At Wit's End
It was the darkest night of the year; the Summer Solstice.
Pinkie Pie could faintly hear fireworks burst in the distance and pushed out the sound as she continued her gloomy journey. Large piles of rocks loomed around her and nothing disturbed the clearing save flickers of shadows that came from the lantern clutched in her mouth. She inhaled slowly and then let her breath out. Her eyelids felt ready to clamp shut like a garage’s steel door, yet she pushed herself to keep trotting onwards. While she walked, her hooves left wet prints within the mud of the rock quarry.
She continued her winding journey for a little bit further and then sat down on her haunches. In a swift motion, she had put the lantern she was carrying beside her on the ground.
Pinkie Pie scanned over the clearing. The light of distant stars was visible through the skies of the cloudless night and great piles of rocks loomed around her. A part of her that she had long since left in the past gave them names; igneous, metamorphic, sedimentary and many others. She paused for a second to consider if she had labeled any of the rocks correctly, then dismissed the thought.
“Why did I come here?” she wondered aloud.
She sat in silent contemplation for several moments.
Then she remembered.
Her frizzy mane began to writhe and twist as she let out a long sigh. She held a hoof up to her face and squinted at it.
“You don’t have to pretend anymore.” whispered a voice that came from nowhere.
“Pretend what?” asked Pinkie. She whirled around, trying to find where the mysterious pony was hiding in the quarry.
She ventured far from the light of her lantern in her fruitless search. A frigid breeze blew over the clearing that made her teeth chatter together.
“Why is it so cold?” she asked aloud again. Pushing aside the sudden change in temperature, she lifted up a rock, to find nothing but a pile of dirt.
She stirred the dirt with her hoof in a directionless, repetitive motion.
Then a familiar sensation overtook her.
First, it was her legs that succumbed to the numbness, then her heartbeat began to quicken its pace. Her breaths came shorter and shorter and she fell to the ground. Pinkie’s hooves clutched the side of her head and she felt a lone tear make its way down her face. She squeezed her eyes together and clenched her teeth.
“Have you noticed that you’re always the one that makes them laugh?” inquired the elusive stranger.
The wind was growing in intensity. Eerie howls swept over the quarry and the dirt itself seemed to wrap her in a shroud that obscured her vision. Her body was swept with the sensation of small pebbles bounding off of her skin and she felt her tail whip around, along with her mane. The force of the wind made her squeeze her eyes shut, yet the coldness of the air stung the insides of her nostrils.
“I’m...Pinkie Pie!” she muttered under her breath.
From what little of the world she could see with her eyelids half-closed, there was nopony around to hear her words.
Pinkie felt something overtake her that she hadn’t felt for a long time. The world became unreal to her and she gasped as she saw herself lying unconscious upon the ground. She shook her head and realized that she had been imagining the experience within her mind. Still, a sense of dizziness and nausea overtook her. Her limbs were still numb and she struggled to feel anything across her body.
Then she shut her eyes and opened them slowly. The wind had stopped and warmth had returned to the clearing, to replace the coldness that had hung over everything a mere moment prior. A small circle of light ringed the lantern in the center of the clearing. Beyond its reach, the walls of the quarry had closed in on her. She frantically searched for a way out, only to find that she had been trapped within the quarry. Even the night sky far above had melted into a sea of inky blackness, the light of the stars above consumed into its writhing depths.
She trotted towards the lantern and it grew farther and farther away.
“Hey!” she cried out in a small voice. “I need you to...see...”
The light transformed into a small, orange pinpoint that faintly shone through the blackness surrounding it, which then vanished.
Pinkie Pie found herself alone in an abyss of darkness. The pressure of the silence enshrouding her was nearly deafening and she found that she had forgotten to breathe. Nothing sat before her besides a rock and once again, she struggled to recall its proper classification from deep within her memory.
“Metamorphic.” said a familiar, disinterested voice.
She turned to look at the voice, though she already knew its owner.
“Maud.” she said in a low voice. “How are you...here?”
Maud looked at her from underneath her dull, purple bangs and then rolled her eyes. She turned her back to Pinkie Pie and began to trot off into the distance at a slow pace.
“Wait!” cried out Pinkie. She tried to trot towards her sister, only to find that her hooves felt as if they were frozen in place.
“Just get to work. And leave me alone.” snorted her sister.
“Get to?...” wondered Pinkie aloud.
Then she saw the work before her.
The rocks seemed to stretch towards the skies themselves. What had been far-off memories only moments prior came rushing back to her. The rocks before her were to be sorted by shape, weight and technical classification. Even a single error could be grounds for a single revision of the entire process, making it into a slow and tedious affair.
“But...I’m not...” she whimpered quietly to herself.
She broke a rock with her hoof out of anger.
Her leg plunged through the stone and she felt shards of debris cut her leg, leaving wounds that stung like angry hornets in her flesh. She shuddered as she felt blood trickle down her leg. Then a sensation of shock overtook her.
She was bleeding!
A gasp escaped her lips and she jumped to her hooves, gritting her teeth. She looked around frantically for a moment and then found a small puddle of old rainwater beside a large boulder within the quarry’s depths. Her legs carried it to her in a few breathless moments and she submerged her leg within the puddle.
She fought her gag reflex as the puddle filled quickly with her own blood. Words like artery and incision came to her, but she dismissed the frightening medical terminology from her mind.
“Pinkie.” angrily spat the voice that had been haunting her from before.
This time, there was no question as to its source. She looked into the depths of the puddle. Streaks of her own blood had clouded the water and puffs of dark gore seeped from the cuts along her leg.
“Who are you?” asked Pinkie with a mixture of curiosity and fear.
Pinkie’s jaw dropped as she saw a face began to take shape within the puddle. The mare’s face was sullen and a white-hot glare of rage shot from her eyes. Her mane hung in an unbroken flat, pink sheet parted from one side. Her eyes were as blue as Pinkie Pie’s own, though the mare's brow was furrowed in an enraged scowl.
She poked it with her other hoof and the surface of the water trembled, upsetting the reflection within its depths. For a moment, she felt a twinge of relief creep across her body, because the angry mare’s face had vanished.
Then a leg shot up from the puddle.
Pinkie Pie screamed and fell flat on her flanks. She scrambled to her hooves while her furious doppelganger climbed its way from the puddle’s depths. The leg from before grasped the ground’s edge and a head dripping with blood emerged. The mare’s teeth ground together in a furious snarl and her eyes were barely visible from the intensity of the rage playing across her face.
Pinkie shrieked and tried to run while the mare pulled herself the rest of the way from the puddle. Her legs pumped furiously, but she failed to move and she gave up after only a few moments.
“Pinkie Pie, do you ever think there’s a reason why nopony laughs at your jokes?” snarled the mare.
“Of course, ponies laugh at my jokes! Everypony likes me because...” said Pinkie.
Her words trailed off and she felt a sudden hardness come over her heart.
Then memories rushed back into her mind. Social rejections, all of the times she had tried to make somepony laugh, only to be ignored. She recalled in a single instant the number of times her party invitations had been declined, the instances when she had been ignored when she was just trying to make a new friend.
“It’s because you’re awkward.” hissed the mare.
“I... well, maybe a little bit.” muttered a defeated Pinkie Pie. “I guess I can be at times.”
She felt the happiness leaving her body like air rushing out of a balloon. She sighed and lay down on the ground, telling herself that she belonged down there, with all the dust and rocks of the quarry.
“Nopony really likes you. They just keep you around because you’re so fucking annoying you do something a little bit funny every now and then.” said the mare in a low but steady voice.
Pinkie Pie felt herself sobbing. Her chest heaved as she let out an ocean of tears and she sniffled while snot begin to drip down her face.
“It’s not true.” she whispered to herself, staring at the ground.
“Just go away. Let me out.” whispered the mare.
Pinkie looked towards the puddle and then towards the mare. “Will I feel afraid in there?”
The mare shook her head with an incredibly forced smile strung tightly across her lips.
Before she knew what she was doing, Pinkie had dragged herself over towards the puddle. She curiously stuck a hoof in and was surprised when it didn’t hit the bottom. Out of curiosity, she submerged her head.
Then something shoved her from behind and she felt herself falling rapidly. Gallons of water swirled about her as she submerged further and further into the depths of the puddle.
Darkness overtook her and she felt herself falling into a slumber deeper than any she had ever known...
“PINKIE!” screamed Rainbow Dash.
Fluttershy and Twilight followed Dash as she sprinted full-tilt into the quarry. Just as they had all feared, Pinkie Pie was unconscious and covered in blood. A pill-case was clutched in Fluttershy’s mouth, the contents filled to the brim and the lid unopened. Tears formed in Fluttershy’s eyes as she beheld the state of her friend.
Dash rushed over and cradled her in her hooves. She noted that Pinkie’s mane had deflated into a flat state and her tail had followed suit. Her right foreleg was coated in blood and a nasty wound that had barely begun to scab up was ripped open across its surface.
“Dash, I’d get back if I were you.” uttered Twilight with a start.
Dash looked towards the alicorn with a frown on her face while gently setting Pinkie Pie on the ground. “But she needs-”
“She’s likely entered a psychotic state. This medication was supposed to be taken twice per day, for a month. And by the look of things, she never even opened the bottle.” said Twilight in a single, breathless expression.
Fluttershy gasped as she let the bottle fall out of her mouth. The top popped open and pills spilled over across the ground. “Guys, she’s-”
“Gone.” finished Dash for her.
Twilight, Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash turned around to see that their friend had vanished from where she had been placed on the ground.
“This could be really bad.” said Twilight in a nervous, quiet voice.