Chapters

Part 1: The Store – I
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Trolley Pushers

Part 1: The Store – I

‘Shit.’

‘Mm?’

Lime’s hooves were all over his Com, and that wasn’t the half of it. First, he hadn’t strapped the ten mainfleets he was pushing, and second, he was pushing ten. Ale ignored this and pushed his eight around van parking, felt the familiar tug on his hooves as the front accelerated on the uneven tarmac and compensated automatically, pulling the back of the row hard to the left, which turned the trolleys to face the main bay. He clattered them in and stepped aside as three shoppers passed him without a word to grab themselves a trolley each.

‘What?’ he asked Lime once they were out of earshot. Lime pocketed his Com and rammed his trolleys into one of the spare rows beneath van parking.

‘I was supposed to get some chocolate picked up for Gourd,’ he boomed, ‘and she’s just asked which kind I got her. Shit. I forgot to list it.’

‘Aw man,’ said Ale, wondering whether he should offer to pick some up during staff hour. He thought it was too awkward a thing to ask.

Lime puffed out his cheeks frustratedly and stretched his neck from side to side, sticking out his barrel chest. ‘Our shopper’s in there just now. I’ll message her.’ He pulled out his Com again.

‘Gat’s not going to be happy that you’ve got that out,’ said Ale as casually as he could.

‘Well, guess what. I don’t give a shit.’

‘Just saying.’ Ale had no desire at all to stay and speak to Lime, who, like Ant, couldn’t shut up about whatever topic they stumbled onto, however little he knew about it. The difference was Ant knew quite a bit about quite a few things, whereas Lime, though likeable in his way, was thick as a paint can. Gat had no way of telling what either of them were actually up to on shifts, but he could calculate exactly their trolleys pushed per hour, minute, second, anything. And Lime may have been OK with a bad rep, but Ale – though he was unsure about a lot of things as regards work and responsibility – at the very least thought it a duty to do the job he was being paid to do well. Well enough, at any rate.

He walked off quickly to bays four and five, at the far end of the shopper park. He stepped aside to let out a car, entered the trolley bin, then pressed his strap head onto the farthest handle, encompassing nine or ten trolleys. He didn’t really care about the eight-trolley rule either, but they’d had a training refresher recently and he was conscious about the dos and don’ts. So he pulled off two from the end and pushed them back into the trolley bin, tugged out the eight with a grunt and turned them onto the road to be pushed back to the main bay.

Then he spotted a sight deplored by all trolley pushers: a lone trolley, a walk away, left behind thoughtlessly. This one was beside the recycling bins, where the shopper park finished and the low stone wall separating it from the pavement beyond began. With a sigh, cursing whoever had left it under his breath, Ale pulled the row out of the way of the road, turned and strode toward the rogue trolley. He reached it and grabbed it roughly by its handle. He felt the top of his hoof clip something on the road below him.

‘What the –?’ He clipped it again and flew forward, hanging on to the trolley for support. ‘Shit!’ he gasped, wincing as he grazed his leg. He limped to his hooves, swaying on the spot, and looked down at the road, searching for the hazard. The last thing he needed was an injured shopper in the shopper park. Gat would cut his hours, and though he wasn’t desperate for the money, by no means did he want to face the stress and worry that came with finding another job.

He saw that he’d stumbled over a protrusion in the road, a dark piece of concrete-like material with which someone had once patched a pothole. He’d seen its like before, but it struck him as odd that he’d never noticed this one. Still, it called for a hazard cone, and they were kept in the trolley hut at the bottom of van parking. Knowing he’d re-encounter Lime, Ale sighed, returned to the row he’d set up and pushed.

Lime didn’t look as though he’d moved. He was standing by the main bay, his high-vis jacket draped carelessly across his shoulders, his Com out in broad daylight as, Ale presumed, he messaged his shopper for chocolate.

‘There’s a loose bit of road up by the recycling,’ explained Ale as he passed him and Lime looked up. ‘Do you still have the shed keys?’

‘Yeah, here. You’ll need a hazard cone,’ added Lime as if Ale didn’t know.

Ale sighed in his mind, rolled up his strap and said, ‘Ta.’

Part 1: The Store – II
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Trolley Pushers

Part 1: The Store – II

‘Do you know who’s coming in tomorrow?’ Ale asked Lime at half five, an hour before his shift was due to end.

‘Ant. Or East. Or one of the new starts.’

‘I’m pretty sure Ant was getting the day off.’

‘East then. I don’t know. Check the rota.’

‘But that’s what I’m saying, Gat’s not released it. He’ll need two on tomorrow as well, but I can’t remember if I’m supposed to come in an hour early. If it’s a new start, then sure, but if it’s East –’

‘Call Gat!’

‘Well, I’m just asking! If you knew, I wouldn’t have to call him, would I?’

‘Why don’t you just call him anyway?’

‘Alright, I’ll call him!’

Ale turned away and traipsed back to the trolley hut. He hated calling Gat because Gat hated being called. He expected each of them to have everything worked out, and if any of them called him for something he expected them to have worked out, which was everything, he’d let them know about it. Though it was Gat’s job to release the weekly rota in time for their shifts, he hadn’t yet, but no doubt he had a good excuse, which Ale would just have to accept. His shifts were mostly the same, but he didn’t want to leave it to chance and turn up late. Knowing Gat wouldn’t understand this, Ale picked up the Company Com resignedly once he’d unlocked the door and pressed Z. To his relief, the Com timed out.

‘Well, he’s not picking up,’ he said to Lime once he’d locked the shed again. Lime, of course, gave no indication that he cared in the slightest. He shrugged and strode off to bay one, in which there were only two or three shallows. Ale’s relief was short-lived as he realised that, to be safe about it, he’d have to come in early tomorrow after all. He had a valid excuse not to, but it just wasn’t worth the trouble he feared it would cause. So he trudged over to bay three, his hooves aching. As he approached, he saw that the hazard cone he’d placed over the protruding concrete by recycling had fallen over. He shifted his hooves and walked over to recycling again, cracking his neck out of habit despite there being no cracks left in it.

Fifty-five minutes to go... he told himself dully. He stooped and righted the cone, then saw that it had rolled away from its spot. He frowned, took three paces to his right and replaced the cone over the protrusion. He remembered he’d have to report it in his clock-out call.

‘Oi. Oi, Ale.’ Lime was back, and Ale couldn’t blame him for wanting to chat, however much he disliked making small talk with ponies he wasn’t close to. The shoppers were slow that evening. Not many had turned up, which most likely meant that tomorrow, being the last day of the Company week, would be even busier than usual. He hoped he’d be working with East. The new starts thought trolleys was all fun and games, fresh air, good exercise. Store staff in general thought that too until they tried it and the tedium sank in. Chatting to each other largely undisturbed was one of the few perks of the job, but Ale could only stomach so much of it. He passed the time by daydreaming, thinking, humming to himself. Unfortunately, most of the ponies he worked with didn’t think that way.

‘Check this,’ said Lime, and on his Com he showed Ale a picture of a plastic gun.

Ale hadn’t a clue how Lime expected him to react and so said, ‘Nice.’

‘I’m spraying it green to make it look authentic,’ Lime explained. ‘Look, see how I’ve done the trigger there as well. Pretty good job, if I say so myself! Have you ever done airsoft?’

Ale had, but he wasn’t keen to repeat the experience. It had been dull and somewhat painful. ‘I’ve had a go,’ he said.

‘Aw man,’ Lime said as though Ale had announced his dedication to the sport. ‘We’ve got to get together and play sometime. Which guns do you have? I’m thinking to set up a group and go up the hill near my house. There’s no one around, so we can have a really big map and shoot each other up fully auto and shit. It’ll be sick.’

‘I don’t actually have a gun,’ said Ale. ‘I played it once with a friend, ages ago. He lent me a pistol or something like that.’

Lime wasn’t deterred. ‘I know a really good shop where you can get one. Company shop, so you’d get a discount, and I’ve got so much good ammo, by the way. You wouldn’t have to buy any of that if you came along. A good gun will only cost you a couple hundred, and when you think about it, that’s not bad. That’s really good.’

Completely certain that he would not be spending a couple of hundred on a plastic gun, Ale smiled nonetheless and placed his strap over the few trolleys in bay three.

Lime, as he had expected, did not take the hint.

Part 1: The Store – III
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Trolley Pushers

Part 1: The Store – III

‘Urgh...’

Ale unzipped his high-vis jacket with a sharp tug and closed his eyes, cracking his neck again. He rolled up the loose end of his trolley strap, placed it into his tray at the trolley hut and took from the latter his Com and his clock-in card. He picked up the Company Com and pressed B to clock out.

‘3006,’ he said to the receiver, and it beeped to indicate it was ready for his card, which he swiped through the Com slot and then pocketed. The second beep was for reports. ‘Hi, Gat,’ said Ale in his most normal-sounding voice. ‘Just to say there was a pothole that’s not been filled properly on the road next to the recycling bins. I’ve stuck a cone over it. Just to let you know.’

He cut the Com and replaced it, then closed the shed door and locked it. He gave the keys back to Lime, who was ill-advisedly pushing two lines of shallows. ‘That’s you off, is it? Take care,’ boomed Lime, nodding.

‘You too. See you later,’ said Ale, and he walked past van parking and towards the skip wall, where there was a gap for pedestrians. He pulled out his Com the second he’d turned the corner and walked past the back yard, where store staff were busy unloading a delivery truck.

‘Darling?’ said his mother once he’d called.

‘Mm,’ replied Ale.

‘How was the day?’

Ale sighed. ‘It was fine.’

‘You’re sounding low!’

‘Mm.’

‘What’s happened? Are you with someone right now?’

Ale didn’t respond as he passed a mare walking her dog. Then he said, ‘Just walking past someone.’

‘Ah, OK. So how did it go then? Were you doing trolleys?’

‘What else would I be doing?’ said Ale impatiently.

‘Well, sometimes they put you on the checkouts.’

‘Well, not today.’

‘Oh, give a smile! You’re sounding low! Are you tired?’

‘Of course I’m tired!’

‘It’s good exercise though, eh? It’ll help you in losing weight.’

‘I’m not losing weight just now,’ said Ale wearily. There was a long pause with which he was totally comfortable as his mother spoke loudly to one of his brothers, probably Air, in the background. He walked with the Com held up to his ear for a full minute, waiting for his mother to speak.

‘Well, your father and I have nothing to say about how things are going on here. We’re just sitting together lazily, doing absolutely nothing.’

‘What were you saying just now?’

‘Oh, just arguing with your brother about nothing. He’s now back in his room again, playing fantasy games.’

‘Well, I’ve got nothing new either,’ said Ale. ‘I’m just...’ He sighed. ‘Fed up.’

‘Yes, you’re sounding a bit down, and Ale, this is because of the food that you are eating.’

‘Oh, enough about the food,’ said Ale. ‘It’s got nothing to do with the food. I feel the same even when I’m eating healthy.’

‘How do you know? You’ve never tried!’

‘Are you dumb? I had a diet for two months that summer!’

‘But you weren’t doing it properly.’

‘That’s bullshit, I was completely off bread and sugar! And I still felt tired!’

‘I’m not so sure.’

‘Well, I am.’

‘Anyway, I’m not going to waste my breath telling you to look after yourself. My days of looking after you are over. I’ve done my part. If you want to treat your body like a bin –’

‘Oh, just be quiet.’

There was another long pause.

‘Hey, Ale. Give a smile.’

‘Urgh.’

‘Are you working tomorrow?’

‘Yes! And I’ve got to go in an hour earlier too because my stupid manager isn’t doing his bloody job!’

‘What did he not do?’

‘He hasn’t put up the rota yet,’ grunted Ale. ‘Again.’

‘Can’t you just call him?’

‘No, Mam.’

‘But why not? Isn’t it his job to tell you when you’re supposed to be working?’

‘Yes, but I’m not going to call him.’

‘But why not?’

‘Because I don’t want to!’

‘Oh, I can’t understand it when you act like this. It’s so simple just to give him a call! How about you message him?’

‘I’ll see.’

‘Well. Just make sure you do. You don’t want to go in late.’

‘Yes, I know.’ Ale sighed as his hooves crunched against the gravel pathing the rise to his groundflat.

‘Are you back home now?’

‘Yes, speak later,’ said Ale, twisting to reach his keys. ‘I’ll phone after at some point.’

‘OK, darling, love you. Bye.’

‘Bye.’

Ale tried the top lock, his neck tingling with anticipation. It was locked, and he relaxed. Farl wasn’t back yet, which meant Ale could use the kitchen if he was quick enough. He opened the groundflat, then stuck his keys back into the bottom lock and locked the door. He threw off his underzipper, then picked it up and hung it on the peg by the cupboard door. The dull Company furnishing that occupied their living room was nonetheless comfortable, and Ale sank into his puffy chair beside the window, kicking up his hind hooves onto the low table in the middle of the carpet and sighing again.

How empty, he thought. How empty does it get.

Part 1: The Store – IV
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Trolley Pushers

Part 1: The Store – IV

‘It is you!’ said Ale, frowning through the bright eleven-o’clock sun as East heaved a trio of twin seaters into the specialised bay.

‘Yeah,’ said East. ‘Did you not know I was coming in?’

‘No! I asked Lime yesterday and he didn’t know, and Gat wouldn’t pick up when I called him. Has he released the rota yet? Did you check it when you clocked in?’

‘Yeah, it’s been published. I printed it and put it up on the wall.’

‘Unbelievable,’ said Ale, though meekly. ‘He could have done it yesterday, but no. I guess I’ll just have to start now. Has it been busy?’

‘Pretty busy, yeah. With two of us on, it should be fine. What time are you finishing?’

‘Eight, I think. At least I get the extra breaks.’ But Ale didn’t really mean it. He’d much rather have come in an hour later. Nine-hour shifts were painful to think about, tiring and tedious. Time moved doubly slow on a nine hour than on an eight. He had grown to hate them and had often wondered how Ant, who had pushed trolleys for ten years, still managed to turn up for them with a straight face. ‘Could I get the keys?’ he asked East.

‘Oh yeah. One sec.’ She dipped a hoof into her high-vis and pulled them off her neck. ‘Here you go,’ she said, smiling as she passed them to him.

‘Thanks.’ Ale made the walk to the trolley hut, unlocked the door and stepped in. The keys, he noted, were still warm. He pocketed them and tugged out his tray, from which he grabbed his straps and into which he placed his Com. He picked up the Company Com, pressed A to clock in, spoke his number into the receiver and swiped his card through the Com slot. The rota, as East had said, was pinned up on the corkboard-clad wall. He saw that none of his shifts had changed. Even his overtime was as had been agreed. He sighed and closed the shed door, locking it.

Bays one and two were chock-full of trolleys, typically disorganised on account of shoppers having rumbled them in carelessly. East had emptied bay six and moved on to one, so Ale took two and secured his straps over eight mainfleets, grunting as he leaned backwards and tugged them out with his weight. A car was pulling out. He stopped to let it, but it stopped too. He pushed his trolleys past, taking the hint, but then the car moved again suddenly and he only just managed to clear the space, sweating from exertion, before its horn honked at him angrily. Swearing quietly at the occupant, Ale forced his face into a smile and nodded at the shopper through the latter’s window, who glared back.

‘Prick,’ muttered Ale to himself, and he pushed on to the main bay.

The one mercy was that, albeit busy, it wasn’t nearly as busy as Ale had feared it would be. He and East were able to clear the shopper park of trolleys within the hour and so waited together at the spare rows behind van parking for the bays to fill up again. Ale got on reasonably well with East, and she wasn’t nearly as much of a pontificator as Ant or Lime. He didn’t mind her. He didn’t mind any of them, in a way. He also didn’t like them. It was strange, but Ale, when he truly considered it, found he didn’t like anyone all that much at all.

‘So what’s new with you?’ East was asking him after she’d talked a bit about a misunderstanding she’d had with a shopper the other day. ‘Anything interesting? Anything exciting?’

Ale shrugged and leaned his hoof against the nearest row, very conscious of where his limbs were and where his eyes were. He tried not to keep eye contact with East for too long, but he also thought he couldn’t risk not keeping it for long enough, however long that was. He really, really hated small talk. ‘Not really. I’m just sort of pottering around, you know. Just enjoying time off when it comes and that’s about it, really. How about you?’ And he regretted this question the moment he realised he’d asked it only two minutes ago. East rolled with it politely enough.

‘Yeah, I’ve been pretty much doing the same,’ she said, moving around on the spot a little. Ale could see he wasn’t the only one uncomfortable with their deteriorating conversation. The pause that followed, though short, was horribly painful.

‘Well,’ said Ale, the task of breaking the silence having fallen to him. ‘That’s good.’ His faced burned and he tried hard not to look away too quickly.

‘Oh, I... found a cone up there, by the way,’ said East, her face as red under the pressure of an awkward pause as Ale thought his must be. ‘I put it back in the shed.’

‘Nice,’ said Ale. ‘Gat’ll be happy his pothole’s been fixed.’

‘Is that what it was?’

‘Yeah,’ said Ale, pleased they’d moved on to something he was comfortable speaking about. ‘I reported it yesterday. He must’ve got someone to fix it when he did the rotas.’

‘I didn’t see anyone in the morning,’ said East.

‘Could they not do it at night?’ asked Ale. East shrugged.

‘To be honest, I don’t really know,’ she said. ‘I just turn up for this.’

Ale forced a laugh. ‘That makes two of us.’

Part 1: The Store – V
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Trolley Pushers

Part 1: The Store – V

‘Hey, Ale.’

Ale span around and saw that Elm from checkout support was leaning against the fence behind the trolley hut, not smoking as most staff did there, but looking unhappy. Ale pushed his trolleys sideward, out of the way of the road, and stepped towards her, rolling his strap automatically. ‘Hi, Elm. On a break?’

‘Yep.’

‘How’s it going? Busy in there?’ He gestured tamely at the airless block a few strides from the trolley hut that was the store.

Elm gave a slow, heavy sigh, and to Ale’s embarrassment, he realised she looked as though she had been crying. Her makeup, though there was little of it, was smudged around her eyes and her breath wobbled as she exhaled. ‘Yeah,’ she said eventually, unsmiling. ‘I’m just taking a minute to calm down.’

‘Mm,’ said Ale. ‘Trouble in there?’ He gestured at the store again.

‘Oh, you know, just a shopper being an absolute dick to me,’ said Elm unapologetically. She pushed herself off the fence and walked a little closer. Ale stood where he was, uncertain. ‘You know how it is,’ she continued, wiping her eyes.

‘Yeah. There can be some real dicks sometimes,’ murmured Ale unhelpfully. ‘Well,’ he said after a while. ‘Back to it.’ He smiled at Elm and turned his back to her, strapping the row.

‘Watch yourself,’ said Elm from behind him.

‘What?’ said Ale, turning round again. Elm was pointing at the floor beneath him.

‘You’d better get a cone for that,’ she said. ‘Otherwise it’ll be your turn to have some dickhead complaining.’

‘Right, cheers. Will do.’ Ale frowned down at the pothole Elm had pointed out. It was at the edge of a now-empty parking space, but Ale could have sworn it hadn’t been there yesterday. What was more, it was the same sort of poorly filled pothole as the one he’d coned and reported. A loose bit of concrete-like material sticking up from the road on which he’d tripped and skinned his leg. ‘Another one?’ said Ale. ‘Who’s fixing these? They’re not doing much of a job.’ He snorted. ‘Gat’s going to be pleased. He just had one fixed at recycling.’

‘As much as I sympathise,’ said Elm, smiling for the first time, ‘and I mean this as nicely as possible, it’s not my problem.’

Ale smiled back. ‘No, it isn’t. Well, I hope that’s some consolation.’

‘I’ll let you deal with your pothole. Thanks, Ale.’

‘For what?’

Elm shrugged and walked through van parking, around the main bay and vanished through the opening doors of the store, followed by a short burst of shoppers.

‘Did you know there was another pothole?’ Ale asked East once she’d returned to the main bay with a row of her own.

‘Is there another one?’ she said, surprised.

‘Yeah, just by the trolley hut. Maybe there was a car over it and that’s why I didn’t spot it yesterday.’

‘Next to the trolley hut?’ East frowned. ‘But I would have seen it this morning, surely? What should we do? Should I report it to Gat when I finish?’

‘Well, I’m going to grab the cone again for now,’ said Ale. ‘But yeah. We’ll just have to let Gat know, and he can get it fixed again.’

‘He won’t be happy,’ said East apprehensively.

‘Well, what can we do. We’ll have done our job and reported it.’

‘I don’t think the shoppers even care, to be honest.’

‘Yeah. Well, there’s always some dickhead,’ said Ale, thinking of Elm.

‘Hear, hear,’ said East, nodding her agreement. ‘Shoppers can be such a pain. And it’s like, they’re supposed to be on our side in a way.’

‘What, just because they work here?’

‘Well, yeah.’

‘But they don’t really work here,’ said Ale. ‘They’re basically glorified customers, and who likes customers?’

‘Lime was saying that Gourd wants to become a shopper here. She’s applied, apparently.’

‘Oh, nice. Is she with the Company?’

‘I think so,’ said East. ‘I mean, Lime is, so I guess that wouldn’t hurt her chances. They definitely live in a groundflat together, so I guess she is with them in some way.’

‘Nice,’ said Ale again. ‘Well, it’d save them some money anyway. Lime spends money on a shopper for some reason. No idea why he doesn’t just do it himself.’

‘We had a shopper before I started here,’ said East. ‘But it wasn’t too bad. They don’t charge much, and if you’re in housing, it’s even less, I’m pretty sure.’

‘Yeah, they offer discounts. I get sent ads all the time in the mail. I live in a groundflat out past the store.’

‘Oh yeah, you’re down at...’ East clicked her hooves, trying to remember the name.

‘Borhill,’ said Ale.

‘That’s it. Is it good there?’

‘Pretty good. I get a discount on the rent as well, and my flatmate’s good to share with.’

‘Yeah? Who’s your flatmate?’

‘He’s a Canterlot guy called Farl.’

‘Ooh, Canterlot? Fancy!’

‘He’s actually alright. We don’t speak much, but we get on. And he’s clean, which is a bonus. I mean, you know how a lot of students are.’

‘What’s he studying?’

‘He’s graduated, but he does R&D at the college here.’

‘Nice, nice.’

Sensing their conversation had expired, with little desire to extend it, Ale took the first excuse that came to mind. ‘Right, well. I’d better get that cone.’

Part 1: The Store – VI
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Trolley Pushers

Part 1: The Store – VI

‘Are you not supposed to come in during staff hour?’ Ale asked Ant, draped in his high-vis as though he never stopped working, which in a certain sense was absolutely true. Ale couldn’t understand how Ant wasn’t fed up with trolleys. Yet he couldn’t imagine the shopper park without him. Ant was a strange case. He was surprisingly likeable despite being generally considered obnoxious by shoppers and store staff alike, and even though Ale didn’t truly like him, he sometimes found himself reevaluating. There was just something endearing about the pony, from his stupid, lanky mane to his odd, stooped gait. Despite his mood, he found he was happy to strike up a conversation for once. He almost regretted it quickly the moment Ant stopped and gestured for them to walk towards the back of the trolley hut, where Elm had been crying two hours before. But Ant, it seemed, wasn’t nearly as talkative today as he normally was. And that made speaking to him more enjoyable than Ale could have hoped.

‘I don’t really want to come in on the last day of my holiday,’ said Ant solemnly. ‘But I’ve got nothing in the fridge and I thought it would be nice to get something different from the store for dinner.’

‘Something different? What, like a curry or something?’

‘Oh, no, no, no.’

‘What? You don’t like curry?’

Ant shook his head vigorously. ‘God, no.’

‘So what do you think you’ll get?’

‘Probably something that’s reduced and easy to prepare,’ said Ant. ‘Preferably something I can heat up on the hob or in the oven.’

‘A pizza?’

‘If I don’t see anything else, then yes, although I’m pretty sure they have reduced pasta meals in the fridges at the top of the store.’

‘Ah. Nice. Nice.’ Ale nodded. ‘You sure they’ll let you check out before staff hour?’

‘I’ll use self service.’

‘Self-service staff won’t be happy.’

‘Well, I don’t really care,’ said Ant, shrugging with his hooves. ‘If they get mad at me, they can take it to their manager.’

‘Yeah.’

‘It’s a stupid, stupid rule, and do you know what really annoys me no end?’ Ant said with his customary intensity.

‘What?’ said Ale, hitching a look of concern onto his face.

‘The fucking checkout and self-service staff are happy to forget the rules when it’s their turn to do their shopping,’ he said furiously.

‘Well, yeah, but I suppose it’s kind of the benefit of working in there.’

Ant sighed deeply. ‘Yes, but you don’t have to be such a hypocrite about it.’

‘Have you ever wanted to work checkouts?’ asked Ale, curious. He found it hard to imagine Ant in any other department.

‘Not once. I had to do it during my induction when I first started. Look. I know myself,’ he said, ‘and I know that I can’t trust myself not to say something to a shopper that would really get me in trouble.’

‘Yeah,’ said Ale, nodding back. ‘Well, that makes sense, I suppose.’ He gave a silly chuckle. ‘I mean, I don’t mind it myself sometimes –’

Ant had interrupted him, and Ale fell quiet out of habit. ‘It’s not even that,’ said Ant. ‘I just couldn’t sit still for that long, especially if it’s late at night and I’m expected to sit and wait for shoppers. I think I’d just doze off. It’s happened to me when I’ve done training.’

‘What, you’ve just dozed off?’

‘And passed at the same time, I’ll have you know! I did legal training, and you know how it’s the only training course with a limited number of tries. I was falling asleep and pressed a lot of answers completely at random, and I still passed.’

‘Really? Nice! And that’s one you need one-hundred percent on!’

‘I know, and I still managed to get everything right, and I was like this –’ He mimicked falling asleep. ‘For most of it.’

Ale nodded and said, ‘Quite an achievement.’ Ant had already moved on.

‘I could tell it was you who was on,’ he said. ‘I saw the main bay and saw the trolleys were touching the yellow line.’

Ale laughed. ‘Yeah, I always fill it to capacity.’

‘That’s your way,’ said Ant, ‘which is fine and all, but I think it looks neater if you fill it to the line of the railing instead.’

‘There’s a railing?’

‘Well, it isn’t really a railing, but I can’t think of another word for it.’

‘Fair enough either way, I guess.’ Ale chuckled again. He had no idea what Ant was talking about, which was perhaps the most typical thing in their conversation thus far. Ant frequently brought up things no one had ever heard of and talked about them at length, as though Ale, or whoever else was lucky enough, knew all about them. On the rare occasion that Ale was forced to admit he didn’t know anything about the matter at hand, Ant didn’t react at all and went on as though he hadn’t spoken. He really was a strange case. It takes all sorts, Ale found himself thinking. This time, though, Ant seemed to have had his fill of chatter. He sighed much like Ale did these days, the sigh of a tired, fed-up worker tolerating his dead-dull job. For Ant it was surely much, much worse. Dead dull it might have been for Ale, but at least it wasn’t dead-end. So far as Ant was concerned, it really probably was.

‘Anyway,’ said the latter after another sigh. ‘I’m going. Catch you later.’

He walked off towards the store, leaving Ale with mixed feelings of pity and gratefulness that both helped and upset him.

Part 1: The Store – VII
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Trolley Pushers

Part 1: The Store – VII

‘Bye, Elm,’ said Ale, waving at her as he passed the gap in the skip wall. She was standing at the edge of the shopper park, near the staff cars, perhaps waiting to be picked up.

‘Bye, Ale,’ she said, waving back at him with a smile, which Ale was surprised to find made him feel a little bit better. They weren’t so bad, the store staff, really. He considered pulling out his Com to call his mother, but he’d already called before work and didn’t feel like speaking just yet, especially when he couldn’t think of anything to speak about. Still, he nearly went through with it out of habit. Most ponies had to remember to call their mothers. Ale had to remember not to call too often. Twice a day was a low for him.

‘Into the shadows we go, we go...’ he sang quietly as he walked home. ‘And into the shallows we row, we row...’

The sea was a stone’s throw from the road leading to his groundflat, and today it was peaceful, which was a rarity. The summer so far, though rarely dry, had been pleasant enough and, best of all, not windy. Ale didn’t really mind rain in the slightest. He infinitely preferred it to the sharp, hot sunshine. Sometimes he would curse the wind and the rain when walking back, but then he would remember what the alternative was and counted himself lucky. Any further south and he would have to tolerate long days of uninterrupted sunshine, which to some sounded very much like paradise. To Ale it was a tiring, sluggish nightmare. Working below the sun was even worse. In fact, whenever any of the store staff suggested that, on a sunny day, he was lucky to be outside, he privately seethed, but politely told them he didn’t fancy it. None of them knew the pain of pushing trolleys for hours under a vicious sun. Except for Ant, East and Lime, though they weren’t nearly as sensitive to the sun, it seemed, as he was. East, with her thin, sleek coat, had it the easiest on account of her father being a southerner.

When Ale reached his groundflat, he went through his usual routine of checking that the top lock was still locked and felt a thrill of dismay when he realised it wasn’t, which told him Farl had indeed made it back early. Ale didn’t have any negative feelings towards Farl. He was actually a very kind and thoughtful pony. But he hated – he truly, truly hated – having to talk to him awkwardly at the door every time he came home.

As luck would have it, the sound of running, splashing water behind the main-bathroom door greeted him as he stepped inside. Farl was in the shower. Grinning, Ale took off his underzipper, hung it and stepped softly across the corridor to his room, whose door he closed quietly behind him. He had his own en-suite, which meant he rarely had to emerge. Farl pretty much had the entire flat to himself when he was at home, but mercifully, that was rare. Ale knew that Farl was very sporty. When he wasn’t working, he was training for some race somewhere, which meant that he seldom stayed indoors. This suited Ale immensely because it gave him access to the kitchen and the living room, where he could cook whatever he wanted, eat however he wanted and sit however he wanted. He could also enjoy humming and singing. Ale went outside daily, but he very rarely ‘went out’, as ponies would put it. As such, his room was his home, though no one could have told him that it was his, which Ale prided himself on. The room was as blank and as neat as the day he’d moved in. Bland and bereft of the infuriating touches of personality that Ale so despised without knowing exactly why. Perhaps he associated posters and collectibles – clutter and mess in general – with school and the ponies from it that he hated to this day. He wasn’t sure, but enjoyed that he was the anomaly.

Ale sank into the only chair in his room, a fold-up he’d purchased from the store to spare himself the embarrassment of taking one from the living room and potentially having to explain it to Farl. His mother would say such behaviour was unhealthy. If you couldn’t even share a chair with your flatmate, surely something was wrong, and Ale could understand her concern logically. But he knew himself, and he knew that this was just how it was, how he felt. He was hardly a nutcase because he felt uncomfortable. Ale liked his comfort. With a contented sigh, he reached across to the chest of drawers in which he kept all his clothes, folded, and picked up the full packet of fruity gums he’d left there. He tore it open with a smile, dug in with his hoof and dropped a bunch into his mouth, closing his eyes at first when he chewed.

‘Fucking... perfect...’ he whispered to himself, holding up his hoof in a salute.

Part 1: The Store – VIII
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Trolley Pushers

Part 1: The Store – VIII

‘Hello?’

‘It’s Gat,’ said the voice on the Com, and Ale closed his eyes, sighing internally. ‘What’s all this about a pothole? You’ve reported it twice.’

‘Have I? Wait, no, I reported it once. East reported it earlier.’

‘Yes. Why?’

‘... Well, because it’s our job –’

‘No. It’s your job to report it once. East would only report it if you hadn’t passed it on in the handover booklet. So I now know that you, Ale, haven’t been communicating with the team properly.’

‘But she reported a different pothole,’ said Ale as levelly as he could. ‘Not the one you fixed.’

‘I didn’t fix a pothole.’

‘The one you had fixed, then.’

‘I didn’t have one fixed.’

Ale wasn’t sure if Gat was being serious or testing him. ‘But... what about the one I reported?’

‘What about it?’

‘Well... it’s not there anymore.’

‘Oh, really? So what did East report?’

‘A pothole by the trolley hut. Mine was next to recycling.’

‘East didn’t say where the pothole was.’

‘Well, I can’t say what she said. I wasn’t there to –’

‘I’m sending somepony to fill it, so let’s settle this. Is it by recycling?’ said Gat as if he were addressing a child. ‘Or is it by the trolley hut? You tell me.’

‘But there are two!’ said Ale a little too loudly, which he regretted and compensated for by softening his tone. ‘One by recycling and one by the trolley hut.’

‘Didn’t you just tell me the one supposedly by recycling was fixed? So now you’re changing your story again.’

‘But it was fixed. East took back the cone I placed on it.’

‘Did you see it fixed?’

‘Well... yes-ish. Not personally.’ Ale couldn’t believe he hadn’t thought to look down at the ground where it had been on his last shift. ‘I would have seen it while doing the trolleys if it was still there.’

‘Did you see it or didn’t you? I don’t have time to waste on this.’

At that comment, the anger really came running hot. Ale couldn’t believe the nerve of the pony, calling him after his shift when he was at home, outside his jurisdiction, and demanding answers to something as trivial as a pothole that he had reported. It really was beyond a joke. But rather than shout, rather than visibly lose his temper, which would have been completely justified, as always, Ale relented, and he said in a monotone, ‘I didn’t actually see it.’

‘So where should I be sending the pony to fix this pothole?’

‘Next to the trolley hut,’ said Ale dully, wondering why he didn’t just push on and stick to his story. The thing was, he lost either way. If he went back to insisting there was a pothole by recycling, which there was, or had been, Gat would ask why he was changing the story again, and he’d be for it. If he let it go and Gat found out that there was still a pothole by recycling, he’d be for it. Ale was certain it was fixed. East wouldn’t have brought back the cone for nothing. Unless, and his stomach squirmed at the thought, somepony had moved the cone. But he didn’t want an argument now, so he simply kept his mouth shut as Gat went on.

‘Tomorrow Hull is coming on with you.’

‘Hull?’

‘One of the new starts.’

‘But I thought it was just me on the rota tomorrow.’

‘Which is why I’m telling you now that he’s going to be on with you,’ said Gat as though Ale was a difficult idiot he wasn’t being paid enough to deal with. ‘He’s never done trolleys officially, so make sure he knows how to use the Com and the handover booklet, and you start using it too.’

‘Will do. What time is he coming in?’

‘Same as you. That’s all. Goodbye.’

‘Bye, G—’

His Com beeped off and Ale set it down, sighing. Just his luck, to have to deal with a new start. It wasn’t that he especially disliked new starts, but he did dislike having to explain things to them or anyone. That, and meeting new ponies was always a negative. It was tiresome. It was tedious. It was painful. As if trolleys wasn’t all three things already. Though one redeeming quality of new starts was that they were typically quiet, sharing the trolleys on an off-peak day meant, at the very least, a lot of standing around. A lot more boredom, and for that if nothing else, Ale felt animosity toward the faceless Hull he’d yet to meet. It wasn’t the latter’s fault, but he was, like it or not, complicit simply because he was working there too. Ale knew that this was him feeling sorry for himself. He knew he was being unfair. But that didn’t help him feel any better about it.

He fell backwards onto his bed, staring up at the blank white ceiling and vowing he’d have a long, productive and thoroughly enjoyable day off when it came. But he knew he probably wouldn’t.

Part 1: The Store – IX
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Part 1: The Store – IX

‘Hi.’

‘Hi,’ said Ale and at once added, ‘You’re Hull?’

‘Yep,’ said Hull. He was skinny and weak-chinned, and he reminded Ale a lot of a pony who’d been bullied at school, which annoyed him. He particularly hated dealing with awkward ponies; it made him feel even more awkward himself, a feeling surely no one liked. Hull blinked at him silently, expectantly. Ale walked past him and towards the trolley hut without further comment. Hull followed.

‘Did you get the keys?’ asked Ale. Hull blinked back at him.

‘What?’

Ale sighed internally again. Of course he hadn’t. He was brand new, fresh out the training room, with no inkling of how anything worked in practice. ‘If you could go just inside the store to the desk,’ he said monotonously, ‘and ask for the keys to the trolley hut. It’s just inside the entrance. I’ll wait here.’

Hull seemed taken aback at these instructions, but obeyed, followed by the stinking cloud of self-consciousness Ale loathed so much, perhaps because he wore it himself. But today he wasn’t in the mood for pleasantness or self-critical self-awareness. He just wanted time to move fast, and fortunately, a bluntness that he rarely found happened to have settled on him, which would help hurry things along a little less painfully. He should have been pleased, but instead he was just fed up. Perhaps he had to be.

‘This is the trolley hut,’ said Ale once Hull had returned, unlocking it with the keys. ‘Do you have a clock-in card?’

‘Yes,’ said Hull, pulling it out.

‘We clock in with the Company Com,’ said Ale, picking it up. ‘Press A to clock in and speak your number into the receiver.’ Ale showed him. ‘Then you swipe the card –’ He swiped his clock-in card through the Com slot. ‘Here. And that’s you. Same process at the end of your shift when you clock out, but it’s B on the Com to clock out. And there’s also a beep for reports, where you basically record a message for Gat if anything happens on your shift that he needs to know about.’

‘What if nothing happens?’

‘Just let it pass. It times out if you don’t speak. You swipe your card on the first beep.’

‘OK,’ said Hull, coming forwards to take the Com from Ale.

‘Right. Then just make sure you’ve left everything in your pockets in one of the trays there. Especially your Com if you have one on you. You are allowed to keep your clock-in card in your pocket if you want.’

Once Hull had clocked in, Ale took him outside and explained to him the job they were there for. ‘Bays one, two, three, four, five and six,’ he said, pointing them out one at a time. ‘And there’s another one at the second entrance, the specialised bay. We keep the twin seaters and that sort of thing there.’

Hull nodded. ‘OK. Do we just take the rest to the big one there?’

‘The main bay. Yes, and make sure they’re empty when you push them in. Sometimes shoppers leave crap in them.’

‘Shouldn’t they get trouble?’

‘They should, but we can’t do anything about it. Gat doesn’t care enough to bring it up.’

Hull took this with surprise. ‘But they’re employees too. How come they can get away with that?’

Ale gave a world-weary shrug. ‘Like I said. No one cares enough to bother. We’re just the trolley boys, after all.’

‘Sounds pretty unfair.’

‘You know what? It is. But it is how it is, and we’re used to it anyway. You’ll get used to it.’

‘That’s pretty hypocritical from management, then,’ said Hull, much to Ale’s surprise. ‘I just went through all that training, and it was all about how the Company’s always got your back and how, if anything happens, you just tell your manager and they’ll make sure it’s dealt with.’

Ale was surprised. Here was a new start with a spine, something he certainly hadn’t been. It made him want to compensate for that now. ‘Well,’ he said as though unperturbed, ‘who’s going to hold the Company to account? Where do you live?’

‘Tunk.’

‘But is it Company housing?’

‘Yes.’

‘There you go,’ said Ale. ‘Who’s going to kick up a storm at the ponies who own the roof over our heads?’

‘But,’ went on Hull, ‘you can always leave. They don’t own you.’

‘Ever tried leaving the Company?’

‘Well, no.’

‘Is this your first time working for them?’

‘Yes, but my dad –’

‘But that’s my point,’ said Ale quite rudely, and he enjoyed the effect it seemed to have on Hull, whose confidence was diminishing. ‘Your dad’s with the Company too. And so are you now. You’re never really able to shake them off completely. Too many ponies rely on them now. They’re all over the north, in everything. Retail, entertainment, housing, medicine –’

‘Well, then I’ll just find a different one,’ said Hull stubbornly, and Ale laughed without dissembling.

‘This is your first day, and you want to quit already?’

Hull smiled. ‘I wonder what your manager will say about you if I actually did.’

Ale grinned far wider than he meant to. Perhaps the day wouldn’t be a total drag after all.

Part 1: The Store – X
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Part 1: The Store – X

‘I had no idea you were from Canterlot!’

Hull was smiling, as though pleased he’d managed to keep this a secret. ‘It’s the accent, isn’t it?’ he said enthusiastically. ‘Ponies always say I sound northern now.’

‘Yeah!’ said Ale, pleasantly energised and smiling without having to try very hard at all. It had been some surprise. ‘I thought you were from here and all. I actually live with a Canterlot pony, and you can hear it in his voice. How long have you stayed in Tunk?’

‘My dad moved us up here when I was just starting out at school. It’s been about twelve years now.’

‘Nice, nice. Where was it you went to school since you’ve been up here?’

Hull grinned and nodded. ‘OHS at Deacon, of course.’

‘Ayyy,’ jeered Ale. ‘So you must have been in first or second year when I was leaving.’

‘Probably. I don’t think I ever saw you there though, but I didn’t really see a lot of ponies, to be honest. I was quite quiet.’

‘How was it compared to school in Canterlot? Mind you, you can’t have spent long there.’

‘No, not even a full year. It’s hard to remember. I remember it was very Celestian. They’re pretty old-fashioned in Canterlot about a lot of things.’

‘Oh nice,’ said Ale. ‘Is your family Celestian?’ he asked somewhat tentatively.

‘No, we’re pretty dull, to be honest. My dad was an Alicon, but he fell out of it. That’s partly why we moved.’

‘Fair enough.’ Ale had actually voted for the Alicons before, but he wasn’t about to tell Hull. Though they had hit it off in a way Ale could not have expected, he was not about to spill anything personally compromising any time soon, however pleasant their conversations had been that day. He didn’t know Hull’s politics. Even if he did, he wouldn’t have said anything. He knew how divisive the topic was. He had strong views of his own, but they were restricted to calls with his mother. Hull, however, seemed an open book. Certainly a pony who wore his heart on his sleeve, which Ale somewhat admired. But he knew he could never work like that.

‘He’s a progressive now,’ Hull was saying, unfortunately still on the subject. ‘He tries to get me to vote.’

The subsequent pause, the first of its like between them that day, reminded Ale why he avoided small talk. All the energy he’d gained was falling out of him fast. Then again, there didn’t seem to be any expectations from him on Hull’s part. Even now the silence wasn’t nearly as awkward as he’d feared it would be. It was bad, but it wasn’t so bad. Hull seemed comfortable, but not in a discomfiting way. Ale, for once, did not try to break it. But Hull didn’t say anything, so he had to. Though he wanted to change the subject, he couldn’t think how to under the pressure, so he dawdled verbally.

‘It doesn’t really matter which sides you take, I guess,’ he said diplomatically. ‘There’s always more than one answer to a tough question.’ He liked the sound of that. Hull seemed taken with it as well.

‘Yeah!’ he said, nodding vigorously. ‘I try to tell that to my dad sometimes. He’s really one of those far-gone types. He means well, always, but it’s when it gets to the stage that you think ponies who disagree with you are evil and that sort of thing. Not that he does. It’s just... sometimes things get heated.’

Now Hull seemed uncomfortable, and it was a discomfort Ale recognised at once, one where you were afraid you’d said too much too quickly to someone you weren’t yet sure you could trust. Ale had toed the line of that feeling all day. But unlike Hull, he’d left it uncrossed. Just. Ale had no intention of telling anyone about anything they’d discussed. He didn’t feel like a trustworthy pony, but he supposed, in a way, he was. He didn’t like gossiping. He didn’t like talking to ponies about anything much. Hull didn’t know. Perhaps he thought Ale was a sociable sort based on all the talking they’d done. It was strange, but Ale believed that a lot of one’s character and behaviour with a certain pony was shaped by the first encounter. He and Hull had established a dynamic he certainly didn’t hold with many others. Knowing himself, he wondered how long it would last. He truly hoped Hull wasn’t the type to seek closeness. It was doomed to fail if he was.

‘Anyway,’ said Hull, right before the word had formed on Ale’s lips. ‘Back to it, I guess?’

‘Back to it,’ said Ale in agreement, and then he remembered about his call with Gat. ‘I’m going to recycling to check something first.’

‘Oh?’

‘I want to see if this pothole’s been fixed.’ Hull followed him as he strode off, curious.

‘I saw one earlier at the trolley hut,’ he said, and Ale nodded.

‘Yeah. Gat’s getting it fixed at some point.’

They reached recycling and Ale scanned the ground, frowning. It did seem that it had been fixed. But Gat had said he knew nothing about it.

‘There it is,’ said Hull, pointing.

Ale span around. ‘What do you –?’

But there was no mistaking it. The same concrete-like material, and it was next to where Hull was standing, metres, Ale could have sworn, from where he’d found it.

‘That’s moved,’ he said flatly, though he knew the idea was ridiculous. ‘I don’t care what Gat says. That pothole has moved from where I first saw it.’

Hull was smiling weakly, as though unsure whether Ale was making a joke. But Ale, though he couldn’t wrap his head round it, knew that it had, without doubt, shifted from where it had been. That, or he had suffered a catastrophic case of mismemory.

‘What do we do?’ asked Hull.

‘We’ll need that cone again.’

Part 1: The Store – XI
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Part 1: The Store – XI

‘And I guess we’ll have to report it to Gat,’ Ale added with a sigh. ‘Again. He’s going to be so happy.’

A car horn beeped loudly nearby, and Ale jumped. He turned around and saw a broad foreleg waving at him through an open window, its owner grinning. Lime was sitting in a stout red car and, to Ale’s exasperation, clearly wanted to chat, which was no surprise. He turned slowly to Hull and said resignedly, ‘Just head into the hut. The cone’s in the corner. I’ll be here.’

Hull nodded and left Ale to walk over to the red car.

‘What do you think?’ Lime near-shouted at him as he approached.

‘What?’

‘The car! Check it out!’

Ale knew absolutely nothing about cars. He didn’t care about them. He didn’t want to talk about them. But he just widened his eyes and smiled and said, ‘Looking good! Is it yours then? How come you’ve got it?’

Lime grinned slyly, as though he’d pulled off a great coup. ‘Company privileges. I got it really cheap, second-hand from a friend who lowered the price for me. Plus all the discounts, and I cashed my saver scheme to pay for the bulk of it.’

‘Nice!’ said Ale, trying to grin back. ‘Nice colour too.’

‘Sick, hot-rod red,’ said Lime appreciatively. ‘I’ll be cruising in style from now on. You’ll see me coming.’

That really is a plus was Ale’s immediate thought, and he controlled the smirk it tried to coax from him. He smiled earnestly instead, though insincerely. He hated being interrupted, and the pressing issue of mysterious, moving potholes demanded his attention far more than Lime and his new car. So why didn’t he just turn around and leave him? But it was as he’d reasoned earlier. He’d established a particular character when speaking to Lime. He couldn’t break it, and if he did, the consequences of doing so would be uncomfortable to say the least. Ale liked his comfort too much. So he stood there and smiled, though he hated it, though he didn’t need to do it. Perhaps it showed because something in Lime’s face seemed to fall for a fraction of a second as he caught Ale’s eye. As if he’d glimpsed the thoughts beneath.

‘Who’s the new guy?’ said Lime, tossing his head in the direction of the trolley hut.

‘Hull? He’s from Canterlot, but he’s lived up here for years.’

‘Canterlot?’ said Lime, his face twisting as if the very word were gall. ‘Is he a posh boy?’

‘No,’ said Ale quickly, unsure exactly why he felt he should defend Hull. But then he disliked backbiting on principle. Yet there were times he’d gone along with it. Never saying anything, never betraying anypony. But he wasn’t averse to pretending he agreed with a gossip if it would placate them. He wondered why he was feeling brave. He wondered why he was feeling brave on Hull’s account. ‘You’d never tell where he was from, speaks like a northerner, accent and all. He went to school here.’

‘He looks like he’s afraid of the trolleys,’ said Lime, chuckling. It was a joke, but a cruel one. Lime’s sense of humour didn’t quite sit nicely with Ale. He had nothing against insulting humour, but Lime hadn’t earned the camaraderie required to make such jokes in his presence. It made Ale uncomfortable. He didn’t really want to defend Hull, but he didn’t want to insult him. In any case, his silence had prompted Lime to move on. ‘How long are you on for?’ he asked.

‘Pretty much the whole day,’ said Ale, and to move the conversation away from himself and Hull, he added, ‘By the way, I heard Gourd’s applied here?’

‘Yeah, did I not tell you that?’ Lime screwed up his face, trying to remember. He shrugged. ‘But yeah, her application’s been accepted. She’ll be coming in for an interview once they stop advertising the vacancies.’

‘Nice! A shopper, huh?’

‘Yeah, that’s right.’ Ale nodded as Lime went on. ‘So it’s good for us because we’ll finally can our shopper and Gourd’ll be able to do it from now on. And she can pick up her own chocolate now!’ He laughed, and Ale joined in a little sycophantically. ‘Well, if she gets in.’

‘Well, that’s it,’ said Ale. ‘Good luck to her anyway. Maybe it’ll be better for us too. She’d probably be the sort to actually put her trolley away.’ He grinned as Lime guffawed, but hoped they’d wrap up soon. The more he thought about it in the back of his mind the less it made sense and the more it irked him. That pothole, the one he’d first reported to Gat, it had moved.

‘I’ll be making sure she puts her trolley back,’ Lime was saying. ‘She would anyway because she’s not a dick.’

‘Pretty much.’

‘Just think how much of a dick you have to be if you can’t even be arsed to stick a trolley into –’

A yelp hit the air quite abruptly and it made Ale jump. Lime frowned and then he grinned. ‘Who the fuck was that?’ he said, half-chuckling. ‘Sounds like someone’s balls just dropped!’

But Ale did not laugh, though he would perhaps have found it funny under normal circumstances. You could always tell when a shout was one of genuine need. It had a quality to it that couldn’t be mistaken, however much Lime had just proved otherwise. He scanned the shopper park, frowning himself. His eyes widened up fast when he spotted Hull. Lime had spotted him too.

‘What the –?’

Part 1: The Store – XII
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Part 1: The Store – XII

‘Is he alright?’ said Lime, throwing open the door to his car and stepping out. Ale stepped aside to admit his bulk automatically, then rushed forwards, as did Lime, towards Hull, who was on the ground and clearly in pain. His face was twisted and tight and he waved to them as they approached.

‘What’s happened?’ Ale asked, unsure what to do. He very much hoped it was nothing serious. He remembered that once he’d been forced to call for help when one of the checkout staff had passed out in the shopper park. It had been an embarrassing, humiliating experience.

‘My leg,’ said Hull, pinching his eyes shut as he swayed from side to side. And Ale saw the impossible.

Wrapped tightly around Hull’s hind leg was what looked like a sheet of rubble, and the leg seemed diminished, but Ale realised this was because half of it had sunk into the road. And then he realised, with alarm, that Hull had somehow fallen into what had been, minutes before, a shallow, relatively harmless pothole. If its movement had been unexplainable, then Ale hadn’t the slightest start of a clue what to make of this.

Lime looked less confused, and perhaps it was because he hadn’t put a hoof on what the problem was. Ironically, it had been a stroke of good luck that Ale had been chatting with him. It was Lime who was bending down to offer Hull his help, not Ale. Hull struggled, but couldn’t shift his leg.

‘I’m stuck,’ he managed.

‘Stuck in what?’ Lime said, frowning again.

‘Are you blind?’ said Hull.

‘It’s the pothole,’ muttered Ale, and Lime looked at him. ‘How could it be the pothole?’

‘Can you get me out?’ said Hull, his face dismayed. Ale had no idea how to react. He just stood there, trying to think, then trying to remember that he was supposed to be thinking about helping. He looked at Lime.

‘Should we pull him?’ Ale asked him. Lime shrugged, his eyes now serious and wide with confusion.

‘Alright,’ he said, grabbing Hull by the forelegs and pulling. Hull grimaced as he was stretched. Ale stumbled forwards, grabbed one of Hull’s legs and added his own weight to the pull.

‘Stop! Stop!’ gasped Hull in pain. ‘It’s not working!’

‘What do we do?’ muttered Ale, feeling lost and horribly, horribly uncomfortable. And he felt a paralysing guilt as he realised how he cared much more about getting out of the situation he’d fallen into than actually helping Hull get out of it himself.

‘Get a first-aider,’ said Lime. ‘Go into the store and get them to tannoy for one.’

Ale’s mind span but he said, ‘Right.’ And his hooves carried him unwillingly quickly to the store, when all he wanted right now was to lie down.

The store doors opened to admit him as he stumbled inside and through the inner doors as well. The desk was at the front of the store floor, and he held up a hoof to wave at whoever was on, helping a shopper buy cigarettes for whichever ponies he was representing. They didn’t see him, so that left him little choice. He pushed past the queue that had formed, much to the indignation of the shoppers, and stuck his head over the counter.

‘We need a first-aider in the shopper park,’ he said loudly, and he was pleased, at least, to hear that there was what sounded like genuine concern in his voice. ‘Can you tannoy for one now.’

Mercifully, the desk pony, who Ale knew only by face, did not ask why. She strode at once to the corner of the desk and picked up the intercom. Ale waited for her to make the announcement, and once she had, he decided to wait by the desk for the first-aider to arrive. He hadn’t a clue how to explain, then thought it would simply be easier to show them. But then what would they do when they saw the state Hull was in, welded to the ground by a pothole? What could they do?

‘Ale?’ It was Elm, her checkout-support earpiece still in. ‘What’s wrong?’

‘Are you a first-aider?’ he asked her.

‘Yes,’ she said, and she followed him out of the store as he rushed to take her back to Hull. ‘Is anyone hurt?’

‘It’s Hull,’ said Ale, walking quickly beside her. ‘He’s... well, you’ll see. Stuck. We need to get him out, but I don’t know how.’

‘Stuck? What do you mean stuck? Where is he?’

‘Just up here,’ said Ale, pointing. Lime and Hull watched as they approached. Elm looked down at Hull curiously, frowning as both Ale and Lime had while she took in and processed the peculiarities of the situation. She looked up at the former two, visibly confused.

‘How did this happen?’ she asked.

‘I don’t know,’ said Ale, but Hull hastened to answer.

‘I was about to put the cone on, and it grabbed me!’ he said.

‘It grabbed you?’ echoed Lime emptily.

‘What grabbed you?’ said Elm, deeply perplexed now. Ale was too.

‘I don’t know!’ said Hull, with a touch of ordinary impatience that did something to ease the tension. ‘I felt something around my leg, and it pulled me. Does it matter? Can’t you just get me out?’ he said.

Lime and Ale looked at Elm, who seemed lost for words. Eventually, she rallied.

‘We’ll have to call Emergencies,’ she muttered, pulling out her Com.

Part 1: The Store – XIII
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Part 1: The Store – XIII

‘What’s taking them so long?’ asked Hull in a panicked squeak. The pain in his leg, clearly, was worsening, and Ale hoped it was just his imagination when he saw that the leg seemed to be getting smaller, pulled deeper into the ground by... well, by what?

Elm and Lime had done little but try to offer Hull assurances that everything would be fine. Lime’s were awkwardly loud and hearty and struggled to ring true. Though everyone seemed out of their depth, Elm, by far, had been most effective in keeping calm and genuinely helping Hull feel more comfortable – as comfortable as he could feel in such a predicament. Ale had said little if anything, mainly because he felt a fraud. He had no kind words to give. He had no skills by which to conjure for Hull either relief or an escape. All he could do was wait there in silence, be present at the scene. And the worst of it was he wanted to disappear for his own sake. He felt so tired. He felt so hollow and selfish, but there it was.

Elm pulled out her Com and called Emergencies again. Most peculiarly, she pocketed it a moment later, her mouth open. ‘They hung up on me!’ she said.

Lime looked aghast. ‘What the fuck are they thinking?’ he said, his voice rising incredulously.

‘But it’s an emergency!’ said Hull.

Elm looked at Ale for help. Ale could only shrug, wide-eyed, and said, ‘Maybe... call them again? Maybe you got cut off.’

It was worth a try, but this time not only was Elm unable to speak to an operator but the Com timed out. However unlikely, however wrong, for whatever reason Emergencies did not want to take their call.

‘What do we do now?’ demanded Hull of the group.

‘Are you sure we can’t pull you out?’ rumbled Lime.

‘I don’t know,’ said Hull, wincing as he tried to wriggle his leg loose. It wouldn’t budge.

‘Worth a try,’ said Lime, nodding himself into it. ‘Worth a try. Grab his other leg,’ he said to Ale.

‘Not like that!’ said Hull as they pulled and he was stretched again. ‘Ah! Not like that!’

‘What other way is there?’ Lime boomed back at him, frustrated. He relented, and Hull’s body slumped back into its undignified position against the ground by the pothole.

‘Just give me a moment!’ said Hull.

Elm crouched down and scanned the pothole, frowning hard. She pointed at Hull’s leg. ‘It’s as if the road’s fused with you here,’ she observed, frowning deeper still. ‘You’ve got this sort of... layer of stuff on your leg.’

‘Well, don’t touch it,’ Ale found he’d said. ‘What if it gets you as well?’

‘What if what gets me?’ Elm asked him, looking him straight in the eye with a refreshed skepticism.

‘I don’t know,’ said Ale, holding his ground, however awkward it was. ‘But he said he felt something pull him. Isn’t that right?’ he asked Hull.

‘You think I’m lying?’ Hull said to Elm, who shook her head.

‘No, I just think you might’ve misread the –’

‘I know what it was!’ Hull snapped back at her. ‘I know how it felt!’

Elm derailed the argument swiftly by straightening up and saying, ‘If Emergencies aren’t coming, then it’s down to us. We’ll just have to pull you out, one way or another.’

‘He finds it too painful when we pull,’ said Lime. ‘If he’s that stuck, we’ll only make it hurt more.’

‘It’s the layer here,’ said Elm, pointing at the rubble-like crust. ‘If we loosen that, maybe he’ll be easier to pull.’

‘How are you going to do that?’ asked Hull uncertainly.

Elm was beaten this time, but not for long. She fixed Ale with a stare. ‘Do you keep any tools in the trolley hut?’

‘None. Gat wouldn’t let us do any work on the shopper park. He sends ponies in.’

‘I’ll just go into the store and get some off the shelf then.’

Lime shrugged his agreement, seemingly impressed by such sturdy common sense. Ale conceded that it was a good idea under the circumstances. At least one of them was thinking clearly. Hull seemed nervous.

‘What’s she going to do?’ he muttered to Lime and Ale once Elm had left for the store. ‘Dig me out?’

Ale shrugged. ‘I guess so.’

‘This is solid road!’ Hull said. ‘Unless we’ve got a power drill in there –’

‘But it’s just that rocky stuff around your leg,’ said Lime. ‘Once we get that off –’

‘Yeah, and how are you going to do that?’ retorted Hull. ‘Cut it off with my skin? I don’t exactly think it’s going to be gentle!’

‘Do you want to get out?’ asked Lime impatiently.

‘Not at that price!’

‘We’ll see how it goes,’ said Ale to the both of them. ‘It’s not like we’ll be hacking away at you, and if it hurts, you’ll tell us.’ He shrugged. ‘I don’t have any other ideas.’

Hull sighed deeply. ‘Some day at work.’

Ale couldn’t help but give an inappropriate snort, and when Lime and Hull looked at him, he said, ‘Well, for your first day, you know. You can’t say it hasn’t been eventful.’

He hadn’t expected Hull to smile, but he did, which Ale took as a good sign. It can’t all have been bad if he was capable of smiling. ‘It’s not what I had in mind when I signed up,’ said Hull, and he smiled again, though nervously. Lime drew their attention to Elm, who was approaching with a bagful of assorted tools.

‘OK,’ she said, setting them down beside Hull. ‘Here goes nothing.’

Part 1: The Store – XIV
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Trolley Pushers

Part 1: The Store – XIV

‘Ah!’ squeaked Hull. ‘Not there!’

‘There’s where you need it,’ said Lime, scraping the rubble none to gently.

‘Ah!’

‘Don’t you think you should... well, I don’t know, keep it down?’ said Ale. ‘You’re going to attract attention.’

‘So what?’ Hull threw at him. ‘What are the shoppers going to do?’

Ale shrugged, but he knew why he’d said it. He didn’t want a scene. He was sure Gat would bring him trouble if they did cause a scene, not because the shoppers cared but because his department could look incompetent, or silly, or bad in some sort of way. Ale couldn’t really figure how exactly Gat would come to such a conclusion, but he was certain the latter would find some way to spin it so that they would take the fall. Ale in particular, since it was he who was responsible for Hull on his first shift.

The pain in Hull’s leg, thankfully, seemed to have subsided, and now the only pain he felt was that induced by the slow removal of the rubble-like grains that did indeed appear to have stuck fast to his fur. Ale had tried first to scrape them off, but Lime had complained he was going too slowly and doing it wrong, so he had taken over. Elm, for her part, watched them and kept them at it, and she had even gone into the store and bought them all soft drinks. Now that their initial panic had abated, and the danger appeared to be contained and able to be dealt with, each of them were relatively relaxed, even Hull, who was sipping his hay soda as normally as he would in the staff canteen. Of course, they hadn’t at all explained how Hull had ended up in the pothole in the first place, but it was easy, while occupied with his extraction, to put it to the back of the mind. Time quickly made everything banal, even the most outlandish and unbelievable things.

But not enough time had passed to prevent Ale from taking serious issue with the fact that not only had Emergencies not yet arrived despite having been called, but also they had blatantly refused to take Elm’s call when she’d redialled. It defied all sense. What on earth were they doing? Hull had been right. The Company hypocrisy was as plain as the pothole he was sitting in.

‘It’s coming loose,’ said Lime as if he were an expert in the field of extracting ponies from pony-snatching potholes. ‘I can see it. See that?’ he said to Lime and Ale. ‘That’s the hole just under there. Goes right down.’

‘But how does that work?’ said Ale. ‘You and I just saw it,’ he said to Hull. ‘It was just a bog-standard pothole. Is there some sort of hollow space under the road or something? Like, I know you said you were grabbed, but... you know what I’m saying, guys, there’s got to be some sort of explanation. Could a hollow road make it move about?’

‘Well, if it’s a hollow road,’ said Lime as he continued scraping and Hull winced as he pulled at the skin. ‘Then all the cars are going to have to come off. They’ll have to close the store to fix it. There’s no way it can stay open if it’s this unstable.’

‘We’ll have to tell the store manager,’ said Elm.

‘But they’re in the main building,’ said Ale. ‘Gat’s actually who we’re supposed to call about this. He’ll pass it on.’

‘And what about all the shoppers right now?’ asked Elm. ‘We should tell the shopper manager at least. They need to be warned. Keep away from the potholes at least.’

‘Yeah,’ said Ale. ‘Well, the way Gat would want us to mark out a danger is with hazard cones, but I don’t think ponies really notice them too much. And by the way, he’ll have to know Hull’s been hurt on a shift as well.’

‘Why don’t you go and report that now, then?’ asked Elm.

‘Well,’ said Ale, hesitant. ‘I could, yeah.’

‘Wait,’ grunted Lime. ‘We’ll need you to help pull him out when I get this last piece off.’

‘OK,’ said Elm. ‘Well, wait now and then do it after.’

‘Right,’ said Ale, unsure whether he liked taking orders from Elm. But he couldn’t deny she was speaking sense.

‘Come on,’ said Hull, anxious to be free, as Lime chipped away the last of it.

‘I’m getting it, hold on a second.’

The last of the rubble crust came off less easily, and Hull winced again but held on as Lime chipped away faster.

‘That’s done it,’ said Elm, leaning down to inspect the leg once Lime had finished. ‘Try to pull him now.’

Lime and Ale obliged, Ale grabbing one leg, Lime the other. They looked at Hull for his consent, which he nodded back at them, and pulled. Hull tensed up as he was stretched again, but this time the skin on his leg was free from tension, and slowly, they managed to wriggle his leg and hoof out of the small hole and onto the road beside it. Hull got to his hooves gingerly, inspecting his raw-looking leg and puffing out his cheeks. ‘Thanks for that,’ he said as Elm sighed with relief and Lime grinned. Ale looked down the hole they’d left behind, but could see nothing.

‘It’s deep,’ he said.

‘Never mind that,’ said Elm. ‘We’ve got to report this. Stick that cone you brought over it for the moment. We’ve got to find some better way to block this off.’

‘That’s Gat’s job,’ said Ale. ‘He’ll send somepony with the equipment if he thinks it’s necessary.’

‘It is,’ said Elm. ‘Can you call him now?’

Ale nodded. ‘Will do,’ he said, and he walked quickly to the trolley hut.

Part 1: The Store – XV
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Part 1: The Store – XV

‘What in Equestria are you thinking, that I’d believe such rubbish.’

‘I’m not making it up,’ said Ale down the receiver with growing frustation. ‘The whole road, we think it must be hollow underneath or caving in or something. It’ll be too dangerous for the cars –’

‘And what makes you think you can reach that conclusion?’

‘We all just saw Hull practically disappear into it!’ Ale said, his voice rising higher still.

‘And you got him out?’

‘Yes.’

‘And he’s fine?’

‘Yes –’

‘Then you’re to do nothing until I take this to head office.’

‘But could the road not be at risk of collapsing?’

‘No. It’s a Company shopper park. It’s well-maintained and kept that way.’

‘But it’s not just me who’s saying this!’ Ale abandoned his subservience to Gat under the image of a genuine disaster by which ponies could potentially lose their lives. But Gat, as always, didn’t want to hear anything until he’d seen it with his own eyes. Which Ale immediately suggested. ‘Could you not just come in and take a look at the road? Or send somepony to have a look?’

‘If head office thinks it’s necessary. They’ll have to investigate it anyway, but it’ll be in the Company’s own time.’

‘But don’t you think –’

‘I’ve already told you what I think. Now get on with your work. The pony who was to fill the pothole, he’ll take a look at the road for me. Cone the hole and the others and tell the shopper manager to warn the staff about them. I’ll get back to all of you about it when I hear more. Goodbye.’

And that was that.

‘So what did he say?’ asked Lime, who had stayed in the shopper park despite not working, as Ale emerged from and locked the trolley hut.

‘Cone the holes and warn the staff,’ muttered Ale. ‘That’s it. He says he’ll get back to us about it once he hears back from head office.’

‘At least he took you seriously.’

‘He didn’t, and I didn’t tell him Hull thought he was grabbed, and I didn’t tell him that the pothole had moved.’

And Ale knew why. Because it would have sounded stupid and ridiculous coming from his mouth, and he knew Gat would have taken him even less seriously if he’d brought it up. It was bothering him now. While freeing Hull, these had been secondary issues. Now Ale, bereft of such a distraction, kept coming back to thinking about them and how surreal it all seemed. He could tell from Hull’s subsequent silence that he was thinking along similar lines. The thoughtfulness of the after-event. Elm had gone back into the store to carry on working, but perhaps she was thinking about it too. Hull was pottering around the bays, gathering up short lines of trolleys and pushing them quietly without a strap. Lime was hanging around, waiting to see the upshot of it all. At least he seemed open to discuss the situation, as he usually was. And Ale found he wanted to, which was a surprise.

‘Odd that he said he was grabbed,’ said Lime ponderously, frowning hard.

‘You’re thinking something’s down there?’ Ale asked. He hadn’t meant to say it so directly, but he did. He expected Lime to smirk, but Lime seemed to be on the same wavelength.

‘But what? What could be there?’

‘I don’t know. But Equestria will be Equestria and all that,’ Ale added, hoping it sounded less schizotypal than a straightforward suggestion that monsters of old, imaginary or otherwise, were alive and active today. Not that he thought they were. But all sorts of odd, wild explanations crept towards the front of the mind when an odd happening needed explaining.

Lime nodded. ‘I’ve heard that kind of story. About old beings and such. Can’t say I’ve ever heard of anything under a road.’

‘It could just be some sort of animal,’ said Ale, preferring the simpler explanation since he didn’t want Lime to think he was the type to believe in myths and monsters, albeit the current atmosphere allowed for that kind of thinking.

‘Maybe,’ said Lime. He seemed about ready to leave. He was pushing himself backwards and forwards on the spot, holding a trolley in the spare rows. ‘Oi, Hull!’ he yelled quite suddenly across the shopper park, with his typical disregard for what ponies would think. ‘Hull!’

Hull saw Lime beckon him over so left behind the trolley he was picking out and walked up to the trolley hut. Ale was pleased to see his leg really did look alright. Maybe it had been as simple as the road caving in after all, which was hardly reassuring, and Ale hardly wanted to resume work with that thought in his mind.

‘Are you sure you felt something pull you?’ Lime asked him plainly. Hull didn’t show any sign of considering it.

‘Yes,’ he answered flatly. ‘No doubt.’

‘You couldn’t have just tripped? You couldn’t have just fallen in?’

‘No,’ said Hull, shaking his head. ‘I know what I felt, and it’s bothering me, to be honest.’

‘It’s bothering me,’ Ale found he’d muttered.

Lime leaned against the spare row and said, ‘And you can add my name to that list.’

Part 1: The Store – XVII
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Part 1: The Store – XVII

‘Well...’ he said. ‘Well, well, well, well, well.’

He laughed. Ale saw his face in the mirror. Farl wasn’t in, which was good. It meant he could speak. He had a lot to say.

‘Poor you,’ he said in a whisper. ‘You’ve really got it so hard, don’t you. Such a hard life. Such a pointless existence. Oh, how my heart bursts with pain and empathy. Ha. Or not.’

He smirked, walked out of the bathroom and began to pace the flat.

‘Well, well,’ he said quietly, pacing slowly, smirking, chuckling. ‘Well, well, well. So. What is it, then, my friend? What is it you’re troubled by? Ponies are being mean to you? Oh dear. Oh, look at the poor lad. Poor, poor boy. Let me wipe away the tears. Kiss it better? Ha. Mmm.’

He draped himself over his chair, leaning his head backwards so that the blood rushed to his head, smiling all the while. ‘Ahhh. The comforts of this world. The comfort you live in. You spoilt, arrogant, useless little worm. The lack of gratitude is staggering. So you feel upset, do you? That’s such a shame. I’m sure the world is bleeding for you. What a shame, my friend.’

He pulled himself up with a sigh, then smiled widely. ‘So. To business. The problem? What is the problem, you little worm? What are you wasting your time with now?’

Ale wasn’t sure he liked hearing his feelings dismissed as a waste of time, but he supposed, in a way, sometimes they were. He could concede that. But he wasn’t quite sure what he was getting at yet so waited.

‘A strange happening, that little mishap at work today, mm? Mmm. Very strange. Yes. Young Hull seems to have survived the ordeal. I’m sure you’re bosom companions now. Best friends. No? Now why is that? Was he not kind to you? I swear, he was perfectly polite.’

But polite meant nothing, Ale knew. He was polite to a lot of ponies himself. It didn’t mean anything. He wasn’t a friend to any of those with whom he behaved politely. In fact, the only friends he had were those to whom he was rude, impatient, irritable and angry. His mother. His father sometimes. His brothers. He couldn’t think of anypony else.

‘Ha. Yes. Polite does mean nothing. To you. Didn’t you hear your mother? Not everypony thinks as you do, young Ale. Oh, you poor, misunderstood little urchin. My heart bleeds, I tell you. Everything revolves around you. It’s all about you, isn’t it? Oh, what a stunted little shit you are. It makes me so happy to see you are capable of realising that. And of course, you do nothing about it.’

And why should I? Ale thought back immediately.

‘Why? Because you’re an idiot if you think the world spins for you, you selfish dolt. I don’t take issue with your self-centredness. But I am deeply disappointed that you think it translates into everyday life. You think anyone gives a shit about you? You said it yourself. They don’t. Why would they owe you anything? Can a pony not behave as a pony wishes to? Who will stop them? You?’

But I don’t want to stop them, thought Ale. I want them to leave me alone, the little shits. Can’t everything just leave me alone.

‘Everything. An interesting choice of word.’ And Ale sighed with defeat, knowing he’d reached a key point he’d been avoiding. ‘So. This little mishap. What’s bothering you? And don’t give me shit about moving potholes. You don’t actually care, do you? If it’s paranormal, or impossible, or unusual, or improbable. You don’t give a shit. You just pretend to because you think you should. Who cares? You don’t. You only care because you think it’ll trap you. You don’t want to be stuck with ponies. You don’t want to be there. You didn’t want to be there today, when Hull fell. When Elm came to help. When you and Lime pulled him out. “It’s bothering me”, you said. Hah! What a lie! You don’t give a shit! What bothers you, my slippery little truth-dodging friend, is responsibility! You don’t want ponies to expect anything of you! And because they did, you were happy to disappear. You wanted to. You would have let Hull die if it meant you were free of responsibilities.’

But Hull wasn’t in any real danger.

‘And you didn’t know that until it happened to become known. You didn’t care. You wanted to escape because helping demands too much energy. And you’re so selfish, you think all that energy belongs to you. Don’t be afraid to admit it. Confess, you little shit. Confess.’

I would never let a pony die because it discomfits me.

‘Wouldn’t you? We’re talking in extremes because that’s what you understand. I’ll concede that maybe you wouldn’t. But out of selfishness and fear. Because you wouldn’t want that floating over your conscience. Not because you actually give a shit about anypony. What a hoot this is. I expose your little games, unravel your knots and your riddles so easily. You try so desparately to bury the truth, and I can dig it out of you in one stroke. Your emotions are entirely selfish. Your petulant little outburst was guilt. Your mother saw that too. Look at you! You can’t even admit it!’

Ale wouldn’t admit it. Because it wasn’t true. He knew that. He knew he cared. A little. Not much, it was true. But a little. He didn’t like Hull, no. But he didn’t dislike him. He also didn’t owe him anything. He was feeling bad was all. A reaction to a stressful, unusual, distressing day.

‘Ha. Of course you will tell yourself that. Of course you will. But you know, don’t you. You know. I do. I’ll make sure you remember.’

He found that he had entered the kitchen. He pushed the kettle on, smirking.

‘The luxuries. The luxuries you have. It’s incredible. Be grateful. But I know you won’t.’ He smiled. ‘Until next time, then, my friend. Enjoy your life. I’ll enjoy watching you struggle to.’

That was all he had to say, and it left Ale feeling hollow, empty, thin, weak and tired. Very tired.

Part 1: The Store – XVIII
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Trolley Pushers

Part 1: The Store – XVIII

‘Oh, hi!’ said Hull, blinking up at him through the sunlight.

‘Hi,’ said Ale, nodding, and he smiled earnestly.

‘Is it not a day off for you today?’ Hull asked.

‘Yeah. But I wanted to come in and check, you know. The potholes and all that. I just saw that you guys have taped them off.’

‘It was Elm’s idea,’ said Hull, nodding. ‘She thought it would be better to mark them clearly. The cones, you know, it’s like you said yesterday about how ponies don’t really notice them. But it seems like the holes have stayed put this time, so that’s something.’

‘Well, I mean, I don’t even know how they moved in the first place,’ said Ale. ‘I said to Lime it could have been an animal or something. But that doesn’t explain how they moved.’

‘Yeah. The road would still be hollow if it was an animal. So we’d still have to block it off for safety either way.’

‘Guess so. Has Gat been in touch about it yet?’

‘I don’t know. It’s only my second day. I don’t really know how the Com works yet,’ he admitted.

‘Feels like you’ve been here for ages already,’ said Ale, albeit there was a sappy, sentimental flavour to the words that he didn’t like to associate with himself.

‘It does feel a bit like that, yeah,’ said Hull as he smiled. Ale wasn’t sure what else to say to him, but at least he’d said something. Because Ale did feel guilty. He’d accepted that. It had been wrong of him to feel so selfishly when Hull had been in trouble. Coming here to speak to Hull, to check on him, it felt as if he were making things right. He was giving another pony his energy. That was a kindness, wasn’t it? That made them square, surely.

‘Who’s on with you?’ Ale ended up asking as he cast around for something else with which to break the silence.

‘Ant,’ said Hull, and Ale noticed his smile became somewhat forced. He supposed he was the expert in forced smiles. He smiled a little himself at that. Ant, he knew, was hard work for some ponies. All ponies were hard work for Ale, but he enjoyed Ant in many ways, and he enjoyed that ponies felt more uncomfortable around Ant than he did. Perhaps because it felt like a quiet victory when ponies stepped into Ale’s shoes and tasted just how tiresome pony pleasing could be.

‘Ayy,’ said Ale, grinning. ‘Ant’s been here for ages,’ he told Hull. ‘The one true trolley pusher.’

‘Yeah, we were speaking,’ said Hull. Ale snorted with laughter, and Hull grinned uncertainly, taking it well.

‘What?’ he asked.

‘You’ll get used to him,’ said Ale. ‘He loves to go on about all sorts of things. Let me guess. He’s asked you to read Hanging?’

‘Yes!’ said Hull, livening up. ‘How did you know?’

‘He’s been asking pretty much every single pony he comes across if they’ve read it,’ laughed Ale. ‘He actually lent me his copy once.’

‘Did you read it?’

‘I did actually. It was pretty good, but it’s one of those obscure, niche kind of things that no one’s ever heard of.’

‘Yeah,’ said Hull. ‘He seems... pretty niche.’

‘Well, speak of the devil,’ said Ale, still chuckling, and he waved as Ant approached them with two trolleys, his face serious as a funeral. ‘Ant. How’s it going?’

Ant said nothing at first and walked up to them, stopped the trolleys, then sighed deeply. ‘Oh, you know. Another day.’

‘Yeah,’ said Ale, grinning. ‘Busy?’

‘Not at all,’ said Ant. ‘And there’s two of us.’

‘Yeah, Hull’s just been saying.’

Hull smiled and nodded quietly.

‘Yes, well,’ said Ant, his expression not changing. ‘Now that there’s also these potholes to keep in mind, it’s even more frustrating than normal.’

‘You know about them?’

‘I said to him about it when I started,’ chipped in Hull.

‘So have you just been avoiding them?’ Ale asked.

‘Well, obviously,’ said Ant. ‘But if the road is facing any risk of collapse, then we shouldn’t be working on it. So I’m a bit pissed off about that, obviously.’

‘But did Hull not tell you –?’

‘No,’ said Hull quickly with a meaningful look at Ale, which Ant didn’t appear to notice. As usual, he was going on as though nopony had spoken at all.

‘Anyway,’ he was saying, letting rip another sigh. ‘What’s happening with you? Any fun plans for your day off?’

‘No plans, no. I was just saying to Hull about Hanging.’

‘Yes, that’s right, you read it. I remember.’

‘Yeah,’ said Ale as Ant went on.

‘You know,’ he said to both Ale and Hull, ‘there was actually a whole series written. But the second book, I remember, wasn’t really very interesting. And there was a lot of controversy about the writing too because the creator’s son took over the universe for most of the series.’

‘Oh, right,’ said Ale, nodding while Hull watched them quietly.

‘Yeah, so that happened,’ said Ant a little glumly. ‘But the first book – I highly recommend you read it,’ he said to Hull as though he’d forgotten he’d already suggested this. ‘It’s really a very well-imagined world, and there’s a lot of detail I think you would appreciate. You liked that, I think.’

‘Yes,’ said Ale dutifully. ‘It was really in-depth on a lot of things. I like how he, you know, the writer made up a lot of words and terms and that sort of thing for it.’

‘There’s a twin trolley going into the main bay,’ said Ant quite suddenly. He frowned. ‘Excuse me, sir!’ he roared across the shopper park. He took off, strap in hand, to berate the offending shopper. Hull turned to Ale, who grinned.

‘You do get used to him,’ he said. ‘Ant’s... odd. But he’s nice enough.’

‘Well, I trust your judgement,’ said Hull. ‘Um... I’d better get back to work.’

Ale blinked. ‘Oh right. Yeah.’

‘But it was nice to speak with you! Catch you later, Ale.’

‘Yeah, uh. Yeah. Nice to see you, man, take care.’

Ale watched Hull walk off to bay four, feeling somewhat let down. His gesture, though sincere, did not seem to have been appreciated. Or had it been? His mother was right. There was no way of telling what ponies really thought.

Part 1: The Store – XIX
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Part 1: The Store – XIX

‘Right...’

Ale pushed open the door to his groundflat, knowing Farl was in and hoping he wouldn’t have to speak to him. To his disappointment, he saw the lights of the corridor were on and the door to the latter’s room was open, the sound of a zip being done or undone issuing from within. Either he was leaving to train or he had come back from training. Neither helped Ale because Farl had heard him come in, and being a polite pony, he would want at least to say hello if not to check on his welfare to boot. Ale smiled forcibly as Farl’s light hoof-fall reached the corridor, catching him with his underzipper half off.

‘Hey, Ale,’ sang Farl in his thick Canterlot accent. ‘How’s it going, man?’ he asked at exactly the moment in which Ale did the same, which made Ale blush surely redder than paint, but he stuck to his smile more firmly for it.

‘Not bad, yeah, not bad,’ said Ale. ‘I was just down at the store, checking on a friend.’

‘Oh nice,’ said Farl, his large eyes sincere in their approval.

‘And yourself?’ Ale prompted.

‘I’m doing good. I’ve just come back from the swimming pool, and now I’m about to be going out for a run.’

Ale grinned with what he hoped was appropriate enthusiasm. ‘Nice, nice. Still training hard, then? When’s the race again? Was it at the end of the summer?’

‘Yeah, it’s around then,’ said Farl.

‘Nice. Well, yeah. Good that you’re sticking in, training hard.’ He clung to his smile like a drowning pony to a plank of wood. Of bloody course it was good he was sticking in, and who was Ale to say it to Farl? Farl was the mature, disciplined party of the groundflat’s two residents. What a fraud he was even to consider bringing it up. Farl was graciousness itself.

‘I mean, yeah,’ he said, shrugging it off as though his many hours of hard work were nothing. ‘It is what it is, you know. I’ve just got to keep going now at the end. Especially with work and everything taking up the rest of my time.’ He nodded, not looking Ale in the face. That was something Ale noticed about Farl. He was a confident speaker, but he met eyes as rarely as Ale did. It was really, really strange and amusing, Ale noted, that he and his flatmate, who’d lived together for many months, scarcely spoke or knew anything about each other. Ale put this down to himself being himself, but at times like this he wondered whether Farl’s own tendencies, as his mother called them, were of a similar ilk. Still, they had a healthy arrangement. The groundflat was kept near-spotless between them, and they didn’t get in each other’s way. It had never been formally, or even vocally, agreed on. But Ale considered it an unspoken contract, and perhaps Farl did too. There was no way of telling.

‘Well,’ said Ale, ‘I won’t keep you.’ He felt as though he should have added a goodbye, but they lived under the same roof. What a stupid thing to say to a pony you lived with when all you were doing was going to your room. Farl muttered some nice-sounding sentiment that Ale didn’t fully catch and smiled. And just then Ale’s Com went off, which he usually disliked. But now it was a timely excuse.

‘Oh, sorry,’ said Ale as if their so-called conversation had been rudely interrupted. ‘I’d better take this.’

‘Alright. I’m just going out anyway. Catch you later, man.’

‘Yeah, catch you later.’ Ale’s stomach jumped when he saw that it was Gat. Normally it would have sank, but he was awaiting news on the shopper park, and it seemed Gat had been true to his word for once by getting back to him as promised. He didn’t like taking calls when Farl was in, but Farl was leaving in a minute and work-related conversations were usually OK seeing as during them Ale never had to reveal anything personally compromising. Not that he thought Farl would abuse any sensitive information if he did overhear it. But Ale was openly paranoid about such things. You never knew.

‘Hello?’ he said, answering.

‘It’s Gat,’ grunted Gat with customary dissatisfaction.

‘Hi, Gat,’ Ale responded heartily, knowing Farl could be listening. ‘What can I do for you?’ Gat, however, was not Farl and did not appreciate this effort at cheerful optimism.

‘Have I caught you at a good time?’ he grunted and before Ale could speak added, ‘Good. You’re needed tomorrow for a meeting.’

‘A meet—?’

‘Head office has sent an inspector down to brief us all on this shopper-park-road business. It’s all department staff to attend, so I’m calling each of you to let you know. I’ll be in-store as well. We’re meeting in front of the trolley hut. Half-past one, just after lunch tomorrow, and don’t be late. This is my department you’re representing. I’m telling you now so you know.’

‘Right, OK, don’t worry, I’ll be there on –’

‘Good. See you then.’

‘Bye, Gat –’

Gat had, of course, closed his Com already, and as Ale closed his, he couldn’t help but notice he was looking forward to the meeting. It wasn’t merely because he was curious. It wasn’t just about potentially getting some answers at last. It was more the fact – and he was taken aback by how clearly he could see it all of a sudden – that he was pleased he would be seeing Ant, Lime, East and now Hull in a context he understood and, above all, one in which nothing was expected of him. He frowned and exhaled some air amusedly as he replaced his Com and dropped lightly into his folding chair to tuck into a bar of chocolate.

Part 1: The Store – XVI
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Trolley Pushers

Part 1: The Store – XVI

‘Right,’ said Ale, swiping his clock-in card through the Com slot after Hull, who was watching him. ‘Well,’ he added, unsure what to say. They had started the day as strangers. They were ending it, Ale felt, like ponies who’d known each other for far longer. It was a heavy, unfamiliar feeling, one of which Ale was skeptical. On the one hand, it felt like he was on the brink of establishing a closeness he hadn’t believed possible with a pony, and he guessed this was because they’d got through a tight spot together. On the other, he thought it was merely a product of exactly the latter, which would collapse with time and a return to normality. He didn’t want ponies cluttering his existence. Ponies were so difficult, and now that he was thinking about it, he remembered just how difficult they really were. He remembered school and all the happy memories that particular misery had spawned. He remembered how tedious and tiring it was on a normal day to talk to a pony, to pretend to smile, to force a laugh. He remembered that he didn’t like anyone beyond his most immediate family. And while remembering all of this, he also remembered he’d been about to say something. Fortunately, Hull said something for him.

‘See you tomorrow, I guess,’ he said simply.

‘I’m not in tomorrow,’ Ale said back, not quite managing to look up at Hull and meet his eye. And this was the same pony he’d spent hours speaking with and, ultimately, rescuing. How could he not look him in the eye? Hull surely expected Ale was the smiling, talkative pony he’d encountered that day. But Ale was not that pony. He wasn’t a pony who smiled or spoke or helped. Perhaps Hull was about to realise that.

‘Well, thanks for getting me out,’ Hull said, and to Ale’s great surprise, the latter held out his hoof, which Ale bumped automatically. ‘Seriously. I would have panicked if it hadn’t been for you – and the others,’ he added fairly. ‘So thanks. And yeah.’ He smiled. ‘It’s been good to meet you.’

‘Likewise,’ said Ale, holding as natural a smile as he could under the circumstances, his cheeks burning. ‘Take care.’ It was all he could think to say.

‘I will,’ said Hull quite sincerely. ‘You too.’

He left just like that, opening the shed door and walking out. Ale stood where he was for a moment, not thinking, not doing anything much. His body cooled and his heart rate slowed. He blinked a few times.

‘Darling?’ said his mother minutes later once he’d called. Ale didn’t know what to say, so he said nothing. ‘Darling, are you there?’

‘Mm.’

‘Are you finished work? How was your day?’

Ale took a deep breath. Then he said, ‘Shit.’

‘Shit?’ repeated his mother in her lilting eastern accent. ‘Why?’ she said. ‘What happened?’

‘A lot of things,’ Ale said, and he found his voice was shaking, and he wasn’t sure why. He felt, inexplicably, heat building behind his eyes, which he blinked to extinguish. Wetness greeted him, and when it became clear he wasn’t about to continue, his mother spoke again.

‘What sort of things? What happened, Ale?’

‘Just... bloody stupid...’

‘What? What is it?’

‘I hate ponies... so much...’

‘Did someone say something to you?’

‘No...’

‘What then?’

Ale didn’t respond.

‘Are you hurt? Is it something bad?’

‘No, Mam.’

After another long pause, his mother spoke again. ‘Hey, Ale. Bad things happen sometimes. You can’t let them rule you.’

Ale said nothing.

‘You have to let go of these feelings. You have to learn to forgive others and yourself so that you can move on in life.’

‘They don’t deserve my forgiveness!’ Ale found he’d hissed venomously down the receiver, his face contracting furiously as the tears finally came. He tried hard not to sob. He didn’t want her to hear him crying.

‘Ale,’ said his mother very seriously. ‘These ponies have done nothing to you. The things they have done to you are imaginary.’

‘No, they’re not! I hate them! I hate them!’

‘Hate is such a strong word! When all they have done is nothing! Tiny things! I mean, minuscule things!’

‘That’s bad enough!’ hissed Ale, near-spitting. ‘I’m not... they’re absolute shits. They do not deserve my forgiveness. I’m not going to forgive them ever!’

‘And that’s your problem, darling, listen to me. You are so poisoned by your feelings towards these ponies that you can’t do anything. It’s like you are paralysed! And it’s because you are afraid!’

‘I’m not afraid.’

‘You are! It comes from fear. All our problems come from fear, and you are so afraid! I have never seen a pony so terrified of nothing! And I mean nothing. All because you cannot face your fears! You do not want to!’

‘I don’t want to,’ agreed Ale stubbornly, regaining control.

‘You have to! To grow! Ale, we’ve had this conversation so many times before! It is not the ponies that you don’t like, it is your fear and the fact that you feel guilty! You feel like you are owned by them, and that breeds resentment!’

‘I. Don’t. Care,’ said Ale.

‘That’s your problem! You should care! Not because of me or your father or anyone else. Because you should care about yourself.’

‘Well, I don’t care.’

‘Well, you really are snookering yourself, then. I can’t do anything to help you there. It’s your fault you feel that way.’

‘It’s not my fault. It’s theirs. Those stupid little shits who think they deserve my attention! They think they can speak to me and treat me like a friend when they don’t know anything about me! They don’t care about me! They’d don’t give a shit about me, and I don’t give a shit about them! So why the fuck are they speaking to me? Why the heck do they bother me? I don’t bother them! I never go up to anyone! I don’t speak to anyone, because I want to be left in peace! Treat ponies like you want to be treated! Why can’t they do that for me?’ His voice broke on the word, and he stopped, breathing heavily.

‘This is where your thinking is wrong, Ale.’

‘Oh is it.’

‘It is. Your nature is to tend towards extremes, but not everypony thinks like you. When they speak to you, they aren’t thinking the kind of things you’re thinking.’

‘How do you know?’ Ale snapped back at her.

‘Well, OK, I don’t know. But the point is not everypony thinks in the same way. It’s useful to think about others through your own eyes sometimes, but it does not work in every situation. And you, Ale, are very extreme. A normal pony does not think so viciously about others.’

‘Oh, so I’m not normal now?’

‘You are normal, but you have tendencies, like I do. You have to control them and not let them control you.’

‘Stupid bullshit.’

‘It is not bullshit. What you’re saying is the bullshit, Ale. Imaginary. Im-ag-in-ary.’

Ale sighed heavily. The heat had passed as soon as it had come on, and he wanted to leave. He’d done enough talking for one day.

‘I’ve had enough,’ he grunted bluntly. ‘I’ll phone after.’

‘Give a smile, Ale, and don’t let these feelings control you. You are in charge of yourself.’

‘Yes, yes,’ he said wearily. ‘I’ll phone after.’

‘Goodbye. Speak later. I love you.’

‘Mm.’

‘Bye.’

He hung up his Com, sighing.