//------------------------------//
// Vinyl Scratch- Patient Zer0 
// Story: Vinyl Scratch- Patient Zero 
// by Alicia Van Hammer 
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Vinyl laid on her back, staring at the ceiling.  From the kitchen, a squad of dirty dishes cried out for her attention, as did the laundry scattered about in piles on the floor of her side of the house and the obscure stain on the bedroom ceiling she only vaguely recalled she was somehow responsible for.  However, none of these cried quite as loudly as her need to lay on the couch and munch away at a box of Griffon-grahams cracker treats.  She swallowed the delicious honey-cinnamon goodie and popped another into her waiting mouth.  

Another busy day in her life of accomplishing absolutely nothing.

It wasn't so much that Vinyl was lazy.  She WAS lazy, make no mistake about it.  That was a fact her marefriend had pointed out to her quite often.  Truthfully, little did she know it but within the circles of both amateur and professional laziness, her name was whispered in tones of reverence.  For the moment though, Vinyl just couldn't agree that the worth of seeing to any of those domestic issues compared at all to that of discovering just what the perfect amount of spit was required to stick a Griffon-Graham to the ceiling.

With a heavy blast of air from her cheeks she launched another of the winged cookies into the air.  The tiny snack-cracker smacked against the ceiling with a wet "Smick" to join a small flock of it's compatriots in a loose "flying Q" formation.  Vinyl's red irises flexed behind her trademark purple sunglasses as she watched and waited.  After several tense seconds it seemed that it wasn't going to come hurtling back to her in shame.  Success.  She hoof-pumped with a grin.  

Suddenly the front door flew open.  In a wild explosion of motion, Vinyl's marefriend and flat-mate Octavia threw open the door and slammed it behind herself.  Vinyl raised her eyebrows and lowered her sunglasses to fully evaluate the bizarre scene.   

Octavia Philharmonica, her marefriend... The normally reserved grey earth-pony was a dirty, sweaty mess.  Her trademark lilac bow-tie and always-crisp white collar were crooked and wrinkled, smudged with what Vinyl assumed to be cake frosting.  Her back was slapped against the door in a wide-eyed panic, grasping a hoof to her heaving chest.  Her normally shimmering, straight mane of carefully brushed and immaculately combed raven-black lustrous beauty was a bird's-nest of fly-aways and bits of what appeared to be cake.  As the mare stared ahead in stark panic a cowlick from her scalp ending in glowing embers, sent out a tiny, almost comical trail of smoke.  

She glared at Vinyl and shouted.  "BOARD UP THE WINDOWS!"

Vinyl listened intently with the half of her brain closest to her beloved.  Unfortunately, that was as much as she could currently muster- despite any bizarre panic-stricken circumstances.  It wasn't that Vinyl was a totally thoughtless or uncaring lover- far from it.  When she KNEW that 'Tavi needed her, she could become quite focused- for Vinyl.  However, at her current levels of lazy, lacking any amount of alcohol, music or intimacy, her capacity for paying attention by most normal pony standards was already beginning to peter out.  Internally, she struggled for control of the other half of her brain as it scanned the couch and floor for the remainder of her Griffon Grahams.  The crumbs from the cushions itched at her flank and it was producing an odd mix of irritation and the munchies.

With a restrained groan Vinyl peeled herself from the couch and approached the manic mare with a raised eyebrow.  Octavia normally held a very calm and rigid manner, the "stiff-upper-lip" upbringing of her Trottingham youth which both irritated and enamored Vinyl.  As such, she reacted to almost everything with a wordly, non-plussed air.  A side-long glance, a heavy sigh and whatever she had encountered, no matter how outlandish, rolled right off her back, glancing off the gleaming polished armor of her apathetic indifference.  When Octavia comes home to see that Vinyl has set the coffee-pot on fire, eye roll, shrug, snide remark, life goes on.  Octavia wakes up to learn that Vinyl let the sink overflow until the kitchen attracts a family of frogs, eyeroll, shrugs, snide remark, life goes on.  Generally, it took something truly drastic to get a reaction of any sort from the stoic-shelled mare of her life, such as "Vinyl left the 'adult novelties' out on the floor and is discovered passed out on the carpet in a puddle of her own sick as Octavia's parents show up"...THAT one had done the trick.

Vinyl set her chin with a tiny pang of guilt between her shoulder-blades.  

Come to think of it- she should probably try to be a bit more thoughtful to her marefriend.

Her horn glowed with a faint blue aura as she stuck out her tongue.  A small gob of spit floated over to Octavia's head and with an audible HISS snuffed out the tiny fire in her hair.  "Okay... so... It's not Nightmare Night and I haven't surprised you in the shower with a meat-cleaver... so what's the major damage, Tav-"

Vinyl was abruptly cut off.  Octavia clutched Vinyl in her hooves and shook her by the shoulders in a mad fit.  "We have to DO something, Vinyl!  They could be here any minute!"  Octavia looked to the windows and released the white unicorn.  Vinyl fell on her plot and watched with a furrowed brow as her panicked lover frantically jerked the curtains together and pushed their coffee table up-end as a makeshift barricade.

"Uhm... Tavi?  What the buck is your deal?"

Octavia turned to face her.  "She bit me!  Did she bite me?!"  The grey mare scanned her body, frantically turning and twisting.  She jerked her bedraggled lavender bowtie from her neck, casting it aside and lifted her chin, gesturing to her neck and pleading to Vinyl.  "Did she bite me?  Look!  Look!"

Vinyl lowered her purple sunglasses with a knit brow, her generally laxidasical smirk slowly fading to a look of greater confusion, bordering on concern.  She didn't see any "bites" so much as maybe some dirt, scuffing and a light bruise.  Whatever Octavia had been involved in, it had gotten at least as rough as sounding like a good time.  "Uhm... 'SHE' who...?"

Octavia clutched Vinyl, her violet eyes, piercing as she practically shrieked. "VINYL!  Did she BITE ME?!  Please, tell me she didn't!"  

Vinyl shook her head, her eyes wide now. "No... Celestia's gold shoes, baby.  What the hay happ-"

"You're sure?!"  Octavia spun about, looking over her shoulder to her hind legs, ankles and hooves.  The grey mare thrust her plot towards Vinyl with a worried wince.  "Not even- Oh Celestia, no... Tell me... Tell me she didn't..."  

And with that the smile returned.  It was more of a smoldering leer, than a smile.  Vinyl stared into the familiar grey rump as if it had just bought her a drink and asked "your place or mine".  Vinyl's natural laziness was a wonder to behold at times, resisting most external influences with but three exceptions- all of which were generally within hoof's reach when her over-stressed marefriend was home.  Booze, music and...

Glancing from her mare-friend's slender yet cushiony plot to the fearful, panicked look on her muzzle, Vinyl snapped back to the moment.  "Uhm... nope.  Nothing there, Tavi."

"Nothing?! You're certain?!"

"Well... there's definitely SOMEthing there but no bite-marks as of yet."  Vinyl said with a chuckle and a brief wriggle of her eyebrows.  

Octavia panted, relaxing somewhat at the examination yielding negative results.  She swallowed hard and ran a hoof through her mane, straightening out some of the tangled mess.   She turned from Vinyl to peek out the crack of afternoon light between the window frame and the drapery, scanning intently.  

Vinyl rose from her duff and dusted herself off.  Something really did have her rattled if she wasn't rising to the challenge of Vinyl's innuendo.  Normally that last remark would've registered at least somewhere on the lower end of Octavia's "annoyance" scale- a scoff, a huff, an eye-roll, but nothing?  Now, Vinyl was getting a bit concerned.  She gently placed a consoling hoof on her marefriend's shoulder.  At the touch, the terrified grey mare turned to face her.

Vinyl removed her glasses to lock eyes with her lover.  Her deep ruby-red gaze reached out to Octavia.

"Tavi, you're here, with me... Okay?  Are you gonna tell me what's going on, now?"

Octavia nodded and the lovers made their way to the couch.  In the blue glow of her horn Vinyl levitated a glass of water from the kitchen.  She listened patiently as Octavia gulped it down, coughing, sputtering and polished off half of another.  At times like this she knew it was best to just wait and let her marefriend explain things in her own time.

"After practice today, I was thinking about your new employment at Ruby Red's establishment here in Ponyville.  I wanted to get you something nice to congratulate you for showing some modicum of initiative so I decided to swing through Sugarcube Corner and get us a cake to share together..."  Octavia swallowed a mouthful of water and ran a hoof through her mane.  "Maybe a romantic evening together at home..."

Octavia sniffle-snorted and continued.  "When I entered the establishment I was shocked at what I saw.  The shoppe was in TOTAL disarray."  The grey mare's violet eyes went wide with horror, reliving the moment.  "Boxes had been scattered about the floor.  Containers of all manner of ingredients, turned over, scattered contents across the floor.  Shelves had been knocked from the walls.  Cake frosting was smeared everywhere.  I thought 'Vandals' at first or that perhaps they had been burglarized."

"HOWEVER... it being the middle of the afternoon on a bright, blustery day... in PONYVILLE..."  She looked from one hoof to the other with a sigh.  "I recalled that one of the elements of harmony worked there- that absolutely insane little mare, Pinkie Pie."  

Octavia's eyebrows rose a fraction.  In brighter circumstances, Vinyl knew that this gesture would have evolved into a fully developed eye-roll accompanied with a groan or a huff of condescension but her beloved 'Tavi was too shaken to scare up the snobbery.  "I figured whatever chaos had occurred to be simply a by-product of whatever hectic madness she had become embroiled in so I announced my presence and went about perusing what undamaged wares were on the remaining shelves.  I presumed to simply find a suitable treat, leave my bits upon the counter and take my leave.  As soon as she was done with wrestling a cosmic horror or playing hop-scotch with her army of body-doubles she would retrieve it"

She shuddered, looking off into the distance with a stare that walked a thousand yards. "...but then... Oh, Vinyl... she came from the kitchen, staggering, dragging her hoof, jaw slackened, eyes rolling about, covered in filth."  Octavia looked down to her hooves again.  "She was reaching out to me, groaning in this airy, creaky manner, not words, just an aching, tortured noise... I tried to ask her what was wrong..."  Octavia swallowed, the panic returning as she wrestled the words from the horrifying memory.  "...d-d-did she need help, a physician or something but she didn't respond..."  

She clutched her hooves to her temples, trying to contain the madness of what she'd been party to mere moments ago.  "She was a ZOMBIE, Vinyl!  An actual, real-as-the-string-in-my-bow, ZOMBIE!"  Octavia looked to her marefriend, clearly terrified.

"I didn't know what to do.  I was paralyzed.  She just came at me, the beast, tackled me to the floor.  We wrestled.  I grappled for my life against the undead horror as she kept trying to bite me!  I'm not sure but I believe I even heard her raspy-throated groan for 'brains'... Oh, Vinyl!...  she was trying to EAT me, Vinyl!"  Octavia hugged to her marefriend.  Vinyl wrapped her hooves around Octavia and hugged her tightly, consoling the shuddering earth pony.  "I kicked and struggled to get free.  The beast had the unnatural strength of the dead... somehow, I managed to fend her off with a rather large birthday cake from a nearby table.  Splattering it over her head, the candles had been lit already and I think the fire reached some sort of lingering survival instinct in her, drawing her focus away from me."  Vinyl soothingly stroked her lovers mane as she continued.  "As the bestial nightmare flailed about I snatched up my purse and fled as fast as I could.  I don't think I've ever run so fast in my life.  All I could think of was to get back home to you..."

She looked up to Vinyl, eyes red and rimmed with the tears of her panicked terror.  "Vinyl, what are we going to do?  We have to get to the princesses!  Maybe Twilight can do something?  Or-" A sharp gasp cut her thought off at the knee.  "Unless Pinkie has already gotten to her... I ran so fast, I don't know... she may have already turned half of Ponyville by now!"

Vinyl gently kissed the crown of Octavia's raven-tressed dome. Turning to face her lover on the couch, she drew close to the grey mare and tenderly pulled her close in an embrace, pressing their barrels together.    Octavia felt the warmth of the unicorns breath at the nape of her neck as Vinyl rose on her haunches, reaching to adjust the cushions behind Octavia's back.  "Uhm... Vinyl, I hardly believe now is the time for-"

"Got it!"  Vinyl announced.  She withdrew from the embrace with her box of Griffon Grahams in hoof and began to inquisitively filch through the contents.  She smiled.  "Oh yeah... I knew there were still a few of the frosted ones in here.."  With a whoop she popped one into her mouth, munching away with a widening smile.

Octavia sat, dumbstruck.  "Vinyl... Did you... did you hear a word I said?  Our friend is a ZOMBIE, Vinyl.  A ZOMBIE.  A flesh-eating undead terror... We have to-"

"She's not a zombie, Tavi."

"Come again?"

"She's not."

Octavia crossed her forehooves with a raised eyebrow, simply aghast.  "I know what I saw, Vinyl. Record. Scratch.  The monster attacked me, clamoring for my brains, trying to devour my very flesh!"

"Yeah.  I kinda figured something like that might happen." Vinyl sifted through the box of goodies, searching for an unbroken one.  As you neared the bottom of the package there always seemed to be SO many bits and pieces, for some reason.  Sweet Celestia, that always annoyed her so.  

"You ...What?"

"Yeah... Earlier today I was waiting for you to come home and we ran outta chips.  I was feeling a MAJOR snack binge so I wandered out to The Corner myself.  I was kinda dozy from all the waiting for you and Pinkie kept trying to offer me one cookie or... coffee thing or...some junk... to wake me up."  Vinyl shrugged, munching away at the crumbly remains. "I dunno.  I think maybe she was hitting on me.  It was kinda annoying but kiiiinda cute at the same time.  Eh.  You know how Pinkie is.  So I told her I wasn't tired, I was actually a zombie and just to get her off my case, I gave her a bite.  She got all bug-eyed and just started wailing like NUTS.  It was freaking hilarious, like one of those 'wacky arm-waving toob' things."  Vinyl flopped her forelimbs about and shimmied side to side in pantomime, laughing.  "She was all 'BLAAH! BLAAAH! And stuff... heheh... It was CRAZY... You should've seen it, Tavi... Knocking over shelves and just going BALLISTIC, like a Yak in a china shop... SO I snagged a box or two of frosty GG's and left an I.O.U. on the counter."

Vinyl up-ended the box and caught the final crumbly bits in her mouth with a loud, happy chomp.  "Oh yeah- So we owe them... four bits, I think..."

Octavia sat in silence as the white unicorn chunked the empty box over her shoulder to the floor with a belch.

"And we're outta chips."

Octavia's right eye twitched.  

"If... if you knew all of this... wh-why didn't you SAY so from the beginning?"

Vinyl ran a hoof through her spiky blue mane and stretched with a small yawn.  "Well, at FIRST I was kinda worried when you busted in all wigged-out but after that you were just really funny so I rolled with it and let you get it out of your system."

Octavia's left eye twitched.

Vinyl scratched at her belly, smacking her lips.  With a mischievous smile she raised an eyebrow and produced a single remaining Griffon Graham.  Humming a little tune, she began to playfully walk it along the couch cushions to flirtatiously hop upon the soft grey thigh of her lover, pantomiming the creature taking an interest in a rather lewd exploration of her nethers.  

"Soooo... now that that's all squared away... you wanna make ou-"

Later that evening Vinyl groggily came to on the floor.  She wasn't sure how she had gotten there but was keenly aware that she was now sporting a very sore and throbbing knot on her dome.  She wasn't sure how that had come to be, either.  With a groan she rose to her elbows and the world began to come into focus.  

"Unnh...Hunh?" She spat out a piece of paper that had been folded and stuck between her lips.


"Vinyl- Out getting chips.  Go buck yourself.  Love, O"



---fin---