//------------------------------// // Mother of abomination // Story: Graveyard Shift // by TDR //------------------------------// Graveyard Shift By TDR Mother of abomination My mother died in foal birth. Bucking awesome way to start a story right? But it's the best way I can think of, it's when everything went to shit after all. So yeah you can see where this is going. My mother died in foal birth and I didn't... Well... to put it nicely I didn't come out right. I guess my foal hood was normal, if you didn't count the plethora of doctors who came to look over the freak, or how my father looked at me like I had been the one to kill his wife. Or how my grandparents disowned my father and I believing we were cursed. Or how my father lost his job because of it and took up drinking as a hobby. He started charging the doctors and students to come look at the freak and so we scraped by. I went to a public school, was pretty much an outcast from the moment I walked in the front door. My first real encounters with other foals had them backed into a corner screaming. Over time they got used to me, but when one of them demanded I stay out from under her bed, the nickname stuck. None of them ever called me anything but monster after that. Monster. I was just a foal with some physical deformities, but to them I was a monster. My real name never mattered. Happy memories? Maybe... the teacher was apathetic, he didn't care what I looked like so long as I did what I was supposed to, beyond that he let me be. I rather liked school in truth. I liked learning things. Once I learned to read that's what I did constantly. It was my escape while I was being picked on at school, prodded by the doctors or listening to my father go on a drunken rant downstairs. I could lose myself in worlds far from my own for days at a time. I could briefly forget how miserable everything was and imagine I was one of the heroes of the story. Saving the day, stopping the villain, solving the mystery, you know basic foolish stuff you think you want to do as a foal. Nothing in my life changed as I grew older. The foals I grew up with continued on their merry way living lives I only wished I could have had. By the time the first incidents started most every one was used to me. I almost knew normal. But then things started happening around me, simple at first, some one would slip at an odd time, or trip over nothing. Science class activities wouldn't work the way they were supposed to. A hoof ball might go the wrong direction from the way it was kicked. Simple things. Then they started getting worse, items around me might get replaced with a different item all together, some ponies mane might change color or design in an eye blink. A desk might come alive and run out of the school house carrying a screaming pony with it. And of course everyone blamed the monster despite many of the problems happened to me as well. I don't know what it was nor did I have any control over it, but they only happened when I was around so I was blamed.. My father didn't care, he just blamed me for it when ponies complained, blamed me for when the doctors stopped coming around to study me because they hadn't found anything new in a long time. Blamed me for his inability to keep a job, blamed me for his wife. I just accepted it. What was I supposed to do. I was just the town freak, their monster, the one to blame for everything. I just pushed it all down and found a book to lose myself in until the next time some one blamed me for something. I'd never been violent. It just wasn't in my nature. But every so often growing up I would manage to get into a fight. Some pony would push me too far or would get physical with their bullying and I would just snap. It was all pretty much foal hood garbage. If some pony told you they never got in a fight as a foal they were either lying or sheltered away from other foals. Any way the fight would get broken up, we'd both be punished, and I'd be left alone for the rest of the school year after showing my limit had been reached. Then the next year it started all over again as if they forgot the previous year and the monster was a target again. What I recalled from it however was that it felt good to let out all that anger that I had bottled up. All the suppressed rage at my lot in life. To vent at the ones who had everything and still decided to try and make me feel worse than I already did. At one point however it was no longer foals will be foals. I was barely 15 my father had been particularly bad with his screaming and carrying on and the day had not gotten any better with all the odd things happening around me. I was once again teased and set upon by some colt until I snapped. The fight was more vicious than I recall. I received a bloody nose and he lost a tooth or two, clearly his whole goal was to beat the monster as he didn't let up and neither did I. Of course in the middle of the fight, something odd happened. The colt fighting me suddenly became a filly. It only lasted long enough for every pony watching the fight to notice and for me to break his jaw and send him to the ground. For a moment everything seemed to align properly for me. That simmering rage I felt remained boiled over and I couldn't push it down anymore. The teacher and faculty took the bully's side, gave him barely a slap on the hoof while talking about throwing me out for good. I told them exactly what I thought of their punishment and left, still simmering in anger at the injustice of everything. In class we had learned of how peaceful and harmonious Equestria was under Princess Celestia's rule. All I had experienced of it was injustice and misery. Where was any of that peace and harmony for me, for the Monster? I made it home and made my way to my room, ignoring my father passed out on the couch surrounded by empty bottles. I opened a book and prepared to lose myself, to try and ignore the unfairness of the world. Daring Doo had a temple to raid and I was going to join her adventure. I barely noticed the knocking on the door, nor that it woke my father as Daring swung from a vine to avoid vicious cats after her wing was injured. I barely noticed the argument with what sounded like the School Guard and the Principal as Daring solved a riddle in a Minotaur labyrinth. Daring was set to stop the curse from spreading beyond the temple when the door to my room was flung open and I was yanked out of my fantasy. My father had never been physically violent with me before. And his drunken screaming was as unintelligible now as it ever was from downstairs. From the little bit I made of it he was livid. Not that I had been thrown out of school , but that the parents of the colt I had fought were forcing him to pay for the injuries their son had received from me. I was still sore from my fight, still bloodied , and my father decided that wasn't enough as he laid into me as well. Thing was. I was still angry. When he called me a monster. That anger boiled forth again. There was no pushing it back. I was done fighting it. All any one saw me as was a monster. Why disagree? The town was only about fifty maybe sixty ponies. A small farming town that occasionally saw more coming in to work the fields in the growing season. The town isn't there any more. There's a few odd shaped stones, hints of a road, but the farms were gone, the houses as well. What wasn't out right destroyed was turned into something else, something that the local wildlife either ate later, or rotted away. In the center of it. Where my house used to be stands a lone tree. It smells strongly of alcohol, bleeds when it's cut, and occasionally screams. The rest of the town wasn't left any better. They all lived, but none of them are fully ponies any more. I sought out every pony with a vengeance, the odd occurrences that happened around me coming to my beck and call now as I rampaged. Part griffon. Part fish. Part llama. Two fused together. Stretched out like a giraffe Scrunched down like a pug. Extra limbs. Flippers. More eyes. Less eyes. Elephant ears. Only speaks in clicks. Bug parts. I was called a monster by all of them for my deformities. Lets see how they liked it. That was three years ago. I found a place. Found a little niche of my own. On the other side of the foal mountains I came across a Diamond Dog warren. For being allowed to live nearby and for meals and help building a home, they had me teach their pups the Pony language, how to read and other basics that would allow them to better deal with living in Equestria. They saw me as odd, but they saw most anything that chose to live above ground as odd. As long as I did what I said I would, they kept their part of it. It... it was surprisingly peaceful. Sure the oddities happened around me, but most of the time it was but a mild curiosity. I never went into their warrens and nothing harmed their pups when I taught them, so every one was content, I was just this odd pony teacher. I knew sooner or later some one would find me. Bring me to task for what I had done. My anger remained free, bubbling and simmering, far more focused now on the ones who would come to deal 'justice' for a colt defending himself. I expected Guards and Unicorn mages and adventuring heroes to come and slay the monster. I did not expect the dark blue alicorn.