The Hollow Kingdom of Big Macintosh

Exhibit B

The elderly stallion with the black umbrella could be his very first hallucination. It stands to reason that he is simply the hallucination Big Macintosh noticed first, as in he noticed the stallion could not be perceived by anypony else. Even today, the unaged, yet ancient stallion can be seen from where Big Macintosh sits behind the apple stand. He's never approached this particular hallucination, meaning he doesn't know anything about him beyond that fact that he is only real in Big Macintosh's mind.

The stallion with the black umbrella just stand and waits on street corners, peering down at a pocket watch at regular intervals while looking increasingly worried. Big Macintosh believes the purpose behind this is to get him to approach the stallion. It's a clever ploy, one of the best his mind uses really, but the only one he's never fallen for. Looking back at how fantastic some of his other hallucinations have been, he's surprised he didn't give into the old pony.

On the other hoof, it was that same, surreal simplicity that drove him to ask his friends about it back in grade school.

"I don't see anypony," Cheerilee told him. Big Macintosh turned to look back out the window. The old gentlecolt was still there, clearly visible.

"Oh, he left." Big Macintosh lied that day because that was easier. Defending what he saw would require too much talking. It was odd to jump straight to the conclusion that the man was an illusion that only Big Macintosh could see, but he turned out to be right in the end. He wondered, from that point on, who was real and who wasn't. There was no written rule that his hallucinations applied only to ponies either.

"Why do you stare at ponies like that?" Shoehorn asked him once. Big Macintosh quickly fell into the habit of silently regarding ponies and using one-word answers unless he was absolutely sure what he was talking to. He could talk to his hallucinations, but for some reason talking to them while they walked that line between reality and fantasy bothered him. It was silly, but it never led him astray.

"Nothin'."

He didn't over think his ability to hallucinate at that ripe, young age. He did not grow paranoid that everything was just one big illusion and he was just insecure enough not to tell anypony about it. He was partially afraid of losing his hallucinations, back then. He feared many of the wonderful things in life weren't real. He might miss those things too much.

He did, however, fear being crazy. Unfortunately, he wasn't sure what crazy was. He did not feel crazy, despite his hallucinations. He thought maybe he was the thief holding the knife to crazy's throat: crazy was not his crime, but he was still something else. He still had some sort of stigma.

"Tell me a secret," Rarity asked him. They were in the same class, but hardly ever spoke with one another. A lanky, young Big Macintosh wondered if the filly was just a hallucination. She had one of those kindergarten crushes on him, the kind that fizzles out when it becomes boring. He did not know this about her, though, which lead him to believe she was real.

"I see ghosts."

"Ghosts?"

"Yeah." Big Macintosh did not consider the phantoms he saw ghosts. He did not believe that one day these ponies died and showed up in his mind or that they some how became unacquainted with their own bodies to freely wander his mindscape as mere thought forms. He considered his hallucinations a part of a separate reality and even sentient. "You probably think I'm crazy."

"I don't think you're crazy." Looking back, it was impossible to tell if she didn't think that because she thought Mac was lying or because she legitimately believed the colt could see ghosts. "As long as they're really there."

They were real to Big Macintosh, and they still are. Nothing has changed for him. If he were to lash out at one of his apparitions, they would be hurt. If the sky fell down on the apple stand, taking the rest of Ponyville with it, the stallion with the black umbrella would die too. He could, by some miracle, survive. That too is a possibility.

"Excuse me."

Big Macintosh looks down at the pony in front of the stall.

"I need apples."

"Eeyup." The pony puts down her bits on the counter.

"Hurry up." Big Macintosh stares at her for a second longer. He turns around to load up a sack with apples. He counts them, one by one, until the little, cloth sack has significant weight to it. He turns back to to counter and is not surprised to find it empty. Big Macintosh returns to his silent vigil over the stand, but not before he adds the sack of apples to the growing pile.

Rarity's crush for him ended the day after he revealed his only secret to her. He thought that, perhaps, his mind invented the whole event, but that was only at first. All through those younger days, he always caught her regarding him a little longer whenever their eyes should accidentally meet. Her expression was a blank page, waiting to be filled by an expecting author with a loaded pen. She was the filly who could see the colt who sees ghosts see ghosts.