An Even Worse Self Insert

by ROBCakeran53

13: Buttons and Bows

“East is east and west is west
And the wrong one I have chose
Let's go where I'll keep on wearin'
Those frills and flowers and buttons and bows
Rings and things and buttons and bows”

They say time heals all wounds.

I think that’s a load of bullshit.

Time patches up your current wounds, stitching them closed in the hope that you don’t bleed out to death while you watch your life flash by. Eventually, time catches up, and those wounds reopen. You bleed out, all of the old pains and worries coming back. You throw up, gut wrenching and constricted to the point that you just can’t heave anymore out of your system.

Time giveth, and time taketh away. That’s a more appropriate saying. I like that. Looking around, I notice my company, although not who I’d expected.

Elegance, regal, purple curled mane and tail, with an offshoot of white coat that could be mistaken for a very, very, very light grey if you wanted to be specific, which this pony would gladly do.

If I was being honest, I never thought that I’d see other ponies show up. Then again, Luna did break one of my light bulbs, so it was a possibility, but I didn’t think it would happen again so soon.

Granted, she is knitting the holes in my socks, so I can’t complain one bit. Haynes, I love you to death, but all my socks get holes in the same place, just behind the big toe on the bottom.

At this point, I replay the record again, not even sure how long the unicorn mare has been here. She’s sitting in my recliner, off to the side of my bedroom, back towards me. I can see the beautiful curls of her purple mane, and the eerie glow of her horn as she knits. When I first noticed her, I wanted to offer her my sewing machine, but Westinghouse stopped making bobbins for it about fifty years ago, and I’ve been lazy in tracking down used ones. I still remember dragging the thing home in my little red wagon, when I was no older than ten.

Could be worse; I could have one of my Singer pedal machines up here, but it’s just so hard to get a good leather band for one anymore. I could probably make one, but still, not like I’m using one every day. Remembering the first one was a pain to drag home, and the very idea of lugging one up a set of stairs… forget it. Thankfully, by my second and third ones that I had acquired, I was driving so lugging them home wasn’t so bad. It did beg the question though, could unicorns use a pedal style machine with ease of their horn? Or Earth ponies with their strong legs?

If my Singers and one Honeymoon weren’t buried in my barn, I’d be curious to try it.

There’s a lady like cough, and I turn back towards my recliner at the mare. She’s still facing away from me, but has an ear turned in my direction.

“Yes?” I asked.

“Sorry, I’m just… how Twilight talked about you, and this place, I was expecting more conversation. You’ve been deadly quiet for the last twenty minutes, other than standing to play your record.”

“Yeah, well that’s how some nights go. Quiet, save for the voices of the dead.”

“I see.” She paused in her knitting, but resumed quickly, “So is that how you always view your music? By whether the performer, or plural, are deceased?”

“Just most of my collection.” I tap on the shelf beside me, laiden with 78’s. “They’re all dead. Been that way for most of them, since before I was born. Kinda sucks.”

“Kind of?” She asked.

“Well, yeah. I can’t say that I have, or ever will, get to see any of my favorite groups perform live.”

“Ah, yes. Sapphire Shores, my current favorite, puts on some of the most amazing performances you’ll see.”

“So what, dancing, costumes, and all that rot?”

“It is not rot! I make sure all of her wardrobe choices are of the best.”

“Oh.” Yeah, I just insulted her talent. Oops. “Sorry, I didn’t mean-”

“It’s quite alright, darling. I can take a jab here and there. I may be a lady, but I can hold my own to criticism.”

“Good on ya then, lass.”

I swore I heard a hitch in her breath. Probably something I said. Usually was.

I cleared my throat. “You want anything to drink? I got water, some expired Sprite, and a metric fuck-ton of thirty year old cheap wine.”

The last one got her attention, finally turning in her seat to look at me sitting on my couch, brow raised.

“What?” I asked.

“Wine? Twilight told me you were a whiskey drinker.”

I shrugged. “It was free. Compliments of my grandmother.”

“She just gave you a bunch of vintage wines?”

I shook my head. “More like we’re cleaning out her house after her passing, after five years, and I’ve been bringing home what I me and my dad didn’t drink from her house. Between us, we can polish off a couple bottles in an evening.”

Rarity seemed to be thinking this over. That, or she was judging me silently. Either case was plausible.

“What are you drinking?”

I reached down to the bottle, inspecting it.

“Riunite… Lambrusco?” I squinted at the finer print. “Soft red wine. I dunno, some cheap stuff.”

Before she could answer me, I stood and carried the bottle over to her. With her magic, she set down the current sock she had been working on and took the bottle to inspect it. I walked over to the shelf which held all my drinking glasses, and found a clean coffee mug and brought it over.

I set it on the table, on a coaster I should note, and waited expectantly.

“You cannot be serious. You do not drink wine from a… coffee cup.”

“Half the time I just drink it from the bottle.”

She frowned at me. It wasn’t a disappointed frown like Twilight usually gave me, but one of frustration and internal battle.

Rarity must have been as weak willed as me, because she floated the bottle back to me, as well as the coffee mug. I twisted the cap off, and poured her a generous amount.

“Not even quorked…” she muttered, but took a sip, and cringed.

“Yeah, like I said, thirty plus year old cheap wine that wasn’t stored properly.”

She sighed, placing the mug onto the coaster. I went to return to the now silent record player, but a tug on my shirt stopped me.

Looking back, Rarity’s horn was glowing, and so was the edge of my shirt.

“You do know why I am here, don’t you?”

I patted down my shirt, trying to get rid of her magical influence upon it. With a roll of her eyes, she let me go, and I stumbled back to my couch, restarting the record before I sat down.

“I dunno. She probably got sick of me, but that constant feeling of needing to help made her ask you to show up.”

Rarity was silent for a few moments. “You’re… not too far off.”

“Zing!” I poured myself another glass of wine, into a clear Jack Daniels lowball no less.

If there was a special place in hell for those who committed sins against drink, then I was surely going there.

“You were quite rude to her, you know.”

“I know.”

“So is that it? Do you not feel sorry about it?”

I was silent for several seconds, and then shrugged.

Rarity huffed, and I hear the recliner creak from shifting movements.

“Now hold on,” I said, “I didn’t answer.”

“Your silence was all I needed to hear.”

“You have tinnitus too?”

This time, she did turn back to look at me, confused with brow cocked.

“Never mind, probably not. To properly answer you, yes, I do feel bad. I just… can’t help it.”

“Help what?”

I shrugged again.

“You can’t help that you hate yourself, or that you hate the world?”

Okay, that was a big stretch.

“I may hate myself, but hating the world is quite braud.”

“You seemed tartarus bent on telling Twilight, the poor dear, that she was hated.”

Now hold the fuck up… “I never said I hated her.”

“Well you sure implied it, from what she told us.”

“No, I doubted her existence, as much as I doubt you being here.”

She glared at me, and suddenly I felt a sharp jab on my shoulder.

“Ow! What the everliving fu-”

“So, am I real then?”

I looked to the small dot of red on my shoulder, bleeding through my white shirt. Back to the mare, her horn glowed, and a small needle hovered by her.

“You shived me.”

“I wouldn’t use such a threatening word.”

“Shanked.”

“Again, no…”

“STABBED!”

“Please, do you even know what a thesaurus is?”

“Yes, I have one, thank you very much!”

“Oh and do tell, because Twilight was happy to talk about your books, how old is it?”

I paused, voice dying in my throat as I thought about it.

“Well?”

“I’m thinking!”

She blew a raspberry. “Please, you’ve shown very little in that regard.”

“Well…” I stammered, trying to think, “it’s not as old as my dictionary! So it’s relevant to at least the twentieth century!”

Again, she blinked at me. I crossed my arms across my chest, feeling the victor.

I should have known better; I’m never the winner.

“That’s old, isn’t it?”

I let out a sigh, rubbing my face with a hand.

“Yes… yes it is.”

Rarity shook her head, a tisk tisk tisk coming from her lips.

“Seeing the state of some of your clothes, I’d hate to imagine how old everything else you own is, but that would be wishful thinking I dread.”

I wasn’t the best at keeping track of my clothes. I still lived at home, my mother enjoyed, yes, that word, enjoyed doing laundry (she always found things to yell at me about doing it so I eventually gave in), and just accepted what she did as how it was to be.

Rarity lifted up, in her magic, a shirt from my dirty clothes crate.

It was a crate, in the literal sense, of a commercial grade milk crate. Because I didn’t believe in clothes baskets. They were overpriced, cheaply made and flimsy, not worth my time in honesty.

Milk crates I got all the time, and they were great. Used them for all kinds of things.

“So, you simply ignore all these holes?”

I shrugged. “Most of them are from working on stuff. Or battery acid, take your pick.”

Another glare in my direction.

“Okay, so I overlook them. It’s not like I’m trying to impress anyone.”

“Well, Twilight sure thinks-”

“It doesn’t matter what she thinks.” I interrupted, standing to start the record over again.

I heard her let out a huff, but off the edge of my vision I saw one of my cats go darting by.

“Oh, hello dear! What is your name?”

I did, in fact, look over, and watched as Rarity was holding, petting, and generally loving over the older kitten of mine.

“That’s Stinky Pete.”

Have you ever had a perfectly timed sound effect? In your life? Like, you’re talking with someone, and one of you say something so dumb that a tool, or object, is dropped, to show the awkward silence?

My copy of Buttons and Bows has a small skip at one point, and it made itself perfectly clear after naming one of my two cats.

“Stinky… Pete?” Rarity asked, and I could feel her glare on the back of my head.

“Well, yeah. Her name was originally Pumpkin, but she never figured that out. Her farts were so bad, I called her Stinky Pete, and the name has stuck.”

My nieces, in fact, gave me the cat. They hated the name. My vet nearly died of laughter when I told him.

“Right… Of course.”

Silence took over for some time. I’d let the record player go quiet for a while, just staring at nothing, or everything in my bedroom. Eventually, that lady like cough came about again.

“Do you have any ribbon?”

I had to think hard on that one, taking a swig of the old wine as I did so.

“Probaby, in the sewing box under my sewing machine.”

I had looked to her, and she blinked rapidly at me.

“You have a sewing machine?”

I nodded.

“And you were going to tell me this… when?”

Shit, I fucked up. Again.

“Well, it won’t be of much help since I’ve not ever gotten a bobbin for it.”

She rolled her eyes, horn lighting up as she threw a now sewn sock at my face.

“Please, like that’s ever stopped me before.”

I studied the stitched sock, amazed that the hem work was so smooth, that in my shoes all day I might not actually notice it. “Wow.”

“Wow is right.”

I looked back to the mare, and she’d already found my Westinghouse machine, opened the lid, and was studying it.

“Yeah, it’s old, I-”

“This is magnificent!”

That was a first for me.

“Uh…”

“Yes, I could do so much with this…” She seemed to look up, but not at me, or anything in my room.

I felt like she was lost in her own imagination, thinking up all kinds of crazy ideas, and honestly that worried me. This wasn’t Equestria, or if you wanted to argue it, not even Earth. This was my room, where the modern came to die, and be replaced with the old.

I decided that this was above my pay grade, and instead started up the record again. This seemed to catch the mare’s attention, away from the sewing machine, and watched as Grayson jumped onto my bed to watch her, curious.

Again, that damn lady like cough. It was like, she had no other way to get my attention or something.

“You can just shout at me, or throw something at me, if you want my attention,” I say, turning to face her again.

“I could, but that would suck out any of the drama we’re having, now wouldn’t it?” she asked.

Fuck if I knew. This was meta levels as it was, and that only begged the question if I was really off my rocker and believed it, or just wanted to cry.

I was, in fact, not in my rocking chair, and I didn’t feel like crying, so I nyxed both and went with my usual default.

“I dunno.”

She rolled her eyes. “Astounding response.”

“Yeah, I have that effect sometimes.”

She played with the sewing machine another minute or two, but then returned it to its stowed away position, closing the lid with a final thud.

“Well, this was... something.”

I shrugged. “Was it? I dunno.”

I could feel the hoof steps on my floor, the damn room always shook with any movements, and she joined me at my couch, taking a seat beside me for the first time all night.

“Now, I don’t want you thinking you have to apologize-”

“Then don’t.”

I wasn’t looking at her, but I had the mental image of her ears falling back against her scalp. For some reason it made me want to punch myself.

“Alex, dear, I know- no, we know you are hurting, but that does not give you the right to simply shove off anypony’s helpful hoof, when you’re hurting.”

“Who says I’m hurting?”

“No one is. And that’s how obvious it is.”

I finally looked to the mare sitting beside me. I wasn’t sure where she’d gotten it, or if she’d made it, but she was holding a small, pink bow in her hooves, absentmindedly playing with it.

“You need to stop feeling such self pitty, and accept when those who love you want nothing than the best for you, and don’t like to see you hurting.

“You need to strive to get better for you, not anypony, or anycreature, else.”

“And what do you know about that?” I asked, a slight tone of venom in my voice.

“More than I care to admit, but not enough to tell you.” She rubbed a hoof on her chest. “We’ve just met, after all, and I feel this isn’t the right moment.”

I scoffed, taking a sip of the shitty wine. I realized she’d barely touched her glass, still mostly full at the recliner, but also knew that if she had any brains, she wasn’t drinking it like I was.

“So when is the right moment?” I asked.

She tapped her chin, then shrugged. “I suspect you’ll know when.”

I waved her off. “Yeah, sure, alright. So what then, oh wise white mare of death?”

Rarity, fashion diva that we all knew she was, stood from my couch. There, I noticed Stinky Pete with a bright pink bow at the base of her tail, and she seemed to beam at the attention she was drawing from me and Rarity.

I watched the white mare walk away, towards my entry way, tail giving an occasional flick of… agitation? I should know this, having horses in my yard for years should tell me, and yet… I felt dumb at the hidden meaning.

“I am not the pale horse of death, Alex. I am, however, not the last to visit you.”

And then, a flash of light, and she was gone.

I looked down to my freshly knit sock, then to Stinky Pete who had already torn off the bow and was now playing with it.

All was back to normal, and yet, I didn’t feel like it was.

“Fuck it.”

I slept on the couch again.

Author's Note:

Blog posts and any sense in this story is for chumps.

Comments

[Level Dasher]

Oh man, if more are coming, I don't even want to know what's gonna happen when Fluttershy gets there. She'll be bawling before we get to 500 words, I fear.

[Dustchu]

Whew, man... no words, honestly

But I can get two out.

Big feels