Absence of Logic

by Antisocial Ind.

Just Another Day as a Minimum Wage Slave (Revised)

It was just another slow, boring day as I pulled into the parking lot of Shoppers. I parked my car in the back as I always did, never going farther than two rows up. I turned turned the car off, stepped out, walked into the store, said good morning to Stacey and Tami, punched in, then headed over to the produce room; same old same old, nothing new.

“Morning, Charles, what do you need me to do first today?” I said as cheerfully as I could. I had gotten good at putting on a fake smile everyday, forcing an air of happiness towards my work. On the inside I just wanted to scream at every customer I met; sure there were the good customers who I liked, but they were few and far in between. I couldn't stand most of my customers. It was actually pretty unfair of me: most of them had done nothing to me. I hated myself for it, I wanted to be a friend to everyone I met, not some cynical ass who was ready to snap at any moment.

Maybe that's why I was a fan of My Little Pony. It gave me some temporary relief from this world, let me forget my hatred and anger. I idolized the gentle temperament of the characters, and their flawless humanity, and I guess it gave me something to look up to, an example of how to better myself as a person.

“Morning Tyler. I need you to go out and restock all the citrus fruits and bananas.” Charles was a fairly tall man standing at over 6’ 6”. He always seemed intimidating, but once you got to know him, he was a wuss. No no, I kid. I’m sure he could kick my ass clear across the parking lot. Actually, now that I think about it I’m sure he could break me down into leather, turn me into a shoe, and use me to kick the ass of some other helpless peon across the parking lot if he so desired. Ah, the blessings of Upper Management.

“Thanks, Charles!” I trudged back to the produce cooler, grabbed a u-boat and slung my olive green hoodie over one of the handles. I started loading the needed boxes onto it, three boxes of oranges, two boxes of limes, a box of lemons, two boxes of grapefruits and three boxes of bananas.

I ended up doing tasks similar to this for most of my shift, stocking the fruit, then got back into the produce room and waited twenty or thirty minutes for the stock to diminish so that I could go back out and REstock it. Needless to say, my shift got very boring, very fast.

I rolled the U-boat out into the store and headed for the citrus aisle of the store's produce section. I repeated this task so often that now a days that I just became zoned out. Not like when you're bored during a stupid Biology 101 lecture, but like in a trance almost. Imagine being in a state where you wouldn't notice if a nuke went off until the heat was burning the flesh from your bones.

I pushed the cart out in front of the oranges and pulled out my box cutter. I cut open one of each box and started filling up the oranges and lemons. Turns out the ungodly amount of fruits I had grabbed were completely and utterly unneeded. I only ended up using half a box of oranges and one box of lemons. I just shrugged and walked back into the produce room.

I pulled up a chair, put my feet up on one of the boxes on my carts and laid back and twiddled my thumbs while waiting to go back out and re-stock the fruits. As I sat there, bored, I found myself drifting off into a dream.

I was standing in the middle of a calm looking field, doing nothing, just watching the sky. Suddenly I had a sense of serious unease, like something was watching me with evil intentions. I slowly started walking forward trying to just ignore it. As I continued on the sense of danger became more urgent. I started to run, I looked back over my shoulder but saw nothing. This didn't deter me though, I kept running faster and faster. Soon the field was replaced by a dark forest, it was so sudden I didn't know if I had somehow run into a forest or whether it had just appeared out of nowhere.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw a sudden movement. I looked over that way and saw nothing. Another movement came from the opposite direction I had just looked, I looked that way then another from above. This was crazy, I kept seeing things out of the corner of my eyes, but they moved too fast for me to actually see them; so I just kept running. Survival instinct kicked in and I picked up the pace. Suddenly the forest was replaced by my own God damned neighborhood. I was out of breath, and I stopped and leaned against the SUV sitting in the drive way trying to catch my breath. I looked down my drive way and saw something that made my heart stop. Running down the sidewalk was something out of a nightmare, a grey creature resembling a man running on four deformed limbs with the head of a wolf and two red glowing eyes. I was frozen in fear, all I could do was stare at the monstrosity running towards me. I couldn't scream, I couldn't run, I couldn't think. All I could do was stare.

The creature was nearly on me, I was about to scream, it jumped an- "MISTER!" Wait... Wha... "HEY MISTER! WAKE UP!"

I was suddenly jerked awake by the sound of a little girl yelling at me, I groaned and covered my eyes with my hands; for some reason it seemed much brighter then I remembered it being.

"Ugh, kid, why are you back here, what do you want?"

"I just wanted to buy some oranges, mister." I removed my hands from my face and sat up.

"Kid, were you-" I was stopped dead in my tracks, my jaw dropped. Standing in front of me wasn't a little girl, but a God damned pony! It seemed to just be a small orange filly with a red tail and mane. "Uh..." was all I could muster.She tossed me four bits and took two oranges.

"Thanks mister!" she said, running off leaving me holding the bits.

I looked up and saw I was in the middle of a market place fully of multicolored ponies. It reminded me of the farmers markets I used to go to wait my grandmother when I was little. Peo- err, ponies were going from stand to stand, buying fruits and veggies. To one side I saw a pony peddling with a customer, trying to sell a bunch of carrots for what I guessed was a much higher price than what was reasonable. At another stand, it looked like a pegasus and a Unicorn were chatting about when the next rainstorm was scheduled. Off to the side somewhere a few fillies and colts were playing a game of tag and sharing what I guessed were the oranges one of them had just bought off of me.

As I looked around I realized everything was really bright and colorful, just like a cartoon, but live action and with a bit more shading and texturing. Looked at my cart and saw that it, too, was just as colorful. Same deal with my blue jeans and boots. I held up my hands in front of me and just stared at them. From what I was seeing, I too was turned into a much more colorful version of myself.

I looked up again and looked around, and suddenly the realization hit me like a semi truck full of rainbow colored bricks: I was in the middle of the Ponyville market place! My heart started to race. I tried to keep my breathing under control as I shakily sat back in my chair and crossed my hands over my chest. OK, there are two explanations for all of this. One, I'm still asleep and this is just an incredibly awesome dream. Two... I've finally snapped and I'm starting to believe I'm in Ponyville. I found myself acting surprisingly calm for finding out I had gone completely mad. On the outside, at least. On the inside I was freaking out.

That was one of the perks to being a cashier in a story full of annoying, angry, depressing customers: you learn to hold in your emotions and not let them show. There were many a time when I come across a customer who I just wanted to slap across the face. I actually wanted to slap most of my customers across the face. I was so happy when they finally moved me off of cashier work and back into the produce and meat departments.

"Excuse me sir." I looked over and saw a blue coated stallion with a black mane standing there. "How much are your limes?"

I started racking my brain trying to think of a reasonable price, normally limes went six for a dollar at my store, "Hhhh... six for three bits..."

"Wow, six for only three bits, here you go!" The stallion handed me the required bits and trotted off with his limes.

I sat there holding six bits in my hand. It was so unreal to me, actually being there, feeling the cold gold coins in my hand. I pinched myself to make sure I was awake. I took one of the box covers from the cart, set it upside down on the ground, and dropped the coins into it. Ok, lets just stay calm here. I'm going crazy... OK, nothing big... maybe... it will all go away in a few minutes. I sat there for five, ten, then fifteen minutes, just waiting for this multi-colored world of ponies to disappear. But it never did. Part of me was freaking out. I mean, I was hallucinating that I was in Ponyville! This was serious, but, laughably, another part of me was excited for the exact same reasons.

As it started getting to the half hour mark with no change in my environment, I came to the conclusion that none of this would be going away anytime soon. What if I actually am in Equestria!? Wait no, that's silly... but if this is just a dream, or a hallucination, then its pretty damned real...

I continued sitting there for an hour, pondering whether this was real or not while selling the fruits I had to the occasional customer. Some time around noon, about two hours after I had arrived here things began to pick up for me. Apparently citrus fruit was out of season at the moment, so I was one of the few vendors carrying them. I was getting a lot of business.

At this point I had put on the happy minimum wage slave persona, keeping a friendly smile and attitude while selling my produce. I really didn't need to fake my attitude though, most of the customers I received were very friendly and I was happy to serve them. About the worst I saw was just one tired looking customer who handed me some bits and continued on without a word.

With the surprisingly high demand for citrus fruits, my stock soon ran out, except half a box of oranges I had set aside. I looked down into my box of bits and started counting the bits I had made. It came out to about 439 bits. I had no idea whether it was a good haul or not.

I sat back in my chair and thought about what I should do next. I guessed the best idea would be to find Twilight's library. If any on- err, any pony could help me, it would be her.

I gathered up the bits I had and made a bag to carry them in by tying up my hoodie. I was about to get up and go find the library when I overheard two ponies talking.

"Hey, you saw that strange monkey thing in the market, right?"

"Yeah, I bought some oranges from him. Seems like a pretty nice... uhhh, thing."

"Huh, oh well. Oohh! Wouldja look at that, there's another one of 'em over there, talkin' to Bailey!" My heart jumped. YES! There was another human here! Maybe he or she knew what the hell was going on.

I turned around, and he was standing there, as another pony who I guessed was Bailey was walking away. He turned his head back to face forward and started to walk. He was the absolute last person I ever would have expected to find in Equestria.

"Holy shit! Noah!?" It was my closest friend Noah McDonough. He turned to me and a look of absolute relief seemed to cross his face. This kinda clued me in that he probably had no idea what the hell was going on either. It was alright though; if I wasn't going to find out what was going on right away, at least I had a familiar face here with me. I started towards my friend and the pony he was with.

“Well, shoot! Now I've seen two of you!” said Bailey. He must have stopped and turned to us when he heard me call Noah's name.

I walked up to Noah and we embraced in a manly hug. “Dude, Tyler, I am SO glad to see you! I have no idea what is going on!”

“Ok, this is gonna be hard to explain, maybe you should come with me-“ I was cut short as a rattling came from the Barrel Bailey was rolling.

“What in the?!” As Bailey reached down and flipped the lid open, out slid the gargantuan mass of man flesh me and my friends all know as Adam Davis. He looked up at us for a moment, adjusting his glasses.

"Wait a minute. How the hell did you guys get in my barrel?" Of course he wasn't shocked by the ponies and unusual colorfulness of his new environment, then again, I wouldn't have expected him to be.

His sense of humor was odd. Then again, he could also just be having an Asperger's moment. None of us could ever really tell with Adam. Sometimes it seemed like he would do this stuff on purpose, but I had just about given up on trying to figure it out after having known him for several years.

"We didn't, you fell out of it," said Noah, clearly annoyed with Adam.

"Right, well, if it's the same to you gentlemen, I'm gonna go now." I just realized how terribly awkward this must have been for Bailey. Noah said good bye and gave a little wave, and Bailey just continued rolling his barrel.

"Right, I want to go back in my barrel," said Adam, getting to his feet. I turned to him, finally getting over my moment of semi shock.

"Adam, how did you get in a barrel?" I asked, as anyone would.

"I climbed in. Jeez, and I thought I was supposed to be the retard of the group." His smartassness annoyed me to no end sometimes

I sighed, "No, why did you climb in the barrel?"

"'Tis an epic tale, filled with scantily clad women and alcohol!"

Oh for the love of God, I give up!

A/N

Dude you suck. Calling your boss a pussy on the Internet? Oooooo big man here! Watch out guys he's got guts!

Dude, just shut up it's MY chapter.

Nut up and tell your boss how you feel.

I'm not trying to get fired, dude.

Unfortunately for you, Tyler, I am also a brony. Didn't expect me to read this, did you?

Noah, that's you. You just changed your text color.

Tyler, you're fired.

Right. Well I'll come back when you decide to stop dicking around and work on the story. Later.

Oh come on you're no fun! Tyler? TYLER COME BACK! IMMA CRY!