The Bug Man
Sam rolled over on his side as the sunlight hit his eyelids. He grumbled as his back and neck ached for some reason, and his bed seemed unusually hard and unforgiving. I know my mattress is crap, but gosh damn, this is hard. Apparently his blanket fell off at some point during the night, because he didn’t feel it on him. His pillow seemed to be missing as well. It’s like he wasn’t on a bed at all, yet Sam distinctly remembered going to bed last night, and not at some party or whatever his friends liked to call those drug havens.
A dusty smell entered his nose, and he sniffed with confusion. This wasn’t was his room smelled like. He didn’t remember his room smelling at all (though his friends would probably say otherwise). Why was he friends with those losers anyways?
Well, better get up and see what happened to my room. Sam thought.
Still keeping his eyes closed, he groggily rolled over to his other side of the bed, dragged his feet over the edge, and pushed off to get a start to this rather uncomfortable and confusing day. And then he wasn’t standing on anything. On the contrary, it appeared he was actually falling now. A spike of adrenaline shot through him and his eyes shot open – seeing a light brown surrounding around him moving up – but that wasn’t important – where was the ground?!?
Sam found out roughly a second later as his back slammed into it with a dull thud, followed shortly by his head, which bounced once before coming to rest on the hard ground again. Strangely feeling no pain besides the aches from earlier, his heart pounded in his heaving chest as he stared up at the distant, distant, why the hell is the ceiling so high? How am I not dead? Where am I?!? Rising up to meet the wooden ceiling was an enormous bookcase, or at least it looked like one anyways, each shelf seeming to bet at least 10 feet tall, filled with similarly large books.
After lying there for a few seconds in pure shock, he carefully felt around his body, doing a check to make sure everything was intact. Ten fingers, two legs, two arms, a body, a head. Nothing felt broken. Good. Slowly, he stood up on two legs, and nearly fell over again. This room was ginormous! There was a door about the size of a five-story building, a horse statue in the middle of the room the size of a six-story building, a writing desk – wait a minute. Sam recognized this place.
No way. No freaking way. Sam thought.
Sam’s breathing accelerated as he slapped himself in the face repeatedly on multiple sides. That having failed to wake him up, he pinched his arm as hard as he could. One shaken out arm and a small red spot later and Sam had to sit down for a moment.
Sam was experiencing mixed emotions. On one hand, he was in Equestria! In Twilight Mother Freaking Sparkle’s library none-the-less! On the other hand, it seemed Equestria was huge. Well, it seemed like that from his perspective anyways. Now that he thinks about it, it’s probably because he’s just really small or something. Man, screw whatever magic BS that’s making me this small.
His breathing finally slowing down somewhat, Sam offered himself a chuckle as his head buzzed with excitement, anxiety, and then, boredom. Well, now what? he thought, smiling. His stomach suddenly started aching and his throat felt parched. His smile was short-lived as it dropped into a look of concern. How exactly am I going to feed myself, let alone survive here? Thinking for a few moments, he snapped his fingers. Duh, the ponies! I’ll just wait until Twilight wakes up and introduce myself, and she’ll take care of me. Best pony is awesome like that.
Just as luck would have it, there came a loud thumping sound from up above. It seemed as someone was coming downstairs to start the day! With a nod, Sam donned a determined smile, and started running towards the kitchen area. It was taking a surprisingly long time to get there, and he eventually saw a droopy looking Godzilla Twilight Sparkle trudge on over to the kitchen of Golden Oaks.
“Twilight! Hey, Twilight! Stop!” Sam yelled as he ran. Seeing as she apparently didn’t hear him at all, he picked up his pace and ran as fast as he could to get to her.
Around thirty seconds later, Sam was heaving some more as he rested his hands on his knees, nearly exhausted from his sprint. He had seriously underestimated how long it would take him to reach anywhere in this monstrosity of a tree, and overestimated how fit he was after sitting on his computer just about all day long for weeks at a time. Sam conceded to just walk there instead, and hopefully catch Twilight while she was still eating.
Five minutes later, he passed through the doorway to find her eating something at the table. Now was his chance.
At the top of his voice, Sam shrieked, “Twilight! Hey! Down here! Down! Here! Heyyyyy!”
The only response he got was a little flick of her ear as Twilight continued eating her breakfast. Sam moaned loudly as he hung his head in frustration. How the heck was he supposed to get Twilight’s attention if she couldn’t hear him? Perhaps if he could get up there, then she could see him? After looking around for a way up, his eyes came upon the chair Twilight was sitting at. He grinned. It was one of those stupid over-fancified chairs with all the decorations on the column things holding it up. He was pretty sure he didn’t see these in the show, but whatever works, right? It was going to be a somewhat tricky climb, but apparently he couldn’t get hurt from falling, so there was really nothing to lose from trying.
The first handhold he could find was a few feet out of arm’s reach, so he approached the chair, bent his knees and jumped, flying into the air. And he went. And went. And went. Sam flew far beyond the actual height of the chair, and just about to the height of the table itself. Sam screamed as he fell back to the wooden floor, then painlessly landed on his back again, and flopped over on his stomach. I am never going to get used to this.
After pondering for a minute on how in the actual heck he was able to jump that high, Sam just attributed it to the stupid Equestria magic that must have brought him here in the first place.
Getting sick of all this nonsense, he prepared to jump up to the table again, properly this time, to talk to the purple unicorn to restore some normalcy to his life. He then leaped up onto the table, and turned to face Twilight. Apparently, she still hadn’t seen him, and was still focusing on her meal.
“Hey, Twilight! Down here!” Sam yelled for the third time. She still took no notice of him.
Sam knew he wasn’t invisible, because he could still see himself, and he knew he wasn’t mute, because he could hear himself yelling. Maybe ponies couldn’t understand English? But then, she would still hear his human noises right? This didn’t make any sense. One last thing then. He thought.
As a last ditch effort, he walked to the edge of the table, and jumped up onto Twilight’s snout.
Now she could see him alright. Her two colossal eyes converged on him as he waved his arms back and forth, wearing an incredibly annoyed face.
“Do you notice me now?!?” He yelled at her.
Twilight screeched, which to Sam sounded as a deafening banshee, prompting him to desperately cover his ears with his hands. A giant purple hoof came up and flicked him into the air away from Twilight’s face. Sam began to fear that he did not follow the correct course of action as he saw a bright purple light at separate intervals of his sickening spin through the air. Moments later, a bright purple beam shot out from her horn and zapped Sam. The last thing to go through his mind, was magic. There was a poof of red mist, and Sam was no more.
“Ick, how did that thing even get in here?” Twilight said with a look of utter disgust on her scrunched up face. “I thought I put up that anti-insect array in the library yesterday! Or was it an anti-insect divination? Whatever it was, it clearly isn’t working, I’m going to need to replace it if I want to get through Ponyville’s bug season this year.”