Lyra didn’t awake until nearly noon that next morning.
She regretted every single thing about it. The loud thumping of the blood inside of her ears was enough of a wake up call. She felt like the noise itself could rouse an elephant in the other room. Her legs felt tingly and warm underneath the blankets. No matter how she moved them, they refused to calm down. It was an almost insane notion, when a body didn’t listen to its brain’s demands.
She didn’t want to get up. Not after last night. Not after realizing that there was actually no reason to leave the confinements of her room. She just wished to sit and lie there for the rest of her days, waste away the time like it was leftovers on a plate.
At first, her mind was horribly fuzzy, but eventually as the hours progressed she felt herself wide awake. When the warmth that came from underneath the blankets became too much, she finally rose, albeit a bit grumpy.
Upon waking up, Lyra was horribly hungry. She could feel her stomach twisting and contorting inside of her, like someone was crushing her insides in a mighty grasp. She didn’t even let out a yawn as she sat up in her bed, coddling the blankets close to her body like a small child. Her mane was most certainly a mess, but she didn’t bother to fiddle with it. Not like it mattered. She gently tossed the blankets off of her body.
She rubbed her eyes, cleaning the dried flakes that adorned the corner of her orbs. She slid off of her bed. Her hind legs were not as cooperative as she would have liked, prompting her to make this transition just a little slower than normal.
The moment she hit the floor, she looked towards the other side of the room. A thick beam was gifted to her from the sun, shining through her window like a welcomed houseguest, or a friend in disguise. The glass ball was in its same position since last night, untouched and unbothered. The sun’s light was reflecting gorgeously off the ball, and projecting a pretty rainbow-esque pattern on the wall next to Lyra’s bed.
The ball was back to its normal self. It was so pretty and inconspicuous that Lyra couldn’t help but cock her head. She stared at it with wide eyes, and a downturned mouth. The ball was like a gravitational force, tempting and seducing her to close the mighty gap between the two of them. Lyra could feel some kind of attraction when she looked at it, but it simply couldn’t be explained.
She took a few nervous steps forward, each hoof lingering in the air for almost a quarter of a second before each step was initiated. She never took her eyes off her target, for fear that something else may happen should she. She reached the ball, and took the liberty to simply stare at it, in its transparent glory.
She moved her head around, getting a few different views of the object. But nothing about it seemed strange. It was an ordinary glass ball. “Maybe…” Lyra murmured, her gaze transforming into a depressed, half-lidded stare. “Maybe it was just a dream,” she told herself with a tiny whisper. She couldn’t help but sigh when that single thought crossed her mind. It was like a raft floating aimlessly down a raging river.
The thought drifted through Lyra’s mind, fluttering around and bumping absently around in different parts of her skull. She had never had a dream so vivid, which was a statement in itself. Her mind was never as clear as it was last night. The light that came from the glass ball, being awoken in the wee hours of the morning.
Stanley.
Stanley. That name rang through her brain like an ancient gong being struck for the first time. It made Lyra’s heart beat just a little bit faster, and her appendages wish to lock up involuntarily. She remembered him. He called himself a human, she believed. The idea of his face projected on the side of the glass ball was nothing but a memoir of what she thought was true.
Lyra turned to the floor, and let out a heavy sigh. It must have been a dream. It was just too insane to be real, everything that occurred last night. A small smile adorned her face, and she giggled lightly to herself. Her loneliness was causing her to lose her mind. That mere dream was a representation of what she didn’t have, and she knew it. She was silly, to think that she’d ever make a friend. She was wrong, to actually think that her new purchase was some kind of… magical communicator. She was stupid to believe that she’d ever have somepony to talk to during these next thirteen days.
She was stupid.
Lyra couldn’t get Stanley’s image out of her mind. That kind face that smiled up at her inside the ball like some kind of small child. She couldn’t ignore the words that she said to him, and the meaning of his misplaced grin.
No.
There was a sliver of doubt inside of her, and she wasn’t going to let it go to waste. She needed to use her emotions as a drive, like she knew she should have. Lyra, like she was flipping a switch, suddenly refused to accept that it was a dream. It was too real, too vivid, for it to be a falsification. Whether it was a dream or not, she actually felt scared. From the moment the ball started glowing, to when it shut off, Lyra had been terrified to the point of passing out. But after contemplation Lyra wanted to go back. She wanted to go back to being scared, as long as she could finally have a new friend just like she had always wanted.
Stanley was a kind monster. Someone who Lyra could call a friend, talk to, even.
She stared at the ball in front of her, poking and prodding it softly with her hoof. She did this once every so often, until she eventually tapped it so hard that it almost fell to the floor. How do I make this thing work…? she thought. She knew it wasn’t a dream. She wanted to see her friend again, but right now, this stupid ball was keeping her from doing that. The ball was cruelly tormenting her, like it was offering candy. “Come on… please…?”
The ball didn’t so much as flicker, or give Lyra even a hint that it would turn on any time soon. Maybe the balls connection to Stanley was some kind of fluke? She shook her head, as her dome was already beginning to take a turn for the worse. She very suddenly felt overcome by a splitting headache pitted inside the back of her head.
The whole situation was killing her thoughts. She could feel certain areas of her body throbbing with annoyance, resisting Lyra’s futile wishes and desires once more.
Lyra gave the glass ball one final stare, before walking into the kitchen to soothe her growling belly.
Boredom almost immediately caught up with the mare, as depressing as it actually was.
The realization of what was to come hit her like a freight train, or even like a fall from the edge of the skies. The trepidation of her evident ennui was a curse in disguise, like an unavoidable nightmare. She could feel the tremors rising inside of her chest, and she hated every second of it.
No matter what she tried to do, she got bored just seconds afterwards. Drawing lead to nowhere, as she had the artistic ability of a small child. She practiced her singing, but eventually her voice started to hurt. It wasn’t as if she ever used it very often. However, playing her lyre actually provided her a bit of joy, until she broke one of her strings.
Lyra was absolutely devastated. With that similar sinking feeling in her belly growing, she knew that she was in trouble. The sound was like Lyra had murdered her own instrument, as it begged for mercy and release in her very hooves. Considering her lyre only bore a few strings in itself, it was physically impossible to play it without that one single missing piece.
Completely disheartened, Lyra felt like crying. The sheer stress and loneliness and isolation weighing down on her shoulders was enough to sink a ship. But, she held it at bay. She bottled up her emotions, like usual, and sighed. She didn’t have any extra strings, having the one she broke be the last one. While Lyra was glad that she was going to have something to do to bide her time, she was none too happy about having to leave her home, as much as she wanted to. It was a conflicted feeling. However, unless she didn’t want to play her lyre anymore, which was almost never the case, she was going to have to go out and purchase some more strings from the shop.
“It… it figures…” Lyra muttered underneath her breath, even though there was absolutely no one around. Lyra had a feeling that she was going to pick up the terrible habit of talking to herself, or make it worse really, so she tried her best to keep it a minimum. As the time dawdled on, and every hour seemed like a total of two days, it was getting much more difficult.
Nonetheless, it took Lyra approximately thirty minutes to run to the store. The journey should have been much longer, but Lyra couldn’t keep herself from rushing and running. Just the thought of other ponies looking and observing her made her horribly nervous, to the point of petrification. When she performed with the Ponyville Symphonic, she had to refuse sitting in the front, like most lyre players. She just couldn’t do it. She was forced to sit in the back, behind the big drums, where no one could see her, and she couldn’t see the crowd.
In short, Lyra ran to the store, bought the correct strings as fast as she could, and bolted back before she had any time to think twice about it. It was something that she just couldn’t help doing. Like a strange urge or tick that she just couldn’t ignore or get over.
But, it was her life. The way she acted way a part of her, like the very fur than adorned her coat. There was nothing that could be done about the things she did or the way she behaved. While most around her would merely tell her to be brave, and to put herself out there more in order to make friends, she just couldn’t. Her parents told her many years ago, and even tried to enroll her in various clubs and groups in order to get her out of the house more, but they all resulted in the same thing: Lyra sobbing, having something similar to a mental breakdown, and begging to be picked up.
As much as Lyra wanted it all the change, she knew it never would. She was cursed with a destiny of seclusion and isolation, her mind and body refusing its inner desires like a child not wanting to eat veggies at the dinner table. It was the exact same thing, and Lyra was absolutely certain. While it sometimes killed her inside, she had no wish to fix it. Whenever Lyra tried to contemplate it, she would only end up shaking her head.
In short, Lyra ended up doing practically nothing all day. She idled away her time by playing her lyre, practicing, and taking a small trip to the store. That was it. Nothing more, nothing less. Lyra thought nothing of it as she squandered away another day of her one and only life. She only felt loneliness, happiness, and a slight bit of depression as well, but she tried her best to ignore it.
Lyra plucked away at her strings like they were a gateway to the afterlife, delicately tracing and playing her instrument with the finesse and love that it deserved. Lyra had always believed that the lyre’s sounds were the music of the angels. She always had, ever since she had first heard one all those years ago. Now, whenever she played or heard its beautiful tones, she’d let the notes course through her veins like some kind of ethereal adrenaline.
But it couldn’t last forever. Much to Lyra’s delight, the sun seemed to come and go. She had successfully frittered away her entire day. While it was spent doing something she loved, and the unicorn felt slightly guilty, she felt a pang of triumph as she reveled in the fact that there was only twelve days left until her best friend returned.
And then, and only then, she would be alright.
The sun was gone, dipped below the trees beyond, by roughly 7:30 pm. Surely, Lyra thought to herself, I could go to bed now without interrupting my sleep schedule. As tempted as she was to stay awake just to see if she was, in fact, dreaming last night, she decided against it. Lyra firmly believed that what happened the previous night—the glass ball her meeting with that kind human, Stanley—was not a fallacy. It was oh so real, so much that she could remember his voice ring inside of her head, and his enlightened face inside of the glass.
“Even though this whole thing is still weird as shit, at least we each made a new friend out of it, right?”
Lyra couldn’t believe it, that those words were a lie. Did she really, truly, make a new friend? She had dismissed the possibility so long ago. The idea of somepony actually calling her that word was nearly a miracle.
One more time, she wished. Call me your friend, one more time.
Lyra was forced to go to bed, though. There was nothing else she could do besides that. As fun as it seemed to stay up all night and stare at that ball until something happened, she was never positive that it would. “Perhaps it was a one time thing…” Lyra wondered, as she slipped underneath the covers of her blanket, ready to endure night two of her fourteen day long suffering. “Stanley woke me up last night,” Lyra muttered, as she rested her head on the pillow. Saying his name out loud felt so foreign to her tongue. “Maybe… maybe he’ll do it again tonight.” After all, she was a fairly light sleeper.
Lyra closed her eyes, and clutched the blankets. The silent chill of the oncoming night was cooing, and doing it’s very best to lull her asleep. However, she was just so hesitant. Restlessness had her by her foreleg, while her inner wish for sleep had her by the other. They were both tugging mercilessly, threatening to rip her clean in half unless she gave in to one of the two sides.
She wanted to see her new friend, so badly that it almost hurt. It was the only thought inside of her mind. Her friend. Friend, friend, friend.
That one, minuscule word passed through her mind what must have been over a million times before she gradually fell nodded off. Her snores were simply a replacement for her insanity. Unfortunately, she just wasn’t aware.
Lyra was awoken, yet again. The night was like any other, peeking its way through her room like a friendly intruder. Her sleep was gently shattered by reasons that she really didn’t understand. The covers that adorned her body were actually sliding off, forcing the top half of her to shiver at the occasional chills that her room was kind enough to give her. She pulled the blankets up closer to her body, before flipping herself over. She turned her nose towards the ceiling, and opened her eyes.
It hurt, at first. It was like her orbs were being pierced by a red-hot metal rod. She had to compel herself to get used to the odd mixture of light and darkness that made its way through her room. It was like the two of them were doing some sort of perpetual dance for control of the walls that covered and isolated Lyra from the outside world.
When her eyes finally stopped hurting so much, she let out a small sigh. She almost would have paid the odd light no mind, the sleepiness that she was enduring shrouding the incident that had happened twenty-four hours ago like a horrid blanket. It wasn’t until she heard something that her eyes snapped open, and started to remember.
“Are… are you sure this is a good idea?”
“Don’t ask questions, just come on.”
Lyra was given another chill, but for different reasons. Her eyes grew the size of pinpricks at the sound of another voice. It took a minute before she pieced it together. She slowly turned her head, and took notice of the glass ball. It was shining once again, illuminating the room in a much brighter glow that it was the previous night. Unfortunately, Lyra couldn’t see it all that well from her position. With a quick turn of her head, she looked at the clock. It was midnight, on the dot.
Stanley.
Was it true? Was she really going to talk to her new friend tonight? Was it honestly not a dream? Was just losing her mind, and hallucinating as she descended upon another helpless bout of insanity? She had to know.
Lyra, slowly, began to exit her bed, feeling the sharp chill of the house hit her with the force of ten suns. She was so desperate, wanting and willing for some kind of communication. She wanted so badly to talk to somepony, or something, Stanley specifically. She had him, and it made her happier than she’d truly been in a while.
Lyra walked up to the glass ball, a bit closer than she did last night. She was a little more confident, sure that Stanley would never hurt her now. However, it wasn’t until she looked inside the glass ball when she realized something was terribly wrong—something that made Lyra’s mind wish to go completely numb.
The voices… neither of them sounded like Stanley at all.
“Walker… come on. Can’t we do something else?” This time, it was another voice. Three voices in all, Lyra heard. Neither of them were Stanley’s. Lyra could hardly handle talking to one monster, one human. She still couldn’t even handle talking to ponies from her own world. There was no way she could handle three at once. What if these monsters were nothing like Stanley? What if they attacked her, and killed her? Lyra felt her body lock up, turning back into her usual stupor. That lame, frightful, lonely version of herself that she despised so much.
She was looking at some kind of room. There was a large oak table in the middle, much larger than Lyra had ever seen inside somepony’s couch. Just how big are these monsters? Lyra couldn’t help but think. There was a brown couch located directly in front of the table. They shared the same color. The walls were a stark white, and covered in various different pictures and memorabilia that Lyra wasn’t able to directly see. The room was dark, however, the moonlight allowed her to see practically every inch at least a little bit. If it was indeed a human’s house, then their livingrooms really didn’t differ all that much from that of Equus residents.
Something else Lyra noted as odd was the fact that the view of the room was clear, and unmoving. When she talked to Stanley, the picture of him would frequently jump and jerk. Perhaps Stanley was holding his ball, while the one she was looking through now was stationary? Well, that’s assuming if Stanley’s original idea was correct.
Oh, how she missed her new friend.
“Fuckin’ pansies. Just come on!” said one of the voices. Lyra winced at the sound. It was a bit younger than Stanley’s, but a bit more meaner sounding. Although he was talking in a hushed manner in a place that Lyra couldn’t see, she could feel the venom dripping from his voice.
There was a small whimper, like that of a young child, before three figures made their way into the room. Two of them were… young. About half the size of Stanley, if Lyra had to take a guess. The other one, the mean sounding one, must have been older, as he was significantly taller. Piecing this together, and using the sounds of their voices as evidence, Lyra deduced that they were all male.
“I don’t like this! We could get in trouble!” said one of the monsters. He was only a foot or so taller than the couch, and bore a fluffy red mane on the top of his head. Lyra was immediately reminded of Golden Harvest, who she would sometimes see and buy carrots from in the market. However, she tossed that reminder out of her mind very quickly. His body was much skinnier than the other two, and he bore small red spots on his face and cheeks. He was shaking a good amount, like a leaf in the wind. “Let’s just go do something else!”
“Hush, Eric!” said the older monster to the small red-maned child-human. His skin was much darker than the other two, making it hard for Lyra to see him in the darkness. She had no idea that these monsters differentiated in color like ponies did. He didn’t even seem to have a mane. In fact, he was almost bald. “Shut your damn mouth and start grabbin’ shit,” he said.
The red-maned monster, Eric, turned his gaze to the floor, and let out another pathetic whimper. The other small child, glared hard at the much more intimidating human.
“You have to know how bad of an idea this is,” he said, in a hushed whisper. “We could go to jail! Can’t we just… do something else?” This monster was only an inch or two shorter than Eric, and he was a bit more portly. Every step he took almost caused the hardwood floor underneath him to creak and groan. Unlike Eric and the mean human, his mane was a bit longer, uncut and styled upwards a bit. Oddly enough, it was similar to a pretty common Equestrian haircut. For being smaller, he certainly seemed a bit braver than the other child. Since Lyra had absolutely no idea how human’s aged, she had no idea just how old all three of them were. The mean one had to have been reaching adulthood sometime soon, though. He just sounded so older.
The older one glared at the tubby child, and threw a small sack at him. A pillowcase, maybe? “Don’t pussy out now,” he said, obviously growing more agitated by the second. “You wanted to be cool, right? You wanted to hang with the older kids, right? Then prove you two aren’t just little bitches. Start puttin’ stuff in the bag.”
“But Walker, this wasn’t what we--” started the portly one, but the older monster quickly dragged his claw across his neck, shutting the poor monster up.
“I don’t wanna hear it! Just do it, or else! I’m not fuckin’ around. Sooner we grab it all, sooner we can leave.”
Lyra was pretty sure she was witnessing a robbery. These monsters were… were terrible! They’re stealing from somepony! The mare stayed absolutely silent, fearing the worst. If these monsters knew that she was witnessing their crime, surely they’d come after her as well. She didn’t wanna get hurt. Lyra didn’t want to die. All she could do was stay silent, and pray for her safety—hope that they wouldn’t notice her.
These humans were nothing like Stanley. Nothing like him at all.
Truly monsters.
The three humans started loading things into the sack in the portly ones grasp. How they hadn’t noticed the light that was surely given off the glass ball was a mystery, and Lyra didn’t question it. She stared absolutely silent, watching with wide eyes and a trembling heart as these three stole from another human. Another being of the same species. Lyra was beginning to grow sick to her stomach.
“Levi, make sure to grab the DVD player. I could use that,” said the older monster, who Lyra was pretty sure one of the younger thieves called Walker. That meant the last one, the chubby human, was Levi. “We gotta hurry the fuck up. We’ve already been in here for too long,”
Walker was avidly tossing things inside of the sack, moving at a brisk pace. He talked very oddly, with some kind of accent that was hard to understand. He occasionally missed his G’s and H’s. However, Levi and Eric were being very slow. They were practically dragging themselves from the shelves, to the sack, and back again, all with large frowns on their faces. Are they ashamed of themselves? Lyra wondered. Is the big human forcing them?
By the time the sack was halfway full, majority of the items inside of the bag were thrown in by Walker. Eric and Levi only threw in two or three things, if Lyra was paying attention enough. There was no doubt that the big human was manipulating the other two smaller ones. Lyra felt just a little worse. The terrible wish to intervene was apparent, however so was her fear. Her courage was absolutely nowhere to be found.
Lyra’s heart practically stopped when a light flipped on, and she heard a fourth voice thrown into the mix.
“W-Who… what are y-you three doing in my house…?” it said. From an entrance far in the background, Lyra could make out the hunched silhouette of another monster. It sounded oddly feminine, but a bit distorted. Lyra could certainly make out the fact that it was a female, but just barely. She had strange wrinkles all over her face, and was shaking horrendously. Her fragile body looked like she was about to keel over at any minute. Soft, blue eyes stared at the three thieves, but they were quickly contorted with worry in a matter of seconds.
“Oh fuck!” screamed Walker. Eric and Levi reacted in different ways. The former was trembling, and Lyra could see water assembling in the corners of his eyes. The latter had actually ducked down behind the couch, in a desperate attempt as to not be seen. It didn’t work. “I… I… Fuck!” Walker added.
“G-Get out!” screamed the old monster, clutching her bathrobe. Her long grey mane hung down like algae. “Please, get out of my house, n-now!”
“Walker, let’s go!” Levi shouted, standing up from his crouched position. He started pulling at Eric’s shirt, trying to coerce him roughly. Lyra was pretty sure that the portly boy would start dragging the meek monster had enough time passed.
“Look, old lady,” Walker said, holding out his appendages. His entire demeanor changed, and his face softened to the point where Lyra could hardly recognize him anymore. “W-We’re sorry, we’ll put the shit back and leave, just chill out, alright?” Lyra furrowed her brow as she watched the scene take place. Her heart was beating faster than she ever thought it could, struck by so much fear that she was quickly finding it hard to breath. It was like she was entangled it a murderous bear hug. Lyra could feel the tension in the air, and she prayed for it to end.
She was completely helpless as she watched.
It was a shame that, deep in her mind, she knew she was never meant to be of help anyways.
Walker was much closer to the elderly monster than the other two males, but that didn’t stop him from taking steps towards her.
“What are you doing?” Levi shouted. His eyes were shifting between Walker, and something just out of Lyra’s view. She presumed it to be the door. “Come on, let’s get out!”
“Go on!” shouted the old human. “You’d better listen to your little friend there, and git!” she spat. Walker didn’t appear to be listening.
“Just take it easy!” yelled Walker. The female’s eyes grew larger, as if she had just then realized that the mean human was taking steps closer. “Come on, just come out here with us. Talk a bit?” As suspicious as it sounded to Lyra, the female caught on as well. She roughly shook her head.
“I-I’ve seen your faces! All of them! I’m calling the police!”
It was then, at the point, that Lyra felt so afraid, so frightened of the safety of monsters she never even knew. Walker’s face contorted into a mask of sheer rage—a swirling behemoth of evil and maliciousness. It was as if something inside of him switched, shifted. Like a demon in angel’s clothing, Walker exploded.
“God fucking damnit!” Walker cried out. He threw out his appendages and stomped on the floor, exasperated. He let out an aggravated howl, like that of an animal. The dark bodied monster had appeared to just lose his mind upon the hearing of a single sentence. It was as if the sheer mentioning of punishment was too much for the monster to bear. “Old ass bitch! Now it’s all fucked! God dammit all!”
Before Lyra could even wonder what was going to happen next, she heard a small click.The next moment, Walker was holding some kind of… thing, in his hand. It looked like some kind of metallic… thing. From Lyra’s position, it looked like the tip of a metal hammer, and bore a small cylindrical tube that pointed towards the old human’s head. His finger was shaking near some kind of trigger near the bottom. Lyra had no idea what it was, but Eric, Levi, and the female did. All three of their eyes widened fearfully at the sight of it.
“W-Walker, don’t!” cried Eric, who was blubbering horrendously. Levi’s mouth was parted, and Lyra could see the gears turning inside of his head.
“Yeah!” The noise that came out of Walker’s mouth was terribly loud, so much that it made the female hold up her appendages, and jump. Lyra couldn’t help but flinch. She quickly brought a hoof up to her mouth, to keep herself from crying out. Lyra had a bad feeling about the weapon in Walker’s claw. “Yeah, yeah! Now what? Now whatcha gonna do? Stupid motherfucker!” Walker actually tilted the weapon horizontally, shoving it closer and closer to the old monster’s face.
“P-Please, wait…” The female said, choking back a few tears. “I w-won’t call the police… just… please leave!” Her fragile arms were shaking like branches, being forced to endure the pain of holding them in the air unsupported.
“Don’t do it! We’re already in enough trouble!” Levi shook, clutching Eric’s shirt for dear life. “Come on, this isn’t a joke! Put the gun down!”
“Hell nah, it ain’t no joke!” Walker shouted. “This bitch’s gonna send us to fuckin’ jail! Callin’ the police and shit. Do you wanna go to jail? Do you wanna? I didn’t fucking think so!” Walker didn’t take his crazed eyes off the female. “Here’s what you’re gonna do. You’re gonna go and grab anything worth hard money and give it here!”
“I don’t have anything, h-honest… please…” the female begged, tugging at Lyra’s aching heart. The words that fell from her lips were nothing but sincere, as far as Lyra could tell. They were sweet. The female reminded Lyra of her very own grandmother, but she felt worse upon making the connection.
“Bullshit!” Walker cried, thrusting the weapon a little closer to the female’s face. She let out a soft cry as her only rebuttal. “You don’t keep all your shit in your living room. Now go get it!”
“Let her go!” Levi shouted, taking a few steps forward. Lyra’s eye twitched, and she felt like she was going to undergo a full-fledged panic attack at any moment. “Don’t hurt her! Seriously!”
“Please…” pleaded the female, giving the tubby child a small flicker of her eyes.
“Shut up!”
“Walker—”
“Fuck you!”
“Walker!”
What happened next, Lyra would never be able to cleanse from her mind, body and soul. It would haunt her for the rest of her life, and fill her dreams full of nothing but remorse and suffering upon each and every remembrance.
Walker turned around, but kept the “gun” pointed towards the female. He opened his mouth, as if he was going to holler at the portly human some more, but stopped when he realized his mistake. By the time he turned around, the elderly female human had already tried to bolt. Using the walls as support, she rushed deeper into the kitchen. Lyra could just barely see her, but she wouldn’t have to much longer. Walker cursed, and suddenly, the entire house was filled with a sound that rivaled a firecracker. It hurt Lyra’s ears, forcing her to cover them to prevent them from enduring any further harm. She gritted her teeth, and closed her eyes, tears streaming down like the mouth of an angry river.
“No!” she heard Eric shout. There was a loud crash, and Lyra forced herself to open her eyes again. “Oh God…!”
The female was almost out of sight. The only part of her that Lyra could see was part of her hindlegs, strewn about the kitchen floor. All she noted were the pink slippers and the panicked crying that came from Eric.
The older female was surely dead.
“Fuck! I… I…” Walker stuttered, holding the gun up in the air. Levi pushed the murderer aside, and knelt down to the floor. “She made me do it! She was gonna call the police on us! It was her fucking fault! God dammit, you both saw that shit!”
“You killed her! Why!? Oh no, no, no!” Levi cried. The body of the female was moving, as if Levi had started shaking her, doing his best to rouse her from a sleep in which she would never awaken. Tears fell down his face, and Lyra could see some kind of red substance meandering across the kitchen floor. There was no doubt as to what it was. Lyra felt the bile rising in her throat, a false sense of warmth climbing from her stomach, making a daring escape for the surface.
“She tried to run!” Walker argued. He quickly hid the gun away in the back of his pants. “So I shot the bitch! She made me do it! Y’all saw! Come on, grab the shit and let’s go!” With this, Walker grabbed the sack, and tossed it over his shoulder. To his dismay, Eric and Levi were huddled around the body of the elderly female, shouting.
“We can’t just leave her! We’re gonna go to jail for murder!” Eric cried, falling down to his knees. The front of his shirt was soaked, using it as a way to clean the tears off his face. Walker let out another angry cry, and Lyra could hear his seething. His eyes were soulless, dead inside as he stared at the much smaller children before him.
“Is that how its gon’ be? Y’all just gonna pussy out once some old bitch gets shot? The fuck? Y’all just gonna wait for the fuckin’ cops to get here? Stupid!” he yelled. Levi nodded. He was heavily trembling, but not as much as Eric. The poor child appeared to be having some kind of breakdown, staring at the body before him and grasping the sides of his mane, like he was about to tear it out.
“We didn’t sign up for this!”
“‘Ey! You wanted to roll with the real niggas, right? Well, here we are!” The murderer threw his unoccupied foreleg up into the air, causing Levi to flinch.
Please leave. Lyra told herself. Please… leave the children alone…
“She didn’t do anything! We didn’t…” Levi couldn’t even finish his sentence, as he turned back down at the lifeless corpse next to him. A few of Eric’s whimpers filled the house.
Click!
Eric and Levi both looked up.
Lyra’s heart stopped, and she lost the ability to breathe.
A smile adorned Walker’s face.
The two children jumped up at the sound. Walker now had the gun back in his grasp, and was pointing it at both of the young humans. Eric started to cry harder, while Levi raised his forelegs high in the air. His eyes harbored nothing but deep regret.
“Y’all can stay ‘ere then! But y’all ain’t gon’ snitch on me!” Walker roared, staring at the two with eyes colder than the body that lay before them.
Then he fired.
The shot was aimed a little too high, creating a hole in a cabinet just a few inches above Eric. Since Lyra hadn’t technically seen what a gun did, and lacked the basic knowledge of just what firing one of those guns would bring forth, she couldn’t help but imagine that size of a hole inside of the poor female’s body. Lyra had no idea that guns shot out really fast pieces of metal. Inside, she pleaded for the children to run.
Levi and Eric bolted out of Lyra’s view, to the right. Walker cursed, and dropped the sack onto the floor, with a mighty crash. He ran into the kitchen, and lifted up the gun again. Lyra heard the opening of another door. But, near milliseconds afterwards…
Bang! Bang! Bang! Followed by another angry curse from Walker.
And then, just like that, the glass ball shut off, leaving Lyra wondering about the fates of the two children.
Just like the previous night, the room was completely shrouded in a complete darkness. A seemingly hopeless pit of sorrows and emptiness that Lyra had gotten used to so long ago. The sounds of terror and sobbing whisked away any sort of hope for the future that the young mare had. She could feel the swirling descension into madness in her heart, lungs, and mind. It was like a war cry in a peaceful evergreen.
That loud noise. The loud blam! was still audible inside her ears, labelled in the filing cabinets of her brain as the sound of somepony she didn’t know being murdered. After pleading for her life, begging for the trio to leave her house and let her be, she would still be on the floor of her kitchen, bleeding, and reaching an end to her already long life. And then, the gun being turned on innocent children, leaving Lyra unsure of their fates.
Levi and Eric tried to stop him, Walker, the monster. Walker the monster. Walker was nothing like Stanley. He was mean. He was a murderer, and ender of innocent lives that deserved to thrive and prosper for however long they had left. Stanley was a good friend, nothing like that.
Humans are monsters, Lyra thought, with wide eyes. A human is my friend.
Lyra couldn’t take it anymore. What she had just seen would never, ever leave her mind. Before it was too late, Lyra’s cheeks puffed, and she up and ran herself to the restroom. Having barely made it, Lyra successfully vomited into her toilet in the knick of time. She retched, and puked until there was absolutely nothing left inside of her aching belly. By the time she was done, her throat was on fire, and the only thing that was exiting her body was nothing more than disgusting stomach bile.
When she was sure she was done, she sat on the floor of her bathroom, her mane strewn about and contorted into nothing more than a mess that she had no desire to fix. Lyra’s eyes were bloodshot and panicked. Lyra’s spheres were as wild and transparent as the glass ball.
Lyra brought her hooves to her head, and sobbed into the bathroom floor. She let out gigantic wails of agony that bombarded her already spoiled eardrums. The torment that was brought forth to her traumatized mind cracked her brain, breaking her down until the stress tried to eat her alive. It was all too much to bear, and if Lyra had the opportunity, and another one of her rash impulses, she would have possibly jumped from the nearest highest cliff just to ease away the pain of it all.
The loneliness.
The emptiness.
The sights that befell her that night.
The fear.
The death.
The silence.
Oh Celestia, the silence.
That ball. It was getting to her. Whether or not it showed nothing but illusions or fallacies, Lyra certainly hoped so. She wished that she was simply dreaming, a rare nightmare that would occasionally plague her mind with hardships and woe. The glass ball that she had bought for fifteen bits was threatening her psyche, should she not be in some kind of odd dream.
Dream.
Lyra’s fractured mind almost forced her to believe it. What she had saw, never happened. She urged herself to throw out any thoughts of what she had just visioned, any recollection of the murder that had just taken place in front of her very eyes. Lyra tossed away the thought of the terrified screams of possibly murdered young children.
But she just couldn’t. There was no way. Lyra lifted her head, and looked out towards the hallway. Her face and eyes were redder than a tomato.
The glass ball. How she despised that horrid thing. She hated it more than anything in the world. The temptation to go and throw the glass ball into the trash can was staggering. So much that she actually rose to her hooves…
...and let out a sigh.
No. She was not going to throw out that ball. It was the only link to Stanley. Her new friend.
Her new friend.
Stanley would never do what Walker did. Ever. He’s a kind soul, who likes Lyra for who she was. He was nice. He would never hurt anypony.
But he is a human.
And humans are monsters.
...Right?