//------------------------------// // Chapter Two // Story: The Townsend // by MemoryLane //------------------------------// That was it. It was over. Jazz was allowed no more. Just as soon as the sky turned a color she was sure to be acquainted with soon anyway, it had disappeared. The flash had only been there for a few key moments before somepony flipped the "off" switch. If she focused enough, the tint was still there in the back of her eyelids. It chilled her. Never in her life had she seen the sky turn that color. The idea was horrendously obvious, but Jazz wasn’t very keen on realizing it. The Townsend had begun. She turned back to Crest and her quiet, shallow breathes. Her body rose and fell with every breathe of the air that Jazz was struggling to take in. “Crest? Crest, please wake up…” Jazz whimpered pathetically, like a puppy standing next to it’s fallen master. She knew what she was doing was selfish — waking up her friend and bringing her into a potential nightmare just so she wouldn’t have to be so alone. But Jazz knew Crest, and the one thing she could always depend on was the fact that Crest could keep her safe. Jazz put a shaking hoof on Crest’s side, and lightly shook. “Crest? Crest, please, you have to get up.” As much as Jazz wanted to raise her voice, she most she could do without breaking out into full blown panic was to just croak out the words. The house was silent. The world was silent. Jazz was silent. Jazz’s shakes grew rougher, and faster, until eventually the mare was almost pushing her friend off of her own bed. “Crest! Come on, don’t leave me alone! I can’t…” It was no use. There was no way the mare was getting up anytime soon. At least, not until the week was over. That’s right. Anyone who fell asleep won’t wake up until the end of the Townsend — one week from now. Jazz had never heard of anypony who had actually woken up during the fated week. Jazz was wasting her energy. Jazz’s heart wouldn’t stop pounding, and a few frightful tears poured down her cheeks. “Oh no, no... “ she muttered to herself as she swept her mane back from in front of her face. She was alone. She was terribly, terribly alone. She took a deep breath, and wiped the tears off of pinked cheeks. “Calm down, please, just…” she whispered to herself. The longer she thought about it, the more she came to terms with the fact that she was on her metaphorical death bed. That was the gist of it. Her family in Canterlot would wake up after the week had passed, rejuvenated and pleased. Then, it’d turn to tragedy as they realize that their darling daughter had become a victim of The Townsend. She would become nothing but a memory to everypony that she'd ever known. She couldn’t just hide in her house. She sniffed and looked up, and out the nearby window. “Maybe…” she whimpered, as she contemplated her future. Maybe… there’s somepony else who didn’t fall asleep…? Maybe I’m not the only one awake in town. Jazz didn’t like the idea of going outside, but she had no choice. Thinking logically, there was a chance of there being somepony else awake. But then again, there was no way to be sure. She would feel much better if she had somepony else at her side, rather than sitting in her home for a full week, hiding like a foal.          She was going to die anyway. She had to take a chance. Tossing aside every childish will that told her to stay and hide, she quietly slid back into her room. Her eyes were as wide as dinner plates, and she didn’t expect that to change anytime soon. She slid her peach colored satchel over her head, and took one more deep breathe. She then wandered to the restroom, cleaned herself up, and made her way to the front of her house. Her satchel carried her everyday essentials, such as her keys and wallet, but she a bit too bothered to discard them and leave them behind. The view from Jazz’s doorstep was exactly what she expected: pure nothingness. The streets were as empty as Jazz had ever seen them, even for a little after midnight. The crickets had taken their leave, as well as everypony in town. Poking her head outside was the equivalent to entering one of those sound protected rooms Jazz had heard so much about, the ones that cancel every single morsel of noise. The silence didn’t make her feel any better. The air nipped at her nose, and so she was forced to stifle yet another pathetic sniffle. “Hello?” She cried out to the void. Jazz had been about Stableside in the dead of night a few times before. The darkness that shrouded the normally pleasant town was nothing compared to how she felt right then. It had taken Jazz a few moments for Jazz to realize the overabundance of the pitch black around her. For being pretty close to the dead center of town, she could hardly see her neighbors’ homes. It took her a little longer than she’d like to notice that the streetlights had turned off at some point. “Flashlight…” she told herself. If she was going to run around, she needed a flashlight. The last thing she needed was to trip over something while feeling around through the dark, or worse yet, fall into a well -- which Stableside had quite a few of. There had been folk tales of foals who fell into wells, created by concerned mothers and fathers to prevent their children from playing too close to them. It had taken Jazz approximately ten seconds to walk back inside, locate her favorite yellow flashlight from the cabinet in the kitchen, and make her way back outside. “There, now I might not trip over my own hooves,” she muttered as she closed her front door behind her. “Now, where to…” Maybe it would have been smarter to come up with a game plan before walking outside… Regardless, Jazz turned left. She knew for sure that heading north — deeper into the town — was probably for the best. “The police station… somepony has to be there,” she murmured. Jazz could see nothing except for what she was shining her flashlight on, as if her own town was playing a devilish game of peekaboo, or reenacting one of her favorite horror novels. She kept her flashlight pointed directly in front of her, refusing to move it even an inch for the fear of seeing something she’d rather not see coming. The last thing she needed was to shine her flashlight on a small animal and have a heart attack. Every step on the cobblestone below her was a call for help. The world around her was so foreign and gross that it was merely a shell of its former, lively self. She couldn’t keep herself from tripping over small, round indents in the ground that she never saw until it was too late. Had it rained recently? It didn’t smell like it, but the indents were full of a strange clear liquid she could only assume was water. “Careful…” she told herself. Either way, the last thing she needed was a sprained hoof. The police station was quite a walk away, so Jazz let out a breath. “Okay… maybe this won’t be as bad as I thought it would be,” she whispered just a little louder. Perhaps she was just overreacting. “It’s… it’s just the dark. It’ll be daylight soon anyway… maybe-” And that’s when she heard it. There was no mistaking it. It was the only sound that she had heard since the Townsend began that didn’t come from her own actions or body. It was a thumping sound, like somepony banging on the side of the house — loud, continuous… Heavy.