Cigarette ashes burn red
but they fall like snow,
and I hear the wind a callin' my name
and this world's got to end someday soon.
A slick black queen
in a slick black coat
her leggings high and her brim down low.
She's beautiful and she knows it.
You can't believe you just let Vinyl Scratch move in. She's piggish, doesn't wash any dishes, and plays that repulsive music in all hours of the night. You found her passed out on the floor of a nightclub, spouting some nonsense about her coltfriend dumping her or something. Being a pony of great generosity, you scooped her up and brought her back to your apartment. She was luckily sober enough to have personal boundaries, but after a little bit of conversation, you heard she has nowhere to go. After MUCH thought, you decided to let her live in your stuffy flat.
Living with Vinyl Scratch is honestly the stupidest descision you've ever made.
"Vinyl? What did you do with my hairbrush?" You shriek over one of her unlikeably loud 'songs'. Her room is locked up tight but the music tears through the door, seam-ripping at the threads of your patience and shaking the silverware stacked upside down and sideways in the kitchen sink.
"In the drawer beneath counter!" Vinyl doesn't even bother to stick her head out of her door. You grit your teeth and stomp into the stark white kitchen. A balcony candied with mountain dew bottles and sour punch straw wrappers hangs from the side of your apartment, a vast sea of concrete jungle stretching beneath it. You fling open one of the drawers, and sure enough, the blue and gold hairbrush is pressed between a spatula and a pizza cutter.
You yank the brush through your hair and curse the very unicorn that caused all of this- the almost fire, the gala mishap, the humiliation from your peers. You want to strangle her so bad, but you try to focus your anger on your hair.
It's gonna be a long year.
You can't believe you just moved in with Octavia. She's snooty, stuck up, and demands you wash the dishes when she doesn't lift a hoof to help you set up for concerts. Yeah, she did bring you home from the night club that one time your disgusting coltfriend dumped you for accidentally forgetting to put in headphones while listening to dubstep, but who cares! Her policies are ridiculous! She forced you to tell her all about yourself, and you eventually told her you had no place to rest your head except for your turntables.
Huge mistake.
She made you move in with her, even though you can make a peachy keen bed out of the barstools and a table cloth at your nightclub.
Living with Octavia is honestly the dumbest descision you've ever made.
She's yelping about her hairbrush, so you tell her that you last saw it in one of the drawers in the kitchen. She stomps around and throws a hissy fit.
It's going to be a long year.
You're practicing a piece for a concert tomorrow night when Vinyl finally decides she'll come out of her hermit hole. She trots lazily into the kitchen and grabs the last bottle of that neon green slum she's always gulping and ambles back to her room. You roll your eyes and play fiercely a sonata you've practiced for months.
The song goes eloquently and gorgeously until that last little note. Your practices have yielded a high pitched shriek that would make a deaf pony herself wince and cover her ears.
Vinyl's door is shoved open and she walks out on her back hooves, her glasses propped up behind her horn. She takes the cello and it's bow from you and glares, pressing the bow to the strings. Scratch plays the last measure of the song, each note hit perfectly and smoothly. You brace yourself for a cacophony of an ending note, but the song climbs up and ends on the exact note as it was written in the sheet music.
She hands it back to you and drags herself back to her room. You're taken aback by her ability, your jaw slack and your eyes wide.
After an hour of practicing endlessly, you finally decide to go out for a breath of fresh air as another song starts up from Vinyl's room. You wrap the scarf you knit a month ago around your neck and brush a piece of fuzz from the end.
_-_-_-_
Small snowflakes drift from the sky, dusting your black mane with little white specks and filling you with a childlike whismy. Some may scoff at the sentiment of such joy brought from frozen, crystallized water. You vaguely remember the pony's name who started the snowflake... Snowcrop? Something like that.
You shake your head and pull the scarf closer to your neck, squinting and leaning forward as the blizzard picks up. The winds shriek an eerie melody, but you push forward as the snow howls and the trees swing and sway. The warm light from a candy shop pours out from a street corner in inviting curls, making you gallop towards the familiar place.
Bursting through the door, a sweet little bell jingles a three-toned melody. The walls are painted a well-loved, washed out magenta and are peppered with little photos. You exhale and walk up to one of the walls, searching for a particular photo. It's the left wall, and you trail the tip of your hoof across the worn sepia photos. Right there, three inches away from the center and down just a pinch, held up with patterned tape, is a picture of you.
In the photo, you're grinning an ear to ear grin with your white and blue braces gleaming. A half-eaten birthday cake sits in front of you, a large '8' candle shoved haphazardly in the middle.
It fills your nose with a bookish scent and your mouth a sickeningly sweet taste. You remember every sharp detail of that day, from the adrenaline rush when you raced to this very pastry shop to the high-pitched giggles as you stumbled around your backyard, clumsily grabbing at fireflies, tired but free as a bird.
A knot forms in your throat. You shake that feeling away and trot to the counter. An elderly pony with a warm, saccharine smile greets you with the small wave of a hoof.
"Hello, miss Taffeta Turpentine. Fine day we're having! So much for the first day of spring," you chuckle as you look along the shelves under the counter. Sticky-sweet rock candy coaxes you, sandwich cookies draw you in, but you know exactly what you're getting.
"Please, call me Taffy," the mare responds, taking a pink and brown paper bag and filling it up with your favorite treats- Strong mint, sugar melted into ornate shapes, and one you hate- Jawbreakers. Vinyl demands you bring her back a monthly tribute of extra-sour jawbreakers, lest she hold your ear-plugs hostage.
The shopping expedition ends as it began- quickly, frigidly, and silently. You give a grateful nod to Taffeta and walk out the door, a light airy feeling in your chest.
While you hate Octavia with every fiber of your essence and occasionally want to strangle her, you wonder what it'd be like to kiss her. While you don't fantasize about it (no you sick moron), you wonder what she would taste like. Fine wine? Ripe grapes? You wonder and wonder, and honestly you're beginning to develop a little crush on her when she storms through the front door, bringing a winter storm advisory with her, her icy glare and cold words already cutting through the surly silence of your room. From your pillow fort, you hear stomping hoofsteps, the rustling of paper bags, and finally, the clunk of something outside your room.
You hope it's what you think it is... Yes! Octy got you jawbreakers.
Score one for DJ P0N-3.
While you abhor Vinyl Scratch from the bottom of your heart, you can't help but feel the slightest spark of love. No matter how hard you stamp your metaphoric hoof onto the little ember, the flicker burns dimly and you can't do anything about it.
After dumping the slum of a candy in front of Scratch's door, you drag yourself to your room and slump against the doorframe.
Your heart is pounding again, your throat seizing up with pain. You let out a hacking cough, your chest rattling with every breath you take. Without hesitation, you pop one of the mints you got from the pastry shop onto your tongue, the fresh taste calming your heavy breathing. The attacks are getting worse and worse each day, and you try to convince yourself it's just heartache or a cold.
To calm your frayed nerves, you walk over to your cello and pick up the bow. Gently, as if you'd break it with the slightest twitch, you run the bow carefully across the strings.
A heavenly note pours out, one after the other, weaving an elaborate and ornate melody like glass. It's so full of feeling, yet melancholy and sustained throughout.
In your head, a scene plays. It's a turnabout argument between a goddess and a reckless demon. The demon has spiked purple-and-blue hair, a spike protruding from her forehead. The goddess is dressed in long, flowing gray gowns that trail as she paces angrily, reprimanding the demon.
The melody quivers and fades away as the goddess collapses to her feet and withers away. You're left breathless as the final notes drift quietly into the last snowflakes that fall from the sky, each telling a story.
You fall onto your bed, only a memory of today's events running through your mind.
If only you had stayed awake a little longer to hear a playback of the song you just composed on a violin in the next room.
I said a word,
it got caught in my throat, and it burned.
Slipped off my tongue and I choked,
you were concerned for a second.
Then cries echoed into the night, lesson learned
Because you heard a word
that I said, and this word how it rang.
In your head, it was loud and glorious, yes
and from where you lay on my chest...
Well, you heard it best
Vinyl stares at you with a hellish grin, white teeth gleaming like knives in the moonlight.
You forcefully bring a hoof to your forehead. The flashy sign of the nightclub glares with a bright, unwanted enthusiasm that stings your eyes when you look up. You'd despise this, but Vinyl swore she wouldn't play her 'songs' on max volume for ONE MONTH.
What a deal.
You let out a hefty sigh and push the door open, lip-glossy music immediately pounding over you like a riptide of acid. Ponies are twisting and shaking half-used glowsticks to the uneven rhythm of the song roaring from the large speakers set up at the back wall of the room. You have a cold feeling in the pit of your stomach as three stallions sitting in a sweaty, bunched together group look you up and down like you're on a menu. They seem all too much of lemurs, eyes wide and searching. You're tempted to slap them in the cheek, but you focus on the young bartender who's whisking a washcloth across the counter.
"Excuse me?" you call to the bartender in an annoyed voice, throwing an angry look to the stallion from the group that has decided to wriggle towards you. You can hear his heavy breathing from here. The bartender gallops over with a cheery expression. Her tail is long and black, like a thick mass of crow feathers, her eyes yellow and glowing in the sickening neon of the rave.
"Moondust, at your service!" She has a well-meaning voice with a touch of inebriation at the edge, but overall she seems extremely sober, "what can I get you, miss..."
"Octavia. Got anything that'll knock me out and is legal?" you ask her in a nonchalant voice. Your eyes roll at the stallion from the group who is scooting towards you, his wings slowly but surely inching off his back and outwards. You grimace at the notion of this heckler already sizing you up.
"No," Moondust responds, like the precise 'snick' of a guillotine, " but I do have some good wine if that's your taste."
"Yes please. Anything to take my mind off of this whoremonger of a stallion beside me," you growl, pushing the stallion backwards with a strong hind hoof.
Moondust snickers at the comment and brings you a small serving of fine wine in a fancy shot glass. You press the wine to your lips, and it instantly relaxes your sore shoulder. Suddenly, your lungs feel like they're on fire. You cough sporadically, and Moondust passes you a glass of water.
You shake your head and pound a hoof against your chest, gradually making the gagging die down.
Turning around, you see Vinyl dancing with a strong looking earth pony. His cutie mark is a speaker with little sound waves coming out of it.
She looks so at home on the dance floor. Lights pour onto her white fur, making her ordinary coat look almost bioluminescent. She moves in perfect rhythm to the music, her tail swishing and her head bobbing. Scratch is so perfect out there, twisting and twirling to the bouncy rhythm, occasionally flirtatiously bumping her flank into the stallion's cutie mark.
He brings her close and tries to kiss her, but Vinyl pushes him away and laughs playfully. They continue dancing, Vinyl shaking a glow stick above her with her magic.
The three stallions glare and point at you, whispering something about 'friendzone' and 'nice guy'.
One of the members gets pushed out of the group and towards you. He looks younger close up. You estimate he's barely 17, with a scraggly orange mane that looks like shredded carrots.
"Hey baby, can I get your number?" he asks you in a nasally, toothy voice. His face is greasy and his wings fight against his will to burst off of his back. His purple eyes seem to be glued to your treble cutie marks and you're enraged with his unwanted brashness.
"Why, you need a foalsitter?" you hiss in a scornful voice. He looks at you as if you've kicked him in the stomach. He narrows his eyes and storms away, muttering under his breath.
The stallion dancing with Scratch tries again, five minutes later. He seizes Vinyl by her waist and yanks her forcefully into his chest, his eyes angry and his lips moving closer to Vinyl's. She squirms away from him and looks at him with a hurt expression, rubbing at her sore arm. You jump up and give the stallion a piece of your mind, your blood boiling.
"Will you stop it with the aggressiveness?!" you shout over the song pounding out of the speakers.
"I don't get it," he yells back to you, an angry look in his eye, "why are mares so uppity about being struggle-snuggled? I thought they like dominance."
He makes you furious. He makes your heart pound in your chest and your ears twitch wildly. He has a smug expression that you want to tear off and shove down his throat, then take Vinyl far away from him and leave him to choke.
Struggle-snuggling. The word burns like hot acid on your tongue.
With the rage and venom of a rabid manticore, you swing a gray hoof across his jaw, leaving a big red mark. He winces and presses a hoof to the mark, and you shriek at him.
"I don't get it," you sneer, "why are you acting like such a foal? I thought you like acting tough."
Vinyl grins at you with a thankful smile and hurls her glowstick at the stallion, hitting him in the back of his disgusting head and making him stumble forward.
You exhale and drag yourself back to the bar. The orange and purple is sobbing like a moron, his friends glaring at you.
You regret nothing.
"Give me your hardest whiskey," you mumble to Moondust, "and don't talk to me 'till I come up for air."
You don't remember how many drinks you had, but everything hurts. Your legs ache, your eyes sting, and your head throbs, something pressing down hard on your stomach.
You raise your head a little, but instantly regret it. A blinding light makes your eyes water.
You lie there for Celestia-knows-how long, breathing and trying to block out the high-pitched shrieking noise that pounds at your eardrums.
Once you've finally come to your senses, you find you're on your couch back at your house.
Vinyl brings a cup of coffee to you and you chug it down without talking or breathing. Finishing your cup, you glare at the white unicorn in front of you and shove your mug forward.
"Good morning, sunshine!" Scratch calls from the kitchen sarcastically, pouring more breakfast-ambrosia into your mug. Her hair is tied up in a messy ponytail and her glasses are perched on her horn. A blue apron with her cutie mark on the front is hastily wrapped around her stomach, although you don't know why she needs an apron to make coffee.
"Fuck you," you growl, digging your head into the pillow beneath your head.
"Love you too, Octy." She passes you a steaming mug with three little ponies on the front. Their unwanted enthusiasm mocks you as you yank a brush through the rat's nest you call a mane. Standing up is the worst challenge you've ever encountered.
After trials and tribulations (namely trying not to fall over), you walk to the bathroom. Your mane sticks out in all directions and there are dark bags under your eyes. You absentmindedly begin to brush your teeth, and Vinyl is humming a sweet little tune as she cleans up the kitchen-
Cleans up the kitchen?
Vinyl never does that! You decide not to question good things and put down your toothbrush.
At least you look mildly less like a beer-bellied cider addict. A solitary calendar hangs on the corner of the mirror, and you turn towards it while smoothing out your tail.
Scanning the page, you see absolutely nothing....
Except a concert.
Today.
In eight hours.
You double take and nearly trip over your own hooves, flinging open the curtain to the shower-bath and slamming the faucet on. You tear off your bow tie (now dusty and fraying) and throw it into the sink. Your chest begins to hurt, but you push past that pain and step into the tub.
"Ten minutes!" Vinyl Scratch shouts from her bedroom, and you practice your piece for the last time. Each note is played with ease, and the last note just scrapes by.
You let out a sigh and set your cello into its case. Vinyl steps out of her room, and you seize up in shock at what you see.
She's wearing a long grey dress that trails behind her, like silken ribbons on a present.
You look down at your black suit. It has a blue flower tucked in the breast pocket. You were almost certain that Vinyl, the definition of rowdiness and shattering social expectations, would wear a suit.
You stand corrected.
"Octavia!" Beauty Brass calls in her thick middle-eastern accent. Her words are breathy, and her tuba is wrapped tightly around her stomach, "Quit looking at yourself like you're about to sprout a fifth leg and get out here! We're about to start!"
"Coming..." you respond in a small voice.
"WHAT?" Beauty yells back.
"I'M COMING!!" You shout, trotting to where your trio stands. Rolling your neck around, you take your cello in one hoof and your bow in the other. Beauty Brass simply taps her hoof twice.
"Curtain in two!!" A stout stagehand with a bushy mane that reminds you of the old end of a broken mop whispers to you. Half moon glasses perch at the end of his blocky snout and his eyes are the color of dishwater.
Two.
Such a menial number, two. One more than one, one less than three.
Tick.
Tock.
The stage lights dim to a royal purple and the curtain inches its way upwards.
Your face relaxes as you see the crowd. Some might crack under pressure from the many judging eyes in the audience, but you see their criticism as a form of praise, if not flattery.
Working your hooves deftly, note after note after note after note resonates out of your cello. Beauty comes in with low bass notes that seemingly fill the room with suspense. Harpo drags a well-placed hind leg and a strong front leg across the long strings of his harp, and Fredric begins to play high notes, teetering between a lullaby and a broken music box, more sour than sweet.
Half way through the song, your heart begins to pick up its pace. The room seems to be hot, and your chest burns with a searing pain. You lean tiredly against your cello, your notes slowing down and becoming less precise.
Vinyl, of all ponies, immediately jumps up with a look of terror on her face.
"Octavia!!" she shouts, sprinting towards you from the back of the audience. Your vision begins to darken around the edges. You don't notice it, but you've fallen to the floor and your chest is heaving. The floor is cool against your hooves, suddenly some voice snaps you awake.
"OCTAVIA!!" Vinyl screams again, crushing someone's tail and stepping in someone's cake.
Your heart feels like it's about to tear itself apart.
Howling breaks out from the audience.
"Doctor!! Is anypony a doctor! Please, somepony, ANYPONY!!!" One voice caterwauls, accompanied by the crash of plates. Vinyl is hunched over, saying something over and over again, talking quicker than lightning.
"GET A PHONE, QUIT YELLING!" A stallion's voice thunders from the audience.
"SETTLE DOWN!" This is repeated by several different ponies. Why do you feel so weak?
The roars die down as you drift off.
The last thing you hear?
Vinyl's horrified, frenzied shrieking.
For once, nothing hurts. You're left with a dull throbbing in your chest.
Everything is warm and quiet, two of your favorite things.
There's no burning in your chest, no brash unicorn to annoy you, nothing.
The scene from before plays again in your mind's eye, except the white and blue demon crouches over the gray-robed goddess, sapphire tears falling from her eyes and onto the goddess' porcelain skin.
The goddess does not stir.
You're sitting in the audience at the symphony when the curtains lift up. Octavia looks like a hawk, shoulders held high and eyes like amethyst. She takes a deep breath, then plays. A sorrowful melody pours out of the bass and surrounds you like a thick blanket of snow. A blue pony beside her plays dark notes on a tuba, and a stallion strums a harp while another weaves an intricate melody of high notes.
It bores you half to death.
You sink further into your seat as Octavia begins to falter with her music. The notes are all off and her tempo is going haywire- something's up. A couple of ponies in front of you tip their heads as Octavia begins to sway sleepily against her cello. You jump up and race over to the stage- she's fallen over now. Her legs twitch and she lets out heaving breaths, all too ragged and sharp. You shriek her name as a cake gets crushed, but that doesn't stop you.
"Octavia, Octy, Tavi, Tavia, Octavia, please please just a little longer, you'll be okay..." you whisper to her, tears beginning to fall out of your eyes- You're crying?
You're crying over a mare you barely know that just so happened to let you live in her apartment. You're crying over a mare that hates you. You're crying over a mare that you hate.
What's wrong with you?
Sirens wail in the distance, and a husky pony with strong arms pulls you off of Octavia. You lash out at him like a wounded animal trying to escape, but his grip is strong. You get pulled backwards, away from that mare that hates you and vice versa. She's curled up in a weak little heap, her chest fluttering like a moth with a hurt wing. Howling and sobbing, doors slam in front of you before you know what's happened. Words die in your throat, your eyes sting with hot angry tears, you feel like you're drowning. The mare you were sheltered by just passed out while you fart around like a hair-brained idiot, you're the worst!
Paramedics rush into the symphony with a stretcher clamped in their hooves, shouting orders to each other like dogs. Why couldn't it be you? Something inside you dies as they carry Octavia, nothing more than a weak shell of a pony barely clinging to life, out of the concert hall and onto the ambulance. Tears fall to the ground, leaving little circles of moisture on the ground as you finally break down.
You fall to your knees and bawl like a newborn filly.
Author's Note
Okay. I'd apologize for all the Furrycore, but I'm really not all that sorry :1
Anyway, I'd be glad to listen to any criticism you have, since this community thrives on criticism.
