A Promise Not Forgotten

My name is Aidan, with an ‘a’; I am a fifteen year old boy in the tenth grade. I am smaller than most kids; I lean more towards the skinny side. I have blonde hair and greenish-blue eyes and an average height. Those that see me do just that, see me, nothing more. I do my best to stay out of people’s way, and make myself scarce when possible. I have forged few friendships and have little to no social life. I do fine in school, in fact more than that; I do great in school. I’m in most of the honors classes available to me. I’m that one smart kid who sits in the back of the class, nobody cares though. It leaves me with time to think about the more important things going on.

Right now things are complicated, I want something more out of life. What I have now is a gift, and I have all the resources to achieve greatness. I can’t explain how, but something tells me I will do something to ruin it all. I numb the pain of these questions with the presence of my few close friends. We are a tight group, and we get along fine. It’s a normal friendship, for anyone in an average American high school. The normal insults are shot among us and are just as easily ignored. But the true thing I want out of life is pure, real friendship. What we have now is great and all but it feels lacking, again I don’t know how to explain this.

“Great, another weekend gone…” I complained as I woke up Sunday morning. I slid out of bed and walked groggily down the stairs to the kitchen. I lazily made a quick bowl of cereal, ate, and retreated to my dark room. I wake up around noon on an average weekend and stay up until about one or two in the morning, but I like the darkness to I put a sheet over my window. I’m a hopeless gamer and quite the techie, I guess that explains my no social life problem. With boredom on my mind I plopped down at the computer and started Skype.

Let me tell you, having a terrible memory is one thing that plagues me the most. With the volume on full blast, I put the headset on and looked at who was online. The familiar tone of an incoming call on Skype played through my massive Logitech G35 headset on full blast. The sound nearly gave me a heart attack and I answered as quickly as I could.

Colin greeted me happily, “It’s about time you got on!”

My half sleeping ass screamed in reply, “AAAAAARRRRGGGGGHH! Damn this headset and its super-duper loudness! I left the fucking thing on full blast again!” We shared laughs at my expense and carried on with our lazy gaming.

I am a brony, have been since the summer of 2012. I was a closet brony at first, like most bronies I know were. During the winter of 2013 I let go of the act and openly admitted to being a brony. Colin couldn’t give two shits if I was or not; in fact, it gives us something to talk about when we get bored of gaming. Sure I had some insults come my way because of it, but it’s worthwhile to come out of the stable.

As we neared the end of our sixth hour of straight call of duty black ops 2, we again somehow got on the topic of bronydom; most likely because of the ass who called me gay for my pony emblem.

Colin asked the question, “Yeah, ponies are nice and all, but are they really that amazing?” He had long since stopped judging me for it, never hated me.

I responded with my usual answer, “Fuck yes dude, why would I keep telling you to watch a series that I thought sucked?”

That usually shuts him up right on the spot but this time he had to ask the question. “If you could go into MLP, would you? And what would you do?”

I responded in split seconds, “DON’T YOU TEASE ME YOU PRICK! IF YOU KNOW A WAY THERE I WOULD KILL YOU TO GET IT!” There goes my crude sense of humor, but Colin knew I was joking. We have this understanding of each other. “But, yeah… I’d love to go there. It’d be awesome, but I never could go; I will never leave my family,” I began to talk a little quieter. “It’s just one of those things I think about. As to what would I do, I have no idea. That’s a conditional statement ya know!”

Colin questioned, “What do you mean, ‘conditional statement’?”

I explained, “Well, it depends on what the world is like at that time, does it differ from the show? Who finds me first? Are they hostile? You know, shit like that.”

“Hostile ponies?”

“Yep. You haven’t seen the show, so I wouldn’t expect you to know. Besides, remember cupcakes?”

Colin wasn’t a brony, but that doesn’t mean colorful ponies being murdered and made into baked goods doesn’t sicken him. “Oh God, I get the point!”

“Shit, its eight and I still haven’t done any homework. I gotta get goin bro, see ya tomorrow. Tata!” I said to close the gaming marathon.

“Yeah, I better get off too. See ya tomorrow,” Colin replied and the call ended.

And there I sat, but for some reason I couldn’t get that question out of my head. Though I easily dismissed it earlier, I would never let anyone know I actually had considered what would happen if I went to Equestria. I spent a lot of time on the subject regularly. I did want to go, and often considered what would happen to my family or me if I went. I finished my homework and called Colin back to help him with a problem in algebra II.

“So yeah, just use the synthetic division crap on the polynomials and don’t forget to plug in zeros for the missing exponents so that the powers count down from left to right all the way to zero,” I instructed. I don’t care if I stayed up late; I usually stayed up late anyway.

“Oh right, I remember. Thanks,” Colin trailed off as I continued reading an MLP fanfic.

Just then as I was about to close the call I heard a different voice. “The time has now come!” The voice itself was fucking scary, like someone who had been smoking for years, but not only that but was really loud. Not the kind of faint wheezing sound of a smoker.

I disregarded the demonic-sounding voice to yell at Colin, “The fuck was that man, you sounded like shit!” He usually uses his own wide variety of demonic-sounding voices to scare people in DayZ.

He replied, “Tell your brother that was creepy, and stop smoking.”

“He aint in here, I thought that was you,” I responded. I then checked if there was someone else in the call, but it was only us. And I also looked around the room to see if my brothers may be crouching behind the dresser. “That shit was weird man. Some creepy stuff is going down here.”

He sounded a little panicked. “What the fuck is THAT!” and started screaming.

This scream was different though. It wasn't out of anger, and it wasn't a joke, it wasn't mocking my sudden weariness. This stomach turning scream spelled true fear in my friend. His scream scratched at my very soul; I heard him yell before, but never like this.

I yelled, “Dude, what the fuck is goin on. You ok?”

No sooner than I said that did I get tunnel vision. The world began to fade from me. I heard myself and Colin screaming, but it sounded distant. The fear was immense, I’m sure I wasn't the only one at the time fearing that I would die. I didn’t see what was causing my pain but I felt something there, not physically, but boy did I feel it.

The voice said, “When the time is right, you will hear me again…” in that same raspy and equally terrifying voice.

I heard Colin’s voice fade completely, I was alone now. That’s when I blacked out. Death was too easy…