//------------------------------// // Body and Soul // Story: Pinkie Pie's Suicide Psychosis // by Facemelt91 //------------------------------// Chapter 2 – Body and soul can never be married My love, my love, why have you forsaken me? As Rainbow Dash walked by the old bakery, she glanced up at the small room on the top floor. She could hear the music blaring angrily through the window. Rainbow breathed out hard and shook her head. She slumped her shoulders and continued to walk. As she got to the end of the street, she suddenly stopped and turned her head around. The music continued to growl from within the house. The bleakness of the window, the wretched groaning of the music: something about it just didn’t sit right with Rainbow Dash. She unfolded her wings and floated slowly up to the window. The curtains were open and when Rainbow looked in, the first thing she saw was the blood that had been spread across the floor like a scene from a horror movie. Rainbow dove through the window without hesitation, shattering it into pieces on impact and rolling when she hit the ground. She saw Pinkie Pie, passed out on the ground, a fresh wound on her leg bleeding profusely. Rainbow felt her stomach twist around itself. She rushed to Pinkie’s side and placed her hoof to the pink pony’s neck. She felt a weak pulse and desperately tore a strip from the bed sheet and wrapped it around Pinkie’s leg like a tourniquet to stem the blood flow. She placed her hooves on Pinkie’s chest and started to push, screaming for Twilight Sparkle and begging for her friend to hold on and stay with her. It was ten minutes before anypomy else arrived to help. * It wasn’t for long. I wasn’t there long. But drinking bitter black coffee I catch that medicinal smell in a cloud of ancient tobacco and something touches me in that still sobbing place and a wound from two years ago opens like a cadaver and a long buried shame roars its foul decaying grief. The first thing she noticed was that the pain had stopped. No more gut-wrenching agony cutting through her being, no more daggers being driven into her skin, no more barbed wire being forced down her gullet. She was pain free and surrounded by bright light. She wondered for a moment if perhaps she was in heaven. But if this was heaven, where were her wings? Where were the cupcakes? Where was Hay Zus? As the room came into focus, Pinkie Pie found herself looking up at two expressionless faces that stared blankly at her as she lay on the hospital bed with various tubes running into her limbs. She wasn’t in heaven. She wasn’t even in hell. This was something much worse. “Shame.” Pinkie’s eyes snapped open as she heard the word spoken by somepony else who was sitting next to her. She craned her head to see, but the pain in her neck made it almost impossible. She sat back on the bed, incapable of moving any of her limbs. She heard the sound of a chair scraping along the floor next to her, and the owner of the voice entered her visual field. She swallowed hard when she saw the pony’s face. “How are you feeling, Pinkie Pie?” asked Dr Freud Shetland as he sat with a clipboard. Pinkie stared at her psychiatrist for several seconds and then her gaze wandered over to the other two ponies who were sitting at the end of her bed near the door. “Oh, don’t mind Dr This and Dr That,” insisted Dr Shetland, “they’re only here to observe.” He stroked the white tuft of hair that dangled from his chin. His eyes were on Pinkie, but his mind was elsewhere, focusing on the lecture he was due to give on oedipal desires at Canterlot University. Pinkie glanced around anxiously. She’d been in hospital enough times to know that it was a hospital room, but this one was unusually bare. Apart from Pinkie, it was completely empty apart from the bed and the three ponies who sat in it. No books, no flowers and not a Get Well card in sight. Not even a basket of fruit. The walls were a bare white and the windows had bars on them to keep them from being opened. It wasn’t a hospital. It was a prison. Pinkie’s eyes widened. Dr This and Dr That stirred uneasily in their seats. Dr This was a short, fat pony whose legs barely touched the ground. Dr That by comparison was lean and sat awkwardly with his knees higher up than the midpoint in his stomach. Both doctors had clipboards and pens with them and both looked very nervous to be there. Shetland, on the other hand, remained composed. He flicked through pages of notes from his recent sessions with Pinkie Pie. He made a few amendments to a sheet of paper and tucked the pen behind his ear. “So,” Dr Shetland said, eventually, “You were a very silly filly.” Pinkie turned her head to face him. She opened her mouth to speak, but her throat was chalk-dry. She coughed hard and dribbled slightly. She tried to wipe her mouth but she could barely lift her leg. “Look at you,” said Shetland disapprovingly as he dabbed at her mouth with a towel, “you’re a mess. You’re so doped up on morphine and God knows what else, you can’t even wipe your mouth. Like a little baby.” Pinkie lay back, her throat hurting. Her tongue felt hot and dry in her mouth and she realised how desperate she was for water. “What were you thinking, Pinkie?” Shetland demanded, leaning forward over his clipboard. “What was your plan? Did you even have a plan?” “Take an overdose...” Pinkie croaked, “slash my wrists... and hang myself. That was my plan.” “Didn’t make the last part I take it?” Shetland said, raising an eyebrow. He glanced over at Dr This and Dr That who were sitting uncomfortably in their chairs. Pinkie said nothing. Shetland sat back in his chair and skimmed his notes, shaking his head disapprovingly. “Why did you do it, Pinkie?” Pinkie said nothing. “Do you even realise what the consequences of your actions could have been?” Pinkie said nothing. “Do you have any idea what you put your friends through?” Pinkie said nothing. “Are you even listening to me?” Shetland’s voice grew louder. Pinkie turned her head to face Shetland. Her eyes were like sinking ships in a storm being tugged underneath the waves by vast tendrils. She breathed out and realised that she needed to clean her teeth. She wondered how long it had been. “I need some water,” Pinkie Pie said. “You’re being fed through a drip,” Shetland told her, “your stomach couldn’t handle anything right now, not after all the drugs you took. You’re lucky you’re alive.” “Yeah,” Pinkie said, rolling her eyes, “lucky.” “What you did was a very immature, attention seeking thing to do, Pinkie Pie,” Shetland said, sucking in a rasping breath, “You put your friends through hell.” Pinkie’s face fell. She shut her eyes and tried to force the image of one of her friends standing over her unconscious body, screaming and crying out of her mind. She couldn’t deal with that guilt. Not now. Not while she wasn’t strong enough to do anything about it. “Your friends all want to help you,” Shetland said, “I want to help you. But I can’t help you if you won’t talk to me.” “What is there to talk about?” Pinkie asked. “Your feelings,” said Shetland. “How do you feel?” “How do I feel?” Pinkie asked, trying to sit forward. “How do I feel?” Shetland nodded. “Doctors,” Pinkie snarled, “Inscrutable doctors, sensible doctors, way-out doctors, doctors you’d think were fucking patients if they didn’t walk around with ID cards.” Dr This and Dr That were on their feet now and were backing away slowly. Shetland shot them a glare and they froze in place. He invited Pinkie Pie to continue. “You all ask the same questions, put words in my mouth, make me take pills and try to keep me from jumping off a cliff in case somepony tries to sue you,” Pinkie said quickly. She breathed deeply and continued, “You sit there with your notepads and your sympathetic murmurs and your fucking eyebrows, watching the crippling failure oozing out of me, watching desperation and panic drenching me as I gape in horror at the world and wonder why everypony is still smiling at me when they are all thinking the same thing.” “What are they thinking?” “Shame, shame, shame!” Pinkie cried, “Drown in your fucking shame!” Shetland nodded. “I thought you enjoyed seeing ponies smiling?” Pinkie let out a hollow laugh, “these aren’t happy smiles. They’re ‘Pinkie it’s okay’ smiles and ‘Pinkie don’t do anything silly’ smiles and ‘Pinkie you need to stop overreacting’ smiles. I HATE THOSE SMILES!” “Then stop putting your friends through all this drama,” Shetland said. “You’re hurting them.” Tears began to roll down Pinkie’s fluffy, pink cheeks. She couldn’t even wipe her eyes. “I don’t want to hurt my friends,” Pinkie cried. “I never wanted to hurt anypony!” “Then stop this nonsense,” Shetland said. “Because your friends will never forgive you for it.” “I never asked for this,” Pinkie said through tears. “I never asked for ANY of this.” “You were dealt a bad hand. It’s up to you to play it properly and make the best you can of it,” Shetland said. “I’m already out the game,” Pinkie said. “I’m all out of chips.” “Borrow from your friends?” “I’m enough of a burden to them,” Pinkie said. “They’d be better off without me, I know that.” “They’d be better off if you weren’t being so silly and so selfish.” “I’m a complete failure as a pony,” Pinkie said, “I used to love making ponies happy, but now I’ve stopped caring. I can’t make decisions. I can’t eat. I can’t sleep. I can’t think. I hate my body. I hate my face. I’m destroying my friends and everypony I’ve ever loved. I’m nothing but a dark cloud hanging over Ponyville. I’d be better off dead and everypony knows it.” Shetland nodded his head as he jotted down Pinkie’s words. “And then there’s you.” Shetland lowered his clipboard and looked at Pinkie directly, “What about me.” Pinkie made a disgusted face, “You want to torture me with life just so nobody tries to sue you, and I’m selfish?” she erupted into a bout of high-pitched, unnatural laughter that unnerved even Shetland. The other two doctors rapidly backed out of the room as she entered a hysterical fit of laughing, her face contorting in pain. Shetland checked his watch. 4:48pm. He didn’t know if he could take another twelve minutes. Shetland rose from his seat and tucked his clipboard under his arm. “I’m going to recommend that you stay here until further notice.” “What?” Pinkie screeched. “You’re clearly a risk to yourself and others,” Shetland said. “Severe depression with suicidal ideation, borderline personality disorder... if keeping you here is the only way I can stop you from killing yourself, then you’re staying in the psychiatric ward.” “Do you despise all unhappy ponies?” Pinkie wailed as Shetland left the room. “Or is it just me specifically?” “I don’t despise you,” Shetland said as he reached the doorway, “You’re ill.” He shut the door behind him, leaving Pinkie Pie completely alone. For the next hour and a half, the entire hospital corridor was filled with the sound of Pinkie Pie’s bitter tears. I dread the loss of her I’ve never touched. Love keeps me a slave in the cage of tears. I can fill my space Fill my time But nothing can fill this void in my heart The vital need for which I would die Breakdown.