Those Thirty Days

  Home; home is supposed to be a comforting place of solitude, a place where ponies can go when they feel down, or just tired, and yet, my home could no longer be that to me. I had signed what effectively functioned as a license to break my privacy and observe me every second of the day. I had signed my own paranoia license. I suffered greatly in those thirty days, yes, but I think the preamble might have made it all the worse for me. It wasn't as bad as the main event, but it sufficed as a prologue to the torture that I would suffer soon enough.

  Shooting up in my bed, I looked out towards my window, a movement or something having caught my eye but a second earlier, though I couldn't tell what it was, or if it was. I squinted, trying to peer through the darkness, but nothing new was revealed to me. I fell back onto my bed, sighing in frustration. It had been a long day at the office, and now that I was home I needed sleep more than anything, but for some reason I wasn't getting it, no matter how much I tried, especially with brief blurbs of motion that caught my eye either in my room or directly around it. I couldn't wave it off anymore, but I couldn't prove it had been real either. For all I knew, I was just stressed and needed sleep.

  I settled deeper into my covers, trying to escape whatever tricks my mind was trying to pull on me, but no matter what I did, toss or turn, my thoughts haunted me, biting at the back of my mind, telling me to look one more time, the same fears that made sleep without a nightlight when I was a small colt impossible. Was this simply me being sleep deprived? If so, why wouldn't my body cut it out and let itself recuperate?

  Suddenly, a clatter hit my window, and I groaned, looking up towards it, only to freeze. There was no pony there, but on the center of the glass was the slowly fading mark of a hoof print, as if a pony had touched the cooled glass of my window, the heat from their body leaving a mark where it had been moments before. Shaking my head once, I looked back, and watched as the final wisp of the heat dissipated into nothing, leaving no trace. I stood up and left my bed, going to the kitchen to get something to get me to sleep. Even if a burglar was trying to break in, I wanted to sleep. They could steal whatever they wanted for all I cares, as long as they left the bed, the couch, and the stove... and maybe the freezer and the fridge, the freezer was a nice thing to have and the fridge had left over macaroni from the last time he had eaten out.

  I opened the fridge and poured a cup of milk, drinking it down in a few swift gulps. Looking around in my apartment with the pale light from my fridges miniature light fixture, I saw everything was in order, not that anything shouldn't be. Closing the fridge door, I made my way back to bed, flopping unceremoniously as I tried to get to sleep before the morning made my room unbearable.