A Schizophrenic's Guide to Equestria

by Soulsilver

A New Beginning

Hello readers. Not sure how these things are meant to go, but I guess I'll start by introducing myself. My name is James Douglas, but you can call me JD. I suppose I'm writing this in order to explain how I got to where I am, and to spread my story to others, however insane I might be. Might as well start at the beginning then. Enjoy.
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I shot up in bed, forehead enveloped in a cold sweat. I looked myself over before breathing a sigh of relief.

"These bloody nightmares are starting to get annoying."

I looked to my clock resting on the floor next to my matress. 4:47 AM. I sighed, this time in exasperation, and begrudgingly got up, knowing I wouldn't get any more sleep that morning. I went about my morning bathroom routine before heading into the kitchen in search of food.

"Let's see what we've got here," I said to myself as I browsed the pantry. "Hmm...oatmeal....half a packet of crackers....and a can with no label that has been in here since before I moved in. Oatmeal it is, then."

As bland and somehow chewy my meal tasted, I focused on it intently, hoping to distract myself from thinking about the day that was to come. I've never had a good day after being woken by a nightmare.

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"HOW ABOUT YOU GO FUCK YOURSELF!" yelled a rather irrational customer, before throwing his coffee at me and storming out of the cafe.

Thankfully it was only lukewarm because the guy left it to sit for half an hour before touching it. Which is why he was complaining, requesting a refund and a new drink for free. Which led me to calmly explain why I couldn't give him either. I then offered to simply warm it up in the microwave. Which caused him to throw it in my face.

One of my co-workers covered for me as I cleaned myself up and got out my spare uniform, hoping to get back to work before my boss found me.

"GODDAMN IT JAMES!"

Of course, I had no such luck.

"THIS IS THE FOURTH TIME THIS MONTH YOU'VE MADE A CUSTOMER ANGRY! IF YOU KEEP THIS UP I'LL START LOSING PROFITS! WHAT DID I TELL YOU ABOUT HOW YOU DEAL WITH COMPLAINTS?!" he yelled, as his fat, round, bald and perpetually sweaty head seemed to swell as he chewed me out.

"'Always give them what they want.' But sir, he wanted a refund AND another coffee for free. I can't afford to have $10 taken out of my pay."

"THAT'S NOT MY PROBLEM! NOW GET BACK TO WORK THIS INSTANT! IF THIS HAPPENS AGAIN, YOU ARE FIRED!"

"What? But sir I'm soake-"

"I SAID GET BACK TO WORK!"

I sighed, getting back up and walking out to my position behind the coffee machine, still dripping coffee, not wanting to lose my only source of income. Now, a normal person might have stood up for their rights, yelled at their boss, or even gone on a rampage killing people and/or flinging their feces all over the place. Luckily, for pretty much everyone within a kilometre of there, I was not normal. No, I don't mean I had superpowers, was extremely smart, or was an alien-demigod with control of all reality. Nope, I was just mildly schizophrenic.

'He always seems to be yelling, huh? You should pour chemicals in his coffee and try to make him sound like a midget.'

That is Ataxia, one of my "alternate personalities" as I like to call them. I don't know if they're really split personalities, they just seem to personify an emotion or a mental state. In case you don't know, the word ataxia is a synonym of chaos. Why did I choose that name for him?

'Oh hey, there's a bird outside that window. I wonder what it's eyes look like inside out.'

Mainly because his train of thought is completely sporadic, always confusing, and tends to be disturbing. He isn't that bad, to be honest. Gives me a laugh every now and again. I'm not sure exactly what part of my psyche he represents, but if I had to guess, then it'd be "doing and saying whatever the hell he wants". I guess he is my carefree nature. Just kind of disturbed and insane.

I have two more distinct personalities, and I guess one of them is actually me. The way it seems to work is that one personality has dominance at one time. The other personalities manifest as voices coming in like thoughts so we can "communicate", if it doesn't count as talking to myself. I tend to be the one in charge most of the time, because I'm the calmest and nicest. Sure, I still swear, lie, act rude and talk in fluent sarcasm, but that's nothing compared to the other two. Ataxia could say the cruelest damn thing imaginable and force you so deep into a pit depression that you can't see the top. And the other one...

'Rip his goddamn throat out you fucking pussy! Punch his spine in half! Fry his brain and feed it to him!'

He is rage. Pure simple rage. He gets angry over the tiniest things. The first time I let him take control, just to see what he was like, he walked us past a flower and the pollen made us sneeze. Allergies suck all kinds of ass. But not as much as what he did. He started wailing into our own face trying to tear our sinuses out so he could beat them to death. Luckily we managed to get him under control before he disfigured us.

That was a very hard thing to blame on running into a pole. We keep him under wraps now. Luckily we all share the same intelligence, so Ataxia was smart enough to know not to let him "out" without having something to focus his rage on. We have to let him out, of course. If we don't his anger slowly builds up until he breaks out regardless of where we are or what we're doing and tries to destroy as much as he can. So we let him out while we're at the gym, working the punching bag or something. Physical exertion distracts him from hurting others, or destroying property. He likes to be called Wrath. Unoriginal, I know.

'And how, exactly is he going to eat his brain if he isn't using it to do it?' I asked Wrath.

'You're assuming he actually uses it for anything he does,' snarked Ataxia.

'Which means that he won't mind if you pull it out of his nasal cavity. And even if he does care, do it anyways!'

I sighed again. It wasn't even 10 AM yet.

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I walked home through the suburbs of Caloundra. It's a town in Queensland. That's a state in Australia. And no, I have a British accent. Don't start that "Gidday mate!" BS. Anyways, it was only 5 PM, but it gets dark real fast in winter. The last block to my apartment building used to have a street light, but some jack-ass crashed into it doing wheelies. Knocked out our power for a couple of days. Internet withdrawal sucks.

I climbed the stairs to the third floor and entered my apartment. I checked the mailbox attached to my door. I found a single yellow envelope. It had the word NOTICE printed across the top in bold red..

"Fuck." I have never received a notice that wasn't bad news. I opened the envelope and read the note inside.

"Dear Mr. Douglas.

This is the third time I've had to postpone your rent. Either pay it by 5 in the afternoon tomorrow, or I will throw you and all of your stuff out on the street!

Regards,

Management."

'What stuff? asked Ataxia as we looked around the small apartment that was our home. And I've got to say, he was right. All I had was a table, some dishes and silverware, a sofa, a small (broken) television set, a mattress, some bed linen, a few clothes and the laptop I had been given for my 18th birthday. Oh, and a few books. But those didn't count since it became apparent that I was going to have to sell them the next day.

"Damn it, I didn't even get to read all of them. At least it's my day off tomorrow. I might sleep in."

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I groaned as I was rudely woken by a knock on the door and looked at my clock. 10 AM. Still too early.

'Please kill whoever's at the door.' I was tempted to. I honestly was. But I figured it might be important. I'd wait till after they explain to see if I kill them.

I got up and answered the door.

"Hey man," said my neighbour. "You've got a phone call." Each floor has two apartments, and they both share the same phone in the hallway.

"Who is it?" I asked while, unsuccessfully, attempting to rub some feeling back into my face.

"I dunno, some fat sweaty guy. Said it was urgent." That was probably my boss. Yes, you can actually tell that he's sweating just from a phone call. It's really disturbing.

I walked to the wall-phone and picked up the receiver and held it to my ear. "Hello?"

"WHERE THE HELL ARE YOU? YOUR SHIFT STARTED HALF AN HOUR AGO!" Cringing, and holding the receiver at arms length, I attempted to make sense of the most recent stream of horse shit that came spewing from his mouth.

"What the hell are you talking about? Today's my day off! It's Ramirez' shift today!"

"He got in a car accident last night! He'll be spending the week in hospital! You know you're supposed to check in with me in the morning to see if you've got a shift!"

"I triple checked yesterday with everyone before I left to make sure that I would have today off! I doubt everybody has been sent to hospital."

"Don't you be a smart-ass to me you little pissant! You didn't sign it off with me, which means that you don't get today off! Now I want your ass back here right now!"

"What the hell! That is complete bull! I asked you every day all week. You bitched at me to leave you alone and that I would have the day off!"

"Well I changed my mind! Now get your ass back here or you're fired!"

"You know what?! You can shove your job and your fucking coffee up your ass, which is probably where they came from because they're both shit!" I was yelling at the top of my lungs before I slammed the receiver down.

*THUNK*

My head hit the wall as I leaned against it. "Fuck."

'....now can we kill him?'

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I packed up all of my books. Or at least the ones that I could sell for more than a few dollars. I placed them in one of those "eco-friendly" library bags, with my laptop and charger resting at the bottom. Probably not the safest place to have a laptop, if it's even safe to bring out into neighbourhoods like this, but I preferred keeping it with me in case my apartment is robbed.

'So, what're we doing?'

'You're me, we share the same brain. You can literally read my thoughts. Why do you need me to explain it to you?'

'For the sake of the people reading this in one of the alternate realities where this story is being told in a written narrative.'

'.......you know what, I'm too tired to do anything but humour you. We are going to go sell these books, come back, pay our rent, go back out, go to the library and use their wifi so I can look online for a job.'

'Wouldn't it be easier to apply to Centrelink?'

A moment passed.

'Phhhhtttthahahahaha!'
'Phhhhtttthahahahaha!'
'Phhhhtttthahahahaha!'

'That was a good one.'

As we rounded the corner, something happened. Still not sure exactly how it happened, but it happened.

A large *CRACK* split the air. Literally. There was an actual crack running through the air, around chest height above the sidewalk, 10 feet in front of me.

"What the actual fuck."

Speaking seemed to disturb it further somehow, and the crack widened until the void in reality was roughly my size. And then I felt gravity shift towards it.

'God damn it, who broke the universe?' That was the last thought in our mind as the gravity increased exponentially, sucking me and my bad in, closing behind me.

The next part is...sort of hard to describe. It felt like nothing I can think of, but it looked like I was travelling at warp speed, except instead of stars, everywhere I looked was rainbow. Like I was falling really quickly down a tunnel and all the walls were made out of solid glowing opal. It didn't last long, however, as another crack formed ahead of me. As I was flung out of...there, the last thing I saw before losing consciousness was a bookshelf approaching me alarmingly fast.

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Spike just stood there, silently staring at the creature who had just appeared out of nowhere and embedded itself in a bookshelf across the room.

"Great," he sighed. "It's gonna be one of THOSE days."

Author's Note:

I realise that it's been a while since I've written anything. And I know that some, if not all of you, were disappointed that my previous story didn't actually finish. Hell, it hardly got started. The truth is I had no idea what the hell I was doing. I had no direction that I was taking the story in, and couldn't think of what to do in later chapters. Personally, I wanted it to be good, but it wasn't. So I'll be writing this new story. I will eventually go back to my old story. I'll probably rewrite it all as well. Lots of people put their faith into it and I don't want to leave them wholly unrewarded. But for the moment, I simply don't have a story for it, but I am working on it.

Anyways, I hope you enjoyed this chapter, so rate, comment and, if you feel up to reading more of my mindless ramblings, subscribe. Check in later for another chapter. No, it will not be a month apart this time. Hopefully.

Comments

[abdcdweawrbitwaihjtolwtj]

First. And this is interesting, very. I must make a request for, say, 80 new chapters? Nah, just kidding. But I still want more. It's always refreshing seeing a new idea

[Hunter reaper]

Interesting concept. Moar please.

[Soulsilver]

2844925

You shall get more. To be honest the hardest part for me is deciding on what to call each chapter. The next one is called Three's Company, Nine's a Crowd.

[Noman]

This story is amazing. I love how you incorporated the alternate personalities. Keep up the good work!

[GordonFreebrony]

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BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!
This is an awesome story. Good on ya, mate!
H ave a star and a green thumb, you deserve 'em!

[The Questioner]

Just making sure you know he's not actually schizophrenic. There are stark differences between schizophrenia and Disassociative Identity Disorder, which JD does actually have.

Now, the whole diagnosis system is flawed, and rightly so. But it's all we've got. It's not a huge deal, unless he becomes schizophrenic later. It would be about the right time for him to be diagnosed as such. The most interesting element, in my opinion, is the trauma he must have suffered to have developed multiple personalities. Ooh, pray tell!

[sky_petal_blank_flank]

Well, I've now read the first chapter. I was really hesitant at first but so far this seems to be a really entertaining look at a system who by all accounts should seriously not be functional, and yet manages anyway. Just want to make sure: you're aware that plurality and schizophrenia are different, right? The headmates ("alternate personalities", as you called them) that are associated with plurality are totally different manifestations to schizophrenic voices. They also don't necessarily represent a part of the "core", but some do.

I hope I'm not coming off as meta-/a total know-all who wants to spoil your fic here. I just wanna make sure you're not spreading total bullshit...

[The Bourgeoisie Bear]

Not to be an asshole but I feel a bit jipped
I came here expecting paranoia and hallucinations accompanied by paranoid voices
But instad I got three personalities for one character
Sigh
I suppose it will have to do