Stuck In The Middle With You

by CoffeeMinion

Tequila Sunrise - [Human] [Sci-Fi] - June 2016 Writeoff ("The Killing Machine")

Jane awoke with the dawn, feeling refreshed, which was damn unnerving given that she’d purposely stayed up all night trying to keep that from happening again.

She sat up in her too-perfect bedsheets, batted silver-streaked brown hair out of her eyes, and did a quick check of her bedroom. Gentle sunlight filtered through a large bay window with gauzy drapes at one end of the room, despite the fact that she remembered smashing the window not five minutes before. The polished wood desk she’d toppled just before that was back in its place against one of the room’s shiny white walls, complete with the sparse collection of books on a small inset shelf.

Jane collapsed back upon the soft mattress, stifling a scream.

---

By midday, hunger prodded her to change from the sterile blue pajamas into the closet’s only other garment: a plain, full-length green dress. She did so only because she’d learned that the dining room wouldn’t have food unless she changed into it… in the bedroom… with the door closed.

“Stupid dress,” she muttered, trying to get it to sit properly across her bust. It felt like it had been tailored for someone younger, or at least perkier.

She passed through the dining room quickly, pausing only to grab the inevitable small grey food-disc on the solitary plate set at the table, as well as the small white pill set next to the plate.

“They can't cook for crap but they can get the name-brand meds,” she scoffed, downing her daily antidepressant.

Thoughts of who “they” might be pinwheeled in her head as she stepped out her front door, nibbling on the flavorless food-disc. The lush, humid greenery of the rest of her prison assaulted her senses. Small but colorful birds darted from tree to tree, frustrated in their pursuit of a larger area in which to roam. Sunlight—or a clever imitation—warmed the biome-in-a-bottle from above. The biome was small enough that she could see across the whole thing from her tiny house’s front porch. It was circular, and not much larger than a cricket field, and its walls were made of glass.

On the other side of the glass was grey, pockmarked stone on all sides, save for a pair of other biomes connected to hers toward what she reckoned were the north and south.

She looked north, but saw no one at the pair of heavy metal doors that separated her biome from that one. She looked south, toward the darker, more arid biome…

Vex was there, as usual, sitting naked and cross-legged on the other side of the doors, waiting for her.

His shape was similar to that of a human male, but the broad, flattened head atop his stubby neck bore a fearsome set of almost crocodilian jaws. His eyes were dark slits, and his body was covered in shiny brownish chitin. Even at this distance, she had to hold up a hand to shield her eyes from the sunlight that reflected off his scaly body.

Jane shook her head, took another glance north, and headed south toward him.

A field of freshly tilled dirt cooled her bare feet as she worked her way south. She frowned at the nearby rack full of gardening equipment and the box containing small containers of seeds. She didn’t know how to raise a garden, and the books inside her house didn’t give any clues.

Vex sat motionless, watching her approach.

Jane saw that he’d opened the door on his side again. “Typical,” she said, rolling her eyes. “You just expect I’m going to open my door for you because you want in. Can't you even try to persuade me?”

She knew from experience that hearing through the doors wasn't a problem, and that there didn’t seem to be a language barrier… though she didn’t know how that could be the case, since he clearly wasn’t human. But he neither moved nor answered; he just kept staring at her.

“Fine, be that way,” she said.

Vex cocked his head slightly. “I have stated you have nothing to fear from me,” he said, his voice guttural and clipped. “You are not what I consider worthy prey.”

“That’s not persuasion, Vex.”

He continued staring. “As I have said, I wish to hunt your birds. I have not tasted flesh since butchering the last of the small animals I found in my enclosure.”

Jane’s pulse quickened. “Did you ever think you were supposed to breed them? Instead of just…?”

“I hunt. I know little about animal husbandry.”

Jane nodded, and turned away from him.

“You are troubled,” he said.

“Y… yes.”

“You wish to speak more of your life before this place?”

“No,” she said, not looking back at him. She took a deep breath. “I just… wonder why we’re here. The three of us. Or, where ‘here’ is.”

Vex paused. “The prey is elusive. Its nature, unclear.”

Jane looked back at him. “And… you don’t think there’s anything that could help us through the doors on the other side of your biome?”

Vex cocked his head the other way. “You may open the door and come see for yourself.”

She pressed her eyes shut.

“Your fear of me is flattering,” Vex said. “But I do not understand why you fear the other one as well. From your words, he does not sound like worthy prey, either.”

Jane shook her head. “Thanks, Vex; always a pleasure.”

She set off through the vegetation separating the southern doors from the northern ones. Long grass swayed in a gentle breeze, and small insects buzzed around her head, but none of it broke through her mental funk.

The northern biome wasn’t far. Jane stopped a few yards from the metal doors, looking over at the similarly verdant scene on the other side. She frowned as she noticed that the door on that side was open as well, though the biome’s resident wasn’t in sight.

Jane sat in the cool grass, losing herself in thought as she waited for him.

Minutes later, she heard a cheerful voice call out: “Oh, hi there, Jane!”

Jane looked up, watching him step out from behind a stand of trees. Where Vex was vaguely humanoid, this one bore a closer resemblance to some kind of horse; he was quadrupedal and covered in short, off-white hair, with a long brown tail, and a brown mane situated behind his elongated face and his too-big eyes and tall ears. And then there was what Jane found to be the really weird thing about him: two patches of hair near each of his hindquarters grew green, resembling the image of a spidery, spiky plant.

She gave him a halfhearted wave as she watched his smooth gait with a mix of curiosity and revulsion. “Hey, Agave.”

Agave’s smile widened. “Do you want to come in? I finally got my distillery going. You’ve got to try some of my first batch!” He veritably danced back and forth on all four legs.

Jane looked down at the grass. “Um… no thanks, Agave. I wouldn’t want to… bring down your good time over there.”

He stopped dancing. “Oh, believe me, it’s not all fun and games. It’s hard work growing and harvesting things, and it’s been even harder cobbling the distillery together!” He sighed. “I just wish I had some actual agave plants over here to work with. And… well, someone to share it with.”

Jane looked up, seeing through the glass that he was pressed close against her metal door. She looked down again, taking a deep breath.

“Jane?” Agave said, sounding uncertain.

“Yeah, Agave?”

“You seem… quiet today.” He paused. “I mean, not that we usually talk very much, but I’m picking up a really, really quiet sort of… vibe from you.”

She sucked in a deep breath, then blew it all out at once. “I can’t live like this, Agave. I can’t stay cooped up in here anymore.”

He grinned. “Why, that’s the best news that I could’ve asked for! Why don’t you come in, and I can show you what I’ve been working on?”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” she said. “I’ve had some… trouble… with some things.”

“Oh,” Agave said, taking a step back. “What do you mean?”

“Honestly, a drink sounds really good right now. But if I just have one… I won’t just have one. It’s really… hard for me to stop there.”

“Oh.” He sat down on his rump, and the expression on his large, otherwise happy-looking face became uncomfortable. “I had an uncle like that, once. It used to make him angry, and of course he was a unicorn, so…”

Jane scoffed. “A unicorn?”

Agave nodded. “Sure. I mean, most of my family is Earth Ponies, but we have a little magic in the blood.” He laughed, and their eyes met, and he hunched his head, looking sheepish. “That’s actually… kind of the joke about our family trade. You know, because it makes ponies feel… happy, or at least… different.”

Jane buried her face in her hands. “I almost don’t care how crazy that sounds. I’m tired of being stuck in here. I just want out!”

Agave straightened. “It’s okay if you don't want to come over. I guess it’d just be nice to have some company. It’s not like I can really talk to my other neighbor…”

Jane blinked. “I didn't know you had another neighbor, too.”

His muzzle twisted into a frown. “Kind of. I don’t know. There’s something… wrong with that one.”

“He can’t be too much worse than mine,” Jane said. “Sometimes, honestly, I wonder if Vex would kill and eat me if I let him in.”

Agave’s eyes went incredibly wide, and his pupils shrunk to pinpricks. “That’s horrible!”

“Yeah, he’s a real piece of work.” She sighed. “Still, I’d almost rather face a quick death than a slow one.”

“I don’t see why you have to make that choice,” Agave said, “if all you need’s a change of scene… I would love to have you over!”

Jane’s arm trembled as she reached toward the door and turned its handle.

Author's Note:

This story started out as an entry in the June 2016 Writeoff, The Killing Machine. I was strapped for ideas during the Writeoff, and a hail-Mary trawl through my idea list surfaced a terrible old concept for a HiE where the human causes humorous chaos in Equestria by introducing Our Little Ponies to hard liquor (specifically Tequila). I thought I could do something interesting with it by inverting the structure: Start the pony with the liquor, make the human have problems with that, and keep the tone serious.

Unfortunately, the setting was easier to come up with than a proper story arc, and what came of it was more like a first chapter than a complete story. I took a shot at developing that further, and asked MisterNick to provide some input in that vein, which guided the few edits I made from the Writeoff version.

Comments

[MisterNick]

I still say this concept would work well as a novel in which you play up the symbolism of the characters and situation and what not and could be something that you could make money off of. It's a really solid concept that could go a lot of interesting places and should be saved and worked on as such.