Eric had a good many times in his life where his sanity had been pushed to the brink of complete destruction, this instance, however, seemed to take the cake.

"Are you legitimately telling me that you spilled your coffee on the laptop?" He groaned, slapping his forehead.

"Yes."

The nervous voice of his classmate Holland spoke through his phone. Holland had been his friend since Junior High, he had a bit of a wildcard attitude that had set him apart from a lot of the other people there, but, he had a good heart and was quite intelligent when you could finally get him to sit down and have a conversation with him. Eventually, he matured enough to the point where he actually became likable to other people, since then, he was a social butterfly. Always the party animal.

"The very same laptop that had the entire paper and presentation script on it?"

"Yes."

"Which went to the assignment that is due four days from now?"

"Yeah."

"Were you hungover?"

Holland didn't respond.

"You went to a party and got drunk again, didn't you?"

"..."

"Unbelievable."

Eric threw his hands up, letting go of the phone and allowing it to fly up in a lazy arc and fall screen-first onto his bed.

"You're not even legal drinking age!"

Eric pinched the bridge of his nose, frustration completely overtaking him, Holland wasn't even legal drinking age, he had to literally hold his breath to keep himself from throwing obscenities left and right in a fit of college-induced rage. That project had been their final for the English class they had together, it would be the thing that would make or break their grades. His friend was a great guy, but when it came to being clumsy, he would be described as the patron god of it. and when you mix clumsy and alcohol, you get a mixture that is likely to cause some sort of catastrophic event; such as a blackout, a fight, or the untimely death of a young college student due to the unbridled rage of his disgruntled classmate.

"Eric? You there?"

"Quiet, I'm trying to strangle you through the phone."

"Oh, ok."

The phone went silent for a few minutes as the young man paced around his apartment, trying desperately to come up with a solution to the problem. He bumped his head against the wall repeatedly, swearing slightly. He briefly considered drowning himself in the nearby bathroom's toilet, thought the better of it, and slowly lifted his head from the wall.

"I don't think its working." Said Holland, his voice carrying a touch of mirth.

"Didn't try hard enough." Replied Eric, his voice betraying the humor in his tone.

He sighed, he couldn't change who Holland was, and despite the fact that he wanted to chain him to a log and send him over the nearest waterfall, Eric knew as well anyone that he had screwed up as royally as Holland had more than a few times, with a lot of them ending with Holland saving him. Besides, once you met him, it was hard to stay mad at a guy like Holland for long.

"Get over here," Eric told Holland. "Bring the laptop, let's see if we can salvage the papers from it."

"Got it, on my way."

Eric hung up, Holland had woken him up with the call, not the best way to start a Saturday. He made his way to the bathroom and began to make something of himself, freshening up and combing the mess of brown hair on his head. Once his hygiene was taken care of he began to change clothes, putting on a pair of jeans and a pullover. Looking himself over in the mirror, he decided he looked acceptable.

"God, I'm getting pale." He muttered to himself, "Note to self, study outside."

Leaving his room, Eric found that his T.V had been left on, showing some kind of little girl's TV show.

"Ugh, the power bill is gonna suck."

He left the T.V on, changing the channel to a fantasy movie before going to the kitchen to scrounge up some breakfast. Digging through his fridge, he found a box of breakfast burritos and popped one into his microwave oven.
He waited for a few minutes before the oven chimed and his meal was ready. He plopped down on his couch, eating his breakfast and watching the movie. Holland lived about an hour and a half away, so he had time to kill before his friend a arrived, he finished his food and returned to the kitchen, cleaning off the plate in the sink and putting it back in the cabinet. He then sat back on the couch, daydreaming.

It had been six months since he had moved out of his old house to live on campus, his scholarship paid for most of his bills, and the on-campus job he worked covered anything else he wanted or needed, by his standards, he was doing pretty well for himself, his life was laid out before him, go to college, become a publicist, maybe write a novel. He had everything planned out.

A knock at his door pulled him from his thoughts, it had barely been twenty minutes since Holland had called him, there was no possible way that he was here, so who was this?

He went to the door, looking through the peephole to see who it was, he was met with an overwhelming amount of the color blue on the other side of the door. Figuring someone left a note on the door, he opened it and stepped outside to look at it and was greeted with a fierce gust of wind, enough to sending him stumbling back through the door.

Except there wasn't a door, or a floor for that matter.

Eric wasn't in his house, he wasn't exactly sure where he was.

"The hell?!"

He stood, looking around himself and found that he was surrounded on all sides by blue, in the distances he could see large cloudbanks floating lazily by, the sun was high in the sky.

"The sky" He thought, "I'm in the sky. Ok, cool."

He took a moment to re-evaluate what went through his head, and suddenly his eyes went wide as he began to panic. If he was in the sky, then what exactly was he standing on?! He slowly looked down, seeing a beautiful countryside that looked like something straight out of the movie he had been watching not even five minutes ago. Directly below him, a town stood, pretty big, from what he could see, near the north part of the town stood what looked like a castle. A particularly shiny castle.

However, what he did not see was any kind of ground or platform under his feet.

He was just floating there, kind of like a cartoon character did just before they-

"Oh f-"

As if a switch had been flipped, gravity suddenly took hold of him again and he was falling. He screamed, flailing around as ice-cold air roared around him and chilled him to the bone. He hurtled downwards, steadily gaining speed as the ground rushed up to meet him.

"Well, at least I got to have breakfast before God decided to kill me." He thought, still screaming externally. "No real way out of this one, I should have stayed in bed. "

He had lived a decently good life, kissed a girl once, had made a few friends, did some good things in his life, he had spent a few days as a volunteer, and a bit of his money had always gone to charities. Maybe he could have done more, how much time had he wasted?

"Doesn't matter now." He mentally shrugged, watching as the earth rushed up to meet him, "at least it'll be quick."

The ground wasn't far now, he would hit it in twenty seconds or so, the only thing between him and a quick and painless death were a few clouds, which drfited lazily in a semi-straight line under his flight path. He hit one and was immediately surprised, it wasn't like the clouds back home, this one felt like he had hit a mass of cotton, which he smashed into with an "Oof!"

The cloud had slowed his fall but didn't stop it as he passed through and left a rather comedic human-shaped hole in it. He hit another one, still having enough momentum to go straight through it.

Several clouds later he was falling cloud by cloud, unable to actually land on one. His fall had slowed to the point where he could not go straight through the clouds but began to bounce off them, each landing feeling like the young man had been hit by a bus made of pillows. Eventually, he ran out of clouds to land on, and after a short fall, he landed heavily and painfully on the roof of a building.

"Owwww," He wheezed, groaning and writhing in pain. He was still alive, fortunately, or unfortunately, depending on how one looked at the situation.

"Christ," groaned Eric, swearing as he struggled to a sitting position.

"Hey! You ok up there?" a voice called from below, "That was one heck of a fall!"

One of the locals, they must have seen him.

"Yeah," he called back, "not my most graceful landing,"

He heard a short laugh, "Can you get down? I'm pretty sure the ponies who own that house won't take kindly to you being on their roof!"

Eric groaned again, "Yeah, gimme a sec-" he paused;

"Wait, Ponies?"

"Crack!"

The roof below him shifted, its already weakened supports giving into the added weight Eric's put onto it.

"Oh shit!"

The roof caved, causing Eric to fall in.

"AAAAAH!" He screamed for the second time today, this time hearing two voices joining him in screaming as he crashed down onto a table, breaking it and sending small fragments of wood flying everywhere. He lay there for a moment, almost certain he was dead before realizing he was still in pain.

"Fuck. My. Life." He managed to growl, opening his eyes to see the hole he made, sunlight poured through the hole, shining down on the young man as he struggled into a sitting position for the second time today. Groaning again he shut his eyes tightly as the mother of all headaches started to roll in, causing him to groan even more.

"What in Tartarus' name?"

He opened his eyes and was confronted with what could be described as the weirdest experience of his life. Standing before him, were two anthropomorphic horses wearing t-shirts and jeans. Standing on two hooves with a similar body structure to a human's, but with fur, a tail, and the head sporting a small muzzle and huge eyes. The other one, to the left of him, carried a horrified expression on her face, her light blue eyes looking at him in shock. Her fur was cream-colored, with her mane and tail colored a mix of pink and dark blue. The one to the right, however, stared at him more with surprise than horror, her fir, and part of her otherwise white mane light green. Her golden eyes seemed to carry more of an 'error 404' look about them in contrast to the other one's eyes. What got Eric's attention was the horn sticking out of her head, an anthropromorphic unicorn.

Suddenly Holland's mistake didn't seem so bad, compared to how the rest of Eric's day was going.

He blinked, so did they. No one moved for what felt like an hour, both parties staring at the other in disbelief as the seconds ticked by.

"Hey! You alright in there?!" The voice from the roof called through the hole.

Then, the green one fainted.

Author's Note

O to the K.

There's chapter one. Took a second to get out there, but I'm hoping that I didn't make it boring or cliche or whatever taboo a writer can do. Pretty balanced reviews so far, but I've been developing ideas for a while and I'm still hopeful about the future of the story.

"I think its gonna do great!"

Oh Christ, you're still here.

"Of course I am Angsty! I'm here, I'm there, I'm everywhere! I was here before you even decided to write the story!"

But, aren't I the one typing that?

I don't know, aaaaarrreeee you?"

Oh God, she's doing the fourth-wall-breaking thing again!

"No, you are!"

Stop it!

"What?"

That!