You're in a Laundry Room

by Ribe_FireRain

And you will think that you're happy.

Author's Note:

Inspired by Nirvana's Sappy. This clip is from Soaked in Bleach, a documentary based upon the life of Kurt Cobain and his death.

It's dark down here in the basement.

It is a room that has been witness to multiple decades of distress and disuse. It is the room where hardly any soul wonders to or even remembers.

No noise, no life, it's a void of nothingness.

That begs the question of why you are down here.

There's nothing but dust upon dust and an empty space without a face to recognise it. All that houses the empty, dark and dank basement is a few small shelves, a small, open window with the moon pouring in and a couple of old laundry machines.

There is a small echo of hoofsteps clacking down the stairs to your location on the shelf.

You watched behind the glass around you and you waited for your master's arrival.

It's funny, really. She said that you'd be happy down here. She said that you'd be happy on the shelf, encased in this small jar with breathing holes drilled through the tightly-secured lid.

You waited for her in silence, pressing your face up against the glass as you looked over to the small entrance of the basement. The hoofsteps were quiet and slow, but the acoustics of the basement made believe that they belonged to a fully-grown pony.

From the gap in the window that exposed the outside world and allowed it to penetrate the disused basement, the moonbeam reflected a dim white light off of the glass of the jar and conjured up a pale illumination of the area around you.

On the shelf, you were high up and beside the laundry machines, but despite the height, your viewing field wasn't obscured. It was something that had always perplexed you - the silence of the area and the moon that lit it.

Whilst undeniably beautiful, what creature could have produced such a holy sight? A white, luminous spectacle in the sky that gave you the gift of sight in such an uninhabited area, like the wings of your guardian angel were watching out for you and lighting the way.

You were always told that you were going to be happy down here, that you were going to be looked after and taken care of. You were told that you were going to be happy as can be.

However, you knew that it wouldn't rightfully be so. You knew that you had to find a way to save yourself, yet any means of escape is beyond your capabilities.

Small arms were not meant for big tasks.

It was a hopeless situation.

A light sniffle could be heard as the hoofsteps stopped at the bottom of the dusty stairs. It was quiet, but you heard it.

Squinting, you could see the figure of a small pony at the other end of the room in front of the entrance to the basement. Although it was dark, you could make out that they had a hoof covering their eye and there was a faint glimmer running down their cheek, reflecting like a polished diamond in the moonlight as it slipped downwards and made an audible plop on the concrete floor below.

You immediately recognised it as the voice of your master. The one who caught you and encased you in the jar.

Ever so slowly, the sniffling died out and you saw the pony rub their eye softly before they approached the shelf on which you were set on. The darkness kept her face shielded from view as she gradually came closer, but you could make out that there were still tears dripping from her eyes.

It was strange in a sense. She was the once who encased you down here, yet you can't help but feel sympathetic.

In your time of living down here - however long that may have been - you have had time to ponder her reasoning for capturing you. Perhaps she was some kind of insect or bug enthusiast? Maybe she just wanted to have something to keep her company, a friend of sorts. Behind the young girl's eyes, there was always something lurking behind the purple that held traces of loneliness.

Perhaps that could be it. She didn't have any friends.

Maybe the only friend she has ever had was you.

She came up to you and she stood on her hind legs as she reached up to grab the jar between her orange hooves. You gave a short-lived stumble as you were thrown off-balance for a brief moment or two before you were able to right yourself again.

You didn't know what was happening or why she was taking you off of the shelf in the first place, and that gave you all the more reason to be wary.

She held you in front of her face as she turned to be in line with the moonlight, allowing her face to become visible but dimly lit in a combination of blue and white.

Her cheeks were damp, he eyes were red and puffy, and most noticeably of all, she was clearly distraught by something.

She walked over to the window with you in a single hoof and she paused beside it, staring at you with large eyes through the glass. She sniffled and she wiped her muzzle before she placed the jar on the ledge of the window and unscrewed the lid.

She removed it and placed it beside you on the ledge.

You couldn't help but blink in confusion as you eyed her, trying to ponder on what she was doing.

She said nothing as she blankly stared at you for a moment, but, eventually, she spoke.

''G-Go. Go on, get out! I'm not allowed to keep you anymore!'' She said, hardly holding back a sob.

Fluttering your tiny wings, you gave them a short series of flaps before gently flying out of the jar and hovering on the rim. You gazed at her for a moment and offered a soft, gentle smile.

You blew a small kiss before leaving into the cold night.

You were free.

Comments

[Starlit Rose]

Well, this seems like a good beginning to a longer story, but then I noticed the completed tag.

[Ribe_FireRain]

8615271

Hey, there might be hope for it yet! Depends if people like it enough for me to write a sequel or extend it from where it currently stands. Besides, I'm not really sure how I'd evolve it if I do decide to make it a longer story.

[Starlit Rose]

8615387
I mean, well, it really feels incomplete now. Sure, the person/thing/creature escapes at the end, but at what obstacles? It was just released from captivity, with no explanation why.

And if it wasn't about escape, then the other themes don't feel complete either.
The muse on whether the protagonist is happy where she is?
Why it is locked up in the first place?

If you're going to extend this, then perhaps exploring these avenues will make it complete.
But that's just my two cents.
By the way, the language is nicely written, so props to that!

[Ribe_FireRain]

8615466

It's really weird and hard to explain this, but there wasn't really much of a point to the story, to be honest. It was inspired by Nirvana's Sappy, so I included what was in the song.

The pony that I mention is upset is, of course, Scootaloo, and the thing in the jar was just a breezie. I won't say what I had on my mind when I was writing this, but I was going to go with a different approach to it. I was actually hoping that this would work out as a one-shot seeing as I don't really like writing long stories.

To answer both the position of the protagonist and the breezie in captivity, my initial idea was that Scootaloo isn't entirely happy with her family life, but I can't really disclose the exact reason, but I will mention that I picture her as a lonely child with no friends that came across a breezie one day and managed to capture it, trying to befriend it, but her approach in doing so was all but friendly.

Hopefully, that helped somewhat with explaining some of my ideas and stuff, but I'm not really sure that making this into a larger story would work out all too well.

I mean, most of my stories have some of the same or similar aspects because when I write things, I like to intentionally not answer some questions just for the sake of making the reader think about it, but I suppose that method has its limits and flaws.

[MixMassBasher]

Interesting short tale