//------------------------------// // Suicide is Painless // Story: Trash.demo // by dfkingerperson //------------------------------// It took a while for Vinyl to notice the small bumps and curses coming from below her. In her stupor, neither near sleep nor fully conscious, she had dimly recognized that they were a thing that was happening but didn’t think too hard about them. At least until she recognized the voice from one particularly frantic pejorative. She flipped her body around and looked through the gaps in the walkway. A blue pony with a spiky black mane and a black vest was cursing up a storm as he looked at a keyboard that had fallen off a speaker and onto the stage floor. Picking it up in his light blue magic he examined it for any flaws before placing back on his turntable carefully. He muttered as hopped off the wooden stage and left the warehouse again. So, her little brother was the one still using the warehouse. In a weird way that calmed her. It wasn’t some stranger taking her place, but someone she knew and trusted. Someone who knew and trusted her. Someone who might let her back in one day. Neon, loops of wires around his body, carefully set up a stand and placed a brown case on it. With more care than he showed for most of his equipment he opened the case showing the silver console inside. After a cursory check of it he flipped the case closed again and shedding the wires wrapped around himself he left the warehouse. Vinyl stood up and walked down the stairs, eyes never leaving the case. --- Neon Lights, carrying a second speaker on his back and his headphones in his magic field, took a second to notice the pony standing behind his turntable, idly flicking switches and messing with his settings. A surge of anger went through him at seeing a stranger touch his stuff. He always got touchy when people started messing with things that were his. Maybe it came from having a bunch of brothers and sisters with no sense of personal space, maybe he was just naturally selfish, but watching somepony use his things was one of the easiest ways to get under his skin. The unicorn at his new(ish) silver PX900 turntables was about to get a hoof to the face if they didn’t step off. “Hey!” He rushed up the stairs to the stage, dropping the speaker on the ground with a crash. He would have cringed if some bum wasn’t getting their grubby hooves all over his stuff. The white pony looked up at his proclamation. “Oh bro, hey. I was just checking out your new table. Bit too fancy for my tastes, but I guess anything would be fancy compared to the old wreck you had.” Neon froze, dropping his headphones. She was thinner since he had seen her last seen her half a year ago, and was wearing an expression he had never seen on her before. He had seen her stand over turntables thousands of times, and had seen expressions ranging from frustration to ecstasy to hate. But for the first time she looked miserable. Her eyes were lidded and she looked exhausted to her core. She was smiling but it looked like it was painted on, a parody of a real smile. “Damn, I swear they just keep making them shinier and brighter. Like chrome on your gear will make your music better.” Her hoof absentmindedly roamed the board, feeling the resistance of the knobs and sliders. The lights intensified and faded with her movements. “Bet you after every disc jockey has one of these light up things they’ll start making retro brown or puke green ones so you’ll ‘stand out’. Never got why these things needed so much flash, it’s not like the audience is gonna see much of it. Weird.” If he had closed his eyes right then he could have pretended everything was back to normal. Vinyl musing on some weird anecdote while preparing for a set while he helped her, hanging on every word that she said to fill the quiet. Scrambling around, worried he was messing something up while she smoothly told him it was okay and fixed his mistakes effortlessly. Watching her go through the motions of pre-production like a fish swam, so natural it was effortless. But his eyes were open. In more ways than he liked. “Vinyl, your face…” He felt so uncomfortable he couldn’t finish the thought. “My face? Oh, you must mean my shades. Yeah, I, uh, broke ‘em earlier. Tripped and smashed them. It’s so weird to be without ‘em, you know. Guess I must have been squinting or something?” Vinyl gave an exaggerated grimace, red eyes squeezed to slits and one corner of her mouth pulled way below the other, before returning to the ghost of a grin. “Like that right? Guess I’m more bummed about it then I thought. Forget that though, dude. What’s been up with you?” “Nothing?” he answered, bewildered. “Just, um, preparing for a show later tonight.” “Well, duh. Here, let me grab some tables for your gear.” Vinyl hopped off the stage, walking towards the old wooden tables in the far corner. Neon stared after her as she walked away from the stage. Then he realized how stupid he must have looked following her with his eyes, mouth wide open. He picked up the headphones again tossing them into a nearby pile of wires and hurried towards the speaker he had left on floor below. He grabbed it in his magic, carefully levitating it and cursing himself for his haste. It was already barely reliable and if it fried now he would be screwed as far as getting even music at the back of the warehouse. He set it down gently on the stage and added checking if it was still useable to his mental checklist. “So how you been, kid?” Vinyl asked as she rolled one of the tables up the ramp behind the stage with her head. “Fine.” His voice sounded high and whiny, even to himself. Vinyl didn’t seem to notice. “Good, good. Your family doing alright? Wishing Star’s applying to the University soon, right?” “She started the second semester a week ago.” He hated how harsh his voice was, how accusatory it sounded. “What?” Genuine surprise tinted her voice. “Huh, yeah. I guess it has been a while. My mind has been wandering a lot lately, guess I lost track of time.” “Most people lose track of time in hours, not months.” Spite dripped from every word and he had an urge to bite his tongue. “Well most people ain’t Vinyl Scratch. I always do it bigger than everypony else, don’t I bro?” He grit his teeth rather than answering and turned back towards the speaker. The damn thing had been on the fritz last time and even though the repair pony had sworn he had fixed the short Neon wasn’t about to let a stupid minor problem like a shitty speaker crash his show. He had a toolbox on in one of the piles on the stage. Maybe he should crack it open to make sure the fall didn’t fuck it up more. Neon trotted over to it, teeth grinding, Vinyl blabbing in the background. “Saw Octavia earlier. She said she had a gig tonight too and-“ Neon grunted. “I know. Saw her last week.” “Really? Sucks when jobs overlap, don’t it. You always end up missing something.” Vinyl lightly skipped over his brusqueness of his tone. “Then again it may be a blessing in this case. Sitting still for a couple of hours always feels like torture, even if it’s Tavi playing.” Vinyl was the same as always. Upbeat and interested, running her mouth off about any topic that happened to cross her mind. She had already finished moving the tables and began untangling the load of wires and cords he needed to plug in, though with her teeth and hooves instead of her magic. He thought about asking but he wasn’t sure if he could keep his mouth shut if he started actually talking. So he listened, against his will, as Vinyl kept filling the silence with him chiming in with a harsh grunt or comment lightly tinged with nastiness that he regretted as soon as he said. She didn’t notice of course but that just made it worse. Finally they finished the basic setup and Neon, unfortunately, had to add something to the conversation. “I have get the other speakers from the wagon.” He said, interrupting her spiel on finding decent wind instrument samples. He didn’t even try and hide the snarl in his voice anymore. “Hmm? Uh, I’ll be happy to help but my magic ain’t exactly so hot right now. Don’t know if I can do any heavy lifting.” “What’s wrong with your horn?” Neon asked. “Nothing major, just some headaches and stuff. Don’t worry about it.” “What?” His voice was tinged with… worry? “If you’re having problems casting magic then you should get checked out as soon as possible. Could be an indicator of head injuries, or tumors or something.” “Pff, I ain’t lucky enough for a tumor.” “The hell Vinyl, this is serious!” She looked him in the eye and gave a small grin. “Bro, chill, I was joking. It’s just stress headaches. It happens to unicorns all the time. Hell, I remember you bitching about your horn conking out on you back when you were barely out of puberty. It’s not that big of a deal.” Neon took a deep breath. Then he took another. Stewing in his own anger was stupid, and Vinyl was clearly not as healthy as she was trying to pretend. Whatever Vinyl had done, or didn’t do, they were friends. Practically family. If she needed help it was better if he just confronted her with the issue. “Look, Vinyl, is this about those reviews of your last album?” “Is what about the reviews?” “Your-,” Your gauntness, your fake smiles, your need to act like everything is okay when it clearly isn’t. “Being gone for the past few months.” Vinyl raised one of her of her eyebrows before chuckling. “What? No, dude, you know I don’t care what those snobs think. Only a few of them know enough about the genre to even judge my shit fairly. Besides the fans seemed to like it just fine, and their opinion is way more important than some old geezer that can’t listen to my music without gagging.” “They were right you know. It wasn’t you at your best.” It slipped out, on purpose, but he still regretted it. Vinyl didn’t exactly freeze but she did slow down. She moved to his console and started playing with it again. She didn’t answer and it was his turn to fill the void. “It wasn’t sloppy, exactly.” He didn’t know what he was talking about. “I mean, I don’t think it was as polished as usual, at least.” She was the one who taught him what it meant to care about the final product, to obsess over a few imperfect seconds for a day until it was perfect. “It just didn’t have the, the soul you used to put in.” An understatement. “It wasn’t bad…” And a lie to end. Vinyl was quiet for a moment. “Well if my biggest fan says it then it must be true.” The statement didn’t hold a hint of sarcasm. It had no malice, no bite. It was resigned. She wasn’t surprised. “I just…” This was wrong. “You put out too many albums maybe, burnt yourself out. You were practically a machine.” “It’s cool man, you don’t have to spare my feelings. I’ve been shoving my work down your throat since you were a tyke. If you think it’s bad then you’re probably right.” She turned her head and gave him a big grin. “Guess I’ll just have to better next time, huh little brother?” His breathing got heavier and his jaw tightened until it hurt. “Don’t call me that.” “Call you what?” She asked confused. He narrowed his eyes. “You know I was jealous of you for a long time. Still am, I guess.” “Jealous of what? What are you talking about?” “Dammit Vinyl, you are better than me.” Neon snapped. “I used to think that maybe it was just experience, or, I don’t know, me making excuses for why I wasn’t getting big yet but it’s not. You are just better than me at making music. You’re fucking gifted, you have the skill, the patience, and the determination to fucking, fucking revolutionize music probably. But you know what? Your last album was shit.” He turned around so he couldn’t see her. It was easier. He didn’t stop; he couldn’t. “An- and you know why it was shit? Because you didn’t care about it. You just, you just gave up. The first song maybe was alright. Not good, but fine. But the more I listened to it the more I felt sick. Because it was a disappointment. I wanted to like it, but I couldn’t.” That was enough. He didn’t need to say more. “You sounded like an amateur. By the end if someone had told me they replaced DJ PON3’s new album with some wannabe trying to ride off her fame I would have been relieved. Because you, the pony I looked to my whole life, could not have produced shit like that.” “…You’re right, bro. I fucked up and-“ And the last straw fell. He interrupted her with a dangerous voice. “Vinyl. You remember what you told me before I did the concert in Hooves Garden?” He could hear her shuffling around behind him, but he was steadfast in staring at the blank wall. If he saw what he was doing to her he would never finish. “I was whining like I always do and finally you put a hoof around my shoulder and you said, and I quote, ‘Bro, listen. I know how you’re feeling. You are scared, you think you’re going to fail. But listen, and I need you to trust me on this. You are going to do just fine. And you know why? ‘Cause you have me on your side and you will always have me on your side. Now I admit, playing in front of a crowd as big as the ones in Hooves Garden might be the tiniest bit daunting if you were taking on this alone. There may have been a point zero zero zero fuckload a zeroes chance that you would slip up during the show. But you got me, and I’m going to be there the entire time. I’ll help you set up and I’ll be there for you.” He snorted. His voice was mocking. “A big sister is there for their little brother, right?” She had stopped moving behind him. He grabbed his tools and ripped the back of the speaker open fiddling around with the wires for a minute. When he continued his voice sounded calm. “You didn’t fucking come Vinyl. I needed you and you bailed on me and everyone. I went to your apartment for weeks after that, banging on your door. I checked every hospital in the city looking for you. After all, if you skipped out on the most important concert of my career you would have had a good fucking reason right? You must have gotten mugged or hit by a runaway cart or at the very least had a pretty bad stomachache, right? You, of all people, my big sister, wouldn’t fucking leave me alone on the most important day of my life. You wouldn’t betray me like that.” He sighed. The anger was gone and he just felt empty now. Deflated. The pain was still there but the rage that had made him start blurting things out was finished. He wasn’t done though. “In case you were wondering, I fucked it up. Not bad, I guess. A bit rushed, a few of my illusions slipped. Could have been a lot worse. In fact I doubt it would have gone any better even if you had showed up. I mean hell, it’s not like I was the headliner, who gives a fuck, right?” Neon was mildly surprised at how much venom he could put in his voice without raising it. “You certainly don’t.” Neon grabbed the shades on his face with his magic and slid them off. He walked up to Vinyl, her face showing how he felt, and slid them on her. “Here. Sun’s bright out and I know it hurts your eyes. Let’s just get the speakers.” He walked to the entrance of the warehouse. Before he stepped out he turned and said. “I don’t hate you. You’re still family to me, I guess. I just…” Neon looked for words he didn’t have for a moment before sighing. “Forget it. Let’s just get the speakers.” Neon wished he was a better liar.