Heartbeats

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I walk out of the classroom with complete uncertainty. I was done, I was out of it. I had finished. I had a few more things to do and then I was on my own. I was alone. I was on my own card and I had no help from anyone. It was just me, on my own. I loved it but it terrified me.

I had some cash saved up, but it was nothing special, just enough. Some spending money, a rainy day fund, a little bit more than what I needed to survive. I had budgeted everything out and I made enough money to live off of as long as I spent my money smart.

I could sit in the dorm for a few more days before they kicked me out and I planned to use those days to pack my few possessions together. I had already sold everything I couldn’t carry with me in the last few weeks. My plan now? Move and don’t stop. Pack up my things and take to the sky. Run as far as I could, to the reaches of everywhere, and keep running until the run turns into a chase.

And what a glorious chase it would be.

I snort at my own idiocy, and walk down the hallway. I had stuff to do. I had to choose where to go first then I had to figure out how to make enough money to get wherever I chose to go. I needed an apartment in the meantime and I didn’t have time to dilly dally on such outlandish fantasies as finding a mate. That wasn’t going to happen for me and every second spent in the attempted defiance of that fact, was another second wasted that I could be spending doing something that would get me somewhere. Sure, I had seconds to waste but they weren’t right now.

I step out of the school, go to the dorm, and ensure that everything is packed and ready to go. I give my roommate, who had decided to nap upon the completion of his own exams, a glance, full of contempt before heading out of the dorm. Thereupon towards the city with the intent of walking around until I find apartments, inquiring as to their policies and prices or rent. Continuing on in a somewhat gridded path that was crafted more on the intent of avoiding the worst of the ghettos, and the areas that I knew would be out of my budget. This was based entirely upon my noticed surroundings instead of having any actual knowledge of the area. Sure, I could navigate major roads but knowledge of the smaller areas eluded me, and I found no purpose in perfecting navigation in every corner of the city. If I spent what I felt was too long without seeing an apartment, I would simply take flight and locate one from above ground.

        Thus was how I spent the time from my early afternoon on until dusk, at which point I stepped back into the cafe I had visited upon my last trip to the city. I bought some more green tea and headed home with the tea cup grasped firmly in my left wing. The walk home was calming. It was certainly getting colder as fall progressed into winter.

Winter. I think of fuzzy thoughts, thoughts I wished I could have without regret. Thoughts of spending time around a hearth with a family, of curling up in front of a fire with a special somepony and falling asleep next to them. I decided I needed to light a candle when I got home. Flames intrigued me. Fire represented good things. No matter how much ponies feared it, it could do no wrong in my eyes. Fire purged filth, it cleansed, it created the ashes from which a new world could be born. It was the ultimate hoof-sanitizer and no infection was safe from its grasp. Snow melted back from heat created by the eternal flame of the sun. The melting snow provided water for the world, awakened from the slumber of winter, to regrow. Fire was the source of all life. Without it, Equus would be just another frozen ball in space. I liked that thought: a frozen ball in space. I had suffered too much, seen to much and the most profound thing I knew was that my suffering was nothing compared to what happened to some other people. I was a mild case, I had just suffered emotionally. I had not been subject to the unspeakable physical suffering others went through, I had never starved, I still had all of my limbs, nothing had taken a bite out of me yet. I was whole of body and though every once in awhile I put myself through physical suffering, it was still minimal. It was wrong and that was it. Nothing should have to suffer the way ponies suffered today; nothing should have to starve to death, nothing should have to freeze to death, to burn, or anything. Pain was something that didn’t bother me but the concept of others in pain upset me to no end.

        I pull my folding knife out, the cheap one I have for sentiment, more than anything else. It was a cheap, reliable blade on which the mechanisms would never wear out and though it wasn’t the sharpest blade in existence, it did the job. I flicked it open, closed it, and reopened it with the kind of casualness that bespoke a nervous habit. It was late enough and there weren’t many ponies around. so I wasn’t worried about being arrested. I continued to walk, mind silent, concentrating on nothing but the monotonous opening and closing of the blade. As I approach the dorm, I put it away, tucking it back into one of the outer pockets of my saddlebags and fold my wings to my sides. I make my way inside the building and up the stairs, to my room, 212. I shared it with some randomly assigned student that was a stereotypical pegasus in the most inane way possible. Brutish, average intelligence, into physical sports like hoofball. Oh, how he loved hoofball. Oh, how I hated his obsession with the damn thing.

        I dulley notice his absence, shrug and rummage through my possessions to ensure they've not been touched. I finish off my tea, having held it in the opposite wing of the knife, throw the cup into the trash can and proceed to settle into my bed. I had seen some nice apartments, nothing great, nothing terrible, several within my price range, a few with decent locations. I had two or three to choose from and I thought I could find the right one based upon whatever factors remained. Namely the overall quality of the tenants and the tolerance for things such as noise and the like. I was for the most part a quiet person but sometimes I had to silence myself, and to do so, occasionally I needed noise. I consider my options, going forward. The apartment would cost me W, I had Z amount of funds, X amount of money went into things like food, clothing, utilities, and I had Y bits left over. Y bits that had to be saved for a rainy day or spent sparsely on excess and consumerism. I worked for A hours a day, and I made B bits an hour, with C days off, which left me 15 - 1 - A = D hours free on a workday, -1 hour for travel to and from work, I would continue to make B bits a week, which went straight into my budget, and I had (C * 15) + D hours a week to do what I wanted, not included time left over for sleep. If I got up at  8 AM every morning, seeing as I got off at 5 and would arrive home between 5:30 and 6, depending on how late I get off and traffic to and from my place of living. I was awake for an average of 15 hours a day, 8 + 4 = 12, 15-4 = 11, or, I slept from 11PM to 8AM every day, on average, as I’m sure I’ll sleep less weekends and probably more after long days, especially Mondays. I hated Mondays.

Anyways, I should get about 9 hours of sleep, which was plenty for someone who could run off 5 hours and wouldn’t sleep more than 10 hours.

        After a brief mental recap, I concluded I needed a fillyfriend to fill my time with as my hobbies allowed me as much time as I wanted and they were pretty cheap. So they didn’t draw too much from Y, which left me Y-HobbyMoney = FillyMoney;

wonderful, since when did I put a ; at the end of my thoughts. I was reasserting java into my thoughts. I groaned. Java was great for statements, math assertions, whatever. But it simply would not do if my greeting went back to isalive();

I shuddered. Yep, I remembered those days. They weren’t that bad but they got weird sometimes. Ya ever greeted someone with an if statement, complete with boolean expression?

I shook my head, and tried to concentrate on slowing my thoughts down. I’d never get to sleep at this rate and I needed that sleep, even if it did absolutely nothing for my looks or my sanity, it was still sleep.

Sleep was Escape. It was time spent where I wasn’t running, where my mind was free from the constant subjugation I enforced upon it at every living second so that I could continue to function in the real world without too much trouble. Of course, sleep had it’s downsides. I had a habit of having nightmares on nights like this. After wearing myself down thinking too much, I’d go into a depressive state to recover. Sleep, have a nightmare, and wake up between 3 and 5 crying my eyes out and wishing I could just die. My dreams tended to be lucid enough; I didn’t have my full thought process but I could control them to some extent. My big problem was that they were terrifying recreations of my worst fears written in such a way as I could believe them. I could recount two or three different scenarios I know are dreams without a doubt that I cannot distinguish from my actual memories of my past, which is one of the reasons I suppressed it so strongly. If your memories were inseparable from your worst nightmares, how much would you choose to recall?

I shuddered again. I was going to lose myself. I turned on the television screen and loaded up a solo zombie survival game, nothing like screaming and running from hordes of the undead all by yourself to get your mind off the wolves in your mind, right? Nothing like it.