The pony lying in bed has been conscious for over an hour and has yet to move an inch.
The pony’s waiting for the strings tied around his legs to start his day, making sure to keep his body loose and limp. It’s not wise to fight the strings. By now, this is something that everyone knows. The strings are nearly invisible, they are; only glimpsed in direct sunlight if caught at just the right angle. The strings have the ability to change, too. One moment, they could be as elastic as chewing gum. The next, as sharp as piano wire.
The pony lying in bed has enough faded scratches and scars circling his legs and throat to know exactly what they’re capable of.
“Ready for another beautiful day in Paradise?” the voice in his head asks gleefully. “My happy and smiling little pony?”
He feels a soft tug on his foreleg, flipping him onto his side to face the clock on the counter. It’s 9:37 in the morning. Once again, he’s slept in.
Same as he had exactly 742 days ago.
And the day following that.
And the day following that.
“Not going to greet the world without the most important meal of the day, are you?”
The strings that hold his legs guide him out of bed and toward the kitchen. As he crosses the threshold, he does his best to ignore the large brown stain in the corner of the room. What comes next is more muscle memory than anything: half an orange, a fresh cup of coffee (three drops spilled on the floor—each and every time), two carrot sticks with the tips left over to be tossed into the trash.
Next the pony cleans himself off in the shower, praying the voice in his head doesn’t talk to him while he’s in there. It’s silly, he knows. He has no control over that voice. No one does.
The pony shivers as he stands under the showerhead. The water is too cold and he has no way of fiddling with the knobs. Not without fighting against the strings tied around his hooves, at least. That’s a big no-no in the land of Paradise.
In silence, the pony dries himself off and opens the blinds covering the window in his living room. Outside the sun is out in full force, as are all of the ponies left in town. Like clockwork they cross the street in front of his home: a lone unicorn, two mares with baskets full of fruit, a pegasus with a cutie mark in the shape of…
Only this time the pegasus doesn’t trot across his window. In fact, he’s nowhere to be found.
The pony standing before the window lets out a quivering breath before the voice in his head speaks to him again.
“Don’t mind those nasty missing troublemakers, my perfect little pony. They don’t deserve a spot in Paradise with the rest of us. Put your mind at ease. Say, isn’t it your day off? Why not spend a little time around town amongst your friends?”
742 days ago it had been the pony’s day off from work. And it had been at that very moment—while he was staring out that window—that he’d decided to spend his afternoon around town. Truthfully, he didn’t know which fate to be worse. To have decided to stay inside, reading and lazing about all by himself? Only to only spend the next two years doing the exact same thing with no idea of what was happening in the outside world?
The pony’s legs are ripped out from under him in the direction of the door. He hisses through his teeth as the numerous strings around his limbs tighten and pull. He hadn’t been paying attention and therefore paid the price for it. He doesn’t have the ability to look down at the moment, but feels a small trickle of blood begin oozing down his legs.
It reminds him of the first time he fought back against the strings.
***
Outside, it’s deathly quiet. No birds chirping in the trees. No dogs noisily lapping at their master’s faces in order to get their attention. In fact, not a single animal is in sight besides the remaining ponies of the town.
Our pony walks down the road and pauses to wave a hoof at a mare selling flowers on the curb. With no emotion on her face, she returns the wave, keeping her foreleg limp to let the strings do their work. She has large bags under her eyes, alongside fresh gashes close to her hooves.
“She seems nice,” the voice adds. “Can never have too many flowers, am I right? Oh, how they brighten up any room that they’re in!”
The pony makes it another half-block before he’s stopped again. This time he stands before an empty, dirt-covered wagon overloaded with soggy, destroyed books. Two years ago, it had belonged to a used book salespony, stopping in their town for the day on his way across Equestria.
The used book salespony lasted less than two weeks once it all started. He had tried to run and was sliced to ribbons for his efforts. This was before anyone knew just how bad things would get.
The strings attached to the pony’s hoof move it toward a hardcover that’s wet to the touch. Due to being left out in the rain that falls at exactly 8:14 every night, it crumbles easily. Next the pony’s neck snaps upward as if someone’s speaking to him. This was when the book salespony had asked him what genres he liked and he’d replied in turn.
It had been a long time since he’d held this particular conversation with a living pony.
Now the pony merely says this all to an empty wagon next to a mound of rotting books.
“Today’s too nice a day to have your nose stuffed in a book! Why not take a nice stroll in the park while the sun is out?”
Can the voice read his thoughts? The pony thinks he probably can.
As the pony exits the marketplace, he counts the number of ponies that he passes by. Forty-two this time around. That’s two less than last month. Again, the strings tied to him force him to wave at a unicorn mare seated on a bench under a tree—same as he had 742 days ago. A short time ago, two mares had sat there together. Perhaps they were a couple. By the tears currently staining the unicorn’s cheeks, our pony doubts she’ll last much longer in Paradise.
“No smiles for your friends?” the voice asks him softly. “Let’s not be impolite, my joyous little pony.”
Invisible strings tug at the corners of the pony’s lips, painfully revealing his upper teeth and gums. He tries to keep his features relaxed so as not to get cut. Eventually, the unicorn on the bench returns the same horribly forced grin, as more tears stream down her face. Then she looks away from him and back to the empty spot next to her.
Our pony’s midmorning walk continues in the direction of the pond, where blankets and picnic baskets filled to the brim with food have been laid out along its grassy banks. Twenty-one ponies are already there. Thirteen less than a year ago. Two ponies wordlessly paddle a small rowboat out in the pond.
Our pony has always wondered if anyone in town had been caught on a first date when all this began.
To live the same day over and over again until you go mad is terrible enough. Trapped on a bad date for all eternity?
All things considered, being stuck on a day off from work isn’t the worst way to go.
“Do you like my sun, my happy frolicking pony? Is it not just as bright and warm as it used to be? Is my moon not as beautiful and as radiant as ever?” The voice sounds rather proud of himself—even if what he’s mentioning are the exact same things he’s been doing for years. “Perfect days are hard to come by, wouldn’t you agree? So why should they ever need to end?”
If our pony looks hard enough—squinting his eyes as he gazes upward—he can sometimes see the faint glimmer of light on all the strings connecting them. Millions of strings. Maybe more. Up and up into the air they go, somehow never tangling together once.
Not unless he wants them to, of course.
The one pulling the strings never comes down from his cloud. That’s where our pony believes he must live—up on high, lounging around in the clear blue sky while he controls each and every pony trapped within his Paradise. And what does he get out of all this? Out of all this exhaustive effort? Our pony stopped searching for that impossible answer some time ago.
Most likely after he’d created that large stain on his kitchen floor; the first time he fought against the strings and nearly died; the first time he’d refused to leave the house after thirty days of the same minute-to-minute routine.
On that morning, the strings around his legs had dug so deep into him that they must’ve sliced into something important. Our pony was sure of that, considering the amount of warm blood pooling onto the floor. Soon after that, his eyelids became heavy, and he collapsed to the ground as he waited for the end.
Then the voice.
“Someone had a little accident, I see. Why were you trying to fight against my perfect day? Were you trying to put a dark and ugly smudge all over it? But why? This is Paradise, remember? Why would you try to leave just a wonderful place?”
The pony must’ve agreed at some point while the voice spoke. Perhaps the notion of someone finally putting a stop to all of this had crossed his dying brain. Or perhaps it was merely the fact that the one pulling the strings wasn’t quite done with him yet. Either way, he awoke the next morning as if nothing at all had changed. Besides the fresh scars visible on his skin.
A noise pulls our pony out from his thoughts.
Someone is screaming. Above him.
A poor stallion is dangling in the air, held aloft by the dozens of sharp strings wrapped around his torso and legs, pinning them together. He screams as loud as his lungs will allow, but not a single soul in the area is able to move an inch in his direction.
Unless they want to suffer the same fate.
Fresh blood falls to the grass below him. Then soon trickles into the water at the center of the pond where he’s dropped and quickly sinks; the water splashes and reddens for a moment, before it grows still again.
It seems the one controlling Paradise had finally had enough of that particular stallion.
He’d had his strings clipped. What happens if one fights against the strings for too long.
In the town our pony occupies, it wasn’t all that uncommon for ponies of all types and sizes to suddenly fall from the sky to splatter against the earth.
“Seeing all those pleasant picnickers must’ve gotten your tummy rumbling, yes?” the voice asks our pony.“It must be getting close to lunchtime, I’m sure. This is Paradise, is it not? So why not treat yourself to something nice?”
The “something nice” the voice had in mind is nothing more than a regular pecan salad with dressing on the side. The same thing our pony’s been eating every day for lunch all year round. By this point he barely tastes any of it.
At a small outdoor restaurant, he sits amongst others. Two years ago, the restaurant used had eight employees serving thirty-five guests on a daily basis. Now only three employees and twelve guests remain. Many guests stare down at empty plates while the strings attached to them pretend to grab at food that’s not even there anymore.
“I’ll have… I’ll have the…”
There’s a stallion about to give his lunch order to no one at all.
He looks thin—much thinner than a week ago.
The one pulling the strings from up on high likes it best when the residences of Paradise follow his script as closely as they can. He’ll even feed them their lines should they forget them. But what he hates most is when his ponies say things they’re not supposed to say.
Things that weren’t first said on that fateful day 742 days ago.
The date they’re all cursed to repeat forever and again.
“I can’t do it! I can’t do it anymore!” the stallion yelps, eye bulging from their sockets. He’s head whips around to face the rest of his dining guests, spit flicking from his lips. “Don’t you know how this ends? There’s no getting out of this! We die! That’s it! One by one, he’ll kill—”
That’s when one of his forelegs smashes into his muzzle, hard enough to draw blood and crack a few teeth. Again, he tries to speak, but his leg is pressed up too tight against his lips. For a short while, he calms himself. No doubt the voice inside his head is talking to him. Warning him. Yet it seems the stallion doesn’t seem to care anymore, as he painfully wrestles his own foreleg away from his face.
The strings tied to him begin digging deep into his flesh.
“We should’ve fought back that first day!” he screams to the silent ponies seated around him. “What were we all thinking? We could’ve outnumbered him! Now there’s what? Less than half of us left!?”
A mare from a table close by keeps her head facing her empty plate while she whispers to the raging stallion. “The Princesses could rescue us any day now. Just keep quiet and—”
“Princesses? You mean Celestia and Luna?”
Drops of blood start soaking into the tablecloth underneath the stallion. He seems not to notice this as he continues to speak.
“They are dead! Get that through your thick skull! Who even controls the sun and the moon anymore? He does! Don’t be so stupid! Don’t listen to the lies he whispers to you! He’s not letting a single one of us out of this place!”
In one quick motion, both of his forelegs are pulled behind his head in, silencing him instantly. The razor sharp wires connected to his limbs wrap around his throat and pull closer together, creating a thin red circle. His cheeks puff out and his face reddens as he’s lifted off his seat into the air.
“My gentle ponies of Paradise,” the voice begins, and it’s clear from the very first sentence that he’s speaking to all of them now. “Why do you do this to yourselves? And on such a pleasant day, too? I really can’t begin to understand what’s running through your heads—besides my voice, of course.”
The strings around the stallion’s neck dig deeper into his skin, sending several trails of slick blood down his belly and twitching legs.
“I know that I certainly love this day—the day that I conquered above all. Is my Paradise not enough for you all? Is this not what you all did before entering Paradise? I am not changing anything, am I? I’m only repeating them. Again and again and again and again…”
As the voice goes on, the strings around the stallion’s throat tug together one last time, severing his head from his shoulders to fall into the puddle of blood below him.
Ignoring the numerous shrieks from all the employees and guests around, our pony simply returns his attention back to his half eaten salad. The strings tied around his hooves have been pressing bits of lettuce against his closed mouth for some time now and he hadn’t even noticed at all.
Perhaps tomorrow would be a better day.
Author's Note
A few people asked if I had anything planned for Halloween. I didn't.
Then I thought of turning the simplest of concepts into a horror story. Namely, a nice stroll around town.
And here we are. Happy Halloween!
