The Hollow Kingdom of Big Macintosh

Exhibit A

Shoehorn is always a welcome guest at the Apple house. He doesn't eat their food, but Big Macintosh often finds him in the bathroom due to his negligence to lock the door. It is almost as if it is Shoehorn's house and Big Mac is intruding. He doesn't exactly remember when he met Shoehorn, but he remembers playing with him right before his mother gave birth to Applejack. They were playing in the orchard or behind the barn when his father appeared covered in the kind of sweat that accumulates on a stallion's forehead in dire situations.

"My parents will never give me a sibling." Even back then, Shoehorn was insightful. He still is. The only thing that has changed is how big he is and how little he minds when Big Macintosh finds him during a private moment. It is his home, on some level.

The meetings are getting farther between nowadays. If Shoehorn is finally settling down somewhere, it isn't in Ponyville. Each story he brings back is different, like the scars on a veteran. His brain is marred with stories. Big Macintosh always asks where he's been.

"I made shoes for a King," he once said. "Not for the King, but for the stallion he loved behind the Queen's back." Shoehorn made shoes, both metal and otherwise for a living at times. His father before him also made shoes, but his mother was just a home keeper, although Shoehorn did not like saying "just" a home keeper. The thought of being responsible for little iterations of himself both frightens and excites him, but he is more effected by fear than excitement. It could be part of the reason he hasn't settled down yet.

"Who was he?"

"The King? He rules over a Kingdom far in the west. They've recognized a monarch for thousands of years and he can trace his lineage to the very first King. He married the Queen to continue the bloodline, but he's actually a homosexual. The entire Kingdom knows about this. It isn't against the law for him to openly have another lover, but he keeps it a secret anyway, for the Queen's sake he says. He loves her but doesn't realize it I think."

"I meant his lover."

"Oh."

Often, Shoehorn would not reveal his whereabouts, even asking Big Macintosh where the farmpony has been himself. The answer never changed for Big Macintosh. He was at the farm. He had been at the farm and it appeared he will be at the farm for the rest of his natural life. He can imagine himself somewhere else, but that doesn't mean anything. Sometimes, though, he has stories about what has happened to him.

"I drank a love potion."

"Today?" Shoehorn asks, reaching for something to wipe his ass with.

"No, on Hearts and Hooves Day," Big Macintosh clarified. He watched Shoehorn clean himself, like painting in reverse. When he finished, canvas was clean and more appealing to look at, on some level.

"That seems like the day to do it."

"I was tricked," Big Macintosh explained.

"Yeah, that happens sometimes," Shoehorn said. He just stands next to the toilet without flushing. "A mare once tricked me into drinking this stuff that made me really horny. I ended up bucking her sister, or friend or somepony. I'm not sure why she did it because I never saw her after that. I think it may have been an accident. Actually, I did see her after that. I was in Vanhoover doing a job."

"What kind of job?"

"Construction. We were building houses: charity work."

Big Macintosh has never seen Shoehorn flush. There are times he'll just stare at the lever as if in a trance and when Big Mac calls out to him he whips his head around as if they are back in school and the teacher has called his name right as he stopped paying attention. They never did pay much attention in school. Cheerilee once asked him if he had trouble focusing.

"Eeyup," he'd said. Everything was a little blurry. A week later his parents died and Shoehorn didn't come to the funeral when it was held.

"I didn't know your parents," he said many years later. "There was that one time your dad showed up when your sister was born."

"Applejack?"

"Yeah."

"Where were you when Applebloom was born?"

"I can't remember," Shoehorn said. He turned to the toilet and just stared at the lever for a while.

"Still can't remember?" Big Macintosh asked after a while. Shoehorn turned back to look at him slowly.

"Huh?"

"Where you were."

"Nopony can remember everywhere they've been," he confessed. "Unless they haven't been anywhere." Big Mac wondered if he was talking about him.

That brings us to the present, where Big Macintosh has once again walked in on the honorary fifth member of their household. Shoehorn doesn't look up or acknowledge Big Mac in any way, shape, or form. He just stares at the tiles on the floor, drawing faces in the discolorations with his mind. There is a particular dark splotch that looks like a mare's face, marred only by the grit where two tiles meet.

"Where've you been?" Big Mac asks.

"Nowhere," Shoehorn claims. He gets up from where he's sitting and moves past Big Macintosh into the hallway. Big Macintosh follows him right to the front door, where Shoehorn finally turns and looks at him. "You don't need new shoes, do you?"

"No, why?"

"Gotta eat," Shoehorn explains. He leaves the farm without a word. Big Macintosh doesn't watch him, but he closes the door and returns to the bathroom. He will think about Shoehorn while he's gone, but he won't miss him too bad or be lonely without him. Shoehorn is not his friendliest, or even most real, hallucination.