1: Memory Lane
Contagious:
“Sweet Celestia, what happened to her eyes!!”
Oh no… Oh no, no, no.
“Oh Goddess, is, is it contagious!?”
No, no, no.
“Get out of here, run! Don’t look baby-”
You look out your ‘right’ eye at the people around you, then to your hooves. Near your ‘bad’ side you see what was torn off, that concealing purple cloak. That cloak of safety, the one object to make you a normal mare. You see it laid flat on the pavement, torn away by the bustle of the crowd now watching you in panic. Some scream, some go pale, most run. You bring a hoof over your ‘wrong’ side, you can feel the fluid leak from the pore that was supposed to be an eye. Your proper eye begins to well up as well.
“... What in Tartarus are… those things!?”
-Your mother cries out as you lay in bed, stifling your screaming only with the occasional choking sob. It was the exact day after you’d gotten your cutie mark. It was a fine blue vase, contrasting well with your orange coat. You were so proud of it, but sleep was strange that night. You felt a strange prickling sensation as you lay, and waves of heat washed over your hoof. You could feel your skin go taut and tight, your flesh shifting. It wasn’t painful, but something was wrong. But you felt so very tired… You couldn’t call for help as darkness overtook you. Then you awoke to this. Your stare in terror at the hoof before you, laden with many small polyps, little holes all about them. They itch, and seem to palpate on their own. You see no veins, blood, or organs beneath these ‘surfaces’ in your flesh, only a viscous black goo. You are crying, and the crying turns to screams when after scratching a particularly itchy hole embedded into the tip of your hoof, a stream of the black gel turns to liquid, seeping down your mottled flesh onto the mattress. Your mother screams, at first in fear, then for an ambulance, then she tells you that you’ll be okay. That it’ll all be okay. This was the first indication of the life to come, from this moment forward your mother would never touch you again. You were late to get your cutie mark, not quite a mare but well beyond a filly, and you weren’t stupid. You know what ‘contagious’ meant.
“Police, police please there’s a monster!”
Two officer ponies turn from their coffees at the corner of Manehatten Avenue. They both eye you at the same time. One officer’s face goes brown blue to white, you see him gag notably. The other watches in disgust but is made of harder stuff than his partner. He takes a step toward you, his horn alight with a stun spell ready to take you down. Your heart begins to pound in your chest, all you wanted was to be a normal mare for one night… That’s all, and now… now they are leaking. The black puddle seeps from the holes all amassed about the ‘wrong’ half of you. It’s going to be a return to the hospital… But this is Manehatten, not the one you know. … What will they do to you? You aren’t contagious! … You can’t be. The sterile smell of chemicals, the tests, the needles, the ‘tissue samples’, the drawing of fluids… As the officer takes another step, your head goes numb and you find yourself back two years.
“Ma’am, please stop panicking, Ponyville has a fine, fine medical staff. I’m sure whatever your daughter’s condition is we can stab-Oh… Oh my. We’re going to need to call in some specialists.”
The first day after your special talent was discovered was spent in a hospital. Specialists were called but it would take a week to get them here from some prestigious medical center in Canterlot. You were moved by numerous doctors in thick rubber suits and gloves, they were afraid to touch you still. You were shaking all over as you were set inside the confining glass room. There was a cot, a toilet, and a source of artificial magic light far too bright for comfort. Your mother and the doctors stand outside the glass, looking at your terrified form as though through a television.
“W-what’s happening to my baby?”
“Please help me, they won’t stop itching, they won’t stop leaking!”
One of the doctors grows nauseous as he watches the black sauce under your skin seep into puddles on the floor. You dig your hoof into one of the larger holes, the liquid collecting at the hoof but still pooling out. But it brings relief. But even with just one hoof contained, there are far too many of the polyps to scratch and please, so you panic at the sensation. Afraid.
A doctor enters the room, unicorn, clearly nervous despite the thick rubber suit he wore, he carried a syringe with his telepathy. It had a clear liquid inside of it. You rush to the corner of the room, tears pouring from your eyes as you tremble.
“Shhh… This’ll … help.” the stallion murmurs uncertainly. You are well past fillyhood at the time but trapped in far too much anxiety to fight him, and it’s with ease that he sticks the needle to your neck. You feel a strong burning in your veins, followed by lightheadedness, and didn’t wake up till the next morning. What woke you was your mother, returning for you, namely her sobbing. … More holes had grown into your skin, spreading to your chest. The holes you tried to relieve the itching of the prior day were in turn a bit wider and looked red and irritated. You feel heavy underneath the holes, as though whatever black goo had created its layer underneath your skin was heavier than the rest of your original body parts should be.
“It’s spreading!? Why is it spreading? When will the specialists get here!?”
Your mother meant well, you know that. But she was scared, you were scared. The doctors were scared. You were administered drugs when the panic became overwhelming but they brought no peace of mind, just a vacancy, like a fog. By day seven the specialists arrived, and the holes had grown over your entire left side up to your neck. As a small blessing in trying times, you’d found that the reason the holes were burning and irritating you so brutally from the start was because of the initial formation. Your hoof where the infection began had settled and ceased its non stop itching. But you could still feel them, each individual polyp and the alternative goo beneath your skin. A silent hope fills your heart that maybe you wouldn’t have to feel the holes, you may look like a monster, but perhaps there was mercy in Equestria to spare you the suffering.
The specialists arrived that day, two of them. The first… had to leave the room when he first saw you, going pale. He reentered a few minutes later after regaining his composure. The second was more professional, donning his hazard suit and leading you out for tests. Up until now the local doctors had been too afraid to do any tests beyond basic bloodwork from your normal half, where nothing came up. Couldn’t risk contamination. They couldn’t risk you being a living disease. The more professional specialist did a number of tests the local hospital lacked the bravery to attempt. He took sample of the goo from a hole in your hoof for study. He examined how the holes responded, the way they shrunk or grew in different environments, he took tissue samples from inside one of the holes, and with the help of his unicorn assistant, was able to look inside of you.
That was where events began to really spiral into the strange and terrifying. There was nothing inside the left half of your body. At least, nothing that was visible. For some reason the black goo was impossible to be seen past. They assumed there had to be bone and blood and organs inside of you somewhere, but the gelatinous mass was thick and they just didn’t know. They had tried to make an incision through it to find anything resembling flesh and blood but it was of no use. The goo would not be damaged and would just rebuild itself. Your hole-filled, wrong half was officially a part of you. That was what this first professional did, and this was the last you saw of him. He was to research your symptoms and run tests on the samples he had taken, but offered no words of hope or kindness to you. You could understand that. You were a living plague in the eyes of modern medicine. Your mother’s visits start getting shorter, and every time she looks at you her eyes water. You both begin to talk to each other facing opposite directions, and the conversations are filled with fake, forced hope for a future that was never to be. There was no light at the end of the tunnel, and you wondered when the holes would finally stop teasing and finally kill you. You begin to wonder if that wouldn’t be the best solution for everyone. The skittish specialist stayed nearby for the day but let the other pony do his work. He looked embarrassed when you caught eye contact with him. You could have sworn on the way out he mouthed ‘sorry’ to you.
“Please, I’m not contagious! I just- I just needed air, I’m not trying to hurt anyone!”
You plead but the officer keeps approaching. The other comes to, and you hear him calling out for backup. Two more officers approach from behind, keeping distance and looking visibly shaken at your disgusting image but still circling you. Looks like it’s all over for you. Maybe they’d slice you up, all because you had to have one night to be normal, to do some shopping, see people... You don’t get those privileges. You’d skipped out on a few occasions for air, but never in public. Instead you snuck all the way here, the one place where no one could save you. Frightened tears mingle with the black strings dripping from the many holes inside of you.
Dark places... The worst was on day fifteen of quarantine. The day you awoke to find your eyesight gone and replaced with darkness. Well, half of it. You felt no pain but intense itching, and you couldn’t see through your left eye. You couldn’t even feel your eye anymore, just heaviness and prickling discomfort where it had been. You had no mirror, and trembling with fear you bring your hoof to your eye. You feel no sting, you don’t wince, you pull your hoof back and from the socket you see nothing more than the black residue of the viscous goo that had now spread to your face. You scream for help, for a doctor. You were answered by two people, a local doctor and your mother who just arrived for the visit. You look with your remaining eye through the glass to her, tears falling as you tremble.
“... Help me…”
The room freezes, the doctor immediately starts rummaging through medicine cabinets, calling for assistance, but your mother just stood there. Her eyes began to water as she stared at you. No words were spoken, then tears began to fall. She bites into her lip, blood begins to stream down her face as she whispers.
“... I’m so sorry, sweetheart… I’m so sorry…”
With that, she bolted from the door, weeping. You call after her, but it does little good as a doctor in a hazmat suit had already entered, injecting you again, blacking out your vision.
You never saw your mother again. Another remnant of the life you could have had. Should have had. Gone.
“You have the right to remain silent, we’re going to be forced to keep you in quarantine till we can sort this out. Don’t move, we don’t need to get violent.” the officer spoke, his horn shifted, a knock-out spell you’d imagine. It was over, there was no one to retrieve you now. You just couldn’t accept the life you had, and now you were at the mercy of a city you know absolutely nothing about because you had to be adventurous. Well, that was the primary reason anyways. Figures this would be how the ending began for you. A loud stomp of a hoof from behind shakes you from your thoughts.
“Hold up there Officer, she’s one of ours.” the voice was gruff with age, but very familiar. It’s impossible…
“Excuse me Sir, back away from the suspect, do you want to ri-”
The stallions raises his hooves as he walks straight towards you, the yellow plastic gloves plain and visible. He had a gray coat, with light blue hair, and bore tired, tired gray eyes. He wasn’t as old as he looked, but he was still old enough to be your father. One of those gloves settling themselves onto your shoulder and you feel your trembling ease.
“I’m fine. She’s safe to touch, this young lady belongs to our facility in Ponyville’s medical care. I’m here to retrieve her.”
“You came all the way out here for me?” you whisper up at him, trying to quickly wipe your tears away. Your cheeks flush in humiliation as well as a quiet wonder at the turn of events.
“-And I oughta make you walk back alone for doing this.. Now hush while I keep you from getting arrested and quarantined again.” he whispered back harshly, your ears droop. But the feel of his protective, protected hoof on your shoulder reassures you of his good intentions. That he set it on the ‘ugly’ shoulder only reiterated this for you.
“Mr. Officer… Hayes? I’m Doctor Septics. This young lady is Spindle Shivers. She was brought under our care exactly two years, four months, and sixteen days ago. I have her paperwork here and already have a carriage set to take her home.” He handed a few papers to the officer, who glanced over them, peering up at the doctor. For his career, he was a bulky stallion, age not having slowed him down at all. He always had a weary look to him. Looking after you probably had a lot to do with that.
Day 18 in the hospital. You don’t know if you’d call it a blessing after it’d taken half your body but your… condition, be it parasitic, a genetic defect, or whatever in Tartarus it is, seemed finally satisfied. It stopped spreading. Instead of spreading though, every couple of days you’d be visited by the ‘tingles’. The area would vary but once they started it would inevitably spread to all the holes that covered you. An itchy sort of feeling, one that was only satisfied not just through the nubs of flesh, but digging deeper into the black, oily abyss beneath your skin. But to dig a hoof inside was such a pleasure, what sort of pleasure is hard to categorize, but with time and tending the tingles would relent and you’d feel close to normal. Aside from the knowledge that half of you including your eye was now holes with possibly no blood or organs beneath it. That was a thought that still irked you today, even though you were pretty sure at this point if the condition was to kill you, it would have done so by now.
It was while you were having lunch (a medically proportioned healthy diet of… green goop, brownish goop, something akin to gravy… hospital food) that you received your first visitor in a good while. You ask if it’s your mother, it’s not. You sigh. I’d been almost three weeks, and some of the terror had started to dilute itself into a constant expectation of the worst. At least, that was the current coping gameplan. The stallion who came to visit you was familiar. The one who lost his cool on the fifth day of containment while the other specialist went and did all of his testing. He looked stilted, like a stallion who hadn’t been at ease for a long time. He had a small package with him. He looks you in the eye, and to his credit he didn’t look ill, just sympathetic at this point.
“Oh, it’s you, you’re the doc that got wet feet that day.”
He sighs, walking to the glass before collapsing in the wooden chair set for visitors and active watching nurses.
“Yeah… That’s me. Sorry about that, doubt losing composure like that did much for patient morale.”
“You could have been a sentient ice cream and hug dispenser and I’d still have felt too terrified to notice the difference. It’s… stopped spreading for now. Guess that’s kinda nice.” You rub your normal hoof behind your neck awkwardly.
“I noticed, I was looking through your medical files. Felt guilty about two weeks ago, was able to find your house. Gotta get permits to bring a lot of things in but figured you’d appreciate getting this place to look a bit more like home.” He opens a slot on the other side of the glass, and inserts the package, then rotates it, you’ve already learned how this game worked from your meals. You open the rotating cabinet and take the package. It was wrapped in silver.
“More like home… So I’m gonna be here for a while, huh?”
“It looks like it may be for a very long time. We are doing samples on your uh…”
“-Goop.” you interrupt, having named it yourself a while ago, starting to open up the box.
“Goop. And well, on the bright side it’s not acidic or anything, it doesn’t seem to want to destroy your cell tissue. It just… morphs it. Somehow.”
“And that’s supposed to be… good news?”
“Well, considering the alternative was each hole drilling inside of you with indescribable agony, yeah, I’d say pretty good news.”
“Well I must be the luckiest mare in all of Ponyville then.” you laugh dryly. The wrapping is pulled away and you open the box. It was a small blue vase, well sculpted, the one you made the day you got your cutie mark. A little reminder of what life was like before this. You set it on your desk.
“Thanks doc. You’re the first to talk to me without trying to put another hole in me with a syringe or vomit in a while.”
“Well, on that note, I should probably let you know I’ll be working here for a while. Your other specialist is holed up in Canterlot doing intense studies on the information he found on you, and being higher up than I am, he requested I keep tabs on your condition.” Oh…
He catches the sad look in your eye, the look of ‘finding out the first person to willingly engage you in conversation was only doing so because it was his job to’ sort of look.
“Oh hey, no getting all downtrodden, I was still the guy who suggested the idea to him, he just agreed with me. Canterlot has a surplus of doctors nowadays anyways, and I could use the homey environment of Ponyville for a bit.”
“Sorry… I’ve been trying to keep it together is all. I’ll take any company I can get, Mister…?”
“Septics. First name is Anti, for the record before you get the giggles.”
“Pft, wouldn’t dream of it. I’m Spindle Shivers, but your paperwork probably already says that much.”
…
“So uh, Doc… Is there any news about my mother?” He breaks eye contact with you for the first time.
“Well… I did some research around town, and was able to get some information. After talking with some extended family and getting some exams run, she apparently took a one way train to Appleoosa and left her identification papers behind.”
“I see… So she’s gone, huh?”
“That’s… what it looks like, kid.”
His voice is naturally gruff, but there was a layer of apology pressed over each word. You take a deep breath, fighting back the liquid welling in the corner. Doesn’t do much good for the ‘other’ eye, it begins to leak thin black streaks down your face of its own accord. You wipe it off, not wanting to trigger a round of ‘hole tingles’ in the middle of your new company. You smile wryly.
“... I like you.”
“Beg pardon?”
“Any other doctor would have just lied and said my mom was going to be back any second. You didn’t, you’re honest.”
He sighs, tugging his coat a bit tighter.
“... I know what it’s like to be stuck in that whirlwind of ‘knowing’ and ‘not knowing’ about what your family is going through. I was just trying to treat you like I would myself.”
“Sounds like you’ve got a story there.” You lay on your tummy, propping your head up. The floor is hospital laminated tile, it’s nice and cool. It would be uncomfortable but you’ve noticed your ‘condition’ responds quite well to the cold. You were happy when they declared they were going to build you a little shower stall in the corner instead of making you ask and having to arrange a huge germ free environment and put you in a hazmat suit just to walk down the hall to bathe. You doubt it was for your sake so much as they were tired of you clogging the drain. You can’t help it if you leak. You’re pulled from your thoughts by Septic’s voice.
“A story for another time maybe. But not tonight. I gotta get going now, but I’ll be back in a week. Got some paperwork to fill before I can transfer.”
You frown, a full week?
“No getting all puppydog sad on me, it’s the best I can arrange. And hey, you say you like honesty?”
“Yeah.”
He sighs, before looking you over. Not in the creepy, sensual sort of way, but that of an intense analyst. He notices the good and bad side, stopping mostly to stare at your eye, the good one. After a pause he speaks.
“I’ve seen a lot of patients in a lot of bad places. You’ve got a lot of life in your eye, I know these things. I won’t say it’ll all get better, but if you keep your spirit up, you will make it through this.”
You try to make a snippy comeback, or a joke, or something to dilute the atmosphere laid down, but by the time you get your voice he’d already left.
“Well get on in, we’ve got a pretty long ride back to Ponyville. And put this on.”
You’re walking in autopilot at this point, a dull sense of sobriety interrupted as the hooded cape was tossed to you. You slip into it, staining the brown material black as you were still leaking a bit from the engorged pores throughout your body. Septic points his hoof at the seat next to him, a small wooden carriage. Two work ponies are leading it. Both are wearing proper hazmat suits, so you know they work for the hospital. You sit in your seat as Septic takes his own at the reigns, You look down at your hooves.
“How’d you know I was going to Manehatten?” you murmur.
“Because you’re predictable, kid. Two days ago you had your little tantrum over wanting to see the big city lights and meet a fine stallion and yatta, yatta, yatta. Two days later Nurse… ugh, what’s his name-”
“-Nurse Strokes.”
“-Yeah, him. Apparently you take off while he’s walking you for a routine inspection. Manehatten is the only city within a hundred miles of Ponyville, where else would I look?”
“Guess I should’ve snuck to blimp and aimed for Canterlot instead, huh?”
“That’s not funny. Did you touch anyone? I know you got a crowd to see you, they’ll be wearing gas masks and prepping for potential quarantine for weeks now, you know.”
“Of course I didn’t touch anyone, and I’m not contagious! Not by touch.”
“I said that to calm the officer down. You don’t know that.”
You bite your tongue… You did know that much, but that kind of information would be best saved till after this storm blows over.
“Anyways I played it very safe, Didn’t touch no pony, didn’t speak unless spoken to. Promise.”
“... Well, it can’t be helped now. Geez, you’re gonna make me retake up drinking, do you hate your room that bad?” Oh great, here comes the guilt trip.
“You know I’m grateful for what you guys do, I tell you all the time… I just… Needed to pick up a few things.”
“That’s your excuse? You have a staff of nurses and myself at your disposal almost every hour of the day, what could you possibly need that required risking a trip to Manehatten?”
“First off, aside from Strokes the rest of the nurse staff refuses to talk to me unless they absolutely have to because I terrify them. Second, Strokes refused, and if Strokes refused then you definitely would.” you pout, crossing your hooves.
“Try me.” He looks you in the eye and you suddenly regret bringing up the subject. It’s not that you were particularly modest, quite the opposite really. Being locked up alone for two years with minimal social contact’ll do that to you. But Septic was old enough to be your father and well… In a sense that you’d probably never admit to him, he kinda was now. Sort of.
“I was here to get a sex toy, okay? Strokes wouldn’t do it. Geez…” You sigh, feeling an itch as your cheeks flare. The holes around your face start to feel leaky again. You dig your hoof into the seat of the carriage, forcing the liquid from seeping.
“... Oh. Well that’s… Ah Tartarus, I can’t respond to that... It was still a stupid thing to do.”
“I know... “ you sigh, the awkward tension in the cart amplified to incredible amounts. Septic coughs.
“Well… I noticed you didn’t have any bags with you, so I’m guessing this was all for nothing, huh?”
You chuckle to yourself, giving a sad, bashful smile to Septic.
“Yep, all this for nothing…”
You do your best for the long trip home to keep from giving away any noises to hint at the existence of the thick, gray flesh like pillar you had stuffed and hidden neatly away in a particularly tight hole in your hip.
Unfortunately for you, getting your cutie mark wasn’t the only aspect of your life that you were a late bloomer in. You were old enough to know what the estrus cycle was and frankly, you knew a number of fellow ponies your age had already been enjoying their fair share of sex. However the exhausting heat of estrus eluded you much like your mark did, and it wasn’t until the fifth month of your quarantine that life began to get… complicated. Until this bizarre fifth month though, quite a bit had happened to change your life a bit. Make things a bit less… surreal.
You’d managed to adjust to the hospital life as best a mare could in your situation. True to his word, Septic visited you regularly, eventually making you his sole patient. He’d have to wear the hazmat suit when he was with you but he was open to your venting. Which you took advantage of, the only company you have being willing to hear you bellyache about it was relieving. The only aspect of this relationship you disliked was Septic himself wasn’t very vocal. You could see in his eyes he had problems, but he’d always insist that the kid who was currently leaking all over the floor had higher priority issues than some old stallion who just moved into the boonies. At the same time, however, you did manage to finally make a… an acquaintance.
As mentioned earlier, Ponyville’s nurse staff is large but most are frankly terrified of you. Be it physical appearance or the risk of contamination, almost all of them refuse to make eye contact. to make matters worse they have a limited amount of nurses ‘tied’ to each patient, so you had three that altered shifts to make sure you were alright (Septic did more personal work to ensure you were comfortable than they did, honestly) so you never even got to meet the whole staff at the hospital anyways. It really hammered in the fact that in this tiny, windowed wing you were truly alone and isolated. Even your only friend could only talk to you behind four inches of glass or in a hazmat suit.
At least until two in the morning when you hear the sound of the door to your ‘room’ being slid open. This was two months into your quarantine, and you were still a bit antsy, you back against the wall, wondering what was going to happen to you. Experiments? Were they going to take you away? Or just put you down and kill the disease you’ve become once and for all? A shadow emerges from the open door, a unicorn judging by the glow of his horn illuminating the ground before him. Then the light pierces the glass, and you find yourself caught like an animal, you try to cover your sick half to no avail.
“P-please don’t hu-”
“Woah, Sweet Celestia!! Oh crud, shh… I forgot, gotta be quiet. Sorry there, you caught me off guard. Whew... Okay.” the voice was masculine, but not as deep as most doctors here. The voice didn’t sound to be much older than yours actually. You try to make out details on this new face when he heads to the button by the door and the unnecessarily powerful enchanted lighting system flares the room in white.
He was wearing nurse scrubs, and he definitely looked young. You were around the age of a mare going into her final levels of education before pursuing college, and this guy could not be older than a college age stallion. His coat was blue, not a subtle shade of it either. His hair was kept unusually long for a stallion, and was a jungle green in color. His eyes were green as well, matching your own. He sidles up to the glass, grabbing a chair as he talks.
“Okay, so I know this is probably really rude of me, but I had to see if the rumors are true.”
You don’t move from your wall. Not that you could do much to defend yourself if this guy wasn’t actually a nurse. Besides sneeze on him.
“Rumors?”
“Well yeah, that we were actually using the quarantine room again! Ponyville’s too small., they keep anything interesting that happens around here very hush-hush, but word gets around. Also wow, sorry about freaking out just there. Very rude, I’d imagine you're probably sick of that reaction by now.”
“Um…”
“Wait, that was presumptuous of me to assume that is the normal reaction. Also very rude of me. Uh, y’know what, before they notice I ditched my patient to sneak in here let’s redo the whole introduction thing. My name is Nurse Strokes. Penn Strokes. Because I do paperwork here.”
You stare at him awkwardly as he holds a hoof to the glass. He doesn’t move it, he’s awkwardly smiling.
“Are you… really a doctor?”
“No, I’m a nurse. Oh what, don’t tell me you're afraid of me.” he rolls his eyes, “You’re the one with a giant ‘WARNING DO NOT APPROACH’ sign on your door.”
You sigh, no wonder you don’t get many visitors. You trot from your wall to the glass. You try to keep your sick half in the shadow but all the apprehension seemed to have passed for Strokes. Seems like that initial bout of panic was all he needed.
“Alright, I’m Spindle Shivers… And uh… This is where I live now.”
You gesture back at your room, Septic had picked up a few things and had them pass basic sanitation procedures. A lot of items you wanted were rejected but you did have an actual mattress and wool sheets now instead of those thin, white hospital ones. You had a shower stall installed in the corner near your toilet. Both of these facilities now had curtains so you could have some iota of privacy too. You had a drawer of shelves near your bed now as well, topped with sculptures. They obviously couldn’t bring in a full kiln and ribbon cutter into a hospital (so much for your special talent…) but they did give you a good amount of clay to play with. It wasn’t quite the same but it was something to do beside stare sadly at the ceiling. You also had a few books, mostly school related. You were no longer employed in school, but Septic insisted you try and educate yourself when you could. Sounds nice in theory except you keep getting the books stained black with your hoof hole emissions.
“Huh, well… It looks… clean? Sorry, I tend to blather but didn’t really expect to find anyone in here. how long have they kept you in here?”
“About… two months, I have a calendar over there…” you point to the desk. You’d been ‘x’ing out days as they passed. There was no window so you’d learned to rely on the clock on the other side of the glass.
“Yeesh, I’d have gone crazy at this point.” he pauses as you ponder just where your state of mental health was hanging at around this point. No doubt depression had set in and a ton of paranoia, but you don’t think you’ve completely lost it. Venting with Septic helped, and while you cried a lot at night, you’ve never thought of doing anything really drastic. The thought of dying still frightened you, and no amount of leaky, itchy holes would change that.
“I wonder if I have… You’re not like the other nurses.”
“Whaddaya mean? Is that a ‘dumb’ joke, because I’ll have you know-”
“No. Because this whole time we’ve been talking you’ve been looking at me.” His face goes a bit red and he looks aside.
“Oh, uh, sorry, don’t get the wrong impression. I’m just trying to be friendly, It would be extremely unprofessional if - and the age gap and-”
“Wait what are you talking about?”
“-Absolutely nothing. Forget I said all that.”
“I was talking about how you were looking me in the eye. I’ve only seen one other person since I’ve gotten here that wasn’t too disgusted to look at me, and it took him over two weeks to get to that point. That’s weird. Doesn’t this bother you?”
You gesture to your face, the many polyps sunk inside of it. For emphasis, you tap one of the holes with your hoof, a thin trail of black liquid making its way down your face, collecting in a hole beneath it.
“Well honestly, I think-wait, do they hurt?”
“... Well, they itch and feel really weird and I can’t see from one eye but they’ve never really hurt me before.”
“Well, now that I’ve established I’m not being insensitive on the matter, I think they make you look pretty metal.”
“I’m sorry, what?”
“I’m just saying, it’s very interesting, it makes you one of a kind. Shame about the whole contagion thing. Reminds me a bit of changelings really. Did they check that? Did one of your parents happen to possibly be a changeling by chance? Not that you’d really be able to know that but still.”
You laugh, it’s a dry laugh. You don’t see your routine nurses very often but you definitely hear them. When you were first administered the hospital staff was abuzz with rumors as to what could have caused your condition. More than a few nurses of both sides of the gender spectrum entertained themselves with stories about how your existence came from your mother having an affair or two with the Changelings. Bloodwork has proven this wasn’t this case, but before you knew that their gossip hit you hard. You never knew your father.
“Despite what the nurses may tell you, my blood says I’m pure pony. At least, this half does.” You point at the normal half of your face.
“Hah, well at least you’ve kept a sense of humor, I like that about you Swissy.”
“-It’s Spindle.”
“Nope, Swissy suits you. Because of the-”
“Alright, I get it,” you try to sound frustrated but can’t help feel a small smile tug at your lips. He was clearly teasing you and you probably should be offended. But he just looked so ridiculously genuine. He was also the first person to treat you like an actual pony from the start, and he just made light of your condition. It should be infuriating, but for once having someone regard the holes as a joke instead of the spawn of all nightmares, well, it was nice.
“Oh! There comes your routine nurse from lunch, I gotta bolt or I’ll get fired. I’ll try and see you again sometime Swissy.”
You don’t get a chance to say goodbye as he’d already slammed the lights off and bolted, and true to his word, the routine nurse peered inside. He never looked you in the eye when he spoke.
“You alright in there?”
“Um… yeah… Just had a weird dream.”
Strokes became one of your routine nurses three weeks later. You asked if he pulled any strings to do it, and beyond that why do so in the first place. He just put a shushing hoof to his lips, and it was around this point that despite being confined, life had began to sort of develop a proper pattern for you again. You’d chat it up with Strokes every few days and while there was an age gap, he was close enough to develop a strange sort of friendship with him. He was a bit awkward and had a vulgar streak, but over time you stopped caring. Admittedly some of his attitude may have wore off on you. You also still had frequent visits from Septic, who you grew to trust with more information about yourself as time went on, but still had no luck getting him to break any of his own walls down. Regardless, you now had friends, and that’s all you really need for a future. You started to focus more on your studies, and pursued literature more since there wasn’t really anything else to occupy your mind aside from the ‘itching’ stages that came and went every few days from your holes.
But then Estrus started.
It was five months and two weeks into your quarantine. During the day was your hint that something was coming. You felt warm to the chest, and breathing was difficult. You told your nurse, but after some quick runovers they found you were perfectly healthy where there were organs present to check for heartbeats and the like. But then the heaviness came, and you found it hard to walk around. You decided to rest that day, that maybe you’d been over worrying about your condition or something. Sleeping it off seemed a good idea.
By two in the morning you are pulled from your sleep by the heat more overwhelming than ever. You cry for assistance but your throat has gone dry, leaving you only to rasp quietly. You feel all the blood in your body rushing to your cheeks and elsewhere. Your eyelids felt heavy, and your lungs heaved with each heavy breath you took. The intensity had effected your expanded pores, they seemed to tense up with you, every breath they get tighter and tighter, leaking black streams from all down your side into your mattress. You sink your teeth into your lip, only to find you were just going to make yourself bleed doing that. You roll over onto your tummy, each movement sending wracks of burning heat down your chest and tummy, then coming to a tormentous halt right between your thighs.
You sink your teeth into your pillow, and don’t even notice as your body tightens, lifting your rump to the air. The noise of spilling liquid is audible as the goop from your inner and outer thigh begins to drizzle down onto the mattress and floor beneath you. You can feel the tit above your marehood begin to tense up from arousal, and the hole where the other tit used to be was leaking far more than ever before. And while all the holes around you begin to share their weight of the aching heat, your ‘new’ nipple was particularly burning.
You can’t bring yourself to fight it, you slide your hoof down your chest, the frog of the hoof pressing against every polyp, stretching each hole slightly as you pass down your body. The sensation was so stimulating, you feel your head go blank, this wasn’t just the satisfaction of an itch anymore.
You slide the tip of your good hoof around the lid of the hole where your tit should be. A shudder runs down your back, and you find yourself sliding the tip of the hoof deeper, circling around the edges into yourself.
‘Oh Celestia! This… This shouldn’t feel so good...’
You try to silence your moans, but your body and its many pores adore driving you further. The black liquid seeps from the hole, soaking your hoof. Then things got stranger. The goop inside began to seep out, but this time not as liquid. It held its texture together like gelatin before hanging from your body. It shimmered as it retained its jiggly form. In the darkness of the room you could look under your body and now see two shadows. That of your real, pink nipple and this black, goopy nub that had created itself to match the other half of your body. You bring your hoof over the black nipple, and your touch sends a fire directly beneath your breasts into your marehood. You push your hoof inward, forcing the ‘nipple’ back inside, you legs tremble as the goop seems to battle against you, before slowly seeping inward, releasing more of the liquid down your hoof.
You ease the pressure, and slowly, the goo beneath your skin reforms, extending again, recreating your ‘nipple’. Except unlike your perky pink bud, this one was ‘drooling’ onto the mattress in syrupy black spatters. You rub your hoof around it, where the hole begins. you can feel the other holes around the nipple began to palpitate at your ministrations, them getting leaky as well. You moan into your pillow, sure you’d toyed with your body before, and you knew what estrus was, but after it skipped past you for so long… You never expected it like this. You bring your hole-filled hoof down your chest as well.
Oh Goddess you can feel the holes not just down your belly being stretched and satisfied, but the ones on your hoof as well.Every single gentle tug and pull amplifies itself a hundred over, and you squirm harder. You try to pinpoint where your body ached the most, for most mares it would have been the dripping marehood between your thighs or your unmatched breasts, but every hole began to crave your attention in equal doses. You rub your ridged hoof up and down your side, to your hip. You feel a particularly wide hole situated near where your tail begins, it’s leaking particularly messily. As your hoof races around the rim your hips buck high, thighs parting. You slide your good hoof lower, past your breasts to your needy pussy.
You can’t tell what was your own natural nectar or the goo of your many polyps that greets your hoof as you circle around your pink nub. What frightens you more than that was despite your sex being the source of your heat, it was the feeling of the hoof around the hole in your flesh that is making your brain melt. It was as though the hole knew where you would slide your hoof next and would burn with the fiercest desire to be filled right as your rough pad would slide against it. That friction, that glorious friction sending waves of wonder through your filthy, strange body. You keep playing with your marehood but the holes couldn’t wait anymore. You couldn’t please all of yourself, but you found a damn fine spot here. You slide your hoof deeper into the hole, it stretches to match the girth of your hoof. The other holes around it as forced to thin to accommodate the penetrating digit. You feel your hoof sinking inside of your hip, the wetness inside of the goo, and you feel such an incredible fullness as you fill your hole up.
“Aw buck it!” you cry out, unable to cope with the tension, you jam your hoof into your hip deeply, too deep you fear. As you pry yourself open you shiver as you feel your own feminine nectar squirt its way out of you, no natural penetration could match this splendour. Fortunately you don’t injure yourself, on the contrary, as your hoof sunk in inch by inch the goo changed, solidifying like gelatin. When you pushed your hoof as far as it could go inside of you, it was practically solid, ensuring you didn’t accidentally push yourself through one hole and out another. Though in your hormone rattled mind that sounded hotter than anything in Equestria right about now.
Your body shivers with pleasure as you feel yourself trying and failing to adjust to the massive stretching you’ve done to your hole. You want to pump yourself, but unlike your natural sex the holes never truly adjust to stretching. As you learn over the next many months these holes always return to their intended size and never loosen. They also never, ever adjust to the girth you fill them with. You try to slide your hoof out just the slightest bit to fuck your flesh properly, but even the slightest leeway set your hole alight with burning, frustrating desire. You sink deeper back in, opting to twist the hoof in circles instead, panting and moaning. Your legs twitch, you go to sink your hoof inside of your marehood. You feel tension as your pink lips part, your hoof’s frog pressing against your clit as you slide inside. A warm sensation fills you as well but…
It’s not enough. You can barely bring yourself to care about ministering to your own pussy, it was pleasurable but it pales to the pleasure derived from tending to these holes. You pull your hoof away from your sex. It leaks with wild abandon, you don’t care. Any stains will be hidden by the black pouring from your body anyways. You bring your hoof up to your breasts again… Your nipple was still extended, you brush past it forcefully. Oh it’s good, but you wanted the perfect candidate. Every bump and ridge screamed for attention, but which one needed you the most. So much potential but only two hooves…
“Mgf!” You choke yourself against your pillow as you find tonight’s candidate. An oval shaped hole that was particularly leaky just slightly off center of your belly. It tenses up as your hoof brushed past, leaking lewdly over your hoof, soaking your yellow coat in black syrup. You keep gyrating your holey hoof into your hip as you get ready to explore this excitable new one at your belly. As the tip of your hoof grazes the ‘lid’ of the hole, you can feel the holes around it flare jealously, they burn you for rejecting them, but the warm tingles this special hole gave you quickly convinced you to ignore the rest of your body’s cries for now. Drooling into your pillow, you sidle your hoof sideways, gently prying this new hole open. It squelches lewdly,making wet noises as your hoof begins to fit its way in. Bearing in mind how hard it is to try and pull out once you’ve truly filled yourself, you force yourself to take this second hole slower than the first.
The first hole is still tightly packed and so help you, it would probably take three nurses to force you to ever relinquish this deep, full satisfaction. You slide your hoof round and round the lid of this new one, each circle prompting another pulse from the needy polyp, you can feel sweat forming on your brow as your body heats up more and more. You part the hole a bit, with your hoof, it’s tighter than the one in your hip. As it stretches you feel your eye lulled back in pleasure as the stressful neediness of your strange body begins to alleviate.
‘C’mon girl… Slow n’ steady… Slowly...’
You fight your body, the desire to thrust in. The desire to force yourself open and keep going. To spend the rest of your life going hole to hole, an endless sea of holes, each a brand new component for pleasure and relief at your disposal. You can see yourself in your head, a terrible nightmare to any other pony. The world would be disgusted to see you now, needily moaning and drooling as you fuck any hole you can reach with such reckless abandon. The sanctity of sexual rules, the ‘erogenous zones’ were no longer a limitation for your sponge like half of your body.
“Forget it!” You groan, stuffing your hoof deep and forcefully into the hole at your belly. Like the other hole, the gelatin solidifies as you get too deep, this one doesn’t let you in as deep as the one in your hip. But it definitely gave back in other ways more than the cavity in your hip. You can feel all the polyps surrounding you begin to twitch and leak as a radial wave of pleasure wipes your mind white and steals your vision, replacing it with stars and seas of pale watercolors. What escapes you would be modest to call a moan, it was practically a scream as you fill yourself further. The mattress beneath you is slick with your own syrupy brew, and you lay there for the longest time. You are lost in the endless expanse of pleasure, just rocking your hips slightly as you twist your hooves slowly back and forth, refusing to give a centimeter of freedom to ruin the fullness of your holes.
You can feel your own nectar escaping from your sex in waves, your hips a quivering mess of satisfaction. There was no point trying to keep track on how many climaxes have been brought on from your new pleasure points, the sensation had no focal point to send pleasurable ripples to, instead settling for every inch of your body. You feel lightheaded and fall to your side, your hooves hit against the mattress and sink just a bit deeper, reinvigorating your drive. You manage to open your lazy eye enough to look down at yourself. Your body… Repulsive in every way, wet, leaky, damaged… But so dirty. You were the only mare in the whole world who would ever know what this feeling was. Well, ideally.
It was as you lay here, so very full and satisfied that the idea struck you that maybe this disease wasn’t that at all. A blessing? A sin? To feel such incredible filling pleasure couldn’t be right. Whatever it was, it certainly wasn’t cursing you at the moment. The only true despair you felt during your first night ‘tending’ to your holes was sadness at the thought of your options to fill yourself with being so limited. Then the routine nurse kicked the door open. You rip your hooves out, crossing your legs to hide your flared and drooling sex.
“Are you okay!? We heard screaming!”
It wasn’t Strokes, just a routine stallion. His eyes go wide as he looks over you, turning the light on. You can feel the holes you had filled initially shrinking rapidly back to their normal size, then notice that the mattress and floor were all completely soaked in black where the liquid kept dispensing from your pores. Your face goes redder than before, if possible. They already think you’re a freak, now this guy’s going to know you were-
“Hey, it’s okay. Rough night? Want to get Septic?” He doesn’t look at you, but his voice sounds concerned. Way more so than it usually did.
“... Um?”
“I have the notes, bad dream? I know that… uh… they leak when you’re upset. I can call someone if-”
“Upset? Oh!” Oh thank the Goddess, “Yeah… just um- remembering the old life. I’ll be fine, sorry for the mess.”
“Y-yeah. Well, call us if you need anything.” He nods to you quickly, still never looking you in the face before leaving. You exhale till your lungs hurt as the door shuts. … You learned two things beyond the obvious that night. You were a screamer apparently, and that was something you would need to change. Because you now knew how you were going to enjoy every night.