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Casketbase77


Routine day with a dirt cheap brush, then a week goes by and it goes untouched. Then two, then three, then a month, and the rest of your life you beat yourself up. - Aesop Rock, "Rings"

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Jul
25th
2020

Teaser excerpt from the promised "Innocent Until Proven Cozy" sequel · 3:06am Jul 25th, 2020

It's been a year to the day since my first fic's upload. Those of you whom I spoke with in the comments may remember that my aim was for the sequel to go live on the one year anniversary, though suffice to say it's not even close to finished. Between the Snippet Series and It Takes A Princess, the Innocent sequel hasn't had much of my attention for the past few months. While I'm happy that my current works are being well-received, I still want to honor my promise to continue Innocent Until Proven Cozy on schedule. In a certain way.

Enclosed below is the opening of the sequel fic Doubt Itself. Though not the complete and finished return to the storyline that I promised by this date, it's still a statement of intent. Innocent Until Proven Cozy isn't the most upvoted story I've ever written, but I firmly believe it is the best in pure storytelling quality. My aim is to take the time to craft a sequel that is worthy of the original, and I apologize to any of you whom I've let down with my lack of punctuality.

Doubt Itself


Cozy Glow's dream journal scared her.

She finished her entry for the previous night, then set down her gel pen and exhaled. If anyone read this most recent scrawl (or the dozens of other dreams she’d documented over the years), Cozy would have nothing to say in her defense.

“I’m taking meds for it,” wouldn't help her case. If anything, it'd be a terrible admission that her thoughts were still this bad under treatment.

Cozy shivered. Despite the heat of the late August morning, despite the tightness of her footie pajamas, she could still feel icy tingles in her fingers and toes. Cozy knew what these tingles were, of course: Phantom remnants of her dream, still juiced up by the adrenaline high that had shocked her awake. It didn’t matter that she hadn’t actually wrapped her hands around Sunset Shimmer’s throat. It didn’t matter that she hadn’t actually squeezed and squeezed and squeezed so much that she’d jolted upright in bed, delirious and gasping.

What mattered was she had enjoyed it. Just like all the other dreams she had when she was hurting people. Usually it was just random, faceless targets though. Not her only friend.

Cozy wrapped her arms around her flat, heaving chest while she rocked back and forth in her bedroom's desk chair. Back and forth, back and forth. She kept rocking until the icy tingles were gone, melted by the hot pit in her stomach that Cozy understood to be guilt.

Her dream journal was running out of pages.

If Cozy Glow’s luck continued to fail her, she’d have enough bad nights to fill the book up before the end of the month. What would she do then? Buy another so she could fill that one up too? Keep going until she had so many piled in her room she couldn’t keep them all hidden from the world anymore?

Compelled by loneliness, Cozy plucked a stuffed animal up off her bed and shut her eyes. She pretended the plush goat was alive, holding it tight and trying her best to wring some companionship out of the empty toy. Then, when her fingers began to hurt, she looked down and saw her thumbs gouging into its button eyes.

“I strongly advise against getting any family pets,” Cozy’s therapist had urged after the first session with her parents. “Under no circumstances should any animals be left alone with her.”

Cozy Glow bit her lip, tears blurring her vision.

“This is probably obvious, but the same caution extends to babies. It’s a relief to hear that she doesn’t have any siblings.”

The 7:00 AM alarm sounded on Cozy Glow’s phone, prompting her to drop the goat, slam the dream journal shut, and push her chair back. The self-shaming session would have to be done for the morning; she had twenty minutes til her school bus arrived.

After locking away the dream journal and all its damning indictments in her desk drawer, Cozy made her bed. Then trudged towards the bathroom, yanking curlers from her hair with every step.

She‘d been up for awhile but still hadn’t peed. Documenting her nightmare had been more important. No big deal; Cozy was training her bladder to be stronger anyway. She'd once read that sociopaths had a high risk of becoming chronic bedwetters later in life, and her terrible self-esteem didn’t need something like that compounding everything else. Cozy sat, relieved herself, then left the bathroom as quickly as possible. The toilet faced the mirror, and Cozy didn’t like looking at her reflection any longer than she had to. Soft, babyfaced features features weren't comely for an unclean soul. Even after 14 white-knuckled years of life, the cognitive dissonance still upset her.

Cozy dressed, pulling a blouse over her head and feeling it catch on a stray curler she’d missed earlier. Cozy Glow was new to curling her hair, having worn it in a bun all her life. Right up until last week. She’d only begun trying the Shirley Temple look after… after...

Cozy glanced at her clock, saw she had time, and sat down on the edge of her bed. She pulled out her phone and scrolled past a dozen screenshots of recently revisited WebMD Psychology articles. Thereafter her thumb settled on a unique picture in her camera roll. A photo of a photo, one that Sunset Shimmer showed her in the apparently magical “Friendship Journal.”

Specifically, a picture of the pegasus who shared Cozy's name.

Cozy Glow had spent more time staring at the image of her horsey counterpart than she liked to admit. This other Cozy was adorable, even more undeservedly than she herself was. Same fake smile. Same hollow eyes. Their only difference (other than their species, obviously) was the way they wore their hair. Up until last week, anyway. Cozy Glow extracted the last curler and ran her fingers through her locks. As the tresses settled, so did her nerves.

Cozy knew it was childish, mimicking her counterpart in an attempt to redeem that part of their identity. Still, the need to change one’s hairstyle was fairly innocuous compared to many more long-running and violent urges she dealt with daily. Really, it was nice to finally have a compulsion she could give into without feeling worried or guilty about it. She’d even slept fairly well the first night she‘d gone to bed wearing curlers. Instead of another murder dream, she’d had a repeat from awhile back where a rainbow-colored beam arced from the sky and washed over her, slowly turning her body to stone. Cozy’d jolted awake in terror of course, but at least it was her being victimized for once, not some innocent placeholder person. She vastly preferred traditional nightmares to the sick fantasies she usually had.

With some finality, she pulled on her favorite skirt, sliding her phone into its inseam pocket and hearing the rattle of her lithium tablet bottle already in there. Impulse told her to pop a pair of pills into her mouth immediately, but she first needed breakfast to ensure they’d dissolve properly. A few extra minutes of being sick in the head was fair trade for not being sick to her stomach, right?

Depends on what level of sick.

Cozy Glow flinched. The auditory hallucinations were starting to come back. She headed downstairs, knowing the sooner she could medicate, the better.


“Oh for Faust’s sake!” Cozy Glow shouted at open the cereal pantry. “That's what I get for putting an empty box back on the shelf. Now I can have a big bowl of disappointment for breakfast!”

No one was around to hear her zealous griping, of course. Both parents were at work, as usual. Still, yelling meant filling the room with real noise. Hopefully enough smother any fake noise her traitorous brain might conjure again.

“Bagel,” Cozy decided, tossing the empty cereal box in the trash and rooting around in the bread drawer. “Bagel, bagel, bagel, bagel…” her chanting had a tenor fit for a padded cell.

“Bagel!” she exalted, holding up her prize.

Cozy Glow glanced at her phone again, confirming she had four minutes til the bus was due. Plenty of time to heat her food and eat it. She fired up the toaster and used her momentary break to retrieve the cereal box from the trash. “This actually goes in the recycling bin,” Cozy Glow declared aloud to no one. “I’m a good, responsible girl. I don’t throw away cardboard. No siree.” She was honestly just talking to talk at this point.

Cozy Glow laid the cereal box in the proper receptacle before pulling on her penny loafers and backpack. Still waiting on the toaster, she slid open the silverware drawer to extract a bread knife.

Bad move.

As her fingers wrapped around a knife’s handle, Cozy’s heart rate shot up and a piercing, high pitched ringing stabbed her ears.

A weapon.

In her grasp.

While she was unsupervised.

Cozy Glow yelped and dropped the knife onto the linoleum, She felt dizzy from the headrush, panicked from the adrenaline kick, nauseous from her flare of sadistic excitement.

Sloppy. Careless. Damaged goods. Always underestimating its own triggers.

Cozy Glow clasped her hands over her ears and shut her eyes.

“Yesterday upon the stair, I met a man who wasn’t there. He wasn’t there again today. Oh how I wish he’d go away.”

Her favorite nursery rhyme was her trump card. Her ace of hearts. Before she got pills to silence the spectral taunting, Cozy had relied on chanting as a sort of verbal panacea. Reciting esoteric lyrics didn’t have any power outside of her imagination of course, but then again neither did her demons. Cozy had been encouraged by her therapist to use the rhyme whenever she felt herself beset on all sides.

“Yesterday upon the stair, I met a man who wasn’t-“ Her bagel popped up, causing Cozy to exhale loudly and drop her arms back to her sides. The ringing in her ears wasn’t completely gone, but it had at least quieted. She was retrieving her food from the toaster when she saw, foggy through the kitchen window, her school bus approaching from down the street.

Cozy nearly cussed, but instead stuffed her mouth with dry, cream cheese-less pieces of bagel. She nearly choked from lack of chewing, bursting out the door and reaching the curb the same time the bus did with her phone in her fist and her pill bottle in her pocket bouncing the whole way. Cozy Glow swallowed the last of her sorry breakfast and smiled sweetly at the driver while she boarded. He responded with an indifferent grunt and closed the doors behind her. Secure seated with fellow students in front and behind, Cozy dropped her backpack and took stock of herself.

There was a knot behind her sternum. No doubt a chunk of bagel she hadn’t chewed properly. It ached, but a quick swig from a school drinking fountain would be the remedy that. Cozy could suffer in silence for the half hour it'd take to arrive. What she could not keep waiting on however, was taking her meds. Two pills would be enough. She was small for her age, after all.

Her surreptitious hand slipped into her skirt pocket. Cozy's eyes bulged when it found nothing but lint.

She frantically turned the pocket inside out. Empty. Cozy tossed her backpack aside, scrabbling her hands on the dirty bus seat. When the search turned up nothing, she sat rigidly with her spine flush against the backrest, gaze empty and head pounding.

In her ailing mind’s eye, Cozy Glow saw the orange of her precious pill bottle lying stark against the green of her front lawn. All while the bus carried its recipient further and further away by the second.

Cozy Glow’s breathing was getting fast and shallow. Some silver-haired girl across the aisle eyed her with concern, and Cozy wanted nothing more than to sink a hatchet between those pitying, bespectacled purple eyes. Naturally appalled by her own thoughts, Cozy Glow dug five trimmed fingernails into her thigh and mewled helplessly.

This was bad. Very bad.

Cozetta Glasgow, certified underage violent schizophrenic, was on her way and off her meds.

Comments ( 18 )

Ooooh man. This was a good except and I'm looking forward to the full thing. Great job!

You do really good work layering stuff with her. It's really impressive.

This isn't cancelled, is it?

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Nah, I’m just backed up on other ongoing projects. The Snippet Series Season One Finale is next in line. After that is finishing It Takes A Princess.

Cozetta Glasgow? Cozy's version of Pinkamina Diane Pie.


“Oh for Christ’s sake!” Cozy Glow shouted after opening the cereal pantry. “Thanks for putting an empty box back on the shelf, Dad. Now I can have a big bowl of disappointment for breakfast!”

Am I going to Hell for laughing at that...?
Also, Sunset Shimmer's human dimension has Jesus? :rainbowlaugh:

She’d spent more time staring at the image of her horsey counterpart than she liked to admit. This other Cozy was adorable, even more undeservedly cute than she herself was, with the same fake smile and predatory eyes that Cozy herself often sported. The only difference between the two of them (other than their species, obviously) was the way they wore their hair. Or rather, as Cozy Glow extracted the last curler and ran her fingers through her locks to settle them, wearing their hair used to be something they did differently.

She's starting to imitate her pony counterpart? This could go badly...

Is there a chance this will be written?

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There is indeed. I’ve been chugging along with the ongoing Snippet Series, but multiple people have asked me to follow up on this story. I think I’ll suspend my regular uploads and work on this instead. Seems to be what my followers want, and I aim to please with the stories I write.

5507752
That's great to hear! The excerpt you've shown is really well-written and I'm glad you'll be trying to continue it.

I hope you’ll still come out with this! Innocent Until Proven Cozy was a great story, and the follow-up’s preview seemed really promising.

Hey, just found you via the currently incomplete Her Bitter Half series. I love your work (though personally would prefer is a lot of it was longer >.< ) and was wondering if since last April when you replied to Bebenggu there had been a change in your plans to write a sequel, or you were simply struggling to get back to it. It's cool if you don't, I'm just mainly curious.

I will read this when you upload it.

I hope she realizes she can probably go to the school nurse and say "I really need my pills, and misplaced them this morning."... Hoping her parents have a notice with the school that she is on meds...

In case it wasn't obvious, I look forward to any continuation that might be forthcoming.

TDoubt Itself
They're supposed to be inspiring, Sunset's stories of ponies with familiar names and faces. But to Cozy Glow, her other self is a warning she's grimly taken to heart. Too bad about the whispers still in her head. And the urges.
Casketbase77 · 15k words  ·  139  1 · 1.1k views

It arrives. I'm sorry to you all that it took so long.

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