Strange New World

by Boopy Doopy

I Am One

Lake Cleaver stepped out of the closet to allow Roxanne and Tory good views of what was inside. He couldn’t see their faces as they leaned in to get a look around, but he heard their gasps, and could imagine their eyes blinking in surprise. He knew what that meant.

“I’m not going completely crazy, am I?” he asked anyway. “Like, I know I’m not, but please tell me I’m not having a schizophrenic episode or something.”

“Uh, I doubt it,” Roxanne replied, more bluntly than usual as she pulled herself back out of the small, cramped room. “Unless we’re all having the same episode.”

Tory didn’t answer immediately. He continued leaning his head through the closet to get a look at what was on the other side. He bent his body over slightly, placing his hands on the coat rack to hold himself steady as he peered through. The infinite black that now took the place of Lake’s wall seemed to absorb him as he gazed to the other side. Lake watched him nervously, shifting his weight from one foot to the other.

Finally, Tory, too, pulled himself back, and turned to stare at Lake with wild eyes. The look was no different than one he’d expect his friend to give to an alien. Lake was sure that he, too, still had the same look on his face.

“What in the world is going on?” Tory asked, his voice much lower and much more collected than the situation demanded. He might have used a similar tone if he asked Lake how he’d been doing.

Lake didn’t match the tone at all. “I don’t know!” he yelled, having to take a long breath to not completely lose it. “I opened the closet, and it just—it was there all of a sudden! I’ve never seen anything like that in my life!”

Both Tory and Roxanne blinked at him, watching as he wiggled around nervously where he stood. They didn’t look like they were taking this well, but who would? Certainly not Lake. They at least seemed more collected about this than he was. He wouldn’t have been surprised if he died of a heart attack right there. He used a shaky hand to brush a strand of dark brown hair from in front of his face.

“Should we tell someone?” Roxanne asked before he could. “Like the police or something? Cause I’m not really sure what you’re supposed to do about something like that.”

“I don’t know!” Lake yelled again. “Like, what are the police gonna be able to do about this? Other than give us drug tests to make sure we’re not crazy? But what the heck else are we supposed to do?”

“Uhh, tell someone, I think,” Tory said, still portraying the same calmness. Or maybe it was just plain shock. “Something like this is just… I have no idea,” he said. Then he peered through the door again, his neck flexing like he was turning his head and looking around. Then he pulled his head back out.

“Did it change you, too, when you looked through it?” his friend asked. “Cause that thing is changing me, it seems like. Like, not even into a human.” He stuck his head through again, and continued, “Something red, with animal ears and green hair, it looks like. Some kind of snout.” How Tory’s voice reached him from the infinite blackness, he wasn’t sure.

Lake didn’t know if he changed. He didn’t remember. He was paying more attention to the portal to… somewhere… that now existed in his closet to notice if his body changed. He didn’t really feel like checking either.

Roxanne seemed like she did, because she moved up right beside Tory to look through the black expanse again. “I wanna see,” she almost demanded as she pushed hanging clothes aside to lean her head through. Before she could comment, before Lake could ask what she saw, she moved again, this time pushing the rest of her body through to the other side of his closet. The portal seemed only to give a little bit of resistance, her progress forward slowing down just a tad, like she was moving through something thicker than air. A moment later, she couldn’t be seen anymore.

“Roxie!” Lake complained. “Get back here!”

No answer came from her, and neither did one come from Tory. Lake only stood there in silence, watching as Tory leaned through to presumably watch Roxanne do something. Or maybe she was dead and he was standing there in shock. The other side didn’t seem strange, sure, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t dangerous. Maybe–

“She’s a horse,” Tory finally announced to him. It was enough of a response for Lake to shake his head clear and unclench his jaw. He was not one for exciting adventures like his friends might have been, no way. He didn’t even like going to theme parks. This was all already too much for him.

He waited for clarification from his friend, but none came. “You said she’s a horse?” he asked, taking a breath beforehand to keep his voice steady. Tory sounded calm. That meant he should probably be calm, too.

“Yeah,” was the simple answer. “Four hooves, a snout, a tail and a mane—she looks like she’s supposed to be a horse. I think I’m supposed to be one, too.”

“Okay, well, can you two come back on this side?” Lake asked impatiently, still doing his best to hide any anxiety. “We don’t know what could happen or what’s out there or if it’s dangerous or anything.” He wasn’t an expert, but it didn’t take one to assume that they should call someone smart before poking around with impossible magic. Or get their heads examined.

Tory seemed mostly to ignore him. “It looks like a house to me,” he said, Lake only watching his neck flex as he presumably scanned the scene. “Like one an old lady would have or something.” He pulled himself back, and turned to look at Lake. “Roxie’s checking it out already. I’m gonna follow her.”

“Is that a good idea?” Lake asked. It was a question that fell on deaf ears, because a second later, Tory turned back around and passed fully through the infinite blackness that replaced what used to be a wall.

“Tory?” he called out, to no response. “Roxie!” Silence. “Get back here please? Both of you?” he asked.

No answer came. Lake shifted around on his feet and clenched his fists, taking a deep inhale to try and control his breathing. He was going to have to follow after them, wasn’t he? Never mind whatever danger he might have been getting himself in.

He let out his breath and carefully stepped up to the closet. Minus the infinite black expanse along the back wall, it was just the same as always. Coats and button up shirts hung from the hanger rail, and a dresser sat against what used to be the far wall. Books were still perfectly lined up on the top shelf, and board games and important documents sat along the counters to the side. Whatever universe bending physics caused such a thing to appear in his closet, it left everything in its right place, nice and neat as ever.

As well, for a mysterious black portal-thing, nothing about it seemed inherently dangerous. Sticking his head through, he gazed at whatever world was on the other side. Nothing seemed to hurt as he peered through, and he wasn’t ripped into tiny pieces. So unless this thing was secretly assaulting him with radiation, it wasn’t anything to fear.

Although now he noticed what Tory talked about before when he took a full step through the black hole. His body shifted to a bright orange color, unlike his usual pasty white skin. He could see without much trouble that his face now ended in a muzzle, and noticed his dark brown hair didn’t look entirely human. He could guess that, as Tory said, he was a horse. Limbs that ended in hooves pointed this fact out easily.

He didn’t immediately see Tory or Roxie, and quickly turned to step back out of the closet a few seconds later. Thankfully, the portal didn’t take him hostage and disappear to leave him stranded as a horse in someplace he didn’t belong. It also fixed his body so that he was human once more. It didn’t feel like his body physically shifted in any way when we went through and back again—it was almost as though the transition was instantaneous, like something out of a cartoon.

Lake’s heart still pounded though. It felt like it was beating out of his chest, so hard that he almost thought he could hear it out loud. That portal might so far have been non-threatening, but that fact only eased his nerves a little. It still shouldn’t have been there.

“Gonna have to follow them,” he said aloud, trying to psyche himself up. “You’re gonna have to follow them. You can do this.” He knew both of his friends. Tory and Roxanne both went through that thing without a second thought, as though it didn’t really matter. Someone was gonna have to watch over them, lest they do something idiotic. Like walk through a mysterious black portal he found in his closet less than an hour ago.

He really didn’t want to follow them. Maybe they’d come back on their own. Maybe they’d find gold or the cure to cancer or the secrets of the universe. Or maybe they’d get hurt, or arrested, or kidnapped, or whatever other horrible thing could possibly happen. At least theme parks had to have safety standards before you were allowed to enter them.

“It’ll be fine,” he insisted to himself, closing his eyes and taking another breath. “It’s not even dangerous. It’s just a house. Tory and Roxie are already looking around. You can do it, too.” It was enough to boost Lake’s confidence about following them.

But he wasn’t going to be an idiot about it, oh no. Someone had to know about this, just in case there were kidnappers or piles of gold on the other side. He didn’t exactly know who should know, but someone. An email to the New York Times wouldn’t hurt.

Neither would one to the University of Pennsylvania’s physics department, along with a couple of texts to some of his friends, and maybe one to his mother. If he wasn’t hallucinating and this wasn’t a dream, he could imagine how important something like this would be. And if he was hallucinating, then who cared? Outside of his psychiatrist, anyway. He would need to call her when he woke up if he was.

It only took a minute or two to send those emails and texts. After he was done, he shook his head and his limbs, trying to work the anxiety and nervousness out of his system. What could go wrong? Except for everything? Probably nothing, right? If it was dangerous, he could head right back to the closet, easy peasy. The fact that Tory and Roxie hadn’t returned was probably a good sign. How likely was it that they stumbled into danger within the last two minutes?

He didn’t think about the odds. Instead, he turned on the camera of his phone, and headed back through. No sense in dragging out the anticipation. Besides, he was a little bit curious, too. In a morbid sort of way.

Just like before, it was an instantaneous shift he experienced during the changing of his body. In a blink, no more was Lake a human, but a horse. Still bright orange, still with a brown mane and hooves. He didn’t even fall over as his body shifted from biped to quadruped. Apparently, wormholes that took you to apartments on the other side of the universe understood that horses were meant to be walking using what were once his hands.

They apparently also knew that his phone would be better off if it didn’t clatter to the… what was that? Laminate? A house through a wormhole to someplace no human had ever been before had laminate flooring? Whatever. It was good that he now held his phone in a wing on the side of his body rather than the thing dropping to the floor. Apparently horses in this part of the universe came with wings.

And stubby, almost perfectly cylindrical legs. As well as something closer to fur topping their skin instead of fine horse hair. Not to mention, they were kind of short, about four feet high if he had to guess. He might have been more of a pony than an actual horse. It was extremely weird.

But not entirely unfamiliar. He wasn’t a squid monster or a dinosaur or something completely alien. Lake’s heart rate slowed, as did his breathing as he took in his surroundings.

Just as Tory described, it was a house. Definitely one that belonged to an old lady, or else they were in an alternate version of a rich person’s home in the early nineteen hundreds. It looked high class, and had electric lights hooked into a fancy chandelier hanging over the center of the space, illuminating it. The particular room he now inhabited looked to be a living room, with the space directly behind him being a closet just like his own on the other side. He wasn’t still on Earth, was he? Was he in an alternate dimension, or just in a different world?

“Roxie?” Lake called quietly as he stepped into the main part of the room in front of him. “Tory?” He carefully used his body to close the door to the space the portal inhabited as he asked aloud, “Where are you two?”

He got no response from either of them. He didn’t imagine that they could’ve gotten far, but then again, he didn’t know whether time was relative when you transported yourself across the universe through magical, pitch black wormholes.

Nothing about this house seemed dangerous so far, nor did anything about his body. It moved naturally, without issue, as though his brain had already rewritten itself to be a horse and to move in that way. Walking was easy, and he could move his ears now without issue. It almost started to make him feel completely at ease—until he wondered whether or not that meant he was himself anymore. Could he still be himself if he had a quadruped brain now? How was he able to control unfamiliar muscles without issue? Did that mean he–

“Lake!”

“Oh my god!” Lake shouted, jumping at Roxanne’s voice. He turned to her and sent a glare of an expression her way. “Don’t fucking do that right now!”

Roxanne flashed him a wide, toothy grin, showing off flat horse teeth. Yes, she was a horse, too, not that Lake suspected Tory had lied. Her appearance was largely an assortment of pastel colors, unlike his practically glow-in-the-dark neon orange fur coat. She had a pink body, one that shifted into purple in spots, and a green mane with red stripes in it. Her eyes were purple, and large, taking up almost half of her face he estimated. They almost looked less like eyeballs and more like eye plates, they were so large. He imagined he looked largely the same way, minus the pink horn sticking out of her forehead and adding his new wings. She must have been a different breed of horse.

“You’re too easy to scare,” she teased as she walked around him, taking him in. “I could almost tell where you were just by that.” She stopped walking and her smile dropped into a frown as her eyes settled on something about him. “You’re naked, too.”

Lake’s wings ruffled subconsciously and he crossed his legs. If he hadn’t noticed that before, he sure did now. If the fur on his face could change color, he was sure it would’ve been bright red right about then.

"Stop looking at me then," he told her as he glanced away, his voice full of embarrassment. "Where the heck is Tory?" he asked. "We shouldn't be here without talking to someone and making sense of all of this first."

"I'm over here," the familiar voice called from behind him. He'd gone farther than Roxanne then. Not a surprise. How was Lake the only one concerned about all of this? He imagined this would’ve caused a fuss between the two of them rather than deep interest and curiosity.

“It’s just a hallway,” he announced as he poked his head out of the doorway he was standing in. No surprise, a horse was what he was, too, looking just the same as both he and Roxanne. He, instead of pink or blue though, had a red coat with a leaf green mane. It looked a bit like something out of a christmas movie, a look that was completed with blue eyes. He didn’t have either wings or a unicorn horn though. Maybe another different breed?

Perhaps though Lake wasn’t the only one worried about what was going on. Where he saw largely no fear in Roxanne’s eyes, Tory’s were still wild, even if his body language and voice didn’t show any emotion in it. If he paid close enough attention, he could see his friend taking slow, deep, deliberate breaths.

“See anything dangerous?” the woman-turned-horse-unicorn next to Lake asked. “You’re almost as scared as Lake.”

“Not really,” Tory told her flatly, “and no. It’s just a hallway. There’s stairs leading down and a bunch of windows. “I think it’s the front door, but I wanna take a look.”

“That’s cool with me,” Roxanne shrugged—how the heck could a horse shrug?—before stepping off after him. However, Lake interrupted her movements with a comment before she could get too far.

“Can you two please stop and think about this for one second?” he asked exasperatedly. Or maybe his voice was more desperate and anxious. He couldn’t be sure.

Both of them turned to him. He had their attention. Good.

“We need to talk to someone about all of this before we go marching out into the great unknown,” he said. “Seriously. You two can’t just ‘do whatever’. Like– you can’t–” Lake opened and closed his mouth a few times, but when no words came out, he let out a long huff of a breath. It almost sounded like a whinny, and made Roxanne grin at him.

“Don’t you care about any of this?” he asked exasperatedly. “What if it’s dangerous? How the heck can you act so casual?”

“Because it’s not dangerous,” Roxanne was quick to answer. “It doesn’t feel dangerous. It feels like a house.”

She was leaving a whole lot of details out of that assertion. Lake sent another little glare her way, and then turned expectantly toward Tory. The now red horse still didn’t show fear outside of the look in his eyes, but his ears did lower. It must have been subconscious. Lake took it as a good sign.

Just as quickly as they went down, they poked back up. “You can go back if you want to, Lake,” he told him. The winged horse’s expression changed to an uncomfortable grimace as his friend continued, “I doubt if there’s anything dangerous it’ll be stopped by some impossible magic portal, so there’s not much difference if we look around than if we sit around and wait for someone else.” He paused, rubbed a hoof against the ground, then finished, “Besides, I have lucid dreams all the time. This doesn’t really feel like a dream, but it could be one.”

Lake hadn’t ever had lucid dreams. Not one time in his life. This was definitely real. Either that, or someone accidently slipped LSD into his coffee. He didn’t have high expectations about either being true. But then again, the odds of whatever was going on happening in real life were so low as to be effectively zero.

He could tell from the sympathetic expression Tory threw his way that he knew Lake wanted to argue. “I’m gonna check it out either way. I wanna see what’s going on with this place. It’s okay if you go back and wait for us.”

“That is, unless you wanna stick with us and have a look around wherever we are,” Roxanne broke in temptingly. She wore a sly grin as she walked around him, like before. She wasn’t acting like her usual self, but then again, her current state was only off from that a little bit.

“You have your camera on, don’t you?” she told him, lifting one of her new hooves to point at the phone in his wing. “You can prove that we were the first explorers of this… wherever this house is, so they have to name it after us once we get famous. And you’d probably feel pretty left out if we looked around on our own without you.”

Yeah, that would suck. Lake was curious. He also didn’t like adventure like this, especially not when the adventure that seemed imminent shouldn’t have been possible at all. He glanced between her, Tory, and the door now shut closed behind him, unsure of what to do. He knew what direction he was leaning in.

“I can tell you’re scared, but I promise it’s not even gonna be dangerous,” Roxanne pressed, trying to sound more encouraging now. “And if it is, three of us would stand a better chance than two against whatever’s out there.”

“You can’t know something like that though!” he pushed back. “If a river of lava were suddenly sweeping through–”

“Do you see a river of lava?” she asked. “Trust me. I just know it’s not dangerous. And if it is, it won’t be any more dangerous looking around for five minutes than it would be leaving right now.”

“I’m going back,” he finally decided, turning back the way he came. “And if you two aren’t back in five minutes, I’m gonna–”

“Freeze where you are! All three of you!”

A loud voice boomed up the stairs that Tory stood near. All three turned their heads in its direction and stayed motionless as commanded. Tory actually showed his fear in his body language, and even Roxanne was starting to look nervous. No surprise.

It's almost as if they should have listened to me, Lake thought silently, a thought he didn't dwell on for now. Instead, he shot a quick glance to the door behind him, and debated whether or not to run. This was turning out about as well as it possibly could have.

He stayed still as he heard what seemed to be multiple sets of limbs ascending the stairs, until they were face to face with Tory and glancing back at he and Roxanne. More horses, as he imagined, three of them to be precise. They didn't look happy to see any of them either.

If Tory was psychic, he had yet to admit it. One of them was an older female horse, probably the owner of this house. She had a tan coat and an orange mane with white streaks in it, as well as wrinkles under her eyes. In human years, Lake might have guessed she was sixty.

Like the three of them, she didn't wear clothes, although she did have some fancy jewelry worn around her neck. The same couldn't be said for the other two horses. They were bigger than her—bigger than any of them—and wore blue shirts with vests on top that signified they were the MPD. No pants though. He guessed horses weren't much for modesty here, just like on Earth.

All three were both unicorns like Roxanne, and didn’t look like they wanted to hear whatever explanation they had for being here. The old woman in particular had a furious look in her eye, like she was absolutely pissed at the three of them. He couldn't blame her. If this was her home, was this technically breaking and entering?

The look on the faces of the other two showed angry looks, but not as intense as the female's. Instead, they were deadly serious, their eyes focusing on all three of them like they were trying to stare into their souls. It didn't take a rocket scientist to deduce what their occupation might be, given their golden badges and dark shades and officer caps and batons sitting in a belt wrapped around their waist. This was suddenly becoming very, very bad. Should Lake have expected anything else?

"I say we run for it," he whispered quietly to Roxanne, voice barely audible. It was a bad idea though, and he knew it. There would be no running from these ponies.

"Tory's too close to them," the unicorn whispered back just as quietly. "He'd get caught and get hurt probably."

"I thought you said you were sure there was nothing dangerous here," Lake quipped sarcastically. "And Tory said if there was, we could just leave. Now look."

“Be quiet!” one of the uniformed horses demanded. This didn’t feel like a dream, but it was pretty suspicious how these animals conveniently spoke English. What were the odds of that? Lower than the chances of a random portal appearing in Lake’s closet, certainly. Everything he’d seen thus far indicated that this place was like Earth, except with horses. It was almost logic breaking.

He met Tory’s eyes in front of him, and then glanced back to Roxanne. The former looked skeptical, whereas the latter seemed actually worried for the first time. He tried to ask both a silent question, but unsurprisingly got no response from either.

Then their new company spoke again. One of the male horses stayed close to Tory while the other one approached he and Roxanne. He felt something invisibly tighten around his ankles as the one near them said, “You’re being charged with criminal trespassing, and breaking and entering. You’re being placed under arrest, and are required to accompany us to the station. Don’t resist.”

It was probably the least surprising piece of news Lake had ever heard in his life.

Author's Note:

I've got words for weeks.

Comments

[Solar_Wolf]

Not a bad start.
For me I like wean thay are stuck with no way back right away but in like 2 to 3 years which thay want to stay becus of love or time difference

[Nonnyaddic69]

11766748
Samme

[Alaborn]

At least one of these characters changed sexes, right?

[Boopy Doopy]

11767211
For the first time ever, no! Had to change it up! Can't do the same thing every time, can I?

[Killjoy1221]

Do pony criminals have the right to remain silent?

[Boopy Doopy]

11778712
We may soon find out!