Waking up was just like every other day; Mac's alarm was burning sunlight being cast straight past his window frame. He would bat away the persistent, malicious entity, praying for a thunderstorm to allow him back his empty space. When nothing came, he would sigh and reach for a packet of painkillers with his hooves because he had forgotten how to use his magic.
Taking five would open his mind to the possibility of wandering down the stairs and going to the shops in staggered strides. In passing he would grumble to the denizens, all of them too blind to see his mind's latent intelligence. Big Mac knew something others don't. The best way to choke a pony was to press down on their throat until their windpipe broke, flat-line. He would often sit envisioning murder and carnage, a sanguine baptism to wash away his sins and memories.
Arriving at the corner shop, he would order the highest concentration of alcohol for the lowest price available. The pony in the corner shop acquiesced as always, leading Junkie Mac to allow his drink to lead him to the park bench. He would reminisce over days he had forgotten, ghosts of memories dissipated, all spoken in past tense. He would flutter his wings at the passing mares, drawing attention to the askance feathers of his disheveled body.
Mac had been a subject of affection, now he sang a rockabilly serenade to a puncturing instrument; his internal inspection was overdue. He no longer jacked up in the park, one time he had been caught and separated from his lifeblood, dragged away from his thoughts for days. Junkie Mac knew to frequent the stairwells, the alleyways, the derelict cornerstones of any varied society. It was when someone asked him how his day was that Mac remembered the far off concept of public decorum and niceties.
It had been too long, his mind was feeble and immaterial, learning now would be as difficult as cutting his limbs in a straight jacket. Sparking a cigarette he had brushed her off only to realise he had been talking to his innocuous grey mattress. The thing was filled with holes that insect life had fucked, burrowing and propagating the establishment of crawling communities. Mac would watch them for hours, magnifying glass in hoof, saying fire came from his horn but it was all illusory.
He was hardly helpless, he could ask Celestia for any worldly desire and he was sure it would be granted. He had eternal life, or so he had been told, it was a funny situation he had loved it while it lasted. Once he had seen a mother give birth to a colt looking very much like him with the exception of the dead eyes. He had sobbed and wept for hours till his ducts dried examining the sunrise of a macabre red sky.
He knew this city, and he thought it knew him too, he couldn't recall the name but he could find his way through. He could traverse every facet of the concrete interior and use juxtaposition to establish real dichotomies. Knowing that he could find the destitution riddled in the streets he met prostitutes and spent his last few bits on nights of restless reverie. He wondered if being disease ridden could even kill him, or if immunity was another fringe benefit of his ascension.
The universe was transparent, he was stuck between multiple planes of existence, but anchored in place by a nonstop mental schism. Knowing he couldn't leave conventionally, he resigned himself to drinking from the bottle without care of the butts and lids that floated inside. Cider brought him clarity, he sat in a farmhouse reading a story to a filly named Apple Bloom. A second sip deepened the vision, it wasn't long until he could feel her stroking his mane and reassuring him. Brushing off the stranger, he threw his drink at the wall, the ensuing smash a release from the presence of danger.
Psychedelic ascension, his piss-stained mattress transported him to destinations unknown. He was laying there, tossing with his mouth wide open, feeling the walls breathe and the air begin to control his emotions. He knew he was fucked, but all he felt was panic gripping him like the arms of a thousand sailors in a crisis. He'd be pulled to death as he laid there just to wake up the next day, another overdose waiting.
Decapitation was unpleasant, he had once ripped off his own head just for the constituents to knead themselves back together. The voices were incessant, a nonstop cavalcade of torture relentlessly stamping in depression. He toyed with his reflection, his face still hadn't aged a day, a never-ending masquerade as he felt his soul evaporate. Aware that he was trapped in place, Mac embraced his stagnancy, it became pattern like the patter of acid rain.
He was known as Junkie Mac when he went to trade commodities, scarcely remembered as the fulfillment of an ancient prophecy. With his ascension he was seen as aristocracy but chose to live in dregs and debris advocating poverty. Ponies talked about him, it used to be behind his back but now his presence did nothing to influence their actions. They'd say 'there goes Junkie Mac, they say he's lived here for decades now but he still isn't dead yet'. Interaction wasn't possible, his lips were locked around a bottle or biting onto a belt buckle as his veins became prominent.
Today wasn't relevant, the only thing that mattered was the writing on the wall as he recalled his past life. Buckets of paints retracted those statements broad brushstrokes of black on the wall like the tar that mingled with his perfect lungs. Solitude was optimal, Luna kept on visiting him in his sleep so he had taught himself not to dream. The obscenity of his life was so perverse, so debauched, so terrible, but he considered it a pleasant scene. He would sit and laugh as the foals and changelings played remembering a time when he could slay them with impunity.
His unwrinkled face was illuminated by a lighter's flick, water bubbled and Junkie Mac might have took a hit. Another day forgotten, another spent in bliss, another fantastic journey to the centre of the abattoir. He hacked and slashed with malice, the only lasting damage another bloodstain for his ever-growing mural. Checking his body for slits he found nothing past the matted fur that clumped together having forgotten how water felt.
Shambling to his window, he looked out at the sky and considered making a house of cloudstone. Perhaps if he did he could drift away and when he woke he'd be out of the earth's atmosphere. There was only destitution and sadness here, indecision on every matter except for self-scourging. A real release sounded alluring, and his mind implored him to find a means to make the feeling permanent.
Junkie Mac remembered that many years had passed, and the pain had only been intensified. He had tried everything he could think of, from hanging to incineration, he could only assume he wasn't meant to die. For now he was content to score crack in the underpass and kick pigeons in the playground. For now he was prepared to live a lifestyle of depravity and desolation, if only it meant he didn't have to function.
Returning to his bed, he regarded the squirming insects with a feeling of camaraderie. While he assumed the feeling wasn't mutual, they had at least managed to stay with him as the world kept turning. Giving them a respectful nod, he turned to his medicine cabinet, his insides burning as he drifted off. Empty dreams were all that Mac received, his connection to his body severed by much drug abuse. He could keep on swimming in this deluge of filth, brushing against the springs of his mattress until the new day woke him.
Junkie Mac made a whisper of serenity, a name on his tongue he had all but forgotten the place of. As he laid there falling into slumber, his conflicted mind receded and his anguish was finally quelled. Mac knew already that when he woke the next day the same insecurities, fears, and woes would plague him to the end of his world and back. With that in mind he concluded to wash the day away his mind already concocting a suitably effective cocktail.
Junkie Mac saw his two hundredth birthday the same way as he had any other day.
