Memories Of The Forgotten
Your plan was perfect, and the magic was flawless. You and Cheerilee were both excited; what could go wrong? You had gone for the deluxe package, three spells in one, with a built-in antidote to ensure there were no complications. It'd even end by itself without needing to visit the caster a second time. The first spell was the most important; it turned you into a soft, tan pair of cotton panties. That's the part you were most excited about. The second one added a sense of thrill to the whole thing; it erased all memory of you from the world; no one would ever remember you existed. This one was very expensive; it cost more than double the other two spells combined but allowed you to be panties naturally, without worrying about jobs or family, for as long as it took to activate the antidote, whether that was just the weekend or even a whole week. Lastly, of course, was the antidote. It would start after being worn for a total of 48 hours. Not only was this a surefire way to make sure you were changed back, but it also ensured that you got your money's worth. Having a countdown timer run out in a laundry basket after being worn for just 20 minutes is no fun.
As it is now, you're sitting on the dresser, waiting with butterflies for the moment you'll finally be worn. You see movement from your peripherals, and a vaguely hoof-shaped blur snatches something off the dresser next to you. Keys maybe? You hear a door slam a second later and sigh internally. You'd get noticed and put on tonight; until then, you may as well take the time to relax and take in your surroundings.
The room was small but cluttered, with a double bed and a window on one side. Rent was cheap here, far away from the town, but the walk was terrible… Hopefully, you could find a new place sometime soon, someplace that still has a yard but didn't kill your knees just going into town. The sunlight streaming through the window was just starting to hit you, sending warm vibes across your cotton. You imagined yourself stretching and laying down for a nap and trying to fall asleep to pass the time. To your frustration, you can't seem to settle down and sleep. In fact, you can't even seem to close your eyes as the sun shines down on you. You realize that it's probably by design, so you'd be aware of every sensation while you're being worn. You can't fault the logic, but it's not making the day go by any faster.
The hours crawl by, your boredom getting the best of you. You sing your favorite song in your head (or, rather, your fabric). You count the ponies going by on the road, but you keep getting distracted by birds and losing count, so you give up on that endeavor. The sun's heat steadily grows to an almost uncomfortable point, and you mentally imagine yourself sweating as your boredom leaves you no choice but to focus on the light and the temperature.
After what feels like ages, the sun is starting to slip down below the horizon. You hear muffled noises from far off, and your heart leaps! Finally, your waiting will pay off! You feel elated, and your mind starts to imagine how it'd feel to be worn that close to someone you love… The door to the bedroom bursts open, and you catch a glance of Cheerilee's annoyed, distracted face looming over you for a split second until a stack of books gets slammed on the dresser in front of you, blowing you back a couple inches from the impact. You are on the back edge of the dresser now, part of you hanging over the edge as you look down into the dark crack between the wall and the tan wood.
You wait patiently as you hear things being moved and bumped around in the room, and you feel the drawer under you slide open. You wilt inside a little as you realize the books are blocking you from the world; you are practically invisible. It'll be at least until morning until you get another chance at being worn. Suddenly, the drawer slams shut again, and your cloth form shifts, starting to slip. Your mind is scrambling for options as you creep further into the crack. Could you move a little and grab onto the lip? No good, you can't budge. Could you say something to catch attention? Your voice screams as loud as it can go in your head, but you don't think anyone else can hear you. You start to panic, feeling yourself start to slip all the way off the dresser, and then-
Weightlessness.
You hit bottom with a soft impact. It doesn't particularly hurt, but it is jarring, to say the least. Looking around again, you see that you are partly wedged between the baseboard and the wooden board at the bottom of the dresser, with only a little bit of your new body on the carpet itself. You strain again to try and move, to inch your way forward out of the almost complete blackness and into the light, but you still can't budge. The noise in the room is muffled to the point that you can't even tell if you're alone anymore. You roll your eyes mentally; this was a boring way to spend the night. Things aren't going how you imagined at all. You can only assume you'd get discovered when the books got moved, and you weren't in your spot, but there's no telling how long that could be. A day? Two or three? Can you even sit still that long? You'll have to, you suppose. There's no way around it.
The night rolls on and on, it's more comfortable than the day, but it's still boring. Eventually, you'll be noticed, and you'll finally be worn. You listen for sounds that could tell you what is going on outside of your prison. Still, unfortunately, there's no noise at all, just a deadening, muffled, quiet blanket of air all around you. You grumble and think about how late it must be at this point. Or was it daytime yet? Will you even be able to tell? You resolve to try and keep track if you can count the seconds until you notice a change. It's not like you have much else to do.
You count on and on into the night until you reach 100,000. It took forever, but you're pretty sure it'd have to be morning by now after that many seconds. You do some quick math to figure out how long it's been precisely… You feel a cold rush through your body at the results; there's no way, over a whole day? Shouldn't you have been found or at least heard something? You think a little more; that means it's sometime in early Sunday morning, and there has been no obvious sign that you were missed… Well, at least it was laundry day; when a pair of panties came up short, you'd surely be tracked down. For now, you need to try and listen for any movement outside of the black void you're currently in.
The stillness remained deafening, and the still air hung around you, stifling your attempts to feel something. The carpeted ground underneath you is dusty, and you can perceive the ground, but you can't feel it without movement. You may as well be lying on nothing at this point. The dresser had been slid against the wall to the left, blocking out all light in that direction, and on the right was a floor-to-ceiling wardrobe that was pressing against the wall as well. It was a prison made by a lack of space, but it was still a prison, at least until a certain somepony did laundry later.
The deadened silence hung in the air like a weight around your neck. You tried to remember the last time the dresser had been moved... If you had lungs, you'd be hyperventilating now. Your imagination runs wild, thinking of all the things that could go wrong. Why hadn't the two of you planned things out better? Why hadn't you waited on the bed instead? So many things could have been done better to prevent this.
While running through the events in your mind, you almost missed it. Movement. You couldn't have missed it; of course, your mind was forced to focus on everything around you in this form, but you almost missed the significance of it. You concentrate on the moving shape in the darkness as best you can… It was getting closer, close to the ground, large, with halting movements. You could almost make out the shape… It skittered forward, and your heart jumped in your imaginary chest for a second; it was an enormous cockroach, creeping straight for you; nothing you could do, no way for you to escape this horrific monster, no way to fight it, no way to warn-
No, no. It's ok. It's just an ordinary roach. You try to calm down as it sneaks up to you. There wasn't any real danger, right? You didn't realize the house had roaches, but it's nothing a trap or two wouldn't fix. It reaches your cloth body and waves its hair-like feelers over it, and you inwardly shudder at the touch. The mouth opens and closes as it inspects you, and you can hear the hard, chitinous shell parts tapping against each other as it moves. It seems to have decided that you posed no threat and begins to climb through you.
You're instantly hit with a sickening smell of must and oil, an almost dead smell as the sharp claw segments dig into your cotton flesh. Rage fills you with this violation; what right did this bug have to violate you? To get its stink in your clean body? The claws hurt slightly as the bug clambers through leg holes and out the top. You can still feel the places where it touched you, even as it skitters up the wall and away. The smell lingers, and you desperately hope that it stays gone.
The seconds slip by. Unable to keep yourself occupied, you start to count them; it was still laundry day, right? You can still be found, no worries. By your estimation, Cheerilee should be waking up any minute now; you listen closely for the sound of the alarm going off…
The front door opens, and hoofsteps ring out through the house. That's not right. Shouldn't it be Sunday morning? How long had it been? Were you losing time? Were you counting too slowly? The drawers above you open and close, and you start counting again. If you were right, you had 12 hours, give or take, before those drawers were opened again. In other words, 43,000 seconds. You start counting again, making sure to enunciate in your mind "ONE one thousand, TWO one thousand…" to ensure an accurate count.
You stayed as aware of your surroundings as you could while you counted. As you reached 26,746, you heard the alarm. You stopped counting in disbelief. It should only be about 1 AM, right? What was going on? Are you experiencing time more slowly than you were used to? It would make sense if the spell boosts all of your senses, but… It just doesn't seem right; you would notice if everypony was in slow motion, wouldn't you? If that was the case, was today even Monday like you had thought? How long have you been down here?
You give up on the counting and desperately try to move. Your phantom limbs and non-existent body strain at your command, but to no avail. Suddenly, you realize precisely how claustrophobic now being able to move it. Before, you hadn't thought about entrapment, just your lack of movement. Still, now that you're stuck and need to get out, you can feel every inch of your body, the cotton cloth acting as a perfect iron cage from every angle. It locks you in place, freezing your movement, unyielding and cruel. Your mind pours over your shapes, the twists, the folds, the seams, looking for a chink in the armor that is yourself. There's nothing there, though, nothing gives way, and you start to feel the sheer terror of being stuck. It's like being rolled up in a rug and left, buried alive without a coffin, and crushed by bags of sand. You wail and thrash inside your head, begging the universe to send something to save you.
As if in response to your message, you sense movement again, under the dresser with you. Is it your roach friend? It's been so long since you saw anything else under here; even the roach would be a welcome sight. The movement is wrong, though; it's too smooth… It comes into your sight-zone, and you are surprised it's a mouse. You certainly didn't have mice before, although you did most of the cleaning; maybe your being magically gone created some kind of gap in Cheerilee's mind? You watch the mouse shuffle along the baseboard, sniffing every few inches or so. It reaches you and presses its cold nose to your 'crotch' (not that the crotch section is more or less analogous to your natural body than the rest of you) and sniffles. It almost tickles the way the whiskers brush your fabric, and the twitching snout feels wonderful after not feeling anything for so long. The mouse leans forward and pulls on you with its teeth. Yes! Finally! Your heart soars; this is the moment it pulls you out from behind the dresser, and you're found at long last.
Your thoughts screech into chaos the second the mouse's teeth click down together through your body. You stumble over the sensation, the burning throbbing sensation. Did you just get a hole bitten through you? You trace the hole with your senses, the pain burning your body and mind just to comprehend it; there was a rip right in the front of you. A hollow, searing itself into reality. It's throbbing. How is it throbbing? You don't have a heart; why does it feel like a burn? Why-
Again
New pain rolls through you as the mouse tears more of you, pulling at a part of you, sliding the threads out, and bunching you around the wound. This isn't right; part of you was being pulled wrongly, loose threads hanging out of you like so much offal.
With another snap, and another, and another, you feel parts of you fall away, cut off from your body by this beast, this heartless monster. Ripping into your being for something as benign as foraging for a nest. 'Please,' You scream into nothingness, 'please, just drag me out into the room; I'll give you as much food and nesting materials as you need; just stop the pain, please….'
The mouse doesn't hear you.
As it pulls and pulls, you begin to turn, in desperation, to some higher power. Celestia, Discord, Cozy Glow, anyone, you'll give them your life if only this would end.
After some time, it does. The mouse bunches up as much of you as it can fit in its jaws and disappears into the darkness, leaving you throbbing and crazed from the pain. The hole most likely isn't enough to even poke a straw through, but at your size, it may as well be the size of a baseball. The pain isn't fading; it's not easing up or getting easier to deal with. It fills you with a feeling, though, something to focus on and keep you from slipping away again.
You begin to hold on to that feeling, the pain, and associate it with your sense of self. Being alive, being a pony. Panties don't feel pain; you must still be a pony deep down inside this mess of cloth. But what pony are you? The pain is clouding your mind; you try to remember your name and tie your identity to the pain, but there are only bits and pieces left. It's been so long since you thought about it you can't quite remember… Does your name start with a C? Cook? Crookie? No… Maybe an S? Sunny, Shiny, Shimmy… No. Not that. Maybe it is a C name after all…Cake? Crank? You feel despair and the creeping sadness that comes along with it. Has it been too long? Has it been long enough that you really are losing yourself in a pair of panties lost behind a dresser? You can't cry, but you feel like you're crying, mourning yourself and the loss of everything about you. You won't even be missed by anyone, your family, friends, they all forgot you because of that spell. Of course, you can't remember them either, but to know that your whole life amounts to nothing more than a wad of old clothing lost forever hurts to understand,
Although, if that's all you are, why should you care? Nopony else does, and you're already slipping away; why not just let the void win? The pain of the hole in your body starts to ease as you let your identity crumble into the recesses of your mind. You're unaware of time slipping around you, trailing behind you as you skate through it, ignorant and unfeeling. This is your life, your mind, and your soul. Existence as a lack of anything, the easiest, most comfortable thing in the world.
You jar out of your bliss and come back to your body with the feeling of something moving you. You lazily begin to remember the mouse and the roach, and your hazy mind wonders if one of them has returned to you. No worries, you can ignore them; they're as much part of the universe as you are, and nothing can disturb your peace. Although… Something hard and round is wrapped around you, crumpling and twisting, pulling you away from your meditation and your safety. They pull you out, and you are hit with shining white, something above you… Light? You're outside of the crack... When was the last time that happened? You slowly remember the outside world as you're swung around in the air, disorienting you. You are… alive? Yes, you are… a pony. It's coming back; you're a pony, the hard thing is a hoof, and it's connected to… You crane your vision to see through the halo of light framing the figure over you. A wave of relief you didn't know you were holding back washes over you. It was Cheerilee. Now you could be worn, you could be cleaned, maybe even sewn back up, and… You were almost giddy with anticipation… You could be a pony again.
You hear a pleased sound from up above, and you internally squirm with glee; you picked the best pair to be turned into, something that begged to be worn and hit all of her personal favorite checkboxes. It's only a matter of time now.
Her hoof runs over you, pulling and rubbing, overloading your senses as your spirits soar. You were flipped over, and the rubbing stopped. She traces down your front to the crotch and circles the mouse hole, slipping the tip of her hoof into it, pulling it open just a bit. Pain shoots through you, but you try to remain aware of the sensation and savor the pony's touch. A sigh floats down to you from above, and the world falls away with the sense of movement. You swing back and forth as you're carried out of the room and across the house. You needed to be fixed, you understand this much, and the pain will be a problem, but it'll only be temporary, and then the fun will star-
You feel weightless again as you tumble through the air. Did you get dropped? What happened?
You hit something wet as you land, and an acrid, bitter smell fills the air around you. You focus on it for a second. Coffee? Why is there coffee? You focus your senses a bit more and realize you are lying mostly on a used coffee filter, still full of grounds. That means you're…
All your joy and hope shatters as you see the trash can lid slowly close on its hinges above you. It latches itself with a click, sealing you in claustrophobic darkness once more.
Author's Note
There we have it, I hope you enjoyed! I've been working on non-pony related projects recently, but this one just begged to be written, and who am I to argue with creativity?
I'll get back to writing pony fics soon-ish. Pony stuff is lot more fun to write than most of the other stuff I write, but I am trying to get some projects done, it may be a bit before I finally finish that Lyrabon fic I've been ~~ignoring~~ working hard on for the past 10 months. (At this point, it definitely won't live up to the hype, it's not really that long or well done, I'm just lazy)
Originally, this wasn't actually a "pony" story, it was more generic, with no details at all given about the character that would become Cheerilee, they were just referred to as your "partner". The more I wrote though, the more I realized that I was imagining Cheerilee in my head as a stand in for the partner, so I ended up going with her in the final draft, and I'm glad I did. Having a concrete identity for the only other person in the story added a little much needed grounding in a story that feels a little loose at times imo. I enjoy exploring people's thoughts and headspaces, and I tried to keep it engaging, but I want to hear what you guys thought, was it done well? How could I improve?
Also, as a side note, I added a little self indulgent psychology "easter egg" hidden through the narrative. Let me know if you saw it, I'm curious how it looks to someone else!
