Silhouette

Everything is out of focus; my head throbbing as pain pounded it as hard as it could. I am confused; I have no idea what happened to me, why everything is this way. My breath is shaking, panic relentlessly affecting my system, as I was shaking uncontrollably. Everything is grey, no distinct colors whatsoever, just grey as the eye can see, as little as the tiny crack my eye is showing me.

My sensations slowly showed themselves; Wet, I am soaking wet, and I am cold. The feeling of raindrops running down my broken body proved that.

Broken? Another pain that was other than my head is affecting me. I cannot pinpoint it, but the pain was immensely strong, but I can’t bring myself to care and look. The numbing feeling took hold of me long before the feeling of consciousness gradually fading away.

“Why aren’t ya’ helpin’ him?!”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I woke up in a cold sweat; quickly sitting up from my bed to observe my surroundings, my breathing quite ragged and mood panicked with my eyes darting around. My eyes focus to an everyday sight, the same grey room with the same accessories is found in the same places. Seeing nothing out of the ordinary, slowly I calmed down, stabilizing my fast breathing, and relaxing my panicked posture.

It was that nightmare again; I thought I have already forgotten about that. Why is it still lingering around my mind, Celestia – damn it!

I calmed down and digressed, but after that moment, the feeling of a small headache began to perch itself into my head. I raise one of my hooves to my head. Thinking about it, it wasn’t that strong to the point of worry. Just like a bump in the head would feel. So I dismissed it as just an occasional, temporary morning headpain.

Thinking that it will soon just diminish, I tiredly stood up, and walked to the kitchen to do the same things, as always.

Walking down the same corridor, down the same staircase, to the same living room and arriving at the same kitchen. Opening the same refrigerator, eating the same meal; a couple of apples, washing myself at the same shower room, drying myself with the same towel, preparing the same things for school and there goes the morning. I look at the specific area where I dropped my bag when I arrived at home.

After seeing my bag, I observed that it is still wet, probably because of yesterday’s rain. I decided to not go to school with it; it would still be a pain to carry around a wet bag there anyways.

Leaving the bag behind, I walked to the front door, reaching the door for the door knob and opened it.

The outside is almost like a copy of yesterday’s conditions, but the clouds are starting to be carried away from the sky. The day is guaranteed to be a sunny one either later or tomorrow. I don’t care either way, if it is going to be a clear day or storm, nothing would change for the better. It would be the same lonely day for me.

“I’m off!” I yell out to nopony in particular and hearing no reply of any sort. Giving the house one last look, I then stepped outside and gently closed the front door.

I begin to walk towards the same school, observing the same things again. With Ponies with their friends and families, putting up their shops and stands, ponies walking around for fresh air and whatnot. I simply walked bypass all of them with a blank expression on my face. Not caring on what’s going on around me.

Something was wrong

Middle way towards my destination, I felt the same headache from this morning, but this time, it got worse. I can actually feel the pain worsen from this particular one, and I started to become slightly dizzy, and sicker than before. I stopped for a moment and raising my right hoof to my head wincing in pain. After sometime, I slowly guided the same hoof to my neck.

Surely enough, I had a fever, what caused this was the rain and my apathy. It wasn’t strong yet, but it was inevitably going to get even harmful.

Because of this, I am given two options. One is continue going to school get all the medicine I need, risking me not going home because of the class hours, rendering the gates to be closed. Being the earth pony I am I cannot escape even if I wanted to.

Two is going home to take rest, going home without any medication of any sort and will progressively worsen my condition.

Logically, I would take the latter choice. One main reason was that I could always “borrow” medicine in there to remedy this ailment, and if I want to know what medicine I needed, I’ll just need to look at some book somewhere in the clinic for it, or I could always take some fever syrup.

Then again, I would lose the energy if I do arrive at school; chances are it would pick up before I would even know what to choose. With this curse with me, I would be in a big disadvantage. If I do passed out because of this, then no pony will come and help me.
After some thinking later, I have conscientiously decided. Without hesitation, I started to walk to Ponyville Middleschool with some slight wobble on a few steps I take.

The school gate was now in the distance, and I feel like I ran for the Running of the leaves. Hurriedly, Dodging the other fillies and colts in my way, I entered the school campus. Feeling the fever getting worse and worse and I needed to hurry to “borrow” the medication sooner.

I quickly walked inside the building, seeing a plethora of ponies in the area; the same scene everyday with pupils and students going through their lockers, mingling with the others. With the minority of being alone, my condition only being in my mind I speed - walked to the school clinic, all the while being careful not to collide with anypony.

While moving, the same ponies from yesterday showed up. Now, there were more in the scene; The Ponies with the red shirts with white crosses on them walked by me. An earth pony, Unicorn and Pegasus talking among each other, something about them really makes me curious onto who they are, and what they do. But my sick mind was really adamant about doing priorities, urging me to go the school clinic as fast as I possibly can, with my wobbly legs and pounding headache. But nonetheless, I ignored them and with a slight struggle, continued to walk.

A little more time later, and I found a brown, windowed door with a name tag above it called “Clinic”. I knew that I arrived at my deserved location. I walked up to it and softly opened the door, poking my head to take a peek inside. Initially, I heard nothing and nopony, just the sound of a vent droning in the back, and the scent of various medicines bombarding my nose. There wasn’t even a nurse stationed here.

I slowly stepped in, with a bit of trepidation on my part and from the sickness on the other, and gently closing the door behind me. I have to make sure that there wasn’t a nurse taking their post, or something. I inferred that they must have something important to attend to.

Well, with nopony watching, I guess it’ll make me feel less guilty about stealing.

I made my way into a room, observing it to have two snow white beds on each side of the area, I noticed a short, white drawer that you usually see in hospitals at the middle, between the beds. I guessed that they placed all their medicine in there since on the top had their apparatuses for treating wounds.

Bandages, Cotton balls, a small bottle of Betadine, Alcohol, Tweezers, napkins in a jar, antibiotics syrup, plastic spoons and more that I didn’t even care describing. I just wanted to get the medicine, and quickly at that.

I opened the top of the drawer, seeing nothing I needed, just random tablets and other things that I don’t know off, this is probably for the adults or somepony older than me.

Closing that first drawer, I proceeded opened the second drawer and given a few seconds scanning of its contents, I found what I was looking for. A bottle of Fever syrup, this was usually for a foal 5 years below my age, but what else do I have to take? I don’t know what any of these are or what I have to take at my age.

This is the only thing I remember taking as medication when I was sick, under the care of my parents.

I sat on my haunches and held the bottle with both hooves. I read on the prescribe dose, 100 ml for every 4 hours. I followed what it said, getting the small cup on top of its lid and opened the bottle; pouring the concoction till its prescribed volume with the help of the measure guide on the side of the cup.

Raising the cup from my hoof to my mouth, I drank the syrup down with one gulp, disgust contort my face, tasting what the medicine’s flavor like, even if it said it was sweet orange flavor.

After that, I turned to walk to what appeared to be a kitchen area, after looking in the place; I proceeded to the sink to clean the same cup I used; the slow running of tap water cleansing the saliva off the object. I returned back to the room, placed the cup on the bottle, and returning the bottle back in its place.

Grabbing a plastic cup just right by the water dispenser, I took a quick sip of cold water to remedy the horrid flavor. I threw it away and started to think on what to do next. I stepped outside the clinic and I meet an empty hallway.

Since the school was closed down because of the classes, I can’t really go home to rest up. And I can’t rest up on the clinic bed, with my condition I will get accidentally crushed by another pony. The only place where I can rest is the classroom seat. It would be uncomfortable, but it would be the only place where I can rest without any disturbance.

With that decided, I start to make my way to my classroom, albeit slowly; The effects of the sickness still impacting me, as the medicine still making its way to cure me. Finding the stairs, I slowly begin to work my way up to the second floor.

To my surprise, I don’t hear anything inside the classrooms from the outside. Normally the voices of the teachers would reach through my ears from the open classroom door. As I reach the classroom, it was empty. No students, No teachers.

I do not know where my classmates and teachers are, and I don’t certainly know the occasion or what was going on to make everyone move somewhere. I was certain that there were ponies in school, before I did go to the clinic.

But I do not care, now that there’s definitely nothing that can disturb me rest for a few hours, I now really was confident that I can rest until I can finally get out of here.

Walking up to my seat, I slowly positioned myself to a resting position, placing my fore hooves to the table and using them as a makeshift pillow to put my head on them.

Slowly, my eyes closed as the depths of sleep took over me.

And then everything went black.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Hey, wake up”

Hearing a teenage female voice with a tinge of a country accent nearby woke me up from a dreamless sleep. After noticing me flinch, I heard a light shuffle.

“So, what are you doin’ here, skipping out the program?” I heard again, I didn’t really mind it. She must be talking to somebody else probably skipping out on their job. I continued to ignore her, and continued to fall asleep.

An audible sigh was heard, and the sound of light hoofsteps going into the room got to me. What was she doing?

It got closer, and closer, until finally it stopped onto what seemed to be right next to me.

Then surprise took over.