How I Fell In Love With A Pony

Life is odd. No…no…that statement is way too profound, much too profound for my tastes, even. It’s much too on the nose. It works too well. It’s no way to begin a story that’s filled to the brim with romance and things that one might find on a Hollywood silver screen. It doesn’t defy reality, it is reality. Since this story might seem completely unrealistic (for, after all, we are breaking about a million social taboos within it), it doesn’t seem like it fits. Yet…it does fit. Life is odd, and it got even odder the day I found myself in a swirling vortex of death. Okay, okay, so it wasn’t a swirling vortex of death, but it was a magic portal into a distant land. One that, I soon found out, was inhabited by ponies of every hue in the vast spectrum we call color.

But I’ll get to that later. For now, please, sit back, relax, and enjoy this little tale of how I, a human male, fell in love with an equine female…

It was a normal day, and I was on my way home from work as a pizza delivery driver. It’s not exactly the most thrilling or glamorous line of work, but it pays well and it’s an honest living. The most interesting part of the job was getting to explore areas of town that I had never seen before, and getting to drive by a lake every time I made a delivery wasn’t a bad thing at all. Since I worked the evening shift, the sun would shimmer off the rippling waters as it began sinking ever closer to the horizon. There were also numerous boats, that looked almost like toys from the high bridge I had to cross.

I had graduated from college the year before, and I was working this job simply to subsidize myself until a full time position in my field became available. It covered my expenses, and I was truly grateful for it. Getting to drive around with the smell of pizza invading my nostrils was truly a gift, even though eating it would have gotten me fired. Yes, it was difficult for a pizza lover like me to be around the scrumptious, cheese covered beauties for five hour shifts without taking one delectable sample, but I made it happen.

Anyway, I was driving home when suddenly, a deer decided to jump out in front of my bumper. I don’t know if she had some vindictive purpose, or if she was just a deer being a deer. Since I don’t want to become institutionalized, I’m gonna go ahead and say it was the latter. Thankfully, my headlights were on, so I was able to avoid her. Unfortunately, in the process of doing so, my car hit a giant oak tree beside the road with excessive force. The airbags deployed and I found myself breathing into more of that material than I ever cared to.

Once I regained some sense of self-awareness, I climbed out and surveyed the wreckage. Yep…she’s totaled, I told myself. The bumper was more twisted than the Saw movie franchise, and both front tires had been shredded. The hood had somehow turned into its own ornament, and the windshield was completely smashed in. There was glass everywhere, so I instinctively checked myself for cuts. Finding none of the bloody red soup I expected to find, I immediately telephoned the police and waited for them to arrive.

Since I had nothing else to do, I began searching my surroundings. The tree I had unfortunately become close companions with stood at the edge of a vast field. Since it was pitch black, I switched on my cellphone light and flashed it around the area. There were a few buildings a long way off in the distance, and a wooden fence came tumbling down from one of them. I noted that this was your basic cow pasture, and I thought nothing more of it…until I saw the hole in the ground.

It was of average length, and it appeared to have been dug on purpose. But it was the only hole in the pasture, and I began to question its purpose. Why on Earth would somebody randomly dig a hole at the edge of an apparently abandoned cow pasture? Unless the bovines who resided there had suddenly become adept with shovels and pickaxes, then this hole had no business being there. Whoever owned the livestock certainly wouldn’t have dug a hole in such a random location. The houses and barn are way up there, I thought, which means this can’t be a hole for their mailbox. So…why the hell is it here?

I became curious, and that was when my adventure truly began. I’m sure you’ve heard the saying “curiosity killed the cat.” Well, I was the feline in question, and I guess I had some type of death wish, because I put one foot into the hole. I realized, with more than my fair share of apprehension and a bit of sudden fright, that my foot completely disappeared. It was as if something had grabbed my lower extremity and would not let it go. So, in a move that, in retrospect, was rather ill conceived, I planted my other foot in the hole. I was trying to get some kind of leverage in the dirt to pull myself out, but in so doing, I sucked myself into this vortex.

I found myself spinning more than the clothes in my dryer, and I quickly became dizzy and disoriented. Colors flashed around me, and I could do nothing but scream “HEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEELP!” I felt like such a blubbering idiot, but I had no choice in the matter. All I could do was shout into the void until I felt darkness’s comforting embrace close in. I allowed it to overtake me until I reached the end of the vortex and hit something hard with a loud thump.

I awoke and reapplied myself to basic thought and movement. I adjusted to my new surroundings, and found that I was in a forest of some kind. The trees towered overhead, blanketing me with their canopy of foliage. It was rather peaceful, the kind of feeling one gets when it’s a cloudy day and the trees are softly bending to the commands of the wind. Ah… I told myself, …this is rather nice. I could get used to it!

But then I remembered that I had just been sucked through some kind of vortex and my totaled car lay back on the other side of it. DAMN IT! I shouted internally, and the police are probably there by now, too. They’re gonna think I hit the tree and fled the scene! STUPID HOLE!

“Excuse me?” A kind voice asked behind me, “but…you look lost. Can I help you?”

I turned around and then nearly fell over as I came to the sudden realization that I had four legs. My face had stretched a bit, and I now had way more hair than I ever wanted to. I looked down…and saw that my feet had been replaced by hooves. Then I looked back up and, much to my surprise, saw that the new presence was a talking pony.