I'm Going to Hell for This.
Filly Anon and the Tide Pod Challenge
Admiral Biscuit
There's nothing quite like getting home after a long day at work. Just opening the front door—well, it doesn't make you physically any less tired, nor any less hungry, but all those things sort of take a back seat to the psychological comfort of home. Of the idea of sitting down in front of the TV and totally vegging out, of the idea of cooking dinner and then saying 'fuck it' and ordering pizza instead. Just taking off your shoes and letting your toes be free eases so many aches and pains.
You unlock the front door and swing it open. You're greeted by a soap bubble at about nose-height, which all things considered is a rather odd thing to be seeing when you first arrive home.
As soap bubbles go, it's a little bit larger than average, but not outrageously so. It's hovering there on the air currents, its iridescent surface shimmering in the way that soap bubbles do. You vaguely remember learning something about that back in science class; something about a prismatic effect or somesuch.
You're still pondering it when the bubble pops, dotting your face with tiny droplets of soap. It has a familiar Tide™ smell, along with something else you can't quite place.
Why is she making soap bubbles?
The familiar noise of the television comes from the living room. The volume is down, so you can't quite hear what's playing. As you get closer, a crowd of people on the television shouts “Dilly Dilly!”
A commercial. Just a commercial.
But something still feels off. You don't know what, but you've got a vague sense of foreboding as you step forward into the house. Maybe it's the fact that there are more soap bubbles slowly drifting down the hallway in your general direction.
Or maybe it's the fact that it's just a little bit too quiet.
Sure, she isn't a dog who'll be at the door, tail wagging the moment that she hears your key in the lock. But it seems like she should have given you some greeting.
She's either sick, or up to nothing good.
You step into the living room. She's stretched out on the couch like ponies do, vaguely paying attention to the television. She looks a little bit greener than usual, but that's really hard to tell for sure. She's normally green, and the television is painting the room with its false colors.
She likes to eat snacks in front of the television, and you don't mind. That's why you've got a table there, after all, so you can set the box of pizza down and not have it on your lap like a barbarian.
Although truth be told, you usually have it on your lap.
There is no pizza box, nor a bowl of salted hay, not even the crust of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich (she hates crusts).
What there is is your bucket of Tide Pods™ and several empty wrappers.
You might not be a genius, but even you can put two and two together and come up with four nine times out of ten, and you rise to the occasion.
“What the fuck?”
Her ear flicks back and then she turns her head. “What?”
“Why?”
Her eyes dart to the table and then back to you. “They were talking about it on the TV and how all the kids these days are doing it.”
“And you—” There was a lot more you were going to say. The gist of it was going to be that she shouldn't do something just because she saw it on TV and that was an oddly parental thing to say, really. Adultish. You don't feel adultish.
But all those thoughts disappear like a fart on the wind—which is an appropriate metaphor, because she lifts her tail slightly and with a surprisingly gentle brrrrrrrap a stream of soap bubbles issues forth.
That solves one mystery, at least.
It does also raise like a billion further questions, and your mind engages in a spectacular multi-thought pileup. Your mouth is hanging open, and eventually your brain decides that since it’s open anyway, some sort of cognizant words ought to come out of it. Unfortunately, your brain was never terribly good at coherence, so what ultimately emerges is “How did they taste?”
“Not so good,” she admits. “They looked like blueberry and orange, but they didn't taste like that at all. And my tummy feels all funny, and . . . uh, oh.”
There's a process to an equine getting up, and it's somewhat involved. She has to untuck her forelegs and stretch them out in front of her, and then use her hind legs to push forward and kind of get all four up under her at once.
It stands to reason though that if needed, she can do that right quick, even on the unsure footing of a couch. And she does, going from stretched out to standing to galloping in nearly an instant. The cushion she was sitting on rockets up off the couch just as Newton predicted it should, nearly clocking you in the face.
You hear her hooves skid as she rounds the corner in the hallway, and she crashes into the bathroom door hard enough to rattle the living room windows.
The next sound you hear is much like someone spraying custard though a fire hose, and then there's the smell. Dear sweet baby Jesus, the smell. Nothing alive should ever produce a smell like that. It comes right up to you and punches you in the olfactory glands and lets you know that it will never be gone from your home. Not ever. Not in a week or a month or a thousand years.
Your eyes dart over to the Tide Pods and for a brief instant you wonder if a handful would be a fatal dose, and if it would be merciful, but of course it wouldn't be.
She didn't have time to close the bathroom door, something that you didn't realize until you foolishly moved into the hallway and there's a dumb picture on the wall and the light's hitting it just right to make it into a mirror and you've already seen too much and smelled too much and heard too much but you can't look away and now you know what Hell is.
The spell is broken when you remember that there's an aerosol can of Febreeze on the counter. You smash the nozzle off it and lob it down the hallway in the hopes that that might help. It does nothing. Now your house smells like meadows and rain and shit.
“Why? Why? Oh God, why?” You claw at the window, slamming it open. Never mind that it's freezing outside; you press your face up against the window screen hard enough to leave a waffle-print in your cheek. Sweet, blessed fresh air.
You can't do anything about the sounds of gastrointestinal distress, though. Actually, this isn't distress. This is a full-fledged war going on, and she's on the losing side of it. The next person who tells you ponies are cute or that girls don't poop is going to get punched right in the mouth and then kicked in the nuts for good measure.
•••
It doesn't end for an hour. An entire hour which is possibly the longest hour in the history of ever. You've managed to go through most of the stages of grief in that time, and you've also probably got frostbite on your cheek but that doesn't matter. Numbness is good. After numbness maybe comes the sweet embrace of death.
A man can hope.
•••
After the obligatory thousand flushes (you'd never thought about how apt that name brand was. Al Eisen couldn't have imagined them all occuring one right after another) you hear the shower start and you weren't having that. She was NOT going to ruin the one thing you had left in your sad, pathetic life. The toilet was ruined; that was a fact. Henceforth you were going to be pooping at work and if you weren't at work, there was always the yard. But not the shower; no matter how clean she got it after the memory would linger like the stench of death that's still coursing through the house.
You take a deep breath of air and abandon your window refuge. It's not very far down the hall, and even if it were filled with spiders, venomous snakes, and clowns, it wouldn't take more than ten seconds to traverse.
It takes you longer because every fiber in your body is insisting that you go the other way and never come back, and if you'd had your computer tucked under one arm and your flat screen TV under the other you'd do what your body is telling you to do.
You grab her just before she can step into the shower. “Oh, no you don't.” There's only one thing to do and maybe she's been punished enough; your mind can't even fathom what it felt like to be her.
Down the hallway and into the little alcove which is open because you were a Goddamn fool and hadn't installed locks on every single thing that a curious filly could get her hooves on. You slam the lid of the washing machine up not caring that you just bent it because that washing machine is now dead to you.
You push her into the drum.
“What are you doing?”
You don't answer. You're looking for 'remove all filth,' but since that isn't one of the setting on the control knob—clearly an oversight by Kenmore—you settle for permanent press, hot wash water and cold rinse water.
“You stay there,” you tell her. “Fillies who eat laundry soap ought to have the full experience.”
She hooks her forelegs over the front of the washing machine but it's too slippery and she can't get any purchase on the enameled steel at all.
If you're feeling generous, you'll help her out before the spin cycle starts.
Author's Note
