shitty octascratch might delete later idk

They flickered across the screen. Effervescent glowing lights organized as images of ponies laughing.

Reaching her hoof over to hit re
Rewind
Rewind
Rewind the tape

She watched them. Mocking her. Happy as they were.

Laying supine on the couch
Trying to esc
Escape
Scape

Taxidermied in time. Reliving that moment of joy and elation over and over and over again.

Drowning in th
Drowning
Drown
In the lake

Belonging in this world.

Keep on make
Make
Making the sa
Same mistakes

Vinyl winced, her face pulled up into a pained mix of a scowl and a sob. What use was all this progress, all the ingenuity of innovation, if all it did was make her suffer?

Rewind the tape
Trying to escape
The same mistakes
Drown in the

At least here, alone, in the brief breaths the party took her into the safety of solitude—here Vinyl could belong out of place. At least here alone she could watch brighter days, as the sun slipped away, repeating forever and ever.

Rererererererere
Wiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiind

Sound muted. Watched the white filly on the screen mouth words. She mouthed along.

Reeeeeeeeeeeeee
Whywhywhywhywhy

Went limp for the briefest of moments. Knocked the remote to the floor. The sound came unmuted. And they spoke to her.

“—ook Mom! Dad! Guys! Look! Look what Vinyl can do!”
She’d never hear her brother’s voice that proud again.
The happy little filly was the star of her very own movie even if just for the moment. She spun the record back and forth on the family’s gramophone, matching the hit of the mare’s crackled and swiped vocals as she notched the record back with her hoof expertly. She’d let the record play for a moment, but never passed the chorus, which she’d deemed the best part of the song. She’d skip back, never missing a beat unless it was intentional, and she turned a simple thirty second portion of somepony else’s song into a song all her own.
Long Play, a colt forever on analog, turned to face the camera and its wielder. “Wasn’t that amazing? She can’t even use her horn yet and she learned how to do that with her hoof! I dunno how she can even do THAT with her voice!”
The filly beamed.
The camera jostled. A stallion’s voice she hadn’t heard updated in almost a decade spoke.
“That’s amazing, Vi—”

rerererererere
escesceescesc
Whinewhinewhine
apeapeapeapeape

Her hoof slammed against the shitty CRT. The thin crack in the glass burst into a spiderweb of damage.

Stuck in reverse
Repeating what she recorded
Decay
Decayi
Decay
ngngngngngngngng
aying
deca