I went to the wall to check my board again. On it, I had a picture of every pony or creature I’d come in contact with while in Equestria, with a large X marking the ones I had annoyed or pissed off. Namely, Starlight Glimmer, Princess Luna, and Princess Celestia.
Then I jolted as I glimpsed a picture of Discord pinned to the board.
A picture that hadn’t been there a moment ago.
Would he help Fluttershy in her pursuit of me? I thought to myself. Or instead ruin me, posthaste? I guess I’d worry about that when it happened.
What I had to worry about right that instant was the fact that someone had just rung the doorbell. And the fact my new house hadn’t come with a doorbell.
I faced the foyer and tried to remain calm. Before moving in, my new realtors had sold me on their patented “Fluttershy Proof” homes, way out in the middle of nowhere. Obviously, I jumped at the chance, regardless of the extra bits it cost as well as the horrible commute. What were my realtors’ names again? Slim and Jim? Jam and Ham? I honestly couldn’t recall. A lot of pony names sounded the same to me by that point.
“Anthony!” called a voice outside my door. “Anthony, please! Come quick!”
I grunted as if hit square in the gut. Suddenly, the urge to just fall down and take a nap right there on the floor became the greatest idea of all. I was so tired of this.
“Fluttershy,” I muttered out like some classic western hero. “She’s found me.”
I was about to turn away from the door when she called again.
“Please, Anthony! It’s a matter of life or death!”
Curious, I crept towards the door and used the peephole near the top.
And yep. It sure was Fluttershy out there, sat on the ground with both forelegs wrapped around her small torso, visibly shivering for some reason. A moment later, she reached out and pressed a small button on a white box laying next to her, sounding the doorbell again.
“How did you install a doorbell inside my house?” I asked through the door.
Fluttershy’s shivering only intensified. “Aren’t you going to ask if I’m okay?”
“Not until you answer my question.”
She hitched in a shaky breath. “Are you saying you don’t like your new doorbell, Anthony? I got it for you as a housewarming gift.”
Mentally, I shoved the doorbell situation aside. I probably should’ve asked how she’d tracked me down, but I’d already noted the small map next to the doorbell button. It even came with a small Flim and Flam Bros. trademark logo. “Fine. What do you want? And make it fast.”
Fluttershy shivered again; took another shaking breath. “I’m cold, Anthony. I think I’m freezing to death! I fell in the lake behind your house.”
“There’s no lake there.”
“I meant I tripped in a large puddle down the street!” she quickly corrected.
Through the peephole, I hurriedly scanned her over. “You’re not even wet.”
“It happened a while ago,” she said, adding in the faintest of coughs as she squeezed her eyes shut. “It’s just so… cold out here. All the snow and bitter wind beating against me.”
I shut my eyes and pinched the bridge of my nose. “Winter Wrap Up was two weeks ago, Fluttershy. I would know! You and your friends made me participate. And sing, too.”
The word “sing” appeared to perk Fluttershy up. “Oh, but you have the most wonderful of singing voices, Anthony!”
“Really?” I asked. “Because I recall doing my best Creed impression the entire time.”
Fluttershy coughed another half-dozen times, spreading herself flat on the ground. “Fine. Have it your way. I guess I’ll just succumb to the elements out here… freeze to death… alone and unloved.” She eyed the Welcome Mat currently underneath her. “On your Welcome Mat, no less. Or should it be your ‘Un’-Welcome Mat?”
I grumbled. “That’s not even my Welcome Mat! You brought that here!”
Her raised her head. “So, you’re saying you don’t like your new Welcome Mat?” Another round of shivers. “Oh, Anthony. I think I have hypothermia. If only… if only I had some shirt to wear. Or a large, soft sweater that smelled just like you.”
I told her thickly, “You realize that one of the effects of severe hypothermia is the want to remove one’s clothing, right?”
“In that case I wish you had hypothermia,” she muttered to herself, completely within earshot.
“Fine,” I said, clicking my teeth together angrily. “You get two minutes in front of the fireplace. Then you leave.”
The moment I opened the door, Fluttershy happily trotted in as if nothing had been wrong with her all along. Which, clearly, had been the case.
I didn’t say a word as she sat before the flickering, crackling flames of my living room fire. Although, I did feel like pulling out my hair the moment she started shivering again, less than two feet away from all that blazing heat.
“How can you still be cold?” I asked. “Aren’t you literally covered in fur?”
Fluttershy turned to me with her best pleading look. “Maybe if I… I dunno… had one of your—”
“No more shirts!” I shouted, slamming down a foot onto the carpet. “I never even got that last one back.”
“I stuck it to the wall of my cottage,” she again muttered to herself far too loud, “as a motivational poster.”
“Too. Much. Info,” I said.
“Could I borrow one of your sweaters, then?” she asked, as sweetly as could be.
I sighed. “Is this what all this is about? Another piece of clothing to add to your creepy collection? Sure. Fine. Whatever. Let’s just get this over with.” I then marched into my nearby bedroom and picked out the closest black sweater I could nab—a Metallica tour hoodie I purchased off of eBay years ago while still on Earth.
Back in the living room, I held the sweater up for Fluttershy to inspect.
She read from it. “And Justice For All Tour, 1988.” Then she glanced up at me. “And was there indeed ‘justice for all,’ Anthony?”
I smirked. “For everyone besides Jason Newsted, I guess.”
She hesitated as I dangled the sweater before her. “Well? Gonna take it or not?”
Fluttershy chewed on a lip. “I was thinking more… that sweater.”
She was pointing at the sweater I currently had on. An old, ratty one I only wore around the house or used while painting sometimes. Without much thought (I did have a normal shirt underneath), I whipped it off and dropped it onto her head. I thought the sooner this weird business was over the better.
Yet Fluttershy only continued to stare at it, her ears falling flat against her head.
Her following sentence appeared caught in her throat. “I was thinking… why don’t… why don’t we both wear it? Like at the same time?”
As cute as that may have sounded to her, there was, in fact, a logical reason for not wanting to do such a thing.
“Because that would only stretch out the neck hole, Fluttershy.”
Fluttershy seemed on the verge of tears at that, her jaw trembling. “What are you saying, Anthony? That you don’t want to help me stretch out holes?”
I ripped open the front door. “Out!”
“But what did I do?” she squeaked. “What did I say?”
“You know exactly what you said! That naïve, cute routine doesn’t last forever, Fluttershy!” I indicated the street outside. “Now out! Right this second.”
She came towards the door, but stopped beside me. She held a hoof over her mouth. “But it’s so spooky outside! And dark, too!”
I checked my arm for the wristwatch I didn’t have. “It’s two-thirty on a Tuesday, Fluttershy. And as sunny as can be.”
She looked up to me, shaking like a leaf. “But there could be timber wolves out there! Or those really loud, snapping branches! Or… or those really, really pushy salesponies!”
Just then a stallion trotting by outside waved at me through the open doorway. “Good sunny afternoon, human neighbor!”
I awkwardly waved back. “Afternoon, Bob.”
“Beautiful weather, isn’t it?”
“No doubt.”
Then he quickly strolled away. Was that my last chance to call for help? I thought oddly.
Down below, Fluttershy clung tight to my leg. “Please, don’t make me leave, Anthony! I’ll do anything! Anything!”
“Anything, eh?” I asked, grabbing a bit of parchment off the nearby counter. In less than a minute, I’d written what I’d wanted down and handed it to her. “Solve this for me.”
Her pupils shrunk as she began to read. “What is it?”
“A math problem. Now solve it.”
She gulped dryly, reading the rest. “But why would anyone need so many watermelons at once? And how does the watermelons connect to when the train arrives? And why are there so many letters in this math problem?” She then set it on the ground and turned it over, as if simply looking at it burned her eyes. “This scares me, Anthony. Human math is spooky.”
I nodded. Job well done, me. “Then you lose. Good day, mare.”
Fluttershy entered full-cling mode again. “No! Something else! Anything else!”
“Alright. Turn into a potato.” It was the first thing that popped into my head.
Fluttershy nodded gamely. “Okay!”
Then she tried. She actually did.
And for a time, I only snickered to myself, watching as she lowered herself to the ground and gritted her teeth while trying to transform. But soon my laughter died. I was still in Equestria, was I not? Where weird occurrences were the norm?
And just as I took a step back to protect myself from a possible potato-mare explosion, she stopped what she was doing, panting for breath.
“Anything?” she asked hopefully.
I shook my head gravely. “I am sorry, but you did not achieve Tater-shy status, Fluttershy.”
“You sure?” she asked again. “No fries in my mane or anything?”
Silence filled the room. Neither of us looked at each other. I also didn’t motion towards the front door anymore. Honestly, I felt a little bad about those last two tests.
I asked her openly, “Just what do you expect to happen here, Fluttershy?”
Clearly the question caught her off guard. She shook her head as if waking from a daze. “Wha-what to you mean?”
“Well, it’s clear you have a crush on me,” I continued. “Perhaps something worse than a crush, I don’t know. But… how does it end? In your mind, what’s the endgame here? How do the two of us end up—” I chewed on a knuckle before finishing. “Happily ever after?”
Fluttershy gasped as her whole body filled with newfound energy. Cheeks blushing, she softly stepped around the living room as she spoke. “Well, for starters… we’d wake up in bed, you and me… and it would be this beautiful morning outside.”
“Okay,” I said.
“And then I’d say ‘Morning, Anthony’.”
“Seems doable.”
“And you’d say ‘Morning, Fluttershy’.”
“Riveting. Please, continue.”
“And then I’d go to the kitchen to make us some tea.”
“But I don’t drink tea. I drink coffee.”
Fluttershy halted her step. She looked plain shocked. “Oh. Actually, I… uhh… what I actually meant was that I’d go down to the store to buy us some coffee. Yeah. That’s that I meant! And then I’d come back and we’d have breakfast in bed! And then we’d decide to spend the rest of the day just laying in bed together!”
I nodded along. “I can feel the bedsores forming already.”
I let her ramble for a bit as I pondered to myself.
Whatever she’d said really wasn’t out of the ordinary in the least; just cute, couple stuff. The “norm”, as some ponies would claim. Was this truly what I had been afraid of all along? A small pegasus with a simple crush? And who’s to say things would even work out between us? I’d already seen how she reacted once I’d mentioned I didn’t like tea. Was there a chance she’d eventually find we had so little in common that she’d lose interest in me altogether?
I shrugged. It was worth a shot, at least.
“Fine,” I said, cutting overtop whatever she’d been saying. “You can stay, Fluttershy. We’ll… hang out. Or whatever.”
Shocked, Fluttershy’s mouth dropped. “You mean it, Anthony? Really?”
“Sure. Just stay here for a minute. Need to use the bathroom quick.”
Even behind the closed bathroom door, I could hear her hooves tapping as she danced and sung to herself in the living room.
She’s a strange one all right, I thought. Although maybe not as strange as I first thought.
Washing my hands, I noticed the medicine cabinet above the sink slightly open. I flicked it open the rest of the way and felt like smacking myself in the head. Hidden inside was a large red button, or what my realtors had called the “Plan B Button”; only to be pressed in the gravest of “Fluttershy-related” circumstances.
My head turned from the giant red button, to the door, and back again. Sure, I could spend the rest of the day figuring out if Fluttershy and I ever could truly be a couple… or I could simply press this button and be done with it all already.
I tapped my chin in pure ponderment.
***
Fire.
The big red button hidden in my bathroom set my house on fire. That’s what it did.
The moment I’d realized this, I dove out the bathroom window and bolted down the street. Just as I glanced backward, I watched Fluttershy soar out of my house with the “Anthony Dummy” in tow. That was the second thing the “Plan B Button” did: drop a life-sized Anthony replica doll from the bathroom ceiling to act as decoy.
The dummy even wore a plain white t-shirt that read “ANON-THONY”.
Even before watching her escape the flames, I knew that Fluttershy would be fine. She always was. Like some pony-sized Terminator or like the unstoppable Anton Chigurh from the Coen Brothers’ film, No Country for Old Men. I still could remember the film’s ominous tagline after all these years: You can’t stop what’s coming. Although, I’m sure if the horseshoe were on the other foot, Fluttershy would never stop me from coming.
Stopping in the middle of the road, I balled my hands into fists.
It was clear she was getting into my head whether I wanted her there or not.
I walked on.
There were still a couple of shady realtors I knew that deserved a good smack across the head.