Trip awoke to darkness. Pitch black. At first, he thought he might have died. But he somehow managed to think back long enough to remember what had happened. He had just gotten in a car crash. He had heard his father and his sister talking to a nurse. He was in a coma, that’s what happened. But maybe he never woke up from that coma. Maybe he died. He was in the afterlife now. Trip was dead.
He opened his eyes. Relief rushed over him. At least if he was dead, the afterlife had sights to see, even though everything came to him extremely blurry. He could only tell he was laying on his back. He tried moving his body. Attempting to move his right arm yielded no results. Right leg, same thing. Even trying to move his eyes to see what was around him was impossible.
Maybe he was paralyzed. The crash had broken his spine, rendering him incapable of moving any part of his body. He was doomed to spend the rest of his life at the mercy of breathing machines and be fed through a tube until the day his brain could be implanted into a robot body. Trip curled his tongue in agony.
Wait, he could move his tongue! He flicked it to the left, to the right, touched the back of his mouth, the edge of his teeth. He had complete control over his tongue. Whatever part of his spine responsible for his tongue must have not been broken. Maybe he could use it to communicate with the outside world. He had read about a guy who got paralyzed everywhere except for his left eyelid, and used it to speak Morse code. That guy ended up writing a novel. Trip could write a novel. With his tongue.
He pressed his tongue between his lips, and he tasted the fresh air. There was a slight breeze. Trip became confused. A breeze, in a hospital room? He brushed it off as someone leaving the window open. He’d turn his head to look, but there was the whole ‘paralyzed’ issue. And even if he could, he would only be able to see a swarm of colors.
He recoiled his tongue back into his mouth. As he did, his lips pressed down on themselves. He spread them apart. He puckered them. That’s two things he had control of now. Tongue and lips. But no jaw. He still had the chance of getting to first base. With all those girls who wanted to make out with paralyzed teenagers. Trip was sure there was a small demographic of women who wanted to do that. He could use his tongue to make a classified ad later, but for now, he was preoccupied. What else could he move?
After what seemed like an hour, he discovered that he could flared his nostrils. He could raise his eyebrows, blink, and tense the back of his neck. He was working on trying to move his jaw when his vision cleared up the smallest amount. Now he could differentiate the colors that he saw before him. Above him, was blue. A very bright blue. As he remembered, the ceilings at the hospital were blue, but very pale. Maybe they had repainted them since he last visited?
He wanted to ask someone this question. He was very surprised that he hadn't seen or heard a nurse walk into his room in all this time he had been here. Normally, nurses were very attentive to their patients. One stopped by the room at least every half hour, from what he recalled. Maybe he hadn't been there as long as he had thought. He tried calling out, saying anything, but he could barely force anything out of his throat. And it didn't help that he couldn't move his cheek muscles or open his jaw.
A soft "Uh." was all he could muster. "Uh uhuhuh uuuuuuuuuuuuuuh." He propped his head up to see if anyone had heard him, but he couldn't hold the position for very long. His shoulders gave out and his neck became sore. As the back of his head hit the ground below him, he realized that he now had control of his shoulders, but they were definitely malformed in the crash.
"Hey!" a voice came somewhere else in the room. "Who are you?" It was a girl's voice, not a nurse's. Did a patient's daughter or little sister walk into his room?
"Uh uh uh?" he responded.
"Um, those aren't words." the voice said, laughing a little bit. "Would you like to try that again?"
"Uh uh uh uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuh."
The voice giggled. "You're silly." it said.
The voice sounded a little familiar, but Trip was certain he had never heard it before. But there was something or someone it reminded him of. "Uh uh uh." he said again. "Uh uh uh Iiiip."
"Oh? What was that? That almost sounded like a word. Try again, I'm sure you'll get it."
"Ip. Rip. Triiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiip." he managed to choke.
"Trip? Trip over what?"
"Trip. I'm Trip. I am Trip."
As he said this, he regained all sensation. He was aware of his arms, his legs, his torso, everything. He sat up so quickly that he propelled himself forward. His hands landed in front of him, and instead of feeling the familiar touch of hospital sheets or a mattress, he felt grass. He thought maybe his hands were deceiving him, but his eyes could tell whatever he was touching was green. He rubbed his hands back and forth, reaffirming the strangeness of the situation. He was outside. At first he thought he might have been thrown out of his car. But then he remembered that it was nighttime when he crashed. Maybe he had been knocked out and he was just waking up from the crash now? No, someone would have called the hospital before daybreak. And besides, he didn't feel injured at all. In fact, he felt somewhat rejuvenated.
"Trip is your name?" Said the voice.
Trip looked at the source of the voice. It was a girl, maybe about 6 years old. He couldn't make out any part of her face, but he did see a messy mop of red hair on the top of her head. Well, it wasn't messy, but it was unkempt. He could tell she had a darker shade of skin, that she might have been of middle-eastern descent. With red hair? Maybe it was dyed?
"Y... yes. That's my name." he responded. He tried to focus his eyes on her, but he couldn't.
"Why? Are you really clumsy or something?" she said.
Trip could help but chuckle slightly at this. He regained his thought track. "Where am I?" He asked.
The girl made a motion with her head. "Huh. You know, I don't really know. I don't think I've ever been here, myself. How did you get here?"
"I got in a car crash. At least, I'm pretty sure I did."
"A carcrash?" She pronounced it as one word. "What's a carcrash? Is it like a boat?"
"What? No, I mean, I was in an accident."
"An accident? What kind of an accident?"
Trip squinted his eyes at the girl. Are all six year-olds this naive? "A traffic accident."
"Oh no!" She moved her hands near her face. "Was anypony hurt?"
"Well, I thought I was. I mean, I remember hearing my bones break, and the glass..." He stopped and looked up at her in confusion. "What did you just say?"
"You heard your bones break?” She sounded scared. “Are you alright?"
"No, wait," he leaned closer to the girl. "What did you just ask?"
She paused, as if his question confused her. "Are you alright?"
"No." shook his head and waved his hands in front of his face. "I mean, yes, I'm alright. But what I mean is, what did you ask before that?"
The girl sounded intimidated. "I asked if anypony else was hurt."
"There! What... what is that?"
"What is what?"
"That word you used!"
"What are you talking about, mister?"
"What was that word you just-" A shock of pain came to Trip's eyes. He closed them and covered them with his hands, and cried out in agony.
"Are you okay?" the girl said.
Trip cried out again. "Yeah, I'm- gah!" He lowered his hands from his face. As he opened them, the brightness and clearness of the world he saw before him almost knocked him back down on his back. Everything was... solid. Everything was a solid color. Things had outlines. Shadows were areas of slightly darker color. The world before him was... animated. There was no other way to describe it. "What the...?"
He looked over to the girl. At first, he didn't notice anything strange about her, but then, his eyes started registering what he was truly seeing. It wasn't a girl he had been talking to, it was a horse. A gray horse with a red mane that could talk. And a horn. A horn, for goodness sake.
He leaned back. "What ARE you?" Trip screamed at it.
The horse recoiled in fear. "What?"
Trip pushed himself back with his hands. "What are you? How are you talking right now?"
"Mister, you're scaring me..."
"You are a f..." Trip tried to conjure up a swear word, but couldn't quite form his mouth around it. "You are a talking horse! How is that f... How is that possible?"
The horse put its hooves over its head. "What?" It's voice was quivering.
"You are not possible! What the h... What ARE you?"
"I'm no different than you!" It yelled, starting to cry.
"That's a f... ugh! That's a lie if I've ever heard one! I'm not a f-talking horse!"
It closed its eyes and screamed. "Well you sure look like one to me!"
Trip was about to yell something back, but he stopped himself. The horse continued to sob its strange horse-tears. He looked down at his hands. What he saw weren't hands. What he saw were two tube-looking devices that came to a curved end.