//------------------------------//
// 10. Preemptive 
// Story: The Best Songs Come From the Soul 
// by Quicksear 
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Nights at hospitals aren’t as quiet as you might think.

I spent hours lying on my bed, my attention divided between checking on and talking to Carrot Top, and reading the heart-rending diary entries Vinyl had written in the brightest and darkest moments of her life. Every entry was a reminder of times we’d spent together, every line an inspired insight into our lives, or some painfully funny situation, jokingly written to brighten up the series of events that showed Vinyl’s slow and unswerving descent into madness. 
In every syllable, I knew I was losing her~

Bump. I looked over at the bed next to me. Carrot Top looked back, giving me a slight nod, like she had every half an hour since nightfall. Every photon of light leached from the air had increased my nervousness tenfold, but every time I saw the strength in her olive eyes, I grew a little of my own. And I hated myself for it.

I’m relying on her. I’m relying on a pony who can’t speak, can hardly breath because of something I pulled her into. She’s hurt beyond my worst imagining, and here am I looking to her for solace. And she wasn’t the only pony I’d hung on to in hard times. The other was currently tearing herself apart at the seams in a hole in the ground, a refuge she’d retreated to to overcome her own limitations, to force herself to bear the weight I has leaned upon her shoulders. Now she was lost in a prison that kept her from me. 

Not for much longer, if I could help it. And so that’s when I started listening to the sounds of the night-shadowed building around me. The tick of monitors plugged into my friend, the clop of nurses’ hooves in the halls, one or two cries from other patients. One harsh bark from a nearby ward that I just knew came from Noteworthy. And through it all, somehow cutting across the entirety of my senses, was a deep bass thrumming, a long, bare beat so beyond perception no sane pony would pay it heed. But then again, no sane pony would believe where it came from, either.

Thump. Carrot Top opened her mouth, and breathed out a sighing hiss, nothing more. I listened, though, because listening was what I was doing. It took a few seconds, but in the insurmountable gap between the sounds of the building and the sound of my fear, her barely audible voice matched beat for beat with the distant, chilling bassline. 

“You hear it too?” My voice was hoarse, dry, loud in the silence. And suddenly, the building sounded quieter than a mausoleum. Carrot Top’s forced hiss stopped, the white noise clearing with the haze in my mind. She looked at me as she did when she knew I needed it, but this time it was different. She nodded slowly, her eyes never once leaving my face. Hours ago I’d been near giving up, my conviction broken, but now?

Now, the music called me.

I stood, hearing the buzzing, whirring, stepping and crying, and focussed on none of it. Instead, I walked around to Carrot Top’s side, resting one hoof on the beeping machine that measured her life. Measured, but didn’t protect. 

“I’m sorry, Carrot Top,” I whispered, my eyes dull, “I can’t let this go on. Too many ponies. This is my fault, and I’m going to fix it.”

She didn’t move. She just stared at me, watching as I leaned down and bit the cords that monitored her health. And as the machine they led to started screaming its warnings, she watched me punch it into silence. I shook my wrist wanly as I turned back to her. “They’ll be here to protect you. Goodbye, Carrot Top. I hope I’ll see you again, when it’s done.”

She watched me leave, I know. I could feel her eyes on my back as I padded as softly as hooves could out of the ward and beyond the nurses and guards rushing the opposite way. Scant minutes later Carrot Top was surrounded by loudly chattering nurses trying to salvage what they could of my vandalism, and a few golden-armoured guards desperately searching the ward for a trace of me. No matter how loud they questioned the only pony who saw me leave, they never got an answer, though considering the small smile Carrot Top wore, she wouldn’t have answered either way. And when they finally spread out to search for the mentally unstable musician they saw me as, they were chasing nothing more than a charcoal ghost in the night.


*****


One of the best parts about Ponyville were the quiet nights. The soft contours of thatched cottages and the odd shingled bungalow along winding quaint alleys lined with fresh flowers and paved with cobbles or bare beaten earth, the way the shadows fell over private corners but let the starlight fall about unhindered. Ponyville at night was so beautiful that nopony felt the need to light it. Not many ponies knew to fear the dark.

A grey ghost in between the houses, I walked around the western edge of town. I was avoiding the town centre, where the younger crowd might still be awake. Search parties would be out soon. I’d have to end this before that. 

Reentering the winding paths of the town  I wove my way back towards my own neighbourhood, with all it’s familiarities. I saw a bench set into a secluded screen of hedges, two small images engraved into the stone backrest. A lyre and a trio of sweets. Two mares I knew had commissioned that bench, and had sat there happily many a day, bickering over who was sitting correctly or not. A bittersweet memory now, of ponies I knew nowhere near well enough.

The spread boughs of the town library could be seen over the rooftops, bathing the market square and northern edge of the park in silent shade. The library was empty now. Nopony was there to help me. My hooves clicked over the odd stone, and my tail swished across the ground behind me, my little addition to the night sounds, my small accompaniment to the near-imperceptible sound running up through my legs. 

Long and low, that song  begged me to run away, a warning that called me clearer than a lover’s touch. I saw nothing in the shadows darker than what I’d seen before, nothing to scare me as much as that I would face. It was a quiet night fraught with sound. A peaceful darkness over unbearable tension I couldn’t let myself feel.  

All this I thought as I sat across the street from that house, staring up at it in the night and wondering why it all had to come to this. No, I didn’t know what I was expecting to see. No, I wasn’t at peace with myself, or calm. No, I wasn’t ready to face anything for love. I had no idea what I was getting throwing myself at, and I was shaking in my skin with fear, unwilling to think about what I would do within the next few hours, because rightly, I didn’t know

All I knew was that at some point in the dead of night, a figure would fly up to that door and knock on the doorframe. The the music would stop, and the door would open. Neither pony in the doorway would notice the pair of violet eyes watching them from across the street. Not that it mattered. To me, that didn’t matter. What mattered was the pony opening the door. What was left of her. Vinyl was a slave to herself. All I did know was that I’d either free her from what she had become…or end it all.

It was the same thing, really, in the end.


*****


Not an hour later, the music stopped.

I lay flat there on the ground, behind a hedge, where I’d been the whole time, lost in thought, merely watching, noting the little things. I peaked out through the roots of the plants, focusing on the uninterrupted view of the foot of Vinyl’s door. I saw the way the grass crawled up the doorposts, but stood away from the door itself, seemingly pushed away by some force. I heard a quiet tapping from within, like soft hooves across floorboards. I saw the grass before the door fall against the wood before the door creaked open to admit the night, revealing, for half a second, one alabaster leg. 

Then she landed.

In an instant, four hooves hit the dirt in front of the door.  I could not see this pony beyond the knees, but even that much was hidden beneath a bulky ashen cloak. All I could see of the pegasus Vinyl had called ‘Angel’ were four grey, bleached hooves, the colour of old bones, under the stone-grey coat that brushed her colourless fetlocks. No cloak, though, could hide a voice.

“Open the door, Scratch.” a tone made monotonous from weariness and years.

Dry, reedy came the reply; “Why?”
My heart flipped. Both voices were so different, yet the same. Familiar. Angel’s dull, low monotone, rough and uncut, and Vinyl’s faint rasp, a far cry from her beautiful tenor she had serenaded me with on summers’ eves. No fight was in her words. I could hear the death of her spirit, and so could Angel.

“No games this time, Scratch. They’ll be here soon. Then you’ll have your accompaniment.”

“I-I don’t need accompani…” Vinyl’s words were cut off by the sharpest note I’d ever heard.

My ears splayed back as I staved it off, but the piercing sound actually hurt. Burning not only in my ears, but across my tongue, under my eyelids, in my nose, with the smell of smoke and the taste of coals. My skin crawled with chill as the whistle rose and fell, a new unearthly sound tailored to break a pony. I would have done anything to make it stop…

I heard the door open further, and the note trailed off. 

“Good girl.This is a good weapon you made me, Scratch.”

I picked my head up just in time to see a grey coat and somehow even greyer tail sweep into the black, and the doorway began closing. I slowly released a breath as the lock clicked shut, and I sighed into my hooves. So Angel had come, as I’d expected. Somehow, she’d made noise a weapon. She’d turned despair into a sound. Or Vinyl had. No doubt I’d helped her with that. either way, I’d destroy whatever had made that note when I found it. First, how to get in…wait.

I looked at the door. The grass verging the step leaned easily against the wood, scrunched up by the closing door, just like the grass either side against the doorposts. Vinyl hadn’t redone her muffle spell. Now was my chance!

My heart leapt into my throat. The time for thought was past. I’d bent my mind to this, now was time to bend my will...I’m doing it again! Move, you silly mare!

I stopped thinking about what the pegasus Angel had said, and began a sort of awkward sideways shuffle, the fur of my barrel brushing the ground as I scurried like a rat across the street. I immediately took a short dive into a flower bed, into a remarkably perfectly-sized indent; the same flower bed I’d landed in two days ago, jumping in terror from my old bedroom window. I looked up. The window was closed.

I looked at the door, still unenchanted, still easily overcome with a little strength. I thought back to what these two twisted ponies had said. Accompaniment. So far, Vinyl was the only player. She didn’t need skilled artists, did she? Somehow, I didn’t think Angel meant bringing in a renowned quartet for a special recording. No, all they needed was live meat.

It started again. A very low, thrumming bass note. almost string but not quite, a mixed sound that dug at me. As if from a distance, I heard a lone violin playing, erie in its solitude, mourning what was to come. A sound that, for me, threw a haze over everything else. I raised my head curiously, shrugging off my fear, to try and catch a single note more of that lone player. Instead, it disappeared completely.

I suddenly found myself lying as I was in a leafy bush, my head popped up like a duck, staring off into the distance. I shrunk back. What was I thinking? I needed to focus. Get inside, find Vinyl, and~

My eyes found a sight of a curtain fluttering above me. The window above me was open

“Knew you wouldn’t take a hint.”

I looked up with barely any time too see the bone-grey hoof that blacked out my vision.