//------------------------------// // Chapter Three // Story: A Corpse in Equestria // by LucidTech //------------------------------// Jack waited. This took the form of him tapping his hand silently on the armrest of the chair that, though sheer force of will, supported his ethereal self. He’d spent more and more of his time in this room now, if he was ever asked to identify it by picking it out of a lineup by a picture of the ceiling alone he probably would’ve been able to. In fact, it was becoming harder for him to convince himself to ever leave. In all the world, to his knowledge, there was only the one pony who could see or hear him, and he was hesitant to isolate himself back into the complete loneliness he had known before. But everyone deserved their privacy didn’t they? Jack knew that were he in her position he wouldn’t want to be watched twenty four hours of the day by some deceased alien who just sat at the edge of the room and watched him. So, Jack had taken to exploring the hospital. Partially to see if he could find anyone else who could see him but more so to let the mare have some peace and quiet. It was on return from one of these little walks that he found the mare in unusual circumstances. She had a map of the town laid out in front of her, she’d probably asked it off one of the nurses, and when she saw Jack enter the room she signalled him over silently with a wave of her hoof. Jack approached obediently, curious as to what the purpose of the map was. She waited until he was at her bedside before she spoke. Jack had heard her speak before, of course, but only to the nurses when she needed something. She had never spoken to Jack, perhaps out of worry for some adverse effect that might come from acknowledging his presence or perhaps simply because she had little to say to him. Jack couldn’t say either way, so he didn’t. Instead, he listened. It was, in his own opinion, his only positive personality trait compared to his laundry list of shortcomings. “I want to-” Started the mare, her voice raspy from a throat that had yet to fully recover. She was interrupted by a cough, though it was more of a dry wheeze, and took a drink from the water that rested on a nearby table before trying again. “I want to ask you to do a favor for me.” She said, looking at Jack. She waited a half second and when he didn’t turn her down immediately, she continued with hope in her voice. “My younger sister, Colada, is being looked after by the town’s school teacher.” Here she tapped a house on the map and Jack did his best to memorize it. “She has a light-pink coat, a two-tone mane with two other shades of pink that she likes to wear pretty mussy, and no cutie mark. Well-” Here her voice grew worried. “Not the last time I saw her she didn’t anyway.” The mare looked off into the distance for a moment before turning back to her ghostly acquaintance. “Can you check up on her for me? Make sure she’s taking care of herself?” Jack wanted to ask why this younger sister had not come to visit her older sibling in the hospital but suspected that the mare herself did not know, which was the unsaid reason as to why he was being asked to check up on her. Of course even if she did, Jack didn’t expect her to tell him anything either way. Still, he did not like the idea of leaving the hospital. In fact, he was surprised at himself for how horrible it sounded to him. It felt like he was being asked to jump off a cliff. It was as Jack was considering his answer that a doctor entered the room with the easy smile of a eavesdropper who had caught someone breaking the rules. “Now Ms. Punch, I know that they say exercise is important but trust me when I say that it is best if you keep your talking to a minimum as to hasten the recovery of your throat.” He moved to collect her chart from the end of her bed and as his gaze left her she gave a pointed look to Jack, who knew well what it meant. He did vaguely sort of owe her didn’t he? Or at least, he owed her her privacy. It wasn’t like he was busy doing other things either. And even if she was in full recovery what then? He didn’t know where to even begin with being a ghost and deep in some part of his soul he worried that the only ‘cure’ for being half-dead was becoming full-dead. And she probably wouldn’t be able to help him even then would she? Truth be told Jack just wanted someone that he could talk to, even if he never actually did so. It was comforting simply to know there was somepony who could, hypothetically, interact with him even if, in practice, he mostly just sat silently in the corner of the room. Still, he suspected that if he didn’t do at least this one thing for her he wouldn’t be talking much to her in the future anyway, and she did seem worried about the safety of her sister. Worried enough, anyway, that she was willing to send the creepy ghost alien to check up on her to make sure she was okay. Eventually Jack managed to convince himself to help her. He took another look of the map and tried his best to memorize it. He memorized the hospital and then memorized the neighboring structures. He looked at the route between the hospital and the home that the mare had pointed out, then looked for identifying landmarks to help him find his way around. It looked like there were a couple. There was a tall white building named ‘Carousel Boutique’ which had much the same design as its namesake had in the world he had come from, he would walk right past that one on his chosen route. There was also a large purple crystalline looking structure that lurked on the edge of town, it marked the direction he would need to head off in. He memorized the color of the building he needed to enter, which was a light yellow. Jack studied it until the doctor rolled it up, not thinking it was currently in use, and put it to the side so he could perform a check-up on the mare. Jack closed his eyes, looking at the ceiling through his eyelids, and did his best to lock the memory into his mind while it was still fresh. Eventually, he turned to the mare who was now having her heartbeat listened to. “Alright, I’ll check up on her.” Jack said with a nod, moving towards the wall that seperated the room from the outside. The mare waited until the doctor had his attention turned away before she returned the nod, a hesitant hopeful look on her face. Jack thought very hard about how walls, really when you got right down to it, were actually not there. This took hardly longer than a handful of minutes, then he was through to the outside. He stumbled from the sudden change in altitude and took a moment to regain his footing and remind himself how absolutely impassable the ground was before looking around at his surroundings. They were, more or less, how Jack remembered them being. It had been perhaps a week since he’d last been outside and he discovered that he still didn’t like looking at it very much. There were the houses that looked like they’d been ripped from a 1920’s “too cheery town” horror film setting. There were the ponies who looked like someone had stolen a bag of skittles and turned them into small horses. There was the giant gray semi-transparent wall that encircled the hospital. Huh. Maybe it was less instead of more. Jack approached the wall and squinted at the images that moved on the other side. They all seemed unperturbed and unchanged from their normal selves. Or what Jack assumed their normal selves to be. None of the ponies on either side of the barrier were reacting to it in the slightest. It definitely hadn’t been there when he’d first arrived, and given the apathy the ponies had toward it they either couldn’t see it, or this was normal. “Every second tuesday we slap an old-school cartoon filter on the town, nobody panic.” Jack said under his breath as he examined it. It sounded insane. But that Twilight Sparkle, she’d levitated objects. Not to mention there were pegasi and unicorns aplenty. Clearly this world didn’t play by the same rules as the one he’d come from. Jack glanced around. All around him were ponies milling about in their normal everyday lives, unaware of the invisible set of eyes that gazed among them. Jack waited. Eventually one of the ponies approached the barrier and without so much as a hitch in their step, walked through it. Jack blinked in surprise then turned his own attention to the barrier once again. With a look first to his own spectral hand, then to the gray barrier, Jack tested the waters. He reached out slowly, cautiously, until he made contact. Waves of what could only be described as aggressive apathy assaulted him on a level he didn’t know that emotions could attack him on. It was so strong that even without a physical body he felt like he was in mortal pain, it felt like ice water that had transcended the human idea of cold. Then there were the whispers. He recoiled in shock and pain, his legs giving out and leaving him prone on the ground, listening as ghostly echos whispered in his head. “Just stay.” “Nowhere to go.” “Comfort here.” “Nobody else.” Jack clutched his wrist in pain, squeezing his eyelids in a vain attempt to get rid of the persuasive thoughts that echoed around in his head. He felt them prying at his soul, trying to change it. He felt strange ghostly grips on every fiber of his being, trying to bend him out of shape. Jack knew, on some deep instinctual level, that all he would have to do to make it stop was to never try and leave the hospital. To just linger there forever, make it his home. ‘So this is what ghosts have to put up with.’ Jack thought to himself, enjoying his moment of rest on the grass he couldn’t feel while enduring a pain that felt like it was being inscribed on some building block of who he was. ‘No wonder they’re always so moody.’ Jack was prone for a hour or so before the pain finally finished ebbing away. Cautiously, he stood and looked at the barrier again, only to find that the distance between him and it had shrunk. He looked around the plot of land the hospital sat on to confirm his suspicions that, yes, it was in fact closing in on it. Terror struck some chord in Jack and he looked back to the hospital. He could just go back in, say he had tried to find her but couldn’t get around very well right? But then what? How much would this field enclose, and what about when the mare, Ms. Punch she’d been called right? What about when she left the hospital? Would he just linger in forgotten pharmaceuticals moving little bottles of pills around? No he had to do something about this. Still rubbing his wrist Jack maneuvered his way to the edge of the barrier closest to the direction he needed to go in, then stepped back a fair way to give himself a running start. There were a few ways this could turn out. Either he would break the barrier and be able to move around freely again, which was the best option. Or he would not break the barrier and instead exist in an eternity of freezing pain for all of time, which was the bad option. Or he would truly die which, given the other extremes, was basically neutral territory. Jack took a deep breath that he didn’t need and lined himself up. He hesitated for a half dozen minutes as he made sure, absolutely sure, that this was something he wanted to do. He decided that, yes, it was. Jack broke into a run before he had another chance to second guess himself. His steps were uneven and unprofessional but they all served the singular purpose of building up as much speed as he possibly could. Then, on the last step before he would run into the barrier, Jack leapt into the air. He went sailing through empty space and enjoyed the sparse few moments of weightless momentum before the crashing cold pain locked around every part of his spectral form. It felt like hell. Every passing millisecond was stretched on and on approaching infinity as his body flew forward without any way to stop. Still, Jack was glad he’d decided to jump, if he hadn’t he probably would’ve ground to a halt as soon as he’d made contact. He felt the cold bite deeper and deeper as he fell like a stone farther and farther into the gray scale world until it seemed to latch onto his memories and begin to stab them as well. In some last-ditch effort of self defense Jack's mind brought up his memories of Sam. He remembered their picnics and the time they’d gone swimming at the local pool. He remembered arguments that stung on some deeper level still than whatever level this barrier was attacking him on and he remembered nights in the dead of winter when they’d both been awake far too late into the night and had ended up lighting a small fire in a seldom-used fireplace. Jack latched on to that memory of the fireplace. It had been a tacked on addition to the house. Sam had built it after running it past a couple construction friends they knew. On those nights where they had both gathered at the cobbles in too many blankets and had lit a fire that could barely warm a small room they’d felt a much deeper warmth. It was this warmth that roared now, screaming in anger at the shackles of pain that bound Jack. And then, just as suddenly as it had come, it was all over. Jack let himself lay prone for the second time in so many hours on grass he could not feel. The pain left quicker this time, but he still gave himself a moment before he pressed on to complete the task he’d been given, just long enough to remember the crackle of dry wood and the smell of burning marshmallows.