Johns

by Cackling Moron

But that time isn't now

It was me and Twilight.

She wasn’t actually, technically, up in town to see me specifically, yet somehow she and I had still managed to spend a significant chunk of the day together anyway. She’d come across me (hurr, dirty jokes) while I’d been in the midst of more agonising, slow, largely fruitless magical research and I’d managed to hide the more harder-to-explain books in time to leave the basic ones, making it look like I was still just trying to learn the lingo all innocent-like.

Cunning me. Great work lying to lovely people. You’re a top man. Prick.

The bowling alley all over again. Real close to just collapsing the effort and giving up and laying it all out for Celly. Mean, why not? It’s the sensible thing to do - she was right there, saying how she’d help with anything, fully and lovingly. And that’d be good! But it’d be too good! So you just battened down the hatches even more! Idiot, Christ, you just-

Anyway. That’s what my day had been, mostly. First the missus in the morning, a brief window of alone-ness after giving the missus a kiss and sending her on her way to work, then the appearance of Twilight.

Can’t say I don’t have a nice time of things.

Twilight is a lovely girl, as always, and her help is actually, well, helping. The low-grade, beginner-level magical theory books I kept out are probably a higher level than would be suitable for, ah, reading comprehension, but they’re not actually that bad, and with her help and guidance I make a pretty good show of knowing what it is is written down in front of me.

Certainly she seems impressed with me, which I have to admit feels pretty nice. The look on her little face! She’s so chuffed! And it’s so sincere! I could just devour her. Nibble that face right off her skull. Adorable.

But still, I remain a dense chunk of gristle, and a morning of banging my head against learning doesn’t leave me feeling particularly free and easy. It leaves me, in fact, feeling wound up and tense and worn down. Not helped by, you know, knowing I’m keeping secrets, but that’s a whole other thing, whatever.

I need a break, is the point.

“Think I’m going to take a break, take a walk, I think,” I say, stretching, leaning back.

“I could come with you, if you like?” Twilight asked, hopping up all brimming eagerness.

I’m in the middle of a yawn as she says this and I have to finish before replying, as is only polite.

“No, no, it’s fine. You’re up here for a reason I know and I know you’re taking the time to help me - which I do appreciate, you know, you’re a lovely girl like that - but you should be doing the important stuff. I’ll still be around. So I’ll just, uh, go for a walk, get some air. Thanks for offering, though.”

No idea what it was she was in town to actually do. Something in an official capacity, I knew, but the details hadn’t come my way. I assumed - and this was me going out on a limb here - that it might have involved friendship in some capacity. Maybe also magic. Maybe both at once. Just a guess. Could have been wrong.

Her ears droop a little on having her offer rebuffed.

“Oh, okay,” she says.

Oof. Damage control.

“Hey. If you want to just hang out some time soon you just tell me, alright? That’s something we can do, if it’s something you want. Been a while, it feels like,” I say. Ears prick right back up again.

Un-oof. Damage controlled.

“We can?” She asks. I give her a little ruffle. I can’t help myself! It’s the ears and the way they prick. And knowing that if I ruffle it’ll probably make her turn that delightful shade of red - and it does! Like clockwork.

“Sure, why wouldn’t we? We’re buddies and I’m a man of leisure - I can do what I like!”

“Okay!” She says, beaming.

“I’m also, like, you know, in pretty close with a pretty powerful lady you might have heard of, so I can also do what I like whenever I like. My girlfriend is kind of a big deal, is what I’m saying, so I live a gilded life of ease. Not what you know and all that, eh?” I say, winking at her. We have a laugh, we do.

Or, uh, we try to, at least. Her reaction is a bit difficult to gauge here. I’m not sure what it is, actually. She’s still smiling, but there’s a sense of effort that wasn’t there before.

“O-okay.”

“Laid it on a bit thick there?”

“Yeah. I mean, it’s fine, just - it’s fine.”

“Always go too far on the jokes, that’s my problem. Well, one of my many, many problems.”

“John-”

I hold up a hand to forestall what I know will be another self-affirming mini-lecture.

“I know, I know, self-deprecation bad, sorry. Let’s leave all that, leave that behind. You and me, sometime soon, eh? Have a, uh, picnic or something, I don’t know. We’ll figure that part out. Just something light and breezy. No reading anything. Something nice and easy. Sound good?” I ask. The honesty of Twilight’s smile reasserts itself, which is a pleasure to see. She nods.

“Yeah. Yeah that sounds good,” she says. I clap and make her jump - heh, cute. Hadn’t meant to do that but cute anyway. In a mean sort of a way. Meanie, me.

“Wonderful! Great. Sounds good to me, too. For now though, uh, I’m stretching my legs and getting some fresh air and you are doing…something princessy, probably. Saving the world again, no doubt. Done that much, recently, just to ask?”

Without basis I typically assume that Twilight and her cohort are saving the world at least once a week. The light tinge of pink that again spreads across her (adorable) little face at my question does nothing to disabuse me of this assumption - clearly I’m onto something!

“Not that much…” She says.

“Well, keep it up, much or not. I like this world. S’got you in it!”

That pink tinge gets a lot pinker, which is immensely gratifying. We hug, she goes off, and I go off as well, departing the little library I’d ensconced myself in. Honestly, Canterlot is lousy with places like that, as I’ve discovered.

Belatedly, after some minutes of walking, I realise I took one of the books with me, one of the books I’d been struggling through and which then Twilight had started helping me with. I must have been clutching it without thinking, tsch. Wanted to take a break, took the thing I was taking a break from with me. Now that’s smart. I’ll return the book later and apologise. The magic book.

Magic books. Magic books. Magic books all about magic. Magic magic magic.

You know, this really isn’t a problem. This really doesn’t have to be a problem. You’re making it a problem. You remember what the missus said, she’d help you out, easy as anything. Twilight, too, as you well know. Mean, she’s helping you already with something. Everyone would pitch in, every one of them! They’d all pull together for you, something like this. Either sort it out or find out it’s un-sort-out-able, but they’d do it for you, simple as.

And I know that’s the problem for you, but that’s the thing, it doesn’t have to be, man. Getting too much help isn’t really a thing. Help expands to fill whatever space provided. Reliance may not be the best, sure, but there’s reliance and then there’s throwing yourself at something you’re woefully underequipped to tackle and grinding yourself to paste when the door - as it were - is right there.

But of course, even knowing all this, my mind does not change. Again. Never.

Well, not never. It’ll change later, much later. It’ll change once it comes to a dreary, downbeat halt and the truth has come out and I’ve disappointed everyone and when it’s not too late but late enough that it’s not good. Then it’ll change. Not now, never now.

Question: Had Umbra not inexplicably seen to it I’d got my memories - and, therefore, myself - returned, would I still be acting in this way? Would my behaviour be different, significantly?

Answer: No way to know but, in all likelihood, probably not. Moot anyway. If that hadn’t happened, this particular problem wouldn’t be a problem, so nyeh.

What I could really go for, I realised, was a bacon roll and a cup of tea. The first of these was pretty long odds, given my circumstances, but the second was eminently possible. Tea wasn’t difficult to get in these parts.

So that’s what I went off in search of.

And since tea wasn’t (and isn’t) difficult to get ahold of it doesn’t take me long to get ahold of some. I get it to go because I don’t really want to sit surrounded by anyone because the sound of other people talking is starting to suffocate me the way it sometimes seems to.

Honestly, do wonder what is wrong with me sometimes. I have a to-do list I could comfortably fit onto the back of a postage stamp (with room to spare) and I still feel like the walls are closing in on me. I’d fold like a card table if I actually had any real responsibility or anyone really relying on me. How did I even get this far in life?

Oh yes. On the backs of others. Oops.

I take my tea and I go and try and find somewhere around Canterlot quiet and de-populated. My reasonably extensive (and ever-growing) experience of the town has given me an alright feeling for its ways and byways, and I’m actually passable at knowing a few spots where a man can sit and drink tea unmolested and unbothered.

So I find one of those spots, and I sit, and I blow on my tea. My tea steams. The world turns. Etcetera.

And I think. I can’t really help it. It’s a curse.

Hypothetically, if I got this interdimensional magical nonsense sussed out to the extent I could actually do the whole sending-the-letter thing, what exactly is the letter meant to say?

I had not considered this prior to this point. It had seemed premature, for one thing, and for another the problem just hadn’t really crossed my mind. Now it had though I couldn’t avoid the question. What was it meant to say? What could it say?

The idea was, of course, to reassure father that I was safe and well and that he shouldn’t worry. So how were you meant to do that? And how were you meant to say “I’m totally fine, but you won’t ever see me again, and don’t come looking for me” without immediately getting someone to come looking for you? Somehow I doubted explaining the specifics of the situation - magical horse-land, dimensions, magic, horses, pretty horse lady, magic, horses horses - would do the job. If anything, I kind of felt that would only serve to make things worse.

So what, then?

Could always claim he’d wronged me somehow and that I was cutting ties and that was the reason I’d never see him again, but that idea turned my stomach. He and I may not have had the closest, most loving relationship a father and son could have, but we still like one another in a fairly solid, unyielding sort of a way. I couldn’t do that to him. So no, not that either.

So what? What arcane combination of words will flawlessly achieve what I want to achieve here? Without tipping it too far one way or the other? Does such a combination even exist?

Fuck.

And I can’t give up now! I know about the problem! As has been said before, if you choose not to decide you still have made a choice! And not a good one, either, here!

Honestly, the things we do for those we care about. The knots we tie ourselves in and the weirdo thought experiments we run trying to figure out what the best thing to do is, only to find out it was something we probably never even imagined but you had to try anyway because not trying would have been worse, and you actually care about the results.

How much simpler would life be - would my life be, and have been - if we didn’t have to bother with any of that? If we just sank into our loneliness, kept our eyes down, drifted away? Away from all those confounding, confusing people we only ever seem to worry and disappoint and annoy? Just drift out to sea, blissfully, quietly alone?

Well, yeah, simpler, sure, but not exactly better. It’s like saying if you have an empty glass you won’t have to worry about spilling your drink. Yeah, you won’t, but you’ve also got no fucking drink, so what’s the point?

Risk and reward, fucker, and life in general.

It was just an idle thought anyway. I’m not severing myself from anything. Hell! I’ve been severed from something - my beleaguered, distant, father - and I am now taking active steps on fixing this connection! I don’t even have to! I think being magically vaulted into another universe would satisfy most people as an adequate excuse for communication having broken down, but I’m apparently not most people!

Just one letter. I’ll figure out the exact words later. Just one letter, get it sorted, get it done. Then that’s that, one less thing to worry about and nibble at you. Can get on with your life.

…you know, once you get it working. However long that’ll take. Years.

Christ, he’ll be dead by then.

And he can go to the grave knowing I mysteriously disappeared out of the blue one day and he never found out where or why or having been able to do anything about it. Just, you know, his son vanished with no explanation, never to be seen or heard of again. Without a trace, not a thing to be done. That’s a thing to carry into your later years, isn’t it? Something to keep an old man warm at night, hmm?

…shit.

Thankfully, mercifully, my train of thought was finally interrupted here by the arrival of a stranger. Never have I been so gladdened by the sudden arrival of someone random I didn’t know. They - a pony, obviously, some guy pony I did not recognise - came trotting into the little cubbyhole garden I’d dug myself into, and parked himself on a spot just over from me.

And looked at me.

And smiled at me. I mean really smiled at me.

That’s new.

“You alright there?” I ask, but they just keep smiling at me.

I’m really not a fan of that at the best of times. I know ponies are a friendly lot and they do tend to smile a lot more than humans used to - and that never made me comfortable, back home, people smiling at me for no reason; always made me think they were up to something - but this is something else. This is an unbroken, knowing smile and we’re not just passing in the street and saying good morning. They’re staring at me.

And that smile is kind of familiar, too. Can’t put my finger on it, but it’s making my brain itch.

“Hello, John,” he says.

And it isn’t so much the unmistakable intonation that tips me off - though there is that. It’s mainly the blink-and-I-would-have-missed it flash of red in the guy’s eyes as he head tilts and they catch the light. Red eyes. I know that red.

I know someone with red eyes.

Comments

[ROBCakeran53]

Oh. Well, crud.

[readsponies]

As has been said before, if you choose not to decide you still have made a choice!

You really should have listened to the bit just before, advising that you could choose a ready guide in some Celestial voice.

[Oneiro]

Nice

[Witchery]

I know someone with red eyes.

That's not good.

[HIEfan]

Dun dun duuun! Umbra is in town, and things are going to get interesting.

[Eternal Samson]

Oh fuck. Update and cliff hanger. I’m dead. You’ve killed me. Uraghh

[Venerable Ro]

Oh look, it's miss Spooky. Lovely, could do with a distraction anyway wot?

[Cackling Moron]

11453924
I feel like a tool for having missed that, but there you go.

[Cackling Moron]

11453984
Well, they might in the hands of a competent author, but unfortunately someone left me in charge.

[Alondro]

Quick! Jump on the pony and start stabbing! IT'S THE ONLY WAY!!

[katarjin]

11454269
always with the STABBING!

[SRY]

11454269

11454391

To be fair it does solve a lot of problems... creates a whole bunch more of course too

[Alondro]

11454391 It happens to be super-effective, I'll have you know!

[Alondro]

11454594 That depends upon what you do with the... post-stabbing results...

My 'family' was very good at... clean-up... capiche?

[SRY]

11455143
Lol, I grew up in a VERY rural area. Quite a lot of "problems" solved with a backhoe and some "good 'ol boys".

[Alondro]

11455327 Half my family was from South Philly... the Little Italy section...

'Problems' disappeared into the NJ Pine Barrens.

[Waiting for Godot]

...As I may have said before, John's torturous internal musings act as a barrier that closes him off from all but the most persistent ponies, rendering most of his relationships superficial. It doesn't seem to matter whether these relationships are good, bad or indifferent. In this universe or the pone universe. John is pretty much cut off from any meaningful emotional engagement with anyone/anypony; like the protagonist in Camus's 'The Outsider'.

John blunders along in his whimsical fashion, at first it's mildly endearing. But as John realises his self-deprecation is destructive and not allowing him to connect, the narrative takes on a dark almost claustrophobic tone. As the reader you want to escape from the inside of John's head as much as he want's to escape himself!

As this point, I think he needs to be taken by the shoulders and given a good hard shake/talking to - and perhaps a couple of slaps across the face for good measure! If Umbra can achieve this, so be it.

Apologies for this wall of text. The story has more nuance than perhaps you give yourself credit for. I only wish you would update more regularly, as I desperately want to see John get his collective shit together!

[Cackling Moron]

11456174
If i knew how to solve John's personality flaws, anlot of my own problems would also be solved.

[Jordanis]

11454233

Smile and nod, pretend you meant it all along. I'll credit your subconscious with it, at minimum.

[Jordanis]

11463859

As the kids were once fond of saying: Oof, big mood.

[ibanix]

"I could just devour her. Nibble that face right off her skull. Adorable."

It's going to take John another 20 chapters to realize he has a crush on Twilight, isn't it