Author's Note
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=5MeQ9rA2Ifg
Please listen to this, it's basically the driving force of this story.
Also, the numbers were intended to be chapters, but I just put it all in one part so you wouldn't have to click next every few paragraphs ๐
We Live in a Simulation
1.
I did plan to wash it all down with wine, but there is none. The homeowners must have taken their alcohol with them on their move. The house is completely empty. Old. A lodge-like structure. The doors are locked, the windows nailed shut.
So I push them into my mouth, five pills at a time, and drink from the tap water. I don't know what these pills are, but the pony who handed me these told me they work fast.
Once I am done with the bottle, I sit down at the kitchen table. There's a ticking. I cluck my tongue. A newspaper is at my side, so I pick it up. The paper crinkles loudly.
THORAX OF THE CHANGELINGS NEGOTIATES TRADE DEAL WITH CRYSTAL KINGDOM
WHAT WE KNOW ABOUT COZY GLOW AND HER PLAN WITH TIREK
ELEMENTS OF HARMONY: REVEAL NEW PLANS IN TELL-ALL
DO WE LIVE IN A SIMULATION? SCIENTISTS SAY IT'S UP TO YOU
EQUESTRIAN SUICIDE HOTLINE: 1-800-273-8255
EQUESTRIAN EMERGENCY HOTLINE: 411
The last two are highlighted. The ticking increases.
2.
It's not going to stop. I need to stop it. It's been, what, ten minutes?
I get up and make my way to the stairs. It gets louder and louder. Too loud. I want to shut it up right now. There is a way to stop it, just find the damn clock and press a button and try that.
The clock is in the hallway where I get on the landing. But it isn't coming from that. It's behind me.
So I turn around and it is still behind me. But there's just no clock there, right? Is it hidden? It has to be. The other clock is the sound is surrounding
darkness
I can't see, I can't see, not anywhere, not here, no, why, how, what, when, where, something else,
darkness
Why can't I see? Why can't I see?
I need to scream because it is just bubbling up in me, some emotion clawing its way out to fight this monster, and I laugh at the hypocrisy.
The laugh is screaming. The ticking, oh, the ticking--it's so much louder. Each click gains ten decibels. My eardrums are pounding. I must be louder I must be louder
ticking
3.
I'm fine.
I check the clock. It's still ticking. Not loudly. It's dark outside, but the clock says that it's only been twenty minutes.
I turn it off.
4.
The ticking has stopped, but my mind hasn't. A whirlpool. I stand there for who knows how long, contemplating, letting it suck me in.
Why did I
swallow an entire bottle of pills?
How many
were there?
Why do I
want to kill myself?
I need the phone now. I turn around for the stairs but they're far away and each step makes them smaller and no I need the telephone and the newspaper and the number whichnumber? and now I'm at the foot of the stairs and then I'm falling but not, here but spinning, going out, going in, ineedthephoneit'satthebottom//
5.
When I wake up, I am laying halfway up the stairs.
Someone is at the bottom, levitating a pistol in his magic. He has no mane, or tail. Just glaring red eyes.
Run.
So I twist up the stairs and scamper through the hall. A shot explodes and hits a wall behind me. My heart hurts, my head hurts hehasme my ears are ringing//
I am in the office--second phone, I note--and I'm about to lock the door behind me, but he comes barging in and he has a knife now: "Why are you here?"
Why am I here? I tried to....
I don't...remember. How did I get here?
"My name is Straight Cut. Can you hear me? I said, why are you here?"
So I offer an explanation: "I needed..."
I shouldn't have trailed off because all these words are crashing from my mouth and I'm choking on them. My world is spinning. They're not hitting him. I can see them:
suicide mission
nightmares
emergency
die
kill
darkness
help
will
you
help
me
But they bounce off of him. His knife reaches forward and slashes through him. My foreleg levitates towards it, and it makes a soothing incision.
Then Straight Cut is gone, leaving me and the knife and my blood.
6.
The vision clears. The blood is dried. I am sitting on a nice green chair in the living room of the house, and a purple figure is sitting across from me.
It is Twilight.
My first instinct is to panic, but I hate panicking. I've already done it enough. I need to stay calm.
She stares at me for a long while, some expression illustrated on her face. Then she asks me:
"Why can't you speak?"
I'm trying. I open my mouth but there's no oxygen. Then I'm burning; burning hot and freezing cold at the same time.
The oxygen slams into my face and I weep as I can finally breathe. I'm alive. The pain in my chest is gone. I am not choking.
I am fine.
7.
But I need to do the Pythagorean Theorem. I need to find the circumcenter of a triangle. I need to measure lines. I need to solve graphs. I need to be a math teacher! That's it! I'll be happy! Content! Alive!
I get up and I can speak. The colors are bright, it's bright outside, everything is bright, I've solved it!
42
Everything!
But I'm rambling again. The clock is back to ticking. Twilight looks concerned and it's dancing!
I leap away and something tightens around my leg. It stings. Tightens even more. When I look down it's a long, slithering chain, radiating hate. It hates me. Everything hates me!
I need to pull at it. Pull.
Pull pull pull.
Tug. Scream. Work hard. Twilight has left. Try and try and
try and try and
try and
try and
try and
try and
try and
try and
try and
try and
8.
"The Reflexive Property," she begins, but she trails off. Somehow she remembers that her name is Neon Gravestones, and she is teaching a math class.
A student, by the name of Crystal Hoof, raises his crystal hoof. "Is she okay?"
"Why, of course," Neon Gravestones says, and turns to the board. "The Law of Syllogism states that--"
"What is happening?"
Neon Gravestones sighs. "And, yes, the quadratic formula--"
"Are you sure this is...her?"
Neon Gravestones slams her hooves on her desk. "NO TALKING!" she screams, but then there's a dim chatter, and she tears a clump of hair out, leaving behind a mess of deep red blood traveling from scalp to neck to hooves.
9.
"You need to live," Principal Reaping Sorrows asks her.
Neon Gravestones is appalled. Live? How? She tries to ask, but her tongue is heavy//
10.
I'm back to the stairs, laying on the landing. A realtor passes by. I ask him, "Is this real?"
He doesn't answer.
He just walks away.
I feel an old shaking, like the house is about to crumble. It starts to increase, and the ticking comes back again, drilling into my ears. My heart is squirming. My throat is growing smaller. I have to close my eyes//
11.
I'm flying.
Something heavy on my back. I am flying a chariot. Twilight and Spike are in it.
"She was found dead in an empty house," Twilight explains to Spike.
"Who found her?" Spike asks Twilight.
"His name was--"
12.
I land us heavily in front of a house with a slanted roof and two stories and locked doors and nailed windows and a working telephone and a newspaper inside. Straight Cut demands that we get off his lawn, waving his pistol around like a maniac. I calmly, but quickly release myself from the harness.
Then I charge. His pistol doesn't know where to aim as I blink in and out of the universe. Then I grab him. Then he gives it to me. Then his gun is my gun.
Twilight and Spike are facing me, ready to attack. They fear me, they should. They should fear me. I have the gun--the power.
BANGBANG
then it goes to my temple//
13.
black long time dead hours defeaning silence
14.
I don't want to think anymore. I don't need any metaphor to explain that.
Hope is a trap.
15.
Fire. Flames. I see it, I feel it. It's my death, the product of my body feeding on itself. Or the insects crawling through my insides.
Then she whispers: "Stay awake!"
16.
An interesting scene plays out before my eyes: Daybreaker, standing next to what could be my clone. She's begging Nightmare Moon not to kill herself.
"You can't--you can't take this away from yourself. I know I hate you. But--sis--you're too strong for this. Please! Just give it a chance. I don't care if you turn yourself in or not, just--please listen!--stay awake. You're not dead yet. You're still alive. You can--you can turn this around. There's so much to live for!"
Her cries are hysterical and high. Not high-and-mighty, but high in panic. She doesn't want Nightmare Moon to die.
She, the tyrannical, hate-fueled sister.
And you know what? Nightmare Moon loves her too.
Then Nightmare Moon turns to me, about to say something, then smiles. No smirk. A sad, teary smile. She nods at me.
I try to understand, but it's not coming through these walls.
I should tear them down.
I want to hear her.
17.
The kitchen walls, the cabinets are back. I am holding a bottle of deep red wine.
Straight Cut pushes it to my chest. "Here," he says. "You'll feel better."
I take a sip. It tastes foul, dirty, but it hits me that I want more, like I live on it.
But it's wrong. I shouldn't drink this.
"I can't," I tell him. "I had too much."
His expression turns dark. He turns to the cabinet and pulls out more wine. "Try this one."
"It's the same thing."
"Try it!"
I feverishly shake my head, frightened.
Then he steps towards me. "Try. It!"
I don't want to resist this any longer--I want to, I have to give in. So I open up my bottle again and drink every last sip until a drop remains. Even then, Straight Cut looks angry.
I have drank enough.
18.
"If you go through with this, I'm telling Celestia."
19.
I want to go outside. So I unlock the door with my remaining magic, which makes me stagger, and find my way through the door. A sliver of sun is about to disappear. The birds have stopped chirping, replaced by singing crickets.
I lean against the wall and watch as it goes. I should enjoy this part, this utter darkness.
But I've seen it enough times to know what it is.
20.
I hear hoofsteps. Turning my head, I realize that it's three fillies. One is talking excitedly in an accent that reminds me of the Element of Honesty. I want to be like them. Happy.
Then they are replaced by six figures: the Elements of Harmony. They bear jeweled necklaces; one wears a crown.
They will exorcise me. They will tear this demon out once and for all. But when I look down, I am not Luna. I don't feel her presence. I am just one, all alone.
"Don't drink the poison," they say.
"You shouldn't have," they say.
It suddenly clicks. The wine. Damnit, the wine! No! The...the pills! The wine!
21.
This demon, Straight Cut--he betrayed me. I need to locate him, but I lost that ability, that dream ability, long ago.
the bottle had fifty pills in it
22.
"You're still alive. You're not dead. You need to be alive," says a voice from up high. It isn't from my head. It's elsewhere, in the realm I lost long ago.
Is it true? Am I alive? I don't know how to feel about it--elated? Disappointed? Nothing comes to mind and another wall comes up, unbreakable.
Too many walls and I'll wither.
I crawl back inside the house. It's warming up in here. I need to check the bottle, just to make sure whether I was right about the number of pills.
The bottle is gone.
Straight Cut isn't.
23.
He carries the bottle, his eyes mean. The last drop is still in there.
Then his visage turns into that of rage. His scream sucks into my ears and pounds my brain and it hurts it hurts it hurts it hurts
it hurts
And then he screams about me not taking enough and he throws the bottle and the glass shards impale my heart and lungs and for a moment I can't breathe//
24.
//and then I can, I can feel, breathe, talk. I can do anything.
I am alive.
25.
Floating, too. I am a feather, drifting from the heavens onto a soft mattress where I curl up and try to sleep.
26.
A figure, a blurry blob, hovers above me. She is calling my name//
27.
//so I bucked and bucked the tree and I destroyed everything in sight with a rage of magic because no one sees me in the woods, no one knows I'm not in the Everfree anymore. FLASHFLASHFLASH--I grabbed my cloak and found an alleyway--rural Canterlot, the outskirts--and asked for a fast-working pill. A bottle. The pony asked if I was Luna. I laughed, said I was just taller than most. And she gave it to me and I walked a mile to a house, locked myself inside, and took the pills five at a time and drank from the sink and then sat down to read the newspaper.
28.
Luna breaks through the memory, and then she is standing above me and my mattress.
"You're not awake," she says.
It doesn't register. I try to swim through the calm and chaos. I need to break through.
"You need to find a phone. Call the ambulance, please. You could die within the next fifteen minutes."
Next fifteen minutes...die....
"I know you're in there."
I am. Find me. Please.
"You can come out of this. Only you can defeat your demons."
i need to find myself.
I am nearing the surface of the water, and something wants to keep me down--
i need to speak
Don't leave me--
"Nightmare Moon? Can you hear me?"
Don't leave me--
ticking
help me
try and
try and
try and
I am breaking apart, fragmented but I can pull these parts together--
"I'm not going to leave you unless you phone an ambulance. Alright? You need to get up and go to the phone."
I am trying
and try
and try
and try
Where did the emotion go?
and try
and try
and try
Pull myself together and break the surface, only the surface//
29.
"Is..."
Luna's eyes widen.
I am able to say, "Is Straight Cut the demon?"
She doesn't know who he is. She doesn't speak the sick mind's language.
But I refuse to back down into hopelessness. I can sit up. I can phone an ambulance and live.
I can defeat him.
30.
Straight Cut is in the office where I limp in to. I don't remember where the phone is, but that is not stopping me.
Then I see it, the cord cut.
I really am going to die. My heart is so slow that it pounds against my ribs with every sparse beat. My throat likes to close up occasionally. I will die here, alone.
But if I go down, Straight Cut is coming with me. So I lunge at him and he does the same, and we fall to the ground as I bite at him.
I will make him feel pain.
Like I do.
Like I made Luna feel, when really, it should have been directed at him.
Like everyone does.
Then he has his newer bottle, and he's about to smash it over my head. He produces it from behind his back like a magic trick. I am pinned to the ground, kicking and
drowning
But Luna is barging through the door, and then Straight Cut is gone, and then she nods at me with this unrecognizable look, and I realize that it's only unrecognizable because I'm not used to kind, caring looks. So I nod back. And I turn around to the stairs.
31.
Each and every step, no matter how small, is slow and painful. There's nothing easy about walking now, but there's only ten steps until the stairs. Then the stairs are here. I rely mostly on the banister to carry me down. My eyes threaten to close at any moment, but something higher than me keeps them open.
Maybe that something higher is hope.
Maybe this hope is worth it.
Maybe, and no maybe nots.
I grapple for the phone almost blindly, and punch in 411. I mess it up one, two, three times. The fourth time, I am on the edge of collapsing, in and out of myself.
I whisper into the phone, "I'm dying."
My voice has no air. It's dry and raspy and tight.
32.
Then something smashes over my head and I try to scream in pain but it's in whispers and then my throat is completely closed and my lungs are rapidly deflating and my heart is gone everything is
gone.
33.
My heart stopped once in the ambulance, another time in the emergency room.
But the doctors brought me back. They try to pump my insides and rid them of the pills. They do their best and use the best technology they have.
They put in a breathing tube and stick me with needles and even with all that, my liver shows signs of failing.
34.
My eyes peel open after seven days.
I cannot move or speak. But my liver is getting better, and within three days, I open my mouth and tell everyone that I'm sorry.
35.
It takes me another few days to move more than a couple inches. I'm so tired. I get as much sleep as I can, promising myself that I'll wake up here.
The doctors are scrambling to get me a psychiatrist. They're confused by my liver and how okay it is, and how okay I am.
36.
I'm not. I'm farthest from okay.
Another week goes by. I'm able to sit up. My liver is healing, somehow. Each and every day goes both fast and slow. All I do is sleep.
My feeding tube is taken out and I can eat actual meals now. As soon as I take a bite of salad, my stomach flips over and I feel like throwing up.
My psychiatric evaluation starts as soon as I'm awake enough. I fight and cry. They tell me that I'm manic-depressed-suicidal-borderline-schizophrenic-ill-sick. I need a diagnosis badly, but nothing makes sense. I don't make sense.
Then I am pacing around my room. I tear the IV out and I throw stuff around and then the IV topples over with a CRASH. Two nurses come in and try to get me to settle down. I want to scream at them, tell them I want to be alone.
But that's how I could have died. And for some reason, I don't want any of that.
So I let them rub my back and put things back together. I used to hate this part. I really did.
I remember floating on hatred.
37.
The day after that, Luna is at my bedside. So is Celestia. I'm curled up and we're watching a comedy rerun on the TV. I feel my eyes start to droop.
Luna notices me blinking and tells me, "Can we talk? Just one question. Then you can sleep."
I nod.
"Who's Straight Cut?"
Something is wrapping around me. Those walls, except higher and more dense. They threaten to close in a few seconds.
But I am strong.
Yet I don't know who he is. I don't know if it's even a stallion. I don't know if it's real.
Of course it isn't. It was a metaphor all along.
So I tell Luna, "Imagination. Me. But..." I feel like the words might come blubbering out again, but I feel scared. Whatwillshethink? Whatwillshedo?
"A hallucination," she says. I look at her in surprise. "Your demon personified. The very force telling you how to cope using unhealthy techniques."
And you know what? It sounds true.
All she and I need to know is why.
38.
I am released from the hospital after two months. Intensive therapy with my psychiatrist begins. In the hospital, it was every day; now it's three times a week.
The months are flying by now. I had no sense of time in the hospital; now, in the real world, I am real. Alive. Occasionally, I'll build walls again. But it won't kill me to break them down.
I currently reside with Princess Twilight, in her castle on the edge of Ponyville. Her friends were apprehensive of me at first, and I was scared of them. But we got through it.
A new friend is Starlight Glimmer. She's a reformed criminal, like me, in a way. We like to take walks through Ponyville with Thorax and Spike. Occasionally, Discord joins us. Mostly with Fluttershy.
I get to live like I could have a millennia ago, happy, a real life. One not filled with sorrows or hatred or ruminated failure. There's this demon trying to take me down.
One day, three months after my release, it tells me that none of this is real. I am dead. It punches me in the heart and the bricks start to rise.
This happens during a session with Doctor, my psychiatrist; he just prefers Doctor. He looks funny and acts warm.
"What's happening in your head right now?"
I don't know. The bricks are stacking.
"Can you tell me?"
The clock is ticking. I turn my head towards him and smile. "How's the diagnosis?"
He grins. "Ah! I have a few possibilities. Now you said you needed something to explain your past actions, right, and according to this sheet you filled out, I was able to narrow down two options."
He pushes a notebook sheet towards me:
Borderline Personality
Schizoaffective Disorder
I look up at him and he nods back. "Can you, um, explain these to me?"
"On the back."
"Thanks." I turn it over.
BPD--consists of unstable relationships, fears of loneliness, constant mood swings and anger.
Schizoaffective--more likely; consists of symptoms of both a mood disorder and schizophrenia, but does not fit all criteria for both.
I stare at them blankly.
They're no excuse, I realize. But they could be one reason.
Just one.
"It could be both," Doctor continues. "You expressed concerns of loneliness, mood swings, delusions of grandeur."
"Thank you."
It's silent. There's two minutes left on the clock.
"I can tell something is still troubling you."
It's back, demanding to know whether this is the real world, the alive world. This could be Heaven, or some sick, twisted joke from Tartarus.
I want to ask, but would it make things worse?
No. He's dealt with this before.
"I feel like sometimes I can't speak," I begin. "Like there's something in between me and you. I've built so many walls and it's just...so hard to tear them down."
He nods. "Some creatures believe that building up a facade will make them stronger, but it just traps everything inside. It isn't weak to get it all out. It's brave."
I don't want him to tell me no, but I have to ask: "Is any of this real?"
I'm so quiet that he has to lean forward. "What was that?"
I can say, nevermind. I can say, just thinking to myself. I can say....
"Is this real?"
My voice, although louder, is tight and reserved. I am speaking. I will not be afraid. I will speak. "Sometimes...I feel afraid of this thing. Of...a demon. Telling me how to cope with the wrong things. And now it's at its last resort, and it's asking, is any of this real?" I feel regret as soon as I finish, but it's out there, and I also feel good.
I may not be real. Everyone is not real. They're not themselves. They hide from the real world, something beyond our reach. We need to put things in this new perspective, in this world that could suddenly end one day.
Then he says//
39.
//"That depends. Do we live in a simulation?"
*