Psychedelica - Welcome to the Party

by Joseph Raszagal

Pinker Than Pink

Psychedelica – Welcome to the Party
A pony story by Joseph Raszagal
As inspired by acid and the songs of a certain festive pony
Pinker than Pink

~ ~ ~

There's an everlasting party
And you're all invited
Come and join the conga line
As it snakes 'round and 'round
We'll dance and eat and play
Every single night, every single day
And it only stops once
We've all stopped for good
Never-ending
Just like every party should

~ ~ ~

Twilight Sparkle wretched on the floor of her basement laboratory as several machines around her beeped and hummed. An EEG that had only seconds ago been hooked up to her head protested with an audible hiss and several sparks before producing one final sheet of data. The recording of electrical activity in her brain, much like the seismology graphings recorded during an apocalyptic earthquake, displayed waves of wild fluctuations in wide swaths of still-wet ink. The two halves of Twilight's most recent experiment, a helmet that would allow her to see another pony's thoughts as though they were her own, sat on opposite sides of the room. Twin trails of smoke linked the two piles of smoldering wreckage back at the unicorn's head, complete with her uncharacteristically shocked mane, where only moments ago the explosion that had split the device in twain took place.

As she opened her eyes, pink filtered in through her vision and dominated everything else, bright and blinding, like a piercing beam of pure cotton candy. It swirled around her, a sugary maelstrom, before sinking into her flesh and fusing with her bone. Overwhelmed, she gritted her teeth as every fiber of her being was candied and caramelized. In a moment that lasted no longer than a mere fraction of a second, Twilight felt her body, mind, and immortal soul plummet deep into a void of pastry pink from which she was certain that there would be no returning.

It took all of the her restraint not to scream.

Instead, wracking sobs overtook her as she folded herself inward into a fetal position.

Scrabbling to her hooves, a horrified Pinkie Pie removed her matching helmet and rushed to Twilight's side. Nuzzling the unicorn's shoulder with her snout, she beckoned, “Twilight, are you alright?”

Fuchsia and flamingo hues danced in front of the stricken mare's eyes, drilling their way into her head through her retinas. Unblinking, tears streamed down her cheeks.

“Twilight?”

Everything was pink and coated in sugar.

“Twilight!”

She was pink. Her bones were rock candy and her muscles were the sinewy strips of saltwater taffy binding them together.

“Twilight, say something!”

Her skin was a fine film of honey glaze atop which sat her coat, a thick layer of raspberry frosting. The whipped cream comprising her mane and tail wiggled, writhed, and wriggled uncontrollably along with every movement of the amalgamated dessert-limbs that they decorated.

“Twilight, please, say anything!”

The gelatin and sundae brain encased in her jelly doughnut of a skull melted at room temperature and came oozing out through her ears, dizzying the librarian to the point of drooling as all of her acquired wisdom dribbled down the sides of her hollowed-out head. The thick mental slurry then pooled on the floor at her hooves; spiked fruit punch puddles just begging to be lapped up. Open cuts and sores manifested all across her body, each leaking copious amounts of precious life-fluid; saccharine streams of scarlet strawberry syrup. The sugary liquids then mixed together into a tiny lake beneath her and ate through the library's chocolate hardwood paneling, giving way to the bottomless chasm that she had already felt herself descend into once before.

With nothing to grasp at but her crumbling confectionery surroundings, she free-fell through her delicious nightmare all over again.

“I'm sorry, I'm so so sorry, I shouldn't have shown you!”

Whooshing white-noise roared by her aching head as she fell deeper and deeper and deeper, the sound twisted into a haunting mimicry of every cheery birthday song she had ever heard. The voices, though familiar, sang to her in the distorted, helium-induced tones of a thousand popped party balloons and emptied air horns. A cacophony of laughter punctuated every happy limerick, but rather than high pitches, the laughs resounded with the bellowing force of a gaggle of demons all merrily chanting through dense lungfuls of sulfur hexafluoride.

“I should have known this would happen! I should have known better than to let you look; it's too much to take in! I know that now and I'm sorry, just please, Twilight, please say something!”

Biting her lip hard enough to draw blood, real blood, Twilight did as was requested of her. She released the floodgates and forced herself to reply.

She screamed.

For ten minutes, Twilight shrieked and wailed as though she were being dipped in molten lead. Her body moved of its own accord, ignoring her orders entirely as violent twitches and spasms threatened to shake her loose from Pinkie's protective grip. A primal might unlike anything she had ever felt or experienced before commanded her to thrash, to break free and run whilst yelling like a madpony as far away as equinely possible from anything dyed that color. Her chest heaved, lungs burning, as she sucked in claustrophobic breaths and held them for what felt like forever. She could feel it, closing in around her still; a single pigment more powerful than anything else in the whole of creation. Every time she began to calm down, an errant glimpse of the wild mane belonging to the pink pony gently cradling her would send her toppling back over the edge into utter hysteria.

Choking on her own salty tears, Pinkie Pie found no respite in the silence that inevitably did come once her friend finally screamed herself to sleep. If anything, she found the quiet all the more deafening.

The following three hours passed painfully slowly for the baker. Not a single second wasn't spent contemplating the vital part that she had played in breaking the purple mare clutched desperately in her forelegs.

…

…

…

…

…

“Celestia, Luna, what have I done?”

…

…

…

…

…

“I don't care if you don't want to be my friend anymore. I don't care if you hate me and never want to see me again. I'd find some way to accept that, really I would. Just please, Twilight, please be okay. I just... I don't know how I'll live with myself if I hurt you beyond repair. I won't be able to.”

…

…

…

…

…

“It's pink,” came Twilight's shuddering whisper as she stirred awake.

Pinkie's eyes darted to meet those of the young librarian still held in her forelegs, overjoyed that her friend's voice had returned to her without devolving back into panicked shrieks and banshee wails. Pinkie's joy, however, promptly died as she examined the eyes staring back at her. They were frozen open, impossibly wide, in a look of abject terror beyond their owner's understanding.

“Pinker than anything in the whole wide world,” soothed Pinkie Pie, hugging Twilight tighter, “I know.”

In a voice that even Fluttershy would have found meek, the purple unicorn stammeringly questioned, “W-what is it?”

Again, the party-planner tightened her embrace.

Several minutes passed, punctuated only by the purple mare's trembling.

“This,” thought Pinkie as she took in a deep breath, “is not going to be easy.”

With a nervous gulp, Pinkie closed her eyes and said, “You looked inside my head, Twilight. You've seen things the way I see them. I'm sorry, Twi, I'm so sorry, but there's an Everlasting Party in my head, held year-round and never-ending... and it seems you've been invited.”

Comments

[Inky Swirl]

atypicallyrelevant.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/FamilyGuyStewie-Straight-Jacket.gif

[PeaceColt112]

Man, this is too much to handle at a solid [8]

[Joseph Raszagal]

1406034
I've heard that Juggalos like to brag that their "Dark Carnival" is the scariest possible thing in our world's long, proverbial line of scary things. But me? I think a carnival could be ten times scarier in broad daylight, with its happy music playing and sugary treats in every hand. I don't think we need all the dark and gore and tinny sound distortion to create a sense of horror.

I think... the happiest, cheeriest, cutesiest things could potentially be the most horrifying .

[Inky Swirl]

1407388

And this is why you succeed, sir. Don't be content to chill your brain inside of a box... punch a hole through the cardboard walls.

[Joseph Raszagal]

1407592
And here I thought I was working well within my confines! I get it though, and no worries, I have a ton of fun trying to work out new and awful things for a brilliant mind like Twilight's to logic her way through.

And no worries, no matter how dark this gets, I'll spoiler the fuck out of it. Twilight is my favorite pony and there's no way I'd ever let her suffer through this without benefit in the end . She'll get through alright .

[Joseph Raszagal]

There's just a bit more...