Don't Worry, It's Just the Apocalypse

I don't know how long I hang there, tail and time stretching out in a blurred streak. Only at some point, the winds pulling me in contradiction to gravity disappear, and I flop to the ground. “Hello, Ground,” I mutter into the mud, stretching my forelegs out to hug my last friend in the world.

I should have known better than to move so fast. The ground, not ready for that kind of commitment, attempts to let me down easy. Rolling my body across the cracked and shattered down the newly sloped pavement..

Somehow, the desperate grappling of my hooves convinces the ground to at least let me call sometimes, and I come to rest at the edge of-

I have no idea what this is. Where there used to a vortex, and before that used to be street, there is no just darkness. Not a regular darkness, not a hole or chasm. This is something different than I've ever seen before, I lean out over the abyss and stretched my hoof-

“Don't touch that,” a voice like continents sliding into the sea.

Behind me a skeletal alicorn stands, his gray spiderweb mane drooping lifelessly. His whole body is dark browns, blacks and grays. Shades of finality. Except, for some reason, the distracting white of a pair of maggots writhing above his eye sockets. At the moment, they are pulled into an agitated slant, but he reaches up his hoof and pushes them into a softer visage. “The pink one was responsible for this, wasn't she?”

“The pink one ...”

“You know her. The pink one. The hideous, bright, bouncing, balloon-marked, needs to be snuffed for the good of all ponykind pink one.”

“Well, she was involved, but I don't think she really planned it.”

“No, I don't think she really plans anything, but she was involved. She was involved and, somehow I do not understand, she was definitely responsible.”

“Who are you?”

“I'm Death. Are the eyebrows throwing you off? I've been experimenting with them. Ponies place a lot of importance on facial expression, and I haven't really got a face.”

“What happened?”

“I don't know. I have very limited interests. Well, one interest. If it makes you feel any better, none of the names in my book say, 'sucked into a swirling vortex.' I've got a whole bunch of gunshot wounds, falling, trampling, stabbing, curb stomping, bludgeoning, alcohol poisoning, regular poisoning, and a question mark.” Death looks up as a blue pony covered in burn scars touches the blackness on the opposite shore of the void. He vanishes, his body simply fades into the blackness. A light from Death's horn lassos the pony soul over to our side.

“So that's what the question mark means.” Death pushes his maggot-eyebrows into an angry position before turning to the expired pony and snapping, “Why did you touch that?”

“I wanted to know what it is. What is it?”

“It was something you're not supposed to touch. Can't you tell just from looking at it?”

“No, that's why I touched it and ...” realization slowly sinks in, “Wait, am I dead? Are you Death? Man, just for trying to touch something.”

“Well, I didn't tell you to touch the thing you weren't supposed to touch, did I?”

“No one told me not to,” I'd say that being dead has given the blue pony, perhaps, too much courage, but he was stupid enough to just reach his hoof into an enormous blackness so who knows.

Death however, seems to take the point and turns to my flank, where he sees my terrible cutie mark, a trumpet stuck between two flanks, “Is that a sign cutie mark?”

“What, you mean me?”

“It is kind of sideways, but it looks like a sign sticking out of a hill. Perfect, I am so glad I saved you.”

“Wait, you saved him and not me?” protests the blue pony.

“You are now responsible for erecting signs and fences to keep ponies away from this … thing that they're not supposed to touch.”

“But signs aren't actually my special talent!”

“I'm Death,” he interrupts, “if I wandered around asking everypony what they wanted to do, no one would ever choose dying, I'd be fired, and Equestria would get overcrowded. I don't care what you think your special talent is. You are now my sign maker and protector of the thing that ponies aren't supposed to touch.”

“Will I get paid?”

“You'll get paid in me not killing you on the spot, which is what I'll do the next time some idiot touches the thing that ponies aren't supposed to touch.”

There is a bing sound from Death's day planner and he flips some pages aside, “You'll last longer than I thought.”

“What? How long have I got?”

“It isn't my business to tell ponies when they'll die,” Death replies as he turns, towing the dead soul behind him. His wings, skeletal and strange flip through the air and propel him into the sky where he disappears into the storms, and I am alone again. I don't know if anyone else is left alive in Canterlot right now, and the rain falls like bitter-spatter-spit, although without the vortex's influence the weather is calming down.

“The thing you're not supposed to touch is a pretty unwieldy title,” I decide for no one's benefit, “The abyss sounds better.” I shrug and begin gathering shattered timbers and loose wires from the rubble to make the first set of signs and barriers.

Maybe Celestia will fix this when she gets back, or maybe she and her vacation spot were sucked into the vortex already. Or maybe she just won't bother coming back to a world as broken as this. Who could possibly know? I can't.

And as I move among the rubble, the still setting sun is caught in the dying rainclouds. A rainbow grows out over the wrecked city. From where I'm standing, I can see the whole, half-circle in one view, and the reflected rainbow.

The colors of the rainbow push the jaundice yellow of the sun outside, forming a gray area inside. It looks just like I'm standing inside a giant eyeball, looking out at the world I will never touch. Like one of those squiggly bugs that live in your eye.

Its a pretty gross thing to think about, being all insignificant and invisible like that.

But what else is left?