//------------------------------//
// Ruby's Evening 
// Story: Zombie of One 
// by Impossible Numbers 
//------------------------------//

Once the sun had gone, the curtains been closed, and the lights turned on, Berry’s living room became a safe fireplace. Bright, crackling with energy, and so massively distracting that no one noticed the dead ashes left at the bottom.

Ruby had nothing to burn. The whole party blurred and muffled around her as though she were the only bubble of air underwater, herself alive and empty, but surrounded by choking weight.

She was in her own home. She felt trapped.

“Game time!” bellowed Berry.

All the other foals – Piña loudest of all – shrieked, overjoyed. Drinks sloshed and occasionally spilled, to a chorus of laughs and groans from those nearest. Little bits of snack cheese and mushroom sausage lay savaged on cheap paper plates: somehow, the same Berry who counted cents when buying for dinner always had little snack foods tucked away in a cupboard somewhere. Some music pummelled the ceiling, walls, and floor: Ruby only knew it as a pop tune of some kind.

“OK!” shouted Berry over the music and the muttering. “Who knows GhoulSmashed!?”

Dinky opened her mouth and raised a hoof –

“I do!” shrieked Piña.

Surprised chatter buzzed like disturbed bees. Piña could barely be trusted to know what day it was.

“Yes?” said Berry encouragingly.

Her sister puffed up with importance; she had, after all, just been addressed by her “Best Big Sister Ever!” “That’s the one where you have to work in a team and take out all the monsters across Equestria before they eat it all up!”

Apple Bloom drained a cup in one go. “You, uh, sure you’re OK with that, Dinky?”

Laughter, giggles, chortles, and grunting attempts to not make a noise surrounded Dinky’s offended pout. Buried under the silence, part of Ruby clenched indignantly: so Apple Bloom was playing the snarky sidekick now, was she? My role!?

Meanwhile, Berry laughed and ruffled Dinky’s mane till she moaned and swatted her off. “Aw, don’t feel bad, Dinker the Thinker. Maybe you’ll get lucky next time?”

“I don’t get lucky,” corrected Dinky sharply, but not too sharply: just enough for Berry to notice the pinprick in her voice. “Anyway, it’s just a game. I call red leader.”

“I WANNA BE RED LEADER!” wailed Piña.

Everyone laughed; there was the Piña they all knew and loved. Well, “knew” anyway.

“Dinky, you don’t mind, do you?” said Berry. “You can be the blue backup.”

“Ah call dibs on the green ’ggressor!”

“All right, Apple Bloom’s the green aggressor, so that leaves the white exorcist, the black sorcerer, the purple king, the gold treasurer… Gosh, when did games get so complicated, eh? Ruby, you wanna play?”

Indeed, it seemed to be taking Dinky a long time to set up the board. Ruby ambled over as slowly as she liked, and the “Thinker” was still shuffling cards, organizing random-looking pieces, and unfurling the rules. The whole thing resembled a religious ceremony, especially the way Dinky’s precocious magic handled the sacred relics of bitten wooden pawns and a manual with its pages sliding out.

“While we’re waiting,” announced Berry over the three-dimensional dance, “how about a spooky story? ’Tis the season!”

Ruby backed off. The hospital faded into her mind where she knew it had been lurking the last few hours out of sight. Like someone firmly holding her nape.

To her horror, the lights began to dim. Dinky’s magic stood out against the darkness, and lit from below, Berry’s face became distended worms of pale death.

“This one,” she intoned, and soon the babble around her began to die down; even the music fell silent, “is the Terrifying Tale of the Deeeeeaaaaaad Rrrrriiiiiiiising frooooooom the Grrrrrrraaaaaaave!”

Only Ruby shuddered. The other foals didn’t look suitably impressed by this old theme, but it bit deep into her softened shell of numbness like a spoon into jelly.

“MwahahahahaHAAAAAAAAAA!”

Deep, rumbling, laced with poisonous malice. Her dad’s voice.

“MwahahahahaHAAAAAAAAAA!”

Her dad’s favourite tone. Her dad’s favourite stories. Her dad’s favourite kind of fun…

“MMMWWWAAAHHH-HAHAHAHA-HAAAAAAAAA!”

Her dad –

The lights burst back on.

Dinky blew a raspberry. “Oh, Berry, Berry, Berry,” she chided. “You call that an evil laugh?”

“Nothing wrong with that evil laugh,” said Berry, mock-affronted and forelimbs folded. “That evil laugh has run in my family for generations. My uncle taught me the technique once.”

“Well, I don’t know what he was telling you, but that wouldn’t scare a baby.”

“Oho, and you know all about evil laughter, do you? Which side of the family do you get it from, then?”

Dinky’s little chuckle stirred hairs on the back of Ruby’s neck. Which was ridiculous: she knew Dinky, and the laugh had barely been a nuisance, never mind a creepy tickle on her skin. But she felt something was going wrong in her head.

“I taught myself,” said Dinky simply.

“You definitely didn’t learn that from Derpy, I’ll bet.”

Dinky blushed. “Mom has… nicer talents.”

“And you can put yours to better use, Dinker the Thinker: put the music back on, if you don’t mind.”

A while later, Ruby sat on her own again, keeping away from the outbreak of festivities. She didn’t want to infect anyone, either. Her mind felt sick, in a way that had nothing to do with germs and bodies.

Even as Apple Bloom wandered past with the punch bowl – and stopped to take surreptitious sips from it – Ruby heard the first droning notes of Berry gearing up for a song.

“Ooooooooooooooooooohhhhhhhhhh!”

Ruby winced. This was going to be the Grape Juice Song, because in this mood Berry wasn’t allowed to sing the one about hedgehogs.

“You pick ’em when they’re bulging,

You pick ’em when they’re ripe,

You… Dang it, I mucked up the lyric. Again!”

The record scratched, and then the tune started up again. Piña skipped past humming a song in her own little world.

Ruby ignored the laughter, but she couldn’t help noticing the punch bowl getting lower and lower. Not helped by Apple Bloom’s frequent visits. What Ruby wanted, more than anything else, was something real to do. She watched the lowering redness like a hawk.

On the other side of the room, among the whirling little foals, Berry had geared up for another attempt. It was a fun song to sing, so clearly not for grown-ups.

“You pick ’em when they’re bulging,

You pick ’em when they’re firm,

You pick ’em when they’re full of juice,

But never when they squirm!”

“Sis!” shrieked Piña over the singing and laughing foals. “The punchy’s gone all up!”

“Good call!”

To Ruby’s surprise, Berry was suddenly there overlooking her.

In an undertone, Berry asked: “You wouldn’t mind fetching the spare bowl from the kitchen, would you? Apple Bloom’s going to bankrupt me!”

Ruby hummed and hoisted herself to her hooves, her gait wobbly.

Something flickered in Berry’s grin. “Everything all right?”

“Fine,” croaked Ruby dully.

“Oh. OK. If you say so.”

As Ruby weaved among the bouncing colts and twirling fillies to the narrow hallway, she dimly heard Berry picking up her place again.

“You squeeze ’em nice and gentle,

You squeeze ’em really tight,

You squeeze ’em till they’re gushing goo,

But never when they fight!”

The hallway. No one else was in the hallway.

Ruby stopped.

Up ahead, the kitchen door was slightly open, almost perfectly like it had been in another house, in another life…

“You pour ’em thick and fruity,

You pour ’em like a flirt,

You pour ’em so they giggle hard,

But never when they hurt!”

The parties back in her old home – her real home – had never been this cheap, but they’d never been this lively either. Her dad had always liked inviting other ponies over. To tell them spooky stories, to sing and dance, to simply enjoy having lots of good folk around. And sometimes he’d disappear into the kitchen, and sometimes her mom – before the hospital – had sent Ruby in to bring him back, because he really liked his drinks.

Ruby used to like going down the hall to fetch him. Her dad would pretend to hide a bottle behind his back, but Ruby wasn’t Piña. Just because she loved him, didn’t mean she’d take his talking-to-children lies at face value.

“You drink ’em deep and throaty…”

And then there’d been the arguments, late at night. She’d heard them through the bedroom wall.

“You drink ’em to a joke…”

And then her mother had started looking ill. And then her dad had started looking ill, and spent more time in the kitchen, and Ruby had to walk the hall more often and get fewer smiles for doing so. She’d sensed something deeply ill about the both of them, but she’d been too confused and nervous to ask.

“You drink ’em till you’re smiling sick…”

And then one day she’d gone to fetch her dad from the kitchen, and just as she’d entered the hall there’d been a groan and a clink of bottles and she couldn’t hear anything and she went in as if it was a normal day and she looked inside and slumped over the sink she saw –

“But never when they choke!”

Something met Ruby’s back.

Ruby spun round expecting flesh and white eyes… and saw Berry lowering her hoof. The look on her face was a smile sagging at the corners, a cake left in the harsh heat too long.

“You look tired,” she said, her whisper a kindness to Ruby’s ears. “I’ll get the bowl. You just enjoy yourself, OK?”

Ruby said nothing. Even admitting she didn’t want to party was beyond her tongue, her lips, her throat, her lungs, everything. It just seemed too much.

The doorbell rang.

“Already!?” Berry clapped two hooves to her cheeks. “Wow, some parents don’t like their kids having too much fun, do they?”

A few fleeing words found refuge in Ruby’s mouth. “I wanna go to bed.”

The pain on Berry’s face… hid about as well as Ruby’s dad with a half-empty bottle. The smile was remarkably alike, too. Then again, some things jumped generations in diagonals.

“I’m sorry.” Ruby was as surprised as Berry looked, to hear herself utter those words.

Tenderly, Berry tilted Ruby’s head up by the chin. “Aw, don’t be sorry. You wanna hit the hay, don’t let me stop you.” Berry winked. “I promise I’ll sing real quiet, how’s that?”

Not so much as a fake smile passed Ruby’s lips. Somewhere, she knew that was meant to be some kind of a joke. Right now, jokes made as much sense to her as one of Dinky’s hare-brained lectures.

Unspoken were the words: You’ll miss out.

Ruby accepted the gentle kiss on her forehead – off to the left side so Berry didn’t accidentally poke herself in the eye with Ruby’s unicorn horn.

“Goodnight, Ruby.”

Ruby went straight up. Goodnights didn’t matter.

As soon as she was in her room, she slammed the door, threw herself into the bed, and tried to stay awake all night. Eventually, the muffled thump of pop music died down, the front door opened and closed several times, voices became just Berry and Piña talking in an excited hush – Piña after Berry shushed her and told her not to shout so loud – and thumps came up the stairs to bed.

Little hooves rapped on Ruby’s door. “Goodnight, Ruby!” hissed Piña’s idea of a whisper.

A pause.

“Sis, Ruby’s not saying ‘goodnight’…”

“Beggary. I’m sure she’s just tired, Piña. Let’s give her some space.”

“And then play again tomorrow?”

“Pfft, what’s life without a little play, eh?”

Two lips plucked soppy kisses off each other, then two doors closed.

In the darkness, Ruby didn’t dare move. The slightest rustle would give her away.

But the house was dead. Normally, she’d be asleep by now. Sheer nothing. Sheer silence. Sheer stillness. Yes, the echoes of the party reminded her of what it had been once, but it was as if a light had abruptly gone out. It should’ve been the same house, except it wasn’t, not behind the door. It wasn’t a home. It was merely a thing, like a body slumped over a sink.

And it was all around her.

She was too scared to move.

Sleep offered the only way out. Sleep, beckoning with a grin on its face, knowing it would always get inside her skin. Like an infection.