//------------------------------// // Discord Turns Your Bed Into A Chocolate Raincloud (Chicago Ted) // Story: Fimfic Authors Are In Your Bed // by Admiral Biscuit //------------------------------// Discord Turns Your Bed Into a Chocolate Raincloud Chicago Ted Well!         You walked into your bedroom, bone-tired, the last drop of your energy squeezed from your system, like the rind of an orange, or a lemon. These customers of yours have a way of demanding more effort than you have, especially on Monday. By the time you punched out come day’s end, your soul and your soles were begging you for mercy. --And to top it off, you’ve seen several ponies in your bed recently. You can’t help but wonder how and why they wound up there. But you’re not willing to find out why at the moment. In fact, there’s not much you can do, save for earning a well-deserved rest. So you climb into the duvet, shut your eyes, and let Hypnos take over. *  *  *         “Cleanup on aisle six,” droned the intercom. Aisle six contained several refrigerated products. --Perhaps someone spilled some milk?         You continued with the checkout-- the janitor would take care of it. Just as you started packing a second bag of groceries, you heard what sounded like a water main bursting in aisle six. A large puddle of chocolate milk started permeating the floor throughout the store. The flow rate was so fast, soon it was up to your knees. Clearly, the janitor couldn’t handle it.         Well, what were you going to do? Continue like nothing was happening?         Nay! You leave as fast as you can!         Two problems arise as you proceed to the egress. One: everyone else had the same idea, and the doors were only so wide. And Two: the chocolate milk was really thick, which further impeded movement.         You started to make your way to the nearest door, which thankfully was relatively uncrowded, but an assistant-manager grabbed you by the shoulder and ordered you to finish packing the customer’s groceries. You tried to object to such an absurd proposal, but you were threatened with termination.         Grudgingly, you made your way back to the counter, and finished the second, and then the third bags. The last item you packed, you noticed, was a carton of chocolate milk.         Oy vey.         Now that that was out of the way, you start to leave again. Fortunately, the doorway was much more clear than before, but the chocolate milk was now up to your waist. To make matters worse, someone or something tripped the sprinkler system, which was now raining down-- yup, chocolate milk. At this point, you started to wonder if it was really chocolate milk. --In Heaven’s name, you hoped so. You were trying not to think about the possibilities of this substance, besides chocolate milk, by the time you burst outside of the store. You were astonished that, quite against the laws of physics, the chocolate milk appeared to have halted entirely at the door, as though an invisible barrier were holding it in place. And then you looked up, and realized you have merely went, as the idiom goes, out of the frying pan and into the fire.         There were large pink clouds hanging above the parking lot, and possibly the rest of the city, all raining down chocolate milk. It was coming down faster than in the store, but wasn’t pooling up as severely, thanks to several dozen storm drains placed around the city.         But that wasn’t all. You saw several cars and street fixtures floating in midair. --Some were even rotating in circles. Through the pooling-up milk, you could see the pavement was in a checkerboard fashion.         Without warning, one of the pink clouds reached down to you, grabbed you, and pulled you up into the sky!         And everything dissolved into nothingness. *  *  * You came to your senses, to realize one aspect of the nightmare held true-- the chocolate milk rain.         One pink cloud was hanging right over your bed. It had soaked your bed-sheets, leaving you vulnerable to pneumonia. The chocolate also gathered in one large puddle-- nay, scratch that, a small lake-- surrounding your bed.         “I see you’re awake,” something unseen said.         You’re too speechless and sleepy to respond. --Worse yet, you have no idea what that voice just meant.         Then a door opened-- but not your bedroom door!, but one that appeared in the æther at your bedside-- and in walked what can be best described as an animal that can’t make up its mind.         It had the head of a horse, like the many you have encountered in the past, but the dual horns it possessed were those of a deer and a goat on its right and left, respectively. It had a snake-like body, with wings and four legs from several different animals, and it walked upright.         It shut the door behind it, and with a snap of its fingers (one of its hands was an eagle’s talons), it disappeared.         “Good evening, human,” it addressed you. “I’m Discord.”         “What the hell are you doing here?” you ask.         “Oh, I just saw how boring your life had been recently,” explained ‘Discord,’ “and I thought to myself, ‘Hey-- what better way to fix that than throwing a wrench into the works?’”         As though on cue, a monkey wrench suddenly dropped down onto your shin. You cried out from the sharp pain. “What was that for!?” you shouted.         “Just to make a point,” Discord replied, with a casual tone and a shrug.         “Why’d you wake me?” you demanded.         “Sometimes it’s not enough to experience chaos in a dream,” he explained. “Sometimes I have to show it to you in real life. Dreams are much more flexible than reality, after all. --Here, I’ll show you!” With a snap of his talons, your bed became a pink cloud-- exactly like the chocolate raincloud hanging above you! You tried to get out of the raincloud, only to find you were stuck there in a gooey mess.         “C’mon!” Discord beckoned. “This’ll be fun!”         “I’m stuck in a cloud that’s made of-- feels like cotton candy,” you protested as you figured out the material. “I’m about to go on some sort of adventure with a complete stranger. --Tell me now, how is that fun!?”         “You’ll see in a minute,” he simply replied. He boarded the cloud hanging over your bed, and announced, “And now for something completely different.” The two of you promptly sailed out the window. *  *  * You looked down to see where you were, and find you were hovering about forty feet over the central square. Such a high altitude made you nervous, but this cloud wasn’t about to let you go anytime soon.         “Here we go,” announced Discord. “Watch!” He clapped his hands twice, and the moon was instantly replaced by the sun. (Undoubtedly, the princesses would be most displeased.)         You covered your eyes, for fear of permanent blindness. But that wasn’t all. Down below the two of you, Discord had gathered up several of these cotton candy clouds, and then a shower of chocolate milk pounded the streets.         You watch several residents coming out of their homes, each asking the same collective question: “What’s going on here?”         You roll back above the cloud, and pray to God you weren’t seen. “Oh, relax,” said Discord. He was wearing a pair of 3D glasses, and had a bag of popcorn in his hand. “Don’t you just enjoy such beautiful chaos?”         “I-I never asked for this,” you meekly complained. Then, in a fit of desperation, you cried out, “Change it back!” “Oh, please,” he retorted. “la lejahēra antulne anλānne ānen jajēλa antēña nā;” You were too stunned to ask for the translation. “So just sit back and relax. --And don’t pay attention to that babbling narrator.” Meanwhile, the residents-- excuse me? “Yes, you! Chicago Ted! --Shut up and let us watch our orchestrated chaos in peace!” But how would the readers realize what’s going on if I don’t speak? “You can just put some pictures into the chapter. A picture’s worth a thousand words, after all.” True, but I want the story to come alive in the readers’ minds. That way, none of their interpretations are ever the same. How chaotic would that be? “You know, Ted, you have a point. On second thought, keep narrating. But keep it quiet, I don’t necessarily need to hear it. Okay?” Very well, Discord. Now where was I? . . . ah, yes: “Who were you talking to?” you asked Discord. You looked around for anyone else nearby, but you and Discord were the only ones above the square. “Oh, nobody you know,” he replied. “Here, why don’t we head back to bed now? I’ll save some more for tomorrow night.” He clapped his hands twice again, and night instantly fell. Then, with a snap of his talons, you were startled awake. *  *  * You sat up in bed, wondering what you had just experienced. You looked up; no pink clouds. You felt your bedsheets; they were perfectly dry. The floor offered the same testimony. You shook the cobwebs from your mind, and checked the clock by your bedside. 5:48 ante meridiem. Might as well start the day. “Relax,” you told yourself. “It was a dream. . . within a dream. . . but a dream nonetheless.” “Don’t be sure of that,” said Discord.