//------------------------------// // "BooOOooOOooOOooOOrrRRrrRReDD!" // Story: "OOOoooOOOoooOOOooo!!!" // by shortskirtsandexplosions //------------------------------// Klink! Klink! Kl-Klink! My fists clenched, hovering just above the keyboard. A boiling bubble of frustration ripples through me, and I do my best to suppress the urge to scream. After all, there's just so many times I can allow my writing sessions to be interrupted by repetitive onomatopoeia. The noise continues. This time on one line: Klink! Klink! Klink! I clench my eyes shut. I should just ignore it. I should just ignore it. I should just ignore it. Klink!-Klink!-Klink!-Klink!-Klink!-Klink! The percussive noise becomes gatling gun cacophony now. It occurs to me that my act of ignoring is precisely what has caused the tempo to increase to such a maddening degree. No doubt, I am being baited. And considering this pony, I'm not too terribly surprised. At long last, the noise cuts out... only for a raspy voice to fill the space left above me: "I'm... so... borrrrrrrrrrrrred..." I exhale out the side of my mouth, leaning in and pretending to concentrate on my word document. "You don't say..." "Like... I'm the Duchess Mayor of Boredville, Boredtopia right now." "Uh huh." I type out a sentence. It's awful. I backspace through it with a groan. "Stop taking it out on my ceiling fan." Immediately, she disobeys me. Klink! "But it's so... metallic and swing-y," she whines. In my peripheral vision, I spot her ghostly blue figure reclining upside down on the ceiling, looking like an antigravity feline on Zoloft. With a limp, lazy hoof she bats at the dormant fan's support strut, making the whole thing sway. The electric lamps affixed to the object cast a twirling spotlight on the entirety of the office below. "Could you at least turn it on? Then I'd have something... I dunno... whizzy to look at." "Don't say 'whizzy,'" I mutter, fingers tickling the computer keyboard, stuck in limbo. "You're too old for that." "Pffft! You don't know how old I am." "You're dead, turning on heavenly host." "Death is boring. You're boring." "At last..." I mutter. "An equivalence I can live up to." "What are you writing?" Rainbow Dash asks looking straight up... down?... at me. "Nothing you'd be interested." "You mean what you're writing is boring." "You're not the intended audience." "Try me." Rainbow's voice cracks. "Is it about explosions?" "No." "It should be about explosions." "It's about nihilists," I say. Her cyan muzzle scrunches up above. "Nihilists?" "Lesbian fairy nihilists," I said. "The 'lesbian' part is for marketability." "Yeah? And the 'fairy' part?" "It's my loophole around Patreon's terms of services." "Yeesh. You gotta be really sad and desperate to write stuff like that." I shake my head. "Not as sad and desperate as the poor saps who shop Amazon Kindle." "I don't even know what that means." "Good. There's still hope for you yet." I finally come up with a sentence that's not worth deleting. Rainbow Dash waits for a typing session to end before barking: "You should let me take a crack at it." "I don't think writing is your thing, Rainbow." "Better than sitting here on the ceiling!" "Do you even hear yourself right now?" "Huh?" With an exhale, I slump back in my seat and stare straight up at her roof-squatting figure. "You've transcended the mortal coil. You're incorporeal." I gesture wildly at her. "You can phase through walls and fly everywhere!" "I could fly everywhere when I was alive." I raise my eyebrow. "Yeah, but now you can... like... possess 747s and stuff." For a brief moment, her ruby eyes light up. "What's a 747???" I feel a cold swath of ice forming along my spine. In a nervous sweat, I clear my throat and stammer: "How about a race?" Her ears immediately perk up. "A race...?" "Mmmmmm-more like a time trial." She stands up like an alert bloodhound on the ceiling. "A time trial?!?" "Yeah... uh..." I gesture. "Fly to Gettysburg and back." "Where's Gettysburg?" "It's... it's..." A beat. I pull my phone out, whip out Google Maps, and glance at the compass. "...it's in that direction." I point through the closest wall. "That place has gotta be haunted as heck. There's no way you could miss it." "Really? Are there other pony ghosts there?" "A whale-load of Confederates died there. It's bound to be haunted by pony-lovers." "That's... ... ... cool...?" "Pffft..." I roll my eyes. "I knew you wouldn't be up for a challenge." "Hey!" She leaps off the roof, does a flip, and hovers right-side-up in front of me. "Nuts to you and your lesbian fart nautiluses! I can totally fly to Galgunburgh and back!" I fold my arms and pretend not to look at her. "Prove it..." "You're on!" Rainbow Dash grins a crescent moon, ghost wings flapping. "I can make a full flight lap in nine seconds flat!" My nose scrunches. I squint at her awkwardly. "Nine? Why such a specific number?" "It's a-an upgrade!" She fluffs her chest indignantly. "I've gotta keep up with the times!" "More like you're buying time." "Says you!" She points at my phone. "Start your timer!" "Pffft..." I wave a hand. "I don't need to..." "Start your flippin' timer, ya melon fudge!" "Fine..." I click the app in question. "Not that it matters-" ZWOOOOSH!!! And Rainbow Dash is gone in a blue blur, leaving me to wonder how a bodiless ghosts could be capable of disturbing air molecules in such a fashion to produce a "Zwoooosh!!!" sound. But it doesn't matter. She's left my office, and I can return to my writing with full concentration. ...except that she returns, eight and a half seconds later. SCREEEECH!!! "Mehhhhhhh..." She yawns, filling my ears with her voice before I can guess how ghost hooves could make sounds resembling braking tires as well. "All that build-up for nothing!" She fwumps out on the back of my office chair, her tail flicking through me with a cold chill. "Grannysbarge was nothing like you advertised." I blink quizzically. My voice is accompanied by freezing vapors: "You actually made it to Gettysburg and back?" "Yeah." "Like... uhm... what did you see there?" "Pffft. Like I need to fill you in." I turn to look at her. "... ... ...Try me." "Eh. Nothing special." She blows her prismatic bangs out of her face. "Just a dumb frozen wasteland in the middle of a starry void, occasionally venting huge jets of frozen water and hydrogen out into space..." I blink. "Rainbow, that wasn't Gettysburg." "Oh no?" "I... think that was Enceladus, the second moon of Saturn." "Yeah?" Her tail flicks through me again. "Is that far away?" "... ... ... ... ...kinda?" "Hrmfff..." Rainbow drapes backwards over my sofa, looking like she could fall limply through the diameter of the planet at any given moment. "I've lost my edge. I swear... I gotta find a way to exercise my wings... ... ...especially since cider drinking contests is out of the picture." I look at her. I look at the computer. I look at her again. "... ... ...do you wanna help me with my latest chapter?" "Meh. Lesbian nudist flamingoes aren't my thing." "What if we added explosions?" She perks up. Immediately. "Do you mean it?" "Sure. Why not." I shrug. "There's gotta be a fetish for it somewhere out there." "What if... like... there's an explosion the size of a universe..." Rainbow gestures. "...and our main characters are having to outfly it by the skin of their teeth?" "Maybe we can settle for an explosion the size of 'Nietzsche's Hollow.'" "What's that?" "The story's setting. But I'm cool with incinerating it if you are." "Cool!" Rainbow zips towards the computer monitor. "Fire! Fire!" "Don't block my view, please." I scoot forward. "Or the keyboard." She hovers upside down, staring at the screen. "How's this?" "That works. So..." I stroke my fingers across the home row. "What sets off the explosion?" "What about... a boa constrictor...?" She grins, wingtips fluttering. "It swallows up a TNT factory and barfs out dynamite towards them!" I nod. "Considering the tags of the next chapter, that would be good foreshadowing." I type away. "So... how about we spend a full paragraph describing this python's mammary glands." "Ha HA!" Rainbow Dash's lower legs do a ghostly jig in mid-air. "Writing is fun!"