I wheeled up to a white house and parked my car. I took a deep breath. A new home, changes. A new beginning. I closed the door and started walking up the driveway towards the door, only to be knocked down by something barreling into my back. I went crashing to the ground with that heavy weight still on my back. Then I heard a deep gasp of surprise.
"Are you okay!?" whoever it was asked me.
"I will be when you get off of me," I shot back.
She apologized, and the weight left my back. I rolled over to see a pink blob staring back at me. Her face was only a few inches from mine. I blinked a time or two, and the form didn't change. I waited a few more seconds, and she still didn't move. I cleared my throat and she still didn't move. This was definitely a thick one.
"Excuse me. Personal space," I said, a bit of an edge sneaking into my voice.
"Oh sorry," she said, folding her ears.
She took a couple of steps backwards, allowing me to finally get up. She looked towards my car and presumably saw the boxes in the back. She came to her own conclusion. I'd be a bit impressed if I wasn't creeped out by her rapidly growing smile. She was once again refusing to move, so I decided to leave her to whatever the hell was going on in her head. I turned around and made my way towards the house.
"You're moving into this house, aren't you!?" she said, stopping me in my tracks.
"Uh, yeah," I said.
"Oh we're going to be the most super-awesome neighbors ever! We can have cook-outs every weekend in the summer, and spend our holidays together! And we can have wild nights of partying! Don't worry, I'll even take care of the body myself. Speaking of partying, I've totally got to throw you a house-warming party!" she said.
Her mouth was running a hundred miles a minute. I could barely follow along. I grabbed her muzzle, and I could swear I heard the sound of skid marks. I gave an irritated smile, and I let go of her muzzle. I thanked the heavens above that the motor didn't start up again. Instead she was just smiling at me innocently.
"Why don't you just start with your name?"
"Oh my name's Pinkie Pie, pony party-thrower extrodinaire! What's yours?"
"Jack."
"Need some help moving in?" Pinkie asked, looking back to the car.
"You break anything you pay for it," I said.
She walked over to the car and I walked to the house. Something told me that this wasn't going to be as easy as I hoped it would be. I gave myself a mental note to strangle whatever that "something" was sometime later. The door came open and I stood in my foyer, a staircase to the basement and a staircase to the upper-floor sat before me. Great, one of these houses. Bringing in groceries was going to be hell. A crash from the car caused my train of thought to fly off of the rails. I looked out to see Pinkie holding a yellow trinket. At her hooves was a flattened box, marked—in big red letters no less–fragile. I stormed over to Pinkie and took the trinket from her. With a blur, the trinket found its way into my pocket.
"You have an investigator's badge!" she said, seemingly in shock. Her eyes went wide as she added "a homocide investigator's badge."
"What about it?" I said, checking the box. Yup. It was my computer, glass cracked all across the monitor.
"Why didn't you tell me!?"
"Hello, random stranger. My name is Jack. My job is poking and prodding dead bodies to find out what killed them. And if I'm really lucky I get to find out who killed them. What's your name?" I asked, still more focused on my broken computer than her.
"Point taken. Sorry about the... um... computer."
"Oh don't worry about it. You're the one who's going to pay for it," I shot back. She gave a nervous chuckle.
"Yeah, so, um, do you still need help moving in?"
I reached into my car and looked around until I found a particularly heavy box. I took a second look to make sure that the word "fragile" was nowhere to be found, and placed it on Pinkie's back. She struggled for a few moments before walking towards the house. I picked up a box of flatware that I desperately didn't want broken.
She was struggling to get up the steps to my stoop. Oh boy would she have fun getting that thing up to my kitchen. By the time that I returned to collect another box, she hadn't gotten much further. I rolled my eyes and took the box off of her. She smiled and ran off to get another one. The actual weight of the box suddenly dawned on me. I put it down on the stoop. I'd deal with it later. Pinkie was struggling pulling yet another box. I picked a much lighter one and placed it on her back before grabbing another box of my own.
"So, what do you want to talk about?" Pinkie asked me. She stopped and waited for me to catch up.
"I don't."
"You know, you remind me a lot of one of my friends. She doesn't like to talk much either. Then again, she's not..."
"Uh-huh," I replied.
I brought the box up to my kitchen and sat on it. My breathing had grown heavy, and a bead of sweat was starting to form on my brow. That heavier box must have taken quite a lot out of me. And to think that she walked it across the driveway, uphill. She placed the box down next to the other couple of ones. I took a pack of cigarettes out of my jacket pocket.
"Um Pinkie," I started.
"Yeah?"
"Thanks. For the help, I mean."
"Not a problem," she said, and then she beamed at me. Her eyes briefly darted back and forth. "You're not still mad about the computer, are you?"
I put a cigarette in my mouth. "Why would I be mad? After all, you're the one who's paying for it."
"There wasn't anything important on it, was there?"
I reached into my pocket and pulled out a flash drive. "Everything I need is in here."
I put the flash drive back into my pocket and pulled out a lighter. While I tried to get the cigarette lit, she stared sat on the floor and stared at me with that big grin. To be totally honest it was starting to creep me out. I blew a puff of smoke into the air in a vain hope that it would shatter the nothing that was happening before me.
"So, is there somewhere you have to be?" I asked.
"Yes, but helping you out is more important."
I blinked. She blinked back. I blinked. She blinked back.
"Why?" I managed to ask.
"Because I want to be your friend."
"I thought you said you already had a friend."
"I actually have six-hundred-seventy-two, but when I saw you I realized that I wanted six-hundred-seventy-three friends."
I took another puff of my cigarette. It was going to be a long day. A very long day.