I yawned, my visage reflecting into the darkness of the screen in front of me. I was tired, so very, very tired. My eyes darted to the digital clock in the corner of my monitor's screen. A disappointing yet predictable number stared back at me, three in the morning yet again. I drummed my fingers on the wooden surface of my work table, my eyes scanning through yet another revision of my term paper.

"I swear, if this one gets denied again..."

Any witty remark died in my throat as I hit save, closing the tab and staring at my browser's blindingly white page. I pondered watching a movie, only for the idea to be dashed away by the weight of my eyelids. If I wanted to feel alive tomorrow morning, I had to hit the hay that instant, lest a shambling corpse enter the university's doors tomorrow morning.

I shambled towards my bed, vision blurry as I took out my contact lenses and deposited them into their respective containers. Despite my heavy limbs I know that a good hour or two of restlessness awaits me, so I reach for a bottle of sleeping pills, nothing too serious, over the counter stuff.

Popping two tablets into my mouth I swallowed them dry, settling into the comfortable warmth of my bedsheets. I exhaled as the confines of my bed failed to bring me into the warm embrace of sleep, anxious thoughts ruining any chances to fall asleep by myself.

A violet cough rattled my ribcage, reminding me once again that I've forgotten to grab flu medication on my way back home. Fuck, just what I bloody needed. I rubbed at the needle-like protrusions penetrating the back of my palm, the hard, black surface still visible in the darkness of the room.

I sighed, closing my eyes and rubbing the bridge of my nose.

This term paper was the only thing standing between myself and getting shitfaced with my friends during new year. I prayed for a swift and favorable resolution of my troubles, medicine soon taking its toll on me as I faded into the dark.

I'm not sure when, but at some point I understood that I wasn't simply dreaming. It wasn't just the ever present darkness, I had experiences with dreamless nights, after all. Rather, it was the lack of stimuli that clued me in on the state of my being, coupled with my unnatural lucidity during the entire affair.

Ever heard of sensory deprivation chambers? You know, salt water at body temperature that makes you float at the surface, the pitch black interior and soundproof walls ensuring you are completely cut off from the outside world? Yeah, think that, but worse. Because sensory deprivation chambers don't restrict your movement, you can flail your arms or scream your heart out, you can bang your fists on the walls until they bleed, scream for someone to let you out.

I listened intently for any sound, even tinnitus would've been a saving grace compared to the deafening silence around me. It was when I tried to still my breath to listen intently for any sound, I noticed something that terrified me to my core. I wasn't breathing. I wasn't breathing.

In retrospect, it's somewhat amusing that my first reaction was to hyperventilate, to no avail, mind you, my nonexistent diaphragm didn't expand, no air entered my ethereal lungs, no oxygen traveled to my missing alveoli. My second reaction was to scream, which was, of course, impossible, the lack of trachea or vocal cords, nevermind the lack of air, making the action fruitless.

My eyes shot open in a desperate attempt to assess my surroundings, but nothing changed. It was at this moment, as my eyeballs danced in my orbits to take in as much light as possible, I realized something terrifying. I had no eyes. Another attempt to scream, another failure.

I then tried to flail my limbs, yet no signals came from my missing spinal cord, no electricity traveled through my nervous systems, no motor neurons were fired, no muscles were flexed. I couldn't feel my body, but not because I was sleeping.

I simply didn't have a body.

To say that I broke down would be an understatement. I wept nonexistent tears, a million thoughts raced through my mind, a silent scream of terror filling the void around me. I'm not certain for how long I remained a screaming, weeping mess of consciousness. It could've been days or weeks, maybe months, it wasn't exactly easy keeping track of time, but at some point I managed to calm down. Well, 'calm down' isn't really the right way to put it. Looking back, I'd say I exhausted myself enough for my thoughts to slow down, and I realized that I was having thoughts.

And that meant that I was still alive. You know, 'therefore I am' type of deal.

I remember breaking down once more, I cursed all gods I've ever heard of, everyone I've ever met in my life, cursing them for dooming me to this fate, one I was fairly certain was worse than death. I was sure they conspired against me, they had to, right? Perhaps someone broke into my apartment while I was sleeping and killed me, and all of this was a punishment for my earthly life? Or maybe I overdosed and was in a coma, all of this being a fever dream my mind conjured up as I slowly wilted away on a hospital bed.

That last thought sparked hope in me. If I was still alive, maybe I could send a sign to the people in the real world? I screamed and shouted, willed my missing libs to move and begged for anybody to help me, come and save me from this eternal torture. I wasn't strained by physical limitations of my nonexistent body, so I once again lost track of time, pouring my heart and soul into the void, my last ditch attempt at escaping this prison met with silence.

Finally, my will to fight waned enough for me to stop, putting a stop to my attempts to set myself free. My thoughts spiraled uncontrollably, one overlapping the next. If this was what awaited me for the foreseeable future, was there even a point in thinking? Maybe if I cleared my head of any and all thoughts, I could cease to exist? It surely would've been a better alternative to all this. The thought seemed inviting, fading away into the nothing shouldn't have been a frightening prospect at this point, right?

But I was terrified.

I remembered my friends and family, tried to picture their faces, their voices, a feeling of relief washing over me as a slideshow of faces appeared in my mind's eye. I was ecstatic at that moment, positively crying with joy as I recollected my life, both the good and the bad, happy and sad moments. Camping trips and drunk get-togethers, evenings of playing tabletop games, long lectures at my university and nerve-tingling minutes before exams, all of it was better than what I was currently experiencing.

Was it worth losing all that, just to stop myself from suffering? Accept that I lost this fight and choose an easier, albeit a cowardly option to go gently into that good night? It scares me that, even to this day, I don't think there's a right answer for this question. I was tethering the line between wakefulness and final slumber, dangerously close to falling over the edge and into the other side, when something gave me a kick in, what I now understand to be, the right direction.

Both a physical and a metaphorical one, as my entire being lurched violently into one direction, sending me reeling from the long forgotten sensation, the sensation soon being replaced by a gentle yet ever-present pull. It was so refreshing to actually feel something. Not to recollect it in your mind's eye, but to physically feel the pull of my body, the revelation that I still had a body terrified me to no end.

What did I look like? An emaciated body on a hospital bed, currently being cleaned? Or was I finally being pulled from life support, no signs of me leaving this coma-like state for who knows how long sealing the deal? Either that, or whatever hellish dimension I resided in finally decided I had enough of this isolation, and was currently transporting me to another never ending torture session.

Still, if there was even a slim chance that someone could hear me, help me, I had to try. I filled my lungs with oxygen, and screamed my heart out for as long as I could, begging, pleading with anyone who could hear to help me, tell the world that I was still there. It didn't take awfully long for the pull to become stronger, seemingly correlating with my efforts.

My momentary happiness soon turned to horror as a burning sensation enveloped me from head to toe, a pain I haven't experienced in a long, long time. Despite the burning sensation increasing in intensity as it enveloped me, the pain I initially felt seemed to have dulled, in time turning into a barely noticeable ache. It was an odd development, all things considered, but before I could begin to question what was happening to me, the burning sensation lessened, finally ceasing to exist, only for something else to take its place.

A violent crash shook me to my core, the force of the impact no doubt enough to turn a person into a fine red mist. That same force failed to do more than daze me momentarily, leaving me wondering what the hell had just happened? Had I fallen from my hospital bed? It would've been funny, if it weren't so infuriating. Whoever was taking care of me, were clearly doing a bad job. I was about to try my patented 'scream and shout' method of getting results, when a brand new sensation made itself known.

It felt like pulling off a scab from an old wound, the sensation both pleasant and slightly painful. Now, something I'm about to tell you is hard to describe, so please bear with me. It felt like taking a breath after surfacing from under the water, the air dry as that of a desert. The cool air caressed my body, sensations outlining its current shape.

It was an odd thing to take in, the fact I was no longer human. Instead of a normal, bipedal humanoid body that I used to inhabit, a roughly geoid shape greeted me instead. I didn't see it per se, more like I felt it, the rough edges of what seemed like a carapace distinctly different from the mucus-like substance contained within.

I reeled from the revelation of my current state, but intrigue won over disgust, in the end prompting me to investigate further. Muscle memory kicked in as I tried to flex and relax my nonexistent muscles, the action doing little more than frustrating me. Undeterred by the lack of response I tried and tried again for what seemed like hours, to no avail.

I growled in frustration, the bleakness of my situation once again setting in. Great, instead of being dead or hospitalized, I turned into a puddle of God-knows-what. Fucking great. I concentrated all my anger and frustration into one thought, wishing I could move or punch or do something more than just exist as a puddle of liquid. I mentally lashed out to strike the nearest object, fully prepared for my initiative to fail.

Only to feel the puddle move.

It did so almost imperceptibly, the sludge not simply moving from one place to another, but rather growing to consume more space. My initial confusion gave way to excitement, which further shifted into exhaustion as the sludge, as I continued to move, slowly but surely spread from the confines of my rocky geoid, and onto the sandy ground beneath. To my utmost bewilderment the carapace shifted, once again closing shut, the sludge/me now seeping through the small opening at the base of the geoid.

I am still not one hundred percent comfortable with this sensation, so alien from what I was familiar with. It was actually overwhelming, feeling yourself spread over each grain of sand, each groove of the ground. So much so, that a hidden part of me refused to continue without rest, without a chance to properly assess things. Even this alien sensation dulled as I began to feel the embrace of sleep, something I haven't felt in a long, long time.

A quiet night settled over the town of Appleloosa, ushering in a welcome cold that contrasted harshly with the town's blistering midday heat. Braeburn watched his beautiful apple orchard from a convenient vantage point that was a hill not far from the settlement. The stallion reclined in his seat, sipping a can of his family's famous cider, most graciously provided by his cousin.

The peaceful night was cut short, however, when a ball of red light emerged from behind the clouds, dispelling them in an instant. The farmer watched in horror as the meteorite headed straight for his priceless orchard, landing amidst the very first grove of trees planted on his property.

"Horseapples!" Braeburn cursed, quickly folding his chair and placing it into his saddlebags, galloping down the hill like a stallion possessed.

Author's Note

Hope you like this fun little adventure, in which our human? protagonist is definently not going to do anything horrific to cute, multicolor ponies

Oh, and fair warning: don't expect regular updates, but that advice goes for pretty much all of my stories.

I'm a lazy bum.