The life and times of Lafayette Ryder

I stand and watch my death in slow motion. I see the insurgents on a nearby hill, one with a RPG fires and his buddies’ holler, aim their AK’s and light up the convoy. I see the tank at the head of the line of vehicles hit an IED right as the rocket hits a Humvee towards the back of the line. The Humvee I was in. I see the fire as one then two then three and four more trucks are hit by explosive rounds our bombs buried under the road. I watch in horror as a good friend of mine pulls himself out of a burning fuel truck and desperately roll on the ground. It’s a mercy when he is shot in the head. I watch as my platoon is decimated, I watch as men and women I knew well die horrible deaths, I watch as my Humvee is flipped over with me in the gunner’s spot on top, I watch as I’m crushed underneath a few tons of hot metal, I cry. So that’s why they had a closed casket at my funeral.

I watch all of these events exactly as they happened a year and a half ago for me and forty years ago for the world I left. I watch because I can’t turn away, I can’t even look away as the fuel truck explodes and showers the surrounding vehicles and people with burning gasoline, as more explosions trigger, as more soldiers are shot like dogs, as people die. As I die.

I force my eyes close and scream a single word in my head.

‘Discord!’

When I open my eyes back up the hellish nightmare of that doomed convoy in Iraq is gone, instead I float in a vast expanse of darkness, of nothingness. Having no other viable option to choose I start to back float and accept my fate. Tears fall from my moist eyes and shimmer for a second before being lost in the great void tha surrounds me. I can’t hear my sobs or my words but I know what I’m trying to say.

“Jeff…Discord…Dallas…Twilight… Lizzie… Dulcie…”

The first two silent words are filled with inaudible loathing, the third with mere disappointment, and the last three with love.

“Yes?” an angelic voice rings out in the wasteland. I look and see none other than my favorite punker gril, angel or otherwise.

“Dulcie,” I speak and hear the words as they pass from my lips and make their way to my ears. “You came when I called.”

“Well,” She says as she takes a bight out of a green apple from Sweet Apple Acres, I know it’s from there because the sticker on the side says so. “Believe it or not I’m an honorary member of the Green Wind Tribe, where you be tinkin I get dees sweet wings an wicked cool skeels?” She laughs and flaps her wings a bit; I just recline on a cloud on nonexistence and look at her.

“So what’s the deal now Dulcie? Am I dead, dying, hallucinating, or what?”

She does a 360 and a few flippy flips before settling down next to me and then starts chewing on her nails, she obviously doesn’t what to answer me but I don’t care at the moment.

“Dulcie,” I say firmly. “Tell me what the fuck is going on here.”

“Chill out,” She says with a flick of her wrist. “No need to swear and all that, you’re not dead, you won’t die for another seventy years if I have anything to say about it. And yes, in a way, this is a hallucination, just a real one.”

“Wut?” I calm down immensely, all that fear and worry now traded for confusion at Dulcie’s cryptic way of telling me shit.

Dulcie giggles and pulls a bag of candies out of her cargo pants. “Want some?” she offers me some generic chocolate gumdrops. I take a handful and wait for her to explain as we both fill our mouths with gooey fudgy goodness. “So,” she garbles through the mouthful of sweets. “Remember when you got pissed and killed Celestia and Twilight?” I nod “Well this is kind of like that. You did something violent, insane, and terrible and now your conscious is punishing you. Deep down you feel bad about what you’ve done so you stop time, force yourself to somewhere where you can calm down, and then rewind time to make a better present. It’s some sweet Code Lyoko shit you got going on with it. So after we have this nice little chat you’ll go back to Canterlot gardens and face Discord again only this time you won’t go all ‘Hulk smash!’ on everything. Got it?”

“Uh, I think so.”

“Good, now before you go back I need to clear a few things up with you. First off, Discord’s full of horse shit. All the stuff about making Dallas, Jeff, and I is highly exaggerated. We simply used him as a hub to find you and bring you to Equestria; regrettably Jeff tainted Discord’s chaos while we did this. ’Member that green globe next to Jeff’s?”

“Yeah, what was it?”

“That, my friend, was Discord’s natural spirit of disharmony. It’s no more dangerous than… than something that’s not that dangerous; don’t give me that look you know how bad I am with words. Anyway the red one was the taint that Jeff left in Equestria, now that it’s gone what the hay is so damn funny?”

I clasp my hands over my mouth in a futile attempt to stifle my laughter. “You said ‘taint’.” I double over laughing but start to spin out of control. I grab Dulcie’s leg and right myself.

“Ugh, men.” She grips. “You know there’s a reason I prefer girls right?”

“Two words; tits and pussy.” I get smacked but it’s worth it.

“No, that is why I like girls so much.”

“That doesn’t stop you from falling for some lovable idiot fella in every story you’re in.”

“Hah,” she laughs. “Me falling for them? More like they fall for me and I’m too much of a softie to tell ’em off.”

“Come on Dulcie, admit it. You like the cock!” I get backhanded again but I laugh anyway.

“Shut up,” she orders.

“Yes ma’am.” I salute her and make a face.

“And for the love of God don’t get me started on other stories, I hate this damn multiverse! Die in one world that you’re accustomed to and get punted into another that doesn’t even have Rad soda or true chaotic perfection!”

“Yeah, I know how bad you miss your ‘meaningful randomness’, hell if it would help me keep from fucking up I’d gladly comb the personals and tabloids every day.”

“Welp, let’s get back on track here. When you go back Discord will be alive and mischievous as ever but nothing more, your little rampage will not have even occurred and Pinkie is going to show up and give you a black eye for some reason.”

“Why?” I dare to ask. Dulcie just glares at me.

“It’s Pinkie motherbucking Pie, I aint gotta explain shit.”

“Fair ’nuff.”

“Now because you just made Jeff really friggin’ strong Dallas and I are gonna have to step our game up, if we do it right your mind will have four parts, us three and you and together Dallas and I will be a bit stronger than ol’ Jeffy boy. The only downside is that since Dallas will be a bigger part of your mind you’re gonna get gayer.”

“How gay?”

“At best? Neil Patrick Harris gay.”

“Hmm… I can live with that, what about at worst?”

“On the other side of the scale, Justin Beiber.”

“Fuck me.”

“Yep, that’s the attitude you’ll have whenever you’re around hot, black men.” Dulcie smiles and I practice my award winning poker face for a minute.

“Good thing there aren’t many blacks in Equestria.”

“*Cough* Racist. *Cough* Asshole. *Cough*”

“Hey, in case you forgot, Fish was black and he was one of my best friends.”

“Whatever. Oh! Looks like our hour’s up, back to the land of rainbows and titty sprinkles for you my friend.”

A portal opens up in the void near us, within it I can see Canterlot gardens, Discord, Celly, Luna, Armor, and a shit ton of guards. I float to it but stop halfway there.

“Dulcie?”

“Mmmhmm?” she mumbles past chocolate.

“Earlier you said something about how you three used Discord to bring me here. What do you mean by that? And I am NOT leaving until I get answers and I will not let you bail out either.”

“Shit.”

“Yep, that sums up your situation. Now spill it.” I fold my arms over my chest and wait for her explanation, after a minute of blubbering and attempting to get out of talking she gives up.

“Remember what I said about the multiverse?”

“Yes.”

“Well God, The God I mean, created one universe in the beginning, the whole Genesis chapter of the bible for realsy. But after the people there started doing stupid shit and he had to kill off a bunch of ’em he decided to make more universes with more humans. This way if he ever had to destroy an entire planet for being evil his people would live on elsewhere. He made an infinite amount of them and then interconnected them, every story you could read or watch is someone’s real life somewhere out in the universe. Hell, on one world Equestria is a TV show for little girls but a bunch of dudes fell in love with it and treat it like it’s real.” I stop her there.

“You’re bullshitting me, that would never happen.”

“Sure, whatever helps you sleep at night. Anyway this is how I got here, after my story ended God sent me here along with Dallas and Jeff to guide you. Now the trippy part is that I’m also still with Cameron back in our own universe, Dallas is in a parallel Equestria and married to Big Mac and Fluttershy, and Jeff is in his own fucked up world full of creepy stuff, he’s a deranged serial killer there.”

“Never would have guessed. So why did you three bring me here?”

“Well,” Dulcie sighs. “We had to kill you in your world and bring you to life to protect you and your family.”

“And how exactly did killing me protect me and my family?” I raise an eyebrow and wait for a doozy.

“Mmm, you’re not going to like this, you probably won’t even believe it.”

“I’m married to a unicorn and killed two demigods recently, the things I will believe in overshadow the things I don’t by a mile. Try me.”

“OK, but don’t say I didn’t warn you. That magic of yours,” she points at my hand. “Isn’t entirely from Celestia. All she did was give you the power to use it, the only thing that can bring a human’s power to the light of day is extreme suffering, when you were on the moon the pain and loss gave you the ability to harness that magic, your fight with Tia and return home ate away at all that pent up emotion and let you keep your sanity and magic.”

“OK, and if I didn’t come here?”

Lizzie would have had a miscarriage on your second child and later that year would die of cancer. Your baby girl, who you so kindly named after her mother, would grow to hate you because of your apathy to her and would run off with some biker douche and end up dead in a motorcycle crash. You would become depressed and try to kill yourself; you fail and get sent to a psych ward at some hospital. There you meet Dallas, fall in love and get married. The only problem is that AIDS kills Dallas off a year later. You would go insane, unlock your powers and then proceed to fuck everything in your universe up. Once done with that God would try and stop you and inadvertently allow you to jump into the mist of the multiverse and fuck everything everywhere up. We were sent to stop that.”

“That’s a shit ton of ‘would’s’.” It’s all I can think to say.

Dulcie continues speaking. “Now that you’re dead on earth Lizzie, lil Dulcie, and earth Dallas all live, no one destroys everything and the worst pain felt is the death of a father. Over in Equestria you change everyponies’ lives.”

“Really,” I interrupt her. “How so?”

Dulcie grimaces but keeps talking. “Let’s see, without you Twilight becomes an old maid, mare whatever, Dash never comes out of the closet or becomes a WonderBolt, Celly becomes one of her various personalities and ruins the nation somehow, all of the CMC get different cutie marks except for Dinkie who goes through life covering hers up because nopony knows what it means, Mac never marries Flutters or Caramel, oh and Pinkie Pie starts baking Cupcakes.”

“What’s so bad about that?” I ask.

“You don’t wanna know.” She answers.

I groan and rub my eyes.

“You’re telling the truth Dulcie, I know it and I hate you for it but I also love you for it. I got one more question before I go home though.”

“Shoot.”

“OK, so you said that Dallas was in my future on earth, and then you said I named my girl after her mother so I figure in a way you’re Lizzie or vice versa,” Dulcie blushes at this. “So that’s two of the three voices in my head as people in my life. Where’s Jeff?”

Dulcie stops blushing and starts looking at the Great Tremolo sticker on her breastplate, evidently it’s fascinating.

“Dulcie,” I growl. “Who is Jeff?”

Dulcie coughs a bit and flies closer. She wraps her arms and wings around me and looks me in the eyes. She kisses me gently on the lips but I don’t kiss back.

“Dulcie,” I begin.

“You,” she says. “You are Jeff.”

With that she pushes me hard and I pass though the portal. The last thing I see is her wings spread wide with a spray paint message on them.

‘To live is to love, to love is to live.’

I remember that saying from her story, her life I mean. I think about the message as I fall into the inky darkness of the portal.

“Life is worth fighting for and so is love, I’ll never have either while Jeff is in my head.”

I turn around and face the light as I exit the portal.

By God I’m going to fight for my life and my lover, this time I’m just going to fight the right person.

But how do I fight part of myself?

Author's note: The punker angel Dulcie (And Cameron) are from the novel Going Bovine by Libba Bray. Also thanks to Frank Dufresne (Doc) for proofreading my stories even though I'm so damn impatient that I post them before I even send them to you.