shitty octascratch might delete later idk

Few things pleased Vinyl Scratch as isolation with music did.

This was certainly to be expected—she was a musician, after all. All musicians desired intimate time alone with their instruments.

Vinyl’s instrument was uncommon in choice. Almost everypony and creature beyond had the means to her music-making. They had the keys to her composition. Any creature with a brain, an appendage, and a record player could make the music she did.

But only she did.

Or only she had—at first.

you’re not special anymore.

Which is exactly why she needed her isolation more than anything now.

Vinyl stalked through the apartment, claustrophobic in its empty clutter. The mounds of refuse from night after night spent locked up tight made it hard to breathe. The smell was overpowering, rotting fruit and dirty clothes and the stench of her unwashed going on a week now.

She wiped her hooves best she could on her own coat. They were still slick, grimy, oily with some putrid gunge that no doubt had originated from her at some point. She carefully held the vinyl between her hooves, not even bothering to use her horn. She needed to feel the plastic under her bare hooves.

Let me know I’m still here.

She carefully placed it on her personal player. This one was different from the deck she used to perform; it was smaller, more modest, and less flashy. Simple oak and rosewood; played 10 and 12 inch records depending on the setting.

Vinyl slowly dropped the needle on the plastic, and grinned like a madmare as she heard the fuzzy, staticy scratch. She could feel the hair on the back of her neck standing on end, and her tail swatted back and forth like a dog’s despite herself.

Fuck, that’s gorgeous.

And that was only the beginning. Of course Vinyl could never let even a solitary, personal listening session go without at least a smidge of her own personal flair. For this particular record, it made her feel all that much closer to the artist.

The first strings began to ring out from her speakers. They were the highest fidelity her endless supply of bits could find.

Vinyl collapsed in her stained and ripped recliner. It hadn’t changed position in the months since she’d upgraded to this apartment—a penthouse in Canterlot Heights, as it would happen, a click southbysouthwest of Princess Luna’s Cosmomancy Tower as the pegasus flies, and only just that little bit shorter—and it was hardly likely it ever would. Maybe when she’d ingested enough ethanol to kill a dragon and she tripped over it (which, by her accounts, could be anywhere between 4 and 7 nights a week if the blackouts were anything to go by).

She really couldn’t define her living situation as anything but squalor, to be honest. The recliner looked like a hand-me-down from her parents, but she’d actually bought it brand new when she’d moved into the penthouse. Living with Vinyl had a tendency to age both objects and ponies alike much more rapidly than they would otherwise.

Maybe that’s why she never wants to come over.

This was the only recording of its kind, too. Vinyl held a great pride in that, hollow as it was when she was at her worst. She’d been at the concert this piece was performed at, and recorded it herself. She didn’t even use any of the new digital shit, even though she could afford it easily. She’d done it all analog, with her very own tape recorder she’d built piecemeal over the past decade in order to best service her particular preferred sound.

Vinyl Scratch really did love Octavia Melody. Truly and honest to whatever horrible god let all this happen, she did. Octavia Melody was her reason for getting up and going to the party day in and day out.

Well, not the only reason.

“Yes, the only reason,” Vinyl growled over the slick and warbling bass notes.

She’s not even the only mare that keeps you getting out of—or into—bed.

“I don’t need to take this kind of abuse,” Vinyl muttered. She turned her attention back to the music—Octavia Melody’s music.

She let her head slam back against the recliner; she remembered this concert as if it were yesterday. It was the first performance of Octavia’s Vinyl had gone to see after the two had started “officially” dating. It had been transcendent—certainly the music was wonderful, but it had honestly been the indescribable elation of seeing that mare perform that way and know in her heart honestly that that mare loved her.

“Me,” Vinyl had found herself croaking out to Octavia after the show, letting her hear her vile voice for the first time. “Me, of all fucking ponies.”

And Octavia hadn’t run when she’d heard her voice, as rough and ragged and rancid as it was. She’d stayed. And she stayed.

There was always one thing about this piece that soured Vinyl. But it wasn’t even so much a sourness as it was a deep, aching bruise somewhere deep inside her abdomen that she couldn’t ever properly find.

I could never play like her.

Vinyl was doused in water. Clean, purifying water. Octavia’s strings soared through her. Her hind hooves twitched on the floor. Forehooves on the hoofrests.

I’m fucking useless.

She flopped off the recliner, the serenade still ringing in her ears even as the piece ended, nothing left but the hissing and popping of the needletip hopping over plastic.

Just another remix nopony wants to hear...

Vinyl rolled over and smacked against the turntable. She pushed herself shakily to her hooves, thrust the record needle up, and then picked the disc between her hooves before immediately losing balance and falling backward to slam her head off the hardwood floor directly next to a neglected plate of three-day old food. Mildewed rice and grey broccoli flew into the air from the resonance of her skull, and landed gracefully back to the plate.

I should drown in the lake
Drown myself in the cellar, in the base—

Vinyl Scratch smashed the plate, and then the record, over her face.

“Degaussing is the process of decreasing or elimi—”