Marooned at Twilight

Another day, another excuse to down a half dozen Tylenol.

It wasn't because I hated myself. It wasn't because I was a tier three subscriber to Doomerism Monthly. It definitely wasn't because of my terminally online presence (I was told this was a charming part of me, so...). And no, I'm not affected by some life-altering disability or incurable illness either. All I had were these headaches of mine, and they came every morning like clockwork.

This time, however? I felt like God himself had taken a sledgehammer and slammed the damned thing right between my eyes. There wasn’t a snowball’s chance in hell that I’d be able to grin and bear through all of these stabbing and throbbing pains without my head exploding.

Of course, this all could have been another case of the Mondays. Or any other day of the week, honestly. Work, obligations, responsibilities, woohoo. But it wasn’t Monday, Tuesday, or, god forbid, Wednesday. And it most certainly wasn’t Thursday or Friday either; I had meticulously checked my phone every five minutes on company time whenever I browsed the Spacebattles forums or Ao3 to stave off the soul-crushing boredom.

No, I knew today was special.

‘And thankfully, today can wait a bit longer,’ I thought. I knew it wasn’t just a Saturday but a free one, and right now? I was counting my lucky stars that I didn’t need to work on the weekends anymore. I could afford to be lazy today. And perhaps even tomorrow, too, if I was lucky. No plans, no errands or entanglements, no anything but me time.

And with any hope, my pain and exhaustion could give me a dreamless sleep this time. No nightmares, no terrifying monsters, no—

“...honestly forget with the Princess herself breathing down our necks? I changed the IV myself just a few minutes ago; why?”

I winced.

Why did I hear voices inside my apartment? Did I leave my TV on? The headaches prevented me from remembering much of anything about the previous night, and I would rather gouge my eyes out than try to delve into the nightmares that had been haunting me recently.

God seemed to be in agreement, too, as he began drilling a hole directly toward my headmeat. But before my brain could explode like a grapefruit impacted by 7.62, I heard another voice alongside the first.

“...hasn’t been any issues with the feeding tube, and I’ve been monitoring for any signs of intolerance—no nausea or vomiting, and her abdomen is soft. But with her BP on the lower side, we should keep monitoring her electrolyte levels closely.”

“Hmmm. We’ll do another electrolyte panel this afternoon to be on the safe side and make sure everything’s within range. Let’’s also keep an eye on her fluid balance—”

Clop. Clop. Clop.

The sound was so distinct and unnatural, like a tiger in 8-inch heels parading down the streets of Rome. God’s punishment increased twofold for my vile and sinful thoughts, and I was in sound agreement with his plan.

This still wasn’t enough to stave away my confusion.

Of course, I hadn’t expected to have any coherent thoughts or ideas so early in the morning, but this all felt… off? Like I was submerged underwater, and everything was dark and distant. The voices seemed so distant, like whispers, and I could only pinpoint that awful clacking sound because it sounded so utterly alien to me.

More muffled noises bled into my plugged eardrums—They were steady, rhythmic, and somehow familiar. It was white noise, like the static from a TV, but far more distinct.

“It’s been two weeks now... I’m hoping we’ll see some improvement soon, but we need to be prepared for the long haul.”

What the hell had I been watching before I passed out? I could hardly call myself a fan of drama shows compared to my mom—she was the one who binged All My Children, after all. Did I really subject myself to daylight television? Or had I left YouTube to run amok and delve head-first into the YouTube Recommend cesspit?

Were the other tenants going to pound down my door and beat my ass for making too much noise?

I sighed.

Leaving my bed was the last thing I wanted. I knew the moment I got up from my bed sheet cocoon, I’d never fall back asleep, and nursing a headache at the crack of dawn was not something I wanted to do on my first weekend off. What time was it even anyway? Six? I couldn’t feel the sun shining through my window…

“It’s hard to see, but she’s in good hooves. We’re doing everything we can for her.”

…Hooves? I… my YouTube history is going to need bleach, isn’t it?

Subconsciously, I curled my fingers.

…

Consciously, I curled my fingers.

…

My arms shifted in my tangled sheets. Numb. I had just slept on them wrong. I still had my fingers. I still had them. I just—I needed some rest. Yeah, just need some more shut-eye. And some Tylenol. And some Hard Mike's Lemonade. In that order.

“...Stuffed cabbage rolls at the cafeteria today. Want me to grab some for you after my rounds?”

“Hmmm, depends… are you offering because you’re sweet? Or because you owe me after stealing that last slice of pound cake?”

“I think you know the answer to that.”

“Grab me an iced tea to go with it, and I won’t banish you to the couch toni—wait.”

The darkness receded, if only a little. Pulled. Something pulled at me. A rope, or a tether inside my head, strung me along and toward the surface of the inky depths. Beep. Beep. Beep. The rhythmic pattern had become clear to me.

I still couldn’t curl my fingers.

“Her heart rate is increasing!” one of the voices said, closer this time. I heard the tension, the concern, and it scared me. He was scaring me. Who was he? Why was he so close to my bed? How did he even get in?

…Her? Who are they referring to?

My throat was too dry, my mouth unable to form words. The beeping quickened.

“Can you hear me? Squeeze my hoof if you can hear me,” The second voice urged. Her voice was calm but insistent as it grabbed and prodded my hand. I felt her hand grasp mine and winced. Her fuzzy glove was softer than the fur of my pet Schnoodles.

I didn’t notice the discrepancy in her words until a few moments later.

Hoof? Why did she say that? Doesn’t she mean hand?

I tried biting my lip, but I could only taste copper.

“Doctor, she moved!”

Another curveball. She. Hoof. Hooves. What the hell was going on?

“Stay with me,” the woman pleaded, her grip on my twitching hand firm. The panic in her voice matched the fear clamping down on my chest. “You’re doing great. Just keep trying.”

I heard more clopping, more voices. I focused. Anchored myself. The fog dissipated slowly.

Blind. Bright. I winced, but kept pushing, kept trying to reach the voices. I needed to know what was happening, what was going—sterile. I could taste the disinfectants and plastics that assaulted my nostrils and burned my throat.

I blinked.

God disapproved.

His displeasure once more became known, and my eyes burned like steaks on a grill. And unlike ordinary, god-fearing nine-to-fiving Americans, he preferred his meat well done. The degenerate.

My eyes fluttered. Tears streamed down my overgrown facial hair, and I wanted nothing more than to take a pair of electric shears to my face. After I had my questions answered, of course. That, and down a bottle of Tylenol because fuck everyone and everything right now.

Especially that incessant beeping, which was somehow more annoying than my alarm clock. That, in itself, was a rare feat. Christ, how had I been able to hear my own thoughts with off-brand Skrillex blaring in my ears?

The answer is simple. Because I'm me, and my willpower to withstand the dishwasher's unabashed tunes was a detriment to God's plan. Screw Drake and God, they're getting my medical bills later. The room was still too bright, but I immediately spotted two indistinct, fuzzy shadows leering down at me.

“She’s waking up,” the male voice said, throwing me for a loop again.

I blinked again, trying to focus on the hazy shapes hovering over me.

Their faces swam into view.

My breathing hitched.

“Welcome back,” something whispered, her voice trembling slightly. Tears glistened in her green dinner-plate-sized blue eyes, and I could only stare back in utter revulsion and fear.

At that moment, I knew true and well God was dead… because even he wouldn’t have stitched together something so utterly repulsive and uncanny as this. This… thing wore the face of a horse that had its face rearranged by a toddler trying to draw one on an etch-a-sketch. The angular ridges and features one would expect to find were sanded away and rounded out, while a human’s mouth was grafted below its muzzle. Its fur was as bright as the orange juice God went to buy from the store before being mugged for his wallet.

I opened my mouth to scream, but my voice had been stolen by its unwavering gaze. This thing… should not be. It should not exist.

“Can you hear me? Tw—” the other… creature asked, its stethoscope dangling from its neck. It, too, had an off-putting fur coloring: sky blue with a mop of green concealing a spiral horn and his naked shame, along with a lab coat that looked more like a costume I’d have my dog wear for Halloween. “—ink if you can hear me.”

I blinked once. It was all I could muster. There was too much whiplash, too much happening at once, and everything was suffocating me. The solid white marble walls were closing in, my blankets tightened their grip on my torso and limbs, and if the looks on their forward-facing eyes were any indication, they were ready to pounce.

An uneasy silence fell upon us for a moment, but I didn’t dare look away. I knew they would be all over me the moment I did. But what could I do? How could I get out of here? Where even was here, and why did they—

“Good,” the creature cosplaying poorly as a doctor said, softer now. “You’re doing great. We’re gonna take things slow, okay? You’ve been through a lot, but you’re safe now.”

Safe. The word echoed in my throbbing skull. Safe. Safe. I didn’t feel safe. I was trapped in a place I didn’t recognize by beings ripped straight out of Grimm’s Fairytales. Worse, my body was aching to move, to break free from whatever was holding me down.

The Make-A-Wish(™) nurse still held my arm in her vice-like grip. If she was trying to be warm and reassuring, she would have gotten an A for effort and an F for execution. “Can you squeeze my hoof again?” she asked gently. “Just like before.”

I tried to pull away. Tried, was the keyword. Her motherly smile faltered as I failed to adhere to the script they were playing out. I concentrated, focusing every bit of strength I had left on my hand, willing it to move.

The pointed end of my hand twitched underneath the sheets, but not my fingers. It was as if they had never existed in the first place—no ghost pains, numbness, or spasms. Nothing. My fingerless hand still curled regardless, barely a grip but enough for her to feel.

Our entangled arms escaped from the bedsheet a moment later.

“There you go,” she said, her voice full of encouragement as she smiled again. “That’s it. You’re doing amazing!”

…

I screamed in a stranger's voice.

Stranger’s, because it shared nothing in common with my voice—the pitch was wrong, the tone, the gender. It wasn't the result of helium or laughing gas messing with my vocal cords, either. This… this was genuine.

This voice belonged to me, but it wasn’t mine.

I didn’t know how or why. This was all wrong. Wrong. Wrong!

My chest tightened as fear mixed with white flashes of memory.

“Sunshine, Sunshine, ladybugs awake! Clap your hooves—”

“Oh my gosh! Oh my gosh! Hey—”

“Looks who’s awake, my little star!”

“...You don’t understand how proud I am of you, my dearest student!”

“...if you listen closely, you’ll hear the crashing waves of tomorrow outside your door…”

The two horse creatures crowded around me, but I couldn’t focus. My eyes were glued to my purple-furred limb stump, and it took me ages before I was brave enough for my gaze to trail upward to my equally furry chest.

“—you feel the blanket under your hoof? Or the bed beneath you? Focus on that feeling—it’s real. It’s right here, and you’re ok,”she replied soothingly, placing her orange arm on my shoulder and breaking me out of my trance. “I know you’re feeIing scared and confused, but that’s alright. You’re in the—”

My lungs sucked in a gulp of air down my too-long throat, which felt like the most natural thing in the world. I would have never made the connection if I had been blindfolded beforehand, blissfully ignorant of everything that’s happened and everything about me that changed.

My memories were the only thing that allowed me to notice the differences.

Mouth? It was the wrong shape, and every single tooth was flat. Head? My eyes were far more sensitive, and my vision had been massively exaggerated and stretched, like the max field of view settings in Titanfall 2’s PC port. Legs? Too small, and not a single finger or opposable thumb in sight. Even my knees were wrong—they were too high up and bent awkwardly at all the worst possible angles.

“We’re going to give you something very light to help calm your nerves…”

My wrongly placed heart continued to pound in my mis-shapened chest as I continued to squeeze the creature’s arm. I felt something drip into my arm before I even noticed or recognized the IV drip inside my other one.

Green sparks glittered in my eyes not a moment later.

“...placing a cool cloth on your forehead—can you focus on this for me? This will help you feel more comfortable.”

The world spun briefly, and darkness crept from the edges of my vision as something grasped my hair and gently tugged me back into my hospital pillow's gentle embrace.

“...hurts,” I managed to breathe out between my fits of hyperventilating. Thankfully, my heart was no longer cosplaying as a chestburster waiting for its cue, and I greedily took in a second deeper breath and then a third.

Coolness enveloped my aching skull not a moment later. This, along with whatever drugs they just pumped me with, was enough to take the edge off of my stress. My soul wasn't being prepped for express shipping directly to Jesus—he was content with being shipped to him in five to seven business days.

“What hurts, sweetie?” the female creature’s motherly voice reminded me of my old elementary school teacher, whom I had embarrassingly called mom on more than one occasion.

“Head,” I grimaced. My overriding fear had been able to suppress the worst of it, but now? I could hardly begin to even describe the sensation. I felt like someone had stabbed a knife into my forehead and scooped out bits of my brain through the open wound.

And it wouldn’t stop. Throbbing.

“We can give you something for the pain, but I need you to answer a few questions for me first, ok?”

I nodded hesitantly.

“Are you feeling any discomfort in your horn? Do you feel like you pulled a muscle in it at all?”

…horn?

My blurred gaze shifted upward.

The cre—nurse? Whatever she was hadn’t been lying or gaslighting me—there was an honest-to-God spiral tumor jutting out from my head too, and of course, I had to pull the old “geriatric missing his glasses on his head” trick on myself at the ripe old age of 24.

“Y-yes,” I replied, my voice too high-pitched. “Th-throbbing, too.”

“That’s an average side effect of experiencing mana burn; just try to take it easy on the magic for a week, and we’ll give you some acetaminophen for the pain. Are you feeling any numbness in your head as well? Any discomfort or tingling in the neck?”

I squirmed squeamishly. There were plenty of things fucked up about this situation, and I was not and would never be ok with having my body stolen from me, but I could at least thank whoever did this to me had at least the tiniest bit of empathy to not leave me a vegetable too.

“No.”

“Ok, sweetie. Could you quickly tilt your head?”

“Either side? Both?”

“Both, I know you’re still in pain, but—”

Left. Right. Left. I kept my gaze on Orange Juice’s emerald eyes as I craned my too-long neck. Up. Down. Up.

“Thank you.” Orange Juice raised her… wing and nudged Dr. House’s furry oc while whispering before turning to face me again. “Is there anything else bothering you? Anything that feels off?”

“I- uh…” My eyes were glued to the pair of wings fused to her spine, which was apparently completely normal and totally not more proof that the farm equipment had evolved, rebelled, and sent their owners off to the glue factory. The worst part? I couldn’t tell if her freakishly large wings or Dr. House levitating a bunch of equipment off in the corner of the room with his mind scared me more. “Queasy, mainly. Stressed.”

“No other symptoms?” Orange Juice raised a brow and cupped a clipboard with her wing. “Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

Orange Juice was about to open her mouth when Dr. House butted in, sliding over into my view. “Do you remember what happened?”

“It happened too fast,” the words tumbled out of my mouth before I could even mull things over. “And everything about it felt like a fever dream…”

Orange gave me a look I couldn’t quite place, and I quickly looked away and toward the windows at the far wall. My stomach tied itself into knots over how wrong her wings looked—how they acted like a colony of fingers that were dexterous enough for writing notes down on a clipboard. All of this stress was clearly messing with my judgment, especially with how I was pulling all of these ideas out of my ass at light speed.

“What are you able to remember?”

“If it's all the same with you, Miss Pumpkin Patch… I don’t want to talk about this right now. Not yet.” I bit my lip as I focused on the droplets of rain splashing against the windows. “Can you at least tell me when I’ll be getting out of here? You know how much I love the food here…”

How did I know her name? Who did—who the hell did I brain-jack? Are they still inside? Trapped? Was this hornache ever going to stop making me contemplate suicide?

I wanted nothing more than to run for the hills, but I doubted I’d make it ten feet before I got dogpiled by a horde of mutant horsies, assuming my supposed injuries would even let me step off the bed. Not to mention, it wouldn’t take long for me to be promoted from patient to lab experiment if they figured out I was a sheep in wolf’s clothing.

No, I needed to keep my cool. Stay calm, smile, and pretend like everything was hunky dory until I could mosey on out of here.

“At least a month, possibly two, give or take.” Orange—err, Pumpkin Patch crinkled her nose playfully, but I could still see that look in her eyes like she knew I was bullshitting her. “Oh, don't feel so down in the dumps, sweetie! You’ll be out of here before you know it, and you can put this whole thing behind you when you do.”

“Can’t I be released sooner? Is there nothing I can do here? The headache is the only—”

“Now, now there, I know you must be dying to return to your studies with the princess, but I’m not letting you off the hook until I know for sure you’re in tip-top shape. So, no funny ideas this time! Capiche?” Pumpkin’s green eyes bore into me, and I slunk further into the mattress from the shame.

Princess? Studies? I’m… I’ve had enough schooling for one lifetime. I don’t need to suffer through high school and college debt a second time!

…

“F-Fine,” I shakily breathed out. The damp cloth had thankfully taken off the edge of the migraine, but I couldn’t tell if having my thoughts unscrambled had made things worse, especially with the gravity of the situation kicking in like a hangover—wait, a hangover… “Hey, could I at least have something to drink? Water, preferably.”

“Sure thing, and we’ll make sure you get something nice from the kitchens in a little while, too. How do stuffed cabbage rolls sound?”

Yuck. “That sounds great. Thank you.”

“Alrighty then! But before we do that, Doctor Brain Wave and I need to run a few more tests to ensure everything is okay.”

Doctor ‘Wave’ strode over to the heart monitor and flipped a few switches with his magic as he spoke. “You’ve made excellent progress so far, and it seems like your body is recovering much faster than I anticipated…”

“I’m sensing a ‘but’ here,” I swallowed nervously. The skin under this purple fur was prickling like static on a carpet, and I had to stop myself from clawing toward the opposite edge of the bed and away from this witchcraft.

“We’ll need to run some scans to check your brain activity and resonance frequency. You’ve been out for a while, so we want to rule out any potential issues before we proceed with physical therapy…”

Pumpkin Patch smiled reassuringly at me before adjusting the blankets around me. “Which might just be sooner than you think. We’ll be taking you down to imaging in a few minutes, so just relax, lay back, and we’ll handle everything for you.”

Brain scans and X-rays weren’t things I was ever terrified of before. Adding magic to the mix, though? Spells and incantations? Absolutely not. Nope. Not a chance. The jig would be up before faster than I could blink, and they’d know—they’d all know—exactly what I am.

Pumpkin and Wave’s ears twitched.

I gritted my teeth.

The heart rate monitor tattled on me, screaming incessantly.

They looked at me. Afraid. For me. No. Of me? I couldn’t breathe. My pulse thundered in my ears, screaming alongside the heart rate monitors. Time slowed. The rain stopped its pitter-patter, halting as if the air had gone still. Their eyes were on me. Dinner plates. Wide.

Stop looking at me! STOP!

In a heartbeat, everything shattered.

The world twisted. The room spun. My head burned.

No sound. No smell. No light. My gut was wrenched from my body, and then everything else after. Pumpkin and Waves’s frozen faces were gone now. The desperate hum of machinery was an afterthought. Gone, like ashes.

Time resumed.

I slammed into the cold, hard floor of an empty hallway.