Screwy hated the Bad Room.
The Bad Room was for Bad Girls, but Screwy was a Good Girl. She tried not to be too noisy or play too rough with her friends. She always took the pills the ponies in the white hats gave her, even though they made her sleepy. She tried her very hardest to obey.
So why was Screwy in the Bad Room this time? Did she do something wrong? Screwy pouted and looked up at the yellow pony in the white hat.
"Just relax, Screwy," said the yellow pony, with a soft smile. "You're going to be just fine."
As the yellow pony in the white hat strapped her legs to the table, Screwy closed her eyes tight and hoped the Bad Room would go away.
"Is she ready, Nurse Redheart?" came an unfamiliar voice. Screwy opened her eyes and saw a purple pony with a glowing carrot on her forehead. Screwy didn't trust carrot ponies. Weird things always happened around them.
"She's ready, Princess," said the yellow pony in the white hat.
"Please, call me Twilight," replied the purple carrot pony, and then she smiled down at Screwy. The purple pony seemed nice. Maybe the purple pony would let Screwy leave the Bad Room.
"It's going to be okay, Screwy," whispered the yellow pony, and she petted Screwy's head fur. Screwy had a lot of fur on her head, just like a pony. Sometimes Screwy wondered if she was a pony, but that was a silly thought.
"Are you sure the patient is secure?" asked the purple pony, as she tugged at one of the restraints with a hoof. "This isn't going to be a comfortable experience for her. If she breaks free, the effects will become highly unpredictable."
Something about the purple pony's barking noises made Screwy very uncomfortable. Every once in a while, pony barking noises would start to make sense to Screwy, but she didn't like that, so she did her best to tune them out. Listening too closely to the pony noises made everything feel strange and complicated, and then sometimes the bad memories would come. Screwy would do anything to get away from the bad memories.
"I'm starting to have second thoughts about this, Twilight," said the yellow pony in the white hat as she petted Screwy's face with a hoof. "Magic as an adjunctive treatment to drug and talk therapy is a marvelous idea, but a patient's brain is not a jigsaw puzzle. You can't fix somepony's mind the same way you'd fix a broken haycart."
The purple carrot pony's eyes looked upward toward the ceiling and her face made a frown. "She'll be fine, Nurse Redheart. I've run numerous tests in advance of this experiment, and I cleared the procedure with her assigned physician," the purple pony said. "If this works, we could literally change dozens of lives overnight. We're going to make history and cure your patient at the same time!"
Screwy wasn't sure why, but she didn't think the purple pony was very nice anymore.
"I understand the stakes, and it's not my place to countermand the doctor's orders," the yellow pony said gently. "I just want to be very clear: I've never seen a patient recover if they didn't believe the treatment was in their best interests."
The purple pony grinned. "Then prepare to be impressed," she said.
The purple pony's carrot glowed, and then everything around Screwy glowed, too. Screwy started to get a bad headache. She was scared, and she whined very loudly as the yellow pony in the white hat tried to keep her head from moving. Screwy looked up to the yellow pony for help, but the yellow pony frowned and shut her eyes very tight so she couldn't even see Screwy anymore.
"Just a little longer," said the purple pony as Screwy's body began to spasm. Screwy squirmed as hard as she could against the straps on the table. She pushed and pulled with all her might. It felt almost like her legs were pushing by themselves. Screwy had to get out of the Bad Room, she just had to!
With one final, painful jerk, the straps around Screwy's legs snapped in two! Both ponies seemed very surprised. Before the ponies could react and grab Screwy, she rolled over, leaped off the table, and ran as fast as she could (which was very fast). She ran out of the Bad Room, down the hallway, and all the way through the big doors to The Outside.
Screwy heard ponies shouting behind her, but she just kept running. She ran very fast, even faster than she had ever run before. She ran over the long stone lines and past all the really large things and past confused ponies and over grass and flowers until she finally reached the big trees. Screwy didn't look behind her until she was really deep into the trees, and she went so far and so fast she was sure nopony followed her there.
She was so happy to be away from the Bad Room.
Screwy sat down and rested for a while, and then she walked around the big trees. She walked for a long time, and it was boring. After a lot of walking, Screwy heard another dog making noises! She listened very carefully and headed toward the sound so she could make a new friend.
Screwy found the other dog. She was a bitch just like Screwy, and she was whining. There was a puppy that looked like the other dog, but it was stuck under a big log and it wasn't moving and it had red fur. Screwy knew this meant something bad, and she felt sad.
Screwy spent the rest of the day with the other dog, and the other dog seemed happy again. Screwy and her new friend went to sleep together under the same tree.
When Screwy woke up, the other dog was eating something. Screwy was very hungry. The other dog let Screwy eat some of the thing, but it was red and messy and tasted very bad. Why couldn't she eat it, Screwy wondered?
Screwy was still hungry, so she walked around by herself for a while. She found the log where the puppy was. The puppy was missing some parts, and there were flies.
Screwy realized the other dog had been eating part of her puppy, and she felt very bad.
How could the other dog do that? It was like she didn't remember the food was her puppy. How did Screwy remember the puppy better than her own mother?
Being a dog was hard and sad. Screwy didn't want to be a dog anymore.
Maybe Screwy wasn't really a dog.
Screwy woke up on the table as the yellow pony in the white hat was unfastening her. But she wasn't just a yellow pony in a white hat anymore. Her name is Nurse Redheart, thought Screwy, and my name is Screwy. And that alicorn must be Princess Twilight.
"Screwy, can you understand me?" said Nurse Redheart.
"Y-yes?" said Screwy. Talking felt very strange.
"Excellent!" beamed Twilight Sparkle, and she clapped her front hooves together. "Welcome back, Screwy! Thanks to your help we'll be able to cure many other ponies who share your condition. I can't wait to write up the results!"
"But... what happened to the other dog?" Screwy asked. Something didn't feel right at all.
"Oh, that? That was just a false memory I implanted to remind you that you're not a dog," said Twilight.
"So... it wasn't real," said Screwy, frowning. The memory seemed so real, but it was sad, and she didn't want to think about it.
Nurse Redheart gently held Screwy's hoof, with a look of deep concern on her face. "Screwy, do you understand that you're a pony?" she asked.
"I... I don't know what I am," said Screwy, and her voice trailed off as she began to tune out the world around her.
"Well, she's talking at least. It's a start," barked the purple carrot pony to the yellow pony in the white hat.