H O U R T W O
Vinyl pulled out the records from the cabinet yet again, fumbling some of them onto the carpet, a crazed look dancing in her eyes. Octavia wasn’t going to prevent her from having fun tonight, even if it meant throwing her own, one pony party. Vinyl spread the records across the glass table messily, knocking all the magazines to the floor. Yet again, she searched for a new disc for the turntable.
“Yesssss…yessss…”
Vinyl slapped down a faded record that looked like it had been used hundreds of times.
“PARTY AT VINYL’S” read in electric blue lettering on the disc. Of course she was going to use this one above all the others—it was her own work. Vinyl spun the disc on her hoof and sent it over to the turntable with her magic, delighted at her own brilliant plan about to unfold.
A series of synthetic laser noises shot through the air in great speed, signifying yet another battle sounded like it was taking place right there under the roof. Slowly, seamlessly, they transformed into a bass pattern. All sorts of filler noise surrounded the rising power of the bass, including distant shouting of Vinyl’s voice, digitally distorted. The timing of it all was perfect; nothing less would have been acceptable. It was one of the many reasons DJ-Pon3 was the undisputed queen disc jockey and club music artist for miles and miles around.
Vinyl sat down on the couch and pulled all the many red pillows up to her, closing her eyes tightly. If she could just pretend these pillows were ponies instead of sacks of feathers, it wouldn’t be any different than a normal party. Maybe, just maybe, the big fuzzy round pillow on her left could be Berry Punch, and the silky square one to the right was Colgate. She just—had—to imagine—
The bass dropped. Vinyl’s eyes shot open and blinked.
The swimming image of a group of ponies were moving to the music and chatting amongst each other. She had witnessed the scene so many times before that the image was permanently implanted in her brain. Vinyl blinked again, and the ponies became clearer. She could almost make out the colors of them all.
Grinning mischievously, Vinyl dashed across the room. She closed her eyes and pretended she was dancing through a thick of ponies. After emerging, she shot up the staircase back to her room.
Vinyl grabbed her favorite headphones and slunk them around her neck, then picked up her iconic purple shades from her nightstand and dramatically slid them on over her cherry-red eyes.
“I’m a genius,” she told herself coolly. “Genius.”
When she got back downstairs, Vinyl extracted a table from one of the closets and set it up behind the stereo in the kitchen. She pulled out more equipment from the closest, including a large rectangular controller, a microphone and a tangle of cords. Within a couple minutes, her entire setup was plugged in and ready to go.
“Welcome, my pones,” said Vinyl energetically through the microphone. “You know as they say, guys: when the cat’s away, the mice will—”
But just at that moment, when Vinyl was about to don her headphones, the doorbell rang weakly through the heavy thuds of the music. Vinyl dropped the microphone to the ground and stopped the music, her record comically scratching and plunging the house into instant silence. She clambered towards the front door and peered out of the blinds. Adjusting her hair furiously, she took off her shades and thrust them into the couch.
As casually as she could, Vinyl opened the door to a light-blue unicorn. He donned a black suit and dark grey shades, his spiky mane matching them. It was Neon Lights, her music partner.
“Vinyl! Wassup—”
Without thinking, Vinyl slammed the door in his face, panicky. A couple seconds later, feeling embarrassed, she opened the door a crack and peered out at the colt.
“Neon—what are you doing here?” hissed Vinyl, looking around worriedly, as though she was on the run from the law. “I’m busy—”
“Busy? With what?” asked Neon Lights, pushing up his glasses, his eyebrows raised. “I thought you were going down to Ponyville tonight?”
“Oh yeah, that! Um—yeah, I cancelled because of, um—,” Vinyl fidgeted with the doorknob, feeling sweat on her neck, “—I’m testing out my new speakers! Yeah man, I’ve got to break them in. You know how it is—”
Neon Lights craned his neck to look past her into the kitchen, where the two giant speakers stood next to all her equipment.
“The heck you talking about, I helped you buy those months ago,” said Neon Lights, pointing inside.
“Oh yeah, that’s right! Ha haaa…,” Vinyl gritted her teeth, trying to come up with a different excuse.
“V, what’s going on?” Neon grinned, noticing all the equipment. “You got all your stuff out—how come?” He tried to walk inside, but Vinyl blocked the doorway.
“NO!” screamed Vinyl, their horns colliding. Neon couldn’t come in. No..no…Octavia would kill her! She may have been blocks away, but somehow, she would know…Vinyl was sure of it...
“Whoa!” said Neon, backing away. “Are you crazy?”
“Crazy for you!” said Vinyl. “But seriously, dude, you can’t come in.”
Neon Lights chuckled. “K, well why not? And don’t lie to me this time.”
“Because Tavi will kill me if I—”
Vinyl clapped a hoof over her mouth. She had let it slip.
“Octavia?” said Neon Lights, confused. “What do you mean—”
Thinking quickly, Vinyl kissed him on the mouth. A colt passing by whistled at them loudly.
Neon Lights looked truly confused now, as though Vinyl had smacked him in the face with the front door.
“V-Vinyl? What was that—”
“WHAT’S THAT?!” shouted Vinyl, pointing behind him, making the colt out in the street jump in alarm.
“What—”
SLAM. Vinyl actually did smack him with the door that time. She heard a body hit the ground, followed by “oh sheeit!” from the colt out in the street. Breathing quickly, Vinyl opened the door just a crack to see a knocked out Neon Lights lying face down in the pavement, his shades busted. Vinyl stepped out onto the street, feeling like she was breaching the boundaries of a prison. As quickly as she could, while the street was momentarily deserted (the colt had disappeared), Vinyl grabbed ahold of Neon Light’s tail in her mouth and dragged him behind a bush in front of the house. She repaired the glasses with her magic then crammed them clumsily back over his closed eyes. If she tucked in his limbs in just the right way, he could have been asleep.
Vinyl sprinted back inside and locked the door. Vinyl stood flat against the door, her chest heaving. “What had she done?”
Oh no, Vinyl wasn’t feeling remorse. She had slammed various objects into Neon Light’s face loads of times; one time she had knocked him out cold for several hours after sending Octavia’s two-thousand page encyclopedia of classical music into his face. Vinyl didn’t take kindly to ponies insulting her music. Sometimes she just hit him with things because she wanted to get his attention. Sometimes just for no reason at all. But then again…her loving abuse for Neon didn’t usually surmount to smacking him with a door. Which, as Vinyl noticed when she knocked the door twice, was made of some pretty hard wood. Very hard wood.
Get your mind out of the gutter, reader.
No, Vinyl wasn’t feeling remorse. She was feeling fear. Somepony had seen her. And Vinyl knew as well as anypony that the Canterlot guards didn’t take kindly to ponies assaulting each other on their doorsteps. They were going to be alerted, she knew it. Then they would take her away…away from the house…away from where she was sentenced…then that would be the end of her and Octavia’s friendship. Vinyl could always find another place to stay, but she would never find another Octavia.
Vinyl tried to shake the image out of her head. “No, dude, that’s not gonna happen,” she thought to herself. “Just relax…relax…”
Vinyl drew a series of deep breaths and returned to all fours. She was going to get through this night. Even if she was alone, there would always be music there to keep her company. The party must go on.
Soon, the music was blaring once again, and Vinyl was back in action.
Octavia could play her little cello and listen to her brainy orchestral music, but this was cloud nine. She read all the many knobs and buttons like a thoroughly studied road map, her mind intuitively knowing which way to go. Clumsy as pony hooves often were, operating a great assortment like this would have normally been next to impossible. But somehow through her mannerisms, she could strike the corner of her foreleg hoof on each button or dial and they would behave exactly how she wanted.
For a while, Vinyl was a free as a pegasus, her spirit soaring higher than a Wonderbolt. She was planning on a marathon, all the way up until Octavia returned home. But then came the whispers.
“You’re not meant to be alone, Vinyl…go out and play…”
Unconcerned, Vinyl turned up the music to drown out the serpent-like hiss breathing in her ears.
“They all miss you, lovely…all those ponies…so much you’re probably missing out on…”
Vinyl ignored the hiss and tried to concentrate on the music instead. “Chase me if you please…dununun but this love is just a breeze, dununun,” she sang along to the music. “Chase me if you pleeeease—”
“Fine…ignore me...enjoy your night alone in your own little celebration…freak…”
Vinyl felt her face become warm. She glanced toward the windows, hoping that nopony was secretly looking in at her. Oh how much they would laugh if they found out…
“How lame can you get…just stop embarrassing yourself already…Octavia would never do something like this…”
Vinyl fumbled for the volume and turned it up even louder. She could hear the windows rattle as she started turning more knobs. Once or twice, her grasp slipped, distorting the music the wrong way. She gritted her teeth at the horrid noise.
“Hahaha look at you, choking at your greatest talent…Octavia has never choked once on a performance…”
“Shut up!” said Vinyl, nervously turning up the volume even higher. With all her might, she tried to keep cool and return to her previous blissful state. But the whispers were persistent. Vinyl twitched, the voices irritating the inside of her ears like annoying streams of air.
Throwing down her headphones, the ground shaking from the intense power of the bass, Vinyl ducked into the closet and pulled out a metal box that looked like a huge flashlight.
“Strobe light!” yelled Vinyl into the phantom crowd. There were no more electrical outlets near her mixing station to plug in the strobe light, so she rushed to the kitchen. Unplugging the toaster, Vinyl thrust the plug into the wall.
Bright flashes illuminated the house in rhythm with the music. Vinyl turned off all the lights and instantly threw her whole body into a wild dance.
“Yeeeuh! Greatest—night—ever! Woohoo! Bring—it—on!”
The lights were flickering from the intense power usage. But Vinyl wasn’t paying attention; she had just pressed herself against a wall and was throwing her head like a windmill.
“Stop—swinging—I am—trying to—insult—you—”
The song was reaching its epic conclusion. Chaos through the form of synthesized instruments pounded the windows, which were on the brink of shattering. The strobe light was flashing at epileptic speeds. Vinyl’s glasses had been flung across the kitchen and into the sink. She had single-handedly (I’m sorry, but ‘single-hoofedly’ sounds terrible) reached the same level of noise and intensity as a rock concert.
“Screw this, I’m out!”
And along with the voices, so did the lights.
The house's power had reached the end of its tether.
T H R E E H O U R S R E M A I N