Marble Pie was afraid of the mirror in the corner of her room. Fear was a daily event for the earth pony, but she had learned to live with the routine frights that swept her insecurities such as talking, strangers, talking to strangers, or being seen in public. She could hide, run away, or push her louder, grumpier sister, Limestone, into overt communication with others. After a bout of harsh discourse with her, most ponies would usher their business quickly or find an excuse to leave.
She loved Limestone for her sourness and complete lack of empathy towards others because it reduced the amount of incidents where Marble had to have exposure to others. But Limestone couldn’t help her when the pony was staring back from inside the polished black of the standing onyx mirror that stood in the safe space of her own bedroom.
Marble remained curled up on her bed, where she had retreated from the being in the mirror, the warm sheets providing no comfort as they entombed the mare within. Brushed lavender eyes flickered from inside the confines of the shivering blanket fort like distress beacons in the direction of the mirror. Her heart beat like grouse wings and her mouth ran dry of saliva. Her tongue felt like rough sandpaper as it retracted back into her throat, scratching at the soft flesh as it did.
It’s okay. Calm down.
What was that thing?
Nothing… maybe just your imagination, Marble talked to herself wordlessly. She couldn’t recall how long she had been doing it, but her therapist had said holding conversations in her mind could help her ease into conversation with others. That was when she still had a therapist; the visits hadn’t helped...
Dread filled the room like a suffocating tire smoke, caustic and razing to the lungs. Marble had been combing her mane in front of the mirror when she saw the demented face staring back at her. She had only glimpsed it, but the sight had panicked her. Marble had bolted like a frightened child to her bed, knocking the lamp beside her bed over and extinguishing the light like a blade across the jugular as the flickering flame snuffed. The brush she was running through her mane had flown in an unknown direction, laying in an unseen part of the room.
The mirror had upturned as Marble had kicked out reflexively from the shock of what she had observed; the reflective stone, held by brass and steel, faced the ceiling where it met the wall. Apart from the long, thin piece of onyx, the mirror was mundane. It had been a fixture of Marble’s bedroom for almost as long as she could remember. A gift from her father, Igneous, on her fourth birthday, Marble had spent days of aggregated time reviewing herself within the brass borders. Nothing had ever been there before, nothing scary at least.
Can’t be scared all the time… It’s bad for you.
But, you saw that … that… thing!
It was probably just a trick of the eyes. What are you going to do? Just stay here bundled up, afraid to get out of bed all night?
It’s not that bad of an idea, is it?
What about in the morning? Are you going to throw a blanket over the mirror and just pretend it doesn’t exist?
Maybe.
So you are really going to regress to the point you can’t look at yourself anymore? Too afraid of what might be there? Oh Celestia, you are such a baby, Marble.
I… I’m not a baby.
Yeah? Then get your scared butt out of bed and go look in the mirror.
Marble bit her bottom lip, the pain brought her back from the mental conversation. She could only draw disquieted half-breaths despite the many minutes she had spent cocooned inside of her blanket dealing with the fright that had caused her to collapse. Her lungs flapped like the wings of a hummingbird, heaving and expiring the warm air so quickly that they could scarcely absorb oxygen.
She needed to face her fears. Wasn’t that what her family had told her her whole life? What they had paid the therapist for? That if she allowed her inability to communicate with others to grow too large, it may begin to affect other aspects of her life? Was this the progression of her irrational shyness?
The blanket around her was a tightly latched straightjacket, biting into her in places and restricting her movement.
How did it get so tight? Wasn’t it loose just a moment ago?
Maybe you should get used to it, crybaby. Keep regressing and you’ll have to be put in a home. You know what happened to Pi…
Shut up!
I’m just saying, Marble, things like that typically run in the family.
Freeing herself from the grappling blanket, Marble rolled to her hooves and paused, shrinking down to her haunches as the mirror loomed across from her. It somehow seemed a tower, an altar of pitch-colored stone waiting for a victim to sacrifice to the horrors of the everlasting night. She worried she was feeding herself to whatever dark god was trapped inside.
She really didn’t want to look but the conversational theoretical other in her head would chide her for inactivity and fearing everything if she dawdled for too long. It seemed the other voice was louder than her own recently. Sometimes she hated ever starting those talks with herself, though she really couldn’t remember when she did. It felt as though she had always had them. Even before the therapist had instructed her to have them.
She lifted from her haunches gingerly and eased across the room before the voice remarked to her about the speed she traveled. The mirror still looked up to the ceiling as Marble came within touching distance. A lump stuck in her throat the size of a geode. It ached from the desert that her swallowing apparatus had become.
Okay, good job. I knew you had it in you to cross the floor. The voice was sarcastic and Marble harumphed to herself.
You don’t have to be like that, you know. I’m not a baby.
Prove it. Pull the mirror down and look into it.
I’ll … I’ll show you, but if that thing is there, I don’t don’t want to hear any more smart alec comments.
Marble did as instructed and hesitantly brought her hoof to the upward facing stone. Her hoof floated a few inches away from the polished, reflective surface and trembled. Something inside warned her, something small and distant.
Don’t chicken out now. Touch it.
Her hoof edged closer and rattled off a series of sharp clacks as her nerves vibrated her frightened hooves against the rock. She felt the lump moving in her throat, tearing its way, unlubricated by saliva, down into her chest where it lodged behind her pumping heart. Her breathing was ragged and jittery like a one-legged rabbit trying to run from a predator.
She felt like crying.
Down she goes, Marble. Pull it down and look into it.
She almost felt mesmerized as her hoof followed the command she had not issued. The heavy stone mirror gently creaked as the surface rotated towards the gray mare. Marble wanted to close her eyes, to avoid the thing that was just waiting on the other side, but something wouldn’t let her. She turned her head to one side, trying to defend part of her vision as the ceiling slowly rotated away to be replaced by the wall. Picture frames hung of her family in the mirror as she tugged it downward. She could see the top of her head, the dark gray mane rendered almost black in the lightless room.She swallowed hard and prepared to look into her reflected face. She hoped she would recognize the mare in the mirror but it was the eyes, her eyes, that she most dreaded to see.
She had only caught them for a fraction of a second before. They were rimmed in the hellish golds of deep flame, the pupils elongated like that of a cat and glowing like a smeared firefly. The sclera had been banishment, the void of the unknown, and the iris a fountain of dark, old blood.
Time’s wasting. Is this all you have to offer? Want me to make the reservations at the psych ward for you now or…?
Leave me alone! I’m doing it, okay? Just in my own time.
She paused, taking in a breath of hot air that burned deep in her chest. She thought she felt her heart stop as she readied herself for the terrifying visage that awaited her in the reflection. She yanked the mirror down and prepared to shriek. Staring back were the lavender eyes she knew well. It was just herself standing awkwardly with a jagged grimace: simple, frightened Marble Pie. Her mind raced to conclude what she had witnessed before and she tapped playfully at her reflection. She couldn’t help but chuckle silently to herself and her worrisome stupidity.
You are a mess, Marble. You really need to get it together.
I know. I’m trying.
I know you are. It’s always the quiet ones.
Huh?
Where’s your mane brush?
That was a good question. She knew it had gone flying but wasn’t sure where and in the lampless dark of the room, there may be no finding it. She hoped her lamp wasn’t broken. The house was old, generations had lived there before her and each room only had one or two modern amenities. An overhead light source had yet to be installed to her particular bedroom.
The night rolled into the room and only then did Marble wonder where the day had gone. Time had been flying by recently. She and Limestone did most of the work nowadays and days blended together when they were so untouched by change. But… had she even been in the fields today? What about yesterday? She scrunched her features in confusion and tried to recall what she had done in the last few days. Maybe her nature was getting to her and the self imposed fright had rattled or addled her brain. She could only recall bits and pieces of the last week and none of it was more than waking up, rolling around in bed to get comfortable, or other piddling, middling things.
She looked down from the mirror and crouched, searching below the brass frame with her hooves, hoping to feel the brush more than see it. She could feel the tall tendrils of the rug upon which the mirror stood, one of only two she kept to cut the bite of the cold wooden floor. Her hoof bumped something and she pulled it close, smiling gingerly at the brush.
She stood once more, cradling the ebony wood brush in one hoof. Now she just needed to check on the lamp and, hopefully, she could finish combing and straightening her mane before…
She looked up and horror stared back into her from the depths of the abyssal glass.
Eyes of black ash and raging flame poured into Marble like molten steel, filling the mare with white hot fear and rigid, rebar-like stiffness that would render rigor mortis envious. Locked in place, she gawked in terror as the figure before her grinned from ear to ear with a mouth of rotting, worm infested teeth.
The smile it gave was a sepulcher for joy and happiness. Their corpses gaunt and drawn up tightly from decay like dead fried marshmallow shells.
It looked like her, Celestia help her, the thing in the mirror looked like her.
Her muscles tore free from the stiffness and a bright bolt of pain flared up each leg as she twisted and turned, fleeing from the gaze of the onyx surface. It seemed the thing inside was laughing at her, though she couldn’t hear it. The laughter came from inside of her head.
Limestone! I need to get my sister! She’ll know what to do!
The voice in her head, her conversation imitation, was eerily quiet. Maybe it realized now that Marble had told the truth. Or maybe it was still reeling from the nightmare in the mirror.
Limestone’s room was right next door and Marble made the distance in only a few seconds. She hammered her hooves into the door loudly. Her parents were upstairs asleep but age had brought the sunset of their hearing and even Limestone had to almost yell for them to hear her.
Wake up! Wake up, Limestone! PLEASE!
Marble paused to look behind her. The door was hanging open like the maw of a bleached skull, empty and dreamless. It remained still and quiet. She turned and rattled another volley of strikes into the door and strained to hear over the blood pumping in her ears. Once more, her heart thrummed like the engine of a locomotive funneling fear laced her blood throughout the extremities of her body, jerking her motions and fueling her panic.
“Hold your horses, will you? I’m coming!” Limestone growled. Marble’s sister was always grouchy and waking her up late at night was never a smart decision but Marble wanted so badly to see the aggravation, if not outright hate, in her eyes.
Limestone’s voice was comforting enough that Marble felt the knife edge of tension soften a little and her breathing returned to her control.
Limestone won’t be able to help, Marble. You know that.
You! Why would you say that? She’ll know what to do. I told you I saw that… that thing in the mirror.
Oh, Marble. Come on, sweetie, you need to see things for what they are. You know Limestone can’t help.
The door swung open to reveal a face nearly as frightening as the one in Marble’s mirror. Limestone was the picture of agitation. Her scowl was menacing and the brushfire of irritation behind her eyes scorched Marble where she stood. “What, Marble!? What!? What did I tell you about knocking on this door after 7pm? Hmm?”
The gray mare snatched Limestone’s hooves and tugged as hard as she could, pulling her towards her room. The grumpy mare simmered and said small, unknown things under her breath. None of them sounded particularly friendly but she allowed Marble to drag her into Marble’s room. Maybe it was the paleness to her features, or maybe the big, frightened eyes. Either way, Limestone committed herself to the needs of her sister.
Careful not to step in a manner where the mirror would catch sight of her, Marble sidestepped into her room, creeping up on the mirror after letting go of Limestone’s leg. She moved quickly to the side of the furniture and motioned Limestone to stand before it. Her eyes shuddered and she recoiled down as small as possible, covering her head with both forelegs and waited for her older, braver sister to see the thing inside.
“If this is some sort of joke, I am not going to be happy,” Limestone warned and shook her head angrily. She marched to the mirror and looked deeply into it. Her hateful expression never changed as she tilted her head from side to side and then lifted and lowered the mirror, inspecting it. Her eyes focused like light through a prism onto the cowering mare.
Told you. She didn’t see it. There’s nothing there that shouldn’t be there, Marble.
Marble was stunned and bit her lip, curling up in preparation for the harangue of insults and yelling that she was about to endure from her sister. She closed her eyes as if the harsh words might injure them.
But they never came. Marble popped one eye open, then the other, and twisted her head back and forth. Limestone wasn’t there. There was no possible way that Limestone wouldn’t have blasted her for waking her up. It just didn’t make sense.
Did… did she go back to her room?
No, Marble. She didn’t. You know she didn’t.
I don’t KNOW anything! Why do you assume I just know all these things?
Look in the mirror.
NO!
Just look.
It’s there! I know it is!
A laughter like bubbling tar filled her mind. It swelled and filled her head until she thought it might explode. Suddenly, just as quickly as it began, it ended.
Sweetie, I’ve been here for a very, very long time. Look in the mirror and don’t run away this time.
She felt compelled to look even though she didn’t want to. The voice in her head, her imaginary conversation friend, took control of her body and eased it before the mirror, against her will.
The thing stood there, a cruel mockery of Marble. It’s skin was ashen and scaled, her mane more of a boneless bat wing stretching across the ruddy face. Her tail was that of a great lizard and it throbbed back and forth to the frantic rhythm of her pulsing heart. A pair of cindered horns twisted around like that of an antelope up and behind the sizzling flesh of the reflection. It’s hooves were cloven like a deer’s and old, dark splashes of crimson decorated up each leg. The burning coals of mirror Marble’s eyes floated in a gold-rimmed sea of infinite black.
Hello, Marble.
It took everything for the mare not to turn and run. She idly wondered if she even could control her body because everything told her to flee but she stood as still as a tombstone. It wasn’t the first time she felt alien in her own skin. Wasn’t this kind of thing happening more and more often?
I can read your mind so don’t worry about speaking. Do you know who I am?
Marble tried to think but her mind was an oil slick and her thoughts flopped and flapped like dying, gasping fish.
You already know, whether you want to admit it or not.
Her brain’s locks disengaged and a swarm of stinging insect-like thoughts scattered and bit painfully, fretfully into one dread that had been eating at her. She couldn’t even let the thought coalesce clearly. The voice in her head giggled knowingly.
No… you’re not. I’m… I’m not like Pinkie. I’m a good pony. I don’t bother anyone!
The mirror Marble grinned, a hideously calloused tongue rolled over saw blade teeth and maggots fell from the haunted grin to writhe at the obsidian hooves.
Okay, fine. You want to play this game? Call me a demon. I’ve been watching you for a long time. Ever since they strung your sister up by her neck. Not that I wasn’t there before… but that’s when you called me. When you completely shut yourself off from the outside world and became self destructive.
Marble’s lip trembled and she fought to move, to escape. She didn’t want to think anymore. She tried to silence the voice in her head. Wasn’t that what her therapist had told her to do after she confided in her about how it frequently asked her to do things… terrible things?
That when she held her imaginary conversations, she lost herself to the will of the other?
She felt like something else was taking her place. She had stopped attending the therapy sessions because the voice told her not to trust the doctor.
The demon Marble nodded gently and reached out with a hoof, the surface of the onyx mirror shimmered and bubbled raucously, spilling in heaps of mercury colored tears that gathered in a pool at the bottom brass rim.
Touch me, Marble.
I won’t let you out! I … I want to be me! I’m not what Pinkie became!
I’m already out, Marble. I’ve been out. I want you to be with me, to stop being so afraid. Wouldn’t that be nice?
A hoof protruded from the rippling face of the mirror and Marble found herself reaching for it unconsciously.
NO! I won’t! Please! Limestone! Mother! Father! Anypony, help me!
The extended hoof gestured behind the mare and bits of ash broke from the scaly flesh to slowly lilt toward the floor.
Look, Marble. It’s already too late.
Marble followed the direction of the motion and her eyes fell upon the dried carcass of a pony on her bed. She was shocked but somehow knew that it would be there. The skin was taught and wrapped like wax paper around a catastrophe of jumbled and broken bones. What coat remained was patchy and as dry as straw. The skull of the corpse was broken by some blunt instrument and the eyes had dried to raisin sized rice-like crisps.
She knew it was Limestone and remembered how fun it had been to shut that hateful bitch up once and for all. The fear and pain was fading quickly and being replaced with wonder and sadistic glee. She felt her tongue lick her lips and she turned back to the mirror.
Something small inside squeaked in protest but it was a cricket near a waterfall.
But I’m a good pony…
Marble’s hoof raised, slowly moving towards the scaled, ash flaked hoof reaching from the mirror. The thing inside smiled sweetly.
Genetics, Marble. It’s not your fault, some things just run in the family. Maybe, had you come out of your shell, things would be different, but you doomed yourself to that which you most feared. It’s okay, though. We’ll be happy together. I’ll take care of you, just like you always wanted.
Their hooves touched and Marble felt at ease. It had never dawned on her before that she had been a fragment of reality. A piece of the only true being. But, now, she was whole again. All of the others were just mirror images of the thoughts in her head. They weren’t real ponies like she was. And, as such, she could do as she pleased. Even if all of those shadowy images that falsely represented themselves as ponies wouldn’t like what she wanted to do to them.
Marble looked in the mirror and grinned as she kicked the desiccated corpse of Limestone from her bed. She leaned back and grinned at what she saw. She was beautiful, laying back on her bed. She was as she had always been, a gray mare with long, darker gray mane but something was different. Her lavender eyes gleamed in the darkness, the demon’s fires lighting them from within. It was self-confidence that made her appreciate the body reflected from the mirror. Now that she was whole, she wouldn’t hide any longer and yearned to make the acquaintance of as many ponies as she could.
“You know what they say,” she laughed playfully to herself, confirming what the former voice in her head had stated. “It’s always the quiet ones.”