//------------------------------// // Chapter 4: Paranoia // Story: Man vs. Pony: Equestria // by ThatClosetBrony //------------------------------//         I woke up with a start. I checked left, then right, then left again. Collapsing onto my back again, I began trying to recall whatever nightmare I had that got me so riled up. All I could remember were trees with…faces? And flying shapes…and a weird gay hippie rainbow blasting a black dude into oblivion…and there were these weird spiky vines everywhere.         I closed my eyes and concentrated harder. I had been getting nightmares recently, ever since my seventh night here. Yeah, it’s been that long. Think it’s actually been three weeks or so now. Huh. Anyways, nightmare. The vines were…trying to lash out at me, and there was this weird laugh in the background. I tripped, but before I could experience the marvelous taste of dream-dirt, I woke up. Lately, I’ve been getting this weird feeling of this dark, powerful, corrupting presence. … … HAH! Yeah, right. Nah, it’s probably my over-(re)active imagination trying to put me into a fantasy world where I can be the hero and whatnot again. I shrugged off the rest of my foreboding and went through my morning routine. Take off my jacket, wrap it around my waist, get some water from the lake using this neat half of a wooden bucket I found, wash myself off, try to clean my teeth, drink some water, and heat up some leftover meat from last night over the fire. Oh, yeah, the bucket half was a pretty big find. I should probably explain that. Oh, and I’ve come to terms with my insanity. I should explain that first. I’m perfectly fine with talking to myself/you guys/my other self because I used to do that as a kid. It’s totally not a sign of insanity. You know, I just realized that I’m using past tense. And I seem to remember dialogue perfectly. And everything has been just a little bit too lucky. Huh, this is playing out like some weird fanfic or something. Right, so the bucket. Well, one day when I was hunting, I just randomly found a shattered half of a bucket. What, were you expecting something more dramatic? I tore into the meat, finishing off what was left of the ferret-thing. I turned to look at the shrine I made to the meat god Bacon, and jokingly asked, “Hey, you want the last bit of this meat? Well too bad, I’m eating it.” Just then, a gust of wind rushed in through the cave entrance and nearly blew out my fire. Heh. That was tooootally a coincidence. Right? … I threw the meat into the fire just to be safe. Never thought I’d see the day an atheist would pray to a god. And now I’ve pretty much started my own religion. Fabulous. The shrine started off as a joke. It was just three sticks stuck in the wall, which looked like stone but was really just compacted dirt. Then I balanced a stick and a stone on the top stick to make it look like a human. I made it to celebrate the first time I actually managed to eat real meat, not fish. I had laid out a few snares and whatnot on…what was it, my fourth day here? Sometime like that. I’ll check my calendar later. After a few days of eating fish, I was starting to get worried about my overfishing the river. There were still plenty of fish, but not as many as before. Finally, my patience paid off when I found some wild rabbit or something. Its head was WAAAY too big. It was, like, half its body! I don’t even know how it moved around! So normally, I was afraid of radiation hazards causing mutations, but fuck it, I needed some meat. So I walked over, and kinda sorta just grabbed its head and…twisted. So yeah, it died, and I felt kinda sick and kinda like a badass at the same time for a while. I cut off its head, because I DON’T WANT TO KNOW WHAT RABBIT BRAINS TASTE LIKE, THANK YOU VERY MUCH! So naturally, there was practically no meat left, and I had to go fish for a bit. But hey, it was meat, and it tasted good! So I built the shrine in mock gratitude, and it actually looked pretty cool, so I kept it. And you never know, if those weird tribe dudes find me, I can always claim to be a messenger of Bacon and have them bow to the shrine and whatever before establishing a (hopefully) fake religion with me at its head. So yeah. I put on my helmet, got my Stub© (it’s a club and a staff combined, duh), bow, and flint arrows, and got ready to go explore those castle ruins some more. Honestly, I’m surprised I even made those arrows. They were my best creations thus far, with sharp, heavy flint heads and blue fletches. I somehow managed to hit some rocks a few times and ended up with these perfect arrowheads. Weird, huh? The fletches I made with these blue feathers I found, and I used some grass to tie them on. One day, when I was coming back from checking my traps, I heard some voices near my…home, let’s say, but they were gibberish. There was also a lot of braying and whinnying going on, and some clopping noises reminiscent of a horse walking around. I hid behind a tree, and waited until the voices were out of range. When I checked to see if the intruders were gone, all I found were hoof marks and a few blue feathers. I guess these people are smart enough to have tamed horses. Great. I meant that both sarcastically and genuinely. One the one hand, these guys have at least some form of civilization, but on the other, HOW THE HELL DO I OUTRUN A HORSE? After a bit of trekking, making sure to steer clear of the hut I found, I arrived at that creepy place. It’s this ominous place with tree that look like they have faces carved into them. Oddly enough, they seem to resemble the ones in my dream. I guess I probably just remembered them from my last trip here. So I just held my breath, hummed the Skyrim theme, and tried to breeze through as quickly as I could. I emerged from the forest in front of the bridge that led to the castle, and crossed it, hoping that I didn’t fall to my death. I have a fear of heights. So severe, in fact, that I can’t stand being more than a yard off the ground. Now that I think about it, I’m scared of pretty much everything. I managed to cross it without it failing, thankfully. I checked to make sure nothing was stalking me. Oh, I’ve seen wolves, a mega-giant-ultra-chicken-bat thingy, some weird hybrid bat-lion thingy, and what looked to be a hydra. A lot of bats. I’d say it’s not radiation anymore. That’s why I made my Stub in the first place. I didn’t like the sound of the wolves at night, so I took my knife and a rock, and split my staff/walking stick on the top. I then wedged in a large, heavy rock I found and tried to secure it the best I could with the rope I had left. While we’re on the subject of my last visit here, and still in a nostalgic place, let’s talk about what happened. Long story short, I explored for a bit, found the castle, figured out that there was surely a war going on between two empires (like the Europeans “discovering” the Americas and slaughtering all the not-so-advanced Native Americans with their Middle Ages weapons and diseases, if you catch my drift), went in, found a hall with a sick fascination with horse legs, found some horse armor (by the looks of it, really puny horses), smashed a suit of armor on reflex, felt crushed with guilt for destroying a priceless historical artifact, scavenged a helmet because it was the only thing that fit and was more honorable than letting it get restored or something terrible like that, heard an organ play, got creeped out, activated a trap, got out, found a library (where all the books were written in, you guessed it, gibberish!), felt a dark presence, and GTFOed. How’s that for a run-on sentence? So now I’m back, and I’m ready for more. I rushed in, found my way to the hallway with a bunch of armor in it, and started trying to pound them into shape with my club to try and make them fit me. Of course, the armor was tiny, so bleh. Still more honorable than being restored. Now that I had a rudimentary set of armor, a ranged weapon, a melee weapon, and a way to test for traps, I felt much more confident in making sure that everyone here was dead. I looked around the castle, making sure I wasn’t missing anything. I eventually stumbled across a dusty old guard barrack. Perfect. I didn’t want to be slowed down, so I just took some basics: a spear, a sword, a dagger, and OH MY DEAR GOD A CROSSBOW YES! But upon closer inspection, the spear was bent, the sword was rusty, and the crossbow had no handle, no trigger, and no ammo. Why? Why would you make a crossbow with NO HANDLE OR TRIGGER? Only the dagger was anywhere near usable: it was good old iron, but somehow not rusted. Actually, it looked nearly new. Odd. It was simple, but still razor sharp. That cut piece of paper over there that I just murdered can testify to that fact. The handle had some teeth marks on it for whatever odd reason, but I was fine with that. I mean, now I have FUCKING METAL! YES! All the armor was either rusty or dented. Oh well, no loss there. Interestingly enough, the weapons I found were all covered with rust or bent. Only the dagger was in pristine condition. Also, they all seemed a bit small, and many had teeth marks. Other than that, there were only some glass bottles scattered around. So all the weapons were for midgets who liked sharp stuff near their mouths, and there were no human armor. Guess horses are the most important part of an army here. More important than midgets, anyways. I strapped on the dagger and tried to make my way back to the library. After searching for a while, I found a room hidden away. Curious, I went in, and found a book with two horse heads on the cover. I do hope these people had platonic relationships with their horses. After flipping through about half of it, I found a very helpful map of the castle. I took the book for obvious reasons. Hey, nobody has to know it was here. Upon closer inspection, the room seemed clean and recently used. There were even non-rotten carrot stumps lying about. Well, there’s proof that there’s someone here, and he/she/it is probably playing the organ. I slowly made my way through the ruins, eventually making my way to a massive room with a huge church organ just sitting smack-dab in the middle. Sure enough, there was a hooded figure sitting on the bench, and creepy music started playing. And I don’t mean that cheesy movie organ song, I mean an epic movement that gave me music chills (which apparently only some people have. Go figure.), but also caused some deep irrational paranoia. I tried my best to sneak up on he/she/it, whom I named Hesheit. Did I use whom correctly? I hope so. I pulled out my dagger, and tried to do a lunging stab, but the blade just went straight through Hesheit’s cloak, and it fluttered to the ground lifeless. The organ stopped playing. I do hope I don’t have schizophrenia.