Cheer Up, Ye Toymaker's Whimsies

Cheer Up, Ye Toymaker’s Whimsies. By Twiche

https://soundcloud.com/twiche/cheer-up-ye-toymakers

(I would love critique on this little project).

Poetry By Rainer Maria Rilke. He’s a good poet, you should look him up. Now. English translation is my own doing.

--

Wer jetzt weint irgendwo in der Welt,

ohne Grund weint in der Welt,

weint über mich.

(Whoever now weeps, anywhere in the world,

without cause weeps in this world,

weeps over me)

--

It was raining. A soft rain, a relentless rain. The sort of rain that carried on, like pink noise in the background on your television. The sort of rain that carries just enough cold to bring mist to the windows, making all the world outside seem without place... without structural context... making all the world without, a stage.

Or perhaps all the world within.

The rain muffled moods, activity, and sound alike, for in the end a community is colored by context. The little cafe’s and shops in Ponyville were still open, though all patrons were either indoors or hurrying through the muddy streets, from one point to another in jerky movements, having to choose between getting their hooves dirty or their fur soaked, unless they had ventured out with the appropriate umbrellas. Most who were not so prepared went for a middle ground, avoiding puddles as they could, and gritting through when they couldn’t. A lesson for life, I suspect, can be wheedled out of this... but then it would sound just as drab and soaked through.

I, however, was quite comfortable. Sitting at the window of the little cottage I had somehow managed to acquire on the main street, I could see what activity there was over the top of my desk: The Quills and Sofas (which had a nice collection of both, finally), town hall, Sugarcube Corner... etc. For light I used a long, white, bright candle, because the rain dimmed the daylight far too much for it to be useable on its own. By the flicker and the bluegray glow I worked, alternating between writing a short story of love and death, rage and recovery... and writing a long, long letter to ask the Princess to send back home to anyone who cared to find out. If anyone was left. I don’t expect they were, even then. But, in my present state, I’ll never know.

I’ll never care, either. I’m Hers. I’ll never care again.

I enjoyed my work. It was peaceful, relaxing and fulfilling, even when also painful to make headway in. I’m not antisocial, but there’s a kind of serenity that comes from being by oneself that simply cannot be had with others. But in writing one can still deal intimately with others, if you have enough talent to make your characters really stand out. With care, and the willingness to endure a headache you can pass a few hours in silence, enjoying the twists and turns of your own words, which seem to lead you on as much as you put them on paper. It was in this way that I hoped to spend a few hours of the dreary, drippy afternoon. Quiet solitude...

-...so it was that Lenore, rare and radiant angel sent to me from on high, revealed a smile... one of the delightful sort that could light a candle that burns forever in the heart of...-

KNOCK KNOCK!

Fate has a way of changing something you’re enjoying at the precise moment you recognize the pleasure.

It probably wasn’t that loud, but when caught up in a world of imagination and “maybe”s, the snap of a twig and the crunch of a leaf sound like cannonfire. I started, and wouldn’t be lying if I said I made some sort of unseemly sound not unlike a squeak. But I recovered, and figured I ought to check who had seen fit to come to my cottage, of all places, at a time like this. I trotted over to the door, my horn ceasing to glow as my pen settled in by the thick piece of paper I’d been using (this, more than anything else, had taken some getting used to... one doesn’t gain magical powers overnight, and lose fingers, without needing some time to adjust).

When I opened the door I was hit by a rush of cool, damp air, and staring down the barrel of a Pinkie Pie.

You’d use the phrase too if you’d ever spent any time around her. Hyperactive, bouncy, loud and obnoxious, to be blunt. Don’t get me wrong, I sometimes enjoyed her company. She was one of the sweetest ponies around and would do anything and everything in her power to help if anypony was sad, or depressed. If humans spent half as much time in their entire lives trying to please each other as Pinkie in one day, we would be a much, much better people for it.

But she could also be so, damn, annoying!

Here I confess a personality flaw. I need balance. I need to be around others to be happy, but I also need time alone. This is true for many, but for me it’s a little more rigid. Too much of the one and I feel lost and needy. At times like that I’ll accept even the most mundane, stupid souls to have around me. If I’m around others too much, they become frustrating, even with the best of intentions. Pinkie had no such sense of balance, she didn’t need it. Even at the time, with her body twitching slightly, no doubt from the cold, and with her hair soaking wet, hanging straight down, she was still able to give me a great big smile, and a lightning fast hug. I returned the smile feebly, not really feeling up to the antics at the moment. Still, a little of her joy has always been... infectious.

“Oh. Hello there Pinkie”

“HI!” She spouted, bounding into my cottage before I had a moment to stop her. “How are you today? I’m good, even though it’s wet, because it’s still pretty outside and the Cakes just made a fresh batch of cupcakes and they’re delicious...! They’ve got butter in them... Butter! DId you know you could put cinnamon in cupcakes? I didn’t! But now that I know you can put cinnamon in cupcakes I kinda wonder what other things you can put in them... things that ponies normally don’t put in them... like cheese, not desert cheese but like cheddar? Or maybe spices... Basil? Or bacon?!? Bacon Cupcakes.... that would be a-MAYYY-ZING!

“I’m... I’m sure it would, Pinkie...” My head was already starting to ache a little, between trying to write and this sudden interruption. She was nice... But I really couldn’t deal with this. I couldn’t handle the noise, the saccharine sweetness of it all.

“Me too! Ohmigosh we should make some...”

“Pinkie...?”

“I could go back to sugarcube corner and get the baking pans...”

“Pinkie....?!?”

“And I could get some bacon and we could make...”

“PINKIE!!?”

She stopped. Three blinks later... I remember because they were in perfect rhythm.. Blink, one two three, blink one two three, blink...

“Yes?”

I put my hoof over my face for a moment, rubbing it on my forehead, “Why are you here?”

“Well, I thought that I’d say hi and see about making...”

“I don’t want you here, Pinkie.”

Silence,

When I looked back, she wasn’t smiling anymore. She was crying. The tears were welling in her eyes, and for a moment, my heart absolutely broke. Confound these ponies, they drive me to all manner of sympathy with childish behavior...

“I thought you needed a friend... I thought.. that on a day like this that made most ponies sad, you’d want... want somepony to cheer you up...”

“Pinkie... I appreciate it, I really do, but I don’t need anypony right now. I need to be left alone.” I added, under my breath, “Especially by you.”

I had hoped that was low enough that she wouldn’t hear it. My hopes were, of course, wrong.

“What! Why? What d-did I do to you...? I just wanted to help you sm-smile... and now you’re telling me you want me to go away... Why?” She was truly wailing at this point, the tears dripping down off her cheeks onto the green carpet below.

“Well Pinkie I... I just don’t like you...” The words caught in my throat, and my whole body tensed. The only sounds in the minute afterwards, were the occasional hiccup by a stunned Pinkie, the slight sound of her tears hitting the carpet, and the long endless banter of the raindrops outside.

She looked up at me after a while, carefully brushing her soaked-straight mane out of her wide, wet eyes.

“Y-you don’t like me? Wh-why not?”

Wer jetzt lacht irgendwo in der Nacht,

ohne Grund lacht in der Nacht,

lacht mich aus.

(Whoever laughs, anywhere in the night,

Without cause laughs in this night,

Laughs at me)

--

Toccata and Fugue is a long piece, and a beautiful one. Yet most have not listened to the whole thing. They know only the part made famous as part of Dracula, when in fact there is so much more to be had. There are crescendos of sound and light, airy, tinkling pauses in the drama. It is a masterpiece, and if my reader has not witnessed it to the fullest, I would strongly encourage them to.

A fugue is generally defined as a piece where the voices seem to be in some sort of competition or conversation. The tension, or lack thereof, is thus not built in one... but in many. It is subtle even in its intensity, and many who speak of a beautiful fugue, fall impossibly short of conveying, even for an instant, the sense of its power. Maybe this is because words are not silence.

Silence is the deep, impossible chasm, rife with power, between all notes of music and sound.

And it was a silence of this intensity that permeated, between the raindrops, after Pinkie asked this question.

I heard it repeat, in my head.

“Why don’t you like me?”.

To be honest, I had surprised myself with my response, and for a long time, I couldn’t think of an adequate answer. But finally,

“Because... Pinkie. You aren’t likeable. You party, and you smile. You party, and you smile. you’re cute! You’re so very cute and sweet and kind to everypony, how could they not love you? Everypony’s your friend, because you give them a reason to be... You cheer them up! You make them ignore the hurt, the pain that they ought to deal with... and frankly I wonder whether or not YOU are hurting, and you just ignore it! I don’t like you, because you stand for being a coward! You stand for everything in Ponyville, everything in Equestria that’s wrong! I love joy too, I love happiness and friends and sunshine and games, and laughter... and I adore your laughter. But for being so false, Pinkie Pie... I cannot like you....” I was further amazed, the longer I spoke, with the intensity of my own words. That, and their truth. For I found that I did not speak one thing to her I did not believe. Ponyville was a place of happiness that only occasionally became unbearably supersweet. But the false sense of it all... that was unpalatable. It was why I withdrew even more from the ponies than I had from people. “Because you are false, Pinkie... because you represent everything wrong with this place, I... I don’t like you. At all... I’m sorry”

Whereof we cannot speak, thereof we must be silent. Of the silence that followed, I cannot speak. But after awhile, I noticed something. She had stopped crying. Entirely. She was staring at me, without blinking. At all. She just looked, straight faced, not crying, not saying a word. Just... gazing, a terrible gaze. Unyielding. I was struck with a terrible thought.The thought that the world within me was her stage, and she knew my act. I had let her see what none of these ponies see. My disdain. My sorrow... my hatred. I shuddered, for reasons I will never fully know, at the thought that she saw me, all too well.

Tick, tock, tick, tock. I didn’t own a clock, but I could hear it, in my head. I had a momentary notion of there being a little second hand in her eye, going around in a circle slowly, twisting the dark black of her pupil round, and round, and round.

Then...

Then she started to laugh. It began as a giggle, an airy jingle that for a span cast off the heaviness in the air. Like a little silver bell, merry and bright. But then it changed. Or rather it didn’t. She giggled, and giggled, and it was the same sound repeating again and again, like a recording on loop. The heaviness crashed back in when I felt it wasn’t genuine.

After a little while it turned into a proper laugh. A high laugh. A loud laugh. A Pinkie laugh decidedly, yet off. Here there was no pretense of brightening anyone’s day but her own.

“So what you’re saying is... that you hate me?”

“Um... No, I ju-”

“You just said you don’t like me. For me being fake... being phony. You want me to be a sad unhappy pony, and tell you about how I’m really sad and lonely.” The way she said it... it was almost... singsong.

“Well let me tell you, Mister, about sad ponies. I don’t like being sad, and the ponies here don’t either. Having to worry away all the happy in life is such a bother. So I make them happy, make them sing with joy... So since you won’t be happy...” She got up, from her slumping on the ground, and started to walk over to me. I tried to back up, but found myself pressed against the doorframe.

“.. You’ll be my new toy.”

I could see it in her eyes... the intensity, the meaning... the malice. She was going to... Kill me?

No, no that didn’t seem right. But not entirely wrong, either...

“Pinkie... I-I think you should leave.”

She smiled again, a slight, smirking, mocking smile. “Oh no, There’s no getting out that way. Since you wouldn’t listen, it’s time to play.”

My horn glowed, a silvery color. Sure, i barely knew how to use it, but I thought maybe, since it was important, I’d figure it out. At the very least, I had nothing to lose, right?

\Wrong.

Faster than I’d ever seen, Pinkie whirled around... and kicked me full force in the face. Who would have thought that all that bouncing around would make her spry, and quite strong. In more ways than one, I was soon to find out.

My head spun, and I saw white. I felt myself losing balance, and wobbling. She turned back around and I saw that smirk again. She giggled, and I heard the sound ringing in my ears. Somewhat faintly I heard... “Silly colt, you’re staying riiiight here. Ooohhh. You don’t look so good.” I saw her sway back and forth a little. Was it my vision? No, she was mocking me, teasing me, swaying back and forth with me. I’m quite sure I cursed under my breath Finally I couldn’t stay up and I fell over on my left side.

Pinkie popped into my vision again. “It’s okay, you go to sleep for a while. I’ll get ready to play, I know that’ll make you smile...”

The last thing I heard was that infernal laughter.

A fugue is marked by tension between the voices... And in the final notes, the composer prepares us for the infinite silence to follow afterwards.

--

Wer jetzt geht irgendwo in der Welt,

ohne Grund geht in der Welt,

geht zu mir.

(Whoever goes now, anywhere in the world

Without cause travels in this world,

comes to me.)

--

Pain. For a while that was all that registered.

Then came more pain, accompanied by confusion: Confusion at not knowing what was going on. Confusion at the alternation of movement, then stillness. Confusion at the uncertainty of my fate or circumstance. Just, confusion, in the way that any common sense could envision. That, at least, is not complicated.

But mostly, I felt pain. Being kicked in the head by a pony is an experience worth not repeating.

It must have been about three hours later when I came round. The first thing that I noticed was that I was unharmed. The second thing I noticed, was my immobility. The restraints were not so tight as to cut in under my fur to the skin, but they were certainly sturdy and tight enough to where I wasn’t going anywhere.

The room was dark, dry, and only slightly cool. The same fiendish imaginations anyone might expect flew into my mind... a dank, dripping wet dungeon, rife with rats and the screams of the long forgotten. Horrors unknown and untold. I regretted, in those minutes, every single line of Lovecraft I’d ever read. Not because it was a likely combination with ponies... but because, with ponies, the word likely seemed to have gotten tossed out the window altogether, and I had no way of knowing, truly knowing.

This darkness, in its way, was soothing. It allowed me to think, after the terror passed. That took a while, mind you, but it did happen. This left me alone, without any distractions, to consider. It was a surreal experience. Then again everything since I have arrived has been surreal in a sense. When one takes the world one knew, and casts it aside utterly for that which was thought only fiction... One must reimagine the structure of reality entirely... if not dispense with the notion of it altogether. Sanity seems a quaint and curious notion, never to be wholly grasped again. There are benefits though, to be found in dispensing what isn’t before the eye. I had learned to judge character by what was shown, and cease the pretense of deep analysis where it was not possible. This whole part of my life had made a more honest soul of me, in that sense. But is that not what is loved, reader, about this world of Ponyville? Transparency in an age where we have allowed the more insipid forms of Existential and Postmodern thought to grab hold of our very passions. They render us apathetic. That is why we turn to our fictions, when the shared “reality” seems too much. That shared reality is a cesspool of apathy. Here in our fictions, we find legitimacy. Through fictions, the soul may feel it’s true passions. The stories you choose, dear reader, structure your reality. They are more fact to you than the “reality” that is imposed. This is a psychological note, not an empirical or spiritual one. As regards the vague, unbridled concept of “meaning”, the world of your fantasies here carries more than the vast expanse between the stars. Thus to embrace fantasy may be the key to igniting the passions once again. Life without art is mere existence.

I floated on a sea of thoughts, for what must have been around an hour. Then, I heard the first signs of other life.. the creak of a heavy door, across the room from where I lay. Light from the other side cast a wide, long swathe of yellow onto the floor, all the way to the bed, where it fell upon my midsection. I could see the thick, black strap over my stomach, which was attached by the way of two pairs of cuffs to my hooves. I looked at them, then over to the shadow, obscuring much of the light.

“Hiya, sleepyhead! Did you miss me?”

“P-Pinkie?”

“Of course. We’re in an old basement under Sugarcube Corner that nopony else knows about.” She could be very pointed, when she wanted. “Who else would it be?”

As she stepped forward, I saw that she was no longer wet, but that her hair still drooped straight down. At any other time I might have thought it just a cute difference, but then it just added to my unease.. The yellow light behind her fell harshly on her normally pink fur, and the effect was altogether surreal. I swallowed, and laid my head back, in order to assuage the oncoming nausea.

“Don’t move. You were hit pretty hard, and that head will take awhile to get normal again. Til’ then...” She gave a giggle as she came right up to the bedside, “You need to stay right here. Okay?” She climbed up, and, suddenly, kissed me. It was just a moment, but it left me stunned, staring into her eyes, utterly speechless for a moment.

“P-Pinkie?”

“Yes?”

“Wh... what are you going to do to me?”

This made her stop, and think for a bit. She absentmindedly started rubbing my forehead, which, given the pain, was more pleasant than I wanted to admit. The soft caress certainly antithetical to the force previously applied. Still, one takes what pleasures one can in this world, so I didn’t complain. She looked down at me, and seemed to be thinking hard.

Tick tock, tick tock.

“Well, I was really upset, earlier. You said you hated me, and-”

“Pinkie I-”

The look she gave me cut the words off in my throat, sharp as a knife, or better still, a needle’s point. She didn’t even stop the slight smile that was playing across her lips, but I knew what it meant. She blinked, at long last, and then resumed.

“You said you hated me, and that hurt. You see everypony here likes me, and they smile and I smile at them, and it’s great! But you...”, She looked up and away, thinking “If you hate me, and I know you do.. then how can I make you happy? I like making ponies happy... it makes me happy...”

Her hoof moved down, and began to rub my stomach. I was, at this point, far too scared to talk, and risk getting that look again. Or worse.

“But if I can’t make you happy, because you hate me... then that makes me sad... and being sad makes me... upset.” On the last word she applied pressure to my stomach area. The surprising strength she exhibited earlier showed itself again, and I was about ty cry out when she suddenly let up, and began to rub softly again.

“Being upset is no fun, though. You know that. That makes everyone into a big meanie... and big meanies are no fun, are they?” She pushed again, and I nodded, coughing out a feeble “Yes, Pinkie.”

‘I know! Meanies ruin everything. So I thought, if we hate eachother as ponies... there’s still got to be a way we can make each other happy, right?” I didn’t follow her, but I kept nodding all the same, to avoid her pressing down on my stomach again. “Yeah! So I thought we should figure out what to do, but then I had an idea!  I knew you wouldn’t be okay with it... but then I thought... that you don’t have to! That’s the beauty of it, don’t you see! You don’t have to like it... at first.”

At that moment, I felt her hoof move further down, and rub my sheath, tenderly, for just an instant. I winced. Suddenly, she raised her hoof high, and I was sure she was going to strike me. I grit my teeth, and shut my eyes.

Her hoof landed harmlessly next to my head. I opened my eyes again, looking straight up... and found myself mere inches from those great, unblinking eyes, as she poised herself over me... smiling.

Tick tock, tick tock.

--

Wer jetzt stirbt irgendwo in der Welt,

ohne Grund stirbt in der Welt,

sieht mich an.

--

I saw a glint in the corner of my eye, and looked. In her other hoof she was holding up what appeared to be a syringe, with a short needle. The discolored light made whatever fluid was inside appear black, and I jerked at the restraints, desperate, in a very immediate sense, to avoid whatever it was. Pinkie watched me struggle for a moment, before suddenly, with the reflexes I had only recently realized she had, she jabbed down with the needle, turning and sinking it into the side of my foreleg.

I finally screamed. A strange release, and probably unwise, but it matched my state. She nonchalantly tossed it aside, and I watched it sail high into the air, out of the shaft of light. I thought I heard it bounce against a wall before landing on a solid, floor with a small clatter.

“Pinkie... what your you doing? What was that? Let me out, please!?” It was obvious to me at this point that the pleading would do me no good. It was purely for my own benefit. Therapeutic, if you will. However it did seem important tok know what strange concoction was working through my veins.

She just giggled.

"Silly, it’s what will start the fun. Just wait.”

So I waited, and stared into those... those eyes.

Tick tock, tick tock.

It was a few minutes before I felt it. A heat, a feverish, burning warmth which started at the point where the needle first pierced my skin. As it spread, I felt the strangest disjoint between the terror and foreboding, and a calmness in my muscles. They relaxed, though not as though resting; they were poised, primed, and ready for... something. The feeling washed over my upper body and I noticed the heaviness of my own breathing, the way my lungs settled themselves from the rapid pace they’d maintained from my terror. This drug, whatever it was, was clearly meant to calm... though not, I suspected, to incapacitate. If anything, I felt the things around me with a certain sharpness and clarity that the headache had previously prevented: the soft, heavy sheets beneath me... Pinkie’s warm, soft, sweet smelling fur as her hoof lightly rubbed my chest and she settled down on top of me, her hind-legs to either side...

A wonderful, almost painful pulse between my legs.

I now realized what two things this most felt like. It felt like anger, the kind of anger that makes one plan all sorts of foul things. It felt like the kind of anger where you find yourself ready to strike. What was this, anyway? This little pony had kicked me in the head, dragged me to some old cellar, and was planning God (because I’ll be damned if I count Celestia as a deity) knows what. I was more than angry, I was enraged.

The other thing it felt like, was lust. A want, a need, a yearning so intense as I hadn’t felt in ages. Pinkie was blocking my vision, but I could tell that I was fully erect, because of the little pulse, and the feel of the cool air on my shaft. She smirked at me, and I knew she was perfectly aware of what her mixture was doing to me.

“Working in a bakery so close to all those books in the library, I know how to make all kinds of neat things.”

“Pinkie!” I was breathing hard. “Get me the fu-” That was all I had time to say, before she leaned down, and started to kiss me, hard. I could feel the heat from her body, and her tongue, which forced its way into my mouth for a moment, tasted distinctly like a saccharine sweet. Her hooves moved above my head, and when she pulled back, suddenly as she began, she wasted no time in pushing something into my mouth, securing it behind my head with a strap and some sort of clasp.

She had just gagged me. I roared in frustration through the gag, frustration that was made worse by the fire of need coursing through my body. I expect that she administered a somewhat “above average” dose. She chuckled, and put a hoof under my chin. Those eyes met my own, and she said, simply, “You. Shut up. Okay?” Then she placed both hooves on my chest, and adjusted herself. Here I felt another warmth, one that was not my own, brush against the tip of my member.

I gasped, as best I could anyway.

Yes. He gets it now.” She looked up and spoke to the air, tauntingly. “You make me happy, and I make you happy, and then we’re both... HAPPY!” She shouted the last word, close to my face, with a growl, as she forced her hips back against me, hard, painfully hard, and my shaft slipped all the way into her.

--

Energy, the spiritualists like to say, is the substance of the world. Energy and vibration. To he who can tap into the energies of the world there lies unlimited power.

Spiritualism be damned, but Pinkie had a great deal of energy. She was warm, she was tight, she was everything that most males yearn for in a female for coitus.

She was relentless, too. She knew full well what she had done to me, and she intended to make use of it to the fullest. My disdain, and fury, were only matched by the burning need instilled by the aphrodisiac she had administered. I could feel her quiver as she slid down onto me, then back up again, then down. To describe that in detail to the reader, the endless movement of her hips, which at a point was matched by my own, would be to become quite redundant.

Suffice it to say that it went on, and on and on. She didn’t speak to me for a long time. She just smiled, as she kept the same pace, only pausing when it felt as though I had built up close to climax. Then she would just stop, and come to rest on top of me with all her weight, and wait for me to start struggling again, or relax again. She knew just how to play the situation to keep my anger, desire and energy in check. Each time her hips moved down onto me I winced, even as I pushed up firmly against her, once even eliciting a little gasp from that smiling mouth. She chuckled a little, and pressed her hooves hard into my chest. “You’re loving this, aren’t you?”

I could only glare, give some sort of murmur of dissent, and wish her an ill fate.

She laughed. More than that, she cackled, and she leaned down into my face. “Well good. Because you’re going to be here for a long, long time mister. And you’re going to love it, so that even when you can’t stand parties and cake and sweetysweet fun things,” She moved her hooves to either side of my head, leaned down, and slowly dragged her tongue up the gag in my mouth, “You’re going to need me. You can hate me... but you’re going to want me. You can be angry... but you’ll love me too. Now... are you getting close. I know I am.” She started to slam down onto me even more forcefully than I had thought her capable of, yet her heat and warmth wrapped around my member caused me to have to bear it, a I could feel myself getting close as well. I tried to bounce her some, to give myself some relief, but she just met every attempt with a harder one. Finally she started to pant a little, and increased the speed to a feverish pace.

I couldn’t handle it anymore, and I heard myself moan loudly into the gag, as my entire body tensed, and I started to climax harder than ever before in my life. The sensation, be it the pleasure or the pain or the frustration that she was able to do this to me, could be described as the experience of Intensity itself. If there are Forms, I know at least one. In my state of incoherence, I did note that Pinkie gave what is best described as a growl, an animal, triumphant and infuriated growl. She bit my neck. Hard. I could not honestly tell you whether that was pain or pleasure for me.

When I reopened my eyes after a minute of panting, and resting, I found her still staring at me with the same smile. I half imagined that she wore that smile the entire time, that even during her orgasmic bliss she stared down, and only opened her mouth a little to growl and then to bite.

That smile is forever written in my memories, and shows up often in dreams. Dreams and nightmares alike. For what was this moment, awash with the bliss of passion, the horror of helplessness, and the frustration at allowing myself to fall into it, if not a mix of these. in the end perhaps our emotions are not so different as we imagine. Perhaps they are far more pliable: Joy in sorrow, sorrow in joy. Happiness, in hatred and fear.

“F-feel better?” I could only grunt. “Good.” She panted, resting atop me. It wasn’t as if she had any reason to hurry. “That stuff only lasts for an hour or so... then you sleep.” She giggled. “Then... we do it again.”

I was too tired to jerk, but I was able to glare again.

She just laughed, and then reached up and removed the gag.

You will have to excuse my choice, but eloquence wasn’t exactly the first thing on my mind. Between all the different emotions and feelings, all I could manage was,

“What, the, fuck, Pinkie!?”

“I know, I know you’ll probably want to know all sorts of stuff. But here’s the fun part... I’m not gonna tell you.” She laughed, and just stared down at me.

Tick, tock, tick, tock.

“I’ll come back later when you’re asleep and put some cold rags on your forehead. I mean I don’t want you hurting... that would be bad, right?” I would wager her eyes really did twitch, and it wasn’t just my imagination. “But for now, rest. I’ll feed you too, when you wake up. Oh don’t worry, I’ll give you real food, you know what they say.... One doesn’t live by cupcakes alone. Now you get to sleep, and...” She hopped off of the bed, and started to walk away, not looking back, her hair almost green in the strange light that my eyes still couldn’t fully adjust to. She turned back when she was at the door, smiling that same smile.

“... Get well soon.”

The door shut.

Darkness there. Darkness and silence.

Panic. I didn’t know, I couldn’t know what she was going to do. Would she feed me? Would she do something horrible to me? Would she really make me do that again? Could I get out? These questions... and a thousand more.

I waited, listening, ever listening.

Silence. Tense silence. The silence between notes in this ghastly recital. Now there’s an ominous word, for recitals are ordered, structured. Predetermined. And finite.

I waited. My body grew tired, suddenly, like water washing over me fatigue seized me. The kind of fatigue that we are inclined, by instinct, animal need, to fight against.

I waited.

Then, I slept.

Wer jetzt weint irgendwo in der Welt,

ohne Grund weint in der Welt,

weint über mich.

Wer jetzt lacht irgendwo in der Nacht,

ohne Grund lacht in der Nacht,

lacht mich aus.

Wer jetzt geht irgendwo in der Welt,

ohne Grund geht in der Welt,

geht zu mir.

Wer jetzt stirbt irgendwo in der Welt,

ohne Grund stirbt in der Welt,

sieht mich an.

(Whoever now weeps, anywhere in the world,

without cause weeps in this world,

weeps over me.

Whoever now laughs, anywhere in the night,

without cause laughs in this night,

laughs at me.

Whoever now goes, anywhere in the world,

without cause travels in this world,

comes to me.

Whoever now dies, anywhere in the world,

without cause... dies in this world,

looks at me. )

End?