… and it’s a story that might bore you but you don’t have to listen, yeah, I know it’s supposed to be your job but really, I would have no problem understanding. I’m not kidding at all, it’s really, really, bucking boring. Trust me , I know what it’s like, ponies boring you to death. Random ponies drunkenly telling you about their lives, which they probably find fascinating or at least worth listening, except they’re not and they end up boring themselves on the way, so they hang up and come back to their pathetic lives, forgetting you the second after they did. Or maybe some really do kill themselves, but I don’t think suicide happens very often in here. Or maybe it does. Maybe they just want you to believe the opposite.
You know, sometimes I stop and think, maybe I’m one of these ponies. My life is full of pathetic, boring ponies and I became one of them, no, they made me one of them. Or maybe I was boring and pathetic all along, and just didn’t know it. Well, my story isn’t different.
You may be expecting a tragic romance or some story of undying love but it’s nothing like that.
You may be expecting some sort of tragic event wrecking my life and leaving me to pick up the pieces but the sad thing is, nothing real big ever happened to me.
You may be expecting steamy hot lovemaking but all you’ll hear about is desperate people doing gross things or not actually doing anything.
You may be expecting big adventures but I’ve never left Manehattan.
You may be expecting murder. Horror. Magic.
But you’ll be deceived in every way. I’m not going to say anything worth writing a story about.
You’ve been warned.
You’re free to hang up, but, please, don’t.
It’s okay, mister, says the Suicide Hotline Pony. I’m here for you, he says. You can trust me. Tell me everything.
The Suicide Hotline pony doesn’t sound bored already. He must be new. So I take a deep breath and I tell him. I tell him everything.
I tell him, it’s funny the way we all seem bound to attract something really specific. Like a second kind of “special talent”, except passive. I know ponies which just can’t help attracting mares, or money … Or whatever. It doesn’t really matter anyway.
Just ask me what I am attracting.
Mares ? Good try, but no. I’m not what you could call a pretty pony: big muzzle, small brownish eyes, greasy mane, I could go on for a long time. But we haven’t got all night, have we? Keep trying.
Stallions ? Celestia hell no, why would you even think that ? Come on, you can do better.
Trouble ? You’re a smart one, Mr. Suicide Hotline Pony. It’s definitely something like that, yes. But the exact answer would be losers. For some reason, losers seem unnaturally attracted to me. Not in a flirtatious way, I mean. For some reason, they feel the need to come at me and complain about their sad, pathetic little loser lives.
And that’s the same kind of loser bastard that made my soup go cold the other day. And every other day I can remember.
***
“I’m gonna tell ya somethin', kiddo … Life is nothin' but Celestia-damned plotholes, goin' about their daily lives, never stoppin' to look around … and, I dunno, maybe find some beauty in there, no, they just don’t dare turnin' their Celestia-damned heads so they don’t see all the buckin’ shit behind them and all the buckin’ piss on the side … Equestria is so sad, so I decided that I would be even sadder so I could defy that bitch … heh, seems fair kiddo, doesn’t it?”
That’s basically what was saying the fat, old, dirty earth pony sitting in front of me at this pretty good restaurant where I always go to lunch. This pony, his breath reeking of alcohol and liver cancer, I knew he would be spoiling my lunch the second I saw him enter. As soon as he saw me, sitting in the back of the room silently sipping my alfalfa soup, he just began walking towards me, and I put the bowl of soup back on the table knowing the next time I would be tasting it, it would be cold already. And yes, he did the same thing as the others.
He didn’t even introduce himself.
He didn’t even care to know if I gave a buck or not.
He cared even less about my slowly cooling bowl of soup.
Eating hot wasn’t even a habit for him.
This pony asked himself real questions, and ponies having real problems don’t care about ponies like me’s lesser problems. I bet he even thought he was doing me a favor, making me listen as he talked his nonsense horseshit. Me being deaf wouldn’t have stopped him talking and talking. Those ponies, they just see you as a complaint-dumpster.
So I, my two giant ears and my natural cowardice, we just pretend to listen because I’m just too phoney to tell him I couldn’t care less about his so-called end of the world.
If I wasn’t such a coward, I guess I would have been like :
- "Now why don’t you listen to me, buckface … Ponies like you, they come by dozen and they’re just being a pain in the plot … So you’re gonna pay for them … I don’t give a single buck about Equestria being sad … Trust me, I’m truly the worst … I never stop to look around and I swear I know about all the shit and piss … but I don’t bucking care about all those losers shitting … nor I care about losers like you, wondering why there’s so much shitting … so get the buck out because I feel my soup getting colder … And if it’s cold and you’re still there, I swear to Celestia I’ll kick your rotten teeth down your throat and finally make you shut up.”
But that, I couldn’t tell him. No, I just stood there and smiled, nodding every ten seconds or so, saying “Yeah, you’re so right”.
***
I admit it, having an infusion after my cold soup wasn’t such a bright idea. On the way back home, hot and cold fought without mercy in my belly and for once I was actually glad to push the entry door.
But most of the time, I wasn’t. I felt like somepony going back to the hospital. In fact, my apartment was like a warm toilet seat; you know somepony was there right before you and you know the moment you’ll be gone, somepony else will take your place. There was nothing here but thick bitterness. You wonder how many old ponies died there. In the bathroom, you shower with liquid nostalgia. You eat melancholia on a toast in the kitchen. And even with the lights off, that stench would constantly remind how poor, lazy and dirty I was.
Once I went to a tenant meeting, in the building basement. Even the rats came to complain. And before you ask, Mr. Suicide Hotline Pony, yes, this was not an exception. Everypony in the building told me about their daily woes. They moaned about dirtiness. The central heating not being warm enough. The noisy streets. The noisy ponies. The noisy doors slamming too hard.
Noise.
Noise.
Noise.
But I knew what really bothered them. It was the sound of their own entrails. Of their mares farting during the night. Of their mane going grey and not growing anymore.
And somepony couldn’t stand hearing the dog upstairs clawing and clawing at the ground anymore, so he said that one night he’ll go up and crush its head under his hooves, and the dog owner calmly replied that the day after, he’ll go down and rip his throat with his bare teeth after feeding him the whole dog.
The old whorse upstairs was sick and tired of the foals playing football in the yard, because she feared that one day they’ll break a window, and I remember that she didn’t hesitate kicking her daughter out of her home when she discovered she was dating a zebra. Apparently, breaking a window was worse than throwing your own daughter out onto the street.
Only my next-door neighbor wasn’t down the basement this day. Her name was Fleur. She was a unicorn so she just burned her name on her door. Just “Fleur”. Nothing else. She told me it means flower in some language whose name I can’t remember. Well, if she was really a flower, then it wasn’t a flower I would stop to pick on the grass. Not that I usually pick flowers anyway.
I used to think she was living with her coltfriend because I was hearing her talking all day long. But then the old whorse told me she was talking with herself. Her coltfriend left a long time ago. Of course, I couldn’t avoid Fleur telling me about him. He was charming and beautiful and probably a coltcuddler. That’s why he left me, she said. He ran away with a stallion because he couldn’t satisfy a mare. Good riddance, she added. Then she left me and closed the door and behind the paper-thin walls, I could hear her cry. Guess it wasn’t such a good riddance after all.
She never came back to my place. She seldom left her apartment, and never left the building. Sometimes, I could see her in the doorway, leaning on the bannister, a towel covering her flank stamps, as if she was ashamed of them.
She once asked me to run a few errands for her and it didn’t take long before it became a habit. Three times a week, I went to buy her booze, hay, frozen veggies and a gay porn magazine. This last errand embarrassed me each time (I guess you can understand why, Mr. Suicide Hotline Pony), but the reason was fair enough. She said it was her lottery. That she would buy gay porn magazines all her life. And that one day, she would see her coltfriend choking on a zebra cock the size of his jaw or being gangbucked silly. And that would be her revenge. She said she wouldn’t stop rubbing herself on this. That she wouldn’t stop until his coltfriend was completely drenched in mare juice.
So basically I gave her the stuff, she insulted her coltfriend once more and closed the door. She never paid me. And since I wasn’t ever asking anything, she just assumed I was her guest.
Then she somehow managed to tell everypony how nice and how helpful was her next door-neighbor, and soon, I became the whole building’s errand colt. The old whorse’s bread. The dog owner’s newspaper. The farting mare’s cucumbers and I still doubt she ate them. And every time I brought her their errands, they just invited me in and told me about their boring, pathetic lives for an hour or so.
While they were rattling away, I made poetry in my head, whose length depended on how long they lamented. And when it was really boring to death, I made everything in alexandrines. Then I would repeat my verses in the stairs to avoid forgetting them on the way. And all night long, I copied them out on a big notebook I called “Spirit of Boredom”.
Maybe one day my poetry will be published. Most likely not of my living since I was too lazy to do it myself. No, I just hope that somepony will discover my notebook under the fragments of the building, once it has collapsed under the weight of dirtiness. And that pony will struggle so the world could finally honor my unknown genius.