The Pink I Live In

by PseudoBob Delightus

Rating: teen
Tags: Violence, Pinkie Pie, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Dark, Thriller, Suicide / Self Harm, Horror
Length: 1002

A pony is deathly afraid of the colour pink. This is not ideal for her.

What happens when a pony develops a phobia of a colour that surrounds her?

Asking for a friend.

An entry for Nightmare Night in April 2024 ( group | stories ).

Originally written for the Bean's Writing Group prompt "Trying to escape from somewhere/someone". On top of the prompt, and the "using color to convey emotion" bonus, I also tried to write it with only periods.

Thanks to RDT and Silk Rose for pre-reading and feedback.

Published 2024-04-28 14:00:01 UTC
Last updated 2024-04-28 14:00:01 UTC

Story

I have been trapped here for longer than I can remember.

Okay. Not that long. There is a time I can recall when I did not feel the walls of this prison pressing in on me.

It started out simple enough. A buzz in the back of my head that I could ignore at first. Or maybe I did not notice it at all. A house painted a new colour. A flamboyant sales cart. Clouds at sunset. I could play and laugh around these things back then. But then I saw the balloon and the buzz grew around it. Pop. Quieted but not quelled. I think that is when I should have known something was wrong.

Next were the flowers. The buzz quieted when I stamped the flowers down but came back stronger. There were flowers all over town. I knew that. I believed I could not stamp them all down. I believed I would not. That would have been mean to the ponies who grew them. I believed I was nicer than that.

When the buzz came back even stronger afterwards I knew something was wrong with me. It was everywhere. Patches of it in autumn leaves. Spring decorations. Market awnings and tarps. Book covers. Stained glass windows. Wall paintings. Cutlery. And more flowers every day. The town was infested with it around every corner and over every roof and down every hole and through every alley and across every yard and inside every home. I could not make it all stop. But then there were the sunsets. Many days even the sky buzzed and it made me feel like my skull was about to split open.

I kept quiet about it. I knew it was a problem. But it was a silly problem. Nopony would understand. And if they understood they would think I was joking. If they thought I was joking they would laugh. If they did not think I was joking they would still laugh. And if they laughed they would show their tongue. And the sight of their tongue would buzz in my head. There was a time when I enjoyed laughter. When it did not buzz.

The day you found me was the day I could not ignore it or pretend to ignore it for another second. It started out as most days did. But it was also my birthday. This was a surprise to me. That my birthday was a surprise is what made ponies start to think something was wrong. But they did not feel the buzzing so they could not have known.

They led me over the pink steps and through the pink door and into the building with the pink roof and pink windows and pink floor and pink ceiling. The buzzing was all around me. Almost as much as it is now. It was worse when they showed me the room they had prepared for me. The room was decorated with pink banners and pink ribbons and pink presents and pink tablecloths and pink punchbowls and pink cups and pink cupcakes and pink cookies and a large pink cake with pink icing and pink candles. And it had pink balloons too.

The buzzing roared. I popped all the balloons first. Popping all of them together did not give me the relief of popping that first pink balloon. I kicked the tables over and stomped on the cups and cupcakes and cookies and cake and candles. I tore the ribbons and banners down and crushed the presents. Everything stayed pink no matter how hard I stomped on it. If anything the room looked more pink the more I stomped.

The ponies there tried to stop me. They tried to explain that what I was doing was wrong and there was something wrong with me and I needed to calm down and put some pink punch inside me as if I was a fucking animal. I tried to tell them that I knew something was wrong with me. I tried to explain it to them. The buzzing. I tried to understand why they could not feel the buzzing.

Then I felt it on them. The buzzing was coming from them. One had pink ribbons in her hair. One had a pink scarf she had worn just for the occasion. One had hair with a pink stripe. One had hair that was entirely pink. And another had pink in her eyes.

I believed I would not take all the pink away from them. I believed I was nicer than that.

You found me after.

Brought me here.

To this room with a white floor and white walls and a white ceiling and ponies with white uniforms and white trays with white wheels full of white food and white pills and white cups of water to wash them down with.

No pink anywhere around me.

Every day you ask me how I feel. And I know you have been trying to help me. So I say I feel better. Every day a little better. The buzzing has nearly gone away now. I say. To convince you. Because you have been trying to help me. So I say I feel better.

But it is still there. Every time I take a step. Every time I grab the white food to eat it. Every time I open my eyes and see the blurry splotch between them.

It buzzes.

That is why I had to leave the white room and hurt the ponies in the white uniforms and find the room where you cut ponies open if they do not get better and take your shiny metal knife and hurt you when you tried to take it back. I had to because I knew when I had the knife and held it a certain way and looked back at myself I would see why I kept feeling it.

I will get better. I know I will.

I just have to cut out a little more pink.