Bookworm's Delight

by naturalbornderpy

Interlude: That Wonderful Feeling

INTERLUDE:

THAT WONDERFUL FEELING

1

Excerpt from notebook:

There’s a feeling you get. When everything works out the way you’d imagined it would and no one seems to be the wiser. When everyone’s screaming at the top of their lungs or their mouths are stuck open in that shocked expression and you can barely hide the small smile that wants to bloom on your lips. Moments like these I try to find the most startled pony of them all in an effort to copy their mannerisms. If their eyes are as wide as their head, I open mine just the same. If their hooves tremble as they hold the sides of their jaw due to disbelief, I can copy it exact. To not do such a thing would be unwise. To do it better than them would be even worse. You need to stay in the middle as best as you can.

What was I talking about before? Oh yes. That feeling. That wonderful feeling that I can’t quite explain but I wish you could understand. It’s bliss. It’s magic, really. It’s simply something that once you taste a single time you will search for it as hard as you can. I have only tasted it completely a few times in my life. And I will let you know it isn’t for the faint of heart.

2

It had only been a few months following what Twilight Sparkle had done to me and only a few weeks after something altogether different would occur. The change had happened and now it was my first test to see if the road I wanted to travel down would accept me openly. I had always known in my heart I was destined for something big. Now to see for myself if this was what it had been meant to be.

I was still in grade school when I killed my first pony of choice. This one I had known for so long now and had even grown to care for. Yet sometimes opinions can change horrendously.

When I talk about having ended someone’s life I do not mean I held a sharp instrument to their throat or shoved a pillow over their peacefully sleeping face. What I mean is that I set up a series of events that could have ended in a vast multitude of ways. I always hope for the outcome I desire. Just as I hoped that Twilight would read her way into the next life—but sometimes plans change. And when they do you find you have to adapt along with them. Only how odd it was to find, that my first attempt worked itself out to perfection.

The first pony to give me such a feeling was a colt the same age as me. In fact, we were in the same class together and had sat beside the other for months on end. If only I had known what he would do; then maybe things would have been different. He would have been alive and perhaps my life would have gone in an entirely different direction. But I’ve been doing so well at all this, haven’t I?

It was in the middle of winter when the event occurred and I used it to my advantage. The trio of stairs leading out from the school had always been kept sanded to keep small foals from tripping over themselves, going up and down that icy entrance. Same with the sidewalk outside. The colt that would give me such a feeling for days on end lived further away from the school than most—so much so, that a large carriage would take him along with several other classmates both to school and back home each day. It was such a large vehicle that carried them all. So heavy and so tall. Each one of its wheels close to twice my little height at the time. It always took four full grown stallions to pull such a monstrosity.

The art of timing has always been something I’ve admired. One could also argue it’s the reason I’m doing what I’m doing at all. Timing. It can be used against you or it can be carefully used against others.

At 3:30 each day the school bell would ring merrily atop the building, as dozens of well-behaved little children would run for the doors. The carriage that plucked up all those lucky out of town individuals would arrive anywhere between 3:33 and 3:38. I had been staying behind at the end of each day to monitor their varying times. They were never early, but they were never too far behind. To see to the colt’s conclusion, it would be a combination of timing and chance.

Since him and I had become something far different than friends in the past few weeks, I studied his backside as he trotted to the doors at the end of the day. He appeared eager to get outside—perhaps to roll some snowballs or create some snow-ponies until the transportation arrived. But that was something I couldn’t let happen. If it was not perfect it would not work at all. And it had to be perfect.

According to the wall clock it was 3:31 and my individual of interest had just finished donning his coat and scarf. Like a simpleton he giggled as he spoke to his chums—another joke that would be better suited for a rock than for a pony. That small laugh dried up the instant he caught me staring. I have since become more aware of how odd I look when I forget to add emotion to my features. In the years that have followed I have become much better at expressing normality when prompted to.

Hastily I turned away from him, but not before tugging at his scarf with an invisible aura of my magic. To the wet floor it fell and to the clock inside my head did I add another sixty seconds. Given his short conversation, we were now somewhere around 3:34. It would be now or I would perchance rethink everything come tomorrow. Yet with that in mind, why did it feel like such a once in a lifetime opportunity?

Before he had a chance to exit the doors I ran past him as unobservant as I could. With little care, I crashed through the front entrance and waited by the head of the stairs. When I heard the doors open again, I knew he was behind me. When he took that first single step down, I did the same. Only when I stepped down did I pretend to trip on nothing at all, gasping in the cold winter air while my plot and sides hit against the hard stone step. By that point my pony of interest turned in my direction, as his front legs slipped over the other and he collapsed face down onto the ice.

The night before that wonderful day I had carefully swept up each bit of grit or sand that had been delicately laid across the entryway. Two buckets of water later and a thin coat of ice was all that remained around the entrance to the school.

If he had been paying attention to what he had been doing, he might have saved himself from the fall. If there had been a small sprinkling of sand, he might have even stopped before his head dipped over the curb. If the carriage pulled by four stallions had arrived a few seconds too late or a few seconds too early, his head might not have been crushed underneath one of its massive back wheels like some rotten pumpkin hit with a hammer.

So many ifs…

So many damn ifs…

Perhaps that’s why I find that feeling so rewarding. That wonderful feeling. It is precarious to come by and even harder to hold onto. But oh how I crave it now.

So many of them screamed at my work. My wholly invisible work. I, too, screamed right along and in the days that followed I pretended to cry for the first time in my young life. Maybe if I wasn’t so good at toppling over well-placed dominos I might have succeeded as an actor. What, exactly, do they do all day besides wear fake masks for the public’s amusement?

So many variables. So many ifs.

Although the only if he should have been worrying himself with was if he should have wronged me at all. And the obvious answer, was no.

Author's Note:

Trying something a little different here. Next chapter will be a regular one.

Comments

[blindbronyinblack]

I'm liking where this is going.

[naturalbornderpy]

5358585 With that knowledge, I'm guessing the next chapter will either increase that interest, or perhaps be too much. We will see!

[King of Kings]

Timing

Also...I'm guessing this is an alternate universe take on Trixie. Just throwing it out there.

[darklight731]

Oh. They are a complete psychopath. I see.