A Pale Horse
Discreet Deliberation could pinpoint exactly when he realized that he was being followed. Twelve forty-seven PM on Tuesday, July thirteenth. He was certain of the time. He had just finished his properly-scheduled thirty-five minute lunch with some time to spare.
He had always enjoyed that park. It provided a reasonable but not strenuous amount of exercise in walking the two blocks from his office, and tended to attract lots of happy ponies, no matter what the season or weather. In winter, joggers cantering by, puffs of their breath frosting out into the cold. In the rain, foals stomping around in their rain boots, trying to find the biggest mud-puddle to splash into. And in the spring and summer? He sometimes couldn’t even find a bench to sit on, with so many ponies out and about, frolicking in his little patch of green tucked away in a corner of Manehattan.
He had finished off his daffodil-and-mustard sandwich and allowed himself an extra minute of peace as he watched a colt and a filly romp across the grass, tossing a frisbee back and forth. Then he had stood up, brushed some crumbs off of his crisp red tie, and started the walk back to the office.
It was a warm and sunny day, and he was quickly surrounded by a press of other ponies, all bustling by in the mid-day rush. That was when the feeling blossomed in his head, like a weed growing through the thin cracks in concrete, pushing its way up to the surface.
Somepony was following him.
He blinked and almost stumbled, bumping into another businesspony in an expensive suit who shot him a dark glare. Stopping right in the middle of the sidewalk was out of the question, so he kept walking, even as the prickling across the back of his neck grew.
Who would be following him?
Discreet Deliberation wasn’t exactly the type of pony to make enemies, in public and private life both. He had to admit that he had never been exceptional, or even interesting, though he always preferred to think of himself as regular and well-adjusted. He was just another stallion on the street, another worker crunching numbers in a cubicle, another husband with a loving wife and a pair of occasionally exasperating but perfectly normal children.
In other words, not a pony to arouse much interest or attention. More worryingly, the shiver down his spine said that his follower wasn’t somepony struck by idle curiosity. There was malice involved. He didn’t know how he knew that, but it was a further realization that only grew in clarity as he trotted along.
He ducked to the side as he approached his building, stepping back from the sidewalk traffic to straighten his tie in the mirror of the glass walls. His eyes darted back and forth, trying to catch a glimpse in the distorted reflection of somepony who might be staring at him. It was hard to tell. All he could see was bright flashes of color as ponies trotted back and forth behind him, not pausing for an instant.
And then he saw a small blurry oval of a face, from all the way on the other side of the broad street, still in the midst of the chaos for a fraction of a second.
He whipped around and stared across the street with wide eyes, craning his head, trying to catch a better glimpse.
There was nopony there. At least nopony with the color he had seen, a green so pale as to be white. Only more workers marching forth to lunch and back, a taxi driver on break reading a newspaper, a filthy brown pony sitting in front of bowl with a paltry amount of change.
Discreet Deliberation closed his eyes took a deep breath, letting the faintly acrid city air fill his lungs before exhaling slowly. He turned and pushed through the revolving doors into the office lobby. He knew he was being silly. He also, very definitively, knew that he was still being followed.
The feeling didn’t go away.
It persisted as he sat in his cubicle, double-checking the finances for a potential acquisition of a smaller company. The feeling slowly burrowed through the normal dull layers of work-related frustration, becoming more and more intense and certain. He eventually turned his back to the cubical wall and his calendar of lighthouses of the eastern seaboard above the narrow desk. He could barely manage to keep all the paperwork sorted in his hooves as he watched the opening, apprehensive of anyone suspicious walking by.
That worked, for a short time. Even if he found himself looking up and losing track of where he was in the numbers every time he heard the muted whisper of hoof against carpet.
Then the rumble of a soft voice reached his ears from behind, unintelligible but ominous. His head slowly swiveled back. The thin cubicle wall greeted him, bare except for the tiny square photo of Baltimare’s Shoal Point Light.
It was an awfully thin wall. He had to think about what was on the other side, the simple knowledge slipping out of his grasp in the chill of the moment. The answer finally came: it was the water cooler, the small public area that ponies sometimes visited for a break or to chat with others.
Anypony could have been there. A particularly tall pony could even have been standing on their hind legs, peering over the top of the cubicle walls as Discreet had been unwittingly watching his cubicle’s entrance.
No one was there now, of course.
He shoved the papers into a desk drawer, uncaring that their disarray meant he’d have to re-sort them later. He wasn’t getting anything accomplished anyways, and he had the three o’clock meeting in… another forty-five minutes.
Well, punctuality was always important.
As he entered the familiar environs of the conference room, a smile spread across his face at the sight of the heavy oak table at its center. He trotted over to the head of the table, standing there for a moment as he felt the tension drain.
Meetings always calmed him down. They were, after all, his special talent. He happened to own a signed first-edition of Orderly Rule’s Rules of Order, and kept not one but two additional copies, appropriately annotated with some of Paradigm Shift’s more recent developments in the field of interpersonal decisioning.
Unfortunately his current position didn’t allow him to actually implement any of those new ideas. They had him buried in drudge-work, even as his strengths and motivations all perfectly aligned with a managerial position – though as he told his wife Lilac, any day now, one of the executives would read one of his memos about proper process prioritization and he’d shoot right up the ladder. But even stuck in his current rut, the order and rhythm of a well-run meeting seemed like just the ticket to get his mind firmly back on track.
He mentally pushed back that tingle still jangling the nerves in the back of his mind and got to thinking about the meeting to come. They would just discuss their project statuses, and, to be honest, with his inability to concentrate this afternoon, he wasn’t going to have good news on that front.
He hooves moved on their own as he paced slowly, thinking to himself. His supervisor would not be happy, but on the plus side, it’d be a decent opportunity to work on conflict resolution. He would just need to—
As he reached one end of the table in his pacing and turned to move towards the other, a flash of light caught his eye, sunlight bouncing through the window from the building across the way. He trotted forward, staring, as he saw a flash of movement from an office opposite the conference room.
For a second, before the blinds across the street had been rapidly pulled shut, he had seen a green-white figure peering out in his direction.
He was on edge for the entire day. Through the meeting, where he made a disastrous showing, too preoccupied with glancing out the window to recognize when his boss had directed questions his way. Through his walk to the transit station, the ponies filling the sidewalks each carrying a new and mysterious potential danger. Through his train ride to the suburbs in the evening, his gaze flitting from face to face amongst the other commuters, searching for any signs of ill intent.
Even when he arrived home, walking up the path to their modest house, to a fresh cabbage casserole and the warmth of his family, the feeling remained. He nodded distractedly through the young son’s jumbled account of trying to get a frog-catching cutie mark with his friends. He smiled wanly as his older daughter spun a tangled web of teenage drama when asked about her day. He ate his casserole and considered how easy it would be for a pony to creep into their backyard, make their way across the moonlit grass, and silently watch them all through the kitchen window.
That night, after he kissed his wife, but before he settled into their large, comfortable bed, he made a circuit of the house, closing each and every window, locking every door. Once satisfied, he slipped under the covers, next to his already blissfully-dozing wife, and stared at the ceiling, counting the minutes until the sun had risen once again.
One day became another. Somehow he survived. Persisted. It became his life. It was such a short time in one sense, but before long he couldn’t even a remember a time without that constant weight pulling him down.
He was being followed.
He kept expecting the feeling to fade, to be some passing fancy or idle mood that had descended inexplicably and would lift again just as suddenly.
It didn’t. It was a cancer that had lodged itself in some deep recess of his mind, hardening from a thought to a worry to a crippling anxiety. He began to view his life as made up of long, horrifying stretches of pure helplessness, broken up by brief moments of bitter resignation and the occasional patch of despair.
He started to avoid mirrors, in part because he couldn’t bear to constantly check behind himself to no avail, and in part because he was terrified that he would see something again, catch a glimpse of that flash of greenish white.
His wife noticed, commenting on his increasing lack of sleep. He had started to see the pale pony in his dreams, never clear enough to make out, never doing anything other than watching. He fed her a story about stress from his work, but could see in the pain in her eyes that she saw through his flimsy untruths.
His children noticed, most of all after his son had casually darted up to hug him from behind and Discreet had knocked him to the floor, rearing back with terror and anger flashing in his eyes. They began treating him with caution, as if he was made of china and apt to break. He started to avoid them in turn, worried that prolonged interaction might lead his stalker to take interest in them too. In his darker moments, he wondered if that might not be worth the cost if it meant he was left alone.
His work noticed, boss putting aside the normal grouchy demeanor to inquire about his health with a veiled concern and suggest he take some vacation days, maybe talk to a counselor. The latter was the idea he eventually seized upon when he began to realize he was drowning, that he would never again feel safe in any situation, never have a moment where he felt truly alone.
He walked right into a psychiatrist’s office from the street. He couldn’t risk making an appointment. His watcher would have known, of course, and had too much opportunity to interfere or sabotage or even worse. He argued with the receptionist for ten minutes before the shrink had poked her head out to see what the fuss was about. She agreed to see him. He wished he thought it make a difference. He had stopped feeling any hope three days prior.
“I’m very glad that you’ve made the decision to seek help. I’m sure that you’ll find the little changes we can make to our personal outlook can often have drastic— Are you okay, Mister Deliberation?”
He jerked his head back towards her, away from the windows behind him, and forced a smile. From the taut stretching of his lips against his teeth, he was sure it was closer to a grimace. “Sorry,” he said. “Thought I saw something.”
“Sit down,” she said, gesturing towards a plush couch. He took one last look over his shoulder, walking forward and making a slow circle in place before taking his seat. “Tell me,” she said, “what do you think you saw?”
“You’ll think I’m crazy,” he said. “Maybe I am. That’s why I’m here, isn’t it?”
“I don’t think you’re crazy.” Her voice was smooth, soothing. She took a seat behind her desk, her horn lighting up as a pencil floated in her telekinesis. “Everypony has problems now and again. I’m here to help.”
“To use magic, or… or pills, to make the feelings go away.” His eyes widened, distrust being replaced by a dawning realization. “Can you do that?”
She shook her head. “I don’t think that will be necessary. What you need, Mister Deliberation, is a friend to talk to. Let me be your friend. Tell me what’s wrong.”
He took a deep, shuddering breath, checking back one more time, only to see a light-blue wall decorated with a framed degree from a medical school. “Someone is behind me,” he said.
Her eyebrow arched. “I don’t see anypony.”
“I know. I don’t either. Not… usually. But I know he’s there.”
“Does this pony ever speak to you?”
He shook his head violently. “No. Not like that. I’m not...”
She met his eyes steadily.
“He’s just there,” he said weakly. “Constantly. All the time.”
“He’s not interacted with you?”
He ignored the scritching sound of her pencil on paper. “No. But I think he wants me to know he’s watching. He… he wants to hurt me somehow.”
“What makes you think this?”
“I just know, okay? I can’t sleep. I can’t function. He’s always there, watching me, judging my every move.”
She was silent for a long moment, still staring at him with her head tilted ever-so-slightly. He shifted in place on the couch, tried to resist the urge to check behind him one more time.
“Tell me,” she said, "how do you feel about how you’re treated at work?”
He blinked. “I don’t see how that’s relevant.”
“Humor me.”
He stood, shaking his head as he moved towards the door, a bitter anger in his voice. “I came to get help with a problem, not to spend an hour talking about things that don’t even matter.”
“Please,” she said, with a forcefulness under the soft tone that stopped him in his tracks. “The mind of a pony is a complicated thing. Trust me. Let me help you?”
He paused for a moment before realizing that he certainly didn’t have anything to lose. He trotted back towards the couch but didn’t sit, instead taking to pacing back and forth in the small room. “They’ve treated me fairly enough. Well, I certainly thought I’d be further along at my age. And I really do wish that they’d be a little more open to some process-changes. At times I feel like the higher-ups don’t even know I exist. I’ve submitted so many memos regarding…” He turned to her and frowned. “Are you sure this is important?”
“I think so. I think it is exactly what we need to talk about.” She smiled gently, and for the first time in what seemed like ages, he felt something other than the crushing anxiety he had grown accustomed to. He felt like maybe, just possibly, she might have an answer for him.
Discreet felt like he could have burst into song as he cantered out of the psychiatrist’s office. He looked up at the fluffy white clouds dotting the blue sky and beamed out at the world around him. It was a beautiful day in the city. It was a day to be enjoyed.
He trotted down the street, stepping high as he considered where to go to next. To work? Maybe not – he did have those vacation days saved up. Why not stop by home and surprise the missus? Maybe they could go pick the kids up from school and have a picnic this afternoon.
“Spare some change, mister?” a gravelly voice piped up. He jumped for a second, a flash of the old alarm returning to jitter through his thoughts, but he jammed it back down. His gaze drifted down to a brown pony wearing dark sunglasses, sitting against the brick wall of an office building. The pony shook a cup in his general direction, and Discreet heard the jingle of a pair of bits bouncing together.
“You know what?” he said, smiling in relief. “I’d be glad to. I’m celebrating!” He dug through a pouch for several bits and didn’t even look at the denomination before allowing them to clink together in the beggar’s cup. “A psychosomatic construction!” he muttered to himself in awe.
The pony looked up at him, showing a toothless grin. “Thanks. You’re alright by me, mister. Whatcha celebrating?”
“That I’m not crazy.” Discreet paused to think. “Or, I guess, that I’m a little crazy, but in a way that can be fixed.”
The beggarpony began making a burbling sound, and it took a moment to realize it was laughter. “I hear ya on that one.” A hoof darted within the pony’s dirty jacket and came up with a flask. “And I’ll drink to it.”
“Turns out it’s all a projection. It’s…” He reached back for the proper words. “‘Only natural that the feelings of stress and a perceived functional invisibility built up over a prolonged duration could manifest in a psychosomatic construct.’ And that – just knowing that there’s a logical explanation – is what I needed, the way for me to actually fight back against the problem. That’s the cure I’ve been looking for.”
The beggar responded with a belch, having finished a long swig from his flask. “Sounds alright to me, brother.” He held the flask out, hoof wavering in Discreet’s direction. “You want a drink a’ this?”
Discreet shook his head, before realizing the beggar probably couldn’t see him. “No thank you,” he said, feeling a little foolish. “I need to be on my way pretty soon. I’m just… just so happy that there’s a reason for this. That it all makes sense somehow. I mean, it should have been obvious that it was some kind of mental block. I was just too paranoid and trapped in my head to realize that it could never have been real. How else could you explain—”
“How ‘bout your friend?” the beggar butted in.
Discreet glanced down at the pony, then up and down the street. The nearest pony was all the way down at the other end of the block. “I’m sorry?”
“The fella behind ya. Does he want a drink?”
“No thanks,” the voice whispered, an inch behind Discreet’s ear. “Not while I’m on the job.”
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Man, I kinda want you to expand this. The buildup and ending are so great, I just want to feel more of everything!
I kinda agree. It as pretty nice. I don't like such an abrupt ending though. I really wanted to know where that would go.
I kind of hope that he really is hallucinating, and that's just a jerk beggar who knows how to prank ponies who walk out of a psychiatrists office.