The dream was always the same.
He was playing with her, as children. And then she would kiss him, just like little girls liked to kiss everything. And then she would turn into a teenager and she would be naked. And she would kiss him again, but not in the way little girls liked to kiss everything.
They would make love, and then they would get married. And he would be fabulously rich and famous and would take her everywhere: Aruba, Jamaica, Bermuda, wherever she wanted to go, because they were happy and in love.
And the dream always ended the same.
With him waking up to reality.
***
This time it was the train that went past a block away. The freight train was always loud but most of the time it went by while he was at school, in the middle of the day. Not his luck today.
“Fuck….” He ran his hands through his hair, wondering what the fuck he did to deserve this. It was a second later he remembered what it was that he did: born to the wrong family. That wasn’t his fault, or his mother’s fault: his mother, Report Form, worked a steady job just to keep them afloat, and if it wasn’t for that, they would probably have had to leave town and move in with her parents in Alabama, which she didn’t want.
Of course, that probably would have been better. At least then, they could get away from the past. At least then, she could be Report Form, a woman whose business degrees got them places. At least then she wouldn’t be known as Report Form, the ex-wife of Playtime, a now-disgraced doctor serving twenty years in prison for having pictures of little girls that he shouldn’t have had.
Needless to say, the lawsuits and settlements bankrupted them, and what little they had left was eaten up by divorce lawyers. Now, Rundown and his mother lived in a duplex in one of the nicer neighborhoods of Sunny Town … and by nicer, it meant the local gangs weren’t busy shooting up the area.
There was a knock on his door, and his mom poked her head in. “Runny? Breakfast time!”
“Thanks, Mom,” he told her, getting out of bed and making a beeline to the bathroom to get ready. After a quick shower, he got out and ran a brush through his brown hair. He hated his hair, to be honest; it was muddy-brown and in a world where everyone had normal-colored hair like blue or green or purple, he had to stand out by looking like the ground. His mom always laughed and said it just showed his down-to-earth nature.
He hated that, too.
As he made it to the kitchen, he saw there was just a setting for one. “Not eating, Mom?” he asked.
“Oh, no, I don’t have time,” she told him. “My boss wants to meet regarding the last quarterly sales. Wish me luck: if I do good, they might just give me that job promotion that’s open! Then we can look at moving somewhere nicer, like Bella Vista or Everfree Glades!”
“Sure thing,” he told her with a smile he faked for her. He knew, just as much as she did, she wasn’t going to get the promotion. He’d overheard her complaining to her friend over the phone the other night that her boss was already looking at “someone with big tits” to take over that spot and she would probably have to sleep with him in order to get the promotion. He knew his mother had too much integrity to do that.
At least someone in his family had to have that.
“Oh, don’t forget, dear, your sister is coming back home to stay the weekend, so make sure you clean your room, okay?”
“Sure thing.” He knew that was a lie as well. His sister was six years older and off at college. Because she was a teenager right around the time that they moved to Sunny Town, she asked to move in with their grandparents. Now she was attending college on the East Coast, and though she always promised their mother she’d come and visit, that had never once happened.
She bent down and kissed him on the cheek. “I’ll be home late. See ya!”
He gave her another smile, deciphering the unspoken code. Whenever she was home late, that meant that she was going to be at her “second job”, which was really just her taking late night classes at Sunny Town Community College. She was doing everything she could to get them out of the hellhole that her ex-husband had put them in, and it would all be for naught.
All because his father liked little girls more than he liked grown-up ones.
And what was worse? Sometimes Rundown wondered if he’d end up like his old man. And that scared him most of all.
***
“Yo! Earth to Planet RD!” a voice shouted behind him as he walked to school. He turned and saw his best friend running to catch up to him.
“Hey Quibs,” he called back. He had met Quibble Pants on the first day in Sunnyside Junior High and the two had stuck as fast friends. Plus, they both had their secrets and looked out for one another. “How goes?”
“Man, sorry I woke up late. But I had this awesome dream! I was with Daring Do - the Daring Do from the original Tomb Raider, not the newer games - and I was going to town with her! Titty times for be had!” he crowed.
Rundown sighed. “Dude, you know that Daring Do is just a character, right? I mean, that’s why they redesigned her for the new video game.”
“Who are you and what have you done with my friend?” Quibble said, narrowing his eyes. “Only a heathen would say that skinny SJW wet dream is better than my OG goddess!”
“Your 'OG goddess,' may I remind you, had less polygons than the current model and her tits were just horizontal pyramids.”
“Which means bigger and better, clearly!” Quibble grinned. He then leaned closer and said, “Hey, mind if I stay at your place tonight?”
“Problems at home again?”
Quibble nodded. “Yeah. Mom’s freaking out that The Man is going to come by and deport us.” He was silent for a second before he added, “They arrested my uncle last night.”
“The one that joined the Griffons?” The Griffons were the local gang and were, needless to say, currently on the bad side of the police, the FBI and anyone who carried a badge in the Canterlot Metro Area.
“Yeah. Mom told Uncle Greaser that he was being stupid, but he flashed some cash and said he was making dough selling some drug that wasn’t going to get him caught. Turns out the drug was the Vibe.”
Rundown froze. “The Vibe?”
“Yeah. My uncle isn’t what you would call the smartest of guys. With all the shit that happened last month, you’d think he’d sell something safer like cocaine or heroin or something that doesn’t have every cop in town crawling up everyone’s ass over. Anyway, because he got busted, Mom thinks they’re coming after us, next.”
“That isn’t going to happen and you know it. Fuck, you sound more American than I do and I was born in this country!”
Quibble laughed. “Well, yeah, that’s because I came here when I was two and my parents enrolled me as an Americanized version of my name instead of my real name: Pantalones Objecion.”
Rundown rolled his eyes. “Pantalones Objecion?”
“Hey, man, just because my name’s Americanized doesn’t mean I don’t respect my heritage, okay? I’m a proud member of the Pantalones family!”
“Okay. So what else is up?”
“Oh, just a little rumor I heard from my sister.” Unlike Quibble’s geeky pariah nature, his sister Capri Pants was one of the popular girls at school and on the cheerleading team.
“Oh? And what rumor is that?”
“That some of the guys from the Club - that group of rich-fuck teenagers that was using the Vibe - took some pictures of some of the girls. Well, actually, lots of the girls.”
“Lots of the girls?”
“Oh, yeah. You know that one girl with the big ol’ titties at our school? Dainty Daisy? Capri says someone has a picture of her taking it in the backside while she’s going down on a girl.”
Rundown went pale. “What?”
“Oh, that ain’t all. You know that black chick at our school who says there’s no guy good enough for her? Well, supposedly that’s not a problem anymore, ‘cause she’s got pictures of her getting teamed hard!”
Rundown shook his head. “And you believe this shit?”
“Dude, I am a hard-up Mexican boy living in America. What the fuck do you think?”
“I think you need to come back to reality, Quibs. That stuff is technically child porn, you know.”
Quibble blanched. “Oh, shit, forgot about that. Man, I’m sorry I brought up any bad memories.”
“Yeah, yeah, what the fuck ever,” Rundown groaned as they walked onto the school grounds. “At least these girls hit puberty. With the pics they caught my old man with? Shit, he should have at least had the class to chase after teenagers.”
***
School passed by like a blur, and he and Quibble agreed to meet up later that night, both so Rundown could call his mom and let her know, as well as so Quibble could work his part-time job.
As for Rundown, he went home, made dinner, did his homework, and gamed for a bit. His mother insisted that he have a normal teenage life, which for some reason meant he had an allowance, as meager as it was, and more free time than he knew what to do with.
And now, he got onto his computer and navigated over to a particular website. He’d gotten the location from someone on 4chan and went to check it out. He was careful, and had set up TOR, since the site was on the dark web.
And sure enough, nestled on its own .onion domain, there it was: GIRLS OF CUNTERLOTS. The site where pictures from girls all over the Canterlot area had been photographed by the Club and posted for everyone’s “entertainment”.
He knew what he was looking for immediately. Thanks to some reading up he’d done and the fact that whoever set up this site wasn’t versed in computers, Rundown had obtained admin access, and was now using it to his utmost.
He skipped past all the girls with a variety of haircolors, their bodies pronounced for the world, either in coitus or just posed. He didn’t care about them, and quite frankly, if he’ run into one or more of them on the street, he wouldn’t know who they were to begin with. They certainly wouldn’t have given him the time of day before any of this and they absolutely wouldn’t nowadays, not in the wake of what the Club had done.
In fact, during his search, the only thing that had caught his attention was the forum: someone was looking for pictures of a girl named Sunset Shimmer. He remembered going to school with her when they were kids, but then she moved away during the school year. He wasn’t aware that she’d moved back; chances were, she probably didn’t remember him anyway.
But finally, he found the pictures in a folder for girls who went to Canterlot High. And there she was.
The girl of his dreams, Debonair Lace.
Someone had put up pictures of her again and a few were even new. His blood boiled as to who the fuck had done this to her. But it was impotent rage, he knew; she probably remembered him as much as Sunset Shimmer did.
But he remembered her. He remembered her gorgeous purple eyes and black hair, her friendly smile and infectious laugh. He remembered her being one of the few friends he had when the day came that they told him they’d taken his father to jail. And he remembered that she’d kissed him on the cheek and said she would always be there for him.
And then he moved to Sunny Town and promises became ephemeral. But he still remembered. And as he grew older, a promise remembered became a crush became unrequited love. A love he wanted to rekindle with her, but knew it was all in his mind and there it would probably stay.
And he knew that even as he looked at the pictures of Debonair being violated, that he wished it had been him that had been with her. Because he wouldn’t have done this to her. Because the girl he loved was too special to him even if she probably didn’t even remember he existed anymore.
His phone chimed and it was a text from Quibble: BE THERE IN FIVE.
He quickly downloaded all the pictures, then deleted them all from the server and locked out the folder. Given how stupid the site owner was, he’d probably just think he fucked shit up and would just add a new folder. In a couple of days, Rundown would log back on and delete that when time came.
But for now, he at least had done something to protect his girl/not girl.
He looked at one of the pictures, of her looking at the camera while she was being posed for some violation. He almost would have believed the vacant smile on her face was for him, if it wasn’t for the glassy, drugged look on her face.
He closed the picture, then zipped the file, passworded it, then made it into a hidden file on the hard drive. While his mother wouldn’t know how to open it, Quibble used the computer once in a while and he would know how.
But as he finished what he was doing, he realized now he was, in a sense, doing the same thing as his father had done. Nevermind the reasons were different, it was the same damn thing.
Like father, like son.