still had taste buds that night as well. So now we could eat all the junk food we want without consequences!
We did not eat anything much that night, as Christian and Austin were tired and went to bed quickly. I retired to my room and grabbed a book from one of my desk drawers and a pen. Turning it until I reached blank pages, I practiced my hoof-writing a bit. While not perfect, it was good enough, considering I was lucky that this body could even write at all.
As I recalled everything that had happened in the last two days, I began to write.
Dear Journal...
