“Flash Mustang breaks into the lead, being followed closely by Checkered Flag! Fire Bolt and Thunder Hooves are neck and neck—but wait, what’s this?! Out of nowhere, Dream Chaser passes them all! In all the Equestria Games I’ve spectated, I have never seen a comeback like this!”
With the crowd’s cheers drowning out the announcer pony, Dream Chaser barreled past the other four racers. He willed his legs to go faster, aiming not only for the victory, but for a record that no other pony could ever break. His eyes darted to the stands, where he could see Princess Celestia up in the royal seating, smiling down at him. As he rounded the bend, he saw his beloved Dream Catcher, right in the front row where she said she would be. She blew him a kiss as he passed, and his heart, which was already pounding, skipped a beat. When this was over he was going to ask her to marry him.
He turned his full attention back to the race and pumped his legs harder. The finish line was in sight! All he had worked for was finally coming to fruition! The cheering of the crowd, the heat of the sun, the aches and pains in his overworked muscles, even the competition all faded from existence. The only things that mattered now were him, the finish line, and the ground beneath his hooves.
Suddenly, the competition did matter, and it did exist! One by one, the other racers passed him. He couldn’t believe they had caught up; he had been so sure he’d had the race won. He was already going as fast as he could, and no amount of trying was going to close the widening gap. The finish line was now getting further away…disappearing with the other ponies into the distance. He was still running, but getting nowhere.
The sky turned black; the stands of cheering ponies disappeared. He tried to keep running, but his legs became stones, seemingly weighed down by an invisible force.
“Good luck chasing that dream,” a dark voice echoed all around him. In the space where the sky once was, a face appeared. The eyes glowed red and looked at him with a mixture of disgust and hatred. He tried to turn from the face, but it was behind him as well. The face tilted down, revealing a unicorn horn which began glowing red. A beam of magic shot the ground in front of him, opening a crevasse, which then swallowed him whole. As he spiraled down, the voice echoed all around him. He tried closing his eyes and covering his ears, but to no avail: the voice was inside his head as well. He opened his eyes and saw the bottom of the pit fast approaching. Putting his legs out in at attempt to break the fall, he closed his eyes, bracing for impact.
“Oof!” Dream Chaser grunted as he hit the floor of his apartment. He opened his eyes and waited a moment for them to adjust to the darkness. He’d rolled out of his bed and onto the floor. He sighed and lay there for a moment, debating if he should just lay there forever. His heart beat was pounding in his ears and he rested his head on the cool floorboards. Directly in his line of sight, tucked under the bed, was an unmarked black box.
Opening it usually made him sick to his stomach, and after the recurring nightmare he’d just woken up from, he decided against it. Instead, he rolled over and tried to stand up, which resulted in him falling backwards into his mattress. The blankets had managed to wrap themselves around his legs completely. He pulled at them with his teeth. After untangling himself, he let the blankets fall to the floor. The clock on his bedside table chimed once, indicating one o’clock. He stared at the hands through the darkness, and then looked at the moon outside his window, debating if he should attempt to sleep again.
Pain, awakened by his fight with the blankets, flared up in his rear legs, resulting in his decision that sleep could wait. He clumsily stood up and hobbled across the dark apartment, passing a large mirror that had once been his mother’s. He always made a point not to look at his reflection every time he passed it by, but his eyes wandered this time. He barely recognized the stallion in the reflection as himself. The brilliant red mane he’d once possessed was faded and unkempt; his gold fur stuck up at odd angles. What he found hardest to look at: the remains of his cutie mark, those three silver shooting stars which had appeared on his flanks years ago were now covered by large scars which ran down each leg identically. These were the same three silver shooting stars that he and his parents had been so proud of when they had appeared, but now they meant nothing. He turned away from the mirror and tried not to think about it, continuing to hobble towards the bathroom. When he reached the bathroom, he grabbed at the light switch with his teeth and pulled downward. The bulb lit up, then popped, leaving Dream Chaser in the darkness.
“Perfect,” he muttered, letting the pull string fall from his mouth. Continuing towards the sink, he looked through the darkness and saw several warped reflections of himself staring back. Despite changing the light bulb a dozen times, he could never be bothered to replace the mirror above the sink, which he’d smashed in a stupid fit of rage a few years ago. The reflections all had the same gold eyes as he did, and they scanned the sink top, looking for the prescription bottle. When he found it, he loosened the cap with his hoof and upended the bottle into his mouth. Two large capsules landed on his tongue and he turned on the faucet. It shook before a stream of dingy water poured out. The taste of chlorine and rust hit his taste buds immediately and he drank only enough to get the pills past his tonsils. He shut off the faucet and ran his tongue around his mouth, trying to get rid of the taste of city water. Although it was now empty, Dream Chaser put the cap back on the prescription bottle and placed it back on the sink. He didn’t want to go to the pharmacy for a refill; he didn’t want to go outside for any reason at all. Still, he needed the painkillers.
Dream Chaser hobbled out of the bathroom, hoping the throbbing in his legs would be quelled shortly by the onset of the pain killers. He didn’t want to go back to sleep and looked around the apartment for something to do. It was a quaint little place on the outskirts of Manehatten, being big enough for two to raise a family comfortably. The rent was cheap, the neighbors were quiet, and there were no stairs. Even though he’d been here for ten years, he’d never put a single personal touch into the apartment. No pictures hung on the walls; no knick knacks on any of the shelves; no furniture. Aside from his bed, a kitchen set, and the mirror that had been his mother’s, his place was barren.
He paced around in the darkness for an hour, trying to get the knots out of his legs, fully knowing that it was an impossible task. As the clock chimed two o’clock, the painkillers finally kicked in, and he walked back into his bedroom. He reached down and grabbed the blanket off the floor and tossed it back onto the mattress. Something fell out of the blanket as he did so, hitting the floor with a familiar sound. It rolled across the floor boards, coming to a stop only after hitting something solid under the bed. Dream Chaser immediately recognized the sound and debated if he wanted to retrieve the item. Reluctantly, he got down to the floor and peered under the bed. In spite of the darkness, the gold coin glistened, waiting expectantly for him. He dragged it toward him with his hoof, sat on his haunches, and inspected the coin. It had a dream catcher set into the surface on one side and three shooting stars on the other. Unwelcome memories and feelings stirred inside him and he looked away from the coin.
Yet somehow he wanted to embrace those memories; to remember a time when he was happy and pain free. His mind went back to the box under the bed and he got down to the floor to look at it. It sat hidden in the darkness, calling to him, begging to be opened. Before he realized it, he was dragging the box towards him. It slid heavily through the dust, making its yearly pilgrimage out from under the bed. Repositioning himself, Dream Chaser hoisted the box onto his lap and wiped the dust off the top.
“Do you really want to do this to yourself again?” a voice in his head asked. “Remember what happened last time?” He remembered very well what had happened the last time. He remembered tying that rope, remembered putting it around his neck, remembered…
A cramp suddenly ran through his legs, causing him to bolt upright, sending the box crashing to the floor. He gritted his teeth as his muscles contracted and he struggled not to scream, not to breathe, not to feel. He collapsed on the floor and writhed in pain for what seemed like an eternity. The coin he’d retrieved from under the bed lay on the floor in front of his eyes and he stared at it, trying to concentrate on it instead of the pain. His cutie mark side of the coin had landed up and he focused on the three stars. He stared at it so intensely that when he closed his eyes, a false image remained, as if burned into his retinas.
As the clock chimed three o’clock, the muscles in his legs finally relaxed and he unclenched his teeth. Slowly, slowly… he stood up, testing his legs’ willingness to support him, eventually deciding they would. The stars still obscured his vision, taking him a moment to locate the coin he’d spent the last hour staring at. He picked it up with his teeth and turned next to the box.
After his spasm, the box had landed in the middle of the room, right side up, illuminated by a beam of moonlight shining through the window. Anxiously he approached it, his legs nearly giving out again in his haste. He eased his body into the most comfortable sitting position he could manage and pried the box open.