Chapter 4: Spoilers I Get Hooves

My parents eventually left me secluded in my basement, after which they proceeded to throw a luggage bag down the stairs. I inspected the ‘tattoo’ that they were talking about. A formation of clouds in the shape of a heart. Cute, but why, who, how did it get there, I pondered to myself. That morning was rough I’ll tell you that. However, through the splitting headache and general nausea, I was finally able to collect myself. It was at this point I decided to attempt to recall my night, and call up my good friends Matt and Pam. The conversation went a little something like this,

 

“So do you guys know what exactly happened with me last night?” I said.

 

“Were you that drunk? Man, you’ve really gone downhill haven’t you” Matt replied.

 

“Shut up, did you guys make me get a tattoo last night?”

 

“No, although you kept scratching your ass every five seconds. If you really wanted a girlfriend, you probably should work on your social skills first”

 

“God damnit, did you lose sight of me at all? You know you can’t leave me alone like that”

 

“No, well, it was around one am last night and you said you were getting a huge headache and we left the bar”

 

“And that was it?”

 

“Well, you stripped when we dumped you in your basement”

 

“That answers that”

 

“Yeah, but no idea of a tattoo, did you get one earlier in the week and just forget about it?”

 

“Not that I know of, shit.”

 

“Seriously though, you got to take a picture of that and send this shit to me”

 

“No way in hell dude”

 

and *click*.

 

So, I did what any normal young adult would do after getting kicked out of his parent’s home, I decided to live in my car. What? No, of course I got dressed, sorry I thought it was implied. I couldn’t exactly run around naked in the streets every day.

 

Regardless of my clothing situation, I was lucky enough to find a nearby forest preserve that I could ‘live’ out of for the next few days while I called up some friends to stay with them. It was the Lake Horatio Forest Preserve, which was dedicated to the Late Mayor Charles Horatio who oddly enough had enacted a bill that would allow the local industries to dump their waste into the wildlands. Sort of ironic I guess.

 

So, here I am at Lake Horatio with just a suitcase or so of clothes, my school laptop and no idea how I was supposed to make it through the rest of the summer. Remember, I was ‘supposed’ to return to college in the fall. But it was the beginning of June and I had two months or so of straight summer to deal with. I calculated that I could raise just enough money for school if I play my cards perfectly and stop boozing.

 

After a decent night of sleep in the back of my car, I drove in to work on Monday. It wasn’t so odd of a day, except that my feet began to start cramping up. Well, more specifically it was around my ankles just seemed sore, and for someone who had to stand on their feet all day it wasn’t pleasant. Spoiler alert princesses, I was getting hooves.

 

Now, I’m going ahead to assume there is no way to change from five toes per feet to hooves which skeletally are fairly different from any other mammal’s feet. But by golly was this one painful. Imagine for a second that your hooves (or in my instance feet) were not rotated correctly, and yet you had to walk around and travel on them as if you had walked like that my entire life.

 

Needless to say, I hate Mondays.

 

 

I returned to my car and back to my little home in the Parking Lot of Lake Horatio and I decided to give my good friend Paul a ring, begging for a place to stay for the next few weeks of the summer. He was able to hook me up with a room, although I’d soon find that it was more of a closet than a room, for a little bit each month. Thank goodness, it was beginning to smell like a barn in my car.

 

What car did I have? Does it matter? They don’t even have motorized vehicles in Equestria, so I don’t really have any reference point to meet you with. It was a 2002 Saturn LS. She had well over one thousand-fifty miles on it, and hey maybe she didn’t want to start up everytime I wanted to drive, but dammit she was my car and I’ll miss her.

 

Tuesday was pretty uneventful, I just did the whole work thing my feet still sore. After work, I decided to get a reusable ice pack, I figured that might be able to get me back into walking condition. After icing my feet, I found that I was still sore as ever, and I wondered if i did anything stupid at the bar last time I drank. Rather than giving Matt a call, I decided to sleep it off with the icepack.

 

Wednesday morning, before going to work I hastily decided that the only way to reduce the soreness was to go out in a run. It was at this point I finally was able to find a way to comfortably walk and run. For once the dull soreness in my feet was gone, however, I looked like an idiot trying to run on my tip-toes. That was awkward.

 

I returned to work the next day refreshed and finally over most of my pain. However, the final transitions towards hooves found me on my tip-toes, standing around. Which led to the worst customer experience I’ll ever have. Now normally, I can deal with irate customers, you give them the old, ‘I’m sorry’ or ‘I don’t know’ or whatever it takes to make them feel right. But this guy was the worst customer I think I had ever faced in the history of working retail.

 

Right before my shift ended at 6:00 on thursday, this bulking mass of human flesh walks in. Now at the time, I was no skinny guy, but this person had at least one hundred pounds on me half of which looked like muscle. So here’s this orange ass tough guy that comes in wanting to rent a new DVD, as I remember he was renting ‘Inception’, describing it as ‘Dope as shit how they go in dreams and stuff’, I hated most of my customer-base.

 

So when I pull up this guys account, I notice there’s a hold due to overdue videos. I look closer and its porn, not just any porn, but the raunchiest dirtiest thing imaginable. I don’t want to go into any more detail, for all of our sakes. This guy had overdue charges of over forty dollars, on multiple videos.

 

 

It was at this point I attempted to inform this addict of what was going on,

 

“Sir, it seems you have overdue videos on your account. I can’t let you rent that until you return them back”

 

“Eh youse got a mistake”  he responds to me, putting his arm around his oranger girlfriend.

 

“Um sir it seems you have a few videos that were checked out last saturday, and we can’t give you any videos until you return them”

 

“That’s imposssssssshibul” I hear a shrill coming from the giant duck lips of what looks like is his girlfriend. “He was sick on Saaaaaaaaaaaaahtuday!”

 

“No, it says here that he checked them out at around 5:34 pm Saturday May 25th.”

 

“Okay bro, I don’t know what you’re trying to pull here, but you’re fucking wrong. Read to me what I fookin rented”

 

“Um, well it says, [REDACTED], [REDACTED], My Little Pony: Adventures in the Crystal Empire, and [REACTED]”

 

We all just stared at each other for about a minute.

 

“ARE YOU FOOKIN WITH ME? WHAT ARE YOU TRYING TO PULL HERE FOOK HEAD”

 

“Hey, I’m just reading what it says on the screen”

 

“FOOK YOU MAN, YOU AIN’T LOOKIN TOUGH, GET OFF YOUR TOES BITCH”

 

Oh shit. Obviously I wasn’t trying to pull anything. But this asshat thought something was up, and I know I couldn’t take him.

 

All I remember hearing before I blacked out that day was the shrill sounds of the fat little tangerine that was his girlfriend, and the fist that was colliding with my face coming from the orange douce across from me.

 

One, I really did not know how to take a punch.

 

Two, I really hated getting my lights punched out.