Misery

by ImpendingDoomxXx

Chapter 6: Revelations

Misery

Chapter 6

*DING* sounded the bell.

Friday is over, not a moment too soon too. I thought to myself. It's been two days since I had to talk to the principal about my sleeping problems. I have indeed succeeded in staying awake in all of my classes and in turn, my math teacher has been nice to me. I haven't spoken very much to her these past two days either. No life stories at least.

Walking down the hall through this massive congregation of screaming foals going every direction at once, I caught sight sight of my math teacher. I wonder what she wants. She wasn't trying to get my attention in any way, but I could tell that she was staring directly at me. I didn't exactly feel like talking to anypony right now, but I wasn't going to ignore her.

"Hey, how are you?" I asked as we reached each other.

"I'm good, I just wanted to know if you had any other stories to share." Now I just wanted to be anywhere but here.

"No, sorry, I don't have any other stories that won't break me right now. Maybe next week." I said dryly, just trying to end this.

"Ok, I was starting to think that you were mad at me for writing you up." Now where would she get that idea? "No, I've just been a bit too busy lately to share things." I lied.

"Ok, then if you don't want to share anything, I guess you can go home, or something." The way she said that made me feel as if she wanted to her another horrid memory that I would rather forget. I just knew that I wanted out of there and fast. "Ok, I'll see you on Monday, bye."

I walked outside and into the autumn sunlight. I paused a second to enjoy the feeling of the sun-rays illuminating and warming my back, to feel the slight breeze ruffle my mane and coat, to listen to the leaves of the surrounding trees rustle in the breeze. It was all so soothing. I walked through the field and down to where the carriages were parked. I found the one that runs through my area and boarded. There was an open seat relatively close to the front of the carriage, so I went ahead and sat there. The ride was just as uneventful as always.

I got off at my stop. It was just before the rock cliffs that I watched the sunset from on Tuesday. Though it was nowhere near dusk, I decided to go there anyways. It was more beautiful during the afternoon, being mid-afternoon I could see everything much better. I wonder what it will look like in the sun-rise and early-morning of a beautiful Saturday... I thought. "I guess I need to find out, now don't I?" I asked myself. I made it a plan for tomorrow.

I resumed my walk back to the house, through this amazing green-filled, canopy-topped, and dirt-road trailed wood. I find it amazing, how with no hindrance from pony-kind, that nature, by itself, can be so breath taking. Here, nature is at it's most serene and couldn't be more awe-inspiring. I took in a deep breath, marveling at how the scents of countless different trees and plants can blend to make such an alluring mix. I exhale, just so that I can take a new breath.

I reached the house and noticed that my foster father was already back from work. As I approached I could distinctly hear sobbing coming from inside. "Mike?!" I called into the house when I came in the door. There was no answer, but instead a muffled sob. Oh no, what happened?I thought to myself hoping that it wasn't anything bad. I walked to the kitchen doorway and looked in. There he was, sprawled out on the kitchen floor, crying. He had a bottle of dark liquor laying next to him, spilling on the floor. He doesn't usually just drink a whole bottle for no reason...I thought noticing difference in his drinking behavior. There wasn't much on the floor, so he was probably drunk as all hell by now. I bet I'll be worse at this than he is.I thought to myself. I laid down next to him and wrapped a hoof around his shoulder and asked, "Whats wrong Mike?" He wasn't quick to answer, he was chocking on every breath he took.

"It's all my fault." He said.

"What do you mean? What's all your fault?" I asked him thinking that something had gone horribly wrong. "You, you're my fault." He said between sobs. That felt like the biggest insult I had ever taken.

"What is that supposed to mean?" I asked nervously and a bit angrily, not knowing if I would like the answer. "The reason that you're here, being put through hell and being abused as you go through it alone. It's all because of my stupidity and selfishness." He said. He refused to look at me. I felt a wave of relief wash over me, but I still felt bad for him.

"It can't all be your fault. Bad things happen all of the time. I've come to notice that many bad things happen to me, that's all." I'm not sure why I was trying to comfort him, but it felt like I needed to do it anyways. "Sit up, and tell me what you mean." I told him.

He got up and grabbed another bottle of liquor off the counter. He stumbled back over to where I sat and flopped down against the wall next to me. He un-stoppered the cork and took a quick swig and passed me the bottle before starting. I took a quick swig of my own to calm my nerves so that I could listen to the tale that was about to befall my ears. "It all started before we adopted you. Cindy and I had reached that point in our lives and our relationship where we were ready to have a foal. We tried many times to get pregnant, but we couldn't. After about ten failed attempts, we decided that we needed to consult a doctor to find out if our problem was medical or if we were just doing it wrong. We waited two long days to get the news that Cindy was sterile and that we could never have foals together. She took the news really hard, she barely looked at me, hell, she stopped speaking to me for almost three weeks. "

He took the bottle back and took another two sips. He had stopped crying by now, and was just staring down at the crease where the wall met the floor on the other side of the room. He gave me the bottle back and burped before continuing. "I decided that I could at least propose adoption, at the very least to give her prompt to speak to me again. She didn't like that idea at first, but she warmed up to it and after another four days, she agreed. We searched many different orphanages, but she couldn't find a foal young enough that looked enough like us that she could just lie to her friends and say that she didn't show during her pregnancy. On our ninth trip to a new orphanage I decided that I would get a say in this choice as well. That orphanage was the one we got you from. I noticed you as soon as I walked through the door. I pointed you out to Cindy, but she didn't like how your dark blue coat wouldn't match well with her white and my beige coat. She gave the excuse of 'Ponies will think that I either cheated on you or that we adopted, I don't want to let others know that we adopted, I want to make it look as if this is our foal.' I wasn't going to take that. I didn't mind letting others know that we adopted a foal. To me it showed that we had enough heart to take in a foal that wasn't ours and raise him or her as if they were."

He was starting to lower the tone of his voice, showing that he was starting to get to the part of the story that meant the most to him. All I could do is watch in silent awe as a pony, that until' three days ago I revered as an abusive and highly over-critical stallion, opened his heart and spilled his emotions to me. "I let it seem as if I had given up on trying to convince her that we should take you, and that we would keep looking. The whole time I couldn't get my mind off of you. The way you were just sitting in the corner, looking at the other foals, you were essentially an outcast. I asked the orphanage director about you and he told me your story. He didn't give many details, but it touched me nevertheless. At that moment, I knew that I had to take you home with us, so that we could try to right a terrible wrong. Cindy thought otherwise. A little pure-white filly had caught her eye and she immediately loved her. She had deep green eyes and a pure black mane. She was a beautiful little filly, and I thought for a moment that we should get her, but then you walked back into my view. You looked so sad, so...ghostlike, like no matter where you went, nobody noticed, like nobody cared. Seeing you like that made my heart break. Just then it hit me like a freight train, and I knew, right then and there, that you had to come home with us. I couldn’t let this little filly who had friends and who was loved by her peers come home with us and leave you to stay there, perpetually forgotten by the world." His speech was reaching an almost tender tone, as if he were feeling the exact sme things that he was feeling at that moment in time.

"I said I needed to go to the bathroom and went to talk to the director. We chatted a bit and then I asked him for the adoption papers. He tried to protest that I needed both me and Cindy to sign in order to legally adopt you. I told him that if she had come in the room, that I would have never have gotten to adopt you, that we would argue and fight and wind up taking that little filly home. It wasn't easy, but he cut me a deal, and I was able to legally adopt you. Cindy had a fit when she found out what I had done. She almost divorced me that very day. She hated that I had gone behind her back and gotten you out of my selfishness, and not let her express her own selfishness. She took her anger at me out on you in order to try and ruin my entire plan for adopting you in the first place. I know I have given you my fair share of beatings in the past as well, but those were only about as justified as hers, in short they weren't. Most of the time though, I know it probably seems as though I was helping her, but I was actually trying to pull her off of you. She would go crazy when punishing you, it would get way out of hand, very fast. She would just unleash everything on you. It was so scary, sometimes I held back, thinking that if I tried to save you, then she might turn on me, but I never hesitated for long. I never wanted your life to turn out like this."

He sighed deeply before continuing. "Sometimes I think that your life would be better if she had divorced me to raise you on my own. Sometimes I wonder how your life would have been if I hadn't gone behind her back and adopted you without her permission, but then you would have been at the mercy of whatever other couple decided to get you, be them abusive or loving. But all I have to do is look at what you have become in these past four years, and I notice that you don't always look depressed, you don't sit by yourself in the corners of the room anymore. You have grown up into an impressively smart and very strong young stallion, one that I am proud to be the father of. I just wish that I was your actual father. I try to tell myself that I've done a good job at turning your life around. But there is only one true way to find out..."

He looked up at me with the biggest and teariest eyes that I have ever laid eyes on. Just then every single once of bitterness toward him disintegrated; leaving me staring at a stallion that I no longer hated, but instead, had a soft spot for, like he was my new best friend or something. Then he asked a question that caught be off-guard. "Can you forgive me?" I had no idea how to react to the collaboration of things that I had just heard. I was almost on the verge of tears myself. "Yes." I said while embracing him in a big hug. "Thank you, for everything." I said letting the tears flow. We sat there, crying on each others shoulders for a span of time that let me figure out what I would say back to him.

We both pulled out of the hug and leaned back against the kitchen wall. We sat there for a good long time, just thinking of how we were going to continue. I took another drink from the bottle, which by now was half emptied by our drinking, and wrapped a hoof around his shoulder again. We looked at each other and I smiled, I don't know why, but I felt immensely happy right then. I felt like I needed to show him that he did do the right thing by bringing me back. It wasn't easy but I figured out where to start and just kept going. "I can remember those days. Back then I thought of life as a large congregation of unfortunate mishaps, that nobody wins in the end; that no matter what, your most precious dreams will be crushed and life will laugh at you while you stop to mourn your losses. I always thought that no matter what happened, I would never have a happy life, that I would never actually be happy. I always thought that I would stay in that home until' I turned eighteen and was emancipated and kicked out on my own. I always had the grim thought of suicide in the back of my mind as well. I sulked around everywhere. I truthfully didn't want to get out of my bed in the mornings. I never saw anything or anypony as pretty or beautiful. I had no will to live or drive to live with, I was lost. Then I heard that somepony wanted to adopt me. My heart began racing as I was lead out to the lobby and saw you two standing there. You had the biggest, stupidest smile I had ever seen, but it seemed as if you were happy about adopting me. But Cindy had the most annoyed look about her, she just looked purely and thoroughly aggravated. I must admit, that I thought she would be abusive to me, just on account of how she spoke to me. I know that you think that I must hate you for bringing me into this situation, but truthfully, I have to thank you. If not for you, then I would probably have killed myself by now if I had stayed in that home. I can't say about anything else really, but I feel as if I'm cared about here, I feel as if I'm loved here. I can't hate you for bringing me here. All I can do is thank you."

This was edited by bandgeekjim.