Chapter 12
Have you ever heard a house groan? That old creaking sound that makes you think, or reminds you, that you’re not alone at night? The sound of old wood warping against itself under the weight of its own presence?
A scream is nothing like that. It’s the culmination of every argument; every cry of anguish these walls have ever heard. Every sentence that is broken by anger, every wild thought as you walk away, slamming the door behind you. Thousands of harsh words and hateful things, some my own, some I didn’t even recognize, shattering on the air like a rock through stained glass. Each echo from each corner a different conversation, cranked to unbearable volume, as what passed for a house screamed in protest against my having any kind of hope.
“Please,” I groaned, twitching an ear at the verbal abuse, “I live with Daisy. You’re gonna have to do a lot better than that.”
Why can’t I keep my big mouth shut?
I saw, even felt, parts of the house curdle and curl towards me. Chair legs and lampstands, curtain rods and window panes, every part of everything it had tried to pass off as fake, then pale, then horrid, reach out towards me, grasping at what was thankfully thin air as I hauled flank up the trail of dead rose petals. I followed twists and turns that didn’t exist in my own house, but I was far past the illusion that I was anywhere that resembled home. I ducked and dodged well enough to make a Pegasus proud, until I came to what looked like the finish line: a point where two walls narrowed into a small gap, but didn’t close. Part of me wanted to come to a screeching halt, the other part still had ears and other senses that were rather insistently reminding me that the house was trying to eat me.
So, I kept running. I saw petals fly out of the crack, and wither on the air, lasting just long enough to rekindle the hope the house so sought to punish me for. And, as is natural in these situations, or so popular fiction has taught me to believe, I tripped on something. Sparing a glance back, I see a fleshy, decaying vine that extended past the last doorway I’d ignored, wrapped around my ankle, and intent on pulling me back. Even as it dragged me slowly across what I really, really wanted to believe was just wet carpet, it murmured. Somehow, it was loud enough to hear over the cacophony of spiteful words, “Feed. Eat. Hunger…”
I don’t know if I’d somehow become desensitized to the horrors around me, or if it had simply run out of ways to surprise me, but I was more angry, and rather, incensed, than afraid. “You might look like some dead flesh, but I know a vine when I see one, and Momma’s Hungry!” I reached out with the rest of my hooves, and pulled the vine up close like a horrid snuggle buddy before tearing a huge chunk out with my teeth.
It tasted like blood and bad decisions. Not bad enough, as the vine recoiled and shrieked its way back into the room of Celestia-knows-what. I didn’t stick around long enough to find out what, and turned around, running for the crack. Diving into that small space felt an awful lot like losing consciousness, however, I quickly realized that’s just what I was doing.
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I awoke to a familiar sight: a hospital bed. Actually, the same hospital bed that I’d woken up in earlier in the week. Of course, the contents were a little different: it included more ponies than last time. My roommate, Daisy, leaning over the metal guard on my left, looked about as concerned as she always does, which was no small comfort. Octavia and Vinyl simply stood at the edge of the bed, sharing the same concerned look, but showing some relief at the fact that I’d woken up. Even Der… Ditzy had come to visit. She was sitting by the window, staring happily into space. Her normally endearing lazy eye had lost some its charm due to recent events, obviously, but it was still wonderful to see her.
Well, until the headache kicked in. “Ow, oh god. Ow. What happened to my… everything?” Even my throat hurt. Which made sense, given how I hadn’t technically been out of the hospital for more than a couple days after making it bleed in the first place.
Vinyl raised an eyebrow over her rather large glasses, which in and of itself was an impressive feat. “That’s kinda what happens when you scream yourself stupid and pass out onto a coffee table,” she explained with no lack of snark. “I mean, you kinda put Daisy to shame.”
Octavia rolled her eyes at her roommate’s lack of tact, something I was more than amicable to considering the circumstances. “What she means to say is, dear, you ran screaming into your house, and passed out onto the floor. You hit your head on the way down, and you’ve been here for the last few days.”
“Few days? What? I’ve been running the gauntlet through Tartarus for the last few days. I mean, did Twilight come back? How did I get out of that hell house? I mean, where did you guys even find me? I was running through a bunch of back alleys, and…”
I was interrupted by Octavia raising a hoof to shush me. “Rose, you’re starting to sound like Daisy-“
“Hey!”
“-sorry. What I mean is, you’ve probably been having a pretty nasty nightmare given the circumstances. Whatever you saw scared you so bad you screamed yourself into a three-day coma. You really shouldn’t even be talking,” she added gently, as I started coughing. All that ranting, and I had forgotten about the damage I’d done to my esophagus.
“But… I tasted blood, it was-“
“Probably from the blood in your throat that they had to suction out,” interrupted Daisy. “I mean, the nurses had to clean you and… stuff… so you probably felt a bunch of weird things in that awful dream. Like, what did you even see, anyway?”
I stole a glance over to Ditzy, whose expression was all the confirmation I needed that at least I hadn’t imagined all of it. “Well, probably the same thing Princess Twilight did. I mean, she got really scared, too, but she didn’t go anywhere, I don’t think.”
Vinyl gave the Pegasus a sideways glance. “We really don’t want to know, do we?”
”No, not really. I’d offer you a muffin but they won’t let me bring outside food into Intensive Care. When you’re in a regular bed I can bring you all the muffins you can eat! Which might not be many cause of your throat,” she added sheepishly.
I muddled their explanations around in my head, and it all made sense. Too much sense, actually. It explained everything. Of course it was a dream. I mean, I could probably ask them about anything, and they’d have a good answer for it. Except…
“What about Zecora? I saw her in my ‘dream’, too. And she explained a lot of stuff I’m pretty sure my subconscious wouldn’t have drummed up on its own. Plus, she didn’t rhyme the entire time. I think even in my dreams she’d find a way to rhyme everything. Even oranges,” I said, with no lack of doubt.
The girls all looked at each other, then Daisy sighed, dipping her head to her chest. “Oh, Rose, come on. Why can’t you just leave it alone? You’re fine. You just need some rest.”
Vinyl nodded, “Yeah, you just need to relax a bit. Get some rest, drink some water, watch some por-“ Octavia smacked her in the head. “Watch some TEE VEE or something.”
I shook my head. It still hurt, but it didn’t feel anything like knocking my head on a table. More like someone had scratched at it from the inside. “No way. I’ve gotta get out. Find Twilight or Zecora or somepony. There’s way too much work to do. I mean, even if it was a dream, there’s still something out there!”
I tried to raise myself from the bed, but Derpy stopped me, leaning on my chest with both her front hooves. “Why? Why do you have to do it? Just leave it to Twilight’s friends or the Princesses or whatever?”
“Because I’ve seen these things! You have too, Derpy! We should be doing something to help, not ignoring it with TV and bedrest!”
Her head dipped, her face disappearing behind her mane. “Why… why… why why why WhY why why WHY why whY Why WHY COULDN”T YOU LEAVE IT ALONE?!” she screamed, shrieked, bellowed at me, raising her muzzle to meet mine, even as it split open from top to bottom. It tore itself open, revealing Vinyl’s face. Then it melted apart, falling off in pieces, to unmask Octavia, who disappeared in a puff of gray smoke to turn into Daisy.
More screaming, then darkness.
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I woke up again. Dark. Not pitch. Just dim. I was in the alley again. And again, I was surrounded by Tavi, Vinyl, Daisy, and Ditzy. All of whom looked distinctly more concerned than their hallucinatory counterparts. “Uh… is she dead?” Vinyl asked. She nudged me with a hoof, just to make sure.
“I’ll eat it, I swear to the sun,” I grumbled, aching all over. Bending through time and space, I assume, makes a pony sore in places they don’t even have yet.
“Oh yeah, she’s fine,” the DJ grinned at me, then offered a hoof to pull me up.
Once on all four hooves, I took a step back. I glanced over my shoulder to make sure I wasn’t backing into that crack again. I noticed, with some relief, that I was in the middle of a normal street, and not some back alley full of nightmares. “Ok, ok. How do I know this part is real? I mean, I’ve seen some stuff, you guys. Like, I don’t trust jack all right now.” Octavia gave me a look usually reserved for her roommate, and smacked me in the head. “OW! Ok, ok, you’re real. Sweet Celestia.”
Ditzy waved a wing at me. “Ok, um, we need to leave. Like, now.”
I didn’t want to hang around long enough to find out why.
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I know it isn’t kosher, but I want to fast forward a few days. To say that nothing happened would be an optimistic lie, but in comparison to the events of the first few days, it was rather tame. We all ended up staying in Vinyl’s place, far away from the town. It wasn’t until we heard the celebration of Princess Twilight coming home that we decided it was safe to sleep in our own homes. They wouldn’t go into detail on what happened, and given my own experiences, I didn’t blame them.
We were all at the town wide party, courtesy of Pinkie Pie, sitting around a table with Twilight and her friends, sharing our own experiences. We talked about things that most of the other ponies in town wouldn’t have understood, building a kind of camaraderie around surviving whatever the hell it was that had decided to torture us for so long.
“So you were trapped in a living, like dead house or whatever?! Bleeehhhhh….” Exclaimed Rainbow Dash. She shook from tip to hoof in disgust. “That’s just… I mean we saw some weird junk, but that’s just wrong.”
Twilight shook her head. “It seems to be a common theme with these things. Death and disease seems to follow them around.”
“Either that or they drag it with them,” Spike offered.
The Princess raised an eyebrow at him. “That’s… not a comforting thought, Spike.”
He looked up at his caretaker with a mouthful of cupcake. He swallowed loudly, and retorted, “Oh, and everything from the last week was?”
I giggled at him. “Oh, for sure. It was like a warm fuzzy blanket of regret.”
I got a laugh out of that from almost everypony. It was kind of a warm, fuzzy feeling, actually, compared to everything else. I spared a glance around the table in sentiment, when I noticed something unnerving. Ditzy was looking at me, smiling. With both eyes. “Uh, Ditzy? Wha-“
She looked confused for a moment, then smiled. “Oh, yeah! I haven’t seen them since Twilight got back! So I don’t have to look around for ‘em anymore! Also, I totally forgot-“ she said, pulling out an enormous basket from under the table. “I promised you muffins!”
I sighed in relief, and reached for the basket. My hoof bumped into Vinyl’s as we reached for the same pumpkin muffin, and I smiled sideways at her. She grinned back, meeting my gaze.
With only one eye. The other was looking at the basket of muffins. Or, rather, on top of it.