I sulked in the observation cell for what could have been hours or minutes. The place was designed to deny me a sense of time. It was made to give me nothing to react to, and no way to harm myself, short of running head first into a wall repeatedly until I was restrained for my own safety. I had considered the option briefly. Restraints were almost certain to come with sedation. I needed to be sedated right then. I needed desperately to forget, if only for a little while everything that had suddenly never happened again.
But more than that I needed to get out. The words had put me back here. Back on the first day. Back in the cage. All my earlier screaming had earned me extra security when the orderly came to bring me my sandwich. Tuna fish salad. It was always tuna fish salad. this time through the loop they had taken my plastic-ware. I tried to remember if they had done that the last time. Much like the roll-down cage that kept me from doing anything crazy with the sink or toilet, I wondered at what they found to be the necessity of all this.
Did they really think I was going to drown myself in the toilet? Or that I had enough energy or determination to stab myself to death with a plastic spork? Or was it even my safety they were concerned with. I always wondered just what kind of psychopath they thought they were dealing with... but ultimately it didn't matter. They would transfer me over to the general population, sans pants and dignity, at 9:45, just like they always did.
The sandwich was unassembled, the tuna in a nondescript plastic tub in a little compartment with two slices of wheat bread, as always. In a second compartment there was a whole orange, and in a third a four ounce foil-lidded cup of apple juice. It always seemed strange that they would trust me with peeling my own orange, but not with a plastic spork. Surely they must realize that I'm at least somewhat functional.
"May I use the sink, sir?" I ask the security guard in my most even, most polite voice. They weren't going to let me out tonight, of course, but I still had three more days before it happened again. Three more days to get out and... do what?
"Why do you need the sink?" the guard asked suspiciously.
"Well," allowed myself a little laugh, which earned me an even more suspicious look, "If you can't trust me with a spork, and I'm gonna eat tuna fish salad with my fingers, I'd like to at least wash my hands first."
Gods, it's not like you didn't watch me on the camera flicking boogers at the wall to pass the time for the last hour. But I guess my request seems legit, because he rolls up the cage while another guard stands ready in case I start doing anything crazy with the facilities, and I wash my hands and eat without incident. Everything has to be without incident, if they're going to let me out before the fourth night. That's when the words are coming back. I don't know what good it will do me to be not-here. Maybe none. Maybe the words can snatch me up wherever I go. Throw me in that crazy world for however long it takes me to fail and then set me right back here where it started. But if that were the case why always throw me back here and now? Was it some test, one that I could never seem to pass? Or perhaps it just needed that special desperation of, "they're not gonna let you out anytime soon this time to make me play along."
Eventually the doctor comes in. The same doctor who never gives his name, and whose name I never ask.
"9:45 already? I say with a smile, and immediately realize my mistake as the doctor frowns.
"Did one of our staff tell you the time?" He asked in curious irritation, "You're not in trouble, but if one of the staff is interfering with your treatment..."
"No sir," I back-pedaled quickly, then lied, "I was just guessing, I have a pretty good sense of time. How close was I?"
"Within a couple of minutes," the doctor raised an eyebrow, "Well, it won't be too hard to go over the surveillance and find out, I suppose."
I relax immediately. That camera won't tell him anything about how I knew what time it was. Noting my calming mood the doctor goes on, "You don't seem to be an immediate danger to yourself anymore, or a danger to the other patients, so I'm moving you to the regular psychiatric wing. If you cooperate with your treatment you could be out by tomorrow afternoon."
That lying son of a bitch! I have to bite my tongue to keep from saying it to his face. But not bite it too noticeably, lest he might decide that I'm trying some really creative form of suicide. I mean they already think I might hang myself with pants. Biting off my own tongue, by comparison seems downright reasonable. At least it's a thing I can recognize as "I could see how that might be a thing." Because how can you hang yourself with pants, and for that matter how is it harder to hang yourself with a hospital gown?
So I sat in a wheelchair that structurally more resembled a shopping cart. Funny they didn’t even bother with restraints. Two hours ago they couldn’t even trust me to make a tuna sandwich and now they weren’t even going to bother with restraints. Not that I was running. It was 31 degrees outside and I wasn’t even wearing any pants. Honestly, where would I go?
I thought glumly about everything I had thrown away my last time around, and it suddenly occurred to me that every other time the words sent me back here it hadn’t bothered me. I hadn’t even noticed, even. Now as i thought back, I realized what a sorry record I had left in equestria. Was I trully the "plague” the words portrayed me to be?
Certainly the time before last I hadn’t been. I had lived a quiet unassuming life outside of Ponyville, I had good friends. For that one time around, both I and Equestria had been good to each other. For once I hadn’t self-destructed. The universe just went away, leaving me back here.
The last time was the worst. Because I wasn’t miserable anymore. I wasn’t just running wild out of spite for the world. I just stubbornly refused to follow the path, not learning until I had lost the game that the path had been carefully laid out before me to give me back my quiet happy life. But I sulked about things I had lost worlds ago. I knew I couldn’t stay with Pinky Pie, but I just kept telling myself, “Tomorrow, I’m gonna get on that train tomorrow. And I’m gonna go to Vanhoover and I’m gonna become a warehouse manager and have a good life.”
And then I was out of tomorrows. And now they’re checking me in and handing me all kinds of papers that explain meal times, day-room privileges, group sessions,and all the infinite minutia of institutional life. And in three days the world is gonna end again.