Six Broken Ponies: Endless Laughter
~BlackRoseRaven
I try so hard, you know: silly Pinkie Pie, always smiling, singing songs, predicting the unpredictable or babbling in her silly little way about party-this, party-that. I know every pony in Ponyville, and they all smile when I'm around, and I make 'em laugh, make 'em laugh, make them laugh… but it's not like I don't see it in their eyes, you know. The exasperation. The 'when will she go away' look. The disdain for poor little Pinkie Pie, who never makes any sense and lives in her own silly little world, who never seems to have moments of lucidity, but oh, if only they knew…
I try so hard. In fact, I try too hard and yet I can't stop myself. There's this switch in my brain, this broken circuit, and it makes me just go completely crazy when I get that emotional rush, that pleasure of being with my friends, my real friends, my good friends… even though I know every pony in Ponyville, how many of them do you think I'm actually friends with? No, no, that's a silly question from silly Pinkie Pie. Here's a better one: one many of them consider me their friend?
Oh I learned that a long time ago, you see. No matter how much you care about someone, no matter how good you treat them or how hard you try for them, you can't ever really know how they feel about you. One day you're working the rock farm with your family and the next thing you know, they're telling you to get out of here because you don't fit in anymore. Sure there was that one time, we all laughed and smiled, and we had fun! But the problem was they got tired of it. Very tired of it, very fast, which made me just want to try harder to bring smiles to everyone… and trying too hard is a lot worse than not trying at all, I found out. When you try too hard, they get tired of your faster. They want to get rid of you faster. It's like when you laugh too hard… the deep breath, the expulsion of air, the sharp, loud 'ha-ha-ha!' and then the sensation of all the wind gone from your body, the breath of life washed out of your lungs, the momentary, blissful sorrow when you're choking and no one can or will save you but then air, oxygen, floods back into your mouth and pumps itself into your lungs whether you want it or not and forces you to live.
And yet I can't stop myself from trying so hard. I try and try and try and do and do and do, all for that one solitary moment when someone laughs with you instead of at you, when someone's eyes meets yours and there's no pity or distaste in them, for that one all-important second where you feel yourself connect with another pony, where they don't hate you or lie to you, where they aren't going to sell you at market like nothing but the dirt and stone you harvested every day for years from mires of muck and filth…
Yet one day, you become their jester, their fool, no matter how much they like you at heart. Silly Pinkie Pie, you're the one we'll blame for everything that goes wrong; silly Pinkie Pie, you're the one to take the fall; silly Pinkie Pie, you're the one who has to dance to entertain us, or we'll discard you and find a new idiot to round off our group, and you can go back to living on the outskirts, knowing everyone in Ponyville… and pitied by all of them, too. And even the foals will look at you with disdain in their eyes, knowing that oh, look, it's just worthless Pinkie Pie… the pony who knows everyone and is friends with no one… least of all herself.
So I do and do and do, and I do my best to control myself, too, and I do my best to always keep a smile pasted on my face and even when I'm lucid, they never know, they never notice, because I'm still laughing when I shouldn't be, taking nothing seriously, all to keep up the appearances. I'm very scared of what life would be like without my friends, after all... I'm very scared of who I'd become without these ponies in my life. I might be their court jester, their silly fool... but oh, it's better to be that than something else, something tossed to the fringe of society, the retarded outsider they all pity. It's better to be the freak of the group but still dragged along on their misadventures... then it ever would be to be lost, and alone, locked away in Sugar Cube Corners with the old ponies I barely know and who barely know me.
Because when you're alone, all those thoughts from the deep, dark, reptile part of your mind come to light. All those thoughts that little ponies shouldn't have, mixed together disharmoniously with terrible, ill thoughts of sick laughter and perversion. Vile thoughts, of mayhem, and how in the shadows, my pretty-pink coat looks red, red, red, like the blood that flows inside and sometimes wanders outside through holes in flesh and tears in skin.
Do we all have darkness inside us, suppressed only by our friends and perhaps force of will? Or am I the only one in Ponyville with these thoughts inside my head, whispering through my mind, telling me things, things I cannot believe, things I know I should not do. Thoughts that slither through my mind like serpents in the tall grasses, wild as the Evergreen Forest, bestial as the monsters in its depths. Whispering, always whispering... always just out of sight until you foolishly go looking for them, hooves pawing through the weeds until you see a shimmer of scales a moment too late and then its lunging up to sink its poisonous, corruptive fangs into your throat...
Things like this, I can never tell my friends. I know they won't understand what it's like... that I have no control over this, just like I have so little control over myself at every other point and time during the day. Silly Pinkamena Diane Pie. This is part of why your parents threw you off the rock farm, you know: they always knew, they always sensed it, lurking beneath the surface, even before that self-control circuit first shorted out. They knew you, with your long, straight hair, so different from them, had sin inside you. Oh yes, they knew all too well... and they feared you. Even when you brought them joy, they feared what else you might learn to unlock and indulge in.
It's better that old history lays forgotten, though... no one needs to know where Pinkie Pie came from, why she lives with Mrs. Cake and her husband above the store, why they put up with silly strange and vapid Pinkie Pie. They aren't bad people, even if they treat me like a child, but it's not like I can say they're wrong to, either. I doubt I could handle the store on my own. I doubt I could do anything right on my own. And it scares them, doesn't it, when they hear me talking to myself in my room... except I'm never really talking to myself because I'm never really alone, oh no. There's always the whispers... there's always the reflection in the mirror. She's part of the reason I have to smile and laugh all the time, and part of the reason why I have no self control. She waits there, inside and outside of me...
She hates laughter, and she hates parties, and she knows she doesn't have any friends. She wants attention and love, but she knows that all they want to do is laugh at her when she falls down, or make fun of her because she's different, and was brought up by poor parents who didn't want her on a dusty farm. She's someone who once was, a long time ago, someone who was sealed away, in the dark recesses of the spirit and the mind, she is old-testament faith and longing and hopelessness and oh, she scares me so much. She truly does... because she's come so close to breaking free some days. Days like when I thought my friends were avoiding me, and if only they knew how crucial they were in my life...
And even though most of the other ponies seem to think that I'm a few apples short of a bushel and almost as handicapped as Ditzy Doo, many, many days I wish I could spend more time in the library with Twilight. Funny how that sounds? Crazy Pinkie Pie, wanting to be in a library for quiet reading… but how could they ever know that friendship is a subject so important to me, that I'm so very interested in…
But Twilight can barely stand to be around me. When I get… excited… I interrupt her quiet, invade her personal space, drive her crazy with my presence, and I can't help but get excited due to that broken circuit in me, that way I get so bouncy when I'm in the presence of the people I adore so much and who strive so hard to put up with me. Even worse, some of those weird ticks about me just don't make sense to her, and she looks at me with such confusion, such a need to know the truth that all the same, she understands clearly she may never, ever know. I'm like the dark spot on the map, the unexplored area of the grid, the blackness in the deepest depths, the hidden subconscious behind the masks of faces we all wear. I'm senseless and excitable and more than a little crazy. I'm adrenaline, mixed with blood, mixed with the chemicals that feed our delusions and dreams that can so quickly turn to such black, black nightmares…
I wish she could better put up with me, though. I wish she liked my parties more. I wish she would have the patience to teach me about friendship, so I could understand it, so I could make myself a better friend, even with this… excitability, this lack of lucidity that comes over me from time to time, when I'm giggling and girlish and silly-silly-silly and yet fearing-fearing-fearing, trying so hard, too hard, to make them like me… knowing that one day, maybe I'll push too far. Go too deep… let out something that shouldn't've been allowed to escape. I'll open up that black box that my parents were so scared of me finding inside myself, and one day I'll the one trapped in the mirror, staring out, screaming, not laughing anymore when that other person inside me is set loose.
She won't laugh. She hates parties. She'll smile though, her sick, twisted smile, and she'll titter, and she'll shriek, and she'll giggle. Never laughing like we laugh, but she'll show her twisted joy all the same, and I'm so scared that it won't just be a trick of the light that makes her coat the color of blood, that the bodies on the floor won't just be asleep, that the heavy silence will never again be punctured by breathing… only by her sick, twisted sounds of joy when she revels in the fact I have no friends, she has no friends, we're all alone in this big bad world, and even when we smile, it's only to hide the pain of being alone from everyone else…
If she was ever freed, I'd never be able to escape, I'd be sealed away forever… but sometimes I wonder… wouldn't that be better? She absorbs the pain, I see it in her eyes… she drinks it in, makes it pleasure. I try and make pleasure, make fun, make smiles, and yet I can't help but see every day how I fail… how they don't like my parties, they tell me I try too hard, they pity little stupid Pinkie Pie… never knowing what lurks inside… never knowing that as I struggle to be their friend, and to contain myself, there's this cage inside me I'm trying forever to seal shut, and not wander in to let myself be the first victim of the beast inside me before it lays terrible siege to the world. And I fear, if I ever fail… then I'll laugh. I'll smile, even through my tears. I'll enjoy the sights, no matter how awful they are.
But come on now… don't you want to come to one of my parties? We'll all laugh together, we'll all smile, we'll play games into the night… and then, together… we'll all lay down… and sleep. There will be candy, and cake, and balloons… and if you're nervous… I'll help you dance until you tire, I'll lay you down and make you comfortable… I'll cradle you and make you smile and make you laugh… until you close your eyes, and tell me you're my friend.
I'll help you smile… and we'll laugh together, forever.