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// Chapter III 
// Story: Delirium 
// by Fabby 
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The first few seconds of death are confusing at best, and terrifying at worst. For Scootaloo it was the former. Her mind was trying to project the way things used to be–up and down, gravity, physics in general–onto the bizarre reality she found herself in.  From the moment she’d stopped clutching at the rusty shard in her chest, the world had spun away into a seemingly endless tunnel. There was no logical explanation for how she could be watching herself lie splayed out with a thick metal tooth running through her bloodied body, all the while being thrown backwards through a this tunnel to wherever. So obviously, she must be dreaming.

So that’s it, she decided, I’m dreaming. And she grew relaxed at the thought. She’d had worse dreams before, ones with empty cottages and only silence from down the stairs, or ones with her being stranded in Cloudsdale. Were those dreams? Everything before tonight seemed to blur together now. Something about this dream was placating her, like she was still falling asleep. Watching herself be impaled was certainly an outlier as far as dreams went, but at least she was watching it, and not living it.

But as Scootaloo’s view of her own death was receding away, she leaned back and realized the tunnel was stretching into a silvery white light. Hadn’t she heard something about that before? The light at the end of the tunnel?

That’s when it all came together. I’m dead, she told herself. She waited for the panic to set in, but no screams or struggles came. No panic or tantrums or sobs. Nothing. Maybe it was the dreary calmness that permeated her entire being, or–more likely, she thought–her life didn’t amount to much anyway and wasn’t worth freaking out over.  

Several minutes of silent pondering passed. Scootaloo wondered if they’d give her a funeral. Those cost money, money she didn’t have. Something about the thought of a burial made her smirk. A pegasus grounded all her life, only to be covered in earth and left to rot there, out of sight and out of mind. On any other day such a thought would sour her mind, but now it only amused her.

Then, she saw the first of them. Other ponies, mostly old but some as young or younger than herself, careening down the tunnel with her. None of them spoke, as the tunnel was incredibly wide and most didn’t even seem to realize where they were. Her glance turned down the direction she’d come from. Even if she squinted, she couldn’t make out anything more than the walls of pale blue stretching all the way back to her body. The distance she’d traveled in such a short time made her wonder, just how fast was she going? Did speed even exist here?

For that matter, where was here? If this was the afterlife, it was incredibly boring. Left alone with her thoughts as she hurtled down a shaft to nowhere didn’t sound like pony heaven. Then again–and she grimaced at the thought–pony heaven probably wasn’t where she’d wind up.

Scootaloo turned around, and for the first time since her death tried to make a sound. With a silent gasp, she saw something very far down the tunnel, but still able to be made out. It was a massive swirling disk of... something. It made no sound as its liquidy surface spun in slow circles, like someone was stirring a bowl of soapy water. It covered the entirety of the tunnel, and the closer Scootaloo got to it, the harder it became to look. It shone brighter and brighter, giving off occasional silent flashes as other ponies soared into it, sending out little ripples from wherever they’d passed through.

As she drew nearer and nearer to the portal, whatever had been anesthetizing her mind wore off. Her eyes grew wide with terror, fully expecting a hellish nightmare beyond this gateway to eternity. In her abbreviated life, Scootaloo had given little thought to anything other than herself, especially when living on her own. If getting a meal meant breaking into another pony’s home and stealing whatever she could sell, then it was always worth it. With a gulp, she wondered if whatever divine being judged her would see things the same way.

The portal grew larger, seeming to bulge and swell as she closed in on it. More ponies drifted through, leaving nothing behind but a ripple through the swirling ether. Scootaloo spun around, buzzing her wings as hard as she could, but, as always, to no avail. The blinding light from the end of the tunnel forced her to shut her eyes completely, and she began to shiver in fear of whatever retribution came next.

Finally, the light grew so intense that not even Scootaloo’s eyelids could keep it back. She turned her back on the brightness, whimpered something even she couldn’t understand... and slammed into the portal as if it were a brick wall at an Equestrian speed of nearly three hundred miles per hour. Of course, in the afterlife the physics of speed and force of impact are completely impractical. Of course, that’s not to imply it didn’t hurt.

Scootaloo sank down to the bottom of the tunnel almost comically. If anything made a sound here, there may have been a squeak and a thud when she finally landed face down at the floor of the tunnel.

She didn't want to open her eyes. So long as she lay there, motionless, hiding behind the blackness of her eyelids, she could just invent her own reasons for why this was happening to her. So she lay there for minutes, hours, days–or maybe it was minutes. Seconds even. She couldn’t tell the difference. 

And that was it. She'd just lie here forever, and never, ever, peek at what lay outside her thoughts. Of course, it must be a dream. The pains all over her body were not the result of smashing into a magical portal at the maw of a tunnel of death, they were from the steam tank. The piece that impaled her must have missed her vital organs and the blood loss left her unconscious. And in the same vein, that explained why she was lying down. She wasn’t dead, she was in a hospital, grievously injured. But alive. Maybe hitting her head on that pipe right before the tank exploded had knocked her out, and she’d never been impaled to begin with.

Of course I can’t be dead, she told herself. Thirteen year olds didn’t die. They had issues and they made bad choices sometimes, but they didn’t die. It couldn’t be real. It couldn’t be. The tunnel, the other ponies and the portal and the vision of her own death, they were just the side effects of pain medicine. Obvious, really. It made a lot more sense than the other version of the story, the one with a giant tunnel and a portal to what could only be hell.

So sure was Scootaloo in her recent rewriting of events that she bravely cracked her eyelids open. Squinting through her lashes, the first thing she noticed was white. That’s fine, she thought, just fine. Hospitals have white all over. Sheets, pillows, walls, clouds– 

She was on clouds. Scootaloo struggled to stand up, fighting a numbness in every part of her body. Glancing around, she immediately recognized where she was.

“Rainbow Dash’s house?” She was startled by her own voice. Everything seemed so fresh and different, even herself. There was sound again, everywhere. The whistling of a breeze in her mane, her own ragged breathing, and a quiet, quiet whimpering.

Scootaloo made her way to the stairs. As she drifted across the room, she saw shattered windows, smashed furniture, even holes in the walls. A few drops of blood even trailed from the broken glass panes, past the couch and up the stairs. She followed the trail of destruction uneasily, not quite sure what she’d find at the end of it all.

As soon as she crested the staircase, she was greeted with a raspy shriek.

“Get away! Get out, get away! You’re not real, you’re in my head, it’s all in my head, get out!”

“R-Rainbow Dash...?” Scootaloo said timidly. Rainbow was covered in her bedsheets, her head sticking out of the pile. Her mane was a complete mess, different colors criss-crossing so much that parts of it appeared brown. And her eyes. Rainbow Dash’s eyes were completely red, streaks of tears lining her face beneath them. She huddled against the headrest of her bed, shivering and shaking like she was caught in a snowstorm.

“Don’t say anything! I know this isn’t real, I saw you! I saw you! This isn’t real!”

“Rainbow Dash, calm down! It’s me, it’s Scootaloo!” She took a step towards the bed. “I’m okay, see?”

“N-No!” Rainbow Dash croaked. “I saw your body! You’re dead! You’re dead and gone and you think it’s m-my fault! Everypony thinks it’s my f-f-fault!”

She broke down into heaving sobs. Unsure what to make of this, Scootaloo shifted nervously on the other side of the room. So she was dead after all.

“But wait...” she said aloud. “If I’m dead, how am I here? I was in the tunnel, then I hit that big swirly disc, then all of a sudden I’m here?” She closed her eyes and shook her head. “It just doesn’t make any sense, Rainbow Dash.”

Opening her eyes, Scootaloo squeaked in surprise. Rainbow Dash was gone, and so was the cloud house and the stairs and everything else.

“Rainbow Dash?” she called out into the blackness. There was no answer.

“Rainbow Dash? You out there?”

Still nothing but darkness and echoes. “Anypony here?” she called out again.

“Hello? Anypony?”

“Hello...?