Another Day In Paradise
The pony lying in bed has been conscious for over an hour and has yet to move an inch.
The pony’s waiting for the strings tied around his legs to start his day, making sure to keep his body loose and limp. It’s not wise to fight the strings. By now, this is something that everyone knows. The strings are nearly invisible, they are; only glimpsed in direct sunlight if caught at just the right angle. The strings have the ability to change, too. One moment, they could be as elastic as chewing gum. The next, as sharp as piano wire.
The pony lying in bed has enough faded scratches and scars circling his legs and throat to know exactly what they’re capable of.
“Ready for another beautiful day in Paradise?” the voice in his head asks gleefully. “My happy and smiling little pony?”
He feels a soft tug on his foreleg, flipping him onto his side to face the clock on the counter. It’s 9:37 in the morning. Once again, he’s slept in.
Same as he had exactly 742 days ago.
And the day following that.
And the day following that.
“Not going to greet the world without the most important meal of the day, are you?”
The strings that hold his legs guide him out of bed and toward the kitchen. As he crosses the threshold, he does his best to ignore the large brown stain in the corner of the room. What comes next is more muscle memory than anything: half an orange, a fresh cup of coffee (three drops spilled on the floor—each and every time), two carrot sticks with the tips left over to be tossed into the trash.
Next the pony cleans himself off in the shower, praying the voice in his head doesn’t talk to him while he’s in there. It’s silly, he knows. He has no control over that voice. No one does.
The pony shivers as he stands under the showerhead. The water is too cold and he has no way of fiddling with the knobs. Not without fighting against the strings tied around his hooves, at least. That’s a big no-no in the land of Paradise.
In silence, the pony dries himself off and opens the blinds covering the window in his living room. Outside the sun is out in full force, as are all of the ponies left in town. Like clockwork they cross the street in front of his home: a lone unicorn, two mares with baskets full of fruit, a pegasus with a cutie mark in the shape of…
Only this time the pegasus doesn’t trot across his window. In fact, he’s nowhere to be found.
The pony standing before the window lets out a quivering breath before the voice in his head speaks to him again.
“Don’t mind those nasty missing troublemakers, my perfect little pony. They don’t deserve a spot in Paradise with the rest of us. Put your mind at ease. Say, isn’t it your day off? Why not spend a little time around town amongst your friends?”
742 days ago it had been the pony’s day off from work. And it had been at that very moment—while he was staring out that window—that he’d decided to spend his afternoon around town. Truthfully, he didn’t know which fate to be worse. To have decided to stay inside, reading and lazing about all by himself? Only to only spend the next two years doing the exact same thing with no idea of what was happening in the outside world?
The pony’s legs are ripped out from under him in the direction of the door. He hisses through his teeth as the numerous strings around his limbs tighten and pull. He hadn’t been paying attention and therefore paid the price for it. He doesn’t have the ability to look down at the moment, but feels a small trickle of blood begin oozing down his legs.
It reminds him of the first time he fought back against the strings.
***
Outside, it’s deathly quiet. No birds chirping in the trees. No dogs noisily lapping at their master’s faces in order to get their attention. In fact, not a single animal is in sight besides the remaining ponies of the town.
Our pony walks down the road and pauses to wave a hoof at a mare selling flowers on the curb. With no emotion on her face, she returns the wave, keeping her foreleg limp to let the strings do their work. She has large bags under her eyes, alongside fresh gashes close to her hooves.
“She seems nice,” the voice adds. “Can never have too many flowers, am I right? Oh, how they brighten up any room that they’re in!”
The pony makes it another half-block before he’s stopped again. This time he stands before an empty, dirt-covered wagon overloaded with soggy, destroyed books. Two years ago, it had belonged to a used book salespony, stopping in their town for the day on his way across Equestria.
The used book salespony lasted less than two weeks once it all started. He had tried to run and was sliced to ribbons for his efforts. This was before anyone knew just how bad things would get.
The strings attached to the pony’s hoof move it toward a hardcover that’s wet to the touch. Due to being left out in the rain that falls at exactly 8:14 every night, it crumbles easily. Next the pony’s neck snaps upward as if someone’s speaking to him. This was when the book salespony had asked him what genres he liked and he’d replied in turn.
It had been a long time since he’d held this particular conversation with a living pony.
Now the pony merely says this all to an empty wagon next to a mound of rotting books.
“Today’s too nice a day to have your nose stuffed in a book! Why not take a nice stroll in the park while the sun is out?”
Can the voice read his thoughts? The pony thinks he probably can.
As the pony exits the marketplace, he counts the number of ponies that he passes by. Forty-two this time around. That’s two less than last month. Again, the strings tied to him force him to wave at a unicorn mare seated on a bench under a tree—same as he had 742 days ago. A short time ago, two mares had sat there together. Perhaps they were a couple. By the tears currently staining the unicorn’s cheeks, our pony doubts she’ll last much longer in Paradise.
“No smiles for your friends?” the voice asks him softly. “Let’s not be impolite, my joyous little pony.”
Invisible strings tug at the corners of the pony’s lips, painfully revealing his upper teeth and gums. He tries to keep his features relaxed so as not to get cut. Eventually, the unicorn on the bench returns the same horribly forced grin, as more tears stream down her face. Then she looks away from him and back to the empty spot next to her.
Our pony’s midmorning walk continues in the direction of the pond, where blankets and picnic baskets filled to the brim with food have been laid out along its grassy banks. Twenty-one ponies are already there. Thirteen less than a year ago. Two ponies wordlessly paddle a small rowboat out in the pond.
Our pony has always wondered if anyone in town had been caught on a first date when all this began.
To live the same day over and over again until you go mad is terrible enough. Trapped on a bad date for all eternity?
All things considered, being stuck on a day off from work isn’t the worst way to go.
“Do you like my sun, my happy frolicking pony? Is it not just as bright and warm as it used to be? Is my moon not as beautiful and as radiant as ever?” The voice sounds rather proud of himself—even if what he’s mentioning are the exact same things he’s been doing for years. “Perfect days are hard to come by, wouldn’t you agree? So why should they ever need to end?”
If our pony looks hard enough—squinting his eyes as he gazes upward—he can sometimes see the faint glimmer of light on all the strings connecting them. Millions of strings. Maybe more. Up and up into the air they go, somehow never tangling together once.
Not unless he wants them to, of course.
The one pulling the strings never comes down from his cloud. That’s where our pony believes he must live—up on high, lounging around in the clear blue sky while he controls each and every pony trapped within his Paradise. And what does he get out of all this? Out of all this exhaustive effort? Our pony stopped searching for that impossible answer some time ago.
Most likely after he’d created that large stain on his kitchen floor; the first time he fought against the strings and nearly died; the first time he’d refused to leave the house after thirty days of the same minute-to-minute routine.
On that morning, the strings around his legs had dug so deep into him that they must’ve sliced into something important. Our pony was sure of that, considering the amount of warm blood pooling onto the floor. Soon after that, his eyelids became heavy, and he collapsed to the ground as he waited for the end.
Then the voice.
“Someone had a little accident, I see. Why were you trying to fight against my perfect day? Were you trying to put a dark and ugly smudge all over it? But why? This is Paradise, remember? Why would you try to leave just a wonderful place?”
The pony must’ve agreed at some point while the voice spoke. Perhaps the notion of someone finally putting a stop to all of this had crossed his dying brain. Or perhaps it was merely the fact that the one pulling the strings wasn’t quite done with him yet. Either way, he awoke the next morning as if nothing at all had changed. Besides the fresh scars visible on his skin.
A noise pulls our pony out from his thoughts.
Someone is screaming. Above him.
A poor stallion is dangling in the air, held aloft by the dozens of sharp strings wrapped around his torso and legs, pinning them together. He screams as loud as his lungs will allow, but not a single soul in the area is able to move an inch in his direction.
Unless they want to suffer the same fate.
Fresh blood falls to the grass below him. Then soon trickles into the water at the center of the pond where he’s dropped and quickly sinks; the water splashes and reddens for a moment, before it grows still again.
It seems the one controlling Paradise had finally had enough of that particular stallion.
He’d had his strings clipped. What happens if one fights against the strings for too long.
In the town our pony occupies, it wasn’t all that uncommon for ponies of all types and sizes to suddenly fall from the sky to splatter against the earth.
“Seeing all those pleasant picnickers must’ve gotten your tummy rumbling, yes?” the voice asks our pony. “It must be getting close to lunchtime, I’m sure. This is Paradise, is it not? So why not treat yourself to something nice?”
The “something nice” the voice had in mind is nothing more than a regular pecan salad with dressing on the side. The same thing our pony’s been eating every day for lunch all year round. By this point he barely tastes any of it.
At a small outdoor restaurant, he sits amongst others. Two years ago, the restaurant used had eight employees serving thirty-five guests on a daily basis. Now only three employees and twelve guests remain. Many guests stare down at empty plates while the strings attached to them pretend to grab at food that’s not even there anymore.
“I’ll have… I’ll have the…”
There’s a stallion about to give his lunch order to no one at all.
He looks thin—much thinner than a week ago.
The one pulling the strings from up on high likes it best when the residences of Paradise follow his script as closely as they can. He’ll even feed them their lines should they forget them. But what he hates most is when his ponies say things they’re not supposed to say.
Things that weren’t first said on that fateful day 742 days ago.
The date they’re all cursed to repeat forever and again.
“I can’t do it! I can’t do it anymore!” the stallion yelps, eye bulging from their sockets. He’s head whips around to face the rest of his dining guests, spit flicking from his lips. “Don’t you know how this ends? There’s no getting out of this! We die! That’s it! One by one, he’ll kill—”
That’s when one of his forelegs smashes into his muzzle, hard enough to draw blood and crack a few teeth. Again, he tries to speak, but his leg is pressed up too tight against his lips. For a short while, he calms himself. No doubt the voice inside his head is talking to him. Warning him. Yet it seems the stallion doesn’t seem to care anymore, as he painfully wrestles his own foreleg away from his face.
The strings tied to him begin digging deep into his flesh.
“We should’ve fought back that first day!” he screams to the silent ponies seated around him. “What were we all thinking? We could’ve outnumbered him! Now there’s what? Less than half of us left!?”
A mare from a table close by keeps her head facing her empty plate while she whispers to the raging stallion. “The Princesses could rescue us any day now. Just keep quiet and—”
“Princesses? You mean Celestia and Luna?”
Drops of blood start soaking into the tablecloth underneath the stallion. He seems not to notice this as he continues to speak.
“They are dead! Get that through your thick skull! Who even controls the sun and the moon anymore? He does! Don’t be so stupid! Don’t listen to the lies he whispers to you! He’s not letting a single one of us out of this place!”
In one quick motion, both of his forelegs are pulled behind his head in, silencing him instantly. The razor sharp wires connected to his limbs wrap around his throat and pull closer together, creating a thin red circle. His cheeks puff out and his face reddens as he’s lifted off his seat into the air.
“My gentle ponies of Paradise,” the voice begins, and it’s clear from the very first sentence that he’s speaking to all of them now. “Why do you do this to yourselves? And on such a pleasant day, too? I really can’t begin to understand what’s running through your heads—besides my voice, of course.”
The strings around the stallion’s neck dig deeper into his skin, sending several trails of slick blood down his belly and twitching legs.
“I know that I certainly love this day—the day that I conquered above all. Is my Paradise not enough for you all? Is this not what you all did before entering Paradise? I am not changing anything, am I? I’m only repeating them. Again and again and again and again…”
As the voice goes on, the strings around the stallion’s throat tug together one last time, severing his head from his shoulders to fall into the puddle of blood below him.
Ignoring the numerous shrieks from all the employees and guests around, our pony simply returns his attention back to his half eaten salad. The strings tied around his hooves have been pressing bits of lettuce against his closed mouth for some time now and he hadn’t even noticed at all.
Perhaps tomorrow would be a better day.
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The dark stories are the best stories.
Because you can toy with such concepts as this.
Great work, and glad to see you doing stuff again!
Endlessly repeating the same thing over and over with an overtly cruel edge and regular murder seems entirely non-Discord.
7679872
Maybe it's just the one town.
And besides, you said it yourself, it's non-Discord. It's the last thing anyone would expect him to do. Isn't that the perfect thing to do?
7679894 ...
Touche, Body Pillow Jones. Touche.
Wonderful!
...I, don't know what happened.
Don't get me wrong, this is an AWESOME story, i just don't know WHAT happened on that fateful day.
7680115 a character who we are likely to believe is discord, though it is unsaid in the story won against the princesses. he killed them and to remember his glory on the day he won, he forces everyone to follow the script. if they don't follow the script perfectly down to the facial expressions, he punishes them. the wires are meant to be like marionette strings hooked into every fiber of the ponies beings.
When I first saw the summary, I thought this was going to be some sort of strange bondage story.
Boy was I wrong.
7680191
Thank you so much for telling me! Now it makes sense.
....lol is discord read that he would kill ME! Lol!
But thank you. Now I can read this again and know what is happening.
An excellent little horror story, a fine contribution to the Halloween season.
7679894
That would require Discord to be _genuinely_ random, which on the show he's not. Really. If this is Discord, it's a non-canon alternate interpretation (which I'm fine with: although I will admit, In my personal headcanon, this isn't the work of Discord, but Creepypasta, his even less pleasant cousin.
)
A tasty, tricky, treat, just in time for Halloween/Nightmare Night.
Well done!
See, this is a Discord who deserves to be utterly destroyed. Not simply because he's a killer... he's also very boring about it. Nothing chaotic or unpredictable. He's actually creating HARMONY, albeit in a twisted way. No, there's nothing truly 'Discord' about him. Just a plain anime-type demon who plays puppetmaster in a very predictable manner.
...
I'll be right back.
(Alondro pays that universe a visit and educates this garden-variety god-mode psychopath on what TRULY horrifying monster is capable of)
7681004 This isn't harmony, it's order. There's a pretty big difference.
Honestly, this feels more like something Starlight would do than Discord. He'd find it funny for the first day, then get bored.
Pretty damn good.
I'd like to think of this villain as Discord's brother order.
Also how dare you kill Bon-Bon
I hope you become a famous writer one day because this story was amazing. This story was so so good and original!
Congratulations on another amazing story.
It kinda makes me think that this is discords revenge. And that he was feigning being friendly because being turned to stone was like having his strings being pulled.
He was forced for millenia to endure the same reality, because ponies deemed their state( one of multiple limitless possibilities) the perfect one.
So now victorius, he decided to enact the same punishment on them.
7683365 So, they should have killed him.
Basically, I was right all along!
As usual!
To be honest and blunt, I've seen many of this sort of story. This doesn't reach any level of real horror because to the experienced, it's exceedingly obvious what's going on and it's going to be another 'there is no hope' sort of story, which rapidly induces Darkness Induced Audience Apathy. There is no expectation of salvation, no possibility of escape, no silver lining. There's not even a twist to it. It's bleak and meaningless and one might as well toss the world into a black hole, which would be a HAPPY ending.
Indeed, it has much more in common with general torture fetishism than what is generally considered the higher end of the horror spectrum. There's the bondage and cutting aspect which takes front and center stage in this story, for instance. And indeed, I've seen much of this in the furry fandom over the past 20 years.
Meh Discord is the worst Discord. Not sure this is even Discord the way you wrote him. An unknown force would have been 120 percent better.
Pretty fantastic scenario, but I have to agree that Discord isn't a suitable villain for this. He doesn't have the patience for repetition, not on this scale.
7685631
7685377 After reading the comments and thinking on it, I completely agree. Someone mentioned Discord's "brother" of sorts -- Order -- and that would've been great. Perhaps I only wanted to use Discord because I'm not great with completely original villains. Also having something attached to the MLP world -- considering this short doesn't feature a single nameable character besides Discord -- seemed like the best solution. (Sadly, this story could've been told as a non-fanfiction quite easily.)
Plus I also really liked that cover art.
7683365
Glad you enjoyed this disgusting tale.
7682135
7681557 Thanks for saying so!
7680030 I had a feeling I'd find you here.
7679839 I'm trying to write some "different" material lately to keep things interesting. Doesn't mean it'll work, but damn it, I'll try!
7686147
You know me, just your friendly neighborhood gollum, always watching for the next delicious horror story from nbd XD
7686147 For a named character, Starlight Glimmer off her meds would have been fine enough. The best would have been some unknown force. 20/20 when you always look back.
This is the real reason U.S of A. doesn't mess with Canada. You guys can get almost scary as us. Should know because I've watch the first season of Trailer Park Boys.
I read this while in Salem for Halloween. Really dark stuff. I think I'll read it again!
Oh, think twice...
and now that song is stuck in my head.
...To be fair, Discord isn't so much incorrect as imprecise.
I liked it, but I have a bit of a problem with the whole "every day the starts the same, the same meal is offered every day" thing. Seems very orderly, which would be strange for the god of chaos. I guess the series didn't have him be very chaotic either.
I was ready to be disturbed. I was ready for horror.
I was afraid I'd get Salo or Saw or Hostel.
I got Groundhog's Day sans Bill Murray written by a guy who had once heard of Brad Jones reviewing something called Salo. It was so sterile, so clinical, so note by note. I got no surprises, just a standard torture porn, with surprisingly little gore. Normally you double down if you want to make a name in a world post-Human centipede.
I get what you were going for but it failed to connect. Maybe something with Groundhog's Day but each day is slightly different and he has no idea how. Small things can stack up like practical skills and such but he could never do big things like puzzle out theft or perfect prophecy of one day, or his actions of knowing change the outcome as they normally would meaning his script works until it doesn't. There's some horror.
Sorry. But I just found it a little anemic and plodding.
this is totally OOC for any version of Discord. where's the chaos in just doing the same thing over and over
7679894 he does things because they appeal to him, not cause they make other people thing or anything
The stained-glass window in which Discord first appears in the show depicts him historically operating marionette strings with pony victims. When he corrupts five of the main six, he again appears on screen with marionette strings. It is an inherently discordant thing for ponies to be forced against their will to do things they don't want, especially something as phony as the same day over and over. His corruption flips the nature of a pony (kindness becomes cruel), and the free nature of a pony changing to a prison of wires would be consistent with that pattern and with some of his more malicious actions prior to his eventual reform
7933692 I interpreted it as Discord's repressed rage at being imprisoned for a millennia. Also, I think this is him trying to prove a point to the ponies who love order and harmony so much. I imagine there is a bit of sarcasm in his voice when he talks about "Paradise". Just look at this line here...
"Is this not what you all did before entering Paradise? I am not changing anything, am I? I’m only repeating them. Again and again and again and again…”
He is mocking them and their former way of life by cranking their ideals up to the absolute extreme.
7933692 I think that's the point. We would predict that Discord's paradise would be something "chaotic" but that's just predictable. Discord is a character that is easy to shape into whatever we want because of the basic thing that drives him- chaos. It isn't expected for him to do this, and that's precisely the point.
8036833 enhancing something to the extreme makes it no longer the thing it once was
7933692
Chaos doesn't always mean pandemonium.
I am kind of disappointed in myself. I thought I had commented on this ages ago..
I've read this... maybe three times now? It's still amazing, but part of me wants to see either more POVs or the day that a pony begs, just simply begs, for something, even if it's just more food, better or slightly different food, so that they can all better enjoy his paradise and see how wonderous it is.
It feels like there's a metaphor for an aspect depression or the whole 'rat race' buried deep in here.
Oh this is the kind of horrific story I crave! OwO
Espically loved the life on cloud 9’s reading ^^
Great story! I actually did a reading of this story on my YouTube channel, here's a link if you'd like to check it out.
https://youtu.be/cZiViqO33N8