There is no one on the other end, is there?
No one is reading these letters, or if they are, they don’t care about helping me. No one is going to help me get out of here. I’m going to be stuck here, alone, with nothing to do. Forever.
But you know what?
(Not that there is a “you” out there.)
I think I can use this time alone. Maybe get my head straight. Maybe if I write this down on paper, it’ll actually make sense.
Probably not, but at least it’s something to do.
Now that I have decided that these letters aren’t actually reaching anyone, I’m going to ease up on this stupid past tense I’ve been using for the recounting of last week.
Continuing after the part where I blacked in the Here.
Coming to felt only slightly less worse than how I felt before passing out. Every bone, muscle, and thought ached as I lay on a cold wooden floor. I was content to just stay on the floor for a moment while I gave myself a small survey.
Please rate your current experience, from one being the best, to ten being the worst.
Forty. Can I please go home?
Do you know where you are?
No. Can I please go home now?
Are you having suicidal thoughts?
No, but I am having thoughts of home.
What would you like the most right now.
A nice, cold glass of Coke.
Please rate your current experience, from one being the best, to ten being the worst.
Forty? Um… somethings not right.
Do you know where you are?
Somewhere strange, no doubt.
I stopped answering the questions that were popping up in my head once I realized that I wasn’t the one asking them, and I opened my eyes to find out what was. It was a room, dimly lit by lamps hanging on a high ceiling. There were a few tables and a bar in the center of the room. Featureless knickknacks adorned the wall; it was too dark to see any real detail.
Here. For one, nothing was moving, for the most part, as my eyes adjusted to the gloom. Nothing was shifting, changing, turning, or rattling at all. Which is just how I like my inanimate objects.
Secondly, it was warm. Not the savory kind of warm of a fireplace on winter’s day, mind you, but the dreary kind that settles over you like hot sleet, which is just the thing after being in Here, where there was neither warmth or cold, just a neutral, bland feeling of nothingness.
What was disconcerting about the bar was its occupants. There wasn’t any clear way to describe them without using the word ghostly, or unreal. They weren’t transparent or anything, but the key feature about them was a lack of features. Yes, they had faces, hair, clothes, and everything, but at the same time they were nothing. I’m not writing that they didn’t have faces or anything, that they were just “blanks”, because that would imply that something could be added to make them look real.
The best way I can describe them would be to give “you” an example.
If you’ve ever laid awake in bed at night, just as you are about fall asleep, you might begin to notice strange things in your room. Creatures laying on the covers, small squirming things leaning on the edge of the bed near your feet, or a tall figure looming over you just as you shut your eyes.
If you let these monsters scare you, let them rouse you from your sleep, and make you scramble out of your comfy bed for the nearest light switch to reveal these invaders, you will find that they were only a bulge in the cover, or a tossed pillow, or a poster on your wall. And after catching your breath, you’ll laugh to yourself and realize that it was only your imagination getting the better of you.
An effect called Sleep Paralysis, where your brain is dreaming, but you are still awake leading to hallucinations that you usually never remember.
But the things I saw weren’t pillows or toys or anything whose silhouette could be mistaken for something else in the dark. They formed their own silhouettes, ones created from the outlines of nothingness, outlines which are filled with more nothingness until it could almost be called a something. But it’s still only nothing pretending it’s something.
Are you having suicidal thoughts?
One of them was staring at me. Its mouth was moving in sync with the words in my head.
What would you like most right now? It “said”.
“To get as far away as possible from you.” I said, actually speaking.
It nodded in an unnerving kind of way and walked away. While I was relieved that it wasn’t staring at me, I still felt horrible after what Discord did to me.
My still head felt like it was full of thick silly putty, which gave me the gnawing feeling that he still might be screwing with me. I walked around the bar, and was actually surprised to end up in the same spot I started in. It gave me hope that Discord wasn’t behind this since, if he was, I would have ended up on the ceiling half way through.
I passed a few of the tables and ‘heard’ a few of those things ‘talk’
She left me, I can’t believe she actually left me.
Thirty years! Thirty years and they up and fire me!
What am I going to tell my kids…
It should have been me.
I’ve lost everything.
Why me?
Why me?
Why me?
It went on and on, and the funny thing was, there were more voices than there were speakers. While I was actually walking around something resembled a bustling pub, it was more like swimming in a sea of humming radios. While unpleasant, it could have been much worse.
Amongst the buzz I asked myself an important question, one that was vital for me to answer if I had any hope of getting out of here.
Where is Discord?
A nearby grouping of those Things parted like the Red Sea, revealing the Spirit of Chaos. He was sitting in a booth by himself, surrounded by empty glasses which probably had chocolate milk in them at one point or, knowing Discord, will fill themselves with chocolate milk at any moment.
He was busy fiddling with a box of napkins and had a sour expression on his face. I wordlessly slid into the other side of the booth to get a closer look at what he was doing. He scrunched, tore, folded, and methodically placed each napkin from the box into an ever growing ball of paper. What it was supposed to be, I didn’t have the faintest clue.
So after watching him work in silence for a while I finally asked, “What’cha doin?”
To which he said, “Something,” without even bothering to look up from the ball.
“What kind of something?” I said in return, asking one of the most annoying questions one could ask somebody who was busy just for the sake of being busy.
Discord sighed and put the ball aside. He rolled his eyes as the napkins in the box beside him begun to move to the ball by themselves, folding into little boots that marched into the white sphere.
“What do you want Ashton?” he wearily asked, leaning on the table with his elbows.
I thought about what I actually wanted. Then I thought about what I could actually get from Discord and said, “I’d like to know where we are this time.”
“We are There.”
“And?” I asked, waiting for him to continue.
He loudly groaned and wiped his face with his hand. “This is where all your world’s bitter frustration funnels into, where it will then simmer until it becomes something else.”
“And what is that supposed to mean?” I asked, mystified.
He thumped the table and rubbed his eyes before answering, “Ashton, I am not going spend what would be the better part of a decade explaining the metaphysical zeitgeist phenomenon at work around you!” He sighed again, and I realized that he looked rather upset.
I stopped pushing the subject, and asked about another pressing issue. Said issue being the one that was quite literally, pressing on my mind like a heavy wet sack of fudge.
“Mind talking about what happened in the Here?”
Discord grabbed one of the glasses and undrank some milk. “Yes, but I suppose we are going to talk about it regardless.”
“Yep. Did you really need to do that to me? I feel so violated!” I said, starting to get angry at the recollection of what happened. Making me fall off The Empire State building was one thing, but forcing me to relive my memories was almost unforgivable.
“Not violated enough it seems,” he quietly said to himself.
“Pardon?!” I yelled at Discord, who was staring at me pensively, like I was some kind of strange painting.
“You weren’t supposed to remember that part, but if it makes you feel better, I skipped over most of the unimportant parts until I realized you had almost nothing to offer.”
“Oh sure that makes me feel so much better,” I said in sarcastic relief, slightly miffed that he thought I was mostly useless. He hadn’t even looked through the parts involving the Equestrians before deciding to give up. “My head feels like it’s full of lead lint, but at least you know how we met now!” After my complaint, I backtracked through what he said and asked, “What do you mean I was supposed to forget about that? Is there something special about me?”
Discord laughed and said,” You? Special?! Hah! Do you think you are the Chosen One, Ashton?” He was too busy laughing to talk for a few moments. “Hah! Really, Ashton, you’re not even remotely special. No, you are merely coincidental, if only because accidents require somepony to make them and fate isn’t that silly.” He grabbed one of the napkin boots and wiped his teary eyes and said, “In fact I’m certain that this whole mess is coincidental.”
With my ego thoroughly stabbed, I twiddled my thumbs and asked, “So, where do we go from here?”
I really should have asked how I was able to remember what he did, but I guess it wasn’t really important to me at the time. I also doubt that Discord would have told me at any rate.
I actually saw Discord’s opinion of me plummet as he spoke loudly and slowly, punctuating each word with gestures. “We… were… just… at… Here… Now… we… are… in… There.”
I had kinda walked into that one, didn’t I?
I tried to rephrase my question. “Where are we going to next?”
“Oh, somewhere,” he said dismissively.
“Just to be clear, do you mean somewhere, or Somewhere?”
“Somewhere,” he answered, leading me nowhere.
“Alright.” I started to tap on the table while I came up with something else to say. I decided on idle chit-chat. “So… what do you think of this place?”
To which he gave a small huff and replied, “It’s cramped, crowded, and the service is horrible.” He took another undrink and continued. “Most Theres are. I find that they are the best places to check my priorities.”
“But I can barely tell which thoughts are mine in he-There!” I yelled, before I remembered that the bar was actually silent, and that all the voices were in my head. But since Discord was aware of them too, I could actually tell myself that I wasn’t crazy and not burst out laughing.
He gave me another one of those looks that implied that I was the weird one in this conversation. “Yes, but the thoughts that you can tell that are yours are the ones that actually matter.”
So I tried it out, and paid close attention to which of my thoughts were actually mine and not a voice from one of those things around us. It was harder than you’d think. Only three of my actual thoughts stood out from the teeming buzz of grief around me.
What’s up with Discord?
Why does my head feel like a water balloon?
and
Why hasn’t Crazy Voice chimed in with some kind of snarky comment yet?
I decided that Discord was actually right about this place. It was the best place to clear your facts straight, in a strange, roundabout way. So I followed through with these thoughts and tried to find out what was wrong with the Spirit of Chaos. I couldn’t go right out and ask, because that would be rude, so I was going to beat around the bush.
Then again, it’s quite rude to invade someone's personal memories like Discord did, but that must have slipped my mind at the time.
“There is kind of a strange name for this place, don’t you think?” I asked, resorting to more idle talk while I thought of something else to say.
He stared at the glass in his hand, reminiscing, “There was the second place I found one, and once you give something like this a name, it’s rather hard to call it anything else.” He took another undrink and looked back at me. “To refer to There as anything but, would just feel wrong.”
“Tell me about it.” Crazy Voice said bitterly. I didn’t really know what its problem was, Crazy Voice was a great name to give to a hallucination. It cuts directly to the point.
It didn’t occur to me that I had actually heard Crazy Voice talk until Discord spoke to it. “Ah, it’s nice to put a face to the voice.”
I turned till I was suddenly face to face with Crazy Voice. Everything went silent, even the “voices” from those things that were around us, all of which were now looking at our booth, which was totally not terrifying, honest.
It took awhile for the pin to drop, but when it did, my frightened fear spazzing knocked over most of Discord’s glasses, which then proceeded to unspill from the table.
“I- ah- er…” I stammered in panic while Crazy Voice loomed over me. It still looked the same way since the last time I saw It. It was still wearing a shabby black suit and had on the same creepy tiki mask with red glowing eyes.
Crazy Voice looked around and remarked, ”This place is a dump.”
Discord was irked at being ignored and said, “Yes, all sorts of trash ends up here.”
Crazy Voice stared at Discord, and Discord stared at Crazy Voice. And then they both started to stare at me because I was still sputtering at Crazy Voice.
“Uh, um, bu-...” I continued before lamely saying, “but you’re not supposed to be real…”
“Really, Ashton?” Crazy Voice said, dumbfounded. “What about that time before you turned a dingo?” It started to get angry. “And what about all my constant comments?! Those weren’t real enough for you?” It was yelling now. “I mean, I am right her-” Then it suddenly stopped yelling and looked at its hands. Then it looked back at me. Then Discord, and back to me before taking a long look around the bar.
It chuckled a bit, and then screamed, “I’m free! I’m actually free!” and started to run around the bar like a particularly lively headless chicken.
Discord and I watched Crazy Voice do cartwheels for a while before he asked me a question. “Why wouldn’t you think he was real? I would have thought that even you would know he isn’t a run of the mill hallucination, from what you remember last week”
Why was I so surprised at Crazy Voice’s appearance? Well, I guess after telling myself that it wasn’t real, I started to believe myself, but I wasn’t going to tell Discord this and lose more face. So I avoided the question.
“Don’t go personifying it by giving it a gender, or I’ll never get rid of him.”
Did I just call it a him? Damn it…
“It’s a little too late for that, I think.” Crazy voice was now hopping along the bar tables. “I’m rather surprised you had enough focus to do it.” Discord said, looking at me now.
“What?” I exclaimed, “I didn’t bring him here!” Though, there was this nagging feeling of doubt in the back of my mind, which managed to slip into my voice.
Must have been forced out by whatever Discord left in my head, I thought to myself. I then thought that this thought was rather strange to think, but this thought was almost drowned out by the voices from those things, so I decided that it wasn’t that important.
“You know, I actually believe that,” he said, giving me a weird, appraising look before turning back to Crazy Voice, who looked like he was starting to lose steam. “Yes, it must be because of this There. It’s so stagnant with bitterness, that it would be a snap for your friend to appear here.”
“So what are they?” I said, finally asking about the bars mysterious patrons.
“Them?” He gestured toward the weird things. I nodded and he continued, “They're nothing.”
I refused to back down this time. “I’m not going to accept that. What are they, Discord?”
He sighed and undrank the first of his chocolate milks. “Have you ever seen an optical illusion where you are staring at box in a corner, and there are two ways of seeing it?” He raised his glass face and continued, “On one hand, it’s just a box in a corner. Nothing special there of course, but…” He placed the glass against the wall our booth was next to, where it suddenly disappeared, leaving a glass shaped hole in the wall. “on the other hand it’s a box shaped hole in a corner. Although that’s just as boring, unlike them.” He gestured toward the patrons and finished with, “That’s what they are; holes by themselves.”
Actually, that’s a much better description than mine isn’t it?
Let’s just pretend I said that, and move on.
“But why are they here?” I asked, actually interested in where this conversation was going.
Discord loudly groaned. “Ashton…” He looked at me strangely for a while, and then rolled his eyes. “Ugh, well… Hmm… you see…” He took a while to think about it. “Ah! You see, nothing can live in a place like this, like what you see here is all of what There is.” He waved one of his arms toward the rest of the bar. “but some places, like There, needs residents to complete them, or they won’t work. A ‘bar’,” he said, using air quotes, “needs someone to drink at them, otherwise it’s just a well boozed cabinet.” He chuckled at his little joke. “While they aren’t exactly real, it’s good enough as long as no one calls too much attention to the farce.”
I felt a rising sense of dread. “Like what we are doing right now?”
“Oh, this chat we are having? It’s fine to talk like this in There.” He flapped his hand dismissively and continued. “As long as you follow the procedure in this kind of place everything will be just fine, and we are just having a nice barroom chat in a bar. A bar full of ghostly placeholders, but a bar nonetheless.”
I relaxed a little, and was about to make some snide comment about how Discord was so good at acting normal when it hit me.
People usually don’t run around a bar screaming their heads off while doing cartwheels.
It must have hit Discord as well, because we both swung our heads around to find Crazy Voice. He was on the floor, gasping for air. He looked like a wooden fish out of water, which would have been funny if I had been paying much attention. No, I was staring at the things that were around him. They were fizzling, becoming harshly and red. Our booth shook and more milk was unspilt. The bar walls were closing in on us, and their decorations were starting to look dangerously sharp. The voices were screaming incoherent phrases.
Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo!
The horse raced past the barn fell.
Gooses! Get the gooses!
It’s poison! It’s all poison!
Do it, Mr. Dewitt!
And suddenly the lights went out, plunging There into total darkness. It was a tense five seconds before the lights returned, showing that all was well. The voices resumed their aimless chatting and those things returned to their places.
Discord gave a sigh of relief and undrank another glass of milk. “That could have been much worse.” He leaned toward Crazy voice and said, “Are you quite done yet?”
“What *huff* are they?” Crazy Voice struggled to say.
Discord groaned, but before he could respond, Crazy Voice coughed, and rephrased his question, “I mean, what are you supposed to call them?”
“Oh, well I suppose you could call them… Quantum Ghosts.”
“Did you come up with that name yourself?” I asked. I was kind of doubtful since it was actually a good name for them.
“I bet not. If you had, they’d probably be named Them.”
Discord was nonplussed. I was twitchy with anticipation at what he would do to Crazy Voice.
Is he going to turn him into a toad?
Pull him inside out?
No I bet he’s going to turn him into a rock.
Oh boy, I hope turns him into a toad.
But instead of doing any of those things, Discord sighed and took another undrink.
Crazy Voice turned his attention back to me. “Now to do what I have wanted to do for a very, very long time.”
He backhanded me out of the booth, and begun what must have been the longest, most hate-filled, well-enunciated, and from-the-heart confession of absolute loathing this side of the universe.
At least until I see Garrett again. Then, what I’ll do to him will make what Crazy Voice did look like a delightful serenade.
Now, I’m not going to write what Crazy Voice actually said, because whenever I try to, the letter always combusts.
His little speech was so vile that some of the nearby quantum ghosts fizzled, and even Discord was disgusted. Although, it probably wasn’t just because of what Crazy Voice had said, since he was struggling to undrink his, now curdled, chocolate milk as fast as possible.
“Euagh!” He spat, looking a bit angry, but mostly nauseous. He gave Crazy Voice a long hard stare before saying,” You still aren’t worth the trouble.”
“And why not?” I asked, rubbing my sore cheek as I got back into the booth. I wouldn’t have been that opposed to Discord turning Crazy Voice into a pillar of hummus after that little tongue lashing. I asked another one of my many stupid questions. “Are you out of magic or something?”
Crazy Voice and Discord looked at each other, and then they both looked at the ball of napkins, which had taken over the other half of the table. Then they looked back at each other in a look of mutual loathing, that was eclipsed by their mutual annoyance at me.
“Guess I’d go with ‘something’ then?” I muttered to myself.
Discord sighed again. “That isn’t how magic works…” He said, facepalming. “I could deal with your friend h-”
“He’s not my friend!” Crazy Voice and I said in unison. We glanced awkwardly at each other as Discord continued.
“Mmmhm, as I was saying,” he relaxed into his seat, “I could do all manner of fun things to you two idiots, but you could say I’ve sprained my…” he air-quoted, ”’magic’ muscles, and I don’t want to do any ‘heavy lifting’.” He put his hands back down. “I’m just going to take it easy. After all, it’s not like I have to worry about anything here.”
While we bitterly hated each other, Crazy Voice and I certainly shared a deep connection. We didn’t have to look at each other, or, and this is the important part, without having to actually agree to not tell Discord about the ponies.
“So, you just came to There to wait until you can go back to Equestria?” I said, trying to subtly hint at the fact that so far after getting his powers back he has:
Teleported me off of the side of The Empire State Building.
Brainwashed three cubicle jockeys.
Brought us to two places that no right existing.
and
Just undrank a dozen glasses of Chocolate Milk.
But I guess that doesn’t count as ‘heavy lifting’ to Discord.
“I’m sure Earth is fun and all, but once I feel up to it I’m going straight back to Equestria. Messing with ponies never gets old. As for waiting here at There, well…” He waggled his hand a bit. “eh, I don’t think I will.” He smiled. “In fact, I’m going to throw caution to the wind, and let you choose where we’re going to go next!” He flicked the giant ball of napkins, which bloomed into a globe of the world. The weird thing about it though, was that were a few land masses that I’ve never seen before.
“You’re joking,” I said in disbelief.
“What? You don’t trust me?” he said with a hurt look on his face.
I shook my head. “No. Not one bit.”
“Well, what can I do to make you trust me?” he asked with a smile, which did the exact opposite of reassuring me.
“Wow, how forward of you!” I said jokingly, “At least buy me dinner.”
He shrugged. “Alright. You want to eat anywhere particular?”
I was dumbfounded. “Oh… gee, I didn’t know you swung that way.”
Discord had a puzzled expression. “Pardon?”
“He thinks you’re homosexual.” Crazy Voice bluntly pointed out, much to my ire.
It was Discord’s turn to be dumbfounded. Discord, as in, the Spirit of Chaos, was completely confused for once. “But… but it’s just dinner…”
And on that painfully awkward note, I’ll end this note. See y...
Oh right. No one is reading this.
Feeling extremely awkward, signing this,
Ashton Thomas