Darke Life

My name is Trevor Gunner. Actually, it was, until my life went wrong at about age seventeen. I was in my bedroom actually, playing some video games at around midnight. But I was getting bored on Sonic Generations, especially just unlocking Rouge (and getting bored of her too), so I went downstairs to snack on those cookies my sister Riley just made for our mom’s book club.

Chocolate chip oatmeal. Eck. I never liked oatmeal, but Riley usually put too much chocolate into them to taste anything else. We called them grenades. Back to the cookies. I pulled the top off of the glass container and took three. Staring out the window, I saw a shooting star.

I snickered. “I wish Riley didn’t use so much chocolate in these cookies.” Then I sighed. What I really wanted was a new world. School was too easy. No chores or main complications in my life were distracting either.

~

Suddenly the world was purple.

Everything… was purple. I dropped the cookies and ran to the door, thinking my house was on fire or something. But then everything disappeared. Suddenly I remembered what Riley was always telling me about shooting stars. Careful what you wish for.

I woke up in the middle of a field. The sky was a midnight blue with grey clouds everywhere, and the moon shone a bright white. As I sat up, I realized that my wish came true. But hey, I still had a cookie on my chest. I snatched it up and ate it, realizing I was much more hungry than I had been a few minutes ago. Or had it been longer? Had I been in a coma? And better yet… where the heck am I? Wherever I was, they obviously didn’t know the term ‘tone it down.’ Everything was bright yellows and purples, with hearts and balloons everywhere.

I strolled my way into town. Nobody was in sight. That made sense, since it was about midnight. But I didn’t care, up until a raindrop splattered in a nearby fountain. Another one pattered me in the eye. I looked around for a shelter. Since most of these trees were shorter than me, I decided maybe a house for the night. Surely someone would be kind enough to take me in. I ran out of the park and into what seemed like the town square. I looked up into the sky as the drizzle turned into a full-on downpour. I saw what appeared to be a hotel, or just an apartment tower, looming up about half a mile. I supposed I could get to it in five minutes if I started jogging now.

~

I was in full sprint forward to the tower. I didn’t expect the whole thing to be pitch-black though. Every window was dark, curtains shut tight.

“Looks like nobody wants me around tonight, huh.” I jammed my hands into my pockets and looked around. Nothing really close by, except… hey! In the distance, maybe another half-mile away, was a large house. The lights were on, and I saw what appeared to be a fifteen to seventeen-year old girl walking around behind the curtains, although her anatomy appeared slightly… messed up. I shrugged it off and ran to my fullest, ignoring the searing pain in my knees from my previous run.

I was now thoroughly soaked through to my boxers, but I had made it to the house. It looked kind of like a child’s tree house, but also like that candy shop I had seen on the main road. The colors were all black and grey, with a burnt gold around the windows. I noticed the curtains were purple with fuchsia lace in the form of spider-webs. I knocked on the door a few times and waited. Then I knocked again, slightly harder.

“Please, someone let me in! I don’t know where I am and I need a place to stay for the night, please!” I nearly started crying. I could NOT stay out in the rain all night. I really hoped that girl would come and open the door.

~

Then, softly, I heard a voice call.

“It’s unlocked.”

~

I never threw a door open so quickly, not even that time when I was about to hurl and was rushing to the restroom. “Oh God, thank you, thank you, thank you. Please, ma’am… excuse me, but where are you?”

“Kitchen.”

Now I was kind of scared. A girl I didn’t know, hostile or not, in a room filled with knives and other possible weapons, who didn’t seem to care that a complete stranger was in her home. There was a chance that she would attack me.

I slowly entered the room with the kind of fear you only get playing Slenderman and wondering whether or not the next turn is gonna have his face right there. And I saw her. She wasn’t human. She appeared to be some sort of equine. Her body was a scorched orange; slightly red in some places where it appeared her flesh had been cooked. I didn’t think that had just happened, either. She must’ve had those burns for a while. Her hair- err, mane, was messy with a few curls, and a rich black with some dark red highlights in the light. One of her eyes was bloody red, and the other a sky blue. She was bending over to search in the refrigerator, and she was wearing a baggy Transformers T-shirt, having it hang off of one shoulder.

“W-What are you?” I asked, taking a step back after observing this horse not only performing human actions like looking for food, but also talking to me.

She pulled her head out of the refrigerator and stared at me. Her left eye, which was blue, slowly faded to red like the other. “What? I thought humans like you would know what a damned pony looked like.”

I never thought that a pony could curse. “W-What?”

She jumped up onto the counter with a glass of grape juice in her hoof. How she could hold that, baffles me. “Well, you’re a human. I’m a pony. Don’t typical humans see ponies every day?” I nodded, and she continued. “I’m Darke Amber, and you’re in Ponyville. Or at least as close to Ponyville as I like to reside. You’re mainly on the edge of the Everfree Forest right now, in the middle of a storm. And this…” she gestured with one hoof to the room around us, sipping her juice before continuing, “is my home.”

~

“P-Ponyville?”

“You passed through the portal, unwittingly believing it was a shooting star. When you wished, the portal misbehaved and transported you here. It was originally supposed to get a different human.”

“Yeah, about that. How do you know what I am?”

Amber waited a moment, licking her lips and staring at the ceiling. “How shall I put this? Ah, yes. Long story short, I have visited the human world before. Might I say, I saw things I can never forget. I have been tormented in ways I shall never forget. But here, perhaps, a human would be at peace. I was supposed to send the portal out and retrieve a specimen. But I didn’t expect to get you."

“You see,” she continued, “I’ve known about the existence of humans for a while. Most of my childhood was devoted to proving this to the all-powerful ruler of Equestria, Princess Celestia. But instead, they were afraid of what they did not know, and did not want to know. Then…” her eyes misted over, and she froze in place as tears rolled down her cheek. “Then, things changed. And I no longer spent my life trying to prove humans existent. Sure, there was the occasional day that I wanted to go back to my research, and there was the occasional believer who wished to help me, but I didn’t. I stayed in the shadows with my equals.”

“Equals?”

“Different story for a different time, my friend. And eventually Princess Celestia came to find me. It took her no time, and I was thus banished to the Everfree. Here, I built my house, studied my notes, and returned to work on my research for the first time in a decade.”

“Why would you do that?” I stared at her for a moment, and she wiped a tear.

“To clear my head. And eventually they came to tell me my banishment was over, but I much preferred to stay here. I sent out twenty different portals over the course of a year, but none returned with a human. Until now.” She gestured to me again.

“So all I am is a specimen to you? Nothing more?” I had never been so insulted. She shook her head and looked out the window at the rain.

“It’s almost sunrise. You may need some sleep, if we’re going to send you back.”

“You’re sending me back?”

Amber turned back to me for a moment and smiled mischievously. “Unless you wanna stay.”