Chapter IV. – The Test That Stumped Them All: Beetle
"A person needs a little madness, or else they never dare cut the rope and be free." - Nikos Kazantzakis
. . . .
A walk further inside the sanitarium took the pair to what Twilight guessed to be the sun room. Grand windows took up entirety of all four walls, and seemed to engulf the viewer in a great wave as the windows passed far up and over one’s head and ended in a stained-glass apex. A beautiful view of the rolling hills that made up the hospital’s grounds was visible through the unobtrusive glass.
There wasn’t a single pony in the room, save for a deep blue stallion seated in a wheelchair at the far corner. As her gaze fell on him, a strange sensation of curiosity crept up in her mind.
“Well, this is the sun room, but there’s nopony here.” The doctor frowned as he glanced at his watch. “It’s a quarter past three. The assistants should have brought the fourth group in here by now…” The ever-professional unicorn trailed off as his analytical mind processed charts and timetables. He excused himself to go find out what was going on, and left Twilight alone in the sun room.
But, not quite alone. The sensation of unadulterated curiosity finally won over her mind, and she found herself walking quietly up to the wheelchair-bound from. Twilight glanced at him sidelong, and her gaze fell on a middle-aged blue pony that lay lazily in his chair. His azure mane looked as though it had been combed neatly, but she could tell where it naturally stuck up by the poor way it had been prepared.
Though his rose-colored eyes stood placid and unmoving, she could tell they captured a mad brilliance. Twilight realized with a shock as she spotted a single, brilliant tear that stood on his cheek, a rainbow of light magnified through it. Against her better judgment, she gently reached out a single hoof and gingerly wiped it away. The face remained unmoving; not a single reaction betrayed any awareness to what she had just done.
“Twilight Sparkle?”
Twilight jumped only slightly as she heard her name across the room. She turned to see the doctor, followed by a large white-clothed assistant who walked in to set up chairs and tables. The doctor approached her calmly.
“What are you doing?” he asked enquiringly.
“He was crying,” Twilight said plainly. The answer seemed self-explanatory, but at the same time, ludicrous.
“Really?” The doctor’s face seemed to light up. “You got a response out of old Beetle there?” Twilight shook her head.
“It seemed that a tear was there before I was.” She watched carefully as the doctor’s face dropped. He seemed crestfallen.
“Ah. I was hoping to hear something out of him. He’s been here six years, and we’ve not been able to get a single response out of him. His mind seems, well, shut down.” He shrugged, seemingly in an admittance of defeat.
“Why? What’s wrong with him?” she asked, probing for some more truth to the story.
“All we know is what we’ve learned from his stay here, and the medical records that were taken from the Emerald Ocean Sanatorium in Whinnysota, after it was shut down. Neither has really painted much of a picture as to what exactly happened to this poor pony.”
“Well, what do you know, in all?” Twilight asked. She was determined to find an answer, for some reason far beyond what she understood.
“As far as we have been able to tell, Beetle suffers from paranoid schizophrenia. Or, at least, he used to, after Emerald Ocean decided that using electro-shock therapy and frontal lobotomy surgery would be an effective way to cure his disorder.” The doctor’s normally pleasant persona dropped sharply, leveling off at the point of being dangerously icy. He put a disgusted emphasis on each word describing Beetle's treatment.
“They tortured the poor colt. There’s a reason ES therapy is illegal in Equestria. The evidence is clear in front of you!” He gestured severely towards Beetle’s listless form. “It doesn’t work. It’s a dead-end solution to the test that has stumped us all. Erm, schizophrenia is currently an untreatable disorder,” he added hastily at Twilight’s questioning look. He glanced over his shoulder as his name was called, and excused himself once more, leaving Twilight with Beetle.
She looked on angrily to the poor pony that was sitting dressed in ridiculous yellow coveralls and stuck as helpless as a newborn filly.
A vessel now left lifeless in pursuit to the answer to the test that stumped them all. Twilight looked on, her mind working away vehemently as she watched various ponies file inside, preparing to enjoy their afternoon activities. The lavender unicorn let out a deep sigh as she tried to drive outraged upset from her mind.
A once-wild mind, broken and trapped behind the form of an immobile body...
. . . .
...All in the pursuit of an answer to the test that has stumped them all! What could he possibly have done to deserve this!
The blue colt was standing in the darkness, shivering violently, and waiting for the light.
They’ll be here any second now...
The smell of pure adrenaline was burning in the night, and Beetle felt his mind break.
Random blinding flashes are aiming at the stage! They want him. The shadows all want him for themselves.
The intro tape begins to roll, igniting sonic rage!
Beetle’s face turned to a smirk as he dove into the black sea of shadows.
And still they take me between these hollow walls, he thought. Hoping to find in me the answers to the test that stumped them all!
. . . .
Beetle remembered through the brilliant clarity that his momentary coherence brought forth. As he wrestled with his sheet-white straight-jacket here in the soft, padded room, his thoughts raced back to when he had first come here as a young colt.
He recalled sitting in his best clothes in the head doctor’s office. He remembered itchy, dress-up clothes, and the fact that his parents had neatly combed his azure mane for the meeting with the nice doctor, but that now it was mussed wildly from the ordeal they had endured on the way to the doctor’s. His parents had had to wrestle him into the office as he called out to the shadow that chased him inside. They honestly had no idea what it was he was screaming about.
. . . .
His mother and father sat now on either side of him in the doctor's office. The office smelled of stale sweat and disinfectant; the former seeming to drive the latter into submission.
Young Beetle's ears pricked up as he heard the sound of their voices. They seemed to intertwine in his mind, coalescing into a stereo discussion.
“The colt’s just simply crazy” his father said firmly.
“Suffering from delusions…” his mother added with a sniff.
“We honestly think that, maybe,” his father started, looking sidelong at his wife.
“He might need an institution…” she sobbed.
“He lives in a world of fiction!” Father cried dramatically, bringing a hoof down onto the wooden desk.
“And really could use some help” Mother added tearfully into her hankie.
A pause, as the white-maned doctor adjusted his thick glasses. He finally stood up, a considerable effort allowing for all the bulk that hung on him. He looked thoughtfully out the window for a time, and turned to say:
“We have just the place to fix him, to save him from himself.”
His glare came down on Beetle’s head. The little colt got the strange sensation the doctor’s eyes burned with a ghostly fire.
Beetle stared right back, unblinking.
. . . .
Now he flew back into the present. The white knights had come and gone. Beetle sat, curled up in the darkness, unable to move, searching for the light. The smell of stale sweat and shit sat streaming through the night.
All his subjects had gone. He did not know where, or for how long.
He reveled in the deaf silence as his lucid mind took over for him.
It had all started out quite methodically:
Random urine testing. Pills: red, pink and blue. Counseling and therapy. Not one could provide a clue.
Still, they keep me between these hollow walls, he thought intuitively. A grimace spread across his face.
It seems that they’re hoping to find in me the answer to the test that stumped them all.
He laughed maniacally as he felt the rush return. Spirits began to coalesce inside the room with him, and subtly hid the gut-wrenching horror he felt when they were around. They must not know how afraid he was. They must never know.
. . . .
Another memory:
The fat doctor stood around Beetle’s unmoving form, joined by his nurse. They think he’s unconscious after what they’ve put him through, but he’s just very good at acting like it. Voices mixed again in a stereophonic discussion.
"We can't seem to find the answers,” the doctor said, voice nasally. He fixed his thick glasses.
“He seemed such a clear cut case…” the other mare said disparagingly.
“We cannot just let him leave here…” began the doctor.
“And put all this work to waste?” she finished. The doctor nodded slowly.
“Why don't we try shock treatment?” she added gleefully. Beetle’s heart raced at this. “It really might do some help,” she added with a wink.
The fat doctor walked over to the sink, washing the saliva and blood off of his hooves; a testament to Beetle’s unwillingness to give up his subjects without a fight. The very same colt watched as his mind’s eye formed a cruel sneer on his face at this thought.
“We have just the tools to fix him” the doctor said, coming back. He looked on irately at Beetle’s form.
“To save him from himself!"
. . . .
Beetle sat strapped to the bed with thick leather braces, a stinging spot on his arm where the nurses had shot him full of insulin. A wire sat inside his nose. The filament reached deep into his sinuses, and rested along his frontal lobe. It itched horribly.
Nurses flocked around the bed and the humming machine that sat nearby; sunlight streamed through the haphazardly closed blinds on the other side of the room. The doctor walked up to him, smiling, his body awash in the brilliant sunlight. Specks of dust swarmed in the ray of light about his head as Beetle willed them to attack the fat pony’s face. He watched the smile turned to a frown of disgust as the doctor flinched at the dazzling light.
“Close those blinds!” he barked sharply. A small pink nurse nodded curtly, and rushed over to snap the blinds fully shut. The sunlight disappeared, replaced by the harsh fluorescent lights. Visions danced on the edge of Beetle’s mind erratically. His gaze focused as the fat pony’s jovial smile rested on his still form. The blue colt could still see the dust ensnaring the doctor's balding head.
“You’re about to make history, son. The very first electro-shock patient in Equestria in over thirty years!” The doctor's face darkened as the smile on his face turned cruel.
“Congratulations.”
Before Beetle could even think of reacting, the nurses shoved two tongue depressors into his mouth, roughly covered with surgical tape and cotton.
They cracked and splintered in his mouth as his body shook violently from the waves of pure electrical energy that flooded each and every one of his billions of synapses. His red-diamond eyes shot wide in an expression of pure and utter animalistic fear- the first instance he had ever known to have experienced- and he let out a fierce scream of howling pain.
Beetle could feel as every single one of his nerve-endings seemed to scream louder, drowning out his pain in a bloody dirge to show a pure and unimaginable anguish.
. . . .
A worn-out wheelchair sat in front of the large window, looking down on a multitude of ponies dressed in yellow plainclothes. In the wheelchair was seated a blue stallion, his form unmoving and his eyes placid lakes, seemingly frozen over in the winter of detached consciousness.
He did nothing all day except sit there and stare, until the nurses came and put him to bed, change his catheter, or, on occasion, wheel him over to medical for his special prescriptions. On occasion, a sawdust-colored doctor in glasses spoke with him, but Beetle never gave him the benefit of a reply.
A single tear fell from the stallion’s rose-colored eyes as he spotted specks of dust swirling around in the sun’s rays. He had won.
The test that stumped them all.