Late Night Encounters At The Gas Station

by Barracuda cyborg

Sugar Madness

Directly after Derrick had asked if Mark smelled cotton candy, a small pink pony was zipping across the gas station. The boys knew this wasn’t going to end well, so their mission was clear: catch this pony. However this task was easier said than done, it was as if the pony was one step ahead of the two as it ran across the store. Each time they thought they got her, she ran off and the clerks crashed into each other. This game of cat and mouse seemed endless, until at last, it stopped by the slushie machines next to the soda dispensers.

The clerks finally managed to catch their breath as she started to layer all the slushie flavors. Mark stared at her and suddenly had a thought, “Dude, you think she’s gonna get more hyper?”

Derrick looked at the pony as she tried her best to drink the concoction, “I doubt it, those things are mostly ice. As long as she doesn’t try mixing a suicide soda then we should be fine.”

As if the universe was just aching to mess with the clerks’ evening, the pink pony stopped and walked up to them and asked, “What’s a ‘suicide soda’?”

Mark ignorantly quickly answered the pony, “Oh that’s when you mix all the sodas from the dispenser into-“ He was suddenly stopped by Derrick elbowing him in the gut, taking the wind out of him.

The pony’s eyes grew as big as dinner plates as she heard of the idea of mixing every soda imaginable. She quickly ran up to the machine, grabbed the biggest cup they had in the store, and started to pump out every soda it had, even the diet ones.

“Duck and cover!” Derrick shouted as he hid behind the counter. Mark, however, wasn’t as cautious as his coworker. He stood there frozen, watching their little invader shake like she was exclusively experiencing an earthquake. Soon enough she had become a ball of pure pink energy, which the two clerks knew was too dangerous in mass quantities. Soon enough, she began to run around at an alarming speed, with all the chaos going on, Mark had finally decided to retreat.

“You just had to say how to make that stupid drink,” Derrick said. He let out a shaky exhale.

“Well, you mentioned it in the first place!” Mark shouted. The two got into an argument on who started what and why this was even happening in the first place when suddenly the pink pony stopped in its tracks.

The pony looked around, “Is this where I pay?” It asked, only to be ignored by the continuing fight, “Excuse me?”

The fighting raged on, and the pony was tired of being ignored, so it decided to add to the madness by popping over the counter, "Would you two stop!" The pony exclaimed. "Can't you see all this fighting is tearing us apart!"

The two clerks looked up and were utterly stunned by the Telenovela levels of acting by the pony. “Ok...so this one is weirder than Luna.”

Mark nodded. “Yep, she even smells like cotton candy. Most horses around here smell like ass.”

“Do I look like a horse to you?” the pink not-horse asked.

The two clerks looked at each other. Neither of them wanted to say anything more. They didn’t want to offend the pure ball of energy, she probably could blast them out of this Earth’s atmosphere with how powerful she probably was.

Then Mark opened his mouth.

“Kind of? You don’t have as long of a face and—”

Derrick smacked Mark’s mouth shut. “Don’t listen to him, he’s on his high at the moment.”

And going back to the smell thing; remember when we went to Chappy’s, that place smells worse than horses,” Derrick added, remembering the horrors they endured going to that cursed restaurant.

“Well… I’ve never been there, but I can imagine how bad it could smell.” The horse just fell over and landed into Derrick’s lap, “I can imagine like the world’s biggest dumpster left out in the sun for a week.”

“Well how can we help you…pink pony?” Derrick asked.

“My name’s Pinkie Pie.” The pony replied, “And well….I guess after the drink, and a slushie, I’ll get these!” Pinkie suddenly whipped out several, large king-sized bags full of candies of all sorts of varieties. “Though I’m not sure which ones are the best.”

The two looked on as the pony sifted through all the candies until she picked up a bag of gummy candies shaped like bugs. “Why would anypony ever try to eat bugs? That's just... gross.”

“Those are just candies shaped like bugs, not actual bugs,” Mark began. He picked up the bag and showed Pinkie Pie that they weren’t real, squishing them with his fingers. “Look, see?They even got little sour centers!”

“Really? Are all of them like that?”

Derrick nodded and leaned on the counter. “Basically. They got different flavors and appearances, but they’re all just candy at the end of the day.”

Pinkie Pie squealed as she scrambled to grab another bag. “what are these things?” She asked as she picked up a bag with a lot of multicolored circles.

“Those are M&Ms, they’re little chocolate candies.” Derrick replied.

“I wonder if anypony tried alphabetizing them!” Pinkie pondered as she looked at the bag and the little candy people on it.

“Well I wouldn’t know that, but I know you can put them on top of ice cream sundaes, you can put them in cookies, all sorts of stuff,” Derrick said.

Pinkie’s eye grew wide as a whole new world of culinary opportunities opened up for her. “These can go into cookies?! Forget all this stuff, I’ll take ten bags of these!”

Much like Luna’s encounter, the purchase was odd given that it was with bits instead of real money. They held onto it and watched the pink ball of insanity happily hop out of the store. Once they heard the door close, the two clerks just collapsed onto the floor. They have faced many things over their somewhat-long careers. From crazy kids running amok with their only supply of toilet paper in the bathroom, to people demanding things that they were out of stock to the point that they demanded the two clerks to ‘go get some more in the back’, none of these extremes even compared to that pink anomaly. She had broken them. They began to whimper and cry because screaming in anger would take too much energy.

“How much time is left?” Derrick asked, in-between sobs.

Mark eyed the clock and sighed. “Thirty minutes…”

Derrick gulped. He peeked over the counter to look at the damages and smacked his head up against the counter. “Mark…”

“Yeah, Derrick?” Mark asked, only to peek his head over to and gasp.

“Wow, a miniature tornado just wiped out our store!”

“You could say that again,” Derrick bluntly said, getting himself off the counter.

“Wow, a miniature—”

“I didn’t mean literally!” Derrick exclaimed, which got Mark clutching at his stomach laughing. Derrick sighed.

Then, once Mark recovered, he sighed too.

“Guess we better clean up before the day shift comes.”

“Shut up and get me the mop,” Derrick rasped out.

“I hate you.”

“I hate you too.”

The next thirty minutes seemed to be going on for nearly an eternity as it took them forever to clean up the store. By the time they were done, it was time for them to clock out. As they got into their car, they began to think of their freedom. “Three whole days…”

“Dude… we need a whole week after what that… thing caused us,” Derrick weakly said as he rubbed the sides of his head.

“Did Luna ever say when she was gonna come back?” Mark asked as he turned the keys to the car.

“I don’t know, let’s just go home. I need an aspirin,” Derrick replied.

With that, the two clerks drove off back home. They had time to rest and recollect the moments of this crazy night, but something inside of them kept asking the same question: if this were to happen again, what would they encounter next, and would it be as crazy as it was tonight?