Seattle Seapony

by dNihil

[3-7] Lyre

“I remember now.”

Cala sat holding the radio in front of her face. Peyton sat across the way on the other side of the bed, holding herself and looking nervous.

“You made me forget it all. You made me not know that you were there, but I know now what you did. It sucks,” Cala said.

The radio laid still in her hooves, keeping quiet in shame.

“Liar! What do you have to say for yourself?”

Peyton raised a tentative hoof. “Um, you... you might have to turn it on, Cala.”

“How do I do that?”

She reached over and flipped a switch on the radio. It began to hiss a stream of static, just as it had the night before. It began to change, though. The constant noise sputtered, went quieter, then spat out two bursts that could be heard as the syllables of a word.

”Lyre,” it said.

“Yeah, you're a big, fat liar!” Cala said. “Don't think I don't know!”

“Lyre...”

“Shut up!” Cala rapped her hoof on its casing.

“I need... my lyre,” the thing sputtered, then the static came back in full force, drowning out any further words.

“What the fuck is that thing?!” Peyton yelled. “Why did it... come out of your horn? Were you possessed?”

“Augh, I was, I was...” Cala grimaced. “That, whatever that thing is, that is what I used to call ‘Harper’.”

“You what?”

“It was slowly taking over my mind, Peyton. Suddenly I remember so much. That thing is evil!”

“What the fuck?”

“What's going on in here?” Renée asked from the doorway.

Cala gasped. “Oh no...” She began to shake. “No. Mom, Brooke... my family... my friends...” She clenched her eye shut. “Gone. Gone. Gone. They're gone and they're gone and they're gone. They didn't leave me, oh, oh no! They were taken! Everyone I ever knew is dead!”

Peyton and Renée looked on silently as Cala broke down in front of them.

“Nothing I ever knew is real anymore! My friends and my peers at school, oh God but that school is probably just full of rotting textbooks by now. My aunts and uncles and grandparents, who I would always see every year during Christmas, oh let their memory carry on in peace. The countless, nameless people I saw pass by on the streets every day, and none of them will be remembered. Oh God oh God oh God. They've all just disappeared. None of us know where they went, do we? We don't!

“But that isn't even the worst part. No no no no no it's so much worse than that. I'm still here. We're all still here. We didn't get taken away like the rest of them! We all got left behind for the spirits of the dead to haunt and taunt endlessly! Oh God!”

“Why is she just suddenly realizing all of this?” Renée asked.

Peyton moved to hold Cala, who collapsed onto her shoulders. She bore a sad, faraway look as she patted Cala's back.

“We have such a responsibility now. We're responsible for the world. We're responsible for each-others' lives. We're responsible to live in this crap world now that they're all gone. Responsible responsible responsible. We won't be able to save anything,” Cala said, going on and on.

Renée left the room, leaving Cala in the care of Peyton for the moment.

↷

“...And the. The um. The stuff that people took care of. We didn't make it so... so things would take care of itself. It's so ridiculous. It's almost like we weren't even expecting people to disappear. Naw. Who would think that...” Cala rambled.

Renée walked back into the room, carrying a large water bottle. Willy came in behind her. “Here, I brought you something,” she said.

“Oh, that. Water. That's perfect.” She took it in her hooves. “Water for the hydrophobic seapony. Well not anymore. Harper could only wish that she could make me fear it forever.” She took Peyton's hoof in her own, clenching it, then took a huge swig from the bottle.

“Who's Harper?” Willy asked.

“Apparently, a malignant spirit that possessed Cala and appeared to her in visions, messing with her life,” Peyton said. “Cala might have saw it like an imaginary friend — or an imaginary enemy, in this case.”

Cala finished taking her drink, taking a breath. “It erased all my memories so that I wouldn't question the stuff it was doing, I think. It was horrible. I look back on it all, now knowing everything that really happened, and it scares me how absolutely stoopid a lot of it was. Like, I can't believe I did that!” She took another pull from the bottle.

“Does that have anything to do with the way you were acting?” Renée said. “Because... at times I felt like you had just completely turned your brain off, like you never thought about the things you were doing.”

“Huh...” Cala said. “How old did it seem like I was acting?”

“Age?” Renée paused. “You were... well, I thought you must have been six or seven. Nine at the absolute most.”

“I would disagree,” Peyton said. “She might seem extremely boneheaded, but I mean — look at her! She's got to be at least my age. Look at how tall she is!”

“Well, both of those guesses are way off,” Cala said. “I see why you both thought that, though. I'm actually eleven. At least, I was before everyone disappeared.”

Peyton baulked at her. “No...”

“So if there was something that was inhibiting your thought, well, what happened to it?” Renée asked.

“No! Fuck no!” Peyton said. “You've got to be fucking joking!”

“What makes you think that?” Cala asked.

Peyton looked sick. In fact, she looked absolutely mortified. “What the fuck have I done?!” She suddenly looked at everyone in the room — all of them staring at her in confusion — and then she ran off, wailing.

A moment passed. ”So... what did she do?” Willy said.

“I'm not sure,” Cala said. “It was definitely bad enough that it scared Harper out of my head, though. It ended up possessing the radio.”

“You're not sure?” Renée asked. “But I thought you suddenly remembered everything. Why can't you remember this?”

“Well, I—” Cala sighed. “...I don't know how to describe it, is the thing. Nothing like it has ever happened to me before.”

An uncomfortable silence filled the room.

The sound of retching and sobbing could be heard from the bathroom nearby.

“Anyways,” Cala said, “after that happened, Harper showed up for the first time since I left my apartment. She looked... angry. I think it was the first time she looked like that. Peyton must have noticed something was wrong, so she did... something. The next thing I knew, there was mist coming off of my horn. And I somehow I knew that that was Harper's soul.” She told them the rest of the story up until Renée showed up in the room.

“‘I need my lyre’?” Renée said. “What would make it ask that? Did you take its lyre from it?”

“Well, maybe. I think it meant the mark it had. There was a little yellow harp painted on the toy's butt... but I guess it could be a lyre, too.”

“That's such a strange thing. We all have images on our haunches that... somehow represent us. I spent a whole night once thinking about it. Willy's is a traffic cone — that's a pretty self-explanatory one, he worked in construction before the disaster. Peyton's was a bit more confusing, but I figured out that her Monster Energy Drink logo makes her social, or something. She doesn't talk much about her life before this. Mine is a bit more abstract, but it represents the talent I have with paper-craft. I took up origami as a hobby. Unfortunately, I can't do that anymore... but there are plenty of other things taking up my time.”

“Okay, I think I get it,” Cala said. “Soul jars are probably stronger when they look like the person the soul came from. Since the butt mark says a lot about the person, just having a lyre on it should make it strong enough to answer my questions!”

“‘Soul jar’? Is that what you're calling it?” Renée asked.

“Yeah. A soul trapped in an object. Didn't you ever watch T.V.?”

She laughed. “Certainly not children's cartoons, no.”

Willy cleared his throat. “Do you need me to get anything?”

“Yeah,” Cala said. “Some yellow paint and a small paintbrush.”

“Ooh, we're finally going to get some answers,” Renée said. She clapped her hooves together and laughed. “I love solving mysteries!”

↪

Comments

[LuftRaptor]

yush MORE EXPOSITION

[Lord Of Dorkness]

So...

Letting a kid jump into an 'acid' bath, half eaten by dogs or tricking her with hallucinations of her phobia. OK-kosher.

The girl getting laid with a mare? A mare that thought Cala was off age due to her massive mutations at that?

OH THE HORROR! ABANDON SHIP!

Not that the accidental pedophilia is a good, mind you, but it just seems the threshold of things horrible enough to jump into the nearest object should have been passed a bit before this.

Then again, Harper is crazy, so I guess there's an explanation for the skewed priorities.