THE LAST CHAPTER: SUBCONSPIRACY
“So where can I find a mirror? Or am I too self-conscious to have any mirrors?” Hamsterjelly finally acts like a proper dog again and, while completely ignoring me, goes to a pile of snow to mark his territory. “And now you choose to shut up...”
When I look down at the ground and my feet, I’m met by a peculiar sight. That is, I see very little in between my hands and the frozen soil, very little meaning too little. I have to bow down significantly to see my legs, which are covered in thick, brown hair. Some bald medicine I’ve had, a monkey-style cure to boring legs. Now what to do next?
In case I’m in some deep level of my conscious, or perhaps subconscious, it’s only clear that it’s free of clutter and therefore should be all action, so to speak. My parents probably aren’t there, and the same must also apply to my sister; my mind wouldn’t miss an opportunity to portray something more original. After all, I do see my relatives quite often, something not true for characters like-
“Hello there!” The male voice coming from behind me is nasal to the extreme. I turn around to see a man sitting on the wooden fence that separates our yard from the neighbours’. He’s wearing a dark, boring suit with no tie. His face is mostly hidden behind his black trilby hat and purple-tinted coke bottle glasses. Also, his nose is comically ginormous.
“You weren’t there a second ago,” I say as I walk over to him.
“That’s what I get paid for. I’m Jack, Jack O. Falltrades. I’m a substitute.”
“Who the hell here needs a substitute.” A stupid question to ask.
“You. You need a Yoda to your Force, a Miyagi to your Karate, a Celestia to your Twilight Sparkle, and so on, and so on.” Ponies... I don’t wanna hear about ponies. It was just another day and nothing special. But that one visit to 4chan changed everything. In May, in 2011.
An innocent image of a white pony hugging an orange one with a hat, followed by a friendly proposition to go to the deepest pits of hell, burn, maim and kill oneself until it gets boring and then start all over again. Have my attention, all of it. And for some reason, I never got it back.
“You’re for, not against.”
“That’s what I get paid for. Look, I know the aliphants failed most miserably, so I hired myself to give you guidance.” His tone, that stupid nose, who knows he might have a few sore spots very soon... “From my glasses you see your reflection.” I chuckle at his job description, he’s here to act as a mirror? So damn useless. However, I do need the chance.
My reflection is fine, almost: my hair is still green and my skin coated with hair. The glasses distort my eyes, which look too large and the colour is off as well due to the purple tint. I look like a cartoon character. Actually it’s worse; I look like a furry. And this guy, Jack the substitute, wants me to play along.
“You can see it, but you can’t see it seen.” Seriously, fuck this guy. I mean, he’s a sketch character, his reality is based on a single line. I put up a vicious grin.
“Yet, what I can see is your future Mr. Falltrades. It’s filled with stars and a pool of red.” He whines and protests, but my fist still finds its way deep into the soft piece of tissue he calls his nose, and as the laws of physics require, Jack the substitute falls off the fence and out of my sight. My hand is shaking; a sudden cramp makes me unable to release my fingers. This tasty, tasty violence. I wonder who’s next to bother me with more unbound wisdom I’ve hidden from myself.
I also got fears slowly crawling up my gut. What I see here is all fiction that probably only covers a very brief moment of my life which I’m spending asleep. Yet this dream, or whatever, gives me time to think and time to really experience things – and that’s a first. This environment is both controlled and uncontrolled at the same time, a fact I don’t really fancy. I’m afraid just to chill out, and I’m afraid to go all out too.
“You look terrible, cousin.” Cousin? I can’t recognize the voice coming from behind the fence, from the very spot Jack the substitute just fell off to. No cousin of mine has that kind of powerful, deep voice. A medium-sized – or from my viewpoint, stupidly tall – young man, about my age, climbs smoothly over the fence and steps in front of me. He seems to be wearing a batman suit, just without the mask. “You look like a furry.”
“Takes one to know one.” The prolonged boyish laugh that follows gives away the mystery man’s identity. He is my cousin, but he shouldn’t be this old, this big, this imposing.
“You’ve hit puberty. Nice. Now what the hell are you doing here?” Cousin smiles at me.
“I thought you wanted to see a friendly face.” He spreads his hands like he’s showing me something. “A friendly face in a friendly dress.” The batman suit? The suit, the figure, maybe even the face... this is getting more meta than I thought.
“It does look so wicked on you it really might be mine. How does it feel?”
“Graphene nanosuit, very itchy in certain places, but I’m not here to model for you. I’m here to test you, check on your progress.” My progress on what? Deciphering the message by the pink aliphants? He damn well knows not to mention those things, or I might have to kill my own kin. I subtly try to evade the topic.
“What fucking progress!? I feel like I’m being mind raped by a herd of whales, any progress they make can’t be beneficial.” He laughs again. I just hope it’s for the metaphor and not something else. He draws out a handle of sorts from which erupts a long blade, much like a light saber but less glowing and more silent. He turns the sword around, holding it from the pointy end, offering me the handle.
“Take it. Let’s see what you’re made of.” He’s challenging me to a swordfight?
“You kinda have the high ground, y’know.”
“Test is a test just take it.” I put on a threatening face and grasp the sword. The results are not that good, cousin just smiles sardonically and shakes his head. “There’s a thing wrong with this.”
“Wath’ wong?” I can’t speak too well with the handle in my mouth.
“Time to swing it!” He swings a piece of firewood to uppercut the sword loose from my mouth. It spins a couple of times in the air before landing in my cousins hand. “Seems to me you can’t fight.”
I can fight, just not with a sword in my hand – or mouth. But I can swing a sword. He’s gonna be in a surprise. The sword wrenches itself off his hand, floats still for a second, and then lunges toward his chest. His normally squinted eyes open wide with awe.
“You cheater,” he says while fighting off the continuous strikes with the piece of firewood he had, “you’re giving in. The pink aliphants are getting you.” Again with the aliphants!? You’re not real, cousin, but you’re soon to be dead. I swing, spin, and thrust the sword in every possible way I can imagine, shattering the remains of his wooden protection. Just as I’m about to toss the final hit in between his eyes, he manages to parry the strike away and do something to the handle that retracts the blade. Out of real options I decide to let go of the handle and it falls down to the trampled snow. He just smiles at me.
“You’re doomed. I’m sorry but that’s how it is. You’re about to wake up just the way they like you to.” He kneels down and takes his sword. “I’ll fight to another day. And please, swat off the fly, will ya.” Cousin turns away and leaves. A buzz enters my auditory canal its effects being the normal annoyance. There’s a fly. Flying in the dim, cold winter morning there’s a fly. Time to swat it, swat it dead.
The noise closes up on me from behind. I ready myself, but then I remember my cramped fingers; how am I supposed to kill it without them? Though, when the moment arrives there’s only a singe thought in my mind: end of the road my little insect. *SWAT* I just killed a winter fly, but how? A female voice interrupts my thought.
“What’s with the tail swinging?”
“TWILIGHT SPARKLE! This is your doing you... ASS!” Her ears perk at the negative compliment and she frowns.
“No need to be so rude. Is something wrong with you? You look a little shocked to see me, though we agreed-”
“We haven’t agreed on ANYTHING!” My fingers finally free themselves from the cramp, and I waste no time grabbing that lavender unicorn by the shoulders and pushing her horn first into my mailbox. She’s effectively stuck. “You are fiction! Everything I’ve seen here, FICTION!” Twilight follows my clamour with terror in her eye. She’s scared? This isn’t what she expected? A pity.
“Oh dear, something’s gone awry here.”
“Enlighten me, my little pony, please. A word about something pink and aliphant-shaped might net you some more purple in your eye.” It takes a lot to threaten an innocent little pony like that, even though in my mind she’s not innocent. Heh, in my mind... what a quip.
“The pink-” she begins but quickly refrains from saying the rest as my right hand clenches to a fist. “Those creatures were a fail safe in case something would go wrong, which has obviously happened.”
“EXPLAIN! Why did I-” Things had changed from a couple of minutes ago, gone was that fur coat, gone were the cramps, and I now tower over the pony stuck in my mailbox – my height has returned.
“Something got you pushing to the wrong direction. I can see it, you’ve lost control. All you wanted was to show me where you used to live as a child. And to be honest, I’m not enjoying the sights right now.” Seeing the empty street with one eye and me with the other, I wouldn’t have complained much myself. This is where I grew up, after all. “A human with the most peculiar deformities: a functioning tail and a horn in the forehead.”
What’s that? A tail for swatting flies and a magical horn to sword fight without fingers? Well isn’t that-
The few times I get a reason to scream I take it up profoundly. This is one of those cases. The sounds can only be vaguely described. If a thousand typewriter monkeys found out the true meaning of letters, if a momma-whale had to watch her offspring get hit by an explosive harpoon, and if a full orphanage burned down in front of a dozen Jesus Christs, their combined howls of terror couldn’t compete against mine.
While I’m declaring myself to the universe, I realise a bunch of things – desperation sure brings out your extremes. There’s another thing; Twilight’s words. The pink things were a backup? Why would I ever want to show my old home to a cartoon pony? I stop screaming and watch as she manages to pull herself free. I also purse my lips and maybe smile a little: it’s time to call out the bluff.
I grab Twilight once more and instead of pushing her through the neighbours’ mailbox I squat down and pull our lips together. Normally I’m not this impulsive, not even close, but this is all in the name of science. If Twilight is – as I suppose she claims to be – real, she’ll act accordingly, perhaps even kick me in the balls or something, but if she’s a projection I’ve now given my subconscious something it probably cannot handle very well – a surprising situation, that is.
I wait, but my balls stay intact. Even worse, she kisses me back, and I start to feel like a devoted furry or something like that. This... this just takes me back to having no clue at all.
“Get your filthy hands off my girl!” The male voice startles us enough to break the embrace, not that it was breaking any time soon on its own. I quickly find the source for the interruption. It’s a unicorn pony with light green mane and brown coat, which strike a ridiculous contrast together. “Wow, I never thought I’d get a chance to say that but... wow.”
Who the heck’s this thing? I haven’t seen him anywhere, ever, and if I was to imagine a random pony I sure wouldn’t coin up something that looks like this. The new pony’s appearance makes the horn and tail disappear, and I hope it’s for good.
“Well... this is awkward,” Twilight says and trots over to the new unicorn. The two exchange a few words I can’t make out. It’s of course obvious that they know each other, though they shouldn’t. The brown pony makes a bunch of very familiar pensive face and hoof gestures before taking a deep breath and speaking:
“I think it’s better to address the both of you, given that you’re quite lost. What you see here, my dear Twilight, is my old home.” She nods, and I cross my arms. Give me something I don’t know, mystery pony. “And its old inhabitant as well. Twilight, meet young me, my projection from ten years ago. I believe the shit was just about to hit the fan around this time.” The realisation is not mine to make, not this time, but it still almost brings me down to my knees. It’s impossible...
“A projection cannot have experiences on its own! You lie! There’s nothing you can do to prove yourself.” Is there? I don’t know what all this confusing shit means: a talking dog, a pimped out version of my cousin, pink things – it can be anything.
“My being here is enough proof. I’m sure Twilight can cover for me, right?” She looks befuddled for a moment, but regains her composure quickly.
“Yes, I think I can,” she begins and turns to face me, “this is your past, just like the spell should’ve taken us.”
“But I did screw up a little,” the mystery pony, the older pony version of me, intervened, “I only wanted the scenery, but it seems my subconscious disagreed with me.” The final straw, the smallest extra burden that crashes the plane, the last drop of air keeping the kitten from drowning... I can’t be just a memory residing in somebody else’s head, even if that somebody is me. “It drew out means to fight off the spell, and their incredible discretion is just fitting for a powerful mind such as mine. I had my hunches, so I had a backup made of one of the earliest memories I possess.”
“The pink elephants... I do remember those.”
“But a failed plan is a failed plan, I’m afraid. Twilight, I propose we leave. I think we’ve caused enough damage to my little brain.” She rolls her eyes, but is definitely with my pony self. I guess I should be angry, but instead I feel strangely coy.
“What happens to me? How can I look like that in ten years?”
“Reality breaking, my friend. About right now I’m not quite sure. I can promise I’m not forgetting this, but memories aren’t meant to have lives of their own.” I’ll be gone, though I never was to begin with. Is there anything I have to lose? I’m facing an eternal void of being a lingering memory in my subconscious. I can’t compare it to being dead, but it irks me nonetheless. This is the reality I’ve been let to. It might be nothing but a dream to those two, but, as they say, mind is a powerful tool.
“Hold on a second!” They turn at me one last time. “Don’t think about elephants.”
“What–” He gets cut off by an elephant falling out of the sky. It wasn’t even pink this time, just a regular, grey, five ton elephant that almost crushed the unicorns. “HOLY SHIT!” I look at the sky: thousands upon thousands of elephants flying about in every direction imaginable. However, it still isn’t enough.
“You mustn’t be afraid to dream a little bigger, darling.” Their expressions contort to new dimensions when they see me pulling a hefty grenade launcher out of my back pocket. I take aim and pull the trigger, splatting the elephant into a million chunks of bloody gore, recoloring the ponies in the process. Next I point the grenade launcher straight at pony me, causing his face to spin another three-sixty – the following decade seems to have really cost me my touch with bubbling insanity. I mean, when you’re facing explosive weaponry what’s there not to enjoy?
I silently spell the letters “GTFO” with my mouth, and pony me’s horn begins to glow. That sissy disco glitter must have only meant good with that spell of his, and Twilight Sparkle, well she’s even more innocent. I shoot them anyway.
I drop the smoking gun to the ground. I can’t see their remains, but it’s probably for the best that they got away, they really didn’t deserve it. Or did they?
“YOU FUCKING ASSHOLE SON OF A BITCH!” It’s my pony self, a little pissed I presume.
“I don’t normally condone this sort of language but WHY IN THE FLYING FUCK DID YOU SHOOT US!?” And there’s Twi, charming as ever.
“I’m sorry. I couldn’t stand the upcoming loneliness. You guys alright?”
They answer me in unison: “YOU PUT US IN A COMA FOR WHO KNOWS HOW LONG!”
“Possibly forever?” I lick up a drop of blood from the corner of my mouth. Who would miss a chance to play with himself for an eternity – or possibly longer. I also have to ask Twilight if my kiss was any good.
Teh bitter end
TCB 1st anniversary – yay