As Octavia sat across from Vinyl Scratch, she noticed the sky looked very peculiar with its ascending cloud cover. Octi shook her head. She focused back on her friend who drank from her cup before contemplating the streams of water which began to flow from the window seals of the nearest building.
“Vinyl, I’m serious. I need you to listen to me,” Octavia said. “I’m having a really big crisis here!” Vinyl nodded and drank some more. She motioned for her friend to continue as the store behind them began to pour puddles of water from its entrances. “Nopony is taking me seriously. I think I may be losing it. My talent, my skill, my life! It’s all ending bit-by-bit because other ponies keep taking it away from me.”
Vinyl put her drink down and spoke. “You can’t make it in life if you don’t risk everything.”
Octi wasn’t sure what Vinyl’s comment had to do with her situation, but she continued anyway as her friend started eating some strange black and gray food. “Besides my music, I can’t tell what matters to me anymore. Without my music, what am I? What kind of life can I lead?”
“I suggest you get your affairs in order before others do it for you,” Vinyl said as she finished her plate. The waiter brought her another portion, but Octavia was having a hard time looking at his face, as though her eyes suddenly blurred and his details became obscured. He walked away and helped another one of the many pairings of ponies sitting at the tables around Vinyl and Octavia.
In fact, Octi started to notice a pattern in the patrons around here. Always two. All holding hooves across the table. Each speaking softly to one another. Except her and Vinyl. Everypony could hear their conversation. She just knew it.
“Vinyl, I really need…”
Only Vinyl was no longer there. Octavia sat dumbfounded at the uneaten food sitting where her friend had been only moments before. Vinyl’s chair broke apart and collapsed to the ground before the waiter picked up her plate and scraped the leftovers into the pile of broken wood where Vinyl once sat. He then took the empty dish into the nearest building overflowing with water up to his knees.
“What?” Octavia said. “Where am I?” she looked around. All the ponies were gone. Their tables were covered in pristine white cloth. “Vinyl? Where are you?”
There was a line forming for restless ponies at the nearest market. Octi saw each one give the attendant at the food counter a paper, after which they were given a brown paper bag and then walked off into music academy nearby. Octavia stood up and felt numbness in her legs as she pushed herself to stand in line.
“Is this line for…?” Octi started to ask and was immediately silenced when all three ponies in front of her turned at once with eyes wider than they should be. They lifted their hooves to their mouths and made a “shhh” motion.
“Don’t,” one of them pleaded. Octi did not know what to say so her mouth hung open just long enough for them to stare into it, gasp and turn away.
Soon, Octavia was next in line. The pony in front of her grabbed its brown bag as something squirmed within it. She stepped off to the side and disappeared into the building. The market stallion kept his eyes trained on Octavia for a second before she looked around for a piece of paper she could give to him. She found a candy wrapper on the floor and handed it to the salespony. He took it without looking and handed her a brown bag. A sense of anxiety formed in her heart as she reached out for it.
A tear formed at the bottom of the brown wrapping as something slimy began to leak through. Octi winced and felt tension rise in her chest as she hesitated. “May I have another?”
The salespony opened its mouth and made an indescribable sound of frustration. It sounded somewhere between a hack and a cough of one who was drowning while trying to speak at the dinner table with uncaring friends. His eyes started to tear up, but he remained stern. He pointed a hoof out towards the entry door while remaining motionless in every other way. The bag stopped squirming in his hoof. Octi took it by its topmost section and saw the hole grow a little bigger.
She walked inside the building as she eyed the entry sign: OCTAVIA WAS HERE, BUT SHE’S GONE NOW.
Seats for a movie theater sat within the low-lit walls of the darkened room. There were ponies everywhere and each one of them held empty paper bags. Octavia looked at her own and noticed the thing inside, whatever it was, was missing. She shot several hurried glances around at the ground nearby but couldn’t see beyond the track lighting meant to guide seers to their seats.
A mare in the front row began to groan. “I can’t take it! I can’t stay here any longer!” She stood up and rushed over to Octavia. She handed her a ticket. “Here! Take it! It’s yours now.” She started to cry and ran out the entrance before it slammed shut behind her.
Octavia wasn’t sure why the heart-bled mare was crying so much. She took her seat in the front row next to ponies who stared without blinking at the screen in front of them. The lights dimmed to almost nothing and words appeared in white across a black background: A COMEDY.
Then Octavia stopped breathing when she saw herself, asleep in her own bed in her room, portrayed on the screen. She inhaled deeply and saw her sleeping self do the same. She heard the audience laugh, but when Octi turned to them, she didn’t see any of the ponies moving their mouths. Back on the screen, her sleeping self turned with each motion Octavia made in the theater. And then, in the light of her bedroom window, stood a form. Its face was obscured within a black hood but Octavia knew it was eyeing her sleeping body. The window opened on its own and the creature floated in before the screen cut out.
“Oh no…” Octavia said. She stared around wildly only to see all the other ponies asleep in their chairs. She shook one next to her. “I need your help! Wake up! You have to wake me up!” She peered up at the screen, only to see it had become a stage with an open door cascading light onto the wooden floor. Octavia ran up to the entrance and shut the door behind her.
She stood within a music room she remembered from her high school days at Canterlot Academy. Unopened lockers sat in the corner of the room, each rusted and decayed from years of neglect. In the middle of the room sat the teacher, half reclining on a large black form propped on an unmoving conveyer belt. Octavia moved to examine the black slab when the teacher spoke to an empty room.
“Okay students. I need you to gather up your things and get ready for the exam.” He pulled out a note and a pair of glasses from his pocket. “We won’t be having our guest speaker today. She had an accident. A fire started in her house,” he put the note away and looked at the empty seats where students were not sitting. “Please grab your belongings from your locker so we may begin.”
Octavia turned to the lockers in the corner of the room. Her high school locker, labeled LAST CHANCE, was still there. The number was missing and the words were not her own. She placed her hoof on the metal window slits and felt breath exhale from within. She recoiled and noticed the words were gone. With one fast motion, she pulled open the door and peered inside.
Two meal tickets sat on the shelf. It was otherwise empty.
She grabbed the papers and put them in a pocket she didn’t know she had. The teacher was now gone and Octavia’s parents stood staring at the black slab in the middle of the room. Burnt flowers sat in broken vases all around framed pictures of a purple treble clef. It was Octavia’s cutie mark and a symbol of her musical talent. She peered as her hips where the mark usually resided, only to see it was missing.
Octi’s father spoke up between tearful sobs. “I can’t take it.” He left several flowers on the casket and stepped to the side. The mother said nothing.
The walk to the casket was a long one. Octavia felt every step as though it took ages. The acoustics in the room were perfect and her heart beat louder with each movement. The sweat drew down her brow as air began to escape from her lungs never to return. Her legs shook and the tension in the room rose by degrees. There was heat coming from the dark opening at the end of the conveyer belt and in the back of her mind, Octavia thought it led to the underworld. As she imagined this, a minuscule tongue of flame licked the air at the edge of the rolling belt. A tiny plume of smoke issued upwards from the opening. She placed her hooves on the closed lip of the casket and noticed how cool it felt in the midst of the increasing heat of the room. Her heart threatened to break out of her chest, but she had to open it. Had to see what was inside. She worried whose eyes would be staring back at her. She lifted open the cover.
And there it was. Her cello. Sitting still, in perfect condition, within the white padded interior of the burial box.
With a sigh of relief she reached in to grab it. But it wouldn’t budge. Her parents began to cry as she struggled to fight against its phantom weight. Then the conveyer started to move and Octavia found she could not move the cello from its position at all.
Her mother spoke up, in a calm and unbroken monotone. “Why is it so hard to let go?”
Octavia had no time to turn back. She grunted with exertion as the cello inched closer to the rising flames only yards away. “This. Is. MINE!” Octavia yelled to no avail. She leaned over.
And lost her balance. She fell into the casket and held up a hoof as the cover closed on top of her. She shrieked in horror as she kicked at the sealed top only to be met with futile thuds. The crying of her parents increased. She rocked to the side and felt the casket tip a bit on the conveyer. An idea sprung into her head as she pushed to the sides back and forth as the sound of the fire grew louder. She thrust into one side with all her might and felt the box topple off the edge and onto the floor. It broke open with a clatter and she sprawled onto the ground, clutching her precious cello.
“HA!” Octavia cried in near-delirium. “It’s MINE! Mom! Dad! I’m okay!” She said as she stood up and looked in their direction.
Two urns sat on chairs where they had been standing. Their cutie marks emblazoned the side of each crematory vessel. Octi strapped the cello to her back and approached the urns. She lifted the top off of one to reveal a music sheet. There was one in the other as well. No ashes were present anywhere.
“Oh Vinyl,” Octavia said. “I miss you so much…”
In the corner of her eye, the cello mare spotted the white form of her unicorn friend as she passed through twin double doors into a school hallway. Octi gasped and pursued.
The hallway was empty. There were lockers everywhere. All closed. And a curious low babble of voices came from the nearest closed door with two circular portholes revealing light from within. It was the cafeteria and Octavia found herself very hungry indeed. Maybe Vinyl thought the same thing. With hurried hoofsteps, the mare made her way into the food area.
The sight inside stopped her in her tracks.
Students were everywhere, gathering food two or three at a time from a long buffet table in the middle of the room. They walked past the seats, sat down on the ground, bent over and started voraciously consuming their claimed meals on all fours like wild animals. Their faces and appearances were obscured by black hoods and cloaks. Octi shivered at the familiar sight and remembered the thing she saw on the movie theater screen. But what were they eating? She felt a tinge of anxiety each time they pulled something from the buffet. She moved closer to the table in the middle.
The table was covered in old photos, stuffed animals, clothing, toys, music sheets, games, books, letters from friends…everything Octavia had ever owned in her entire life. And it was all for the taking. They were consuming her life piece-by-piece and she had no idea what to do about it. She had to stop them!
But they were taking faster than she could remove items from them. Each time she tried, they’d either hiss in her direction, or quietly lunge for another piece from the table. Most of the time, it was like she wasn’t even there. “You have to stop!” She shouted at them. “These are my things! You can’t just take my life away!” No response. They continued their feast.
Octavia looked at the buffet. She had to save something. Anything. But what?
“Why is it so hard for them to let go?” Octavia asked out loud, though she didn’t know why. The words seemed familiar to her somehow. What to take, what to take…
She jumped onto the buffet table and frantically scavenged through the piles of stuff. She tossed old photos, threw away toys, broke old dishware when they clattered to the sides of the food table. And all the while, as she discarded more and more, the crowd of dark-robed figures grew. They crawled on the floor around her and eagerly awaited the next trashed items. Now, two black masses formed on either side of the buffet as they clamored at the treasured trash thrown towards them.
“There must be something worth keeping!” Octavia said as she pulled up a letter with the mark of her friend Vinyl Scratch. She opened it and saw a picture of the first time she and Vinyl became friends. “I…” Octavia began to say as she read the contents, plain and clear, amidst the ravenous crowd below her. The image of her smiling friend gave her heart a small bit of warmth in the otherwise cold and unforgiving cafeteria of the otherworld.
A robed hoof reached up for the letter and grabbed it. In instinct, Octavia shot out her hoof and smashed the side of the pony’s face as it screeched and toppled to the floor. Others near it looked up from their eating and glared.
“Hurry hurry hurry,” Octavia said. She placed the envelope in her mouth and began shoveling through the items at record pace. But there wasn’t much left. She found nothing more of worth and the robed ones were becoming aggressive towards her. They lunged from the floor and tried to trip her up so she’d fall into their squirming mass. She jumped onto a nearby bench and ran along the top of the table to get back to the exit. The creatures followed and she slammed the cafeteria door behind them.
The hallway was swarming with them.
Octavia screeched in surprise and looked around for a way out. In the distance, she saw Vinyl Scratch enter a room, only to realize it was the very same room Octavia saw in the theater. And there were dozens of dark robed fiends standing in her way.
“VINYL!” Octavia tried to yell, but realized she still had the envelope in her mouth. Vinyl Scratch closed the door as the things began to advance closer. They clawed at the gray mare as she backed off and grunted in surprise. She shoved them off and tried to push past, but there were too many. One of them grasped at the straps of her cello and Octavia realized there was only one way she could survive. She swung the instrument off her back and noticed the strings were missing. No chance to play it before it would be scrap.
With a wild swing, she smashed the head of the nearest creature with the cello and watched it topple to the ground. Surprisingly, the instrument did not break. Another swing and two more fell before her fury. Octavia felt a crowd gathering behind her as she bucked backwards with her hooves and felt them connect with something heavy. Screams of anger erupted from the robes as they moved to block Octavia’s path.
I’m going to see Vinyl! I’m not going to die here!
Octi thrust the cello forward and pushed over the three robes in front of her. With growing rage, she smashed two at once and stomped a third before one caught her by the throat. She gasped and the letter in her mouth fell to the floor. No! she thought. She pushed forward only to see another one of the beasts put the letter in its mouth. A second later, its head caved-in thanks to a well-placed cello strike. Octavia picked up the letter and placed it between her teeth once more as she dove through the crowd and came up only a few feet short of her door. They began to pile on top of her as she struggled to pull herself out from under them. The weight of her cello was crushing her more than they were. She had to made a decision quick or she would never survive.
With a heavy heart, she unstrapped the cello from her back and crawled out from under it as the weight of the creatures broke the instrument and sent a crack through its body. Octavia stood up, grasped the door handle and rushed inside, locking the door behind her.
Her room was quiet. There no sounds of monsters trying to claw their way through her door. Instead, Vinyl Scratch sat on the bed, eyeing the sheets without looking up at her friend.
Octavia caught her breath, removed the envelope from her mouth and placed it in her friend’s hooves.
“I think I understand why I’m scared,” Octavia said. Vinyl did not look up. “I’m not afraid of losing my skill. I’m afraid of losing my friend.”
Octavia looked around her room. There were enough things here for a lifetime. The monsters couldn’t take it all away. But Vinyl Scratch was more valuable than any object.
“Here I’ve been pouring my feelings out to you at every opportunity. I’m overflowing with emotion and yet nopony notices. Not even you. I wait patiently for you to respond to me, but all I get are hand-outs, and even that scares me, because I’d rather have nothing at all if I’m going to be given something and then just sent away without a second thought.” Octavia knelt in front of Vinyl. “Sometimes I feel like everypony is watching me, laughing at me, and I don’t know why. My whole life…is a stage. I’m the player and I never get a break, even in my own head.” She rested her head on Vinyl’s lap and felt the tears start to form. “Even my parents made me feel this way…like losing my talent was more terrifying to them than losing me…” Her voice cracked. “I never made any friends in school. I always felt scared going to class, like they were just waiting to pounce on me if I showed any sign of weakness. If I displayed myself out there for them to see, bared my soul in any way, they’d just consume it and tear it to pieces…” Octavia clutched Vinyl Scratch around her midsection and felt her voice give way to sorrow, straining with every word. “I didn’t graduate. I survived. That’s the difference in my head. But what’s the point of surviving without somepony like you…?”
It was hard for Octavia to notice when her body became heavy and arms wrapped around her. The color of her room changed and she was lying in her bed, staring up at the ceiling. But when she turned to the side, Vinyl sat there, holding her close and smiling. She spoke tenderly.
“I’ve never seen anypony sleep-talk so eloquently.”
Octavia gasped. “I…I was asleep?”
“You screamed. Several times,” Vinyl said. “I saw you thrashing around on the bed. You were crying too. You pillow is soaked. I thought you were gonna wake up, but each time, you’d fall deeper into sleep.” Vinyl shook her head. “You’re so stubborn, even when sleeping.”
“Wh…What did I say?”
“Everything,” Vinyl said.
Octavia’s heart dropped. “I…if I said anything hurtful about you, I didn’t mean it.”
“You didn’t. And even if you had, I’m sure I'd deserve it,” Vinyl looked down. “I haven’t been listening as well as I should. I’m sorry, Octavia. I bet this nightmare could’ve been avoided if I been a better friend.”
“Vinyl I…”
The unicorn placed her hoof up to her mouth and made a “shh” noise. “It’s my turn to apologize,” Then Vinyl realized what she had done. “Um…sorry I just cut you off again. But I have to get this off my chest or I may never say it. You’re an amazing friend Octavia. If it weren’t for you, I wouldn’t even have a home. Without you, I wouldn’t even still have my love of music…” Vinyl’s tears began to form. “I never thought I was gonna make it either. But you gave me a place to live when nopony else would.” She hugged Octavia close. “I’m gonna pay you back in a great way someday.” Then Vinyl shook her head and changed the subject. “What did happen in your dream anyway?”
“I broke my cello for you.”
“You broke your cello for me?” Vinyl said. Her mouth was wide open. When Octi stared at it, Vinyl closed it quickly. “Wow! I must really be special. Good thing Celly is still safe over there in the corner,” Vinyl said as she pointed.
“You named her that, not me,” Octi smiled.
“Oh it’s a SHE now, huh?” Vinyl smirked.
Octavia rolled her eyes and rested her head on the pillow. Vinyl snuggled up next to her.
“Vinyl, what are you…?”
“No questions. Sleep time,” Vinyl said as she passed out almost immediately.
“Oh really!” Octi said as she narrowed her eyes at her friend. She rested her head close to Vinyl, smiled and fell asleep. The dream of the stage and the applause that followed filled her heart with joy.