After a moment's deliberation, you decide to just stick with a single slice. Just a taste, really. It's Nightmare Night, after all, so you can allow a small cheat on your usually strict meal plan.
Besides, you an only imagine what Icy Hot from the Wonderbolt Heath and Fitness Advisory Board would do if she ever caught word of you eating a whole cake.
You lean in and take a bite, getting a fair share of both cake and frosting and snagging a fondant skull as well. Flavor explodes across your tongue. The smooth taste of chocolate merges with the unexpected depth of pumpkin into a new combination like nothing you've ever tasted. Hints of spice dance on the tip of your tongue, just subtle enough to add ornamentation to the flavor without overpowering it.
The cake is light and fluffy, countered well by the thick cloyingness of the icing and the odd crunch from a sprinkle. You take another bite, bigger this time, but still keeping in mind your limits.
Did they call in Pinkie Pie for this? It's definitely in her league, though not as sweet as she usually makes them. Maybe one of Celestia's personal chefs? Or, maybe, was Starlight secretly a gourmet chef? You continue to chew in bliss as you ponder.
A small voice in the back of your mind, the part that usually keeps an eye out for obstacles and incoming projectiles while flying, can't quite settle down though. This is supposed to be a haunted house. It doesn't make sense for one room to have a delicious cake and nothing else. With each new bite that voice becomes ever more tense, constantly expecting something to happen. For the cake to have a hot chili pepper core. For it to turn into something gross mid-bite. For a monster with a camera to jump from a hidden door and catch you in an embarrassing spit-take.
Yet, everything still seems fine. Having eaten a good third of the cake, you push the rest away. It was a fun break, but you'd rather get back to exploring what other, more frightening kinds of rooms have been set up.
Just as you turn away, you hear a quiet 'pomf'. Like the noise of a pillow hitting the ground after a two story fall.
On the table, a new cake has appeared.
"...Huh," you remark as you return.
The new cake sits just to then side of the old one, iced in white with a string of carrots detailed in frosting around the edges.
It also smells heavenly.
"I guess I could give this one a taste," you reason. "Just a taste though."
You bite into the new cake. A sweet tang of carrot coats your tongue, playing divinely off the vanilla of the homemade icing. You chew longer than the soft cake needs it, letting your tongue swim in the flavor, but eventually you do swallow.
"Alright, that was really good but I really should—"
Before you even finish, another cake appears, its plate pushing the others aside as it manifests. This one's a wide and flat cheesecake, sprinkled liberally with candied lemon peel and shavings of white chocolate.
Something in the back of your mind throws an alarm, but it's just as quickly squashed by the tantalizing aroma of sugar and lemon. "Okay, just one more slice. And I'll do a extra lap around town tomorrow."
You take a scooping bite, digging your jaw through the cold creaminess like a backhoe breaking ground. As you chew, you push the plate away so you won't be tempted for more. It falls off the edge, taking the original cake with it as it goes.
That was it. Definitely. No more cake. You harden your resolve... but it crumbles away as a massive cake appears, nearly too big for the table. A Black Forest chocolate so dark the light seems to bend towards it. Before you even make a decision you find your mouth is stuffed with it, the rich chocolate blotting out those niggling doubts and concerns.
You were already planning to have a big workout tomorrow to work of all the candy anyway. You can always just make it longer to deal with the extra calories.
Then again, if you were to stop now, you'll never know what kind of cake might have come next.
Having dug a furrow through the middle (and thoroughly coated your face) you push the massive cake off the table. There's a moment of guilt at the mess you're making, but that feeling too is squashed by the appearance of yet another gorgeously decadent cake.
And so it goes. One by one, one cake after another. Each one sampled and then pushed aside to make room for the next. Every cake unique and better than the last. Marbled, angels food, devil's food. Chiffon, pound, and spice.
Your thoughts fall into a cycle as you shovel one in after another.
'It's just one bite. I can work that off. Just one bite.'
One bite and one bite and one bite add up as the room starts to fill with discarded cake. At some point you sit down, your legs feeling strangely strained. Soon after you lie on your belly fully, optimizing the position of your forelegs and face for maximally efficient grabbing, biting, and shoving.
You don't consciously think about these actions. Any and all thoughts are clouded away by the constant barrage of luxurious high-class confectionaries, leaving barely room for your justifying mantra.
Time loses its meaning. There is only the cycle of chewing and the brief moment before the next cake arrives.
Until it doesn't.
You blink through a thick mask of icing, briefly lucid by the break in the cycle.
There is no new cake. Primarily because the old one is still on the table. You give it a harder push, using both hooves. They sink into the pillowey dessert but it remains unmoved.
As more time passes since your last bite, you mind slowly clears. You look behind it to see what's in the way.
It's cake. More cake. A mountain of discarded cakes reaching so high that they've formed walls around the table.
But that's no problem. You just need to stand up and kick the pile over to make more room. You lower your hooves back to the floor...
...and find them dangling, still suspended, against something rounded and pliable.
Confused, but with your thoughts still clouded, you flap your wings to try and take off. There's a slight breeze on the nape of your neck, but not an ounce of lift. It's like you're glued to the floor.
The sheer shock of not bein able to fly at a moment's notice is enough to snap you back to full awareness. You crane your neck—finding the motion oddly difficult—to see what's wrong with your wings.
But as you see your body... you scream.
Gone is the lithe and athletic form you're so used to seeing posing in front of the mirror. every muscle, every carefully toned feature is buried under mounds and mounds of fat.
Rolls and rolls of soft and pillowy fat. You've never seen a pony as fat as you. Your belly extends so far your legs are little more than blobby stumps dangling in the air.
With this comes the realization of just how hard you're breathing. Turning your head—even just flailing your limbs in a panicked confirmation that they are in fact yours—has left you as tired as you'd normally be after one of Spitfire's suicide training regimes.
"Oh buck, Spitfire." You can feel your heart rate surging at the thought. You can't be a Wonderbolt like this! You can't even walk let alone fly! Can you even call yourself a pegasus anymore when you're just a ball with wings as decoration?
All your dreams pass before you as though in a vision. Flying with the Wonderbolts, signing autographs in history books and world record catalogues, finding a hot young stallion and raising a pair of fillies who'll one day grow up to beat your records.
"No!" you cry at they all fade away, as desperately out of reach as the next piece of cake.
Something clenches in your throat and chest. The edges of your vision start to go black and hazy. Vision and sensation quietly drift away as...
[...You're left with nothing at all but a crushing weight of guilt and regret. Add two (+2) to your Fear Meter]
"Greed is certainly on of the worst vices, second only to sloth."
A voice drifts into your foggy mind as you wake up from your blackout. The first thing you notice is the lightness. Your body feels like it weighs practically nothing. You flap your wings and rise into the air as easily as anything.
You sigh in relief as you settle back down on the torn carpet of the building's foyer. That had been traumatic.
"Feeling full yet?" A voice comes from above you. You glance up to see Trixie on her perch with a self-satisfied smirk on her muzzle and a plated slice of chocolate cake on her hoof. "Or do you still have room for more?"
The sight of the cake makes you a little sick to your stomach. You really hope not too many other ponies fall for that same trap, if only for the sake of Pinkie and the Cakes and their businesses.
You notice Trixie's costume has changed. Gone is every element of her old one, as she now sports a black woolen jacket with matching pencil skirt, cinched in by a wide belt. Both her mane and tail are pulled back in blisteringly tight buns. The image is somewhere between 'headmistress' and 'military dictator' (though the riding crop in her hoof sends the whole ensemble spiraling down a rabbit hole you'd rather not investigate). A patch sewn on her shoulder displays five interlocking rings and the number 1972, though its significance is lost on you.
You want to get angry at her. Really just let loose with rage for putting you through that. But... it is a haunted house. It's meant to be scary, even if Trixie has a twisted and warped idea of what's acceptable or normal for this kind of thing.
Plus, you've also been restored back to normal, no worse for wear. So you bottle up the anger. Hopefully there'll be a monster or something in one of the other rooms you can take out your aggression on.
Still, you are left wondering...
"How did you do all that to me?"
"Illusions, duh." Trixie rolls her eyes before shifting back to a vulpine grin. "Pretty scary, wasn't it? Fun fact: did you know the average Equestrian will eat eight times their weight in cake every year?"
"Y-yeah... scary." It was more than scary. Something far deeper that you don't have a word for. Even now you can still feel the lingering sensation of all that fat, pulling you down to earth like lead weights. But that's something to bury deep in your psyche, not admit to Trixie of all ponies.
Determined to face the next challenge without falling into any more traps, you soldier on.
There doesn't seem to be anything to interact with in this room, but there are three hallways that branch off that head LEFT, FORWARD, and RIGHT.
If your Fear Meter is full, you must select the fourth option.