//------------------------------// // The Protagonist Has Made Contact (COMPLETELY REDONE) // Story: Narcissism Makes Great Comedy // by Hot Blooded Hero //------------------------------// The Protagonist Has Made Contact “Nnnguah!” I woke up with a jolt and sat straight up. It was still night, and the moon was shining brightly among a field of stars. The ground was hard and cold, yet the air was warm and had the fresh scent of summer. Duh, it is summer. I look around my surroundings and saw that I was sitting in the middle of the road where my bus normally dropped me off. The only difference that I noticed was that the road didn’t have any loose dust or gravel as usual, but was just a flat, dirt surface. How the hay did I get out here? Wait, I remember something from last night. Something… hit me, crashed through my wall. Did that knock me all the way out here? Furthermore, why don’t I feel hurt at all. That thing couldn’t have possibly hit me at that speed without injuring me… or killing me. I decided that it would be best to go home and question it more in the morning. Even though I was unconscious for who knows how long, I was still tired. As I walked up the hill that I’d thought I wouldn’t have to walk up for at least a week, I noticed that the moon and stars shone notably brighter than it normal. It was beautiful, and the skies were abnormally visible. Even in small joint-town like ours, the city lights still caused light pollution at night. Another difference was the air; it smelled too clean. There would normally be some sort of staleness, mixed with dust and humidity. But for some reason, it smelled like someone created the perfect air-purifier, cranked it up pass high to “new-set-o’-lungs” and put it outside. After staring at the sky for a bit and doing some deep breathing of this sweet new oxygen, I looked once more around. My eyes were a bit more adjusted to the dark to see a major difference of the area than the road I had walked just earlier that day. Didn’t there used to be a horse stable there? At this point, I was at the bottom of the hill, next to a large grass field that used to have a recently constructed stable for someone who owned the property. I looked to my left at one of my neighbors’ houses. There seemed to be a distinct lack of vehicles in their driveway. I must be really out of it to not be seeing things… That sentence made less sense than I thought it would. Letting my fatigue take over slightly, I just trudged on the rest of the way to my house, not giving any more bucks about any differences I hadn’t noticed. I didn’t even see that our tan mini-van had been replaced with some sort of horse-drawn cargo carriage. I walked up to my house and tried to open my locked door for several minutes before even realizing it was locked. With a sigh, I walked around towards the back where one of our secret spare house keys were hid, went back to the front, unlocked the door and went in. The house was much darker than outside, but I knew my way around my house. I pulled off my shoes and tossed them in the general direction of where the shoe rack was supposed to be, then went straight to my room to pass out on my bed with my semi-formal jacket and clothes still on. The next morning, the sun had shone onto my face bright and early. It seemed like no matter how late I go to bed, I always wake up in the morning, just to fall back asleep. This morning was a bit different however, because the moment I woke up, I noticed another figure in my bed that I was to tired to acknowledge the night before. I figured it was just one of my brothers who decided to crash in my room for the night, like they sometimes do if they find a "problem" with their own bed. Why can’t they just sleep on their floor? It’s not like it’s cold during summer. Well, I’m not letting them freeload any longer. I positioned myself to where both of my legs were facing whoever was in my bed, reared back both of my legs, and kicked the intruder off, dragging the blanket with him as well. As he struggled to get out of the blanket covering and tangling him up, what came out of the freeloader’s mouth made my heart stop for a second. “WHAT THE BUCK! WHO BUCKIN’ DID THAT!” That voice. That was unmistakably, indubitably, my voice. I remained frozen and silent as the figure continued to thrash around in my blanket. “I said, WHO DID THAT!” he shouted while he finally managed to get the blanket off of himself. At that point, I was sure that my heart completely shut down when I saw a yellow pegasus stallion with dark brown eyes and a black, wild spiky mane glare at me for a few seconds before going into shock. My eyes widened in perfect sync with his. We stared at each other for a few minutes before we both decided to greet each other with a dignified, “AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH-” “Abyx?! Is something wrong?! I heard you- AAAAAAAAAHHH…” That’s when an older, dark purple pegasus mare with a long, straight mane the same color as the yellow stallion’s mane, walked into the room. We were all screaming now, and it stayed like that until my throat got sore, and I had to cough. While in my coughing fit, the purple mare shot at me and knocked me unconscious. I woke up sometime later in my living room on our couch. The sun was even brighter since we had a large window to view the driveway there. I started to wonder if whatever the hay happened actually happened, or if it was another fatigue-and-pony-induced nightmare. I slowly got up and made my way to the window to see if my mom had actually returned last night. Instead of seeing the expected tan minivan that my mom normally drives, I saw the abovementioned large, wooden, horse-drawn cargo carriage that I hadn’t noticed last night. Confused, and with a little bit of rising panic, I began visually searching the front yard for any differences. With a bit of heightened perception fueled by panic, I noticed that our small flowerbed garden had grown at least tenfold since I last saw it, our goats had seemingly disappeared, and our two dogs, Lucy and Jake, were actually sleeping peacefully near our front door instead of in their designated penned up areas. Oh, I forgot to mention another thing: EVERYTHING LOOKED ANIMATED!!! Everything seemed to look two-dimensional in a sense, and everything had an outline. As birds flew by, I could tell that they were smiling. ACTUALLY SMILING! It was as if someone decided to draw everything up on Adobe Illustrator, then somehow trap my perspective into their hard drive. In full panic mode, I rushed over to the bathroom to inspect myself in the mirror. Upon reaching the mirror, my fears had been confirmed. I saw an animated, unusually wide-eyed, acne-less me staring back. With further inspection, I noticed that I had gotten thinner by a reasonable margin. The chub in my cheeks were gone, and my gut had shrunk quite a bit as well. My hair was still long and greasy though, but my facial hair had become slightly more noticeable than before. I backed out of the mirror slowly, trying to regain my senses from being shocked by my reflection, but backing out something bumped into me from behind. I turned around to see the same yellow pony from before, only this time he was wearing a black shirt and shorts with a red vest on. It was pretty much an inverted version of my usual attire. He then said to me in my voice, “Alright, I want answers. What are you and what were you doing in my bed?” “Your bed? That was my bed! This is my house! What I want to know is…” I stopped when I realized that this couldn’t possibly be my house, especially with all the cartoony special effects in place. I was about to apologize at this realization, but the pegasus cut me off. “HOLY BUCK, YOU SOUND LIKE ME!!!” “Y-yeah, I thought that was creepy too when I first heard it. Now look, I’m sorry for disturbing you last night. I honestly thought that this was my house.” “Wait, wait, wait. How could you possibly think that this would be your house? First of all, you don’t look like you live anywhere near here, let alone this house. Second, how’d you get here, were you just wandering or something? And third, what the hay were you doing in my bed?!” “Again, I really thought this was my house. I must’ve just been too tired to recognize where I was. As for how I got here…” I noticed a pair of familiar double doors just to my right at the end of the hallway, they looked like the ones that led to the media room in my house. I walked over there and opened the doors. Abyx started to protest at my actions. “Wait, don’t go in there…” The room was mostly bare, except for a desk with a typewriter on it where the computer used to be and a window on the wall opposite from the door. The light fixtures, which always looked like spotlights to me back home, seemed to serve the purpose of their appearance as they pointed towards an empty side of the room across from the desk. The half of the room that it pointed at had the floor slightly raised. Almost like a small stage, which I suppose did explain the spotlights. At closer examination of the desk, there looked to be scattered pieces of paper all around the typewriter. The room was basically some sort of small acting studio. “Are you a playwright?” I asked, motioning around the room. “Yes, but that doesn’t mean you can just barge in here like that, this is my private area. You didn’t even answer my question.” “Actually, I was getting to that. You see, this is the room where I think I was teleported or something.” I was starting to form a small, possible idea. The house, the front yard, this pony, and this animated look. It was all starting to come to me, but I wasn’t sure if I should’ve been overwhelmed with joy, or completely scared out of my mind. “How could you have gotten here through my studio? You’re not making any sense!” He was starting to get angry again, but I continued with my explanation/theory. “It maybe your room here, but I’m pretty sure that it was mine last night where I came from.” “What the hay are you talking about?!” His anger looked like it increased by three times since I started explaining. “I’m saying that I was in this room last night, just not specifically here. Something crashed through that wall,” I pointed to the wall with the window, “while I was here. It knocked me unconscious, and I woke up at the end of… um, what’s this street called?” “Fruit Farm.” “WHAT!? That’s my street's name! Wait, stop. Off topic. Anyway, I woke up at the end of Fruit Farm, and started heading towards this house. And by that, I mean this house specifically.” “This still isn’t making any sense.” “I’m getting to that! Now, when I got here, I went and got the spare keys to the house that I know were hidden…” I told him where the secret key place was and his eyes widened. “Okay, that’s it! You’re going to start making sense right now!” “If you’re who I think you are, then I’m surprised that you haven’t figured it all out yet.” “What do you mean, ‘who you think I am’? Have you been stalking me!?” “NO! Just think about it. Our voices are the same? We wear the same style? I freaking thought this was my house for Christ’s sake! Think about it!” He went into deep thought for a while, then he suddenly looked up at me with a face of realization and said, “Prove it. You don’t possibly expect me to believe you instantly, right?” I chuckled nervously and rubbed the back of my head. “Actually, considering who I think you are, yeah. I kinda did. But if you do need proof… I know that you secretly keep a large collection of porn in the crawlspace under the house through a well-hidden floor hatch in your closet.” The look on his face was priceless. “…Okay, that’s enough proof I need. I believe you now. So, if what you say is true, than you’re…” “Yep, I’m from another dimension.” Never thought I’d ever have to say that. “And considering the similarities, and the fact that you know of my secret-plot-stash, than that means you’re…” The smile that apparently had been on my face since I revealed his secret stash grew even wider. “Yep again, I’m you!”