Skull
Rainbow Burger
by Kel Grym
Darkness. There was only Darkness. Peaceful and serene like the first days in the womb.
“Wake up!”
Splash!
And suddenly Lyra was ripped from that dark womb and into a very cold, wet world.
“Aah!” Lyra yelled as icy shock jolted her awake. She looked around franticly before her eyes finally settled on Pinkamena.
“Pinkie!?”
Pinkamena stood in front of Lyra out of her uniform. She was wearing a black hoodie and holding a pail in her hooves.
“Didn’t I tell you not to call me that?” She said.
Lyra realized she was sitting in a chair in a dark room with a single over head lamp. The floors were wooden and the walls had ugly, stained blue and white striped wallpaper. There was a bed with a nightstand in the corner and a few magazines littered the ground, but otherwise the room was sparsely decorated. Lyra felt her hooves tied behind her back and her lower hooves bound together.
Terror spread out through Lyra’s body, as a sudden onset of adrenaline kicked her heart rate into overdrive. Lyra looked everywhere for an escape, but the only window in the room was boarded up and Pinkamena stood in between her and the plywood door that served as the only exit.
“W-why are you doing this?” she asked, fear oozing in her voice.
Pinkamena stared at her with eyes completely devoid of emotion and sympathy, like a judge before deciding on a convict’s fate.
“You looked,” she said, as if it were an automatic death sentence.
Lyra paled. It felt as if her stomach dropped all the way to a bottomless pit that would soon serve as her grave.
“No! I didn’t see anything, I swear!”
“You’re lying.”
Oh No! This is it! She’s going to torture me and chop me up in little pieces! Someone help me, I’m too young to die! Lyra thought to herself as the gravity of her situation settled completely in.
“Look,” she said, sobbing in between breaths, “I’m sorry, okay? I’m sorry I spread that rumor you and Big Mac were rutting, I’m sorry I don’t always sweep the floors, and I’m sorry I looked in your satchel! Just please, please, please don’t kill meeeaah haaa ha haaa!” She bawled, tears streaming down freely from her face.
Pinkamena rolled her eyes. She picked her satchel off the floor and opened the flap, pulling out the pony skull that was inside.
“Lyra.”
“Bwahaa haa haa!”
“Lyra.”
“Haaa! sniff, haa haa!”
“LYRA!”
Lyra stopped crying long enough to see what Pinkamena was doing. Lyra recoiled at the sight of the skull being held up to her face. Its hollow eye sockets held nothing, but promise of grim inevitability.
“Ew! Get it away, get it away!” she screamed, turning her head as far away from the skull as possible.
Pinkamena sighed. “Lyra…say hello to Applejack.”
Lyra looked at the skull from the corner of her eye.
“Sniff…Huwha?”
“Say hello to Applejack,” Pinkamena said more slowly this time.
Lyra looked around slightly confused. She was ponynapped out of her car, didn’t know where she was, afraid for her life, and at the mercy of a psychopath. What else was she to do?
“Eh..h-hello…Applejack?”
There was a long pause. Lyra wasn’t sure what to expect.
“Well howdy, partner! Nice to meet you!”
Lyra stared at the skull in Pinkamena’s hooves for what seemed like forever. Twin orange lights dimly shone through its sockets.
“What’s the matter?” it said, “Cat got yer tongue?”
Lyra screamed.
Darkness again. It was comforting. Safe.
“Wake up!”
Splash!
“Aah!” Lyra screamed as she was jolted awake again.
“Stop screaming or I’ll chloroform you again!”
“Please don’t kill me!”
“She’s not gonna kill ya, sugarcube,” The skull said.
Lyra looked at the skull, with saucer plate eyes. It was perched on a tall stool, nearly eye level, right by her. Lyra started screaming again.
“Talking skull!”
Pinkamena sighed. She dabbed chloroform on the cloth.
Splash!
“Mph!” Lyra tried to scream. She was gagged this time. Looking around, again, she found Pinkamena in front of her with the same pale. Applejack’s skull was still on the stool.
“Pinkie, quit drenchin the poor mare, she’s soakin wet.”
“It’s my favorite part,” Pinkamena said to the skull.
Lyra let out another muffled scream.
“Is she gonna be like this all the time?
“Well, I did ponynap her.”
“Told ya it was a bad idea.
“Well what was I suppose to do, she could’ve gone to the police!”
“You coulda just told her when she went to the bathroom.”
“That’s just dumb, AJ. She would have just screamed and start a panic at the restaurant.”
“And chloroformin a pony while they’re drivin is a smart idea? I ain’t the sharpest knife in the drawer, but that’s just plain stupid.”
“Hey, I caught the wheel in time! We didn’t wreck.”
“Sure did put a good scratch in her car though.”
Lyra stopped screaming. She just stared at the two now.
Pinkamena, noticing Lyra had calmed down, looked her up and down and asked, “Are you done screaming? I have neighbors you know.”
Lyra nodded.
“Okay,” she said, “That’s good. I wanna get this over with. If I remove the gag, you’re not going to start screaming for help or anything like that? Cause, if you do I’m just going to chloroform you again. Understand?”
Lyra nodded, again.
“Good.”
As soon as Pinkamena removed the gag, Lyra laid into her.
“You scratched my bucking car, you bitch!?” Lyra yelled as her eye brows snapped into furrows, her teeth flared, and muscles in her neck flexed with rage.
Pinkamena winced at the volume as her ears flattened against her head. She didn’t expect that.
“Do you know how much that’s going to cost me to fix!?” Lyra continued, “I just got a new paint job for it too!”
Pinkamena growled and said, “Are you for real? I got you tied up in my room with a haunted skull that talks, and all you care about is your car?”
“You’re damn right! That’s the best car I’ve ever had! I paid 4200 bits for that thing!”
“It’s a piece of hunking shit! I wouldn’t have paid anything over 1000 for it!” Pinkamena blared back, her face now contorting in its own acrobatics of agitation.
“It’s a gas saver!”
“It’s a lemon!”
“Well, your room smells!”
A confused look crossed Pinkamena’s face.
“What?”
“Girls!” Applejack yelled, “Can we just stop the bickerin and get back to the matter at hoof?”
Lyra and Pinkamena stopped to stare at Applejack. Then they looked at each other.
“Pinkamena?” Lyra asked.
“Yeah?”
“Why do you have a talking skull? And also, are you still going to kill me?”
Pinkamena sighed. “No Lyra, I’m not going to kill you.”
“Promise?”
“I don’t make promises, Lyra.”
Lyra didn’t know how to feel about that, but Applejack quickly interjected, “Lyra, Pinkie here isn’t going to kill you, she’s a lot of things but she ain’t a murderer, and I ain’t one to ever tell ya a lie. You can believe in me, sugarcube, everything is gonna be ok. Promise.”
She didn’t know why, but hearing the skull’s words, as strange as that was, comforted her a great deal. Something about the character in the skull’s voice reassured her that everything was going to be all right…unless it was casting a spell on her. At this point, anything was believable. Why stop at talking skulls?”
“Besides,” Applejack added, “Pinkie knows that if she did anything to really hurt you, I’d haunt her flanks off.”
“You’re already haunting me, “Pinkamena said out the corner of her mouth.
Applejack chuckled.
“Okay,” Lyra said, “But that still doesn’t answer my one question. Why do you have a haunted skull?”
Pinkamena put a hoof to her chin and said, “Well that’s kinda a long story.”
Lyra gave Pinkamena a deadpanned look.
“I’m tied to a chair.”
“Oh, yeah,” Pinkamena said, as if noticing for the first time. Lyra was still in her uniform, soaking wet, and her hooves were probably chaffing from the rope.
Applejack laughed and said, “You know, how bout we untie our guest first and give her a towel, before we all sit down for story time?”
After Lyra dried up, the girls decided to continue their conversation in the living room. Lyra noticed that the living room was in no better condition that Pinkamena’s room. The ceiling was stained brown, obviously from constant exposure to cigarette smoke, and the sickly green carpet had burn holes in various places. There wasn’t one single piece of furniture that didn’t look like it wasn’t a hand-me-down or bought a flea market.
Lyra and Pinkamena sat on the brown, itchy sofa in the living room. Applejack’s skull rested on a stained coffee table in front of them. Pinkamena’s hooves hung off the sofa, but Lyra’s remained curled protectively under her. There was a monster on the floor.
Pinkamena looked at Lyra staring at her alligator in trepidation.
“Oh.” She said, “You noticed, Gummy?”
“T-that thing has a name?”
“That thing is my pet.”
“It’s huge!”
Indeed, Gummy was big. Four and a half feet long, Gummy wasn’t the largest of gators, but large enough to be of concern to anyone that valued their limbs.
“Pfft, he’s just a baby,” Pinkamena said as she scratched the gator’s head.
“Just a baby!?” Lyra exclaimed.
“Yeah, they get a lot bigger in the sewers.”
“That’s just a myth!”
Pinkamena smirked.
“Where do you think I got Gummy?”
Lyra stared. “You’re kidding, right?”
Pinkamena shook her head.
“It’s true.” Applejack piped in.
Lyra opened her mouth as if to say something, but decided against it. She looked at the gator on the floor. It blinked. Probably a sign it was going to eat her. Lyra hugged herself further into the couch.
“You can relax,” Pinkamena said, “He doesn’t have any teeth.”
“N-no teeth?”
“Yeah. No teeth. Not that he’s harmless; alligators have a bite pressure of 2125 pounds of force. He can’t kill you, but he’ll definitely leave a bruise…probably break a bone.”
Lyra gulped.
“Oh stop scaring her.” Applejack said, “Gummy wouldn’t hurt a fly.”
Lyra wasn’t too sure, but she tried to relax anyway. It wasn’t easy considering she was in her ponynapper’s home talking to a haunted skull. She looked at the alligator again and it just continued to stare off into emptiness.
“Um,” Lyra began, “So…Applejack?”
“Yup, that’s me!” the skull said.
“You’re like…a ghost right?”
“Pretty much sums it up.”
Pinkamena said, “I thought that much was apparent already.”
“Hey this isn’t easy for me! I never talked to a ghost before, what am I suppose to say? It’s weird!”
“Yeah, Pinkie, this is all new to her. Let her take this at her own pace.” AJ said.
Pinkamena rolled her eyes and said, “Fine, whatever. Let’s just get this over with.”
Lyra turned to Applejack and asked, “So…um. How do you know Pinkamena?”
“We're cousins!” Applejack said with pride in her voice.
Lyra’s eyes widened. Cousins? She turned to Pinkamena to ask, but before she could open her mouth Pinkamena answered, “Yeah, She’s also Big Mac’s sister.”
Lyra thought on this for a moment then started to ask, “D-does Big Mac…”
“No, he doesn’t know,” Pinkamena said, then added with an edge to her voice, “We’d like to keep it that way.”
Lyra digested her words. It was already a lot to take in. Pinkamena had Big Mac’s haunted sister’s skull and he didn’t know. To the gossip inclined unicorn, that was a big juicy nugget of information, but she could tell by the way Pinkamena’s eyes shot daggers at her that she was expecting something from her.
“So…I’m guessing you want me to keep this a secret,” Lyra said with an awkward laugh.
“You think?”
“Pinkie, quit intimidating the poor thing!” Applejack scolded.
Pinkie sighed. She crossed her hooves turning her away before she let out a resigned, “Fine.”
Lyra scratched the back of her head and said, “Heh, you’re pretty nice…for a dead pony…heh, heh.”
Applejack would have smiled if she could.
“Well,” she said, “it ain’t nothin. Just raised right was all.”
Lyra thought about her next question. With a little trepidation she began to ask, “So, Applejack. If you don’t mind my asking, and you totally don’t have to tell me if you don’t want, but um…how did…how did…”
“I die?” Applejack finished for her.
Lyra felt a little embarrassed for even bringing it up. “Um…yeah,” she said sheepishly.
“Griffon war.”
Lyra’s eyes widened as her mouth made an O shape. She didn’t expect that.
“Took a bullet to the knee,” Applejack continued, “then got mangled under some siege weaponry.”
“Ouch.”
Lyra noticed Pinkamena hiding a smirk behind her hoof as she mumbled something about ‘apple flapjacks.’
Applejack noticed too and said, “That ain’t funny anymore Pinkie!”
“I can’t help it,” she snickered.
“What?” Lyra asked.
Applejack sighed. Lyra imagined that if she still had eyes, they would have been rolled.
“I was under the ground for a long while,” Applejack began to recount, “I don’t rightly know for how long, but I started to get the hang of being dead, so I called out for help.”
“Help?” Lyra asked.
“She started sending me messages,” Pinkamena answered, “I kept on seeing Applejack in my dreams. Sometimes I was at work or at home and I could remember seeing her in a window or hear her calling my name from behind a door.”
“It took a while for her ta get the message,” Applejack said.
“It wasn’t until the dream I had where Applejack appeared in the drive-thru window at work and told me to stop goofing around and grab a shovel that I figured it out.”
“Took you long enough.”
“Hey, it’s not my fault you were so vague with you’re messages!”
“I’m a ghost! We’re supposed to be cryptic!”
“Cryptic? What about that time you just popped your melted head out of the fryer and screamed my name at the top of your lungs!? What’s so cryptic about that?”
Applejack chuckled. “That was just for fun.” She explained.
“Figures,” Pinkamena said through gritted teeth.
“Aw, don’t be that way. Remember that song you used to sing?”
“Shut up, AJ.”
“Wait,” Lyra interrupted, “So you actually went to dig her up?”
Pinkamena nodded, and Applejack said, “Eeyup!”
Lyra turned to Applejack and blinked. She really was Big Mac’s sister. “So what happened then?” She asked.
“Well,” Applejack said, “Ya know Pinkamena. As soon as she dug me up and got over the whole talking skull thing, she started crackin jokes and calling me ‘Flap Jack’! It was a closed casket funeral for a reason.”
“I thought it was funny,” Pinkamena said.
“Consarnit, Pinkie! I’m a war veteran, there aint nothin funny about being smooshed under 18 tons of steel!”
“AJ, they got everything except your head. You literally looked like a moldy pancake that went out of date back when Celestia hit puberty.”
“Ew..” Lyra squeaked, scrunching up her nose.
“Pssh,” Pinkamena started, “You think that’s gross? I had to go down there and grab her skull. There was still hide and rot around it, not the mention the maggots wheeling their way through her nasal cavity.”
Lyra’s coat turned an extra shade of green as she began to gag.
“Yeah, I’d appreciate if you spared her the details about that…” Applejack grumbled.
It was a strange feeling for Lyra. Only a few minutes ago she was tied up to a chair and sure that she was going to die. Now she was sitting with the mare she thought was going to kill her and her dead cousin, while they poked barbs at each other about dreams and decomposing flesh. How did her life turn into a macabre comedy so fast? She wasn't even sure about how she should feel about all of it. What was she going to do now?
"So...why do you take Applejack to work with you?" Lyra asked.
"We have break-ins." Pinkamena said, "That's why we don't have a television anymore."
"And besides that, I get bored collecting dust in Pinkie's room." Applejack added.
"Huh, well I guess that makes sense," Lyra said.
For a moment there was an awkward pause. No one wanted to address the big question that was on everyone's mind. What were they going to do, now that Lyra was in on the secret?
Before anypony said anything else, the sound of crunching popcorn filled the room. All eyes turned to the short, blonde woman sitting across the coffee table with the bag of popcorn in her hands. Her hair was done up in pigtails and she was wearing baggy, denim overalls over a striped pink and black, long sleeve shirt.
They all stared at her. Nopony saw her come in.
"So are we going to have a sleep over?" The woman asked.
Pinkamena ran a hoof over her face and said, "Meagan...I told you to stay in your room."
"But I wanted to meet you're new friend!"
"She's not my friend!"
"Then who is she?"
"Woah woah woah," Lyra said waving her hooves in front of her "Hold on a second here, Pinkamena who the hay is this?"
Pinkamena desperately wanted to avoid this situation with Lyra, but there seemed no avoiding it now. She sighed and resigned herself to introductions.
"Lyra, this is Meagan; Meagan this is Lyra...Meagan's my roomate."
"You're roomate!?" Lyra exlaimed.
"My roomate." Pinkamena affirmed.
"But she's human!"
Pinkamena looked towards Meagan. She was still happily munching away at her popcorn, while wearing her ever present smile. She noticed Meagan put her shirt on backwards again, today.
Pinkamena turned back to Lyra and said, "She's alright."
"I thought you hated humans!"
"She pays her half of the rent."
Lyra gave out an exasperated sigh and leaned back into the sofa covering her face with her hooves.
What have I gotten myself into!?
"Meagan," Applejack said.
"Yes?"
"Go get the spare mattress. It's gonna be one of those nights."
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3990370
Appreciate the input!...honestly I didn't know I put any symbolism in that chapter..
I think I agree with you about the genre though, so I guess I'll just have to deal with the auto downvotes. *shrugs* I'm okay with this being an obscure gem if that's all I can accomplish with it.
Well, at least you gave Pinkie Pie a reasonable exception for Megan.
Plus, I found Lyra's freak-outs to be funny.
Wow, this is getting weird.
Too long, Pinkie Pie it is
3999780
Good weird, or bad weird?
I'm with Pinkamina, if anything paid their half of the rent and didn't trash the place, I'd make an exception for them too. Human, pony... tentacle monsters.
I know, right?
sigh...if only I could move in with a tentacle monster that payed half the rent.
How did you like the interactions between Pinkamena and AJ? Did any of the jokes seemed forced to you?
4030779
Glad you liked it! It's not perfect. I think I fell a little flat in introducing Rover and Diego. I might need to go back and put more define their characters a little bit more. I've been wondering what to do with them, really. Make em just side characters or something more? Then I had an idea of what to do with Rover...but that's a secret.
In the next chapter I'm going to introduce Rareza Quintana Campana. If you're any good at Spanish then the name is a dead give away.
4002727 Yes, but Meghan from G1? And she can't dress herself?!
Chapter 6 is coming out as soon as I get some lines translated into spanish! I can't wait!
4032931 it's rarity isn't it? no I haven't read the chapter yet.
well...that was a turn. not abad turn at all, considering this gives us a twist to the slice of life plot, and considering how canonically Equestria is a hot bed of fantasy and the paranormal, ghosts aren't too much to deal with.
I do hope you balance the sluce of life humour with the more fantastical elements.