Running from the Past

Sometimes it is hard to forget, especially if you desperately need to.

Running. There seemed to be a lot of it recently, thought Rhyme Twister bitterly. The knowledge that there was no one to blame but himself hung over him like a dark cloud. But that cloud that was actually over him was nothing compared to the drenching he was receiving from the huge storm clouds that were high in the sky. All this, along with the lack of sleep didn’t do much to help his mood.

‘Stupid weather ponies.’ Twister thought. ‘They always seem to manage to schedule these storms whenever it inconveniences me the most.’

‘Where were they when?...’

Twister closed his eyes shaking his violently back and forth, trying to stop the onslaught of memories that he knew would snowball out of control, just like it always did.

It worked, if only barely. But it had the surprising side-affect of making himself dizzy. Stumbling onward, he managed a couple of more steps before his front legs nearly gave out on him.

‘No! Not here! It’s right in middle of a town!’ Thought Twister, feeling an odd mixture of annoyance and terror. ‘I can’t! I can’t stop now. I can never stop.’

But each step afterward was forced, causing pain with the motion. He had to stop. He had to stop before his body completely failed him. He had to...

“No! I! Will! Not! Stop!” Twister said aloud, breaking the semi-silence of the rain. No-pony was around to hear him, or to even see the azure pony stumbling onward towards his destination.

“I. Can. Not. Stop.”

‘Ever.’

Each word was immediately followed by a hoof-step, with every one of them smaller than the last. He couldn’t keep this up forever.

Then, out of seemingly nowhere, barely audible over the noise of the rain.

Laughter.

Twister stopped immediately, locking his legs so he wouldn’t fall over. Shivering violently, he peered into the dark, wet night.

“You think that you can run from your past?” Came a voice, to the left of Twister. Swinging his head towards the sound, he tilted his ears forward, trying to detect where the noise was coming from.

“Sh-sh-sh yourself.” Twister barked into the darkness, teeth chattering quickly, the downpour soaking him to the skin and chilling him to the bone.

More laughter. “Gladly”

Twisting his head quickly to the right, Twister nearly fell over in shock. There he was, a pony so black that it was hard to even tell where his outline was in the moon-less night. Twister’s eyes zeroed in on the one splotch of color on his coat. His cutie-mark was was  muddy brown, and dull silver.

A scythe.

“You can’t run from your past. Not forever, little pony. Sooner or later, no matter where you stop running, your past will catch up with you.” The dark pony said in a sinister voice. “ And when it does, you’ll have no choice but to face it!” Walking towards Twister, the pony smiled, showing his teeth.

“St-st-st...” Shivering so violently, Twister couldn’t form anything better than that.

“Stay back?” Said the mystery pony, glancing at the pony in front of him, still advancing all the while. “Or what? You’ll hurt me? Excuse me if I’m wrong, but you’re in no position to give any orders. You never were, in fact.”

Losing the smile, the pony stopped about ten feet from Twister, fixing him with a stare that could kill.

“But I digress. Let’s get on to the nitty-gritties of why I’m here, shall we?”

“Why did you do it?”

There it was, the one question that Twister had tried to answer himself, and came up blank every-time. Squishing his eyes shout, Twister tried to hold back the tears that were welling up.

‘I didn’t mean to!’ Thought Twister, unable to form sentences anymore. But the other pony still somehow managed to hear him, and scorn him.

“Didn’t mean to? Didn’t mean to!” The other pony roared at Twister. “How could something like this be anything close to an accident!”

'I'm sorry. So, so very sorry.' Twister thought, crying openly now. It seemed like all of his remaining strength was slowly being sapped away by the other pony's very presence.

“Sorry doesn't cut it!” The other pony said, his voice calculated and disconnected from any feeling. “What matters is what you've done about it, which so far has been Nada ,zip, nothing!”

Suddenly galloping full tilt at Twister, the other pony started screaming bloody murder, and a long string of profanities, a murderous look in his eyes. Twister prepared for the blow. Most likely a death blow, as weak as Twister was, and a strong as his opponent was.

----Only to disappear right before actually touching Twister. But Twister's body still reacted as if he had been hit. Hitting the ground hard, Twister tried in vain for a few seconds to get back up, only to give up as he realized how impossible it was.

He lay there on the ground, every fiber of his body aching. But the aches and pains that his frail body was feeling was nothing compared to the emotional wounds that the black pony had reopened, ones that had never really closed. And as he went under, he saw them, and grieved, for the moments before reality shut down, and the feeling of bliss that sleep provides.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~0~0~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

And above all this, the weather ponies desperately tried to get the storm under control before it could hurt anypony.

“I thought that this was only supposed to a spring shower!”  Shouted a pegasus.

“It was! We stopped feeding it over an hour ago! It must of gotten a magic boost from somewhere!”

And as the pegasus got the storm slowly under control, and slowly dissipated. They went home to bed, and it was well deserved after the battle that they had just fought with the storm. All of the pegasi were to tired to noticed much, including a blue pony, shivering and crying against a giant tree in the middle of town.