//------------------------------// // Chapter 8 - Distant Memories // Story: Shattered Worlds: The Cataclysm // by Puppeteer //------------------------------// The dark hole seemed endless, like a void. I fell until it got so dark that I couldn't even tell if I was moving anymore. A moment later the darkness slipped away and was replaced with a distant memory of mine: My very first memory, in fact. I saw myself in my room at the rock-farm. I was barely a filly at the time. Since it was the first memory that remained in my head, I used to think of it as the day of my awakening. It was also the day that I made a simple realization: I was bored. That might not seem important, but it caused a lot of problems for me. There wasn't all that much to do on the rock-farm, you see. I would wake up early in the morning if I wanted to avoid a scolding and quickly eat a modest breakfast of oats so that I would have enough time to pack lunch before Father sent my sisters and me out for work. Then I would work until noon, break for lunch and work again until dusk. After that I would come home to eat whatever scraps Mother was able to scrape together for dinner and was allowed a few hours to myself before bed, in which time I had no activity to occupy myself with. The routine was burned into my brain, and so, to weaken its hold on me, I submerged myself in apathy. It felt like I had drowned in it long ago, and yet some part of me never stopped screaming for relief. Soon though, boredom gave birth to a far worse problem. The problem was loneliness. Maybe it would have been easier if I could talk to my family, but as it stood, that wasn't really an option. My Mother never wanted to talk to anypony, and all Father wanted to talk about was work. My sisters were only as silent and lifeless as I was, so I couldn't really blame them for never talking to me. Life was a sad, dreary, joyless event. The vision changed from me in my room to a day that I remember with all too much clarity. It was around noon and I was about to break for lunch when I found that poor, lost, hungry baby bunny. All I had with me for lunch was an apple and some bread crumbs, but I felt sorry for it. Somehow I got it into my head that it was an orphan and didn't have anypony to care for it. For all I know, that really was the case. Either way, I decided to give it a few breadcrumbs. After a while I made a game of dropping breadcrumbs in a little trail for the bunny to follow. Soon I had run out of breadcrumbs and had only an apple to eat, but something about the ordeal made me happy. For that, an empty stomach was a small price to pay. I expected the bunny to go its own way as soon as it realized I didn't have any more food to give it, but it kept following me. After a few hours I started talking to it. It felt good just to hear my own voice after so many days spent in silence. I poured out my thoughts and emotions that day. I told it my worries and problems; my longings and desires. For the first time in my life I opened up my soul to another living creature and I felt relief I didn't know was possible. For the first time that I can remember, something brought a smile to my face. When I got home, somehow I knew that Father wouldn't like the bunny. I didn't know why, but I knew that it would be bad if I let him see. Instead I hid it in my lunch sack and smuggled it into the house. It squirmed a bit since it hated the confined space, but I was able to get it into my room unnoticed. I also brought my dinner to my room and we shared the meal. It cautiously nibbled off the corners of my plate, but I made sure that it got enough to eat. It snuggled under my blanket that night and I felt happier than I ever had before. I finally had something to love. From then on it became part of my regular routine to sneak some food and water upstairs for it in the morning. I knew that Father wouldn't like that either, but the bunny didn't have anypony else to care for it. Nopony ever bothered going in my room, so it wouldn't be to hard to conceal. It wasn't too long before I decided to come up with a name for my new friend. The first name to come to mind was Pinkie because it sounded a lot like my name. Pinkie and Pinkamena just had a pleasant ring to it. I was so happy back then. If only I had been a little bit more careful. The vision blurred and skipped to the day of the sonic rainboom. I was having a particularly hard day working the fields and I was beginning to slip into a bad mood when I saw one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen. A million miles away, a wonderful rainbow maned pegasus had just performed one of the most important feats of her unjustly short life. The joy I derived from caring for Pinkie, coupled with the awe-inspiring beauty of the rainboom in the sky caused something to click in my head. Life didn't have to be some sad, dreary, joyless event. Life was something that should be celebrated and enjoyed all the time. Life could be a party. My vision made another skip to the party I threw for my family that night. That was the point in my life where everything should have worked out. Perhaps some things just aren't meant to be. Maybe some ponies just aren't meant to find happiness. We came home that night and everypony seemed genuinely happy, which was a first. Maybe that's what caused me to let my guard down. I decided to bring a carrot upstairs to feed Pinkie, but I was so caught up in thought that I didn't even notice Father following me upstairs. When he caught me feeding her, he flew into a rage. He screamed at me about wasting food. I had never seen him so angry in my life. I tried to stand in-between him and Pinkie who was cowering behind my leg, but he just kicked me aside and grabbed Pinkie by her ears. He threw her into an ancient wooden box that I kept in the corner of my room and slammed a padlock on it. She was terrified of confined spaces. I tried to get him to let her out, but he said that he wouldn't be having me feed vermin our food. He gave me a lecture about the value of what we owned and told me that I could have the key to the padlock if I worked harder the next day to make up for the food I had wasted. A few weeks earlier he had taken away a mirror that my sister liked and made a similar deal with her, claiming that it was distracting her from her job. He still hadn't returned it. The next day I woke up earlier than normal, hurried through my morning activities and rushed out the door before the normal time. I pushed myself to do as much as I was physically able to do in the time I was given, and barely even stopped for lunch. When I asked father If I had done enough to get the key though, he simply said that maybe I would if I tried harder the next day. I was exhausted, but no less determined. Pinkie was frantic when I got to my room. She wasn't used to being trapped or being in the dark. She was scared. I spent a couple of hours telling her how I was going to get her out and how it would all be alright in the end. Hearing my voice seemed to calm her down a little. The day after that I worked so hard that my muscles ached, but Father's answer was the same. By that time though, I was on to him. I told Pinkie that I would get her out the next day no matter what, and I meant it. I couldn't work nearly as hard that day because of the way I had strained myself earlier, but it was apparent that he wasn't going to let her out no matter how hard I worked. His promise was a simple ploy to get me to work harder, just like he did with my sister and her mirror. He had no intention of following through on either promise. He probably didn't even consider the fact that Pinkie hadn't eaten in close to three days. He thought of her just like he thought about the mirror; as an object. When I got home that day I didn't even ask father if I could have the key. I just ate my dinner as fast as I could and ran up the stairs and into Father's bedroom. I rummaged around in his dresser for the key to Pinkie's box and got back to my room with it just before my Mother and Sisters came upstairs to bed. Father usually stayed downstairs for an hour or two after everypony else had gone to sleep. I went to unlock the box, but something seemed off. Every other time I had come to bed I heard Pinkie desperately scuttling around the edges of the box, looking for a way out. She usually didn't stop until a few hours into the night. This time though, there was only silence. I reasoned that being in the dark so long had messed up her sleep patterns, so unlocked the box and flung the top open, but she didn't wake up. She was sprawled out in the center of the box. I nudged her and eventually picked her up, but she still didn't move. "Come on Pinkie! Pinkie! Wake up!" I remember saying. The truth was beginning to dawn on me, but I wasn't ready to accept it. "Come on Pinkie... Please, please wake up. I'll get you water. I don't care what Daddy wants, just please don't be... Please don't be dead, Pinkie." She didn't respond. There was no use in denying it anymore. I hugged her as tight as I could and collapsed to the ground in sobs. I must have been like that for several minutes before I got my bearings back. The sadness I felt slowly turned into a boiling hatred for my father. I knew that he would still be downstairs, so I decided to confront him. With Pinkie in tow, I descended the stairs and threw her at his feet. "You killed her, Father." I said spitefully. "You killed her and you're a terrible pony." "Don't you ever let me catch you talking to me that way again." he retaliated in a threatening and authoritative tone. "How did you even get it out of that box?" "Well it wasn't exactly hard! You left the key in the most obvious place there is." "Drop that tone, Pinkamena. You directly disobeyed me. Don't think for a second that there won't be consequences for that!" "Were you even listening to me? Do you even care that you starved her to death?" I was starting to become enraged by this point. "Of course I don't care!" he bellowed. "It was just some stupid animal eating our hard earned food! I wasn't about to let it find its way back into the house and steal more of it! You know what: If you had listened to me and kept the darn box closed, I was going to tell you that those damned greedy vermin go into hibernation when they don't get enough to eat, and you would have believed it too you stupid little..." He kept on yelling but I couldn't even hear him anymore. Blood was pumping to my head too fast for me to hear anything else but my heartbeat in that moment. Sound faded out and for a few seconds I was alone with my anger, my pulse, and a sensation I had never felt before; the undeniable urge to hurt somepony. That was the first time I ever felt blood-lust, and let me tell you something: Blood-lust and rage make a deadly combination. "I HATE YOU!" I screamed at the top of my lungs. I bucked him in the knee with as much force as I could muster, but unfortunately I was still just a filly, and the most force I could muster wasn't all that much. He cringed for a second and then thrust forward, bucking me into the kitchen. It knocked the wind out of me and I had barely gotten to my hooves when he burst into the room with a look of blind rage in his eyes but my instincts had already kicked in. I was in autopilot mode, and I already knew exactly what I needed to do. His anger wasn't like my anger. My anger was cold and sharp, but his was careless and unfocused. It made him clumsy; clumsy enough not to notice the kitchen knife gripped in my teeth until he was already moving with to much momentum to stop himself. He flung a hoof out in front of his face as if to shield himself from me, but my target was his neck and the knife plunged deep. Father's eyes widened in shock and I let out a small giggle as he stumbled backward and slipped on the blood spraying from his neck. A grin slowly began to spread across my face. As I stood there watching him him bleed on the floor, something changed inside of me. I knew with every fiber of my existence that he deserved all of the pain he was going through, and it made me feel indescribably happy knowing that I was the pony who had caused it. I just felt like laughing. He started flailing his limbs in an attempt to drag himself to the door, but I walked around in front of him and put my hooves down on his head to stop him from moving. "Do you really think you'll make it all the way to the door? You know you'll still die even if you do. Don't be a silly pony, Daddy." He looked like he wanted to scream, but he had already exhaled the last breath that would ever leave his lungs. "You see daddy, life isn't just some sad, dreary, joyless event that we have to suffer through. It's not something that should be wasted worrying about bits or spent lifelessly repeating mundane tasks. It's something that exists to be enjoyed, and right now I am getting far more joy out of these last few moments of yours than you would ever get out of your sad little life. Life is a party, and in case you missed the new cutie mark, I'm a party pony now." The last strand of life clinging to his body seeped away, leaving his eyes blank. The vision went out of focus and a few hours slipped by. Just after the murder I had been panicked. Now though, I was calm. At first I thought that somepony would come down the stairs any second and discover the body, but I soon realized that my sisters and mother would rather sit the conflict out than get themselves involved in it. That gave me enough time to come up with a plan. I couldn't simply hide the body in a ditch somewhere and pretend like nothing ever happened, but that didn't mean that the situation was hopeless. I was still smart enough to come up with a creative solution to the problem. All I needed to do was to cause an event drastic enough that it would make my father's death completely irrelevant. If I wanted to move on, I would have to burn my world to the ground. I must have stared at the candle set on that table for hours, just thinking about the choice that lay before me. I didn't hate the rest of my family the way I hated my father, but they weren't happy living either. If I walked away from that table, they would live the rest of their lives in misery. They could never be happy the way I could be happy. The vision changed into an abstraction of events that transpired. I stood in an impossibly dark room in absolute silence; the kind of silence where you can hear the blood moving through your veins. The candle on the table burned blindingly bright, but its light barely made it past the edges of the table before being swallowed into nothingness. I reached forward, sliding the candle just over the edge of the table. Time slowed down as it tipped and fell from its resting place. The flame trailed and curled at an impossible length. The entire world seemed to revolve around that single moment, and in an instant it was over. The candle hit the ground and the entire room was engulfed in flame. I grabbed Pinkie by her ear with my mouth and carried her away from the fading life I had once lived. "Wow. I never knew things were so bad for you. I'm sorry you had to go through all that." The voice spoke. It startled me for a moment, since I had completely forgotten that it was there. I decided to humor it. It was nice to have somepony to talk to again. "I buried her, you know." I said. "Huh?" "Pinkie; I buried her that night. There's still a little grave with her name on it somewhere." "Sad. So you took her name after that?" "It's what I asked the ponies at the orphanage to call me. I guess I did it to keep a little piece of her with me. She was always so happy and playful... She was everything I wanted to be; everything I became. Well not everything I guess. I killed after that. I killed so many ponies, but I always felt different when I was doing it. There were two sides to me. The damaged pony that I was, and the pony I always wanted to be. It was only recently that I realized that I had to accept both as part of me if I ever wanted to be truly happy, but I guess it's a bit late to find balance, huh? If you don't mind me asking though, why do you even care?" "That's a complicated question, but I'll try to summarize. When you're inside somepony's head, you kind of understand how they think and what they feel. Surmise to say that you just didn't feel like the monster I once thought you were. I guess I just needed to know how all of this started before I could say this: I forgive you, Pinkamena." "Well that's nice, but forgive me for what? What have I done to you?" "More than you even know. You sentenced me to a fate worse than death, and it could very well be the downfall of us both, but I've said enough for now. I'll see you again tonight." With that I woke up and was left with nopony but Gummy to help me sort out my thoughts.