//------------------------------//
// The Trip 
// Story: Across The Ponyverse 
// by MasterFrasca 
//------------------------------//


I pulled out my phone to check the time once again. The glow of its screen told me it was nearly three in the morning. Lying on my couch, I had been watching my TV for God knows how long. I groaned as my eyelids tried to close yet again. I knew I needed to get to bed, but I was trying to stay up all night just to see if I could make it. I rubbed my eyes once more before turning off the TV and sitting up on the couch. Putting the remote on the coffee table in front of me, I stood up and stretched, cracking my back, and giving myself a few fake slaps. 

“Come on, Zack, wake up,” I mumbled to myself, trying to get some blood flowing.

Not feeling any more awake than I was a few seconds ago, I slowly walked over to my bathroom, still in my pajamas. Groggily I opened the door, reaching out and flipping the light switch. I turned on the faucet and cupped my hands underneath the pouring water. The water set my hands shaking from the bitter cold it produced. Giving myself a few seconds to prepare, I splashed the freezing water onto my face, shivering as soon as it made contact. I woke up fairly quickly, and took a breath, reaching out for a towel. Overreaching the spot where the towels should have been, my fingers lightly hit the wall.  With water dripping off my chin, I turned my head to look at the towel rack. Every single towel was missing. 

I sighed, deciding to just use my shirt to wipe up my dripping head. At least now the cold water would keep me from falling asleep for a while. Once I finished getting most of the water off I looked into the mirror above the sink, seeing my sleep-deprived face. My brown hair was sticking up in hundreds of different directions and my eyes looked bloodshot. Jokingly I squinted my eyes pretending to be some famous celebrity. I chuckled a little, thinking about what to do. It was a Friday night, and I was bored. I spread my gums and opened my mouth to see how my hygiene was holding up. While looking at the amount of debris stuck in between my teeth, I noticed something in the corner of my vision. 

Looking at the edge of the mirror, I saw a faint purple glow erupting in the corner. I stepped back, suddenly wide awake and very nervous. The color spread along the frame of the mirror, until the entire outline was glowing with a dark purple hue. Then, the mirror itself started to be engulfed in the color. Staring in awe, I watched as the purple glow filled the entire surface of the mirror. It looked as if the clear reflective surface of a normal mirror was being replaced with a glowing purple liquid. I was dumbfounded as to what was going on, and I had a sudden urge to touch it—just to see what it would feel like. 

Not even thinking twice about what would happen if I did so, I reached out with my finger and gave it a poke. It felt like I had stuck my finger in jelly, and the surface rippled a little when I pulled it back out. I watched in wonder as the ripples reflected off the edges as if I had just thrown a stone into a pond. I jumped a little when I looked down to see that my finger had turned a pastel blue color. My stomach flipped over when I saw it, but I calmed down a bit when I saw that the color was slowly receding. I calmed myself down and instantly became curious as to what was on the other end of this portal.

Thinking about what to do next, I considered sticking my head in quickly to see if I find anything. I was a little worried about what happened to my finger, but giving it another glance, I saw that it had returned to its natural color. Nothing indicated that it had been damaged, and it felt fine when I flexed the muscle. If that was the case, then I had no worries about sticking my head in for a few seconds; it was like sticking my head into gelatin. I then took a big breath of air and stuck my face right into the mirror.  

That was a big mistake.

As soon as my head went through the purple substance, I could feel my body being sucked through with it. I couldn’t grab anything before the mass took me in entirely. It felt like I was falling into a pit with no indication of the ground or sky. A sense of vertigo overcame me when I noticed that I seemed to be spinning, yet there was no sort of wind and the air seemed thick. Quickly I became disoriented; there was no way of judging up or down. 

My heart pounded against my chest as my eyes darted back and forth trying to make sense of my surroundings. The entrance into this mysterious place was now nonexistent, as everything was exactly alike. No solid objects came to view, and every way I looked just produced an endless image of a purple void. My stomach churned a little as my mind processed all the illogical images it was receiving. I felt like I was going to vomit.
The vast expanse of empty space became the least of my worries when I looked down at my hands. They, along with the rest of my skin, had turned a light sky-blue color, almost identical to that of my finger when I stuck it in last time. This time, however, it gave no indication of fading away. I panicked and started clawing at my skin in hopes that it was just some sort of paint or coating. Nothing happened except my skin turned a slight shade of red from the irritation.

As I was trying fruitlessly to scratch whatever had changed my skin blue, my fingers seemed to pull themselves together. Giving up on changing my skin color back, I tried to pull apart my fingers to find that they wouldn’t budge. I gave my wrist a snap to try and separate the appendages, but with no luck. Giving them another look, I noticed that my fingers were slowly shrinking back into my wrist and as the seconds passed, my hand became more blockish and stump-like.

I bit my arm in some mad hope that this was some sort of messed up dream. The pain that came after told me that this was no dream, this was reality. I looked down again to see if my hands had stopped. They had indeed stopped, but now my hand didn’t even exist. It looked like someone had taken a cleaver and sliced completely through my arm. My clothing seemed to melt away from my skin as it disappeared into the void around me. Looking down I saw that my feet were in the same stumpy form that my hands were. The change must have occurred while I was focused on my hands. I didn’t get to give it much thought, because suddenly a strong burning pain started to arise on my hindquarters.

Taking a glance behind me, I saw something starting to protrude out my lower back. I watched as a thick brown tail started to grow feverishly. The thing got longer and longer until it passed up my legs, and, soon, past my newly-formed stumps. It was very bushy and gritty, and was the exact same dark brown that my hair color was. I only got a few seconds to admire its beauty before my head felt like someone was putting it through a sander. 

I shook my head, trying to get the pain to stop. It felt worse than if some had lit it on fire. I shut my eyes pushed what used to be my hands into the top of my head trying to get the pain to stop, or at least dull a little. I felt my hair growing intensely out from the top of my head and along my neck and back. My arms were soon covered by a sloppy mess of hair, as a mane began to form along my neck. While the hair was growing, my neck also seemed to push itself out from my torso as it elongated well past human proportions. I had never felt this amount of pain ever before.

As if on cue, my back started to itch. The slight itch grew and grew until it finally formed into an unwavering pain that felt like something was going to explode out my back. Looking back I saw some blue skin look as if it were about to rip itself free from my flesh, pulsing consistently. I closed my eyes until the pain became too much. Grunting, something finally burst out from my back, instantly stopping the pain that accompanied it. Opening my eyes, I glanced back to see what had happened. Where what I thought would be a giant bloody hole in my back, I saw two wings, covered in some sort of clear liquid.

I gazed in awe at the two massive things on my back and tested them out a little by flexing my newly-formed muscles in order to make them twitch. As soon as I did, I knew I had made a mistake as a wave of fire overcame me; the newly-formed muscles burned with the fire that my head was still producing. I let out a slight moan before quickly tucking them into my body to let the pain recede a little. Finally I let out the breath I realized I had been holding the entire time.

I gagged trying to inhale the much needed oxygen. The purple-black mass that surrounded me wouldn’t let me breathe, and I started to panic. I thrashed my hooves in front of my elongated nose, trying to move whatever was blocking the air around me. Nothing seemed to be blocking the air around me and I involuntarily tried to inhale again, only to gag on nothing. My heart rate slowed down and the purple substance started to fade away as my vision became blurry once again. I was passing out, but there was nothing I could do to stop it. I was going to die in this objectless hellhole.

Before the wave of unconsciousness hit me, I saw a room start to materialize in front of me.