//------------------------------// // Epilogue // Story: Quicksands // by Dead Nation //------------------------------// My wife Bess hadn't been right since we lost Silk Touch. She had gone insane. Eventually she was locked away in a mental hospital. A soft padded cell contained the mare I'd once held in my arms. She got worse to. She believed her parents died when they stopped visiting her. She was also convinced I had left her, even though I'd visited her everyday. She just got even worse though, believing she heard voices of her past. She would scream, cry, and hollowly whisper trying to make them leave her. It was saddening. I eventually couldn't take it any longer. "So, can you put her down? Please, for my sake." I asked one doctor. He nodded. "We've been hoping you'd come to your senses and accept she was gone. It's painful to see somepony like her so shook up." He responded. "I'll schedule to have her put down in the morning." "Can you make it painless?" I asked, listening to her pained cries. "Of coarse. You may visit her one last time, and her parents will be contacted." He responded. He frowned and walked away, off to make the arrangements. I looked in her cell sadly. I entered, sitting next to her. I hugged her one last time, leaving a kiss on her cheek. With that I left. It was many years later, when the hospital was shut down, that I was given logs. Every crazed rambling she had gone off about, how she lived, what she did. The last document, however, was the one that scared me the most. It was a documentation of her death. They didn't allow family members to witness the death of patients. This sum of years later I learned why. They had a large saw they used to brutally slice open their chests to let them bleed out. Bess was taken to the chamber the morning after I confronted the doctor. She was strapped down and cut into. The entire time she screamed. She screamed something about being ripped apart by her ghosts. She screamed apologies to everyone she knew. Then she finally passed. I cried upon finding this knowledge. I cried a lot. That's when I knew I had to figure out what went through her mind. The logs guided my hooves to creat this small book. To explain the death of my sweet little primrose. I feel wronged by this. That I am the one suffering the outcome, but I know she suffered more than I ever will. She suffered, sinking in the quicksands of her own mind. ~Lavender Hooves