Chapters “Hooman.”
I'm reclining on the sofa. I have my phone in one hand. A can of soda rests half-empty in the other.
“Hooman...?”
My thumb flicks across the smart device's screen. My banking account rest at an uncomfortably low number. I bite my bottom lip, feeling a slight pang of guilt over the latest splurge.
At least I'm keeping my savings account at a steady sum. So long as that remains untouched...
“HooOOooOOooOOoomannnn...!”
I lower my phone and look at the floor.
A black and white tuxedo cat looks up at me. Its eyes are glowing an unnaturally bright turquoise.
“Feed me more treats, HooOOooOOooman!” the cat vocalizes.
I barely hum in response. I hold my phone up again.
The feline can be sensed stirring with awkward discomfort. “I mean it. I will... uhm... snuggle you less.”
“Fluttershy, get out of my cat,” I pronounce in one exhale.
“Awwwwww! But he feels so cute and whiskery!”
“Out. ”
There is a melodic sigh of defeat. Yellow steam rises from my pet, topped off with a flowing pink mane. Within seconds, my cat shakes its head, licks itself, then pads off as if nothing has transpired.
“Thank you,” I say as I sign out of my bank account.
“Hrmfff...” Fluttershy levitates a few feet from my sofa, frowning in the middle of the living room. “You big meanie!”
“Mmmhmmm.” I switch to Twitter. Someone is getting canceled for farting inconsiderately on SNL ten years ago. Syria's being bombed again. Grand Theft Auto Six still hasn't come out. “And why am I a meanie this time?”
“Because you won't give him treats!” Fluttershy whines. “I thought you were supposed to be a loving owner!”
“If I gave him treats all the time, they would stop being special occasions and would no longer qualify as treats .” I switch to Reddit. There's a Megathread about the Syria bombing; everyone is making Call of Duty Modern Warfare jokes for upvotes. “I want him to feel appreciated for the things he does right—or else he'll think I approve of any and all shenanigans.”
“I believe the best way to take care of animals is constant positive reinforcement.”
“Isn't that what I just described?”
“No.” She floats over and nestles against the couch cushion beside me. “You're robbing him of the joys of living! Cat-living!”
I exhale through the sudden chill that the horse-spirit has brought on. The vapors of my breath fog up Reddit, and I feel strangely relieved. “Tell me why I should take advice on cat-life from a bodiless paragon of pony- death?”
“Hrmmmf!” She tilts her nose up and plops her flank down onto the couch with angry punctuation. “See what I mean? A big meanie—EEEP! ” Her ghostly eyes bug as she sinks down through the couch. Ten seconds is spent dog-paddling through the depth of the furniture, and eventually her golden visage rises up once again. “Ahem... honestly—if I had my precious Angel and Elizabeak and the rest of my animal friends here, I would treat them with love and attention every single second of the day!”
“Hey. I love my cat.” I place my phone away and lean casually to the side, gazing at the ghostly house-squatter. “I'm just not aiming to spoil him. He's not got long on this earth—after all—and I want it spent healthily .”
“Well, I haven't... uhm... been long on your 'earth.' But from what I've seen, your animals could use all the treats they can get.”
I nod, not responding right away. I think about what Fred Rogers would do. Or maybe Doomslayer.
“Just what happened to all of your animal friends, anyways?”
Fluttershy sighs. She hangs her head. “I don't know.”
“Cuz it sure doesn't look like they followed you and your friends here.”
“Mmmmm...” She whimpers. Her face hides behind a curtain of pink hair—which is rather redundant, seeing that the hair is translucent. Then again, all of Fluttershy is translucent. For a moment, I imagine seeing her heart, and I can only imagine it breaking.
The air is chillier somehow. But not because of the haunting. Not this time.
“Look...” I gesture as I speak. “If you wanna hang out with my cat, speak to my cat, love on my cat. That's fine. But please ... don't possess it again. I know you're trying to level with me, but leave the feline out of it. You may not believe that I respect animals like you do, but at least you can show some nicer manners, no matter the intention. Hmmm?”
She nods. “You're right...”
“It's not that I'm 'right.' I'm just... more familiar with this plane of existence than you are.” I squint slightly. “Do I have to remind you about your irrational fear of my vacuum?”
Fluttershy shudders, her immortal teeth chattering. “No.” She gulps. “You don't.”
“You recovered from that complex, didn't you?”
“Mmmm... more or less.”
“What's it that you always say? 'Baby steps?'”
“These hooves haven't touched anything solid since I left Equestria...”
“You know what I mean. Just ease off on the cat thing. I promise you I'm treating him with utmost care. In the meantime, you can keep him company.”
She lights up at this. The tiny spectre looks up at me with twinkling eyes. “You really mean it?”
“Sure! Why not. You can even toss some tiny objects around for him to chase. He'll love the heck out of that.”
“Oh... that s-sounds absolutely fun~”
“Just don't hop inside him again, okay?” I point towards the far corners of the room. “I had him fixed ages ago, but I don't need you forcing him to spray out of fear.”
“Oh! I would never!”
“You have my whole-hearted trust.”
“Hmmmm...” Fluttershy smiles warmly and sits back down on the couch once again. “...I think I just might get used to this place after all, human.”
And she sinks straight through the furniture.
“Eeep!”
"DaaAAaaAAaarliiIIiiIIiiIIiing!"
"Dear lord, help me..." I cradle my head in my hands as I sit, hunched-over, before the computer. "Help me, lord, please ."
There's a cooing sound behind me, accompanied by what sounds remotely like twinkling bells. Or a xylophone. Or something else high-pitched and prissy.
"Donations..." I pull at my facial muscles, gazing up with bloodshot eyes at the screen full of numbers, brackets, and information fields before me. "Does Patreon count as 'donations to a hobby?'"
"Ah! Darling! This one is absolutely glorious!"
Something billows behind me. Something ethereal, flowy, and white as a sheet. No, it's not a ghost. It's a dress. A very old dress.
Someone talks, but it's not the dress. "So simple! Yet so elegantly stitched~!" A marshmallowy unicorn levitates through the gown, then settles into a delicate hover beside it. Her horn glows with a light blue haze, making it seem slightly less translucent than the rest of her. "I can easily tell that it's home-sewn! A product of love and expert craftponyship, no doubt! Ooops! " She daintily covers her ghostly muzzle. "A thousand pardons, dear. Craftman ship."
"Maybe I could lump Patreon and Ko-Fi into non-relevant sideline gratuity," I mumble aloud, not really understanding what I'm even saying. Nor caring to. "So what if it backfires?" I rub my face again. "I'm not planning on running for office anytime soon. At least not in this friggin' state."
"Oh! But that bust!" Rarity floats a stationary orbit around the levitating gown. "It looks so awfully tight! I must know how it looks in proper wear!" She looks towards me, batting her eyelashes. Ghostly mascara. Wat. "Would you be a dear?"
"Hmmm?" I throw a tired look over my shoulder.
Her eyelashes are still batting. Why do ghost horses even need to blink? When they want to get something via charm, of course: "Kindly try this on for me, darliiiing! I must know how it looks on a biped!"
"Put that back where you found it."
"Pffft! Puffft!" She swings her head left and right, purple mane flailing. "Don't be such a cheap sneeze! You'd look fabulous in this!"
"Put that back where you found it , please ."
"A resplendent dress like this?!? Perish the thought!" She attempts to snuggle the fabric, but her fuzzy cheeks only phase through the cuffs and seams. "It is such a shimmering spectacle of artistry! It absolutely must bask in the light of day! Every day!"
"It's my late grandmother's and that's wrong and I want it back where you found it, please."
"Why... I am shock and appalled, dear!" Rarity holds a shocked hoof over her non-beating heart. She and the dress sway backwards in a numb stupor. "Surely your beloved matriarch left behind a marvelous legacy! Quite detestable of you to hide it all in some stuffy old closet!"
"Please, Rarity..."
"I saw lovely gingham in there! Not to mention pure silk! Even a poodle skirt! Do you know how difficult it is to come by such felicitous fabrics back where I used to work?!"
"Please... I need to do my taxes..." I grasp my head and collapse against the desk once again. "I just need to do my taxes..."
"I hate to burst your bubble, dear, but only one thing in life comes to fruition." She slides closer in mid-air, whispering past my ear lobe. "The coffers can waaaaaaaaaaaait ," she hisses like something out of Ju-on .
I shudder, exhaling vapers. "There's a Hell somewhere on this planet, and it's run by the IRS."
"Well, it must be far... far from here!" Rarity beams, floating back into the adjacent room. "Thanks to your beloved grandmother, I have stumbled upon a heavenly paradise!"
"Uh huh. Sure." I slump back in the chair, breathing with relief that she's left the sepulcher of my room. "Just don't trip over The Great Divorce ."
"OOooOOooOooh!" she banshee-squee's from the guest room's closet. "What luck! Pantaloons! Pantaloons for miles! "
"Guh!" I kick out of my chair and scamper into the guest room. An exorcist on a mission. "By C.S. Lewis' buttcheeks!" I curse. "Get out of there!!!"
"BooOOooOOooOOooOOooks!!!"
"Pssst! Hey! Heyyyyyyy!"
"Mrrmfff..." I grumble into my sheets. I turn over in bed, stirring uncomfortably. The air of the room tingles with haunted magic yet again, and I feel like burrowing down into the earth's core, head-first. I slap a pillow over my cranium and wrap it around my ears in a desperate attempt to deafen the horse haunting.
I fail.
"Psssssst! Hey!" She speaks with the warm, bookwormish tones of a Canadian princess. By that, I mean that I really wish a moose would burst through the moonlit window and trample her into silence right now. "Are you awake?"
"Mrmmmm-no..." My voice grumbles. "I'm in a permanent comatose state."
"... ... ...if you were in a permanent comatose state, then how would you be able to respond to what I've been saying?"
"Grunnngh ... Twilight Sparkle..." I spin around and sit up with a huff. My eyes open... only to squint at a veritable asteroid field of floating books, pamphlets, books, magazines, books, notecards, and more books swirling above my bed. "Fitzgerald's pancreas..." I curse. "Twilight? Could you... uhhhh ... maybe tone it down with the Linda Blair nonsense?"
"Nuh uh." She rubs-rubs-rubs her fuzzy muzzle, peering from one open tome to another. She flicks an ectoplasmic hoof, and I watch as pages upon pages flip before her muzzle. Ghostly violet eyes reflect a sea of words, information, and illustrations. "I can't sleep."
"Lemme guess..." I yawn and rub my eyes. "Because you're the ghost of a dead unicorn."
"Alicorn."
"Them too."
"Nah, it's all because of Genghis Khan," Twilight Sparkle says without taking her peepers off the books.
"... ... ..." I pause with my fists over my eyes. I lower my hands so I can scrunch my face at the quadrupedal spectre. "You can't sleep because of Genghis Khan ."
"Did you know that he led a two year campaign that ended the lives of over twelve million people?!?" Twilight Sparkle stammers. "The entire Khwarazmian Empire!! Wiped out in a single generation!"
"Twilight, that was..." I grimace. Missing my pillows. Missing sleep. "...that was like eight hundred years ago..."
"You humans put too much stock in centuries!" she barks, flipping pages. "Where I come from, that's less than a single monarch's rule!"
"I guess your horse queens play 4D Space Chess."
"Princesses."
"What's the difference?"
"In Equestria , we resolve matters of major dispute through diplomacy and friendship! "
I cock my head slightly to the side. "You're... awfully keen on speaking in the present tense there..."
She goes on: "But humans? " She points her hooves at the myriad of books orbiting her in the center of the room. "Your history is a bombastic cavalcade of massacres, holocausts, and environmental destruction!"
"~All part of a balanced dystopia~"
"What I'm getting at..." She smiles goofily from ear to ghostly ear. "...is that it's an utter miracle your species has survived at all! Even without the wars and the social strife, you've endured a bevy of pandemics and cataclysmic geological events the entire time! I don't know whether to be flabbergasted or impressed!"
"Mrmffff..." I rub my temples, staring into the center of the bed. "You're implying that something won't finish us all off soon anyways." A stifled yawn. "We've only been doing this civilization schtick for the past one hundred millennia or so. If you ask me, we'd be better off climbing back into the trees and hurling feces at godzilla crocodiles down below."
"Yes, but the fact that you're still around ..." She peers down from her floating field of textbooks. "...seems to suggest that a few good apples among the bunch have made it all worth while!"
"Mmmmm... I doubt it."
She giggles, her ectoplasm rippling off the walls with violet brilliance. "Would it kill you to have a little bit of faith in your kind? Humans are tenacious and awe-inspiring!" She flips a page and peers at the resulting words. "Even in their darkest hours." A snort. "And, sure, there are a lot of them."
"... ... ..." I gaze fixedly up at her. "Y'know, Twilight, nobody ever said you and your friends ended up in heaven ."
She's already speaking, excitedly: "Did you know that the Russian detonation of Tsar Bomba created a shockwave that traveled the surface of the globe three times?" Her teeth glints in an excited smile. "With that kind of powerful science , who knows what awesome things humans could actually be capable of?"
"Mrmmmfff..." I sigh, rubbing my head again. "...well, I suppose we did land an introverted Buckeye on the moon." Another yawn. "And we invented grilled cheese sandwiches."
"I'm glad you have so many books to peruse! What were you doing with them all this time?"
"I hear that if you smell like a library, it keeps the Australian emu gangs away."
"I could spend eternity reading all of these pages! I mean..." Twilight Sparkle winks aside, suppressing a snicker. "I kinda sorta always had that opportunity, only now it's a whole new world's archive!"
"... ... ...what do you mean you always had that opportunity? "
"Oh! Oh! A magazine about terran ornithology!" In a ghostly lavender blur, the horse harpy zooms out of the room. "I've got to share this one with Fluttershy! She'll love it!"
"Twilight..."
"Don't go asleep without me! Zoop! "
"Twilight!" I bark after her. "At least take the volumes of Alexandria with you!"
I am barely finished uttering this when every single book in the room, no longer haunted, falls heavily around me in hard-back percussion... like a hail of encyclopedias. I wince and shudder, feeling multiple almanacs scraping and bruising me. At last, I sit in bed, slumped back with a phonebook draped loosely over my crown.
From the other room: "... ... ...what was that? "
"Grnnngh..." I shut my eyes and grumble. "Toni Morrison's dreadlocks..."
"FuuUUuuUUuuUUuuUUuuNNN!!!!!"
Static.
Black snow.
Hissing.
Muffled noises. Breaths? Voices?
"Fun!"
"Mrmfff... y-you hear that?"
"Fun!"
More rustling.
The black snow shifts.
A sense of movement, of pivoting upright.
A hand slides into frame, then sideways.
Click.
There's a splash of bright vanilla light, cascading over the edge of a bed and an accompanying table that houses a desk lamp.
Off in the distance, bathed in the charcoal black fuzz of dead-of-night shadows, a stream of digits flicker pink and vibrant. Everything is too far away for the camera to get a proper focus.
The camera shakes, wobbles, but mostly steadies into an upright landscape frame, capturing the dimly-lit bedroom beyond the bed.
"Shhhh... listen."
Silence.
"Fun!"
The string of digits across the room flicker in time with the chirping electronic outburst.
"Fun!"
"...Did you see it?"
"Fun!"
The camera operator's free hand points towards the flickering across the room.
"It's coming from the stereo system. From inside it."
The pink flicker vanishes.
Somewhere else, a noise echoes. The cell phone lens jerks over, catching a rectangular solid of strobing fuchsia.
"Fun! Fun! Fun!"
"It's coming from the computer now. Mrmmfff... I don't even have the stupid thing plugged in..."
The computer monitor dims.
There's a pulse of pink high above.
The camera tilts upwards, then struggles to focus in on the relocated source of light.
"Now it's in... ... ... the smoke detector...?"
"FFFUNNN!!! FFFUNNN!!! FFFUNNN!!!"
The phone camera wobbles visibly as the user nearly falls out of bed.
"Augggh! Jack Kerouac's bladder! Pinkie! "
"FFFUNNN!!! FFFUNNN!!! FFFUNNN!!!"
"Pinkie Pie!!!"
"FFFFFFUNNNNNN!!!!!"
"Pinkie Pie, g-get out of the smoke detector! I need that for... f-for carbon monoxide! And stuff!"
All electronic devices throughout the room (and presumably the rest of the house) start flickering on and off with otherworldly pink light. The vague facsimiles of cupcakes and confetti and party balloons manifest in electroplasmic laser light shows across the ceiling and walls.
"FUNNN!!!"
"FUNNN!!!"
"FUNNN!!!"
"Pinkie!!!"
"FUNNN!!!"
"Pinkie, not now! I'm trying to sleep!"
"FUN FUN FUN!!!"
"For the love of Mark Z. Danielewski's sideburns! You're worse than Rarity...!"
Suddenly, the entire camera feed flickers with pink static.
A poofy mane of candy-colored hair flounces in and out of view from opposite angles.
A pair of sea-blue eyes peer into the viewer's soul, followed by ivory teeth and a grinning muzzle.
"Heeheehee! Hi there!"
"Oh no..."
"Do you wanna play?!"
"She's in the phone..."
"~All you gotta do is take a cup of flour; add it to the mix!~"
"Dang it! Get out of the phone, Pinkie! I'm using it...!"
"~You gotta shaaaaaare! You gotta caaaaaaare!!~"
"Okay, if you're viewing this..."
"~Giggle at the Ghostiiiiess~"
"My house is friggin' haunted with ghosties! I mean..."
"~WHOOP IT UP WITH THE WEEPYYYY~"
"HORSE GHOSTS! HORSE GHOSTS LIVE IN MY HOUSE! "
The camera wobbles back and forth, as if it's being assaulted by a swarm of Cloverfield monster spawns, only pink and fuzzy and smelling of cake frosting. The bedroom is a kaleidoscope of salmon-colored lightshows at this point.
"Someone! Please! Go fetch the... cyborg children of Ed and Lorraine Warren! Or Edgar Cayce's chimpanzee! Or somebody! ANYONE!"
"FUNNNNNNNNN!!!!!"
"She's coming out of the Zora Neal Hurston's dang wallssss...!!"
A mouse cursor zips into view.
It clicks in the center of the feed.
The chaos pauses. The audio goes utterly silent.
The cursor streaks away from the media window of a Youtube Clip labeled: "- Horse Haunting Journal - 05/06/2021 - Pinkie Pie In the Bedroom - "
The mouse clicks on the comment field. A text icon blinks, and the words materialize:
"Bad Aftereffects. Fake and Gay. But not Gay Enough."
The mouse icon clicks "Send."
Then downvotes the clip.
Then clicks a thumbnail to a Fortnite video along the right side of the window.
"BooOOooOOooOOooOOrrRRrrRReDD!"
Klink!
Klink!
Kl-Klink!
My fists clenched, hovering just above the keyboard. A boiling bubble of frustration ripples through me, and I do my best to suppress the urge to scream. After all, there's just so many times I can allow my writing sessions to be interrupted by repetitive onomatopoeia.
The noise continues. This time on one line: Klink! Klink! Klink!
I clench my eyes shut. I should just ignore it. I should just ignore it. I should just ignore it.
Klink!-Klink!-Klink!-Klink!-Klink!-Klink!
The percussive noise becomes gatling gun cacophony now. It occurs to me that my act of ignoring is precisely what has caused the tempo to increase to such a maddening degree. No doubt, I am being baited. And considering this pony, I'm not too terribly surprised.
At long last, the noise cuts out... only for a raspy voice to fill the space left above me:
"I'm... so... borrrrrrrrrrrrred..."
I exhale out the side of my mouth, leaning in and pretending to concentrate on my word document. "You don't say..."
"Like... I'm the Duchess Mayor of Boredville, Boredtopia right now."
"Uh huh." I type out a sentence. It's awful. I backspace through it with a groan. "Stop taking it out on my ceiling fan."
Immediately , she disobeys me. Klink! "But it's so... metallic and swing-y," she whines. In my peripheral vision, I spot her ghostly blue figure reclining upside down on the ceiling, looking like an antigravity feline on Zoloft. With a limp, lazy hoof she bats at the dormant fan's support strut, making the whole thing sway. The electric lamps affixed to the object cast a twirling spotlight on the entirety of the office below. "Could you at least turn it on? Then I'd have something... I dunno... whizzy to look at."
"Don't say 'whizzy,'" I mutter, fingers tickling the computer keyboard, stuck in limbo. "You're too old for that."
"Pffft! You don't know how old I am."
"You're dead, turning on heavenly host."
"Death is boring. You're boring."
"At last..." I mutter. "An equivalence I can live up to."
"What are you writing?" Rainbow Dash asks looking straight up... down ? ... at me.
"Nothing you'd be interested."
"You mean what you're writing is boring."
"You're not the intended audience."
"Try me." Rainbow's voice cracks. "Is it about explosions?"
"No."
"It should be about explosions."
"It's about nihilists," I say.
Her cyan muzzle scrunches up above. "Nihilists?"
"Lesbian fairy nihilists," I said. "The 'lesbian' part is for marketability."
"Yeah? And the 'fairy' part?"
"It's my loophole around Patreon's terms of services."
"Yeesh. You gotta be really sad and desperate to write stuff like that."
I shake my head. "Not as sad and desperate as the poor saps who shop Amazon Kindle."
"I don't even know what that means."
"Good. There's still hope for you yet." I finally come up with a sentence that's not worth deleting.
Rainbow Dash waits for a typing session to end before barking: "You should let me take a crack at it."
"I don't think writing is your thing, Rainbow."
"Better than sitting here on the ceiling!"
"Do you even hear yourself right now?"
"Huh?"
With an exhale, I slump back in my seat and stare straight up at her roof-squatting figure. "You've transcended the mortal coil. You're incorporeal." I gesture wildly at her. "You can phase through walls and fly everywhere!"
"I could fly everywhere when I was alive."
I raise my eyebrow. "Yeah, but now you can... like... possess 747s and stuff."
For a brief moment, her ruby eyes light up. "What's a 747???"
I feel a cold swath of ice forming along my spine. In a nervous sweat, I clear my throat and stammer: "How about a race?"
Her ears immediately perk up. "A race...?"
"Mmmmmm-more like a time trial."
She stands up like an alert bloodhound on the ceiling. "A time trial?!?"
"Yeah... uh..." I gesture. "Fly to Gettysburg and back."
"Where's Gettysburg?"
"It's... it's..." A beat. I pull my phone out, whip out Google Maps, and glance at the compass. "...it's in that direction." I point through the closest wall. "That place has gotta be haunted as heck. There's no way you could miss it."
"Really? Are there other pony ghosts there?"
"A whale-load of Confederates died there. It's bound to be haunted by pony-lovers."
"That's... ... ... cool...?"
"Pffft..." I roll my eyes. "I knew you wouldn't be up for a challenge."
"Hey! " She leaps off the roof, does a flip, and hovers right-side-up in front of me. "Nuts to you and your lesbian fart nautiluses! I can totally fly to Galgunburgh and back!"
I fold my arms and pretend not to look at her. "Prove it..."
"You're on!" Rainbow Dash grins a crescent moon, ghost wings flapping. "I can make a full flight lap in nine seconds flat!"
My nose scrunches. I squint at her awkwardly. "Nine? Why such a specific number?"
"It's a-an upgrade!" She fluffs her chest indignantly. "I've gotta keep up with the times!"
"More like you're buying time."
"Says you!" She points at my phone. "Start your timer!"
"Pffft..." I wave a hand. "I don't need to..."
"Start your flippin' timer, ya melon fudge!"
"Fine..." I click the app in question. "Not that it matters-"
ZWOOOOSH!!! And Rainbow Dash is gone in a blue blur, leaving me to wonder how a bodiless ghosts could be capable of disturbing air molecules in such a fashion to produce a "Zwoooosh!!!" sound. But it doesn't matter. She's left my office, and I can return to my writing with full concentration.
...except that she returns, eight and a half seconds later.
SCREEEECH!!! "Mehhhhhhh..." She yawns, filling my ears with her voice before I can guess how ghost hooves could make sounds resembling braking tires as well. "All that build-up for nothing!" She fwumps out on the back of my office chair, her tail flicking through me with a cold chill. "Grannysbarge was nothing like you advertised."
I blink quizzically. My voice is accompanied by freezing vapors: "You actually made it to Gettysburg and back?"
"Yeah."
"Like... uhm... what did you see there?"
"Pffft. Like I need to fill you in."
I turn to look at her. "... ... ...Try me."
"Eh. Nothing special." She blows her prismatic bangs out of her face. "Just a dumb frozen wasteland in the middle of a starry void, occasionally venting huge jets of frozen water and hydrogen out into space..."
I blink. "Rainbow, that wasn't Gettysburg ."
"Oh no?"
"I... think that was Enceladus , the second moon of Saturn."
"Yeah?" Her tail flicks through me again. "Is that far away?"
"... ... ... ... ...kinda?"
"Hrmfff..." Rainbow drapes backwards over my sofa, looking like she could fall limply through the diameter of the planet at any given moment. "I've lost my edge. I swear... I gotta find a way to exercise my wings... ... ...especially since cider drinking contests is out of the picture."
I look at her. I look at the computer. I look at her again. "... ... ...do you wanna help me with my latest chapter?"
"Meh. Lesbian nudist flamingoes aren't my thing."
"What if we added explosions?"
She perks up. Immediately. "Do you mean it?"
"Sure. Why not." I shrug. "There's gotta be a fetish for it somewhere out there."
"What if... like... there's an explosion the size of a universe..." Rainbow gestures. "...and our main characters are having to outfly it by the skin of their teeth?"
"Maybe we can settle for an explosion the size of 'Nietzsche's Hollow.'"
"What's that?"
"The story's setting. But I'm cool with incinerating it if you are."
"Cool!" Rainbow zips towards the computer monitor. "Fire! Fire! "
"Don't block my view, please." I scoot forward. "Or the keyboard."
She hovers upside down, staring at the screen. "How's this?"
"That works. So..." I stroke my fingers across the home row. "What sets off the explosion?"
"What about... a boa constrictor...?" She grins, wingtips fluttering. "It swallows up a TNT factory and barfs out dynamite towards them!"
I nod. "Considering the tags of the next chapter, that would be good foreshadowing." I type away. "So... how about we spend a full paragraph describing this python's mammary glands."
"Ha HA!" Rainbow Dash's lower legs do a ghostly jig in mid-air. "Writing is fun!"
"AAAaaaAAAaaaAAAaaaples!!"
Ba- DUNK!
Ga- DUNK!!
My fingers freeze atop the keyboard.
Ba- DUNK!
Ga- DUNK!!
I see the reflection of my lethargically clearing eyes across the gloss of my computer screen.
The rattling sound keeps issuing from the opposite end of the house:
Ba- DUNK!
Ga- DUNK!!
I try to ignore it. I try .
Like so many things in my life as of late.
Floaty. Translucent. Vaguely fuzzy things.
For a brief spell, all is silent. I feel as though it is safe enough to return back to my word processor—
Ba- DUNK!
Ga- DUNK!!
“Oh for the love of Hemingway's cats! ” I curse.
With a disgruntled sigh, I save the document and climb up out of my desk chair. My left leg's asleep from the position I've placed myself in for the last half-hour, and I'm forced to limp out of my room, into the hallway, and across the house—tracing the source of the offensive knocking.
Ba- DUNK!
Ga- DUNK!!
I can see the shadows shifting from around the nearest corner. The air in the room drops ten... twenty degrees. My breath becomes visible in an angry vapor as I stumble into the kitchen and glare daggers into the corner.
“Will you knock it off?!”
Once again—without any consideration to the laws of thermodynamics—the refrigerator shakes and rattles on its own.
Ba- DUNK!
Ga- DUNK!!
“I mean it!!” I spit, waving vaguely towards the location of my office. “I'm trying to get some editing done in here!!”
Ba- DUNKKKKK!! The refrigerator knocks against the wall one last time—heavily—then settles into a quiet rattle.
Then silence.
“There...” I exhale sharply, beginning to turn towards the direction from which I came. “...was that really so hard—?”
“SILENCE, MONKEY!!!” the refrigerator speaks, except of course it flippin' doesn't. The freezer door is just swinging wildly on its hinges while a drawling southern accent bellows like an amateur ventriloquist from somewhere within. “YER LECTURIN' A CURSED FREEZER BOX! YER TIME OF RECKONIN' HAS COME YONDER!!”
“Applejack...” I place my hands on my hips. “Stop pretending to be a haunted refrigerator—”
“I REQUIRE A SACRIFICIAL OFFERIN' OF THREE WHOLE APPLES IN ORDER FOR THIS HERE POULTRY-GAS TO BE BANISHED!!”
“Don't you mean poltergeist—?”
“BITE YER TONGUE, MORTAL WHIPPERSNAPPER!!”
Stifling a groan, I rub my forehead as I shuffle forward towards the intensely-vibrating appliance.
“ONLY THE RED DELICIOUS SHELLS OF THREE WHOLE APPLES CAN SATIATE—“
With a firm hand, I yank the larger door panel open.
A translucent cat-sized pony with a long blonde ponytail and a translucent cat-sized hat lies curled-up in the back of the third shelf, squeezed between a canister of cream cheese and a plastic tub full of half-decade old duck sauce packets. She freezes in the middle of her frightful equinidolon speech and blinks up at me, full of ectoplasm and freckles.
“—...the demons??” she sputters.
“Applejack .” I am glaring. “What have I told you about raiding my fridge?”
“Erm...” Her tail flicks, phasing through spaghetti leftovers and a half-eaten cuban sandwich. “...always leave plenty of room in the belly of the boat for loot?”
“Out! ” I point offensively across the kitchen, gnashing my teeth. “Now!”
“Uh uh! I ain't budgin'!” She frowns, curling her front fetlocks against her ghostly chest. “Not until you fetch me some apples!”
“Faulkner on pogo-stick... ” I facepalm, sighing. “How many times have we been over this??” I cackle: “You can't eat!”
“Hrmmff!” She tilts her nose up. “Maybe not with that attitude!”
“I don't even keep apples in my fridge!”
“Pffft! Reckon I dun know that?” She kicks against the back wall of the refrigerator and sorta... airglides out like a levitating ghost roomba. This paranormal action sends her careening through my physical form, which sends a briefly menacing chillll up my spine. “Figured you monkey mortals liked to freeze yer vittles—seein' as how yer incineratin' just about everythang else in the world!”
“Don't l-lecture m-me on our civilization's apocalypse...” I rub my arms, melting the goosepimples away as I turn to follow her floating form. “I'm still struggling to figure out yours .”
“Eh...” Applejack floats past hanging pots and pans, fogging them up with chilly condensation while her disembodied voice echoes against the kitchen window's frame. “All good thangs come to an end. And me and my partners' lives was one doozy of a shindig, you get what I'm sayin'?”
“Maybe. Maybe not. But for the millionth time ...” I clutch both fists and hunch over with a pleading expression. “What does your existential nightmare have to do with me?!? ”
“Nothin'. Nothin' at all.” Applejack removes her hat, fans herself, then pivots towards me with a steely expression. “Unless... of course...” She plops the ghost hat back on her ghost head and undulates towards me on ghost hooves. “...you refuse me a fruity snack and I will have to cuuuuuuurse youuuuuu! ” She waves her forelimbs like inflatable tube noodles in an autumn breeze. “OOooOOooOOooOOoo!!”
My nostrils flare. Defeated, I march sideways two steps, reach up, and grab a trio of apples from a hanging fruit basket above the kitchen cutting board.
“Here.” I reach forward, offering the bounty in limp hands. “You happy?”
Her entire demeanor switches from demon to angel in an emerald-eyed blink. “Well, shucks! There they were the whole time! Haah haaaah! Ain't that just whistlin' dixie?”
“Dogs can't look up.”
“Beg yer pardon?”
“Mrmffff...” I toss the apples at her. “Here ya go.”
“Mwaaaaaaaaaaah—!” She opens her tiny horse chompers wide. The three bits of fruit fall into her mouth... through her throat... and land with pulpy splashes against the hard tile floor below. “Mmmmm!” She makes a show of licking her lips and rubbing her belly. “Yum! Yum!” A wide, bright grin: full of freckles and teeth—both translucent. “Them's good eats!”
“Good eats?!?” I gesture inconsolably towards the fresh mushy mess on the floor. “They just went through your body, you dumb phantom furry!”
“Whew-wee! I feel me a dinner coma comin' on!” Applejack gallops out the north wall of the house, vanishing with a flick of her tail. I hear her ghostly voice rattling through the house's foundation. “Better get straight to apple buckin' or else I'll nap the whole afternoon away!”
“Applejaaaaaack, please ...” I cup two hands over my mouth. “Give the squirrels a rest, will ya?! At least kick the cacti along the driveway! They don't have anything living in them!”
My cries fall upon deaf ears. Dead ears? Whatever.
Sighing, I grab a paper towel and proceed to wipe the tasty muck off the floor.
“I should grow an orchard out back,” I mutter to nobody and everybody. I shift my weight from knee to knee as I work on the tile. “What point is there in paying ghostly ranchhooves? I'll make a killing.”
Just as I say this, I hear the toaster rattling and “hopping” atop the kitchen counter behind me.
Cla- KLACK!
Cla- KLACK!
“OooOooOoo! Quickly, mortal!” A cracking voice rasps from the electronic appliance. “You must feed me Pop-Tarts or I will make all your grandparents' underwear turn to liquid! Only the awesomest flavor will do! Something like strawberry cinnamon—”
“It's not going to work, Rainbow Dash!” I snarl without looking. “Give it a rest!”
The toaster rattles to a stop.
Dead silence.
Until...
“WhooOOooOOooOOooOOoo is Rainbow DaaAAaaAAaaAAaash?! Nopony here but us haunted kitchenwaaAAaaAAaaAAaare!”
“Friggin' James Joyce on a zamboni...”
