//------------------------------//
// Insanity 
// Story: Elijah Goldberg's Tales of Horror (And Also Ponies) 
// by Regidar 
//------------------------------//

Twilight swung the door open, and fell into the hallway. The monster growled disgustingly, and lumbered out, looking around with unseen eyes, buried in tentacles. Twilight’s first instinct was to head to her parent’s room for help. The horror behind her made sickening noises, that almost sounded like Shining Armor screaming for help. Twilight began to cry from the sheer terror of it all. This was horrible, her worst nightmares coming to life... why? What was going on?

The little filly swung the door to her parent’s room open, and found the room to be mostly unharmed. Slamming the door shut, she took a look around. There was something blue stuck to the wall, but everytime Twilight focused on it, her vision became blurry. It made her uneasy, but she had more pressing matters to attend to. She could worry about blue fuzz once she had properly barricade the door.

Using her magic to try and levitate the bureau in front of the door, she managed to get it to move about three feet before exhausting herself. The poor filly tried to push the bureau the rest of the way, but it was simply too heavy. 

A dull thud alerted Twilight to the fact that the abomination of Celestia’s Will had found its way to the door. The little filly squeaked in horror, and jumped into her parents’ bed. They would protect her from the monster, they always had saved her from things in the past...

The sheets were lumpy and odd. Both of Twilight’s parents seemed to be fine. Only their heads were above the sheets, but their eyes were closed peacefully. Twilight went up to her father, and whispered in his ear.

“Daddy... something horrible happened, and Shiny turned into a monster, and then... oh, you’ve got to help!”

Orion said nothing, still silent and unmoving. Twilight froze. This is exactly what happened right before Shining Armor had turned into that... thing.

Backing away slowly, Twilight hopped off the bed. She was now faced with two terrible dilemmas. She could either stay in here, and wait for her parents to become horrible creatures from the pits of Tartarus, or risk going back outside with that tentacled monstrosity that used to be her brother.

The door shuddered slightly as the monster shamed its hooves against it. Twilight had all but given up. Either way, she was going to meet a grisly fate at the hooves of some sort of monster.

“Don’t tell me you’ve given up already?”

Twilight spun around. The blue fuzz on the wall was no longer there. Standing in front of the previous space of wall where the fuzz had once been sitting was a creature Twilight had only read about.

“Discord?” The creature bore a striking resemblance to the drawings of the draconequus lord of chaos. However, he wore a deranged smile, one that hinted to the fact that maybe this individual was not quite... all there. Not that Discord would be sane from what Twilight had read about him, but this gave off more of an aura of pure insanity, not of chaos. Also, Discord was sitting in a statue in Canterlot Gardens. Princess Celestia had taken her there on an afternoon not too long ago.

“Ah, yes, my older pomegranate. Shame he’s gotten himself stoned. I was looking forward to eternal chaos. Won, s’tel klat tuoba ruoy tneserp noitautis.”

Twilight stared in abject horror and confusion at this. Whoever this was, they knew Discord, and seemed to be entirely crazy.

The draconequus looked down at the pony before smiling again. Twilight wanted to cry, but her eyes had gone dry. She didn’t even feel scared anymore, just... numb. Uncomfortably numb.

“How rude, I seem to have forgotten my jacket. No matter, the key is Insanity, my dear purple piglet.” The figure before the filly sat down on the bed. “You may be asking ‘Why isn’t the sky blue instead of orange?’ Well, I shouldn’t talk about Derpy that way, she’s a very able mailmare. What I shall address, however, is the monsters in the closet. Or rather, the room.”

Insanity flung the sheets off of the bed. Both of Twilight Sparkle’s parents were skeletons below their necks. Twilight wanted to scream, but in all honesty expected something like this. That didn’t stop this from being any less horrific. 

The skeletons hopped out of bed, their eyes still closed, and the flesh on their heads sullen. Twilight felt bile rise in her throat as they approached, flies clinging to the skin.

“Have oodles of fun with your new playmates, my succulent kumquat!” The draconequus slowly dissolved into several multicolored slugs, which began a painfully slow crawl towards the little foal.

This was simply too much for Twilight to handle. The door broke down, and the tentacle-headed Shining wandered in disgustingly. Twilight’s fragile foal mind snapped. She instinctively shot out a shield, which shoved back the slugs and her parents. The little filly smiled a deranged smile, tears streaming down her face. She fell to the floor, sobbing while grinning the largest grin of her life.

Just before she blacked out, she heard insane laughter echoing in her head. She couldn’t be sure if it was Insanity, or herself.