Intermission: A Week In The Life

I stood under the beating spray of the shower, staring straight ahead at the wall beyond the curtain of water. My eyes flinched occasionally at the patter of the water, but I did not look away. I stood, and stared, and thought. My mind drifted through currents of emotion, thoughts of denial, loss and grief. And most of all, I pondered.

Was any of it real? Or was it all jsut some dream? A psychotic break? Had a gone insane?

In spite of the video file I found attached to my story, I still wondered this, because in the end, if I had gone insane, I could have put that there and not remembered it. Still, my memories of Equestria were so . . . so vivid. I could feel it, hear it, smell it. Taste it. It was all still so real in my mind, and yet somehow still so unreal. Like a lucid dream, it felt like I had experienced all of it, yet none of it. Could it have been real? If so, how? How could I have started out writing a story, and somehow wound up inside of it? Or . . . no, that wasn’t right. I had not ended up inside of it, not entirely. It was more like some small part of me had, a piece of my consciousness had awoken within the words that I had written, and found itself there, in that beautiful heaven, Valhalla, that paradise of freedom and love. . . .

I bent my head beneath the flow of the water and ground my teeth. Even to me, now, in my head, it all sounded insane. Like a weird dream or a drug trip. THere was now way it was real, and, even if it was. . . .

I could not go back. I had no idea how I got there in the first place, if I had, and I had no way of replicating it.

With a sigh, I finished my shower, trying to pretend it was just the water that was running down my face. . . .

* * * Day One * * *

My eyes blearily opened, and I groaned at the sound of the alarm going off in my ear. Reaching out I shut it off, and seriously considered just calling in, but I needed the money. Rent wouldn’t pay itself, after all.

And so, with a groaning sigh, I levered myself out of bed, washed up, brushed my teeth, ate a quick, less than healthy breakfast and got dressed. I noticed things as I did. Things I never paid attention to, before. How uncomfortable the clothes were, how bland the food tasted, and how dull and grey everything was. I shook it off and took off walking to work. The world was what it was, dull, grey, cracked and flawed. Nothing different, nothing missing. . . . Nothing.

I got to work and clocked in, walking back to the meeting. I leaned up against the wall as the manager went on about how our sales had been going, and that we all needed to pick up our speed. She started the cheer, and I ground my teeth as I clapped my hands, barely managing to keep myself from snapping during the ridiculous display. A group of grown people at work, acting like a bunch of high school cheer leaders. It was stupid. So . . . so. . . .

I was on the truck, today, which meant standing next to a “conveyor belt” and helping items move down the line, occasionally plucking things that went to my assigned department off and placing them aside on pallets. Apparently, someone at corporate had sneaked in and changed things around in the dictionary, because last I checked “Conveyor belt” didn’t mean a shoddy steel accordion-thingie with a bunch of wheels on it, but, what do I know?

It went by in a blur, yet seemed to take forever. I sat outside on break, eating a chocolate bar, the taste of peanut butter and nougat mixing in my mouth. Then I was on the floor, down my accustomed aisle, stocking condiments. The narrowest aisle in the store was also the most busy, and half my time it seemed was spent huddling up against my cart of the shelves, clutching a box to my chest or holding my hands folded in front of myself defensively while old people gawked at the shelves, fat people stood and chatted, and children ran screaming up and down the aisle while their parents argued over what type of pickles they wanted.

Lunch went by with me sitting at home, staring at my computer screen, wishing and hoping for something to happen. Something to prove to me I wasn’t crazy, and that there was some hope for freedom yet again, but I saw nothing. No chance, and no hope.

Back at work, I finished stocking my aisle, finally, and then spent a bit of time cleaning up. I put any partially stocked cases up on the riser above the shelves, and then went about the rest of my night, helping where I was told to help.

I walked home, silent and alone.

* * * Day Two * * *

Alarm off, rise, clean up, eat, walk to work. Same Shit, Different Day. I felt the hardness of the concrete beneath the soles of my shoes, and hated it.

Back on my aisle, I stood, huddled up beside my cart as five different groups of people wandered down the aisle, trying to find a way around each other and me, only to be held up behind a particularly fat woman on a scooter, sitting, blinking owlishly up at the shelf as though she had never seen barbecue sauce, before, which would have obviously been a lie.

I ground my teeth, closing my eyes for a moment against the pain in my head and the ache in my heart, and for a moment I saw a beautiful green park, a bright blue sky and a friendly smile on a pink pony’s face.

I blinked back to reality, if that’s what you wanted to call this place I was in, and felt my heart stutter for a moment, before continuing on it’s course.

At break at sat, alone, as usual, and stared off into the distance, seeing nothing.

I finished my aisle before lunch, got everything cleared away and went about helping where they told me to help. HBA, shampoo, soap and razors. Yay.

At lunch I cried in front of my computer, praying for something, anything. But I received no answer.

I finished my work in silence, ignoring or shrugging off anyone who tried to speak to me. Their voices were only causing my head to hurt worse, anyway. I walked home, alone, again, and unlocked my door. I walked inside, stripping off my clothes until I was naked, and went and collapsed into bed. I thought about turning on the computer, for a moment, to look up . . . anything. Anything to take my mind off of this. Funny videos, a swordfighting manual, movie trailers, porn. . . .

In the end, I rolled over and cried myself to sleep.

Alone.

* * * Day Three * * *

Same Shit, Different Day.

Worked my aisle, ate lunch. Nothing special.

Walked home, cried into my ravioli.

Yeah, I’m fucked. This is fucked. Life is fucked.

I stared at the computer, my lip twitching as I fought between weeping and smashing the piece of shit and throwing it in the trash. I stared at the story I had written. At where I left it off.

Fuck my life. Fuck this shit. FUCK!

I glared at the computer, and felt an itch in my fingertips. Before I knew it, I was typing out the experiences I had over the past days. The discomfort, the depression. THe idiots and rude people. The ones who walked by me without looking or even turning their heads, like I didn’t exist. The ones who chewed me out because the store didn’t carry the item they were looking for. The ones who acted like they knew the store better than I did. Because they knew that we carried this item, and I just didn’t know where it was, so they’d look on their own. Managers who don’t give a shit, colleagues who thought I was bad at my job, or who made snide remarks, or who outright acted like I was an idiot who didn’t know what I was doing.

It all came pouring out into the story I had been writing, and when I was done, I collapsed into bed and passed out, not even bothering to turn off my computer.

* * * Day Four * * *

S.S.D.-

SHIT!

I was running late!

I hurried through clean up, didn’t bother eating anything, and got dressed haphazardly.

I got to work without a minute to spare, and ran back to the meeting. The manager had to make a snarky remark about my timing, but I just smiled and nodded, and fell into place.

I went through my day as usual, trying not to get yelled at, or piss anyone off, and most importantly, trying to not lose my cool in the face of the compiled stupidity and rudeness of the people I had to deal with.

My head was killing me, and by the time I got home for lunch, I thought it was going to pop. I took some pills and collapsed into my chair with a bowl of cereal, sighing. I ate several bites, and then glanced up at my computer.

. . . .

Nothing. I sighed, shutting it down, and finished eating. I wanted to cry, but I was too tired. This, then, was what it felt like to have tasted heaven and then be cast out. I found myself feeling a bit of sympathy for Lucifer, oddly enough.

I went back to work, finished my task, and went home, collapsing once more into bed.

Eat, work, sleep, repeat. It’s all I had the energy or the drive to do. It doesn’t take a shrink to recognize the symptoms of depression. But it’s one thing to know you have a problem. Quite another to muster the will or the courage to do something about it.

I needed help, and I had no one to give me any.

No one.

* * * Day Five * * *

S.S.D.D.

I did my job, and went home, and collapsed in front of my dark, silent computer, and stared at it. It was worthless. I was worthless, hopeless, helpless. Nothing was going to happen to save me from this shit. Nothing at all. I stared deep into the darkness of the screen, into my own reflection, cast in the odd, otherworldly way that such screens tend to do.

I thought about it, and knew I was insane. Nothing I thought had happened had happened, it was all in my head. My Little Pony was a cartoon show, fiction, written for children. There wasn’t some other universe out there where it was real. Equestria was not a real place, it didn’t exist. And neither did they. Their faces, real and fully formed, flickered through my mind. Twilight, Applejack, Rainbow, Rarity, Fluttershy, Spike, Starlight, Trixie. . . And Pinkie Pie. I thought about her, thought about the friendly smile always there to make you happy. Thought about her laugh, and her beautiful face. I thought about the warm comfort I remembered so clearly feeling in her arms.

I held it all in my head as I fell into bed, and drifted away to sleep. . . .

* * * ??? * * *

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Author's Note

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/)^o^(\