A pony walks into a suicide phone booth and that's what he says.
Manehattan is a sad place, far away from any magic and where happiness is not a given. Follow the life, and perhaps death of a yet unnamed pony, whose cheerfulness is made impossible by other ponies constantly complaining to him.
Will be updated as fast as possible, and will eventually be finished. Will contain rather mature themes and language but nothing too explicit.
… and it’s a story that might bore you but you don’t have to listen, yeah, I know it’s supposed to be your job but really, I would have no problem understanding. I’m not kidding at all, it’s really, really, bucking boring. Trust me , I know what it’s like, ponies boring you to death. Random ponies drunkenly telling you about their lives, which they probably find fascinating or at least worth listening, except they’re not and they end up boring themselves on the way, so they hang up and come back to their pathetic lives, forgetting you the second after they did. Or maybe some really do kill themselves, but I don’t think suicide happens very often in here. Or maybe it does. Maybe they just want you to believe the opposite.
You know, sometimes I stop and think, maybe I’m one of these ponies. My life is full of pathetic, boring ponies and I became one of them, no, they made me one of them. Or maybe I was boring and pathetic all along, and just didn’t know it. Well, my story isn’t different.
You may be expecting a tragic romance or some story of undying love but it’s nothing like that. You may be expecting some sort of tragic event wrecking my life and leaving me to pick up the pieces but the sad thing is, nothing real big ever happened to me. You may be expecting steamy hot lovemaking but all you’ll hear about is desperate people doing gross things or not actually doing anything. You may be expecting big adventures but I’ve never left Manehattan. You may be expecting murder. Horror. Magic.
But you’ll be deceived in every way. I’m not going to say anything worth writing a story about.
You’ve been warned. You’re free to hang up, but, please, don’t.
It’s okay, mister, says the Suicide Hotline Pony. I’m here for you, he says. You can trust me. Tell me everything.
The Suicide Hotline pony doesn’t sound bored already. He must be new. So I take a deep breath and I tell him. I tell him everything.
I tell him, it’s funny the way we all seem bound to attract something really specific. Like a second kind of “special talent”, except passive. I know ponies which just can’t help attracting mares, or money … Or whatever. It doesn’t really matter anyway.
Just ask me what I am attracting.
Mares ? Good try, but no. I’m not what you could call a pretty pony: big muzzle, small brownish eyes, greasy mane, I could go on for a long time. But we haven’t got all night, have we? Keep trying. Stallions ? Celestia hell no, why would you even think that ? Come on, you can do better. Trouble ? You’re a smart one, Mr. Suicide Hotline Pony. It’s definitely something like that, yes. But the exact answer would be losers. For some reason, losers seem unnaturally attracted to me. Not in a flirtatious way, I mean. For some reason, they feel the need to come at me and complain about their sad, pathetic little loser lives.
And that’s the same kind of loser bastard that made my soup go cold the other day. And every other day I can remember.
***
“I’m gonna tell ya somethin', kiddo … Life is nothin' but Celestia-damned plotholes, goin' about their daily lives, never stoppin' to look around … and, I dunno, maybe find some beauty in there, no, they just don’t dare turnin' their Celestia-damned heads so they don’t see all the buckin’ shit behind them and all the buckin’ piss on the side … Equestria is so sad, so I decided that I would be even sadder so I could defy that bitch … heh, seems fair kiddo, doesn’t it?”
That’s basically what was saying the fat, old, dirty earth pony sitting in front of me at this pretty good restaurant where I always go to lunch. This pony, his breath reeking of alcohol and liver cancer, I knew he would be spoiling my lunch the second I saw him enter. As soon as he saw me, sitting in the back of the room silently sipping my alfalfa soup, he just began walking towards me, and I put the bowl of soup back on the table knowing the next time I would be tasting it, it would be cold already. And yes, he did the same thing as the others.
He didn’t even introduce himself. He didn’t even care to know if I gave a buck or not. He cared even less about my slowly cooling bowl of soup. Eating hot wasn’t even a habit for him.
This pony asked himself real questions, and ponies having real problems don’t care about ponies like me’s lesser problems. I bet he even thought he was doing me a favor, making me listen as he talked his nonsense horseshit. Me being deaf wouldn’t have stopped him talking and talking. Those ponies, they just see you as a complaint-dumpster.
So I, my two giant ears and my natural cowardice, we just pretend to listen because I’m just too phoney to tell him I couldn’t care less about his so-called end of the world. If I wasn’t such a coward, I guess I would have been like :
- "Now why don’t you listen to me, buckface … Ponies like you, they come by dozen and they’re just being a pain in the plot … So you’re gonna pay for them … I don’t give a single buck about Equestria being sad … Trust me, I’m truly the worst … I never stop to look around and I swear I know about all the shit and piss … but I don’t bucking care about all those losers shitting … nor I care about losers like you, wondering why there’s so much shitting … so get the buck out because I feel my soup getting colder … And if it’s cold and you’re still there, I swear to Celestia I’ll kick your rotten teeth down your throat and finally make you shut up.”
But that, I couldn’t tell him. No, I just stood there and smiled, nodding every ten seconds or so, saying “Yeah, you’re so right”.
***
I admit it, having an infusion after my cold soup wasn’t such a bright idea. On the way back home, hot and cold fought without mercy in my belly and for once I was actually glad to push the entry door.
But most of the time, I wasn’t. I felt like somepony going back to the hospital. In fact, my apartment was like a warm toilet seat; you know somepony was there right before you and you know the moment you’ll be gone, somepony else will take your place. There was nothing here but thick bitterness. You wonder how many old ponies died there. In the bathroom, you shower with liquid nostalgia. You eat melancholia on a toast in the kitchen. And even with the lights off, that stench would constantly remind how poor, lazy and dirty I was.
Once I went to a tenant meeting, in the building basement. Even the rats came to complain. And before you ask, Mr. Suicide Hotline Pony, yes, this was not an exception. Everypony in the building told me about their daily woes. They moaned about dirtiness. The central heating not being warm enough. The noisy streets. The noisy ponies. The noisy doors slamming too hard.
Noise. Noise. Noise.
But I knew what really bothered them. It was the sound of their own entrails. Of their mares farting during the night. Of their mane going grey and not growing anymore. And somepony couldn’t stand hearing the dog upstairs clawing and clawing at the ground anymore, so he said that one night he’ll go up and crush its head under his hooves, and the dog owner calmly replied that the day after, he’ll go down and rip his throat with his bare teeth after feeding him the whole dog. The old whorse upstairs was sick and tired of the foals playing football in the yard, because she feared that one day they’ll break a window, and I remember that she didn’t hesitate kicking her daughter out of her home when she discovered she was dating a zebra. Apparently, breaking a window was worse than throwing your own daughter out onto the street.
Only my next-door neighbor wasn’t down the basement this day. Her name was Fleur. She was a unicorn so she just burned her name on her door. Just “Fleur”. Nothing else. She told me it means flower in some language whose name I can’t remember. Well, if she was really a flower, then it wasn’t a flower I would stop to pick on the grass. Not that I usually pick flowers anyway. I used to think she was living with her coltfriend because I was hearing her talking all day long. But then the old whorse told me she was talking with herself. Her coltfriend left a long time ago. Of course, I couldn’t avoid Fleur telling me about him. He was charming and beautiful and probably a coltcuddler. That’s why he left me, she said. He ran away with a stallion because he couldn’t satisfy a mare.Good riddance, she added. Then she left me and closed the door and behind the paper-thin walls, I could hear her cry. Guess it wasn’t such a good riddance after all.
She never came back to my place. She seldom left her apartment, and never left the building. Sometimes, I could see her in the doorway, leaning on the bannister, a towel covering her flank stamps, as if she was ashamed of them. She once asked me to run a few errands for her and it didn’t take long before it became a habit. Three times a week, I went to buy her booze, hay, frozen veggies and a gay porn magazine. This last errand embarrassed me each time (I guess you can understand why, Mr. Suicide Hotline Pony), but the reason was fair enough. She said it was her lottery. That she would buy gay porn magazines all her life. And that one day, she would see her coltfriend choking on a zebra cock the size of his jaw or being gangbucked silly. And that would be her revenge. She said she wouldn’t stop rubbing herself on this. That she wouldn’t stop until his coltfriend was completely drenched in mare juice.
So basically I gave her the stuff, she insulted her coltfriend once more and closed the door. She never paid me. And since I wasn’t ever asking anything, she just assumed I was her guest.
Then she somehow managed to tell everypony how nice and how helpful was her next door-neighbor, and soon, I became the whole building’s errand colt. The old whorse’s bread. The dog owner’s newspaper. The farting mare’s cucumbers and I still doubt she ate them. And every time I brought her their errands, they just invited me in and told me about their boring, pathetic lives for an hour or so.
While they were rattling away, I made poetry in my head, whose length depended on how long they lamented. And when it was really boring to death, I made everything in alexandrines. Then I would repeat my verses in the stairs to avoid forgetting them on the way. And all night long, I copied them out on a big notebook I called “Spirit of Boredom”.
Maybe one day my poetry will be published. Most likely not of my living since I was too lazy to do it myself. No, I just hope that somepony will discover my notebook under the fragments of the building, once it has collapsed under the weight of dirtiness. And that pony will struggle so the world could finally honor my unknown genius.
Back then I had no job. I was told there was none available so I didn’t bother looking for one. When it came to diplômas I wasn’t much decorated either. And in case you’re wondering, it all began at school . The endless complaints. The constant whining. The never-ending laments. Like every other foals, I discovered my “special talent” in a schoolyard. One day, two set of headphones made themselves home on my flanks.
To me, they meant sensory deprivation, the only important sounds being in my head. And only I would ever hear them. To others, they meant automatically-consented listening. A craving for their voices. The egocentric little bastards. Still, I wish my flank stamp was more accurate. Maybe I’m the one being wrong after all.
But don’t get me wrong, Mr. Suicide Hotline Pony. It’s not just the stamps. Ponies didn’t mind complaining to me even before I had those. And hiding my flanks didn’t stop them either. Don’t ask me why. I don’t even think there’s a rational explanation, things are just that way.
Anyway, during the classes, everybody fought to be by my side. I was like the perfect friend. Some complained about their family being too big. About being spoiled by their parents and beaten by the other, poorer foals. One was missing the closet he was locked in until he was ten. Suffered from naphthalene withdrawal.
And of course the teachers didn’t spare me either. They immediately saw how much of a good hearing I was, so they kept me after classes and wailed. About the lack of teachers and the shoddy classrooms. The literature teacher wished he had written a book. The maths one wanted to fly kites on a desert beach where wind would always be blowing. Geography wished he was born two hundred years ago when Equestria wasn’t so boring and big wars were still being fought. The biology teacher wanted to dissect live ponies rather than dead squirrels. You had to see her, kissing the small cadaver before telling us how bad ponies were. What a psycho.
And then there was Cheerilee. She taught linguistics and I loved her. I wrote her classes in red in my timetable. Like her colleagues, she always kept me after class. I honestly don’t remember much of her woes (her stallion was cheating on her or something), but I remember very well the way she tasted on my lips.
It first happened on a Friday evening. Friday was the last day of the week and we had linguistics last. She asked me to stay with her for a while and we both sat on a chair in the back of the classroom. Then she started crying and telling me about her private life which was no surprise for me, but she also kept on saying how much of a nice foal I was and then French-kissed me for 20 seconds or so. Then she would start crying for 2 minutes before playing with my tongue again.
Repeat.
Obviously,I wasn’t listening to her anymore. At first I was a bit shocked by what just happened, but then I recovered and just prepared for the next one. I had Cheerilee’s lips on mine for two years. I came to hate week-ends, and holidays were even worse. My own lips would dry out and split in the middle.
And one day she didn’t come to class. Nor she did the day after. And the day after and the day after and ten days later (I counted), a new linguistics teacher took her place. She still complained but that was all. You can imagine how I felt. But sometimes, life isn’t such a bitch and a few weeks later, I discovered masturbation.
Jump to me walking in the woods on the way back home, when I had my first orgasm. They had this thing called aerobics class and it was restricted to fillies so I basically had no idea of what was going on in here, until I saw it with my own eyes. They were all stretching and spreading their legs and laying on their back and I was both extremely embarrassed and aroused, and when I turned around my length slapped just once on my belly and I felt it throb and all my muscles contracted in a single spasm to expel a million of my potential children on the ground and I just stood there, panting, dazed, like, “Wow.”
And I was so surprised because I thought you could only piss with that thing, and at the same time so happy of my discovery, that I would eventually do it five or six times a day for the next three years. My father had a shed he decorated with pin-ups from Playcolt, and I always went there to honor each mare with my imagination. I had no interest in the various porn rags my friends were stealing. I liked to make up everything. I had to write the biography of my lovemaking. Create the whole situation. Imagine the moment I met the mare I chose mating. The courting and the long, silent staring. And then the actual penetration. Warmth filled my body and I was in bliss. I skipped the whole cuddling thing most of the time, because it was boring to me, and when actual sex came, I wasn’t more interested either.
While climaxing, I would clench my jaw so hard my teeth gritted like a heart giving himself away. After covering the evidence with dirt from the ground, I felt ashamed and anxious for a minute or so. And only when I left the shed, my private sanctuary, I felt cheerful again. I would see my beloved parents and dine with them, in silence. My parents weren’t the complaining type.
And I still feel a bit sad for this one Playcolt Mare, who killed herself over a broken heart, because she had been loved so much in my shed it was unfair she swallowed those pills. Not only she never knew my existence, but in the end, it was a bit creepy jerking off to a dead body.
***
Watching the phone, I had the weird intuition that maybe it would ring if I kept watching it. And it did ring. And I became a wizard. For a few seconds, I was a real wizard.
Two silent seconds later, I heard a click and the pony phoning hung up on me, without bothering to introduce himself. Probably a joker. Or a mistake. The pony on the other side of the line didn’t recognize my voice, uttering the obligatory “Hello!”, so he hung up, because he couldn’t afford wasting time in apologies, explanations, or didn’t want to sound stupid or awkward. So he hung up and left me doubting.
This rude or shy pony could have become a murderer if I was waiting for an important call. I would have guessed this important pony dialed my number, and then, as he was listening to the tone, changed his mind and decided I was not worth talking to. And that I won’t ever be.
And I would have probably jumped out of the window.
That’s how I felt about important calls.
But of course, I wasn’t waiting for any important call. And I was actually glad someone phoned me by mistake. If that pony phoning knew which rat hole he just called, he would have been more than happy to hang up. Still, I waited an hour before showering, just in case I received another phone call. Maybe from the same pony, condemned by fate to repeat his mistakes. But it didn’t happen and in the end nobody was killed.
A few days after, I was on my way to aunt Berry’s mansion. She was very rich. And very drunk. And I’m pretty confident she was as rich as she was drunk. Meaning that after you took a look at her bank accounts, just thinking of her liver would send shivers down your spine. She sent me a telegram the day before, saying I’d have to call on her today at twelve for dinner. She always sent telegrams, no matter whom, no matter what.
“Dear nephew- Hic – I must speak to you urgently –Hic - let’s eat together tomorrow …”
I was always happy seeing the tiny square of paper in my mailbox. What she ended up telling me was never urgent, even though her telegrams always said so. But she lost all notion of time long ago, anyway. Sometimes she’d just stop by the giant mirror in her hallway and whisper something like “Time goes fast, even when you have no memory”. And then she’d down one. Maybe so she could forget her life was ending one minute at a time and she was old and ugly and wrinkled. Or that her memory went missing. Or maybe it just felt good to down one.
Probably all of the above.
I can clearly remember the first time I saw Berry drunk. It was at my 8th birthday party. She liked playing the comedian for her friends or family. She was good at mimicking stuff, mostly Royal family, but sometimes animals too, like squirrels or a Siamese cats in heat. Have you ever heard a Siamese cat in heat, Mr. Suicide Hotline Pony? Sounds like a manticore raping a violin.
Back at my birthday party, we were all lying in front of her and she wasn’t seeing us. Then she suddenly caught her breath and threw up everything her stomach could hold. And judging by the color and the smell, it was more than just cake and lemonade.
To comfort me, I was told Berry had been sick. An upset stomach. But I knew it was a lie, because after having ruined her whole carpet, she burst into laughter and sang “Happy birthday, my little virgin”. And after puking, ponies aren’t usually that cheerful. From that day she was always dead drunk to me. And she seemed too old to stop. Being drunk was her everyday life. Even her dreams reeked of alcohol.
Anyway, I found her by the fireplace, her cheek softly resting on one of her front legs, as if she was trying to be classy even though she naturally was. Above the fireplace, a rococo mirror reflected her back, her neck and her purple mane.
“I’ll have my liver scrubbed out somewhere in Canterlot, in a rehab center … Sober is how I want to die, my nephew … I don’t want to die staggering … I don’t want to take the grim reaper for a delirium tremens …”
So Berry was thinking about her death, purgatory, big empty hallway and mystic light. The old mare apparently wasn’t feeling too good and I guess that’s why I was here. But I couldn’t be mad at her. Family is family. She never felt concerned about this before. Once time disappears, you achieve some kind of immortality. And when something serious happened, like her heart attack twelve years ago, she’d just say a little prayer and promise “Never again”. And in the evening, feeling protected, saved by divine providence, she’d drink to her own heart, still tired from stopping a few hours earlier. And when the doctors asked her to stop drinking, begged her to stop drinking, she’d just say they only had to invent a drink that wouldn’t harm her health.
“So when are you going, Auntie?” “In two days … that’s why I’m a bit in a hurry … You know Pinchy?” “Your daughter”
And my cousin. We didn’t talk much. No wonder since we never met. She was born nine or ten years ago from an unknown father and kept away from the family. Berry’s shameful secret. The first time I was told about her, I immediately pictured her pink with black stripes.
“I can’t take her to Canterlot, those bastards at the clinic don’t allow it … and I don’t want her to be alone here … This house can be so empty sometimes … You know foal kill themselves too … They call it an accident but I know they’re wrong, they die of loneliness … So there’s something I’d like you to do …”
Of course, I knew exactly what she was going to ask, but I liked looking dumber than I was so I said “What is it?”
“Take care of her while I’m gone … She needs some attention and you’re family, I don’t trust the servants, or the gardener, I caught him giving her dirty looks … I knew you can give her all the kindness she needs … You’ll take her to the countryside, sing her lullabies … She’s at a special school for unicorns so you’ll only have to look after her on Sundays … But you won’t ever leave her alone … Am I right?”
Yeah, yeah, whatever.
I’ve never had children and wasn’t planning on it but she didn’t seem to mind. Which made sense since she probably made this decision between two bottles. I didn’t want to upset her so I just smiled and nodded.
The truth was the last time I went near a foal, he was almost killed. By the way, please don’t call the police; I’m not the one who did it. That particular day my friends hung him from a tree by his rear legs and used him as a buck bag because he was fat and ugly and always alone. My friends were bastards, but bastards always seem happy the way they live, or at least keep their problems for themselves, hence me hanging out with them. I wasn’t there at the time and I found them all excited and drunk from the cider one of them stole from his father, so I lied down and drank too, watching the foal flying back and forth and crying until he had no tears left. At some point he wet himself and piss splashed all over the place and we all laughed out loud, protecting our faces with our hooves, then he stopped moving so it didn’t take long before my friends were bored and left me alone under the tree. Well, almost alone.
Anyway, they soon forgot about the foal. The only difference between my friends and I was nobody told my friends hanging foals was bad.
But that, I couldn’t tell Berry.
Before I left and after a hundred of do’s and thousands of don’ts, Berry called a unicorn servant to sign a check for me. She’d be gone for 3 months and said 50000 bits “should be enough to cover the expenses”.
Yes, you heard right. Fifty grands. I mean, what in Tarnation was she expecting me to buy? Truffle soups for breakfast, caviar sandwiches for dinner? She said I could take Pinchy to the beach so she could make sandcastles and all. No shit I would go the beach, I would even go the day after.
So this servant flew the check toward me and I was shaking so much he had to try three times before finally managing to slip it in my saddle pocket. Then Berry whistled and Pinchy came down the stairs.
In the end, the small unicorn brat wasn’t striped or anything but she definitely had a dumb, ugly zebra face: big eyes, big lips, and big muzzle. Even worse, this and her smallish pink body made her look like a living, walking aborted fetus. Apparently, pregnancy wasn’t good enough of a reason for Berry to stop drinking. Call me a liar, Mr. Suicide Hotline Pony, but I swear it took me weeks to realize she wasn’t retarded.
Pinchy hopped by her mother’s side and nuzzled her fur, staring at me with her huge round eyes. I tried to smile, and said something like “Hello, I’m your cousin, nice to meet you, I really like your mane”.
She didn’t reply and kept staring, and I felt a bit uncomfortable so I pretended to look at the fireplace while Berry tenderly and patiently explained everything to the silent unicorn. And when she told her about me and our soon-to-be cohabitation, I stupidly smiled to her, trying to make a good first impression. I forgot everything about my dignity, and couldn’t stop thinking about the check. My dignity belonged to me, after all. I could deal with it later. I would apologize to it on a beach, in front of a turquoise blue sea. My dignity and I both liked sunbathing and not actually doing shit.
Berry rose from her hooves and, grabbing her daughter by the skin of her neck, carefully dropped her on my lap. As far as I’m concerned, I knew there would be no problem. She could shit on me that I would keep smiling. But the damn brat saw things differently, and she started wailing and whining, and I couldn’t help but notice her teeth were whiter than mine. Berry gritted her teeth and gave me a worried look. Pinchy tried to bite my leg. And I thought about my check and felt like each tear made the zeros behind the 5 disappear, one by one. So I reacted. Without any fuss, I calmly but firmly grabbed her by the waist, and with my free hoof, gave her one spank, two spanks, three spanks.
And that shut her up good. Like it did to me before.
Anyway, my hoof instantly reassured everybody. Berry gave a confident smile. Pinchy clenched her jaw. And the zeros all reappeared like stars in a stormy sky.
So we worked out the last details about foal-sitting and we all felt ready in no time. Berry was slightly disturbed, seeing how much her offspring loved me.
“No good bye hugs for mommy? You naughty, cutie, silly filly …”
I went back home on coach. Pinchy fell asleep and since I knew right away the driver would bug me with his life, I closed my eyes and tried to do the same. And even though I overslept this morning, there was no way it would stop me from sleeping like a log.
The coach took me to the grocery shop and I went in to buy some kid stuff. For the first time ever, I picked a toothbrush: unicorns love these things, it makes them feel privileged. Damn useless hooves. Then I picked a spare blanket, a basket for her to sleep in and a few books with nice-looking pictures, and I went to the checkout.
In the waiting line, I made my daily review on the dreams I had last night.
I could only remember one, which won the “Best Dream Prize” in my night festival since it was the only one who managed to leave its mark on my mind, like a movie you would clearly remember the day after you saw it.
The scene took place in an industrial park, the kind you see everywhere in Manehattan. Through the window of a café I spent the night in, I recognized a stallion I didn’t really know but I was used to see for whatever reason. I guess you could call him a symbol. A rather unpleasant embodiment of a rather unpleasant feeling I had. It was as if my soul knew him by heart but my eyes didn’t. And that day, my soul had introduced him to my eyes. This middle-aged pony was real classy. He stood straight but was limping a bit.
So I left the café and went to meet him. “I know you, my mind says you’re Death.” I said.
“You mind is sick, my friend. Cure him, and then it’ll tell you I’m actually Life.”
I kept my mouth shut for two minutes and then said:
“I only trust my mind, prove me you aren’t Death and I promise I’ll have it cured.”
The stallion didn’t say anything. He turned around and watched two young ponies setting fire to cardboard boxes in a factory whose chimneys continuously spat thick smoke, dark as night. Then he turned back to me, and smiled like a foal about to do something stupid, before running like hell to the factory and rushing into the flames.
The two ponies mouths hung wide open, and they looked at me and cried in unison : “We saw him burn, he was alive, more alive than your mind could ever be … We saw him burn and embrace the night…”
Anyway it was my turn to pay, and the pony behind the cash register shouted and pulled me back to reality.
All things considered, this dream is really dumb. So I guess I’m not cleverer when I’m sleeping. You know, Mr. Suicide Hotline Pony, I kind of wish I was a genius in my dreams. At least it would give my daytime stupidity some rest.
