“Doors have locks, locks need keys, which you don't have.”

• Cheshire Cat, American McGee’s Alice

Jack felt the hoof upon his side as plain as the sunlight upon his skin. He turned to look at the pony who had interested him as much as he had interested her, and smiled as he saw the look of awe on her face. Jack hadn’t really noticed before, but since he was a free man and could inspect the finer details of everything around him without worry, he noticed then: Lyra, like all of the other ponies, even the structures and land around them, was semi-realistic. He could see the strands of her multi-coloured mane, and the soft texture of her fur. Her horn looked smooth and softly shined in the light. Her eyes were what captivated him, however. They were just as enchanting as any pair of human eyes he’d ever seen, if not more. He paused and swallowed hard before he spoke, wanting his first words to one of his favourite ponies to be meaningful, but not too extravagant. “Hello, my little pony.” He said with a smile. Cute, and meaningful enough to stick as an occasional nickname, I did a good job with that one. He internally patted himself on the back, watching as Lyra blinked thrice before even thinking of replying.

Lyra Heartstrings gulped, Jack’s words enticing her as they rolled off of his tongue and slipped from his mouth. A light blush spread across her cheeks as they reached her ears. Not only was it how he said them, but it was the exact words he had chosen: “my little pony.” She hadn’t been called that by any other but her mother. To be called that by a human, a male human nonetheless, made her feel a single butterfly form within her stomach. She cleared her throat, which had become profoundly stuffy as she stood before Jack. She was afraid that her voice wouldn’t sound pleasing to his ears, that he would hate it, and her, after she spoke, but she knew that the only way she could find out was to speak. “Hello...” She felt ashamed. Jack had been able to come up with something charming, and yet all she could muster was a single word.

Jack held out his hand, gesturing towards her hoof. Another thing to point out as well, was the size Lyra was compared to him. Her face was level with his stomach, which meant that if he stood next to a taller pony, like Princess Celestia, his face would be at the same height as hers, Celestia being only a little taller. Just as he held his hand out however, something very... odd, began to happen. His vision got blurry, as if he had taken off his glasses, and his head hurt worse than it had ever hurt before, and that meant it hurt pretty damn bad. “Whoa...” He put his hand to his temple, and before he even thunk it, he sat down on the steps, Lyra’s eyes widening.

She was worried she had done something wrong. What if she hadn’t said the right words to him? Should she have made him cookies or something first? She remembered reading that female humans gave males offerings of food all the time. But then again, it did say that they only did that for those they cared about, usually in a romantic way. The thought made her blush, but she cast it aside quickly to focus on the situation at hoof. “Wh-what’s wrong? Did I do something to cause it?”

Jack closed his eyes tight and opened them again. “No, you didn’t... My... my head is killing me...” He strained to clear his vision, everything becoming shapes and colours at that point. He swore he heard something in the back of his head, but he couldn’t tell what. All he knew was that it wouldn’t stop repeating something over and over. He shook his head, only making himself dizzy as he did so. “I think I... I just need to lie down for a bit.” And so he did. He lied there upon the steps to the Equestrian High Court, barely able to see, darkness slowly blanketing his vision. It was then that the voice in the back of his head switched to being right in his ears, almost deafening. It was a voice he recognised, but he couldn’t place whom it belonged to. What he did know, was what the voice was saying: his name.

Jack. Once. Jack. Twice. Jack. Thrice. It didn’t stop, even whilst his body went numb, and he fell into a comatose state upon steps in a foreign land of which he had no natural right being in, it droned on inside his head. Jack. Jack.. Jack...

...It’s time to wake up.

AAA

Why can’t I see, what’s in front of me?

Light slowly faded into his vision, turning the inky blackness into pure, blinding white. When it had reached its brightest, Jack opened his eyes, breathing heavily, almost as if he had been legally dead, and was brought back to life. His ears were ringing similarly to how they would from a flash bang. He swallowed hard as the whiteness in his vision slowly faded, and the ringing subsided.

A person faded into his vision, and the audio of their voice finally began to reach his mind. “Whoa-ha-ho dude, you need to calm down, don’t try to get up so fast, you’ll hurt your head.” It was his friend, Shay. Jack was confused as to why he would see his big nordic friend in Equestria, but he then noticed where they were. He was back in his house in Edmonton. In Canada. ...On Earth.

Jack quickly grabbed hold of Shay’s arms, and shook him, Shay’s medium length dirty blonde hair moving around as he did. “Put me back! Put me back, Shay!” Jack couldn’t believe it, after going through his trial, and successfully becoming an Equestrian Citizen, he was ripped from Equestria like a fish out of water. He had done and seen things he never would have dreamed of, and yet the perfect illusion he had been in was shattered before he could fully enjoy it. Earth was the last place he wanted to be at that moment.

Shay slowly took Jack’s hands off his arms, and looked into Jack’s dark chocolate eyes with his own pastel blue ones, seeing all the signs he knew well. He laughed a little. “I can’t put you back brother, not unless the universe gave me some awesome ability to control dreams, or even something cooler, like space and time. That would be sweeeet...” He smiled dopily whilst staring into space, his head in the clouds. His expression returned back to his normal smile before he turned back to Jack. “Anyways, like I said dude, you need to calm down. Freaking out is not going to help you come down any easier.” He sat back on the couch, and started eating some cool ranch chips. “Just relax maan, and everything will go back to normal.”

Jack put his hands on the sides of his head, sitting up on the couch. “How can I relax when I don’t want everything to go back to normal?!” Reality was hitting him hard, and he could barely handle it. “I was somewhere where I’ve always wanted to be, somewhere far away from here. Away from death and war, away from the jerks at work, away from every single one of my ex girlfriends! I had found a new start there, and gotten a clean slate, and... and now it’s gone...” He swallowed hard, and and sighed. It’s gone... It’s gone and I’m never going to be able to go there again unless nothing short of a miracle happens. ...I guess I’m just going to have to face that fact... He rubbed his eyes, getting the sleep out of them, feeling tired as ever. After taking a moment to let everything sink in, he looked up. When he did, he saw his two other friends: Jacob and Reagan. Jacob was relaxing in the recliner with his feet planted on the floor, and Reagan leaned against the wall next to Jacob, holding his forehead and groaning, as if in pain.

Jacob smiled kindly as he saw Jack look at him. “How ya feelin’, broski?” He leaned forward from his tall sitting position. Jacob was only an inch shorter than Shay, who was 6’4”, but unlike Shay, Jacob didn’t have slightly large muscles, instead having an average build, similar to Jack’s. “Probably not too good, I bet. I woke up feeling like I got hit by a train, but you know me, I still got up fast like I always do.” It was true, for Jack had witnessed it before. The second that Jacob wakes up to go somewhere or get ready for work, he shoots out of his bed and gets dressed and ready almost as fast as Klark Kent undresses into Superman.

Reagan grumbled for a few seconds, his slightly long dark brown hair covering his face, and spoke for the first time that morning. His hair, like Jack’s, could be mistaken for black if only looked at for a second or two. “Was it a fucking freight train? Because that’s what your guys voices sound like right now...” It was obvious he had an insane hangover. Normal hangovers usually didn’t bother him, because of how drunk he was almost all the time, so for a hangover to cause him such pain he can barely think, it would have to be a hangover of high magnitude. “Could you guys maybe distribute less sound through your voice boxes whilst still keeping your voices audible enough for just you two to hear each other, please? Thanks.”

Jack rolled his eyes at Reagan’s intelligent words. He’d known Reagan long enough to know that when Reagan was sober, he was highly intelligent. He could do some of the hardest physics and math questions easily, and he could talk his way out of any situation. It was the reason he was such an amazing lawyer, even though he had just graduated from Law School six months before. Jack looked back at Jacob, whose eyes were the same colour as his own, before speaking a bit quietly. “I feel a bit horrible to tell you the truth, my body feels sluggish, and I just got woken up from the greatest dream I ever had.” It was then that a thought it him. If I dreamt of Equestria, then what did the other bros dream about? “Hey, what did you guys all dream about?” He looked at each of his friends as he asked the question.

Reagan was the first one to answer. “You have no idea how spectacular my nighttime hallucination was. I was in a small building, reminiscent of a medieval tavern, loaded with beer, the best beer I had ever tasted. And it was being served to me by a maiden of the utmost beauty, beauty which I simply cannot describe. She was as drunk as I, and in our drunken fervor, we engaged in coitus on every surface in the bar, drinking more and more all the while. It was prodigiously wondrous, to say the very least.” The whole time he spoke he moved his hands in grand gestures, almost as if he was still dreaming as he spoke. When he finished, however, his head was struck with a grand pain once more. “Ah, fuck!” He began to walk towards the kitchen, most likely to make his remedy for hangovers. A remedy that he hadn’t had to use for a while.

“I’ll go next.” Jacob said, sitting forward in his chair, putting his elbows on his knees. “Alright, so, in my dream I woke up in the chamber of a princess. At first she was just as confused as me, and demanded an explanation for why I was there. I told her that to be honest, I didn’t know how I ended up there, and that I was sorry I was there in the first place. She believed me, and called off the guard, and then she started asking me questions about where I was from, and about who I was. I mentioned to her that I was a gamer, and right when I said that, we started talking non-stop about games. It turned out that she was a gamer like us, and we played some games, like Resident Evil. It was pretty cool, if I say so myself. We finished playing some Dead Rising, and we started towards the Library, because she wanted to see if there was any books on where I came from. But then I kinda blacked out, and woke up.”

Shay was the last one to answer, mostly because he was finishing off his bag of chips. Jack swore that he had seen Shay go through at least five bags of cool ranch chips in one day, but Shay told him that he had only had one that day. After that, Jack decided to never question Shay’s eating habits again. After eating the whole bag, Shay put up a finger and pulled a rolled up piece of paper out of his pocket, which he promptly lit and took a drag from. Jack rolled his eyes when he saw it, and chuckled a bit. It was one of the reasons he liked having Shay around: Shay was a pothead. He said some of the weirdest and funniest things because of it, most of them sounding cosmic and prophetic.

Shay blew out the ganja smoke, and smiled. “Much better.” He turned to Jack. “Now then, as for my dream, it was like a dream come true. I was surrounded by babes at every turn. Babes who bended to my every whim after only whispering a few words in their ears. They gathered around me as I explained the inner workings of the universe. I told them of how one day the mighty space whale will come and take us to the Promised Land, and they thought that shit was fuckin’ rad. And then we had some fun times, if you catch my drift.”

Jack rolled his eyes at Shay’s innuendo, and then went back to his own thoughts as he stared at the floor. So from the sounds of it, they all had dreams just as spectacular as mine... Well, perhaps just a tad less spectacular, considering where my dream took place. Their dreams seem at least kind of normal, however, compared to mine. Casting aside the fact that I was in Equestria, I walked through a forest, hitched a ride on a train, got sent to jail, and then went through a trial over a claim that I had assaulted someone. Well, somepony in this case, but still. ...Though, come to think of it, the guys didn’t really say where their dreams took place. Almost as if they don’t know or remember. He looked between Shay and Jacob, and then at Reagan, who walked back into the room with a grimace on his face from the horrible taste of his remedy. Wait... They’ve all told me their stories, but...

Jacob stood up and moved over to the couch, sitting next to Jack, who looked up at him. Jacob simply smiled like he always did, and then asked the exact question Jack thought he was going to. “Well then, tell us broski, what did you dream about?” Little did Jacob know what he was doing in asking his friend that question, for he and his two friends Reagan and Shay were going to be blown away by it’s answer.

Jack swallowed hard. ...I haven’t told them mine. He finished his previous thought, and as he did, the air in the room hung heavy. The air was thick with tension as his three friends waited for his answer. You couldn’t cut through the air in here even if you had a +5 Sword of Air Cutting... He cleared his throat, and then sighed before looking each of his friends in the eyes and subsequently closing his. “I dreamed...” He didn’t know why it was so hard for him to say it, for in his mind, he knew it was a simple answer. It was almost as if just saying it would change his life forever, though he knew that to think in such a way about it was ridiculous. He took a deep breath. “I dreamed that I was in Equestria.”

Glass shattered within the minds of Shay, Reagan, and Jacob. The veil of illusion that had been placed over each of their minds was disintegrated. They all realized simultaneously where their dreams had taken place, for it was the same place that Jack’s had. Through remembering that, they also remembered other things as well. The woman who had served Reagan beer and had participated in coitus with him was none other than Berry Punch. The princess that Jacob met in his dream? None other than the Princess of the Night, Luna. As for Shay, he smoked ganja and fooled around with several mares he didn’t even know the names of. They each looked at each other, and then spoke at the same time, saying the exact same words. “Holy shit.” Jack’s head popped up, his eyes opening as he heard them, wondering why they said that.

Before anyone could say anything else however, Shay spoke once more. “Now just everybody relax, I think I might know what is going on here.” He took another drag from his blunt, and then continued. “Awright, check it, see, when I heard we were going to party, I did some stuff to prepare and to make this party totally fuckin’ awesome. So, not only did I bake ganja into the brownies I brought-” Jack slapped his hand to his forehead. “-but I also put my own special concoction into the drinks I brought you guys, some more than others.” He looked at Jack with an almost sinister smile.

He brought out a bag full of extremely white powder. “This is something I call Unicorn Dust. It’s extremely kaleidoscopic, made from only the most psychedelic plants and chemicals known to man. It’s purpose? To put you under a powerful spell, knocking you out and making you dream of whatever is most prominent on your mind when you take it. It makes the dream ultra tangible, making you feel as if you are actually there.” He saw how amazed his friends were, and knew he had to explain more.

“There is a downside to it, however. Because of the way it alters your mind, whatever happens to you in the dream is simulated on your physical form by your body. In other words, you die in the dream, you die for real.” Shay stopped to take another puff from his blunt, and then looked at the terrified faces of his friends. “I know, right? It’s some pretty scary shit! That, my brochachos, is why I suggested we watch MLP last night.”

AAA

Why can’t I see, what’s in front of me?

After the four friends realised that they all dreamt about the same land because of a drug, they all tried to get back to their normal selves, chilling around Jack’s house and doing their various everyday activities. Shay watched various internet critics on his laptop, laughing maybe harder than most would at the jokes and points the critics made. Jacob played survival horror games, and watched different b-rated horror movies. Reagan, well, Reagan just drank a lot of booze, drinking only from the stock the he had brought himself, afraid to even touch any other bottles. All of the bros were doing fine. All, that is, except one. Jack, who had been given more Unicorn Dust than his compadres, was suffering from post-trip stress. He hadn’t quite come completely down from the state that the hallucinogen had put him in, and because of that, he was having visions. Visions of the door.

I see the doors that I can’t open, adding locks from time to time...

He was walking down the hallway to the bathroom, and there it was, just on his left at the top of the stairs. He reached out to turn the knob and tried turning it, only to find that it wouldn’t turn. His eyes opened wide as a lock appeared right below the knob, almost seeming to form shape from the wood before turning into black oppressive metal. Other locks formed afterwards, chains connecting some. Locks to which he knew he had no keys. Just as the door could not fit anymore locks on it, it disappeared, leaving the wall behind.

When it opens, something blocks me, and I’m asking myself, “Why?” Did I take the step I wanted? Was it just a state of mind? I feel sorry for myself, everytime I close my eyes...

There were times when it was open before him, standing there just as it had in his living room, but instead of the black space it was supposed to hold within, there would be bricks, or even stone, blocking him from entering. He wondered why it wouldn’t let him in, and thought of everything he had done in his dream. He asked himself if he had truly done everything he wanted to do, and only got the same answer every time he did. No. The next time he saw it, he thought that maybe if he imagined it unlocked, open, with nothing blocking him, then it would be as such. It was a futile effort, for no matter how hard he tried, the door stayed the same: locked.

And I fall, into a hole, and I can take no more...

AAA

Jack sat down upon the couch Shay was on, it's cushions so soft they slightly caved in when sat upon. He looked over to Shay, melancholy written thickly all over his face. “Bro, it's not good, it's not good at all... The door keeps staring at me, taunting me because I can't enter it. I want to enter it again, man... I don't want to leave it, that place... The place we've always wanted to be…” He was wringing his wrists all the while that he had spoke, and his eyes constantly shifted from his Nordic friend to a place on the wall, one shaped almost perfectly like a door because of the pictures around it.

Shay shook his head, knowing how looney Jack was sometimes. “Jack... You gotta understand, staying there would involve complete chemical displacement. Your mind, heck, your very being would have to be displaced from your physical form. They would leave your body to move to the universe beyond the door, man. You get it? You'd be pushing up black roses, brah.” Shay needed to say it in the simplest way he could, and so he had to lower his level of philosophical mojo whilst he spoke. It was then however that he realised that he was the one who addled his friend's brain to the point it was at in that moment. “But... If you really, really, really, are sure you understand what staying there means, and yet you still want to go, then I won't stop ya, that's just not the whale prophet's way... There's more in my bag upstairs.”

The look on Jack's face was one of newfound hope, he looked as though he had seen a miracle happen right before his very eyes. He quickly rushed from his sitting position to a jog towards the stairs. He went past Reagan, who was entering the room. Reagan raised a brow at Jack's passing of him, and sat next to Shay. “Where the bloody hell is he going?” He asked shortly after looking at Shay's partially dopey face. Shay merely shrugged his shoulders, acting innocent, and took a long hit from his bong, which could shrink into a coffee cup. It was a bong from one of Shay and Jack’s favourite movies, that they geeked out about when they first got it.

Jacob was next to walk into the room, pointing around. “Where's Jackbro at?” The other two shrugged their shoulders together, and Jacob knew they only did that when they truly were lost or agreed on something. Jacob turned to go after Jack, but was shortly stopped by Jack running into him lightly before sitting in his throne-like seat like a Jarl from Skyrim. In one of his hands was a black pipe with gold accents, it looked like an Egyptian or Persian artefact of some kind, which was the exact reason he had customised it that way. In the other hand he had the bag of ever tantalising Unicorn Dust. He opened the bag of Dust, and began to take some out. He smashed it into the bowl of his pipe, mixing it with the ganja that was there as well. He took a box lighter out and lit it before he looked back at his mostly surprised friends.

“Let's fucking do this shit! Für Ihre Gesundheit!” He began to smoke his bowl expertly, even Shay's mouth opening at the technique, because it was one of his own. After the bowl was completely devoid of any drugs, he looked at the bag of dust and grabbed a handful, which he began to stuff into his mouth, his nose bleeding lightly. Reagan and Jacob went to stop him, but when they grabbed his arms, it was already too late. His head hung low, and his arms were limp, last words slipping from his lips. “Join... me…”

Jacob sighed and shook his head, but still looked calm and accepting. “I better go with him, so he doesn't get in any trouble. I am basically his older brother after all. Besides, it's Equestria, who doesn't want to go there?” He smiled at Reagan and Shay, before he curiously took a couple handfuls, and ate them. “Huh, tastes kinda like... sweet tarts…” His nose began to bleed like Jack's, and he started to slowly lose consciousness. “See you... there... broskis…” He fell back onto the couch, and looked like he had gone to sleep, his hands in permanent finger guns, two clicking sounds leaking from his mouth as his breath left his body.

Reagan turned to Shay from Jacob's body, to see whale prophet already in the same state as Jacob, Dust coating his nasal cavities as well as his nose. He looked at each of them, seeming a little pissed. “Fuck, I guess I gotta go too. These little shits usually get into crazy stuff one way or another, and I'm the only one who can get them out of it…” He reached into his bag on the floor, pulling out a highly ornamented box, but he stopped before he opened it, because the words he had said only then made him see something. “...Fuck, it really is like I'm their dad... Damn it.” He opened the box, two bottles being found there.

The story behind the bottles was one he had only told once to his friends. They were full of the greatest alcoholic drink he had ever had. He said that if he knew his time was coming soon, he would drink one, and take the other with him to the grave. He opened one and took a small tasting swig, his face slightly blissful. “That's some gooood shit.” He then poured the right amount of Dust into the bottle, before he downed it in less than twenty seconds, beating his previous record by four. He took one last look at his friends, grasping the full bottle tightly before he shut his eyes.

AAA

It was then that he saw his friends once again, but standing outside of their bodies, in ghost-like forms. He stood up with them, bottle surprisingly still in hand. Words he had said many times before in different ways emanated from his spirit lips. “You look like faggots.” They all heard a rumbling, and looked at the fireplace to see it become a door made up of different woods, gems, and metals, plant life growing on and around it. Many vines were across it, moving around, alive. It looked awe-shockingly beautiful in that moment. And what could only be described as the sounds of life echoed forth from it.

Jack was the first to walk up to it. He grasped the knob, and looked back at his friends. “We've been killing time our whole lives waiting for a moment such as this... Now we go... Ex ignorantia ad sapientiam, ex tenebras ad luce.” He turned the knob with a grin bigger than any grin he had ever had before. As he pushed it open a white light spilled forth, one which entangled them and blanketed them, blinding them completely.

From the farthest reaches of the white space, a loud and deep bloop resounded throughout the light, changing it’s colour, blanketing life in a sea of dark blue mystery.

The Four began to sink under it, being suctioned down by funnels that had been formed for them.

And swifter than the light had come, everything became...

...absolutely, indomitably, ultimately...

...dark.

Author's Note

It's baaaaack. Please, tell me what you think.