Well, Mr. Doctor Pony – I ain't good with names – I'll tell you what happened, but it may not be all too accurate on account of me being full of dark magic and the crazies, in that order.
We had a mission for part of a week to take down some remnants of the mind-control nightmare moon magic and keep the town safe. My fighting spirit was a little disheartened, though, when Twi said to all of us:
"I am all so acertained about this but nessiate an awareness that the nightmare spirit could infect you and start to alter your perception."
I can't remember all the fancy parts. With all I know of Luna and my pal Rarity, I'm supposing the nightmare forces took problems I was already having and just made them crazy-making rather than dealable-making. I'm not a fragile mare. Er, yeah, since I'm in a mental ward, I can't judge if you're a tad skeptical about that, but I'll try my best to show you it's true.
See, first of all, we had a huge pest invasion and my friend turned into a bat and destroyed the – please, that happened before I was crazy! – farm right during harvesting season. We've been having lots of money troubles because of it. Then my lil' sis, she wants help with her math. Usually Big Mac – he's my brother, quiet n' humble numbers genius and turkey caller champion of the town – would help her, but he's using all those fancy mathematical skills on the money. And since I'm the less long winded of the two ponies left in the house, you've got me to have Applebloom teach me how to teach her how to do well in math for her teacher. Who the hell needs to find an ecks anyhow?
Tight money might be bad, math might be bad, but if I let those stop me I'd of never graduated first grade. I came back from that whole "battlin' nightmare forces" thing fit as a fiddle, actually. Stress and a little dark magic is something I can handle most days, just not the anniversary of my parents' deaths.
I don't want to waste your time with the whole full and long of it, but yeah, they died when I was a filly on the same day. It's... a rough deal. I've gotten over the bad part of my grief, though, which is why what happened on that day, that day just a few days after that night, was so darn weird.
I like to visit my parents' grave every year. It's really important to me so that I can see how they're doing up in Celestia's Realm and I can tell them how I'm doing down here. I'm not going to lie and say I don't cry. But this time... I saw them behind the trees.
But I didn't really see them, of course, I was being crazy, but only the amount of crazy you can allow to a normal pony; when I blinked, they were gone, and so everything seemed fine. Argh, if only! Because when I returned back to the grave, I saw them again out of the corner of my eye. Shook my head and blamed it on a restless night; last time I got short on shut eye, I thought my friend wanted me to cook earthworm cupcakes and ended up poisoning half of Ponyville. Again, uh, before I was crazy. Who knows, maybe I was insane this whole time all along and nopony bothered to tell me.
I saw them once or more when I was in the barn, but I tried not to jump to conclusions. Well, I kept seeing them the next day too, and could've sworn I heard papa callin' "Jackie!" like he always did when he came home from the fields, and so I decided right up then and there I'd consult my friend Twilight Sparkle about it all.
Can you believe that the first thing she did was pull out a book? She looked at me very serious-like and asked if I had "Post Traumatic Stress Disorder". Now, mom's and pop's death hit me hard, but I wasn't in any kind of disorder because of it! She read out this list of symptoms, but they didn't make any sense because I never had this sort of trouble before. Then, even more seriously, she asked me if I had been hurt by any of the nightmare forces. At first I took it as an insult to my fighting talents (far superior to Rainbow "Buck like a noodle-legged antelope" Dash), but I shook my head nope. Maybe I did get a little scratch, though. Must've. Or it can enter another way. Dunno how evil magic works, exactly.
I didn't get any better. As you can see by the mere fact I'm sitting here, I got worse. I started smelling weird things in odd places, hearing odd sounds. Then it got up to conversations. I thought Rainbow Dash crashed my place again and heard her yelling at the tree she got caught in, but noticed no tree rustling noises and remembered she was training for the Wonderbolts reserves that day so there's no way that could happen at all. It's a darn shame when you've got a witty thing to say and you realized you just said it to your imagination.
Twi's words weren't helping. She said she sometimes got a "a wee bit delirious" in the past when under too much pressure, but what she didn't get was that
A. I'm not talking about that thing where she didn't sleep for half a week and thought she could stop time (craziness on her, doc, craziness on her).
B. I can't stop working. I've got ponies who depend on me.
But I'm not gonna blame it on her, because it ain't her fault I started seeing her turn into Nightmare Sparkle. That's when I should've realized I was plumb nuts, but for some reason it actually made me start to think I was right. Twilight wanted to help me and I was mad at her, so I guess the magic figured it'd make me want to get rid of her or somethin'.
First, it was just an evil glow, and I asked her about it, and she laughed and said I really needed to calm down, and so I started getting real angry. If she was gonna make fun of my problems, she wasn't the Twilight I knew. Maybe, the infection said, maybe she's been taken over by the nightmare forces. Celestia save me and what's left of my corrupted head.
Then I tried to warn the others. They nervously joked about it too, and thought it was a funny idea, but as Fluttershy told me, "Please don't say such things, it worries us about Nightmare Moon" . Fine. They weren't going to help. Twilight was starting to be even more obvious, so even they could notice, and they still decided to sit on their flanks. Ahem, from my point of view, that is. She was getting snake eyes, a cloudy mane, darker and darker purple fur (from my point of view, that is). Even her voice was deepening. Back then, I trusted my own two eyes, my own two ears, and the saying "If you want something done right, do it yourself".
So I did.
I came into the library, trying to be all subtle and catch her off guard. I reckoned she had been preparing for this moment, waiting for me to dare to make a move before putting me out in the community as a friend-slayer. Just like when Chrysalis disguised herself as Cadence and only Twilight could see it – but all the other way 'round and just a little not just like. Unlike Twilight, I weren't gonna bend over and let myself be destroyed. No, I was going to kick the flank out of this villain who replaced one of my best friends with a demon.
I was the best friend replaced with a demon.
I attacked her, her petty cries a silly filly attempt at pity, and a weak one at that. She didn't even have time to respond with her magic before I killed her. Her blood ran out of her quickly like a broken thermometer and dead eyes stared right back at me like a teddy bear's two glass ones and I realized, I realized, that I was something that nopony deserved to see.
Running away, I locked myself into a barn to be lost forever. At least I couldn't be a danger there. But, ah, thanks goodness, my little sister was a good girl when she came home from school and told my friends – all five of them – that I thought I had killed Twilight and locked myself in the barn. They got to Sweet Apple Acres straight away.
At first, I thought Twilight was a ghost. Can you believe that? She said that all I did was break her nose. Liar. I'm the element of honesty. I should know and I should trust myself. But the others agreed with Twilight, so then I thought I had just gotten so far gone that the evil magic was creating a vision so that I'd come out and do what it wanted. No way. I had ponies who needed me to stay right in here and protect them from me.
Twilight didn't even sound mad, though. She never did, not once. A great friend. I don't even remember what she said when I was so worked up, but I just remember the soothing sound of her voice. I sure hope that part actually happened. She brought me to the hospital.
Like that fixed everything. I was begging them the whole way through that I might kill them, please don't do this, I'm trying to keep you all safe, but Twilight was... oh, what was the word she told me... indaunted? Yeah. Nothing stopped her from bringing me from there to here. Twilight says, or, at least, I think she said, that when I got here I ordered them to send me to the highest lockdown padded wall section with a straightjacket to protect the staff and other ponies.
She didn't listen, just like last time. I'm Celestia-damn grateful she was so stubborn. Being stuck in there wouldn't have helped me at all. I'd of assumed the worst and lost myself all the way rather than most of it.
So that's the story to now. You know, the funny thing is, I don't even think it would've been necessary for the nightmare forces to be involved. I... might have gone just as far if it were just me filling my life with too much, too hard, too tough on me and adding a fear of becoming a Nightmare Applejack on top of it, y'know?
The doctor's warm voice finally responded to my long answer. "Look at the wall."
I did. So many charts of my progress. A test for magic interference. Percentages. Zero? I don't know much math, but zero's zero.
Then the door creaked open and the doctor walked in with softly plodding hoofsteps. I looked the other way, where the voice was coming from, and nopony was there.
The charts still were, though. That's something. The stallion asked me with a soothing voice like Twilight's was, "Can you please explain to me what series of events brought you here from your perspective?"
And so I did.
Well, Mr. Doctor Pony – I ain't good with names – I'll tell you what happened, but it may not be all too accurate on account of me being full of the crazies and thinking it was dark magic, in that order...