Someone Came With Her, Part 1

“So you're going down to Sawgrass?”

The man eyes you from under his ridiculous white cowboy hat, and for a second you wonder if he's  trying to hit on you.  Then you catch the cynical smirk smeared on his face like a grease stain.  It's the signature mark of the Small-Town Asshole.  Hoo, boy...just when you thought this bar couldn't get any worse.

Still, no use escalating matters.  You nod and take a sip of your beer.  Non-alcoholic, of course: you still have a bit more driving to do.

“Sawgrass.  Huh.  Now, why the hell would you want to do that?” he asks, the shit-eating grin becoming a bit wider.

“Why do you care?” you shoot back.

He puts up his hands.  “Hey, now.  I was just curious, you see?”  He's raising his voice now, and the other patrons are starting to notice.

Indifferently, you take another sip.  “Listen, man, I'm just minding my own business.  Can you mind yours?”

“You're after the copper, aren't you?”

“The...what?”

He chuckles.  “You think you can fool me?  I see a lot of your type comin' down to Sawgrass.  Place is a goddam treasure trove for scraphunters.”

“Look, I don't know what you're talking about,” you sigh.  “I'm a writer, okay?  I'm doing a book on ghost towns.”  Not entirely true, but not exactly a lie, either.  In all honesty you weren't sure why you were heading to an abandoned village in rural Nevada.  The idea of a side trip to that place just...appealed to you somehow.  Something about the scenery and the isolation, you thought.

He lets out a bark of forced laughter.  “Ha!  This guy here's a real smooth talker, ya see?  A smooth talker!”  The other bargoers stare blankly at him, not quite drunk enough to see the humor.

Fuck you and fuck your hat, you conclude.  Disgusted, you pay your tab and leave before things get out of hand.

You step outside, relishing the way the temperature is vaguely tolerable now that the sun is setting.  The sky is like a painting, the clouds dappled with brilliant orange and red hues.  The cool dark desert stretches out in every direction.

You sigh peacefully.  Little scenes like these are what you've been trying to find in your trip through the Southwest.

Suddenly the bar's door swings open behind you.  You look over your shoulder to see the asshole from before.  There's a strange light burning in his eyes, as though he's about to cry.

“You stay the hell outta Sawgrass, you hear?”  the man bellows.  “You ain't welcome there.”

He wipes his mouth and staggers back inside.

Ooh-kay.

Shrugging, you stroll back to your car and hop inside.  You've marked Sawgrass on your GPS—it's only a couple miles away, in fact--but it'd be stupid to try and make it there in the dark.  So instead you drive over to a place called Juan's Mexican Fiesta Motel, which you're pretty sure is the biggest insult to Mexicans you've ever seen.

After getting your keys from a creepy guy with a mustache at the front desk, you go to your room and plop down on the bed.  Fuck brushing your teeth; you needa sleep.  Despite the itchy and suspiciously stained covers, you manage to drift off in record time.  Go you.

As soon as you start to dream, however, things get a little more complicated.

You find yourself standing in pure darkness.  A horrendously cold chill washes over you, and you shudder.  It's so hard to breathe in this place: each gulp of air is like trying to drink liquid nitrogen.

But that's not your only problem.  Faintly you feel the presence of someone -else-, and the realization makes you freeze with terror.

A patch of darkness lightens slightly, forming into a shape, and then into a moving figure.  You can only see the faintest outline, but you get the impression of a tall and monstrous creature with a long, bearded face.

“Welcome to the back of your mind!  Before I forget, I'm just gonna throw this out here, chum: I feel kinda sorry for you.  One more day as a human, and then...well, I'll get to that later.”

“Who—what are you?”  you stammer.

The creature laughs coldly before stepping closer.  The beard...the horns...the cloven hooves...

“Satan...” you whisper.

The draconequus pouts, folding his arms childishly.  “Aw, seriously now?”

You give him your best wicked grin.  “I can troll too, Discord.”

He does a double-take before his long face lights up with glee.  “Yes!  I -knew- this was gonna be fun!  Follow me!” he squeals before snatching you up and carrying you down a yellow brick road that appeared out of nowhere.

“Where are we going?” you ask, deciding to enjoy this awesome dream while it lasts.

“Nowhere in particular,” he says casually before you both smack into a wooden sign labeled “NOWHERE IN PARTICULAR.”

“Oof.  Always gets me, it does,” he sighs as the two of you get up and dust yourselves off.  A landscape is materializing around you, solidifying into a cartoonish desert with tumbleweeds bouncing across the sand.  About a hundred meters ahead lies a dusty little town.

“You see,” he said, leading you on to the town's outskirts, “Heading off to Nowhere in Particular can lead you to some interesting places.  There's hundreds of Nowhere in Particulars across the globe.  One of them is a little town called Sawgrass.”

“Where are you going with this?” you ask.

He yawns.  “At this point I'm supposed to tell you a bunch of mumbo-jumbo about 'ley lines' and 'thin spots in the dimensional membranes,' but that'd be boring.”

Suddenly he's wearing a caricature of a cowboy outfit, complete with a ten-gallon hat and a duster.  “So I'll sing it to you instead!” he says, as a harmonica blasts out a catchy little melody.  Seconds later the harmonica is joined by a fiddle, and then all hell breaks loose as Discord starts to sing.

What happens next is a blur of surreal sights and bizarre lyrics delivered in an exaggerated country drawl. The song is wild cacophony of old-timey Western music and oddly eloquent explanations of metaphysics.  At one point you get caught up in a square dance with what may or may not have been a crowd of cactus-people.

Mercifully, the musical number finally comes to an end.  Exhausted, you collapse to the ground.

“What did you think?” asks Discord, beaming.

“Why did you keep calling me a mare?” you ask.

“Huh?”

“You must have said it sixty times, for chrissakes.  That thing about 'swing your pardner, yipee ki-yay, let's show this mare the Sawgrass way'?  What the hell did that even mean, anyway?  It sounded perverted.”