“My Little Pony, My Little Pony, ah ah ah ah...”
“Oh my GOSH, Cassidy, turn that crap DOWN!”
Even if my sister started pouting at me, I still wasn’t going to listen to that. I didn’t want to spend the rest of the day listening to a bunch of ponies whine about their “problems” and “needs.” That stuff was for girly girls, and I was definitely not a girly girl. I was almost a grown woman, not a six year old.
I continued to type my report on my little Windows laptop, which was slow and useless. Cassidy frowned, narrowing her eyes, then huffed and turned back to the T.V. To my dismay, I could even hear her singing the stupid theme song. I groaned and went back to my school paper.
Let’s cut to the chase. My name is Maya Bakerson, I am seventeen years old, and I live in the boring old town of Hudson Oaks, Texas. I have a little brat of a sister named Cassidy, who is seven, and I am homeschooled.
Now, you may be wondering why I was writing a report if I was homeschooled. Well, my parents were strict and loved to give me essays to “boost my reading and writing skills” as they called it. On the contrary, I usually just copied down the words from Wikipedia onto my paper and changed, like, two words on it. You could say my classes were pretty easy.
Anyways, the show started and I tried my best to ignore it. I plugged in my iPod and listened to Skillet to attempt to block it out, but apparently my selection of songs of theirs wasn’t loud enough to penetrate the ponies.
Finally I just gave up and worked on the report, standing painfully through the pony.
The episode was about a wedding, someone with a voice that sounded a lot like the Ken from Barbie, and shaking your butts to each other. Maybe that was their mating call or something.
Oh, and there was a lot of singing. Oh my gosh, the singing. I’m not dissing their singing or anything, it was really good actually, but I could count three songs in the first episode alone. I knew it was a kid’s show, but come on. At least try to make it realistic.
“Hey! What happened to the ponies?” Cassidy’s shrill voice shook through my eardrums and possibly the whole house. Thankfully, Mom and Dad were at work and couldn’t hear her. They were always at work when they weren’t teaching me and Cassidy.
I stood up and walked over to the television, not wanting to hear her whining. The T.V.’s screen was bright, white, and unmoving. There was no sound coming from the speakers, either, and for a second some weird part of me thought that the T.V. was pulling a screamer on me.
“It’s fine,” I said in an annoyed tone. “Maybe the ponies are blowing each other up and the explosion is so big and powerful that the screen is going to be white for a few seconds.” Hey, it seemed like a pretty good explanation at the time. I would have watched that show if it was true.
Cassidy just shook her head and pointed at the screen like there was something there that I couldn’t see. “It’s been like this for two minutes, Sissy,” she retorted.
“And you just now decided to tell me?”
“Uh, yeah.” she deadpanned.
I sighed and held on to the T.V., then shook it rapidly, making sure I didn’t shake it too hard and made it fall off the stand. Cassidy watched in confusion, but I paid no attention and continued to rattle its wires. No effect.
Then I decided to pound on it’s side, not paying attention to how much my knuckles began to hurt. It wasn’t doing a thing, not even crack, and I began to wonder what exactly that T.V. was made out of.
This called for extreme measures, Maya style. I walked to the front of the T.V., balled up my fist, and through it straight through the glass. Instead of it shattering and making me bleed, like I expected, it seemed to open like a portal and I was yanked inside.
Yes, you heard me correctly. I was yanked inside the screen.
Something grabbed my leg-I think it was Cassidy-but I was too busy flying through the white and shouting in fear to do anything about it. Then I knew it was Cassidy; I could hear her high pitched squeals of excitement. Knowing her, she probably thought it was a roller coaster.
Suddenly, everything stopped. Everything was black. And everything smelled like rotting flesh, hopefully not mine.
I slowly opened my eyes and groaned. My head was throbbing and my body ached all over. I had the scary feeling that I couldn’t even move my limbs, no matter how hard I tried.
And I couldn’t see my surroundings either. The substance surrounding me was slick and green, barely transparent, and felt gross all over my body. And, considering the fact I was wearing khaki shorts, a tank top, and no shoes, it got even more sticky and gross. It was all around me and smothering my skin.
What made it even worse was that, somehow, I was upside down. That explained why it seemed like all the blood was rushing to my head. My heart wildly jumping around my chest, I wriggled around in my casing, trying to break it, slide out, or do anything successful.
I wasn’t successful.
An ear-irritating buzz filled the room around me, and there were black figures floating around. They looked like a bee, a beetle, and a slice of Swiss cheese somehow had millions of children. Weird, disgusting, holy children. And not the good kind of holy.
One of the figures floated up to me and gave me this weird, snaggled smile that would probably haunt my dreams for the rest of my life. “It finally awake,” he snarled, then began tearing at the cocoon around me with his teeth.
I didn’t know whether to be glad that it he was breaking me out, or scared of what he was going to do afterwards. I just sat, or rather stood, there, unsure of what to say or do. But once I was free, I jumped out of the cocoon, miraculously landed with two feet on the ground, and tried to run, which ended with me tumbling face first into the squishy flooring. Was I in a hive?
The weird thing stood in front of me, leaning forward to talk to me. I looked closer and saw that he looked like a pony, but creepy and with bug wings and no pupils. Then it struck me.
I was in the show.
A small part of me wanted to scream out into the equine-filled world until they found a way to bring me back, but the rest was feeling unnaturally contained and just stared up at the thing angrily. He probably put me in this place.
“No leave,” he said. “Stay here. We give to the queen.”
These things had a queen? And they were taking me to her? Aw crap. I had to get out of there.
“Too bad, I’m leaving anyways,” I retorted, standing up. But I didn’t take off without taking a good look at my body. Not surprisingly, I was a cartoony version of myself. I looked pretty good as a cartoon girl, to put it mildly. I ignored my body for now, since I had already experienced enough weird things that day, and took flight.
Once again I was knocked down to the ground not very long after. I had bumped into some really tall green and black creature, and was now gazing unwillingly up at it. Well, actually a her. She was much taller than the other things, but equally creepy. Her eyes were glazed with hunger, and I wondered if this breed of pony was a vegetarian or not.
“Get away from me, you creep!” I shouted, but her hoof plunged into my mouth, shutting me up.
The female shook her head and cackled. “I don’t think so,” she hissed with a grin that revealed teeth sharper than the smaller creatures, and much more scary-looking. “I’m going to have a few words with you, then feast off of you.”
My eyes widened. “You’re going to eat me?”
A look of disgust twisted on her face. “Oh, heavens, no,” she said, then snapped in a quick change of tone, “I’m going to eat your love, you foal.”
“Foal?” I exclaimed, but she ignored me and I was suddenly rising into the air. My body was surrounded by a dark green aura, and so was her gnarly horn. I tried to squirm out of my tight situation like I did earlier, but ended with the same result. “Let me go!”
The creature contemplated this for a second, then smiled again. “No, thanks,” she said and began flying off with me.
I looked below me at all of the small creatures as they watched me go by, pleased by my misfortune. They must have had a bad case of schadenfreude, laughing and pointing at my near to tears face. I was most likely a “lovely” shade of pink by now.
We finally stopped at what appeared to be the queen’s part of the hive. Combined with her size difference, this chic was the queen. Great. Just what I wanted. The person who put me through all this, I was guessing.
The queen sat in her throne and threw me a few feet away from her. I moaned, then sat up to look at her better. There were weird bug ponies around her like servants now. That changed my plans of attacking her and tearing her to pieces. Then again, I could tear the guards apart too, but that would make it even more challenging.
The bug queen’s voice interrupted my thoughts. “So, strange animal,” she began, tapping her hoof on her arm rest patiently. “what brings you to my hive? I don’t sense any love on you.”
I shrugged. “I dunno. I was punching my television when it turned white and brought me and my sister inside of-” Realization hit me like a train. Cassidy wasn’t with me, and I was positive she had come inside the T.V. with me. So that meant...
I hopped to my feet and got dangerously close to my sister, the blood rushing to my ears. “Where’s my sister and what did you do to her?” I shouted and pushed up to her face. She didn’t react as I hoped.
Her horn lit up, and I stumbled back, my breathing still hard and my heart still pounding. My chest glowed a bright green. “Ah, there’s the love I was hungry for,” she said snidely.
Was she serious about eating my love? Because that’s what it sounded like. I didn’t even know eating love was possible. Or that I even had any love. Either way, I was scared to the point to where I could have peed my pants any moment.
“Uh, I’m not giving you my love,” I said, and the green stopped glowing around both my chest and her horn. The queen glared down at me. I glared back.
“Hm,” she contemplated. “I like your attitude.”
I put my hands on my hips. “Seriously?” I said in surprise. People who actually like my attitude? How rare.
That creepy grin again. “I’ve never been more serious in my life, darling. Perhaps I could let you stay down here for a while...”
“Really?” It was better than being deprived of whatever love I had.
She nodded. “Besides, I have no idea if your weird otherworldly love is good for me or not. It’d be a waste to just throw you out, yes?” she said in a type of kindness.
“I guess...” I muttered. I didn’t desire to be kicked out of a hive that was either underground or above it in a tree, which would kill me. Maybe I could get some useful information out of them as well about my sister and see if I could find her.
Perhaps living in a children’s T.V. show wasn’t so bad after all.
