Author's Note

This chapter contains the opening and closing scenes of a Writeoff submission from 2017. Inspired by Twin Peaks: The Return, which had finished airing just prior, I hastily wrote a rushed, clumsy crossover between Twin Peaks and Equestria Girls, in which Adagio Dazzle was held hostage by the residents of the Black Lodge to dispense pain and suffering (Garmonbozia).

What came in between these two scenes isn't important. It's an amateur's attempts at mimicking the work of a master artist, borrowing his symbols and images out of context, and failing to instill them with any of their creator's meaning. But I want these two scenes, the beginning and end of the story, to be out there at last, as a memorial for someone who inspired me, and will continue to inspire others for years to come.

Thank you for everything, David Lynch. You may be gone, but that town, and all those people, are still there, always there, always waiting.

What a damn fine life you lived.

Posh, 1/16/25

9/2017: Excerpts from Garmonbozia

“Gotta light?”

Adagio Dazzle turned to regard the vagrant in her passenger’s seat. His thick, matted hair and tangled beard, and rumpled, unwashed clothing, lent him a wild air; and his eyes and teeth were islands of stark white against his soot-black skin.

“Gotta light?” he repeated, dangling an unlit cigarette between his fingers. His voice was a growly baritone; his gaze was intense, focused squarely on Adagio as she drove through the night.

Adagio looked at him a while longer. Then her eyes narrowed, and she turned her attention back to the open road. “Try the glove compartment.”

She heard it click open, and his hands rummaging through its contents. Then it clicked shut again. Evidently, there was no lighter, no book of matches, to be found; the smell of tobacco did not fill the car’s stifling interior.

That was a shame. The car stank of burning oil – cigarette smoke would have been an improvement.

“Worth a shot,” Adagio muttered.

Quite suddenly, though not unexpectedly, a building appeared in the night – a squat, dilapidated ruin with a metal staircase on one side, and a sign over the front window reading “Convenience Store.”

Adagio set her teeth and swallowed. She pulled off the road and parked beside it, killing the headlights. The passenger’s door opened; the vagrant stepped into the night. He hovered at the door.

Adagio reached for her purse with a shaking hand, fighting her own staggered breathing and rapid heartbeat to rummage through it. “I’ll be there in a minute.”

The vagrant stood expectantly.

Adagio glared at him. “You heard me,” she snapped. “Damn it, it’s not going anywhere. You can wait on me for a minute, can’t you?”

The vagrant stood a moment longer before walking toward the building that loomed nearby.

Grumbling to herself, Adagio found what she was looking for: the orange pill bottle, still half-full of pearly white tablets. She uncapped the bottle, and shook two into a shaking palm. Then she tossed her head back and threw them into her mouth-dry swallowing both and sighing.

The shaking in her hands gradually ceased. Her heartrate and breathing slowed to normal. Anxiety still clawed inside of her – she couldn’t chase that off so easily.

With a growl, Adagio threw open the car door and stepped into the night. The vagrant stood at the top of the metal staircase; it ended at a brick wall with no door. The whites of his eyes shone like pale lanterns in the dark.

Adagio drew herself up, clutched her purse close, and started up the staircase.

The Dazzlings weren’t at CHS when Sunset arrived – evidently, they’d decided not to wait up for her. So, the next day, after fishing around through phonebooks and websites of questionable repute for their home address, Sunset went to them. Aria greeted her in a bathrobe, grumbling. She let her in regardless.

“Coffee’s on in the kitchen,” she mumbled, slipper-shod feet sliding against the carpet as she led Sunset toward said kitchen. Her eyes were brighter, her face a little clearer, not quite as lined or as gaunt as it had been even the day before. “Not as good as the stuff that cop served up, but good enough.”

“You don’t mind sharing?” Sunset asked.

Aria snorted as she and Sunset entered the kitchen; she gestured for Sunset to take a seat beside a wooden table. “Of course I do. But I owe you. After this, though, we’re square. Got it?”

“Hmm. Yeah, that sounds fair. One free cup of shitty coffee is totally equivalent to rescuing your sister from eternal torment.

“Bleeding-heart little—”

“You said you wouldn’t call me that anymore.”

“You said,” Aria corrected. She poured a mug of coffee for Sunset, then shuffled out the kitchen door. “Wait there a minute, alright?”

Sunset nodded, and sat alone. Her hand reached for her geode, and clutched at nothing. She sighed, and clenched her hand against her breast. Then she took a sip of coffee, and grimaced.

“Celestia, this is disgusting.”

“Aria does the shopping,” a raspy voice called from the kitchen entrance. “She likes that cheap shit.”

Sunset looked up to see Adagio, still pale and haggard, but moving on her own power. She was dressed in fuzzy pajamas bedecked in Sonata’s personal sigil, and sat at a chair opposite Sunset.

“How is she?” Sunset asked quietly. “Sonata, I mean.”

Adagio’s tongue ran along her teeth. Then she nodded. “Better. I don’t know how – the pendent, the new one, it broke when I was…” A shudder silenced her; she took a deep breath. “There’s no reason they should be feeding. They’re not feeding – there’s nothing for them to feed on. But she and Aria, they’re both doing better anyway.”

Sunset nodded, and took a sip of coffee, before clearing her throat. “Are you?”

Adagio didn’t say anything.

The minutes passed awkwardly – silence, interspaced with sips of coffee. Outside, the morning birds sang to greet the dawn; in the distance, an owl hooted, and Adagio seemed to cringe.

“…You didn’t say anything,” she whispered. Her eyes refused to meet Sunset’s. “You didn’t tell Aria what you saw in there. Didn’t tell her what I…”

Sunset finished her coffee and pushed the mug aside. “No. No, I didn’t.”

Adagio’s hands trembled on the table. “Why?”

Sunset folded her arms tightly around her middle. “Do you want them to know?”

“I don’t even want to know,” Adagio whispered. She folded her hands, wringing them together; Sunset noted the way that she traced along the length of her ring finger, around a narrow band of skin that was paler than the rest.

“…Pain and suffering,” she rasped. “It’s easier to find out there than adoration. My sisters and I can’t eat it, can’t survive off it, though. But those things… they can.”

“So you made a deal with them,” Sunset said softly.

Adagio nodded. Her hair seemed to be regaining some of its normal poof, and it bounced with the motion of her head. “I’d go out. Gather pain and suffering. Most of it mine. All for them – I didn’t mind doing it for them. I’d bring it back. They’d trade it for… feelings that we could survive on. Except last time… I didn’t have enough. They told me I was breaking the contract, and to make it right… I had to…”

Sunset remembered the prickle of electricity against her skin and shivered. “Would they have let you go?”

“Maybe. Eventually. When they’d gotten their fill. Or when they’d just wrung me dry.” Adagio’s hands relaxed and lay flat on the table. “All I know is that things could’ve been a lot worse than they were, and they sucked pretty hardcore to begin with. And… gallingly…”

Adagio looked up at Sunset, a spark of the old Dazzling in her eye.

“I have you to thank for that.”

“Save your thanks. Got no need for them.” Sunset leaned back in her chair smugly. “I’ll take another cup of crappy coffee, though.”

Adagio fixed Sunset with a long, unsettling glare. Then the corners of her mouth lifted.

“Get it yourself.”

With a chuckle, and a shake of her head, Sunset reached for her cup and rose from her chair.