Happy Bundle looked fat.
No, she was fat. The skin that was once beautifully blanketing and smooth now looked bunched up and flappy. Beyond her apparent small figure lay the unwanted tissue, worming and sliding around inside the flaps of skin. Just hiding under those extra chunks of flesh.
In her mind, the excess collected and folded over made her worry everyday that some fungus or infection would take hold of the damp and dark crevices. Maybe a parasite wriggling inside her, scratching its own throat with the screaming and crying, burgeoning her belly.
She was fat. She shouldn’t be, not anymore, but the stretch marks didn’t lie. Neither did her reflection.
Bundle looked down, away from the old cracked mirror. Down at the picture she held in her hooves, faded with time... and the lack of a good-quality frame.
The mare there wasn't fat. She was beautiful. She was smiling. Clad in that sensuous black silk, hugging her every curve as if hungry to lavish and adore it. It teased all onlookers with the taste of the nude form underneath—all onlookers, except one.
Young Bundle was everything the old Bundle wasn't. Old Bundle had done a stupid trade of innocence for five grams of some fake metal that didn’t even resemble gold properly, hurriedly melted into a misshapen ring that was just slightly too tight for her.
Surprising, since she knew for a fact the source of the wedding ring had been quite familiar with the size of her horn.
Slightly less surprising, once she found out it hadn’t been made for her horn to begin with.
Feeling her lungs choke up, Bundle looked over at the broken window. The cardboard taping the shattered glass had fallen askew, and the nasty industrial smoke was already fogging up the roof of her tiny apartment.
The oppressive black smoke of Manehattan. A smoke that the Slums were quite familiar with, embracing it just like the dark rain that was so intimate with these streets, penetrating deep into the soil.
Bundle’s hooves shuffled over to the window, being careful not to trip over the bottles scattered over the floor—she had bought an extra pack just for this day. Her head hurt too much to stay upright and her mind was too tired to put her magic on clean-up duty.
Magic and hangovers didn’t mesh well, anyway.
As she passed the table propped up with a block of wood, she pointedly chose not to look at the open letter sitting there. It had her landlord’s calligraphy, stenciled in red ink at the top with some very harsh circles drawn over a rather imposing numerical figure.
She also ignored that this letter currently had four other siblings sitting crumpled beside it, all with the same story. Quadruplets of bad news.
She didn’t need to read the same message a fifth time, with harsher words everytime. She understood well enough when the first one arrived at her doorstep. Even through blurry eyes and the water droplets staining the paper, it was hard to miss the bold lettering.
‘Eviction Notice.’
To an honest, hard-working mare with a stable job and a decent life? The amount of bits wasn't actually that bad. Reasonable, even. A bad house for a good price.
But to a waste of skin, a jobless mare that spent most of her morning staring blankly at a mirror and doing a horrible job of managing her expenses?
The house might as well be gone.
With a shake of her head, Bundle pushed aside the worn, stringy cloth she called a curtain and peeked through the cracks in her window, checking the scenery outside.
Hearts and Hooves day. She could see it all around, despite the smoke. In the streets, in every corner, in every billboard. Young ponies splashing in murky puddles, old ponies sitting in moldy benches, perfect ponies smiling blissfully together.
Couples.
The typical ones. Happily married, lovingly engaged, recently dating. All kinds of fools. Or, as the older ponies in Manehattan liked to say while shaking their hooves from their porches, foals fooling around.
Not her, though. She didn’t get to be a Celestia-damned foal.
No. No foal at all. She knew exactly what awaited down that path—at least, what had awaited her.
The creak of the wooden door came from her bedroom, closing those thoughts away and bringing her back to reality. Bundle quickly pushed the cardboard back into place, hoping the tape would hold out a little longer, as the hoofsteps drew closer.
“Bundle, I gotta tell ya, you sure like to live dangerously,” a stallion said, his joints making a loud noise as he stretched them. “Raw isn’t exactly… advisable, y’know? Heat’s not all there is to it.”
“I'm not worried,” she mumbled, the cardboard piece falling down. She fiddled with her window, nervously resisting turning around while she fixed it again. “Are… are you?”
“Not a problem for me...” His whisper almost startled her. She could feel his warm breaths on her ear, the spot still tender from the night before.
She snapped around quickly and almost bumped her muzzle into his. He barely flinched, the easy smile still doting his face, lifting his cheeks up wonderfully.
He raised his leg, calmly reaching for her muzzle. She could feel the warmth as the frog of his hoof brushed her cheek… and went past it.
To fix the cardboard.
She hadn’t even noticed it had fallen a third time.
“... I thought I made that clear last night,” he finished, the smile turning coy and the extended leg an invitation.
He was closing in, slowly. Bundle could smell the source of the cologne he had smeared all over her, could almost feel his heartbeat once it got close enough.
It was all she really needed, her mind begging him to take her weight, whisk her away and leave all the baggage behind. The bottles and the smoke and the rain and the notices and the...
Just the late hours of the night were plenty… if she could have it always. A natural extension of their previous actions… and maybe even something more. Like the ponies outside demanded this day be celebrated with. A bond that lasted longer than a night’s worth.
Except Bundle could never have that.
She turned her cheek and pushed her way past him, going back to the mirror near her bedroom and leaving a confused stallion hanging by the window. “H-how much do I owe you, again?”
“Bundle…” His smile morphed to concern as he removed his hoof from the window, the fantasy melting faster than if it were put under the acidic rain just outside. “My schedule’s clear. You know I don’t charge extra—”
“Is it still fifty?” she interrupted him, pausing just long enough to look back with the corner of a pleading eye.
He sighed and sat down, his perked ears drooping back to normal. Back to business. “Yeah. It’s still fifty.”
Bundle went to her room to pick up the wad of cash. It was still there, on top of the cabinet, right next to her closet.
And the pile of clothes holding the door slightly ajar.
Bundle made sure to shove the pile back inside and slammed that thing close, trotting out faster than she trotted in.
She was surprised to see him already waiting outside, by the open door. His cute hat was back, sitting comfortably among those brown strands of mane. It accentuated his beige fur very nicely.
Some ponies would say he was your usual bland boring beige boy-toy, with no color to his coat, no oomph.
Bundle wanted to slap those ponies.
He was nothing like that. He had eyes full of fondness and hooves full of forgiveness. Hooves that soothed the aches they touched, that held her up when she felt the wind rushing by. Eyes that had to roam her bloated body, that had to keep the disgust away, that had to–
She made sure to pay him every time. He deserved it, for suffering this fate–her–every night.
It almost made Bundle regret seeing him ready to leave.
The lackluster weight of the bills in her hoof made her regret it even more.
“I, uh...” Bundle lowered her gaze, offering the wad of cash with an unsure hoof. Her ears wanted to bury themselves in her mane. “Can I owe you five, Case? I swear I’ll–”
Pillow Case pressed her shaking hoof back with his own firm grip, a reassuring smile gracing his lips. “You can owe me fifty. Consider it a birthday gift.”
“What…?”
Case dexterously flipped out a little worn calendar, with a big red circle marked on today’s date and a ‘Her Birthday!’ written above it.
Bundle’s eyes widened, gazing with razor-sharp focus at the piece of paper he was waving around. The lungs that choked on smoke working as crisp as ever with her quick breathing.
“It was on top of the dirty clothes pile,” he said, oblivious to her. “Sure, it’s old, but dates don’t change, right?”
She lit up her horn, despite the alcohol-induced headache, and ripped the calendar away from his grip.
Bundle crossed her legs over it, holding the paper close to her chest with a shaky sigh.
“It’s not my birthday.”
Case’s leg—left hanging with nothing on it—slowly dropped down. “Oh, uh… sorry. I was just, y’know...”
“I’ll see you tomorrow, Case.” She started closing her door, not gazing up at what she knew were concerned eyes.
“Tomorrow? You booked me tonight.”
“I got caught up and… booked wrong. Today’s not a good day. Sorry for the trouble,” she said, pushing the door close and pressing her back to it.
Why couldn’t things be easy? Just once?
No. This was her vice. To have a distant warmth while she woke and as she slept. A distant warmth as she walked, and as she stopped. At lunch and at dinner, before a bath, during a bath, and long after the water had dried. A warmth before being warmed, and long after she went cold.
A warmth that she could carry with her, that she could care for and it would care back. A warmth that filled her with joy, that washed the worries... from the top of her head, down to the middle of her belly…
Case’s voice piped up, muffled by the door, “I… I got you some lunch.”
She just sat down and pressed herself back harder, eyes squeezed shut. The door felt cold.
When she didn’t respond, he meagerly continued, “It’s in the fridge. Please eat it this time... you need it.”
Bundle kept her back touching the wood, keeping one ear up and attentive. Case was still just outside; she could hear his breathing and his shifting hooves. And his quiet, repeated mumblings of ‘stupid, stupid’.
She only managed to get up once she was sure his hesitant steps had faded down the hall outside.
She stared at the calendar she was still holding close to her chest, wishing it’d just burst into flames already.
That had to return it to the pit it crawled out of. This damned piece of paper taped to a flimsy cardboard, with that damned mark, on that damned day. Why did it have to be on that exact day?
Why couldn’t she have a Hearts and Hooves day like everyone else?
Bundle entered her bedroom, dodging the clothes strewn about just like she dodged the bottles, and pulled out the wooden chest from her closet, undoing the latch and throwing the lid open.
She shouldn’t look. Just shove the calendar back and go away. Just don’t bother, just…
Her eyes looked. It was all there.
The document with two names, one signed by a demure horn and the other by an unlovable hoof. The photos of beautiful trips, all of them without a cloud in the sky—all except one. The little plastic tube with the damned symbol that, contrary to its purpose, added nothing to her life. The broken little trinkets and deflated pink balloons that never got to pop properly at the party, unused and forgotten. The monthly check-ups that were stained and crumpled, the document from the hospital admitting her in one last time...
And that one final paper, signed by the doctor, clearing her to go home.
Just her. A lonely mare.
Happy Bundle put the calendar back inside the chest and thrust it back in the closet, not even bothering with the latch.
If only she could throw that wooden box away just as easily as she made herself throw her lunch, later that morning.