Death Surrounds Me

It was early on a cold morning in Ponyville, I sat at my bedside when suddenly I feel the pulsating dirt begin its descent. At first, I assumed it was just me, I hadn't bathed since yesterday at the hospital. Entering the bathroom, I knew it wasn't just me. My face was wrong, I could feel it at first; in my eye. My eye pulsed and pushed itself this way and that. Something was inside, fighting to get out.

The squelching sound of my eye being torn open caused me to gag. No matter what I tried, I couldn't stop looking at it in the mirror. It began to look bloody, white making its way to red quickly, then my vision started to fade. One white dot in the center of my sight, then two, four, eight, sixteen, until finally, it came out. A brown cockroach's antenna spilled out of my damaged eye with all the grace of a foreign invader. It crawled out, pushing my red, broken eye open further until it escaped its prison in my head. I wish it had come alone.

Two roaches crawled out of my socket, then four, before I knew it, roaches were crawling all over my face. They hated the outside world however and demanded to be let back in. Anything they could crawl back into was easily entered, nostrils, ears, mouth, and eyes. There was no entrance they did not take advantage of. I ran over to the toilet and began throwing up, only dry retching at first, then the roaches started getting pushed out of my stomach. Thousands of roaches were expelled from my body through my mouth, they took bloody chunks of flesh with them on their way out.

Some of them hung onto my mouth for dear life, I tried to get them off but only managed to damage my teeth, which only helped them accomplish their goals. One by one, my teeth were removed by the roaches, leaving my mouth a broken and bloody mess of puss and saliva. They started to bite me, ripping small pieces of fur and flesh off, and scurried away with it to who knows where.

I left the bathroom in hopes of finding safety in Dark Wood or Herb Garden, but when I reached the stairs, the roaches had finally had their way with one of my hooves. Pulsating and squirming, one of my hind legs was removed, this did not dissuade me, I crawled down the steps. Falling halfway down; through what little remained of my eyesight, I saw Dark Wood hanging from the ceiling by his neck. He had been dead for a while as his once sleep grey fur had turned a sickly green as the flies infest his body, much as the roaches had done mine.

I had to leave, anywhere but here. Throwing up more roaches, I fell down the next flight of stairs, losing another hoof on the way. The house was infested, as I found what little remained of Herb Garden's corpse on the kitchen floor. The roaches left my mouth in droves as I threw up again, dry heaving was all I could do now, as I lacked a stomach now. Roaches owned every last piece of me now, as a large one fell from the ceiling onto my face. It twitched as its children entered my ears and started eating my brain, the mother ripped out my eye, sending me into eternal darkness. I released a blood-curdling scream just seconds before my throat and lungs were filled with the filth of the roaches.

Suddenly, my vision returned to me as the caring and concerned gaze of Herb Garden stared into mine. "Go on, eat it." She said.

I was confused for a second before I realized there was a cookie in my mouth. I chewed it up, certainly not due to hunger, but out of compliance. "Did you feed half of this to me?" I asked.

"I had to, you fell asleep and we didn't want to disturb you; we never gave you your medicine." She said, looking apologetic.

"Med- oh ... right," I said, shaking myself slightly. "So both you and Dark Wood are okay?"

"We're both okay, Green. You're okay, we're okay, your mother's okay. Your safe now." She said and started to rub my back.

"Luna told you to do this, didn't she?"

"Do what?" She asked in return.

"Affirmations of safety, the rubbing ... you don't look the type to come up with that on your own."

She changed the subject entirely, but I wasn't in any mood to chase her down rabbit holes. "What did you see, Green, while you were ... uh .. out?"

"Out? What do YOU see? I've never been on the other side of it."

"We heard you running to the bathroom at first, nothing out of the ordinary, just thought you needed to use it. Then we heard the sound of you throwing up. When we heard you run to the stairs but fall before you could reach them I remembered your medicine so I went downstairs to get it. Dark Wood saw you fall down the stairs and was so shocked he just stood on his hind legs over by his bedroom. You fell down the stairs again and started to ... sing ... I guess? After that, I broke the cookie and tried to soften it with milk to help it go down. I used my hoof to break the pill and put them both in your mouth. "

None of it happened? "What do you mean I started to sing? at my question, Herb Garden started to whistle a haunting and beautiful tune. I remembered it well, the siren's wail.

After that, I apologized for waking the two of them up, thanked them for helping me, then returned to my bed. They both saluted me good night.

As I laid in my bed that night, I couldn't help but hear that beautiful song, the mermaid mourning the loss of the loved one. Strangely enough, it wasn't coming from my head, it was coming from somewhere in town.