The Nightmare Stigma

by Impossible Numbers


The Nightmare Stigma, Part II

For a moment, Daisy thought she saw the wings slip past, and then the world dissolved and her brain kicked into gear. Soft fabric pressed up against her cheek. She opened her eyes.

Someone knocked at the door. Groaning, forcing every single shifting muscle to obey her, she eased off the plush Canterlot bed, tottered across the smooth Canterlot carpet, bumped off the gilded Canterlot doorframe, cursed a very Ponyvillian curse, and peered through the peephole and a foggy layer of gummy cornea.

“Wstfgl?” she murmured.

“It’s meeeee!” Roseluck’s voice was muffled through the door. Daisy couldn’t tell if the blurry face was glass distortion or her own sleepy eyes. “Rise and shine! They’re wheeling out my surprise entry! Come on!”

“Mmuh,” managed Daisy, and finally the words penetrated the mush that passed for her morning thoughts. “Oh, right. The entry. Um. Give me a minute. I gotta…” She patted what was left of her curls. “I gotta find my dandy brush first.”

“I’ll see you in the lobbyyyyyyy! Don’t take loooooong!” Roseluck disappeared from view.

Twenty two minutes later, she staggered out of the lobby, bumping into Roseluck occasionally as they crossed the threshold. Immediately before them, the hotel porter struggled against his yoke.

“Madam?” he said through straining teeth. “Where… would you like… the delivery…?”

“Just outside the Royal Gardens, please.” Ignoring his groan, she added, “I’d better come with you. It’s very delicate.”

“Myuh,” said Daisy before slapping the last of the sleep out of her face. Her gaze followed the luckless porter. “So… what’s this surprise entry you won’t tell us about?”

“Ha! I can’t tell you that! It’s a surprise!”

“Oh, of course. How silly of me.”

Roseluck giggled while the cart inched and stopped, inched and stopped, inched and stopped. “I’ve been keeping this in my basement for as long as I can remember, growing it in absolute darkness. My mother passed it on to me. She says that, when the moonlight strikes it on an extremely magical night, the flower will bloom to its full magnificence.”

“Uh huh.” I need a cup of cocoa. And a full Canterlot breakfast. And a bed. “Must be a long-lived plant, then.”

“Oh, yes. My mother told me it goes back generations. No one’s ever uncovered its true secret in my family.”

“Ah, I see,” said Daisy hopelessly. They took a few steps into the road. “So you think this midnight show might –”

“Precisely!”

“– be the oppor… tunity… you…” She slapped her own face again. “My word, I’m slow. But… isn’t that a bit of a gamble?”

Roseluck blushed and flapped a hoof airily. “Oh, you know me. Always the risk-taker, never the risk.”

“Oh yes, that’s you to a T,” muttered Daisy, still pining for her bed. She glanced around. “Where’s Lily, then?”

Instantly, the bouncy exuberance radiating from Roseluck toned down, like a sun being occluded by fog. She actually seemed to shrink slightly where she stood.

“Uh,” she said while the porter groaned down the street. “I… thought she might prefer a lie-in today. You know… after all that staring she did last night. Right up until bedtime. And the… staring after I woke up…”

They glanced up the height of the hotel front. Several balconies above, where the velvet curtains met the ivory railings, they spotted a face staring down.

It was Lily. Her eyes were wide and staring directly at them both.

Daisy forced herself to smile, and waved up at her. After a nudge, Roseluck did the same.

“Morning Lily!” Daisy called up. “Nice to see you!” Out of the corner of her mouth, she whispered, “So we’re telling the Royal Guard about her strangeness, right?”

“Absolutely,” whispered Roseluck. “Only, uh, let’s do it a couple of blocks away…” They each took a step backwards. “Where she can’t see us.”

Soon, they were walking behind the cart’s pony-sized crate, which was drawing a few stares of its own from unicorns in the street.


Lily stood in the middle of the room. She was staring at the wall opposite.

Thuds could be heard on the other side of her door as ponies walked up and down the corridor. From upstairs, someone laughed and ran along the ceiling until a door slammed.

On the bedside table, the hourglass sands poured on.

Slowly, as though on the world’s most arthritic turntable, her head spun round until it turned away from the wall, past the room’s door, past the wardrobe, past the writing desk with the candelabrum on it, and past the velvet curtain to the balcony and to the rising sun outside. She traced its slow arc upwards.

It was right behind her, so her head had to spin all the way round.


Sitting up to the desk, Daisy once again wished she’d never crawled out of bed that morning. Beside her, Roseluck was tapping the edge of her own chair with the side of her ergot.

Royal Guards marched past the cubicle door outside. Daisy got up and poked her head out into the aisle, peering down the stable-like offices to the glassy front doors that swelled like a split glass dome frosting over. She went back to the desk.

“He’s been gone a while,” she said uncertainly.

“Oh, it usually goes like this,” said Roseluck, not meeting her eye but apparently fascinated by the quill and inkstand. “Then they get Captain Shivers in to tell me off for wasting police time. Then they throw me out.”

“You get involved a lot with the Doc’s hobbies, don’t you?” said Daisy coldly.

“Well, actually…” She began tapping the edge of the desk. “I’ve… come up here by myself more often than not…”

Daisy softened her expression. This wasn’t really all that surprising. In fact, she’d long known about the curse of the three flower ponies, mostly because it had been brought up a lot at school. Usually when they’d run out of the room screaming about spiders.

It hardly seemed fair. After all, everyone knew ponies were skittish and didn’t like surprises. Everyone knew ponies were obliged by emotion-seeking abominations of prehistory and beyond to befriend each other or court death from the slightest unfriendly impulse. On top of that, everyone knew they lived in a land full of evil monsters and weird magical disasters that not only courted death but danced with it and brought it to social events for everyone to get acquainted with it. So logically, that meant she and her two friends were, if anything, the most realistic and the most essentially pony-like of all ponies.

Suddenly, the door bounced off the wall. The captain strode in.

He glared at them. “Oh, for Pete’s sake. You can climb down now.”

Both of them were balanced precariously on the backrests of their chairs. They eased themselves down to the seats, smiling apologetically.

Captain Shivers sat down opposite. “Corporal Poll tells me you two have concerns about your friend. Hello again, Miss Roseluck.”

Roseluck grinned the grin of one pretending the last fifteen false alarms hadn’t happened. “Uh, hello. Captain.”

He grunted and placed both front hooves together. “Now I heard everything from the corporal, so this is merely for clarification, you understand. You reported, and I quote, that your friend ‘keeps staring at things really, really hard’.”

“Uh huh,” said Daisy, feeling her stomach sinking.

“Right.” After a pause, he added, “So there definitely wasn’t anything else you wished to add?”

Daisy glanced across at Roseluck, who shrugged helplessly. Up to me again, I guess. “She started acting weird after we got off the train last night. You see, we’re attending the Royal Moonlit Meadow Show, and everyone was just a little bit nervous –”

Too late, she clamped her lips tightly together. Captain Shivers narrowed his eyes.

“So she didn’t e.g. break into a building, or steal someone’s wallet, or kick a stranger in the face?” he said. “You know? Something concrete we could act upon?”

“Well, she doesn’t usually stare so much,” said Daisy, who was already wishing she could kick him in the face. “That’s a case of suspicious abnormal behaviour, right?”

“Look, this isn’t the first time Miss Roseluck here has been up before me. Last spring, she tried to report a snapped azalea in the Royal Canterlot Gardens.”

“That was gross vandalism!” squeaked Roseluck.

Captain Shivers ignored her. “The winter before that, she complained the Hearth’s Warming decorations were a fire hazard.”

“There could’ve been arsonists,” insisted Roseluck. “You can’t deny that possibility.”

“And the fall before that, she tried to have our official City Decorator for the Delightfully Cruel Nightmare Night arrested for behaviour likely to intimidate and or threaten.”

“Well… those horrible decorations speak for themselves, right?”

Daisy’s insides collapsed where she sat. “Please, Captain. I’m worried about my friend. Isn’t there anything you could do?”

Captain Shivers smiled down at her, and the urge to kick it rose. “I’m sorry, but we need more substantial evidence before we can act. If we went around arresting ponies on such charges as ‘staring too much’, where would we be?”

“I don’t know,” Daisy said through gritted teeth. “Maybe not cleaning up from the last changeling invasion.”

The shock of her own words reverberated around her head. She tried to hide her neck. The captain’s glare was worse than a searchlight.

“Go back to your flower show, ladies,” said Captain Shivers, gesturing to the door. “I’m sorry we couldn’t be of any more help. Treat your friend. Make her feel better. And remember: if anything actionable comes up, then we’re always willing to listen to you. Until then, I’m afraid I must ask you to leave.”

While they stepped out into the aisle, Daisy could’ve sworn two things. The first one was that Roseluck glowered at the opposite stall for a moment before hiding it behind a sad but apparently understanding smile. The second one was that a shadow shifted in the rafters overhead.

Neither of them spoke to each other on the way out. Daisy felt like she’d been told to step out of the classroom until she calmed down. Again.

Even in this mild midday breeze that tackled her like a huddle of puppies as she stepped outside, she could feel her cheeks burning.


Lily had been staring outside her balcony window until the sun rose out of sight. After that, she had to trace its trajectory by staring up the ceiling, then down the wall, and then down and across to the door.

Steps echoed outside and stopped behind the beach-white wood. “Room service? Anyone in?”

It opened slightly.

“Oh, beg pardon. I didn’t realize anyone was in.”

Lily stared on.

“Um… are you OK?”

Lily stared on.

“All righty then… um…”

Lily stared on.

Eventually, the cleaner slammed the door. Steps echoed much faster as their maker hurried away.

The room darkened. After a while, more steps rumbled by, and then stopped before the door. Voices muttered amongst themselves briefly.

“Hi, Lily,” said the voice of Daisy, somewhat muffled. “We’ve, er, just been around the city. Taking in the sights, not worrying. You know? So uh, you –” Frantic whispering ensued. “You feeling better?”

After a while, the other voice coughed.

“We’re just getting ready to go check on the show now,” said the much squeakier voice of Roseluck. “Get a gander at the other early entries? I’ll be setting up my stall too, eh? Won’t that be fun?”

The room continued to darken at an alarmingly boring rate.

“OK, you’re still tired. Nothing wrong with being a bit tired. It’s not, you know, criminal or anything. We respect your privacy, even though up till now you’ve never had any from us.”

Hooves shuffled on the carpet.

“We’ll, uh, see you tomorrow then. If you’re sleeping… um… have a good night! Sweet dreams! Gotta go!”

One set of hooves hurried off immediately. The remaining voice sighed.

“Look,” said Daisy, “I don’t know what this is about, but we’re worried about you. How about we have a talk tomorrow morning at breakfast? I know something’s bothering you, but we’re your friends. You can count on us, right? Right?”

Lily stared on.

Another sigh. “OK, then. See you tomorrow, I guess.”

Finally, the hoofsteps died away. All was silence. Lily stood and stared on.

An hour later, and under much darker conditions, Lily blinked and woke up screaming.

She finished her scream. She began to scream again. Then she blinked more frantically. She stopped in mid-scream. She looked around the room as though she’d never seen one before.

“What the – Who the – How the – Where the heck am I!?” she cried out. “What happened to the little fillies’ room!?”

Someone thumped the wall behind her bed. “Hey, keep it down in there!” they yelled. “I’m tryin’ to sleep!”

Lily jumped away from it, smacking into the writing desk’s chair. A breeze played along the curtains. At once, she spun round with a yelp to face…

The full moon, rising.

Moonlight hit her in the face. She’d barely figured out this was a hotel room before her mind was thrown back into the darkness. Of course, she went out screaming. It seemed the best thing to do.


Captain Shivers went out of the station, pausing only to nod to his night shift replacement coming up the steps. He paused again at the bottom, this time to peer up at the rising moon.

“Ah me,” he murmured sadly.

Further down the street, he paused for the third time and cocked an ear. He was sure he’d heard a flutter, but there were no pegasus ponies when he looked up to check, and none had landed in the street behind him. All was still and shadowy, the distant towers mere silhouettes in the dark. He chuckled and continued his march.

The Royal Guard just weren’t what they used to be. A few years ago, he’d have been first in line to charge some hulking eldritch beast from the otherworld, often arresting them if they couldn’t pay up. They were awful for littering. But that was the point: ponies looked to the Guard and saw the shiny barding and the cropped haircut and tail, and they nodded and went about their business. Threats to Equestria knew their place back then.

Now? Now, there were two Princesses – one had come back under suspicious but largely ignored circumstances – and now there were heroes all over the place. Old Law and Order were replaced by Mythic Quests and Noble Heroes, and what did he get out of it? Standing around like a dumb statue half the time, and dealing with the dumbest old lady complaints the other half. Now, if old ladies nodded at him, it was only to get him to agree that next door’s cat was smelly and ugly and needed to be ‘confiscanated’.

And he was getting his haunches handed to him the other half of the time by the “hulking eldritch beast from the otherworld” of the week. Sometimes, he wondered what life would’ve been like if he’d changed his mind and taken higher mathematics at magical college.

He turned the corner, and swore he saw another flash of wing out of the corner of his eye. He stopped and checked. Just stars.

“Damned Roseluck,” he muttered as he continued marching. “Spreading her paranoia all over the place…”

Yet even as half of him muttered on, another half of him had wished, just once, that her frightened ravings had been true. Oh, what an honour it would have been! Confronting evils beyond the ken of mortals, just like his father, and just like his father’s father, and just like mother’s father’s stepsister’s dog Fluffenschnoodle. To have proven that all those years studying military history had been worth it!

Yet, another half of him wondered if he could have really, honestly handled it half as well as any of them. After all, he’d been the most boring of all the family, charging monsters was about all he’d been good at –

As he turned the next corner, he suddenly wheeled round and pointed his horn, which glowed.

“Gotcha!” he yelled.

The wings glowed briefly, something shrieked, and then to his surprise the shadow fell out of his telekinetic grip and landed with a thump in an alleyway.

Captain Shivers checked, but he was alone on this street. At once, he charged round the corner, blocking the alleyway. His horn lit up, capturing a pile of trash cans and their spilled piles of trash. Flies hovered about it.

“Ha!” he said. “No one gets the drop on the good captain.”

One slow hoof at a time, never lowering his horn, he advanced on the heap. Immediately, he held his breath as a precaution.

“Now, you’re gonna answer me five questions,” he muttered. “Who are you? Why were you sneaking up on me in the dark? And are you aware there’s a charge for littering within the city boundary?”

Almost on top of the heap, he summoned his spell and forced the trash and the cans against the wall, sweeping from the centre.

Empty alleyway ground reflected his surprised gape.

Suspiciously, he felt the weight of the trash within his telekinetic grip. Odd. There were no abnormalities of mass…

By the time he’d worked it out and spun round, fluttering wings engulfed his face, muffling his yell. Worse, he made the mistake of breathing in.

Around him, trash cans and trash crashed back onto the ground. The alleyway was plunged into darkness.

And, eventually – save for the buzzing of the flies around the trash – silence.


Daisy woke up into darkness, faint birdsong, and the stillness of her own body roasting under the thick Canterlot duvet. When she lifted her cheek off the pillow, the silk stuck to it briefly before peeling off.

“Oooohh…” she groaned, wincing. For some reason, her brain throbbed. How late did I stay up last night? How much cocoa did I drink?

She sat up in bed, her belly sloshing, and shielded her eyes from the raw sunlight. Oh dear. I forgot to draw the curtains last night. How could I be so… whatever I was last night. Say, what happens when you drink too much cocoa anyway?

On the fifth attempt, she flopped out of bed and belly-flopped the carpet. Once the pain shrank away, she crawled over to the windows and levered herself up with the handle. The latch clicked. She belly-flopped the balcony floor instead. It was like marble.

“Ow,” she moaned. “Why do mornings hate me? Did I just…” She yawned. “Did I just say something… profoundly insulting about them… when I was a filly? I feel like…” She yawned again. “I feel like the worst pony in the city. Ooh…”

In the end, she stood on all fours, swaying like an upside-down pendulum. Blearily, her cringing eyes peeped out from beneath a furrowed brow and above shielding eyelids.

Ponies moved on the street below, just where it opened into an alleyway. She saw a white cart with a red plus on the side. A stallion in a stretcher disappeared into the rear of the vehicle. Then the doors slammed shut. Around it, a ring of bystanders chattered amongst themselves.

Daisy gasped while the ambulance went down the street and turned the corner, its driver galloping.

“Oh my,” she murmured. I’ve seen that stallion before! “Was that…? Um…”

The morning smacked her head again.

“Oh, drat,” she moaned. “What was his name again? Shiny armour guy… Big muzzle… Uh…”

Hooves rapped against her main door. From the corridor came Roseluck’s frantic panting.

“Daisy! Daisy! Wake up! Wake up! Something’s happened! It’s a sign! A bad sign!”

Eventually, Daisy zigzagged to the door – banging her hock against the bed once – and opened it.

“Lily,” she said at once. “Check on Lily.”

Roseluck goggled at her. “Lily!? You think she’s involved?”

“Not a clue. Let’s check on her anyway. Just in case.”

“You don’t want to brush your hair first?”

“Forget the hair! Our friend could be in danger!” Halfway up the corridor, she added, “I’ll brush it afterwards.”

They almost tripped down the stairs, and successfully bumped into an elderly couple coming down the next corridor. Many apologies later, they were outside Room 101, but had to stop to get their breaths back and wait for their lungs to cool down.

Roseluck went to knock on the door. At the first hit, it swung open.

“Uh oh.” Her face went pale. “That’s never a good sign.”

“Lily?” Daisy stuck her head in. “Hey, her room looks just like mine.”

Lily!” yelled Roseluck, cupping her hooves to her mouth. “Liiiiilly!

“Ow! That was right in my ear!”

“Sorry. Sorry.”

Loud thumping came from the next room over. “I told you last night!” yelled a muffled voice. “Keep it down already!”

Both of them exchanged glances. They went inside.

“Lily?” said Roseluck. They passed the en suite bathroom door; through a crack, they could see the towels still neatly folded on the rack. “Lily? Are you in here?”

They checked round the corner. Blank wall. They checked the writing desk. Unoccupied, save for a rather fetching candelabrum. They checked the bed.

Lily was curled up on the large pillow, right against the wall. Legs, tail, even neck: all were folded or squeezed as tightly as possible, as though afraid of touching the rounded fabrics around them. Her eyes were wide. Both pupils locked onto them as they stepped up to the bed.

A lump rose out of the duvet nearest to her. Even through her morning slowness and the stabs of a panic trying to break out, Daisy sensed her own sharp interest aiming at it at once.

“Oh, Lily.” Roseluck’s hoof covered her mouth. “What’s wrong? You’re shaking like a leaf on an Arctic Wrap-Up Willow.”

Lily whimpered and shook her head. In her cramped position, she seemed to be nuzzling the edge of the duvet.

At once, Daisy felt the breeze caress her tangled mane. The balcony was wide open. About it, curtains fluttered.

“Er… what were you doing last night?” she said.

Lily took a shuddering breath. “I don’t remember,” she whined. “I don’t remember anything! First, I was in the little fillies’ room. Then I woke up here. Then I woke up again, and I was here again.”

Daisy hurried over to the balcony, stomach still sloshing. The breeze was a comfort cooling her still-too-warm body. Yet despite the fluttering curtains, the railings looked normal, the ground looked normal, the view across the opalescent rooftops to Canterlot Castle looked normal – Damned girl got the best room, said a brief spark of rage in her head – and nothing else stood out. She turned back.

On the wall next to the balcony, three imprints stood out. Each one was the size of a pony head, rounded on top, square at the bottom.

Oh no. Oh no, oh no, oh no. I don’t need this. I just came here for a flower show. Why do I have to be reminded of this sort of freakish superstrength that could tie a knot in my spine? Those imprints must be an inch deep, and that’s solid white brick!

“Roseluck,” she began, stepping back in.

Roseluck lowered the duvet. “Oh my,” she said. “Lily, where did you get this?”

“‘Get it’? I didn’t get it!” said Lily. She drew back from the lump and trembled harder. “I don’t know how it got there, I swear!”

“How what got where?” said Daisy.

Roseluck gulped and threw back the corner. The golden helmet rolled a bit and then settled back down. Dents ran along the back where its rounded top stretched down to a square bottom.

A Royal Guard helmet.

“Daisy,” said Roseluck from somewhere suddenly very far away, “I was downstairs just now. They said there was a Royal Guard attack last night. It was Captain Shivers. This can’t be just a coincidence!”

Don’t panic. Don’t panic. We always panic. At a time like this, the sensible thing to do is… is… well, it certainly isn’t panicking. I know that.

“You’re taking this awfully well,” she lied to Roseluck’s wide eyes and quivering lips.

“What’s going on!? What’s going on!? What’s going on!?” shrieked Lily, contriving despite her own cramped dimensions to cramp herself even more tightly. “Some beasty’s after me! That’s what this is! It’s the End Of The World Number 42! I just know it!”

“It’s not the end of the world!” Daisy snapped before she could stop herself. Much more calmly, she continued, “Tell the Royal Guard. That’s the thing to do. They didn’t believe us before, they’ll definitely believe us this time.”

“No!” Roseluck threw herself at Lily, then realized what she was doing and threw herself away, screaming. “They’ll lock her up! She might be under some kind of crazy brainwashing! So they probably should! But I don’t want them to! Kinda! Unless she’s innocent! Which she might not be!”

“The Royal Guard!?” Lily stiffened. “What do you mean ‘before’!?”

“Stop yelling!” yelled Daisy. It really is like a disease. As soon as one of us gets it… No! I’m not falling for it. I’m getting sick of falling for it. One of us has to be the mature one around here.

She swallowed. “Let’s find someone to sort this out for us, and then find somewhere to hide and pray. How’s that sound?”

Lily raised a trembling hoof. “That gets my vote.”

“Mine too,” added Roseluck.

Someone banged on the wall behind the bed. “Gosh darned it, you foals! If you don’t shut up, I swear I’m calling the manager!”