You're always tired. Work all day, get paid sometimes, come "home" to a mess you just can't seem to catch up with, rinse and repeat. Your hooves are freezing and there's no food in the cupboard. There’s beer in the cooler, though. Priorities, right? It beats living on the streets, and at least it's familiar. If only Equestria had the Internet.

Might as well do some dishes to get warm. The last time you turned up the heat the landlady came over and started screaming, and you could have sworn she sounded like Twilight. You glance at the thermostat, but no. You'd rather be cold.

You go to the sink and turn on the tap, sticking a hoof into the bitter cold stream of water that comes out. It hurts, but it helps you focus. Better to feel your body at all. Hot pain lances through your core. Three miscarriages is where that idea got you.

You step back from the sink and wait for steam to rise from it, then plug the drain and drop in some soap. The mountain of dirty dishes is intimidating, even if half of it is disposable or easy-rinse containers. Still, there are no clean plates and you're not quite low enough to eat from dirty ones whenever Scroogey McScroogeface can be bothered to pay you again. Even just a few dishes a day would clear this mess eventually, right? There’s time and energy left for just a few. You turn off the tap and shift some of the piled-up plates and silverware into the sink.

Wipe. Rinse. Drainer. Wipe. Rinse. Drainer. You get into a nice rhythm. Maybe you'll do more than a few, at this rate. Wouldn't that be something? A light hum crosses your lips, a catchy little tune heard at a distance when a circus paraded through town during work.

You lift a plate to rinse it, and scrub vigorously at a bit of dried stuff that won't come off.

A fracture creeps across the surface, splitting apart the horrified, then terrified reflection it bears. Time slows to a crawl.

Dirty mud pony magic pulses like your heartbeat, overpowering the cheap stoneware. You pull back against it, but it's too late. Your mind's eye imposes its view over reality. Every plate shatters between your incapable hooves. Spoons and skewers bend into weird and unusable shapes. The tines of forks twist into a tangled rat's nest. The easy-rinse containers develop holes. Color leeches out of the sink in front of you; there is only the white of your dishes and the grey of everything else.

"I told you," Twilight says in her smug and superior way. "What did I tell you, little Nonny?"

"Shut up," you whimper under your breath. You don't mean it. You can't mean it. Oh god, what if Twilight heard? Your body braces for what it knows is coming. Your mind braces against... something. Maybe it’s possible to resist magic by sheer force of will.

"You can't hide anything from me," Twilight says. Her tone shifts to one of undiluted contempt. "I told you this would happen. What are you doing? You're just proving me right."

Your mouth opens to reason with her. Maybe if you say the right thing, she'll realize how much it hurts. Maybe if you can appeal to her moral character, she'll give you a break. Maybe if you can tease out her maternal instincts, she'll smile and speak gently.

"Please—"

"This is what you do, Anon. You hurt, you lie, you steal, and you break. Somehow, everything to do with you always ends in ponies' tears. I thought making you one of us would help you. I thought welcoming you into my home, out of the goodness of my own heart, would help you. But you just can't help yourself, can you?"

You slump, staring down into the water. The plate slips from your hooves and beneath the surface. She's going to beat you again. That's where this always goes. Your muscles are sore and you ache from nose to tail. You remember a little of before. You were always a donkey's uncle to ponies because they were small and cute and impossible to take seriously.

"I tried being nice, Nonny."

She did, didn't she? Even when she turned you into a little girl horse. Ponies were suddenly huge by comparison, and even Sweetie Belle was bigger and stronger, but everypony was still adorable even when they were mad. Twilight was unrelenting in her "friendship is magic" approach, but being small just made you angry that she changed you. You didn't want to be her friend, let alone her "daughter."

Something snapped. You remember waking up in the hospital with her apologizing in a panic about something. You were too busy floating somewhere above your body to care. They must have trotted out the really good painkillers.

At home, she must have slipped you a little magic. Maybe she was trying to erase the memory of what happened, but you didn't forget that she did something. Maybe it was because it kept happening. She would hurt you, then apologize for the rest of the week with an extra bit of sweets in your lunch bag or going out for ice cream or even, one time, following your directions to make a pretty damn good pizza.

Then she would do it all again.

"It's better to let go," Twilight whispers in your ears.

Her magic worked—you don't remember the beatings directly, thank goodness—but over time, other things started to slip. You lost so much you're not even sure what you started with. Your entire pony childhood is like the inverse of swiss cheese. Some of the holes are filled in, but they're the only things left.

You know you were male because it's apparent from the stories Twilight tells. You remember the Internet because you tried to troll ponies by telling them your name was Anonymous—your online handle. By the time you realized that was a perfectly ordinary name in pony land, it was your entire social identity. Now it’s a question mark on your butt, a symbol of your social invisibility.

“Even destiny hates you!” Twilight says.

Your real name and real, human parents are gone. You must have had a dog, but the dog is gone. You barely remember what having fingers is like. You used to get angry instead of breaking down in tears all the time, but nothing else about being a man has stayed, and with Twilight's erratic anger and the landlady’s tantrums you're not even sure that's a guy thing.

You know you weren't well off mostly because of how comfortingly familiar it is to organize a system of which bills to evade each month and live in fear of tax audits. Your "first time" as a pony is the only "first time" you remember, and your only memory of it is the sick smile on his face. Your whole body shudders in revulsion.

It's better to let go.

You rush to the toilet and throw up. You didn't eat anything today, so after bringing up a little acid you go through a series of dry heaves that leaves you trembling all over and your muzzle streaked with tears.

"Oh, quit feeling sorry for yourself," Twilight sneers. "You got what you deserved."

You got what you deserved. It echoes off every wall again and again as you sob over the toilet bowl and heave up another dry retch. In a way, though, it's cathartic to see yourself reaping your just reward. You're a mess, but you wouldn't be this way if you hadn't started off by hurting, stealing, lying, and breaking.

You got off easy. Twilight didn't do worse than turn you into a cute little pony and raise you as her own. She has to punish you sometimes, but you're really to blame for that too. A grown man can hardly be a normal foal, and before making things difficult unintentionally, you made things difficult on purpose. You act out so much that it's shocking how nice Twilight is. Being oversensitive about the things she says is your problem, really.

"You got what you deserved," Twilight chants.

After all, where have your decisions led you? Every friend has left you, and it's your fault. Countless ponies have been hurt, and it's your fault. Your life is on fire and it's your fault. You must be some kind of psychopath to be such a horrible person and still only feel sorry for yourself.

"Selfish. Useless. Monster." Twilight gloats as you turn away from the toilet, still shaking. You catch a glimpse of a strange chan-green mare in what's left of your bathroom mirror. A disgusting freak. You let that mud pony strength go, leaving cracks across her pathetic face.

"Nonny!" Twilight snaps. You cringe away from her voice, lowering your head and ears and putting on your best hopeful smile. Why resist, though? Why appease? You deserve punishment.

"Go to your room right now," she says, unmoved. Or maybe this is her being moved.

You try to state some form of compliance, but stammer so much you can't even get through a simple yes, let alone move on to mom or whatever hasty apology you can pull out of your mane. You can't do anything right; you can't even speak right, not around her. Not around him. Not around anypony. It's always the stammering or the blurting out all of the words in a jumbled soup. Everypony looks at you funny as you drag yourself to bed and bury yourself in the thin sheets.

Maybe you'll throw yourself off a building again instead of going to work. But that wouldn’t slow down even a pegasus for long, let alone a stubborn mud horse like you. Ponies are freakishly durable. That's not the turn-off, though. Not all of it. Instead, the problem is that ponies will pretend to care for a few days after that, and then carry on like nothing happened. They sometimes even sternly reprimand you to seek therapy—as if there’s any kind of treatment for being a self-pitying psychopath. The solution to your problems is simple: stop being them.

Who would believe your stupid lies, anyway? Spike knows whatever really happened, he saw so much, and even he doesn’t like your “stories.” Maybe he is as infatuated with Twilight as every other pony in this cursed land. Maybe he’s just afraid that he could be next.

But it seems more likely that Twilight really is a fine, upstanding example of ponykind. She has the love of two worlds. She even has the wings to show for it. Who makes up stories about a pony like Twilight? You can’t imagine a more horrible, ungrateful human or pony than yourself.

“After everything you’ve done, I don't know why I put up with you,” Twilight says.

As you cry yourself to sleep yet again, you pray tomorrow will be the day you never wake up.

Author's Note

Breathe.
Notice the environment around you.
You're here. You're now.
It'll be okay.

💜

With thanks to my friends for the safety and motivation to write again. You know who you are.