It was on a tranquil, sunny spring day when I died a horrifyingly gruesome death.
...Yeah, I guess that sounds just little too cheesy for the heading sentence of my tale. Plus, that isn't necessarily all true... Dammit. That line certainly sounded a lot more poetic in my head now that I think about it, and now that I've said it out loud it really does sound like the beginning of a horribly corny pulp fiction...
Ah well, I might as well just roll with it.
As I was saying, my everyday life came to a bloody smear on the side of a dull grey concrete wall one fine April afternoon. A few minutes earlier to this and you would have found me sitting on a bench, perfectly healthy... Well as healthy in the sense that I was still alive and had all my bodily fluids contained inside me at any rate. I'll admit that in my current shape I'd never win any marathons in the foreseeable future, and I was in dire need of a diet, but I was as healthy as any other fifty year old. Admittedly that wasn't saying much, but I digress.
At the moment I had just gotten off a nine hour long trans-Atlantic flight riding economy; which had finally come to a merciful end when my plane had touched down on the tarmac of London Heathrow. I was exhausted from everything that had happened over the past day and a half of traveling, but I was relieved that I finally wasn't a Human sardine anymore; traveling in economy really makes you appreciate the simple things, such as elbow room and not being surrounded by more than a hundred people and their screaming babies in a confined space thousands of meters above the Atlantic.
Exiting the Boeing 747 I had noticed that the sun was shining outside the gigantic walls of glass and only a few puffy clouds hung above the old English city, though I didn't get much of a chance to sight see as I was quickly pushed through security and into the world's longest conga line. A few hours later and I had finally escaped the maze of terminals belonging to one of Europe's largest airports and had retreated underground to wait for my shuttle into London.
The flight had taken quite a bit out of my middle aged bones, and I felt like if I didn't get some rest soon I'd probably fall apart right where I stood.
An acidic burp followed up my thought of taking a seat; it scorched my throat on it's way up and was soon followed by an ominous rumble from my gut. I knew that if I didn't look into popping down a bottle of pepto bismol soon my nausea would only get worse; though I'd probably have to buy one since I used the last of my supply on the flight already. Me and my stomach never liked being any higher than two stories, fear of heights you see.
Yeah, you heard me; it's a rational and quite common fear! So what if I feel like shitting myself if I ever looked over the side of a cliff?! I'm the kind of person that would happily stay on ground floor for the rest of my life, thank you very much.
Sadly I had to face this fear every, single, day of the week because my office had been on the twenty-seventh floor back in New York...I couldn't help but wonder if I had pissed someone off at one point in my life and that was their little revenge; odd to think of scientists as being the vindictive sort.
And that brings me to why I'm busy trying not to vomit up my last meal in an underground train station half a world away. My little trans-Atlantic jaunt was for a special conference being held here in the old country.
I bet you just thought "Well that sounds as interesting as watching paint dry. How could this possibly be worth another second of my time?" Well, first of all to answer that, this is my sub-conscious and I can say whatever the hell I want! Mariachi Mole-Men from Mars! See, I can say whatever I want, and if you don't like it then you can sod off! Secondly this "Boring" conference was being held by this brilliant Swedish chap that had actually invented a way to transcribe those electrical pulses your spongy wrinkled grey matter emits into solid images! I shit you not; this Viking of Science had actually looked at a person's thought!
Granted, similar technology and techniques had been done before, but the most anyone had gotten out of it was a blurred smudge. This on the other hand was a highly detailed picture. Imagine it like a HD television while the previous method was like that black and white box that sat in your grandma's living room.
Beautiful raw science aside I guess I should explain more about who I actually am before I venture further, though since this is my dying brain cells that I'm talking too so it would really worry me if those little buggers didn't already know all this.
Ahem, let's start with a name shall we? My name is Marcus T. Longbottom. Before you say anything; yes I know that last name is the same as a character from Harry Potter, and no I don't care. I got enough crap from having a name for a derrière crammed into mine back in Elementary School.
The "T" stands Thatch by the way; normally I use that as a surname due to obvious reasons.
I was 56 when I met my end. I had been married once, but after a few difficult loveless years Elise and I had to break it up with a divorce paper and a lawyer. I never remarried after that. It was for the best I suppose; I always loved my work more... I hope that didn't sound callus of me. Damn, I'm pretty sure it did.
Let me clarify on that: I'm a Neuroscientist by trade, been poking around brains for near on two decades now and I loved my job! Now, before you get the impression that I'm some sort of creepy Frankenstein, who just goes around harvesting people's brains like some sort of collector zombie, stabbing them with a rusty knife for shits and giggles I'll have you know that I did all the stabby stabby with electrodes for the sake of improving all of Humanity! And Science! Seriously, if it wasn't for people like me who wondered what would happen if I poked someone's living brain with a metal stick while it was still stuck to a person modern medicine would still be back in the dark ages!
Would you want your cancerous tumor treated with leaches and an exorcism? I think not!
I didn't limit my fetish to simple cranial pursuits though, oh no, I did a bit of it all! Robotics, Particle Physics, Astronomy, heck, I even had a minor degree in Geology under my belt. To say that I loved all things science was a bit of an understatement; I seduced it, French-kissed it, and made hard shameful love it!
Some people would call me weird or a total nerd like they did back in High School, but I didn't care, there was just so much out there that we didn't understand; and I wanted to know it all! What can I say, I'm a curious bastard.
Anyways, so as you can probably tell once you add that little job description/almost criminal lust for scientific answers, and that tidbit of info on mind-blowing science (You see what I did there? Because Brains, and stuff... Yes…? No? O-oh, okay then, I guess that was a pretty bad pun… I'll just continue on with the story then,) together you get why I was sitting on a bench at an underground station half a world away from home, green in the face and desperately trying not to think about the flight I had just suffered through.
Great, you got that all down? Because I'm not going to repeat this butt-load of exposition. I'm serious, I won't.
* ~ * ~ *
So there I was, resting on that bench next to the station's platform with my luggage sitting next to me, regretting even thinking of eating that trash the airline's call 'food'. Even if the broadest definition of edible had been used to describe that horrid chunk of rubbery turkey and side of something green that I had absolutely no clue what it had been, you could have hardly called that a meal. At the present moment my stomach was busy contemplating whether or not it was poisoned with a shard of uranium, or empty enough to call out for something else to fill the void. It also didn't help that my gut was still recovering from my fear induced nausea from my flight.
Damn it, what I wouldn't give for a jug of Pepto-Bismol right about now!
As I sat there trying to get a hold of my bowls several trains had already come and gone. I could have already left the platform and have been half way to my hotel by now, but I played it safe and waited until my gut had silenced itself. I didn't feel like adding another mess for the janitors to clean up off the floor. Those poor souls, I remember working as a “Sanitation Engineer” for one of my first part time jobs in High School, it was still by far one of the worst jobs I had ever had.
"Spike, just look at this place! It's simply amazing!" I heard a girly voice yell out in the station all of a sudden.
Normally I didn't pay the noisy tourists any attention, but having nothing better to do I welcomed the new distraction from the civil war in my stomach. As I looked up I noticed that there was now a young lady standing front of me. She didn't look too old, perhaps in her last year in high school or even freshmen year of College or University. Her hair was dyed a rather vibrant shade of violet with a streak or two of magenta thrown into the mix. She wore a purple skirt, shirt, green wool vest, and something that I had honestly thought shriveled up and died in a dark corner a quarter of a century ago: purple leg warmers.
From her colour scheme I could tell that she really, and I mean REALLY, loved purple; enough so that she'd attempted to become its avatar and spread the good word of purple to everyone on Earth, telling the masses that their savior the God of Purple had marked their spot in the soft afterlife of Purple Heaven.
God I hated that colour.
Seriously, the only people who wore it were ether in love with themselves to the point that their narcissistic ego had declared that they should wear the colour that Royalty and Emperors normally wore since they considered themselves as such. Or that they couldn't decide whether they like red or blue more, so they just went for the middle ground. To be fair, this was my totally biased opinion... Though the several hundred twats and frat boys I saw almost daily wearing that colour on my way to work it didn't help Purple's plead of innocence.
Now back to reality. The girl had begun swinging her head back and forth as if she had been trying out for a spot as the leading role in some exorcist horror flick. Her long hair swung around madly as she attempted to look in every single direction at once. I had to duck a few times to prevent the strands from slapping me in the face.
"Oh my gosh!" The girl gushed as she peered down at the tracks, "This world's Humans have such advanced methods of construction and transportation; not even Canterlot has this level of technology! The machine power needed to even run a train such as this underground is simply amazing!"
What's amazing to me is how totally off your rocker you are. I mean come on, it's just a subway! How could you possible call this anything other than ordinary? Also, what's the deal with you talking about Humanity in a third person perspective?
It was then that I noticed that nestled inside her tote bag -purple yet again- was a small dog. To my horror I saw that even that poor little creature couldn't escape the dreaded grasp of purple's evil. She had dyed her own dog freaking PURPLE! Who does that?! WHO?!
That's when I had decided that I couldn't just sit back and let this bimbo nut job be. She had crossed the line with the puppy. I liked dogs too much to allow her to abuse it any further.
Now, as anyone who knew me would testify, I had a very short fuse. At this point the powder keg had been primed, and I was ready to unleash hellfire on this poor excuse for a Human being!
"Miss, could I have a word with you?" I said evenly as I stood up from the bench, my rogue belly all but forgotten as I felt the heat rise in my cheeks. The girl, noticing for the first time that there was someone behind her, whipped around to face the man that was addressing her. For a brief moment her eyes widened as her pupils shrank into pin pricks. Yeah, that's right, I'm talking to you vile purple fiend!
For a second her mouth dropped to the floor and flopped around as if she was attempting to say something. When she didn't say anything after half a minute of acting like a trout I decided to take the initiative. "May I ask you something?"
She closed her jaw and began nodding slowly, not really sure what it was that that I had wanted from her; she was obviously stunned for whatever reason, maybe she was one of those overly shy types. I hadn't gotten this kind of reaction since my days as a University professor back in Chicago a few years ago, it was the same look that students had given me when I'd snuck up behind them in class and had asked them as question about something that they had been too busy texting to have known about. Damn was that feeling ever satisfying!
"Why did you dye your dog's fur like that?" I asked as I pointed at her bag where the poor thing was now attempting to hide himself in. I coolly smiled as I tilted my head to the side, my eyes boring down into the shorter girl.
For an instant the girl was taken aback, yet it wasn't from fear so much as from puzzlement.
"Excuse me?" She asked, her sing-songy voice replaced by incredulous bewilderment.
I rolled my eyes at her, as if she could feign ignorance about changing another creature's coat to something so unnatural and cruel. "I asked why you'd force your preferred colour of the rainbow on a helpless dog for your sick and twisted idea of fashion." Yeah, maybe I was overstepping myself here, but the look of fear on the pup only reinforced my steel.
A look of irritation mixed in with some confusion appeared on the long haired purple girl as she crumpled her brow into a frown, probably wondering why an old man with steel grey hair and an equally grey suit was harassing her like this.
"...Um, Sir? I have no clue as to what you're even talking about; Spike's always been this colour." She started to back away, a hand now on her tote as if she was trying to protect her victim.
"Don't be daft, dog's don't have purple fur!" I snapped, I was probably still irritated from the flight and horrid in-flight food, maybe I should have calmed down a notch before something bad happens... Whoops, too late, something just happened...
By this point the girl had a look of pure fear in her eyes. I couldn't blame her; when I got angry about something even I scared myself shitless sometimes. This next part was why I should have just kept my cool, bad things usually happen when you lose your cool.
With a squeak of fright the girl backed up from me and my now red face of fury even further than before, and wouldn't you know? There was an edge to a train platform. Before my eyes could register what had just happened I heard a scream, a thud, and a groan of pain, three things you do not want to hear at a train station.
Oh shit son! I just forced a girl onto the tracks!
As fast as I could I ran over to the edge and peered over the side to find the purple dressed girl curled up between the rails. Thank god that these tracks weren't electrified; otherwise she'd have been a charred to a crisp right about now.
"Get out of there!" I shouted, "A train'll come any second!"
The girl looked up at me with fear written all over her face, "W-weren't you just yelling at me a second ago?"
"Aye, but that's not important right this second, if you don't get out of there you'll get crushed!" I hollered as I bent down on a knee and reached out with one of my arms for her.
By now the other transit users had ventured over to see what the commotion was all about, a few old ladies gasped and held their hands over their mouths in shock as they realized what was happening. An alarm went off somewhere as the station was filled with the deafening sound of a claxon. Out of the corner of my eye I saw a pin prick of light enter the tunnel.
Oh crap.
I snapped my other arm out and beckoned for the young lady to reach up for them, "Get out NOW!
"I-I can't, I think I twisted my leg!" She said as she attempted to reach up for my arms, she barely even reached my fingers. A horn from down in the tunnel drew her attention away from me and to her right; she instantly was paralyzed with fear at what she saw. Her whole body shook and trembled as she stared at the oncoming light, like a deer caught in the headlights of an eighteen wheeler. Her eyes began to tear up as she quietly sobbed.
Damn it all to hell! All I wanted was to teach her not to abuse a dog like that, not murder her!
Thinking fast I realized that she'd never be able to get out in time to escape the oncoming train, she seemed to have lost touch with reality and had been hypnotized by the sights and sounds of her imminent death. She wasn't getting out of there by herself, and in that brief moment I knew what I had to do. I didn't like it one bit.
Like a lightning bolt I dived into the tracks beside her cowering form. Normally I'd never do anything like this, I wasn’t a hero kinda guy, but since I had been responsible for this disaster I knew that I had to fix it. My old body wouldn't be able to get out in time, but I could save the girl.
I bent down behind the girl and hoisted her up from under her arms. I bent my knees and with all my might I rudely chucked the girl over the edge of the platform. With a startled yelp her body landed well and clear of the tracks. Once she realized what had happened she spun around in a flash to stare with rapt horror at what I had just done.
With a bit of added satisfaction I noticed that her bag still held the purple dyed dog. It looked at me with the same terrified eyes that its master was staring at me with. I heard a woman's scream followed by a rough horn, I guessed from how close it sounded that it was nearly on top of me. I didn't have the agility or strength left in my body to make it clear at this point.
I felt a weird calm wash over me, as if I knew that everything was alright, even though it probably wasn’t. I had lived a good, long life, and sure I regretted a lot of things but somehow those things didn't matter anymore. It was the end. I looked to my right and I saw that the train was hurtling towards me; I could even see the terrified expression on the train driver's face through his small window.
One thought went through my brain at that very last second.
Well fuck.
* ~ * ~ *
Everything happened in such a short period of time that it took Twilight several moments to process what had just happened. One moment, she was standing on the train station under the Human city, admiring the engineering marvel, and then the next she found that she was sitting on the floor surrounded by a crowd of anxious and spooked Humans.
It all slowly came back to her; she had been on another excursion through one of the gateways to other worlds, researching more about what was on the other side of the many mirrors that Canterlot housed in storage. She had wanted to finish Star Swirl the Bearded’s research on each of the worlds that he’d came across in the making of the spell necessary to bridge separate universes.
When Twilight and her faithful assistant Spike had come across this particular portal she had been surprised to find herself in a subterranean network of tunnels, filled with Humans of all things, the same creatures she had found on her first venture across to alternate realities. This world seemed much less colourful, yet at the same time much more highly advanced than even the Canterlot High School.
It had been a shock to see that Humans were in more than one universe, but that only drove the bookish Alicorn to discover why this parallel was so.
After she had entered the station proper she had been met with the sight of something shooting into more of the tunnels. She had only seen a glimpse of it before it disappeared down its dark hole, but she could hardly believe it: she had just seen a train that ran underground!
As she gaped slack-jawed at the empty space that the Human train had occupied only moments ago another train car zipped into the platform and began unloading its passengers. A few of the Humans gave her a look that told Twilight that they thought that she was being weird, but she didn’t care all that much, she was just in silent awe at the machine that stood in front of her. The sleek white and black exterior giving off a slight reflection, the windows with the illuminated interior giving off a slight glow.
“Woah! This place is so cool!” Twilight heard Spike say from inside a Human’s version of a saddle bag on her shoulder. Apparently still a dog in this world as well. "Take a look at this!"
He was staring wide eyed at a poster on one of the walls, both he and Twilight yelped as it suddenly morphed into a completely different picture with miniature figures walking across it. Twilight nodded in agreement with her companion's opinion and wiped out a scroll and quill, taking note of the advertisement which had told her about some to do with reducing some sort of “Emissions” by walking to work.
For the next hour or so Twilight whizzed around from one corner of the station to the next, studying the facilities and the numerous transit users, there must have been thousands of Humans passing through the station while Twilight had been there. Ponyville only had a few hundred residents and seeing the flow of alien bodies exit and enter the trains Twilight realized just how large the community these Humans must have.
After nearly half the scrolls she had taken with her had been filled with all the knowledge she had gained from her stay in the station Twilight decided that it was finally time: She was going to board one of those trains when it came to the station.
Sure, it was reckless of her, but she doubted that she’d get too lost. From what she could tell she could just hop a returning tram and be back by the portal before dinner.
Then she had met him, or rather, he had met Twilight.
She had been standing at the part of the platform that the train docked at when she had been confronted by an elderly Human stallion in a dull grey suit. He had been mad at her for some reason that she didn’t understand, yelling about how she had changed Spike’s colour as if it was a crime of some sort. It might have been for all she had known, but there was little she could do to disprove that. Perhaps this land wasn’t so colourful as Equestria, and the animals never had any colour? Regardless, Twilight didn’t really know what to do with the stallion that had come furiously out of nowhere, and so she opted to back away… In the wrong direction…
As soon as her shoe had left the concrete flooring a sense of vertigo grabbed hold of the Equestrian, sending Twilight tumbling onto the dangerous tracks. In her short fall Twilight managed to let out a shriek before she crashed into the ground below.
A sharp, searing pain began burning up Twilights leg, causing the temporary Human to whimper.
“Twilight, we need to get off the tracks!” Spike said as he started to panic from inside the bag, thankfully not crushed underneath Twilight when she fell.
“…I-I know Spike…” Twilight grunted as she began to stand, only to fall back down again onto the grimy floor between the rails, as soon as she began moving her leg the pain only became that much more unbearable.
“Get out of there!” It was that Human stallion once again. He was leaning over the tracks and reaching down to Twilight with one of his arms, offering to rescue her. “A train’ll come any second!” He yelled, but this time more in panic and worry than anger.
Twilight gulped, still shaken up by the way that the Human had acted towards her, "W-weren't you just y-yelling at me a second ago?" Twilight stuttered, how could things have gotten so out of hoof like this?
"Aye, but that's not important right this second, if you don't get out of there you'll get crushed!" The stallion barked, a small crowd had formed behind him, jostling to see what had happened and turning away in horror once they saw what had happened to Twilight... or what might happen to her if she stayed on the tracts.
An alarm went off somewhere and the noise reached the point where if Twilight still had her Pony ears she'd have them pressed hard against her head.
The elderly Human had noticed something in the corner of his vision and twisted his head to get a better look at it. His face paled in an instant as the blood rushed away from his face, taking away his beetroot complexion. He snapped his attention back to Twilight, and shot out another arm for her to grab onto. "Get out of there NOW!"
The panic in his voice only made Twilight do more of the same, "I-I can't, I think I twisted my leg!"
With both of her arms Twilight desperately reached out to the man, her hopes were dashed to pieces when she realized that she couldn't reach him. Right then a honk of a train's emergency horn blared; it was then that Twilight realized that there was no hope left.
She slumped back down onto her back legs when all the life left her body. She turned and watched as the heavy machine rocketed towards where she sat on the tracks. That was it, she was going to die. After all she had gone through, all the times that she had risked her life to rescue her land she was going to die here in this alien world, and the worst part was that it wasn't at the hands of some villain like Chrysalis or Sombra, but because of an unfortunate accident.
Why did things have to go so wrong?
For a brief moment she wondered what her friends were doing back in Equestria; Applejack tending to her crop, Rarity planning her next fashion revolution, and Rainbow Dash working hard to become a Wonderbolt. Celestia would be heart broken when she found out that her student had passed on like this. A tear slowly fell down her cheek as she realized that she'd never see her friends and family again.
After this point Twilight didn't know exactly what had happened. One moment she was about to get crushed by the oncoming train, then the next she found herself being tossed onto the air. Her body slammed into the concrete, the course flooring ripping the skin on her elbows, the pain was well enough to bring her to her senses.
What?! H-how? Twilight's mind raced for an answer before her eyes found it for her.
There on the tracks stood the old man. He was looking at her with a small sad smile, his suit covered in a light coat of dust and his tie was crooked. Then he was gone. Just gone. One moment he was there, and then the next there was only a speeding train. There were quite a few shrill screams as the crowd saw what had happened to the man.
Twilight shivered there on the floor. Spike had hopped out of the bag and was trying to say something... Or maybe that was the crowd that was trying to talk to her, Twilight couldn't tell. She couldn't see the faces of the Humans, they all had blank faces. But that Human had a face on him, the memory of his almost apologetic smile still there in her memory.
Twilight felt like she was about to throw up.
A single thought filled Twilight's mind; I need to get home.
Slowly she stood up and dusted herself off, now numb to the voices and actions of the crowd. Her injured leg throbbed, and as she put some pressure on it she wanted to let out an ear splitting scream. She didn't though; instead she picked Spike up and ran out of the station. She wanted to get away from the train, she wanted to escape the eyes of the crowd, she wanted to get to the mirror and get back home.
Twilight dashed past a surprised woman and ran into the tunnel's Mare's Room, leaving the slightly miffed lady to shout out how careless she had been. Twilight noticed with some relief that there wasn't anypony inside the room. The mirror stretched out before her, it ran from one end to the other above the sinks.
Without a moment's hesitation Twilight leaped into the reflective glass and found herself back in her world. She was back in her old body once more too. There were several Royal guards standing watch over the Mirror and as soon as Twilight had crashed through on her belly they sprang to her side. At this point Twilight didn't care anymore; she was home, and safe.
The first thing the bruised purple Alicorn did before the guards could even ask what had happened was cry.
* ~ * ~ *
You thought that was the end of my side of the story, didn't you? Well sorry to say that's not exactly the case. Despite being slammed into by a several ton train car with enough force to paint the walls red with most of my blood I survived that meeting of face-to-train. By some miracle I was alive!
That's a good thing... Right? Wrong.
It would have been a mercy if I had actually died back there on the tracks, do you honestly think a Human being could return to their everyday life after being in a fustercluck like that? I think not.
After the paramedics scraped what remained of me off the tracks and onto a stretcher I was shipped off to a hospital where I had my squishy bits shoved back into me. I don't remember all that much from all this except two things: The colour red, and that my soul had been opened up to an entire universe of pain that mortal men were never meant to know of.
All this had happened a month ago.
At the present moment I was laying under the white and bluish sheets of a hospital bed. From what I could gather from the doctors talking to my family the collision had pulverized every bone in my body, snapped my spine, ruptured several important fleshy organs which ranged from my lungs to my kidneys, and to top it off most of my limbs were ether a crumpled heap of mince meat or completely gone. Great.
The ambient soft pings and blips of all the machines holding me afloat were practically the only sounds I ever knew for my stay in that small bleak room. Every now and then my brother and sister would pop in and say hi. It was a real shame that I couldn't say the same. Apparently after hearing of my accident they had rushed over to the UK from Chicago just in time to fill out the insurance forms; see, this is why you get travel insurance kiddos.
Bill was silent for the most part, staring at me from where he sat in the corner of the room, quietly holding his head in hands. He never spoke much other than to talk to the doctors or my little sister in a futile attempt to comfort her.
Jenny on the other hand usually was bawling her eyes out at my side, saying things like she should have been there and all that. And that she was somehow to blame for this; she never was, and I desperately wanted to tell her that things were going to be okay.
It was relatively easy for Bill to make it over, since he was an industrial plant owner, and he could excuse himself for his visit; Jenny however had a family of four to deal with back home and I was both touched and concerned that she had left them to see me like this.
We all rarely saw eye to eye, choosing the path of a man of science never really sat well with a family that had spent several generations in the Chicago factories; yet I was glad to have them there with me all the same.
Now up to this point my mind could handle everything, including accepting the accident that I had made and atoned for, but here's the kicker that really makes my mind spin: I was in a coma. So by all logic I shouldn't be thinking like this, right? I mean, in real life when you go into a coma your brain doesn't have any activity, you don't even dream. In fact, judging by the EEG at my side I could tell that not even a spark was left inside my wrinkled lobes.
I was a vegetable.
So, how do you explain rational thought and the ability to sense your surroundings when your brain has less life in it than that of a Sea Cucumber? Simple, you don't. Not with any sanity at least.
The best explanation I could come up with was that I was Astral Projecting... By Odin's mighty beard, I was having an out of body experience!
Sure, I had entertained the thought about such a thing being possible a long time ago, like, when I was nine! But I couldn't describe this as anything less than that. I was standing in the suit that I had 'died' in right beside the chair that Bill was moping around in, watching Jenny soak the sheets in a flood of tears with a transparent second body.
I had found myself in this state a week after I had been admitted into the care of the Charring Cross Hospital. At first I had done what any ration and sane person would have done in that situation: I panicked!
It wasn't until I had ran screaming through my twentieth orderly that I stopped and paused to think, only to come to a conclusion that I wasn't entirely of this world anymore.
I soon began applying Occam's Razor as my ethereal brain came up with explanations to my current predicament. I eliminated the theory that this was all just a dream right off the bat. None of my dreams were ever this detailed, as most of the time they were as if Van Gough had tried to paint a Picasso imitation, only to have a stroke halfway through (The kind that deprives your brain of blood, not the kind with the brush).
My second theory was that I was drugged out of my mind from all the pain killers. Though I'm fairly certain that I wouldn't be stuck here in this drab hospital of I was high on morphine; I'd probably be riding a gigantic armored wolf while dressed as a Viking fighting an army of robot zombie pirates. But since I didn't see any dinosaurs shooting lasers I guess that rules out that theory. Plus everything still looked as normal as ever, so that's another strike against tripping balls, not that I ever had any experience with that to begin with anyways as you can probably tell.
The third theory I had of being dead was thrown aside when I had found out to my surprise -and mortification- that my body was still alive, just barely at least. It had been an odd sight, seeing yourself being rushed off into an operating room like you were in some sort of TV hospital drama.
That had only left me with one more theory; that all that hippy hocus-pocus nonsense of out of body experiences actually held some weight after all. That train must have knocked more than my bones out of my body. It was certainly the only theory that seemed to fit at the time.
With my new grasp on my situation I proceeded to do what any mature, and responsible, adult would do when presented with being turned invisible and immune to the mortal realm: I peeked up the nurses skirts!
After the fun and perverseness of voyeurism had passed, (and finding out that every one of the nurses here didn't even have a shred of good taste in undergarments), I decided to look for where the doctors had carted my body off to after they were done with the fifth operation that day.
What I found in my room wasn't pretty.
"Come on Jen, it's getting late... We should head back to the hotel," Billy said as he rose from his chair, the purple bags under each of his eyes told me that he sorely need some rest.
Jenny wiped away as much of her tears as she could with her sleeves and glumly nodded back. I silently watched them leave, my heart breaking at the sight of how much pain I was causing each of them.
So, that's the story so far. I've taken to talking to my sub-consciousness like this, since I can't really talk to anyone else here. I'm not even sure if displaced souls have one, but I might as well exercise my mind while I still have it right? Who knows, maybe this little internal dialog might just help reboot my real brain and start a healing process... I'm really just throwing hopes at the wall and hoping that it'll stick, but it's worth a shot I suppose.
* ~ * ~ *
Later that night, as I was busy watching the city lights of London through my window, something rather unexpected happened in my room.
The lights were out and only a night shift of nurses and staff roamed the halls. It was well past midnight, and the entire hospital had been cloaked in deep shadows. No one really made a sound in the darkness, well, except for maybe the life support systems that made Darth Vader sound as quiet as a ninja by comparison.
Since apparitions didn't sleep I had to quite the boring time; it was a shame that I couldn't touch anything, because if that were the case I would have made good use of the television stuck in the corner. For a brief moment I wondered what the BBC aired at two in the morning before tucking that thought away, no sense getting my hopes up on anything interesting that was beyond my current reach.
I had been busying myself with counting the cars that passed by on the road below when I noticed a light flash behind me, normally that would have been the patrolling security guard with his flash light making his rounds, but this time the light had been more bluish than I had remembered, that, and it was constantly shining instead of simply passing by.
With my curiosity perked with the chance at something new I turned around from the window to search for the light.
Had some angel of death stopped by to finally release me from mine and my family's torment?
Nope, guess again! It was that girl from the station, the one that I nearly brutally murdered!... Or at least that's what I first thought when I saw her disgustingly purple hair (Yeah, I still hated that colour, even more so now that I'd practically died for fighting it.) Instead of a young bookish girl though, I found a horse...
Well I'm disappointed; I really had this mental image of the great reaper of souls being a tall skeleton, with a razor sharp scythe as tall as or taller than him, and wearing a black flowing cloak that flowed like the mighty tentacles of Cthulhu.
What? I'm a sucker for the classics. The purple unicorn was a rather large let down.
Oh well, I guess it's time to get sent to the deepest depths of hell regardless of my preference in soul harvesters. I held no illusions of a spot up beyond any pearly golden gates, not after all the bat-shit insane things I did in my half century of life.
I'll never forget that amazing night in Rio; there was so much tequila and unholy screaming that long and humid night. Ah, those were good times, good times... Though, I'm pretty sure that the cartel thug never got over the mental and emotional trauma, even if his scars would be healed by now.
Don't look at me like that; he'd tried to rape my baby sister! Nobody, and I damn well mean NOBODY harms my family and gets away with it! I had caught him in the act of trying to force himself onto a then nineteen year old Jenny after he had ran off with her from the bar. By the next morning I had finished playing doctor and left him dangling upside down from a lamp post, bound and gagged with the words "Scum" burned into his chest with an acetylene torch. I had enough of a heart to sow his chest cavity back up again at the very least; that and I had called for an ambulance for the bastard.
As I was saying, I now had a purple pony thing in my room, probably here to collect my soul or something. I mean, how else could something that colourful make it past security if it wasn't some kind of supernatural being. I wondered briefly if it had taken on the same likeness of that girl as some sort of cruel cosmic joke.
Then to my continued surprise, another larger flash appeared and this time the light lasted as it formed a white circular disk about two meters in diameter. This time a taller version of the horse popped into the room. At least this time this one looked more intimidating, aside from it being taller its colour pallet was much darker; consisting mainly of navy and royal blue. It's mane and tail even had a freaking constellation of stars in them! Plus I had to admit that the black chest piece and crown looked badass.
The second taller horse trotted up next the first, staring at me (My body, not my soul) like I was the most tragic thing in existence. "This creature has suffered greatly, his fate was most unfortunate." One of her blue ears twitched backwards, I could only guess that this was some kind of body language, but I suppose it meant something along the lines of pity.
Normally, I didn't appreciate being treated like some kind of abused kitten, and I would have shouted out that I was actually not in that much pain if I hadn't just realized that they hadn't seen me quite yet. Being see-through kinda does that to a person. So, until I got a grasp on what the heck was actually going down I decided to lay low back in the darker corner of the room.
The shorter purple one seemed rather glum at seeing me and my casts, her eyes were drawn close to the floor and her ears were flat against her head, as if she thought she was guilty of something. She trotted up closer to my bed and eventually sat right next to me, her head just reached above the edge of the bedding with a front row seat to take in the ghastly array of bandages and raw flesh. Even I had to admit that I looked like a cancerous growth on Satan's left ass cheek, so I couldn't blame her when the miniature horse flinched as she looked at me.
"I... I'm so, so sorry that you to ended up like this..." She said in a low whisper, "I-I shouldn't have f-fallen off that platform..."
And then the ball dropped, not only did it smash through the floor, but it tunneled down through the Earth's crust and into the molten Mantle. I even felt my jaw falling closely behind it.
WHAT?! So this purple unicorn had been that girl all along!? I couldn't believe it; this was just way too unrealistic and totally insane. Sure, I could handle most things, up to and including that Death was actually a horse; at least that I could tie in with the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse literally being horses... But this colourful fantasy creature being the whole reason for what had happened was too much.
For a moment I wondered if this all was just a dream and what would Sigmund Freud have to say about any of this; probably that I had repressed childhood memories, a lust for bestiality, mother issues, and that the horns on both the horses heads were a phallic symbol... Yeah, that didn't help at all; in fact I think it only made my mental state even worse. Thanks Freud, you're a real dick.
In the moments that I stared wide eyed and slack jawed the second pony thing walked up and sat next to her companion. She lifted a silver-shod hoof and rested on the purple one's shoulders, though it probably wasn't used to the act and it came off as a little awkward, "Tis not your fault dear Twilight, this... Human had instigated those events and had been largely responsible for its own undoing."
Yeah, I had to agree with blue butt here, this had been pretty much my fault since I was the one that had gotten up in arms about that dog being dyed a shade of purple. Now that I think about it that had been rather immature and stupid of me...
"I-I Know...it's just that I still can't get it out of my head that somehow I had caused this... That I did this to him..." Twilight, as it appeared to be her name, hunched over further and I could swear that she was crying.
"Damn it all to hell! It's not your freaking fault, you shape-shifting purple pony unicorn thing!" I yelled out at the two ponies. Whoops, there you go again Marcus, always letting your temper get the better of you.
The two horses whipped their heads behind them with a look of utter shock. When they saw that in the corner stood the very human that they had been addressing on the bed I could swear I heard their eyes dilate to pin pricks as if they were some kind of camera lens. They both snapped their head back in unison to the body beside them and then back to me.
I waved and nervously kicked my shoe, "Hi."
Their reaction would have been rather comical, had it not been for the ear drum rupturing shrieks that filled the hospital. In a flash of fur, and feathers apparently, both Twilight and the other pony thing ran past me and straight into the bright portal from whence they came.
"Hey, wait up! I still need to apologize for causing you severe emotional trauma!" I hollered back at them as I ran into the white portal after them.
* ~ * ~ *