The night feeling much longer was one of the first things she noticed about the curse. Without sleeping, it dragged on. She was awake to witness the moon in the sky and how the darkness changed as the hours ticked by. Alone, it was painful. But with somepony else? It actually made their time together feel like it'd never end.
It was the only thing the curse had done good for her.
They played board games; they told stories. Pinkie made a joke about Luna surviving on the moon because it was made of cheese, she laughed. There was creaking. She ignored it, which was easy for once.
Pinkie found her mind drifting to her parents. She tried not to think about them if she could help it. They loved her, of course they did. She knew that. They just didn't express it at all when she grew up, so she thought they didn't at the time. They never hugged her, never told her how much they loved her, none of the things the Cakes did to their foals every day.
She told Luna about how old-fashioned they were. How minimalist. About how she was born from a rock, The Choosing Stone. More so, about how they spoke the same tongue Luna had when she'd first returned.
Luna actually became ecstatic at that revelation. Something about her reaction hurt Pinkie. She hated it.
She found herself hating a lot of things recently.
It wasn't until after Luna left did she realize what had changed about the creaking. There'd always been moments of silence between them, leaving her waiting for when it'd pick up again.
Only to notice that there wasn't a pause anymore.
The creaking had become constant, like somepony sitting in the world's oldest chair and rocking it back and forth to their heart's content. She could drown it with other noises: humming, tapping, talking, even if just to herself. However, the moment she stopped, it was there.
Nor was it alone.
Whispers, too, had intruded her moments of peace. The same whispers she'd heard from the depths of The Skeleton's throat, mutters saying nothing at all sprinkled among the creaking, begged Pinkie to listen to them.
She tried so desperately not to. Standing as still as she could manage, watching the coffee pot churn and fill with the disgusting hot water she'd become dependent on to function.
Drip.
Drip.
Creak.
Whisper.
Drip.
Her mane was mostly gray now.
It was hard for her to ignore that as she leered into her distorted reflection, counting the few strains of pink that hadn't converted just yet. They didn't bother her anymore. Or more accurately, she'd reached a point where 'unsettled' didn't quite cover it. The sleep deprivation had reached a similar point, where 'tired' wasn't how she'd describe her exhaustion.
She'd reached a constant feeling of lethargy that she really could only label 'torture'.
Why hadn't any of them commented on her gray mane?
As much as she might have liked to, she couldn't hide it. Many had pointed out how straight it'd become, but none had mentioned so much as an off-hoof comment about its change in color. Why was that? Were they being polite, each and every one of them? Why bother bringing up its shape but not the color as well?
Maybe they were talking about it, just not while she was around. By now she had no doubt every pony in Ponyville had at least heard about the slump she found herself in, and how little party throwing she'd been doing recently. One party in the past few days? That was unlike her. She usually threw three or four times that many.
They must have been saying so many things about her when she wasn't around.
About how 'not herself' she'd been.
About how rude she was to ponies.
About how much she was starting to look like her mother.
Abou—
"Pinkie?"
Mr. Cake interrupted her ruminating, drop-kicking the train right off the rails.
She opened her eyes, struggling to recall when she closed them, and glanced at him through the shroud of rigid gray that was her mane.
"The coffee's been done for five minutes, and you've just been standing there. Are you alright?"
Don't do it.
Don't snap at him, Pinkie.
He was asking because he cares.
They all are.
"Sorry. It's just..." She tugged her thermos off, pouring the coffee straight in and chugging it. Taste didn't matter anymore. Most of her senses were dulled under the numbness of fatigue, so what she put in her mouth to keep going hardly registered anymore. "Getting harder to track time recently. I'm working on it, really."
"Oh, well that sounds worrisome. What if you put something in the oven and forget?" As if to emphasize, he opened the oven door and checked inside. "You should really talk to Princess Tw—" he coughed "Twilight about that. I'm sure she can help."
"I already—"
She bit her tongue.
He was just trying to help.
It was not his fault.
It was no one's fault.
"I will. I was planning to after I got some coffee." Pinkie topped off her thermos, attaching it to her side and reaching for the donut with the most absurd amount of sugar. She wasn't able to taste it very well, but she knew sugar was still working. "Are you sure you don't want me to help you today? There's—"
A strange void sat in her mind. An absence of something, but she didn't know what. It didn't exactly hurt, closer to a deep itching sensation in the back of her skull she couldn't quite reach. It bothered her, that emptiness.
"—nothing I have to do today." Uncertainty inserted herself in her voice as she glanced down, forehead wrinkling as she tried to ignore it. "I'm pretty sure."
"Pinkie, please, you don't have to overexert yourself for us." He placed a hoof on her shoulder, a tight half-smile on his face. "Pound and Pumpkin have really calmed down. we can handle today’s workload no problemo. Just use one of your vacation days; Celestia knows you've earned them."
There was something familiar about that tone of his. That faux-smile, that awkward touch, that polite way of dismissing her.
It was pity.
He was pitying her.
He was pitying her.
A disgusting sourness sat on her tongue, spreading to every corner of her mouth. There wasn't silence in the time she took to respond, only various sounds that had stolen its place.
Creaking.
Whispering.
Drip.
"Ok."
She backed away, a lot rougher than she intended to. Shoving his hoof off of her, hiding her shaking scowl. Immediately this urge to apologize came over her. He didn't deserve that.
But she'd seen that look before.
When she was younger, she went with Father to get groceries from a nearby village. Or when they had occasional outside workers, who needed bits and thought rock farming was a lot easier work than it is. They always looked at her with those half-smiles, never meeting their eyes or staring at them for longer than a few seconds. It wasn't until Limestone told her why that she realized they were pitying them.
It'd been so long since someone pitied her.
She had forgot how much she despised it.
______________
Pinkie made her trek to Twilight's much earlier than usual, meaning there were a lot fewer ponies out than the other times. Fewer eyes to stare at her, fewer mouths to whisper things about her.
However, that also meant less noise to muffle the creaking. Its sound always depended on how much other noise there was. If a lot, it was distant and faint like it was coming from the room beside her. If very little sound, it was more like it came from a dark corner and getting louder every second.
For whatever reason, the whispering had paused. Leaving her with only the creaking. That wouldn't last long, she was sure.
She didn't wait for Spike to open the door this time, doing so herself without even a knock. He was probably still asleep anyway, and she only had fragments of patience left to stitch together.
Twilight was in the library, which was, for once, completely unorganized. Most of the books sat on the ground instead of the shelves, left open to seemingly random pages. A tipped-over bottle with white powder coming out of it, labeled 'Powdered Lighting', sitting beside a bag of 'Afterlife Desire' instant coffee.
Her eyes had obvious bags and her mane was disheveled, every feather on her wings was ruffled and in desperate need of preening. She hardly noticed Pinkie walk in. Twilight scribbled something on a sticky note and attached it to a whiteboard in the middle of the room. A cornucopia of them plastered the whiteboard. Nothing really tied them together.
Pinkie trotted up to the whiteboard, squinting and trying to decipher the hastily written scribbles. Some of them were fairly legible, others devolved into something closer to hieroglyphs than letters. She could make out the occasional word, like 'zebra' or 'sickness', but anything else was more effort than she was willing to put in.
"Oh, Pinkie! You're here, great!" Twilight took a sniff from her mug, which burned the fatigue right from her face as she perked up. "I think I've finally tracked down what curse this is."
Pinkie opened her mouth to respond, only to get cut off by Twilight pulling the board toward them. Plucking all of the sticky notes off and rearranging them in some order known only to her, organizing them in the curviest line she'd ever seen.
"I kept finding mentions of something like it, but most of it was apocrypha. That is, until I found something linking back to Farasi: the land of the zebras!"
"Zebras?" Pinkie raised an eyebrow. "Like Zecora?"
"Yes! Exactly like Zecora! Who, after I found stories of it, I popped in on to ask about on the off chance she knew something about it. Turns out, she did! It was actually a folktale from the early era right after Nightmare Moon was banished, and where Celestia had to start helping ponies with their dreams."
The enthusiasm in her voice was unsettling, incredibly disingenuous and off-putting. Several red flags stood out to Pinkie: Twilight's mouth remained slightly open even when she wasn't saying anything, chest noticeably heaving every time she took a breath, which in itself was erratic.
Some of her coat even looked wet. Was she…was she sweating?
"Twilight?" Pinkie pulled her head back, reaching a hoof forward to touch Twilight but struggled with how strenuous it was proving to be. "Are yo—" She bit her cheek. "How much coffee did you drink?"
"Coffee? Oh, you know, just a teensy tiny liter or two." She let out a nervous chuckle, awkwardly rubbing her muzzle. "Smelling salts too. Nothing too strong, so don't worry! Just needed some stimulants to put me at peak cognitive efficacy. Usually, it'd take me a few days to track down something like an unknown curse. One night on the world's strongest coffee and calling in some favors made that a lot easier."
Twilight didn't stay in one place as she explained, pacing back and forth, so frequently she was leaving trails in the ground. Her wings twitched in spazzes of movement, tail flicking just as randomly.
If it weren't for the creaking and whispering, Pinkie had no doubt Twilight's heartbeat would be as clear as her own.
"I think you need to sleep. I know a thing or two about substance overstimulation, and the longer you keep it going the worse the crash is going to be. There's no rush t—"
"But I've got it all figured out! Right here, right now!" She tapped the board, doing so with enough energy for it to scrape a few inches across the floor. "Just..." Twilight went to drink from her cup, hesitating as she glanced up at Pinkie. "Let me tell you what I learned so far and I'll stop, ok?"
"Hmm." Pinkie made a droning noise, failing to hold back the scowl that her face had been stuck in since Luna left. "Alright."
"Great!" She moved the mug over to her desk, yanking the whiteboard back over. "So, in the span of about a month and a half, nine zebras caught what's been referred to as—with lots of transcribed alternatives— 'waking nausea'. Not only could they not sleep, they began to develop symptoms of sleep disorders. Like—" She pointed to a sticky note with one word on it in bold, underlined, and italicized. All of which made it difficult to read. "Cataplexy!"
"All of them?"
"No, just some of them. How it progressed was extremely inconsistent from victim to victim. What is consistent is they all experience drawbacks of sleep deprivation much sooner than they're supposed to: hallucinations, severe lethargy, short-term memory lapse, and paranoid delusions."
"Did they—" At least two of those symptoms applied to her. She didn't remember forgetting anything, and she hadn't reached paranoid delusions quite yet. "See The Skeleton? Or something else?"
"Hrng." Twilight grunted, hovering over a book from one of the many on the floor and flipping its pages. "None of them would say. They mentioned multiple times that they were seeing something, and most of them were aware they were hallucinating, but the shaman who was recording this never managed to get them to say what it was before they..." She leaned away from the book, leering at it with a painful grimace. "Passed away."
"Passed away?" The idea of this curse being her end had crossed her mind more than a few times. Even Pinkie knew that she needed to sleep, despite the numerous times she avoided doing so because she wanted to be productive. Now, every day she went without sleep the idea of dying came just one step closer. What unsettled her most was every time that idea of her dying came to mind, it was a little less horrifying.
"So the curse killed them?"
Twilight took too long to answer, leaving creaking and whispering in her wake. Pinkie tried not to show it, scratching her ear and scraping her hoof against the ground to make any kind of sound. "In a way. After about five days to a week, seven of them—" she shut the book, carefully placing it on the desk "—took their own lives. The shaman suspected that they'd rather be dead than go on living that way, and so they did what she describes as 'the eternal sleep'. Zecora told me that they likely consumed a poison they made back then for the terminally ill, so it was painless if nothing else."
She knew what she was supposed to say. That it was terrible they did that, That it was tragic; That they could have been helped.
That she couldn't understand why they'd resort to that.
But those thoughts carried little weight. She couldn't say them with any resolve, with absolute certainty. Without certainty, what would make it different from a lie?
Pinkie didn't like to lie.
"If it's a curse from Farasi, then how would it have gotten here?"
"Well, that has to do with how it's passed." Twilight gathered all of the books on the floor, skimming through them before shutting them and stacking them onto a pile. "The shaman only went there initially because a relative of theirs caught it, but they don't know how they got it originally. Fortunately, since she recorded everything, she was able to tell that it passed via them sleeping with someone else. That was the only way they ever managed to sleep in the first place. Unfortunately, they sometimes slept in groups. Which is how it spread so effectively."
"Sleeping with them? As in..." Pinkie blinked a few times, swallowing loudly. "Sleeping in the same bed as them, or sleeping with them?"
"What, no! No, no, no." Twilight's voice briefly spiked to a higher pitch, face tinted a bright red. "Sleep in the same bed, or just beside them, not intercourse. I would guess that that's this curse's condition. At least, it's the condition to pass it on, not to break it."
"Curses can have multiple conditions? That doesn't..." Pinkie tried to rationalize this in her mind, struggling just to crawl through the mind fog and actually think. "But it can't be that curse. You said seven, right? Then the ninth one broke the curse?"
"Not..." Twilight grimaced. "Exactly. He went missing. Three days went by after it was passed to him, and then he disappeared. I think he must have passed it to somepony else who ended up in Equestria, and that they ended up in that pocket at The Rock Farm. Which would explain what the tally marks are: they're the number of people inflicted by the curse. Assuming the relative of the shaman was the first, of course."
"There's a lot of assuming and guessing, Twilight. How do you know it's this curse? There has to be something else it could be, right?" A sense of dread creeped its way to the forefront of her mind, painting her thoughts in a thick layer of doubt. She wasn't sure what it was, but a lingering skepticism questioned everything she heard. "Right?"
"Yes, but it's unlikely. I haven't found any other curse or affliction of any kind that would explain this, not to say that another couldn't exist and is waiting to be discovered. I could be wrong here. But..." she took a tentative step towards Pinkie "just answer me, and I'll know if we should run forward with this theory or not: when you were down there with that Skeleton, did you fall asleep?"
The skin around Pinkie's eyes bunched.
Her head jerked back.
The creaking peaked in her ears.
The room became uninviting and cold.
She opened her mouth to reject the notion, never being uttered into words.
It'd been four days since she encountered the corpse that haunted her, and so many hallucinations had danced in her mind since then. Thinking back to it now, it was impossible for her to say what was real and what was tainted in sleep-deprived madness.
Her first encounter with The Skeleton was a dream, and the last time she was able to sleep. Waking up was easy to recall, but trying to pinpoint when she slipped into unconsciousness was much more difficult. Practicing her shadow puppets to distract herself from the corpse, then hearing a—
Creaking.
She needed to make noise.
It was getting worse.
"Yes." Her words made the creaking stop, if only for that fleeting moment. "I did."
"Then I have to run under the assumption that it's this curse, and that being able to spread it via sleep proximity is not limited to them being alive. Don't worry, this is good news!"
The whiteboard was pushed to the side, pressed against a wall and left in obscurity. In a poof of magic, a pair of sleeping bags with blankets and pillows appeared.
"It means you can just pass it on to me and you'll be able to sleep! I should be able to figure it out before things get too bad."
"Should?"
Pinkie's voice cracked, raising her hoof to step forward only for it to wobble and hit the ground again. She broke contact with Twilight, eyes drifting to the sleeping bag with an irresistible tug. Despite its small size, it was so inviting compared to her bed. Coupled with the hope that, by resting her empty bones in it, she could finally sleep.
Oh how desperately she wanted to sleep for as long as her body would allow.
The curse spreading to Twilight being the price of doing so was the only thing stopping her.
"Even if you're right, I don't want to do that to you. Nopony deserves to have to go through this. It's..." She ignored the urge to look up, making a groaning noise to dull the creaking however she could, biting hard enough to taste that familiar copper tange of blood just to keep the fatigue at bay. "Torture."
"That sounds like more of a reason to pass it to me." Twilight approached her with wide steps, puffing her chest out as she spread her wings. "You're four days in and you're miserable. It's only going to get worse; sooner or later you'll be seeing hallucinations all the time and won't be able to tell what's real anymore. I'm worried you'll—" She whimpered, tearing her eyes away as she pursed her lips. "End up taking your life like the others did."
Twilight's words hung in the air, laced with fear. There was a breathlessness to what she said, or just a weakness to everything she did. As firmly she placed her hooves into the ground, they trembled under their own weight.
It was all too familiar for Pinkie to see, a mirror that doubled as a window into the future if she gave in.
"I'm not going to kill myself, Twilight, no matter how bad it gets. I couldn't do that to the Cakes, to Maud, or to my friends. I promise the option hasn't crossed my mind and it never will."
Her lips tingled. Maybe Pinkie was a liar after all.
"I know; I just worry. After reading some of the reports of how they degraded as the days passed…" Twilight glanced at the books on the desk, horn flickering with aura as she teleported them somewhere. "Whatever the case, I don't want you to go a second more without sleep. Rainbow is going to be coming back today after a week of intense Wonderbolts training for their upcoming performance. Are you even going to be able to throw a party for her coming back like you said you would?"
There it was. That blank in her mind that appeared when she was talking to Mr.Cake. It was a hole in her memory, where something important was supposed to be.
She'd forgotten a party. Not just any party, but one for one of her best friends in the world. One she promised to throw, and that Rainbow was undoubtedly looking forward to. All because of this curse.
"No."
She was knocked back on her haunches by dejection, whimpering to herself and trying desperately not to close her eyes entirely. The tears were on the edge of her vision, threatening to overwhelm her into another breakdown. Pinkie fought it, terrified of being paralyzed like that again.
Not that she could sit there and bear it in silence, of course. The creaking, the whispers to give in, did not abate. Unwilling to give her the privilege of a merciful silence. It was impossible to tell if they were getting louder, or she just focused on them the less sound there was.
"I didn't even prepare for that. I—" She buried her face in her hooves, grinding her teeth together until it made noise. "Forgot."
"Pinkie." Twilight sat down inches from her, placing a gentle hoof on her shoulder. "That's ok, I'm sure Rainbow will understand, you've thrown more than enough parties to be able to take a few days off. Listen, if you're that worried about me, then how about after a day or two I sleep with you and pass it back? That way it stays manageable."
Pinkie hesitantly peeked up at her, lowering her hooves and grazing them over the ground.
"Did any of the zebras try that?"
"Well, no, but—"
"Then you don't know if that'd work. I know you're smart, Twilight, but I'm not risking you on something that might work! You're a princess, what if you have to go to some friendship-related emergency? Or something happens with The School of Friendship? You're one night without sleep and I'm worried you're going to have a heart attack!"
"I'm not going to—" She rubbed her chest, groaning to herself. "Ok, maybe that's founded. I understand what you're going through, bu—"
"You understand?"
It came out as a question, polluted by vitriol and an accusatory tone. Something red-hot crawled out of her chest, anger burning her words with an intensity she hated.
Twilight's head jerked back, eyes widening as her mouth fell open.
Pinkie got to her hooves, clenching her jaw so tightly the muscles threatened to stay that way. It was painful for her teeth to dig into each other with such grit, soreness concentrating in her face that began to spread. "Do you think just because you read the symptoms on paper that you get what it's like? That you can deal with it no problem? That it's easy?"
Some small part of her was trying to coax her into calmness, buried deep under the irrationality of frustration. She knew that Twilight wasn't implying that, that she was genuinely trying to help as her friend.
It didn't matter.
It was the last brick in a cracked wall, and she didn't know how close she was to collapsing until it gave out.
Even those little breaths of silence were invaded by incessant sounds that only further contributed to her irritation.
Creaking.
Whispering.
Drip.
"I don't like closing my eyes, but keeping them open hurts so much. It gets harder just to move every day. Breathing isn't much easier. Light burns, but The Skeleton hides in the dark and I don't know when it'll come out. It's—" Pinkie tried to block out the noise by placing her hooves against her ears, only seeming to amplify it. The sounds weren't coming from the room itself, instead rising from inside her ears. No amount of covering them made it stop, only succeeding in making it the one thing she could hear.
She tried desperately not to scream.
"Always making noise, Twilight. It's always whispering to me, trying to tell me something. Constantly—"
There was a particularly loud creaking, as if it was coming from directly above her. She made the mistake of slightly lifting her head, glimpsing through her gray mane at the ceiling. She caught just a small flash of it, then dragged her gaze back to the ground.
It was there, hanging from the ceiling, more decayed than the last time she'd seen it. Still holding itself in its cot of bones, many of which had been chipped at and no longer whole. Any remnant of flesh that was stuck to it before was gone, leaving only bones held together by the structure it used to be.
Every time she saw it, The Skeleton became just a little less scary, turning instead into something that existed only to provoke her ire. The bane of each waking moment. Knowing it was watching her even now added fuel to the flame she was trying to swallow.
"—Creaking! I can't even talk to ponies anymore. They always ask me if I'm okay and stare at my gray mane—which I've heard dozens of times—and it makes me want to scream!"
Twilight furrowed her eyebrows, pressing her lips together as her jaw clenched. She tried to say something, only to be cut off by Pinkie slamming her hooves against the ground, gritting her teeth in a closed-mouth shriek.
"I'm tired, Twilight. All the time. I don't want to get out of bed, I don't want to talk to anypony because it's too much work; being alive is too much work sometimes. I would never kill myself, but—" The anger simmered, and with the departure of adrenaline came unbearable exhaustion. It weighed down on every vertebra of her spine, crushing her into submission. "I get why they did it. This is agony, and it's happening all the time. You don't understand, or you wouldn't be asking me to give it to you." Her forehead hit the cold ground, the rest of her body soon following. Pinkie could feel every square inch of her skin stretching as she sneered, trying desperately to hold back the tears. "I hope you never do."
Pinkie stayed there in tepid silence, waiting for her muscles to get heavier and lose her ability to move.
It never came.
"Then what? I-I'm just supposed to..." Twilight's shoulders dragged, her breathing becoming loud and shallow. "Watch you suffer?"
Pinkie staggered to her hooves, limbs shaking like brittle branches under a winter's breeze. Twilight was so fragile, her knees quivering and the bags under her eyes were concerningly prominent. She was barely standing up, leaning one way or the next before jerking herself back into position.
Was that what Pinkie looked like all the time? No wonder everypony kept asking her if she was ok.
"You don't have to watch." Pinkie made herself move forward, gesturing towards one of the sleeping bags. "I think you're crashing. Listen, I'll be fine. I'll be able to keep going because I know you're trying so hard to help me. So, please, take care of yourself. For me. You can sleep, and I'll go back to Sugarcube Corner and help the Cakes. That way, you'll be at your best. Alright?"
Twilight bit her lip. The skin began to tear and blister from how often she did so. Twilight opened her mouth to argue, closing it just as quickly and nodded her head.
"Only if you Pinkie Promise me that if you even think about..." She paused, shutting her eyes for a few seconds. "Ending it, you'll come straight to me. Or just the Cakes, or just somepony. You're not alone, Pinkie. No matter how much it might feel like it sometimes."
She knew that.
Of course she knew that.
She reminded herself of that very fact a countless number of times a day.
Sometimes, it just seemed like knowing others were there for her didn't matter. No matter how much they wanted to, they couldn't help.
Regardless, it was reason enough to keep going.
At least, until it wasn't.
"Cross my heart, hope to fly," Pinkie muttered, wincing as the effort to do the motions was more than she expected. "Stick a cupcake in my eye.
Even after doing the motions, Twilight was clearly reluctant to agree. However, she did let out a deep breath as some of the tension left her.
"Okay, I'll try to get some rest. Although, I don't imagine that'll be very much since Rainbow will be eager to talk to me once she gets here. A new Daring Do book came out and I'm the only pony she knows who's read it, and as thoroughly as she has."
It felt like a shard of glass that had embedded itself in her heart sunk a few inches deeper, fresh pain reminding her it was there. She faced away from Twilight, hiding her face from her.
"Twilight, can you do me a favor?"
"Yeah." Twilight lay down, fitting snugly in the sleeping bag. "What is it?"
"Can you tell Rainbow Dash—" A glob of something placed itself firmly in her throat, making it difficult to get out a syllable more. The apology sat on her tongue, sticking there like a prickly thorn. Trying to say it hurt, but leaving it unsaid would have hurt more. "That I'm s—" Pinkie covered her whimper by trying to clear her throat with little success. "Sorry I couldn't throw that party I promised."
"Of course I will. Pinkie—" Twilight yawned, soon devolving into a groaning noise. "She'll completely understand. Rainbow wouldn't be upset about something like this."
No, Rainbow wouldn't.
"I know. Just don't tell her about the curse, please? I don't want anyone else worrying about me."
Twilight didn't say anything, so Pinkie assumed she nodded. She didn't want to turn around to look at her again.
As she made her way back to Sugarcube Corner, a strangling sensation deep in her chest choked her heart; no amount of rubbing eased it in the slightest.
Her mind couldn't help but drift towards how much distaste she'd grown to have for things since she'd unwillingly stopped sleeping. 'Hate' wasn't something she would have ever used lightly; it was too strong to drop casually.
it was becoming a lot easier to hate things.
Hate how her mane was changing to gray.
Hate how she couldn't throw parties or even smile anymore.
Hate how many of her friends wanted to help her, but couldn't.
And now, just a little bit, she hated herself.
_______________________
The Cakes didn't let her help them.
Not that she could blame them. If she forgot to throw her best friend's party, why wouldn't she forget other things? She also couldn't hold anything steadily—in her hooves or her mouth—no matter how much she tried. Eventually, with the gentleness of a loving mother, they told her to take the day off.
They pitied her again.
It was disgusting.
She spent the day in her bed, doing nothing at all. Although it wasn't particularly cold in her room, Pinkie decided to bundle herself up in every pillow, blanket, and plushie she had. Piling it into a bundle of warmth and softness, with her placed firmly in the middle. Like any other nap, she rested her eyes and counted her breaths. Pretending that, for once, she'd be able to fall asleep.
That never happened.
She didn't get less tired, nor did she get more. Really, that was all she could have asked for at that point.
Her period of solace didn't last very long, as the creaking and whispering grew louder and louder until it was exigent. With a snarl, she pushed her way out of the cocoon of comfort she'd crafted for herself.
The Skeleton clung from her ceiling, staring down at her in its eyeless leer. The whispering from its gullet, though it should have been dispersed in her large room, was geared towards her. Every bit of it had gone past the point of frightening.
It was nothing more than a constant nuisance.
"I'm so tired of you." She muttered out, having no doubt it'd hear her regardless of how quiet she was.
The whispering stopped for a few seconds, as if contemplating whether it should respond, before continuing on without respite.
Pinkie got into a staring contest with it, waiting for the creature to fall like it always had when she looked at it for long enough.
"Night by night, second by second, you're there to, what, scare me? Is that your point? To be scary?"
She climbed off the bed, her limbs numb from the total lack of movement for so long. Her back leg briefly gave out right as she stood, barely catching it in time so she didn't end up on the floor.
"What do you get out of this? Watching ponies suffer, watching them die?!"
As she pounded her hoof against the ground, the vibrations seemed to travel up to it and knock it loose. The twisted rib cage came out with a pop, leaving it to drop to the ground and its entire frame gave out as it hit the floor. Bones separated from each other, some rolling away and others resting where they were.
Pinkie stepped back, hitting the front of her bed as soon as she tried. Maybe provoking it wasn't such a good idea.
She waited for it to reassemble, to be put back together again by whatever power gave it false life. To stand in front of her, and approach at a snail's pace.
That didn't happen.
It stayed broken, pieces spread out on the floor and mostly unconnected like a jigsaw puzzle someone gave up on halfway through.
The head stayed whole, resting on the ground right under her. The whispering coming through its mouth didn't hitch for any of that, continuing even though it wasn't connected to its neck anymore.
It was bent on ruining her life.
"I hate you."
She raised her hoof, tempted to kick it as far as she could muster. Problem being that wouldn't be a lot right now; it'd likely just skid a few inches across the floor.
"You want me to spread it, so you can make as many ponies as you can suffer, right? Living off the days of sleep they lost, like the parasite you are."
Again, the whispering and creaking ceased, if only for a few moments. Pinkie waited for its response, expecting it to speak to her for once. There'd always been this nagging feeling in the back of her mind that it was trying to tell her something, lacking the capabilities to do so.
She wanted to know what that was.
What it was so desperate to say.
The words didn't come.
"I won't do it."
Another pause.
"I won't give this curse to someone else. I won't let you keep living off others." Pinkie's voice seethed through her teeth, coated in frustration and indignation. "You should have stayed forgotten and buried."
It didn't make any noises for a long time. Minutes, at least. All of which dragged as she waited for it to respond, picturing it speaking in that conglomeration of raspy voices.
Instead, it started to screech.
'Screech' wasn't the right word. It was something else, a noise no living creature could make. A concentrated scream of voices funneled through one mouth, no attempt to articulate it in any language. A sound of an emotion so purely intense it was tangible.
Loud was a poor descriptor.
Any word she knew wouldn't fit, but screech came the closest.
There wasn't a point in trying to cover her ears, no matter how firmly she tried. Visually, it was coming from what was left of its mangled jaw. In reality, it was coming from inside her brain, making her tremble as it brought her to the ground. It made her blood vessels cry, ramming against her skin in an attempt to escape.
She couldn't tell if anything was coming out of her mouth. The screech was all-encompassing, ensnaring her senses and piercing her very soul with its ringing.
Pinkie had enraged it, and she would live to regret that.
Would it do this from now on? Constantly until she listened? She couldn't take that, not for long.
She couldn't imagine passing this curse on to someone else. Try as she might, there was no one she could think of that she would be content with giving it to. Not even Cozy if she were to come back.
It'd stopped screeching.
The skull remained silent as she stared at it. Her thoughts drifting away from the curse brought the sound back, distinctly more severe than before.
It was forcing her to pick someone, to choose a candidate. If she didn't, it would keep screeching.
She wouldn't be able to keep her promise to Twilight if it did.
With growing desperation, Pinkie grasped at names. Anyone she could think of that had wronged her, or that she could never see forgiving. No one came to mind. Not at first, anyway.
As she trudged through the muddy pool of her memory, the outline of a figure appeared. Not clear in the slightest, but it was there.
She made the mistake of trying to reason with it, to steer her mind somewhere else for just a few seconds. That made it worse.
She might have screamed, it was hard to hear.
Something warm trickled down her ears, dribbling down the sides of her face and mixing in with her tears. Soon hitting the floor.
Drip.
It stopped once she'd started thinking of that figure again.
There was one name that approached her out of the fog. Familiar, and poisoned with buried bitterness. They were the cause of this. They dragged her back to that farm, time and time again. To remind her that, as much as she tried to run from it, she'd always end up back there. Sapping the life out of her, leaving her as gray as it was. They did this to her.
Pinkie got to her hooves, eyes sticking on the skull; her ears were wet with warmth. It didn't screech anymore.
"Limestone."