Increasingly more common last words...
With a long, tense exhale, you take a measured look at the teary-eyed pegasus in front of you. You’d give almost anything to put a smile on that face again. But, alas, you’re dying. Dying of terminal ass cancer in this... this actually pretty cozy hospital room, and there’s nothing anypony can do about it. It’s a tragedy of the highest magnitude. Also, completely unexpected that those strange magical glowing runes would give you cancer after you rubbed your butt on them, instead of superpowers like you expected. I mean… why couldn’t you go out doing something cooler? Like an awesome rocket-skateboard trick you have no business doing because you don’t know anything about rockets… or skateboards for that matter. Or, you know, at least something less embarrassing than ‘ass cancer’. But now this evil tumor is your only companion… well, that and the machine that goes ‘beep’ along with your heartbeat.
Your dear friend Fluttershy places a forehoof on your chest. Right! She’s still here. Well, at least with Fluttershy present you can get something off your bucket list that’s been bugging you for a while, but only really come to a head when you found out you were on death’s doorstep.
“Now, I know things seem rough right now,” Fluttershy says in her dulcet tone that never fails to soothe your nerves, “but Dr. Horse and Twilight are confident they can cure your disease before it’s too late. You’ll be your old, reasonably happy, maybe spends-more-time-in-their-room-than-what-is-healthy, self.”
Knock! Knock! It’s me death, no need to leave me waiting out in the cold for so long! You give Fluttershy a look of sad longing, perhaps the last one you’ll ever give.“It’s okay, Fluttershy. You can just say ‘ass cancer’.”
“Erm…” Fluttershy’s face flushes in that adorable way it often does when you say, well, just about anything. “I’m fine with calling it ‘colon cancer’, thanks. I’m, uh… not really sure why you insist on calling it that…”
“Because colon cancer happens in the colon, and these are big tumors all over my ass. That’s why,” you say. No need to keep Fluttershy pining after a dead man once you’re gone. Gee, you’re such a swell guy who cares deeply about the feelings of others. “Well, I’ve accepted my fate, and maybe it’s best for both of us if we just move on…”
“Um… again. While this sounds usually fatal for your kind, help is maybe literally around the corner.”
So, it’s come to this. Well, if Fluttershy is going to insist on being a true companion to what you can only assume will be a very bitter end, complete with tears and mourning of your passage of which many ponies will certainly never recover, perhaps it is time to get that one last thing off your chest…
You take a deep breath. “Fluttershy? Uh… since you’re here and staying with me, there’s something I need to ask you.”
“Oh, yes, Anon,” she says, her sadness suddenly giving way to unexpected joy it seems.
You knew there was a smile in there someplace, and you manage to weakly mirror the happiness on your own face. “You’ve been with me since the very beginning, ever since you first found me naked in your front lawn.”
“Erm… I’ve been meaning to ask you about that. You clearly arrived with clothes as there was a line of them discarded starting at Sweet Apple Acres and roughly ending a few yards away from my cottage, so you could have just asked Applejack or—”
“Apple-background-pony is garbage tier!” you snap.
Fluttershy frowns. “Uh… I don’t quite understand that, but it sounds kind of mean and also doesn’t explain why you decided to stri—”
“Please, Fluttershy!” you beg. “This is important!”
“Erm, right, uh, okay! I’m listening,” she resumes her intent and hopeful look as she stares at you with glassy turquoise eye. She even takes your hand in her forehooves, sweet thing that she is.
You take a deep breath, your heart, weakened as it is in your dying state, feels like it’s going to beat right out of your chest. Still, with death coming to claim you any minute now, it’s now or never. After one more moment, you summon your courage and finally speak the words you should have said a long time ago. “Will you please delete my browsing history?” you ask.
“… What?” Fluttershy asks, blank expression on her face.
You nod to the laptop sitting on the end table next to your bed. “My browsing history. I don’t want any pony to see it while I’m in this transition period. Now, I’m sure you're curious, but you should respect my privacy here! Wink. Wink!” you say, adding in real winks to the ones you said out loud. At least you think you did. For some reason you don’t seem to have any eyes.
Fluttershy retracts her hooves as she clenches her eyes tightly, clearly overwrought with emotion from this new responsibility. “Uh, I would respect your privacy.”
Uh-oh! She’s too nice. “Well, you can disrespect it a little!”
“Erm…” Fluttershy gives you a nervous grin. “Let’s back up a bit. Why do you need me to do this?”
You raise a limp hand. “I’m so weak from all this dying I'm currently doing right this moment!” you state as you punctuate this statement with a few timely coughs.
“Er, okay, but I just watched you eat an entire home-cooked meal that I brought!” Fluttershy cried.
“Yes, but I wasn’t as close to dying then as I am now,” you say.
“Er… riiiiight…” Fluttershy utters unconvincingly, again, no doubt trying to maintain hope that these aren’t your final moments, which they totally, absolutely, one-hundred percent are! “What’s with this ‘transition’ period? Erm… I mean, you’re probably not going to, but by your own words, you think you’re dying.”
“Oh, I’ll be dead for sure soon,” you declare. “I’m basically waiting on death’s stoop waiting for him to come outside.”
“Er, I see…”
“Waiting with a clipboard and a package.”
“Uh… okay?”
“He needs to sign for the package.”
“Erm… if you say so.”
“The package is my soul.”
Fluttershy lets out a sigh that sounds laden with grief, at least, you’re pretty sure that sound of resignation is from grief. She turns to the computer. “Okay well, I don’t really have fingers so—”
“Oh, huh. Maybe this was more of a Twilight req—”
“Angel Bunny?” Fluttershy calls out. “Angel, can you come out here and help me do something for Anon?”
“WHAT?! NO!” You cry. “Angel Bunny is an asshole! He’s the LAST thing on this planet I want touching my computer and my only regret is that I’m going to die before him!”
On cue, Angel Bunny’s unamused expression appears over the side of your bed.
“Well, that wasn’t very nice,” Fluttershy says.
“He’s not very nice!” you fire back as you energetically motion with your green hands at Angel Bunny which you totally shouldn’t do because you’re so weak and dying. “Cough, cough.”
Despite all that’s going on, Fluttershy still manages one of her heart-warming smiles. “I’m sure it’ll be fine! Go on, Angel.”
Angel, little jerk-wad that he is, jumps onto you and roughly hops across your body, making his way to your computer.
“No. Stop! I trust that little turd-burglar as far as I can throw him!”
“Erm… why would anyone want to burgle turds?” Fluttershy wonders out loud. “Also, you’re a lot bigger than Angel and have hands. I think you can throw him pretty far.”
“I meant in my weak, pounding on death’s door to let me in, state! Look at that smug prick face on that smug prick! He’s clearly going to botch this on purpose!”
Angel moves the mouse on your computer, makes a few clicks, and hits some keys then suddenly the sounds of two females clearly in the throes of passion come pouring out your screen.
“… Aaaaaand there it is,” you say in an annoyed tone.
Fluttershy eyes lock to the screen as her face tightens, the mare going even more silent than usual as she takes in with her eyes the sight of a familiar butter-colored Pegasus also taking something in. Angel flashes you a devilish grin as Fluttershy begins to speak, “Is that me… being plowed by Twilight?!” she asks as her eyes momentarily focus to the purple mare on the screen. “Why does Twilight have a dick?! Why do I have a dick?! Why would I even need it in that situation?!”
You breathe a sigh of relief. “Oh good, it wasn’t one of the weird ones!”
Angel throws up his paws in exasperation as Fluttershy motions to the computer with both forehooves towards the screen. “That’s not one of the weird ones?!”
“Oh, sweet, dickless Fluttershy,” you begin in a soothing tone as you reach out to stroke her face. “You’re so innocent, I’m going to miss you when I’m gone.”
Fluttershy sighs and grasps your hand in her forehooves. “Erm… I guess I can accept your fetishes… Even if I don’t really get them. But shouldn’t you make the most of the time you have, even if it’s probably a lot longer than you seem to be letting on?”
“Oooooooh, good point!” You say, as if events totally unfolded in a way not according to keikaku*!
*keikaku means plan. It also sounds phonetically like cake, but has nothing to do with cake, unless the plan is to make a cake. Such plans should involve Pinkie Pie.
“Could you give me ten minutes alone with the computer, please? You can just leave this running on a loop.”
If ponies could clench their hooves into claws, you’re quite certain that’s what Fluttershy would be doing right now if she could. She lets out a deep scream swimming with anger and frustration. Your upcoming death must be really hitting her hard right about now. Speaking of hard…
You hold up your hands defensively in front of you. “Okay, okay! You can stay if you want, just no judgment and do what you do best!”
Fluttershy raises an eyebrow. “Um… Be a kind and supportive pony who would do pretty much anything, and I repeat an-EE-thing, for someone she loves and cares about?”
“No, be quiet,” I inform. Geez, is she dense or what? She’s acting like I’m talking in riddles here. “Angel can stay too. Just so long as he changes the picture or video on request.”
Angel reacts by making a retching sound and hopping down onto the floor, friggin’ kink-shamer. Well, whatever. You can make due with one video. Heck, maybe Fluttershy can work her snoot on the arrow keys for you. Or use her wing tips. You’ve seen her use those like fingers before. It makes you wonder if she could wrap them around things, and if it would chafe.
Speaking of the pegasus, Fluttershy responds to all this by silently getting her ‘game face’… or maybe that’s more frustration? Probably because she’s going to lose a friend to terminal ass cancer. Either way, she seems game for what happens next, or at least, makes no immediate attempt to leave the room. Without further ado, you throw the covers off your gown, reach out with your green hand and freeze as the door is thrown open and quickly scramble to close your laptop and put the covers over yourself. Good thing you’ve had lots of practice from your mom walking in on you before you came here, huh? Resituated, you stare wide-eyed at this unexpected intrusion that’s about as welcome as a tumor growing right on main street.
Which, to reiterate is exactly what’s killing you. Except, you know, main street is your ass.
Dr. Horse enters your room, your good-natured physician throughout this ordeal but who isn’t a more, so whatever. Hopefully, he leaves soon. He grins widely as his horn glows steel blue and he produces a clipboard. “Good news! I’ve been studying your ailment, and I think we just might be able to treat it with a round of Equestrian medicines before we operate to save—”
Princess Twilight Sparkle, another long-time friend since you’ve arrived that you’ve had a bit of a crush on, suddenly canters into the room, excitement clearly on her face. “Good news! I figured out the spell that will cure your colon cancer!”
You give Twilight a serious look. “Okay, but do you have a spell to give yourself and Fluttershy penises?”
“…What?!” Twilight replies as Fluttershy smacks a hoof against her face.
Guess that’s a ‘no’ then.
Dr. Horse responds to this miracle of magic by magically throwing his clipboard into the air, it clattered to the ground has he began talking to himself, “‘Become a doctor’, mother told me! ‘It’ll be so rewarding and you’ll change the world,’ she said!” Dr. Horse stormed out of the room, leaving the door open behind him.
“See, I told you!” Fluttershy says, joyous expression on her face.
“Buuut, I was going to be with my true love forever!” you whine.
Fluttershy giggles. “I don’t see why that can’t still happen,” she purrs, batting her eyelashes at you.
“My computer with an internet connection,” you qualify. I mean, it’s pretty obvious when you think about it, but still.
“Oh, come on!” Fluttershy exclaims.
Twilight throws a foreleg into the air. “How would you enjoy those things if you’re dead, anyway?”
“I asked Starlight and she said she could totes turn me into the undead with liberal use of magic! She told me that most biological functions could be easily circumvented if she just pumps my lifeless corpse with enough energy!”
Dr. Horse screams from down the hall. He must be having an off day. But again, not as off as you because you’re clearly going to die from ass cancer in like, thirty seconds here. A minute, tops.
Twilight goes cross-eyed and stares upwards like she’s trying to disintegrate her eyebrows with a glare.
“Let me get this straight,” Fluttershy begins, “you were hoping to die, be raised from the dead in a technically unliving space, then put into a coffin with your computer?”
“Uh-huh!” You say nodding your head. “Living the dream, baby!” you declare. “Well… Dying the dream? Un-living the dream?”
“How were you even going to get power?!” Twilight demanded.
You chuckle knowingly. “Starlight was going to run an extension cord from the castle to my new sweet single room digs. Hehe. Get it? Coffin? Digs?”
Twilight and Fluttershy both cringe, the tell-tale sign that they did, indeed, get it.
“Fine,” Twilight growls out. “Putting aside we’ll have no idea if you have other technical problems with power or your machine down there, how are you getting internet? There’s no way the wi-fi is going to penetrate that deep.”
You chuckle once more. “Got that covered, too! Get it? Covered? Because I’ll be in a gra—”
“Just shut up and explain it to me, already!” Twilight demands. Man she, like almost everypony you know, is so tsundere for you, it hurts.
“I’m getting hooked up with an ultra-long ethernet cord!” you inform.
Twilight’s eyes shut tightly as she, no doubt, tries to process your incredible genius. “You want to run a cord all the way from the castle’s map room, which is several floors up, down below ground…”
“It’s brilliant, I know!” you declare. “Please, hold your applause!”
“Oh, done and done,” Twilight says dryly, likely jealous she didn’t think of it first.
“Yep! I got it allll figured out!” You place your hands behind your nearly featureless green head and lean back on them. “Now all that’s left is for Starlight to show up with the gear, and then for her to bring me back after I die… Which like, hurry up death, amIrite?!”
Fluttershy lets out another sad sigh, one of many sure to follow in the days, weeks, and maybe years as she mourns your untimely passing. “Oh, you’re right, definitely right there.”
As if these ponies’ lives are dictated by whatever is most convenient for dramatic reasons or to move things along in their life, Starlight suddenly burst into the room, smile on her face and full saddlebags on her back. “I got them! I got the components from Sunset!”
“Oh, that sweet horse turned human!” you cry excitedly. “I knew she was just being tsundere on me all those times she pile-drived my head directly on concrete!” Your face tightens as you reconsider the words Starlight said to you. “Wait… components?”
Starlight nods excitedly. “Yeah! I told Sunset what was going on and she said she had something even better than an ethernet cable!”
Suddenly, your taxed heart is all a flutter and you feel yourself get misty eyed. “B-better? Wow… she really does care. What is it?”
Starlight’s horn glows electric blue and she floats out a long cord that looks a bit too thin to be an ethernet cord and a rectangular object that looks like someone found it at a Thrift store electronic section, like, a decade and a half ago. “A dial-up modem!” Starlight says exactly.
“… That hateful BITCH!” you scream, feeling a deep stab of betrayal in your heart. A stab that… Wow, that hurts a lot worse than you would think and your arm is going numb and vision going blurry as the machine you’re connected too is beeping up a storm…
Oh, crap baskets! “Gack! Wait! Hold up death… I’m not-mmmffff!”
Your vision goes darker quicker than expected as Fluttershy, no doubt in a misguided attempt to make you feel more comfortable, puts a pillow over your face.
“Shhh, It’s okay. The pain will go away soon,” she whispers.
Okay, she’s straight up trying to hasten your death, but thankfully you’re way stronger than-Nope, scratch that, not only are you weak from the heart-attack you’re suffering right this instant, Fluttershy is clearly much stronger than you in general.
“Oohhh, that’s not good,” Starlight says. “I can bring him back if he dies most ways, but not from a heart attack. He’ll need that to work.”
“Why would THAT be important?!” Twilight asks.
“Uh, he’d basically be a vampire,” Starlight answers. “So, he’d need a working cardiovascular system to pump fresh blood.”
Really regretting not helping that cruddy Apple family on the farm more often, You think as your stringbean arms flail uselessly against Fluttershy’s forelegs. Or like, at all…
“Wait, where would the blood even come from?!” Twilight demands. “He clearly wanted to be buried and left alone in a coffin with his computer for all eternity!”
“Tap hooked up to the blood dimension,” Starlight answers without missing a beat.
“How do you know there’s blood-You know what?! NEVERMIND! I don’t want to know!”
“Stand back, every pony!” a stallion calls out. “I can save him, but you have to stop smothering him!”
Oh shit! It’s Dr. Horse! He has to save you, you know because of the Hippocratic Oath… Holy shit! Death! I’m begging you! Give me just a few more seconds then you can take me!
Seemingly reluctantly, Fluttershy removes the pillow from your face and you muster nearly the rest of your strength to single out Dr. Horse with your weary eyes, which are things you’re not even sure you have, and say, “Hehehe… Horsecratic oath.”
The groans you receive are to die for, literally. Which is definitely happening now, but with the last of your strength, you whisper out three very important words.
“Well, that certainly happened,” Twilight says as she stares down at a lonesome gravestone.
“Yes,” Fluttershy answers simply, her eyes likewise pointed downward, her expression unreadable.
“Uh, look Fluttershy,” Twilight said, “I know you and Anon had a special connection that no pony really got, but—”
Fluttershy looks up. “Uh… I don’t get it either, to be honest,” she admits. “I mean, sure, he was swee… Erm, he was nic… Uh...” Fluttershy purses her lips and wrinkles her brow as she thinks hard. “No, I got nothing. I can’t think of any reason why I was attracted to him in the first place. He was, erm… kinda just weird and bland. Now that he’s gone, there’s erm… I can’t think of a single reason why him being around was ever important to me, or any pony really.”
“Okay then,” Twilight responds. “Just as long as you’re holding up okay.”
“Weeelll,” Fluttershy thought for a moment, “there is one thing maybe you and I can do to honor his memory…”
“Uh…. Yes?” Twilight asks trepidatious.
“Erm, um… I don’t suppose you actually do know a spell to give us penises…”
Momentarily taken aback but Fluttershy’s words, Twilight takes one last glance at the headstone, her eyes drifting over the fresh inscription. ‘Here lies Anon. “Don’t touch my porn!”’ After a moment, Twilight can’t help but chuckle to herself. She turns and begins walking to the castle. “Meet me in my bedroom in ten minutes.”
“… Yay.”
The End
Author's Note
Alternative last words and alternative ending courtesy of TOM.
“Fuck you, Angel.”
And as your eyelids slowly began to close, you could swear you saw a small white paw—or was it two?—holding up a single digit.
