Anywhere but Here - Prologue
Prologue
“I can tell you’re a very sweet young girl, but it think it must be around bedtime back home, isn’t it? You’d best be leaving soon, wouldn’t want your parents to get upse-”
“Aww… can’t I sleep here tonight?” Scootaloo had been practising a little crack in her voice, the kind the older stallions would just die for. She had also picked out her favourite pair of white socks with purple stripes to match her mane, and she’d pulled them up as far as she could manage, just below her hips.
Perfect.
He was strong and muscular stallion, just over middle-aged, married--no children of his own yet--and his wife was away for the night. She liked the married ones the best. They tended to keep their mouths shut. And though she didn’t even know his name, she already knew he was hooked. Though it could never hurt to up the game a little bit.
“Pleeeeaaaassse? Just one night? Your bed looks so comfy…” She begged him, pleading him with her eyes as she trotted over and set her forehooves atop his queen-sized bed and spread her hind legs wide, laying her stomach on the bed, arching her back, tensing her flanks, raising her tail, and showing him everything he wanted to see.
His worst fear and deepest fantasy had just come true, and his face was torn between an expression of both sides, struggling and waging war for logic, reason, and self control.
Although the ‘faithful spouse’ side of the mind had never won ever. There was no exception for this stallion.
She could see out of the corner of her eye that his body and hormones weren’t so opposed to the idea. She could see that he tried to force himself to say no. She could see that it didn’t work.
He stood there for a moment, his stallionhood twitching in excitement beneath him. Then, in just a flash, he was on her. They were all the same.
Every night she would try to enjoy herself, but each night she died on the inside once more, and she felt St. Peter’s cold words on her ears. ‘Forgive me, but the scum of Equestria hold no reservation anywhere past those pearly gates. God’s luck to you with damnation.’
Every night, she cried herself silently to sleep. Every night was cold, dark, and dreamless.
Dreamless except for tonight.
Scootaloo lay in a small patch of clearing in the woods just outside the city. All around her, white flowers swayed in great waves along with her coat as a slight breeze swept through.
Then, in a single moment, the petals of these flowers bled to the rich, sinister blackness of ink.
The tree line drew closer somehow, and the leaves melted to tongues of flame. The branches skewed and brought the flames together into terrible faces that stared at her with a mouth without teeth and eyes of an ungodly abyssal blackness deeper than anything she could have ever imagined.
She quivered violently and curled up into a little ball, sobbing openly, a feeling of utter hopelessness and terminality engulfing her mind. She could vaguely make out the form of a mare through her half closed and watery eyes. The mare stepped between the trees, coming from nothingness into the clearing and walking slowly towards her. Her eyes dried then, and she could see the mare bore a sweet and loving smile. The mare came to her side and pulled her to her hooves. She stared at her for a minute, and then hugged her.
There was a bright flash, and when she looked, the trees were further from her now, still burning, but dimly at that. She flowers didn’t seem quite as black as before, and she noticed a hint of whiteness in the very cores of the flowers nearest her.
A muzzle pressed against her ear, and she was intoxicated with the sound of a voice of liquid gold. In that moment, all her qualms were eased, and those surreal images around her seemed to make sense somehow. She didn’t know those fiery faces, but she knew they fit where they were, and somehow she knew that she didn’t have to worry about them.
“It’s okay, kiddo. It’s all okay.”
She awoke in cold sweat, her heart racing and her legs trembling, chilled to the bone. Though none of it really felt like a nightmare somehow. It felt like a promise.
It was cold and dark and sweat matted her mane to her face, but somewhere inside herself, she felt warm.
For the first time in eleven months, a heartfelt smile lit Scootaloo’s face.
That smile changed though, drifted from heartfelt to the bittersweet smile of something she couldn't quite describe, though irony was close. She began to cry then, one last time, she promised herself that much. Maybe it was for her mom, or her sister, or herself, she wasn't sure. All she was sure of was that it would be her last time. It needed to be her last time.
'I'm better than this. That's not who I am anymore.'
She tossed her old socks into the nearby fire-pit and stumbled her way into the kitchen, moonlight guiding her hoofsteps along the way. The tears dried away from her cheeks slowly as she walked, little dwindling droplets falling to the linoleum floor that made her every step echo through the room.
'I'm done with this life.'
She drew a knife from an old mahogany knife block on the nearby counter-top and stared at her half-black reflection in the window.
'I'm done.'
With a care and deliberation she'd never felt before, not once in her entire life, Scootaloo swung the blade up once. A clump of straight, deep purple mane fell to the floor beneath her.
'I'm through being innocent.'
She swung again, sending more and more dark purple flurries of her prized mane mane fell down beside her.
'I'm done being helpless.'
She swung again. Again. Again.
'I quit you.'
Scootaloo just glared at that reflection then. There was nothing else left to do. After she cut one last time, and the last of her old self fell to the cold floor with her patches of mane, she just stared. All that was left of her old life were scattered and shattered memories, and all that was left of her mane was a short, wild eruption of purple--no more cascading curtains of whorish curls or straight, enticing strands. With that, the knife fell to the ground among the leavings of her old self. So close but so far. That was the feeling behind that little smile.
Scootaloo stepped out into the night and closed the door silently, barring herself against the past.
'It's done now. No going back.'
She walked.
