Silent Ponyville: Reunion
Point of view.
Part 26
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Lance once again clawed his way back to consciousness in an unfamiliar place, having not remembered falling asleep in the first place. Even for how often he'd endured the experience, it never got any less confusing. His eyes drifted open and began to take in his surroundings, his brain mindlessly processing the images as his memory reoriented itself in the background of his head. He was in what he could identify as an elevator car, though one that was taller and narrower than any elevator car in which he'd ever ridden. The door was open, but the opening was mostly covered in yellow crime scene tape. On the other side were the remains of a hallway that had collapsed and mostly filled with dirt and rock save for a spot of open floor, occupied by a single white flower lying in a pool of coagulated blood.
He next registered that a burned out lantern was lying on the floor next to him. Naturally this made him wonder where the light to see all of this was coming from, a question answered moments later as he spotted the blood spattered surgical light lying in front of him, the beam pointed outward into the ruined hallway. But he'd been carrying the lantern, not the surgical light...hadn't he? How had it ended up there? Bit by bit the individual parts of his memories switched on and connected. The door...the nightmare...the chase...the maze...the elevator...the burns and deep cuts, all checked off in his head one after another.
Then the last piece fell into place, his memory activating in full.
His eyes widened slightly, focused intently on the single white, ever so slightly sanguinous flower in the hallway. Tears began blurring his vision and streaming down his cheeks, but he made no motion to wipe them away. Lance trembled pathetically, letting his head drop back down to the floor as his every breath started to come with great effort. There was no outburst this time, no eruption of emotion. There was only a vast, cold, empty expanse inside of him now, devoid of purpose or hope.
Posey had come back. She'd been dead for the better part of two decades and against all logic he'd found her again. The world could have had Posey back and been a bright, welcoming place again. But no...in finding her it seems he had preemptively wasted such a grand, impossibly beautiful gift. The moment she'd laid eyes on him her fate had been sealed. Now she was dead again. Not only dead, but had suffered one of the most gruesome, painful deaths he had ever been forced to hear...and it was all his fault. Knowing that he'd let her die once because of his incompetence, and practically killed her himself a second time over...there was just nothing left in him after that.
What was he supposed to do? For that matter, how was he supposed to summon the will to do anything at all? Everything was coming up blank. Even before having run into his inexplicably revived wife there had been something moving him onward through the fog filled streets and the rusted bloody nightmares, something fundamental pushing him to survive and escape past the basic need to live on. It was gone now...completely and utterly absent, leaving not even a memory of such motivations in its wake. Now all he could recall was some old stallion too stubborn to realize that his life had been lived and the world was well and truly done with him. Maybe it was better to stay there...perhaps it was for the best that he just accept his place in the ground.
Something else held a decidedly more proactive position on the matter.
From the dead silence suddenly came the distorted ring of an elevator bell in sore need of maintenance. The elevator car shivered, knocking loose bits of dirt and dust as the engines far above came to life and began to pull upward. Then the doors began to close, causing Lance's body to break free of his despairing apathy the moment he realized he was about to be taken someplace that could only be even worse than this one. He made a weak dive for the doors to try and keep them from closing but it was a useless effort, the motion placing his reach a couple inches shy as the doors cut off of his view of the slightly sanguinous flower in the broken hallway. There were a few creaks around him as the long unused metal reacted to being called into action once more, followed by the familiar sensation of rising and the steady whir of machinery.
He laid there in silence a while before slowly rising to a sitting position and heaving a shuddering sigh, finally moving to wipe the tears from his cheeks. "You can't even let me just stay here?" he asked aloud. "There's no more doors to open here. Doesn't that make it the best place to keep me you bucking idiot?!" He lashed out in futility, striking at the closed door and getting nothing but a briefly aching hoof for his efforts. As always the sense of something watching him hung heavy in the air, but nothing ever replied to him when he desired it. It was an ever looming presence seemingly just behind him but silent as the grave...but he couldn't be bothered to care anymore.
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The droning of the machinery around him gave him something to focus on, something to drown out the lingering echoes still bouncing around in his head. He needed the sound. Silence just brought the screams back. His eyes would stubbornly remain open until the burning sensation forced them shut. The droning sound that he needed was making him want to close them, but he could do this no more than he could bear the silence. All the darkness brought were images of a blood stained sheet and a lock of his wife's hair. It was all he could do to simply exist.
An unknown eternity passed in that elevator. Even if he had been inclined to check, there would have been no way to mark the passing of time or estimate the distance he was traveling. The only things he could tell for certain was that time was indeed passing and that the transportation upwards was ongoing. Maybe there was no destination. Perhaps being trapped in an eternally moving elevator alone with his thoughts was the final price of his failure. They were devious thoughts after all, positively malevolent in fact. They ignored the droning sound keeping back the silence, and ignored his open eyes fighting back the dark, cutting directly into his memory to the core and never letting him stop remem-
The sudden distorted chime of a bell caused him to nearly jump out of his skin. There was a destination after all.
His gut briefly lurched at the sudden deceleration and the doors opened, letting in a chill potent enough to let him see his own breath. The beam of his surgical light lit up a circle of plain concrete wall on the other end of the fairly small room, but there was something immediately in front of it that cast a large shadow. Lance looked down to the familiar sight of a copy of 'The Mastery of Sewing' resting beneath a spool of thread and a needle.
...
"Well buck you too," he muttered somberly as he remained there in the elevator with no intention of exiting. He'd been placed in the elevator against his will, but nothing was stopping him from just staying in there instead of subjecting himself to any further torture.
...
...
...
At first he mistook the ringing in his ears for the perceived noise one would hear over intolerably boring silence, but it took on an unnatural edge as it steadily grew in volume. It advanced from mere noise to a standout irritant, then to a worrisome drone, and then to a very real pain. His hooves rose to grip his skull as it was wracked by an inexplicable pressure that got worse with every moment. Lance's groan of distress quickly changed into an excruciating cry of pain that got stuck in his throat as he barely managed to avoid falling on his side while the agony intensified....then suddenly stopped.
As the ringing faded away, the first sound that came back to him was his own labored breathing. Then something else followed. His ears perked up. Now forgetting the intense tinnitus and migraine of moments prior, he picked up his surgical light and replaced it on the front strap of his saddlebags. The melancholy that had held him rooted to the spot was soon burned away by a new singular fixation as he got to his hooves and stepped out of the elevator, carelessly knocking the book and spool aside in passing.
Somepony in the next room was crying, sobbing uncontrollably in fact.
Lance heard the elevator door close behind him but paid it no mind. This new room looked to have been a storage room at one point. The segments of the walls that weren't just plain concrete were lined with bared, dust laden shelves. In one corner of the room were the remains of a few broken mannequins that were thankfully only broken mannequins and not grisly murder scene recreations. Most important though was the wooden door with a few patches of unpeeled light blue paint directly to his right. It also featured a working, unlocked doorknob.
The storage room was at the back end of a short hallway leading off to the right. There were a few boxes sitting along the walls, one of which was overturned with a bolt of white cloth having rolled out suggesting this was a clothing establishment of some sort. Along the middle of the hallway were doors for the employee restrooms and break room on the left, and another unmarked door on the right, all four of which were boarded over. His only way forward was the farthest, unbarricaded door on the right, and judging from the direction of the sobbing noises it would lead him directly to the source.
This door too featured a working, unlocked doorknob, but it proved a bit less simple than the first. The hinges moved about a quarter inch before stopping as the door was blocked by something on the other side. Not wanting to have to needlessly engage in another key hunt, Lance opted to first try and test the obstacle's resilience with an old fashioned push. He planted his burned but still good back leg on the floor and put his shoulder into the door, finding that the obstruction on the other side had started giving way with a decent bit of effort on his part. Judging by the noise it made, he was pushing wooden crates of some sort...and the wrenching sobs had stopped, replaced by hoof steps uneasily backing away from him.
He figured he should probably announce himself before trying to push the door open, considering the setting. Lance opened his mouth and drew breath to speak but the timing proved disastrous. The bout of activity had upset the settled dust, which caused his efforts to result in a coughing fit that prompted the hoof steps to rapidly move away in a much less hesitant fashion.
"Wait-" he tried to say before being interrupted by another cough. He heard a locked doorknob rattle in panic before the hoof steps retreated further. Opting to skip the introduction, he gave another push, his still damaged body strengthened by urgency. He couldn't lose track of that pony. The crates blocking the door moved a bit further this time, giving him enough room to squeeze through.
It was a clothing store. Dust covered mannequins wearing torn up, moth eaten dresses stood in the broken, barred over front display window. One of them caught his eye in the brief glance he afforded the place, bearing no dress nor even a speck of dust in complete contrast to the others. The only other detail he bothered to notice was a small mirror on the wall to his right. The hoof steps were around the right corner ahead and would quickly lose him if he didn't move fast. He rounded the bend into the half of the L shaped storefront containing the sales desk on his right and a set of four fitting rooms in the far left corner that, save for the farthest, were all missing their curtains. More importantly he caught sight of the hem of a light blue dress retreating up a set of stairs past the sales desk.
By the time he galloped past the first fitting room a door at the top of the stairs slammed shut, and while he was making his way up the stairs he heard yet more doorknob rattling as somepony on the other side tried to lock it with little success. When he was three or so steps from the door the occupant abandoned the effort and ran to the other end of the room before knocking something over. Lance opened the door just in time to hear a chair leg crack as it was pulled free and held aloft as a weapon by the pony he had followed.
"Get away! Get the hay away from m-..." the pony began to shriek but then stopped and stared at the amber stallion that had stepped into the room. The improvised weapon dropped to the ground with a dull clatter as the two stood there staring at one another in disbelief and confusion. The mare was wearing a light blue dress. Her mane was disheveled and her eyes were still red from crying. The fur on her face was stained a dull crimson in two places. One was a trail left behind from the bleeding of scabbed over gash on her forehead. The other was a much fresher looking blood spatter.
Nothing much went through either one's head for a while. They had effectively smashed all possible thoughts out of one another's heads by merely spotting each other.
...
"But...you're dead..." she finally squeaked as her brain recovered.
"I'm dead?" he replied, putting a hoof to his own chest.
"You...at the elevator, she...I saw..." she rambled in a weak voice, sitting down as her eyes ceased to focus on anything in particular. They shifted about seemingly at random, like she was looking over some contraption that refused to work and she could not figure out why. She let out a shuddering sigh, bringing a hoof up to rest on her healing gash as she gently shook her head. "I'm not getting sick again am I? I remember it so clearly..."
"...what did you see?"
She broke out of her trance, setting her hoof back down on the floor and looking at him with a painful grimace as her eyes teared up again.
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"Just push the open button!" he replied, out of breath as he reached the elevator and started giving what meager assistance his battered could provide in keeping the door open. Their combined strength only managed to stop the door from closing any further, and the sovereign was still looming ever larger behind him.
"There is no button!" she retorted, panic saturating her voice as her mind raced, trying to think of anything they could do to save him. The door gave a metallic groan as they failed to keep it from closing another inch, and again as they lost another, leaving only enough width for their hooves now. She grit her teeth, eyes held tightly shut as she poured everything she had and whatever else she could find into the futile fight against the closing door. Her concentration wavered however when she felt her husband's hooves move away from hers. "Lance?!" she asked breathlessly, opening her eyes.
She was answered by a final two metallic hoof falls and a monstrous murmur.
"Posey, get away from the door," he told her, his terrified eyes not daring to look back.
"No!" she spat back while glaring daggers at him, her surge of anger at his request making her try to pry the door open all the harder.
"Get away from the door!" he repeated with far less patience.
She didn't even dignify such a stupid request with a reply this time, closing her eyes again and concentrating on the impossible task set before her.
"Posey get away from the doo-"
That time got her attention. Her eyes shot open to see that he had been cut off mid sentence by the tendril wrapped tightly around his neck to cut off his windpipe. The only sound he could manage was a weak gasp or two as the appendage coiled tighter round his throat like a python then lifted him off his hooves. The sadistic mare moved closer, nuzzling her metallic muzzle against the side of his head and giving a soft shiver of excitement as he started to reflexively struggle from lack of air.
"Stop! Stop!" Posey begged desperately, unable to do anything else as she was forced to watch her husband start suffocating. "Put him down! Please!" she screamed as though the increased volume would do anything to sway the sovereign's actions. Unfortunately the alicorn was feeling cooperative in that particular instance. Instead of forcing the already traumatized mare in the elevator to watch her husband slowly asphyxiate, she allowed Lance to grace Posey's ears with the sound of his sucking in air as the tendril relaxed its grip only so much.
Any further breath he would have taken was violently cut off by the horn spike that swiftly jammed itself through his throat and between the elevator doors. He made a weak gurgle as his single visible, wide open, bloodshot eye looked in at his wife for the last time.
"Laaaance!!!"
The tendril gripped as tight as it possibly could then, and started lifting him up. The horn spike stayed where it was. She was treated to the tearing and cracking noises of a stallion being bisected accompanying the sovereign's shuddering moan on the other side of the door. Something ruptured inside of him and a brief burst of blood caught the already distraught pegasus mare by surprise, staining her chest and part of her face red. Posey didn't see what the alicorn did afterward. She was too occupied with falling to the ground, covering her face and screaming as though she'd just been splashed with acid.
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"After that, I woke up in that same spot...only the elevator was here. I...stumbled out...for the sake of moving I guess...just...kind of along for the ride," she continued haltingly. "I remember grey and brown and dark and...then this dress. I was cold...and I could still look down and see your...I could still see it all over me so I...put the dress on...without even thinking about it. Then I looked in the mirror and it was still all over my face...I couldn't cover it up and...I didn't want to try and wipe it off or clean it because...it was all I had left of you. I just started crying. I couldn't stop. And now here you are and I...I don't know if you're here or what you are or...I don't know what to do." Posey looked at him, lost and alone even though there was another pony right there in the room with her...supposedly.
It took Lance a few moments to realize she was waiting for him to do something, anything. It took a few moments after that to realize his hoof had subconsciously risen to his neck and lower it. He idly swallowed for little other purpose than to fill the gap as he tried to think of something. What he wanted to do was step over there, throw his hooves around her, and never let her go after having gotten her back against all reason twice now. But what he needed to do was...he had no idea what he needed to do. If she was as confused and grief shaken as he was, being approached by what may very well be a hallucination might only make things worse. He only knew one thing for certain, that even if what he had seen wasn't real, he'd still seen it.
"She'd never do that." Posey's head tilted ever so slightly at the certainty in his voice when he said that, and he found himself surprised at himself as well, especially considered whom it was they were discussing. "I know it sounds crazy after what you just saw of her but trust me, she doesn't want me dead or else I wouldn't have even made it to the apartments," he clarified, though he hardly thought it would be of much comfort to her.
"If what I saw didn't happen, then what did?" she asked pointedly, much to Lance's relief. Searching for clarity was a more proactive state of mind for her than simply being lost.
"She dragged me away and tied me to her back. She had my eyes covered so I didn't see where we went...but soon enough, she takes off after something and I hear you, running for your life. You found one of those thick doors to hide behind, but then she dropped me on the floor and started...using me as bait," he said, skipping over some unpleasant details. "It worked and...then..." He closed his eyes a moment. "I saw you die Posey," he concluded, skipping further over some even more unpleasant details.
His wife was quiet a moment, her eyes soon after drifting from him in thought. There didn't seem to be anything like shock in her demeanor, which in any other circumstance would be odd considering she had just been told about her own death. Then again, it was the second time she had been informed as such. Perhaps she was just getting used to it. "But...if none of that was real, then whose blood is this?" she asked further while pointing at the newer blood stain on her face.
"I don't know...if what I saw wasn't real then where did these come from?" he countered as he looked over at the cuts on his side and the burn on his thigh. Posey gasped and covered her mouth at the sight, having not noticed them until just then. Lance's expression flattened to a deadpan stare at nothing as his blunder dawned upon him. "Good job comforting your wife idiot," he scolded himself.
"No no it's...well it's not okay, but you're still alive. That's what's important...at least I think you are," she reasoned, even though it didn't seem to sway her mood for the better in the least.
For another overly long moment they lingered in their respective spots, each looking at the other and yearning to just behave like the two married ponies they had known themselves to be. But confusion stayed their hooves...perhaps it even went so far as mistrust. Neither of them were attempting to reach out and comfort the other like back in apartment G4. Posey had been so happy to see him, and so shocked by his behavior upon seeing her. Now they were both acting the exact same way, like whatever disease had brought Lance to that place had now spread to her.
Posey finally broke the silence, seemingly reading his mind with her first words. "This is how you felt back at the apartment when you realized it was me, isn't it?"
"Probably," he answered halfheartedly, still not moving toward her for fear of scaring her even more than he had managed since getting out of the elevator.
"...Come here."
"..."
"...Please?" she repeated.
Lance hesitated only a moment longer before approaching at a very unthreatening walking pace, stopping and taking a seat within hoof's reach. Posey's hoof slowly raised, cautiously coming to rest against his chest as though she expected him to actually be some fragile porcelain replica of her husband that would shatter at the slightest touch. But she only felt fur and the rise and fall of his breath. It wasn't enough for her though. She looked him in the eye briefly before easing her head downward and putting an ear where her hoof had been. Then she heard the sound of the heart she'd just seen sliced in half.
Her fore legs wrapped around him and held him tightly as she melted into him, face buried in his chest, tears wetting his coat as she gave up trying to figure anything out and just took her husband back. It only took a few moments for Lance to silently agree with her and return the gesture, his head rested atop of hers as all the thoughts he'd mentally grappled with in the elevator fled from the warm body in his embrace. She was trusting him to be real. How could he not do the same?
But however good it felt to have each other back, they would have to keep moving if they wanted it to stay that way. "Okay...we should go honey," he began as he made an attempt to let her go.
She answered by tightening her grip and giving a small whine of protest.
Lance didn't say anything in reply. He just smiled and resumed holding her. She'd given him all the time he'd needed back at the apartment. He wasn't going to let that kindness go unreturned either.
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"So the front door is locked?" he asked, looking up at Posey as she descended the stairs after him, her now empty lantern in tow rather than the surgical light. It had taken some convincing to get Lance to keep it, the cream colored mare having insisted that he would need the far superior visual range it offered if they once again got separated. They would need to find some replacement oil for her though.
"Yeah, seemed like a good idea to try the option that didn't trap me first," she answered while taking a moment at the bottom step to make sure her lantern was securely fastened in place.
"Must be a key somewhere in here then." Lance looked to his right at the abandoned store. There were shelves all over the place and plenty of things that could be moved. He sighed at the thought of the search ahead of them. "Plenty of places to look too."
"Have they ever been hidden in a completely random place though?" she asked in reply.
"What do you mean?"
"Well, from what you've told me, whenever you've needed something it was placed so that you would notice it. Instead of worrying about every nook and cranny we could save a lot of time by just looking for anything odd," she explained, motioning toward the very same bounty of nooks and crannies that was making Lance worry.
"Hrm." Lance started scanning the abandoned store around them. Nothing in particular jumped out at him as he slowly moved toward the store front. Everything looked pretty much what he would expect an abandoned, perhaps even looted store to look like: dust everywhere, a lack of many useful items, the front display window bashed in, and nopony around to make a single peep. He turned back towards Posey, and then noticed something off to her right that he'd walked past twice already. "That looks promising," he said as he approached the only dressing room with the curtain drawn.
Since his watch was silent, and the dressing room probably wasn't large enough to fit one of the watch defying roller gurneys inside, he felt fairly sure he could reach up and draw the curtain aside without incident. The dressing room obliged him by not containing any horrifying monsters, but he couldn't say the sight that greeted him was exactly welcoming. The dust had been displaced in the corner of the small booth with some hoof prints around it as though somepony had been sitting there very recently. There was a screwdriver lying on the floor in the middle, which he assumed had been used to carve the words into the wall:
MAKE HIM GO AWAY
MAKE HIM GO AWAY
MAKE HIM GO AWAY
MAKE HIM GO AWAY
"I don't know what's worse...that stuff on the wall or the fact that it doesn't seem so bad in comparison anymore," Posey mused grimly as Lance picked up the screwdriver. He didn't really say anything, just stared at the words a few moments then directed his attention to the newly acquired tool like he was trying to avoid somepony's attention. She noticed the odd moment of silence but didn't pry.
"It's not a key, but maybe we could use it to take the doorknob out entirely," he said as he deposited it in one of the front pouches of his saddlebags. It seemed a waste of time to go to the trouble of stashing it in the bags themselves just for a trip from the dressing room to the storefront door.
"I didn't get a good look before, but if there's something to unscrew it would probably be on the inside." She followed behind him as they returned to the door in question.
"Yeah, kind of counter productive otherwise I would imagine," he replied as he focused his light on the doorknob and took a look. There were indeed a few visible screws, and an experimental prod proved the screwdriver to be of the right size to deal with them. Lance spent the next couple minutes disassembling the doorknob, until at last he was able to let one half drop onto the floor next to him to rest amongst a small assortment of screws as the other half fell off and landed on the ground outside. He then looked down at the tool in his hoof as it promptly burned to ashes like everything else he'd used correctly, pausing a moment then sighing.
"Doesn't that always happen?" she asked in response to the brief spike of melancholy.
"It does. I was just thinking it might've made a good weapon. But then again, it was pretty small, and I don't want to get that close to something I have to stab," he replied, looking down at his watch to make sure nothing was amiss before pushing the door open.
There was fog outside alright. A lot of fog. So much fog in fact that there didn't appear to be any ground at all. They both peered out with puzzled expressions on their faces as any sort of traversable surface continually failed to appear. Then in a bout of curiosity, Posey gingerly stuck her hoof out and poked it down into the fog obscuring the ground, a soft metallic tap sounding and echoing downward as she hit something hard, cold, and slightly wet.
"What the..." she muttered as she ventured out another step with similar results. In another moment she had all four hooves outside, finding herself on a flat stable surface, albeit one that was impossible to see beneath the thick fog carpeting it. "Feels like that grating from before...it's solid enough to walk on but where they hay are we?" she asked while looking all around as Lance cautiously stepped out to join her. As chilly as it had been inside, it was even colder outside. Not colder than the arctic kitchen in the bottom of the hospital of course, but still cold enough to be bothersome.
A sudden noise made them both give a start before looking back to see that it had just been the door swinging shut again as it would normally do, but that wasn't all they saw. There was a college ruled piece of paper taped to the outside of the door with a message written on it in blue ink. Lance plucked the note off the door.
"Is that from your...uh...'friend'?" Posey asked as she moved beside him.
"I don't think so, it's the wrong color ink and the wrong hoof writing," he pointed out as his eyes scanned over it.
My Dearest Love Shimmershine,
I understand. Really I do. You're quite the busy mare and you don't have as much time to spend with me, the stallion who loves you and risked getting in trouble with his boss in order to help you, as you would like. But that's fine, I'm willing to go the extra mile to let us be together. That's why I had to break the window to get the key to your store, I needed it in order to have a replica made for me. This way I can come by whenever I want and you learn to not change your lock so I don't have to break your window just so we can be together anymore. You're welcome dear.
With All Of My Love,
Eiffel
P.S. Thank you for letting me in
"I...think he's doing it wrong," Posey observed with slightly widened eyes as she finished reading it.
"No kidding," Lance agreed as he let the note drift to the fog covered metallic ground. They were then distracted by a second sound, this one far more distressing than the first. It lasted about a half a second and consisted of the sound of a very short scuffle and a mare screaming from the back of the shop. He spared a second to exchange a quick glance with his wife before pulling the front door open again and looking inside.
The hoof prints they had left in the dust before were all gone. Now only a single trail remained, leading from the door to the farthest dressing room in the back. The curtains had been pulled shut again, were now boarded over, and a small trickle of blood seeped out from behind it.
...
...
"We should leave," Posey suggested with even wider eyes.
"Yes," Lance agreed again, letting the door go before they moved along past a building next to the boutique that resembled a run down cafe of some sort.
------
"Of course you'd be blocked off," he said bitterly as he looked up at the remnants of a sign hanging from the top of the abandoned store. The only bit that was left of it portrayed the telltale red cross of a medical establishment. Worse yet he could clearly see a few spare bits of medical supplies on the shelves inside beyond the painfully barred windows. The throbbing sting of the large second degree burn on his leg and the cuts on his side were now joining the slowly returning pain from everything else. Whatever the deaf colt had dosed him with had been powerful, but no medication lasts forever.
He spared a moment to open his pack and pull out the still mostly frozen health drink. A little more of it had melted, but the tiny little sips it was offering him weren't very effective anymore. He would need another full bottle, or better yet something more powerful, because not being able to walk straight for the pain of it would not make him a very helpful to his wife. "Did I suddenly stop radiating body heat or something?" he grumbled as he drank of it what he could and stashed it away again. It took a bit of the edge off but there was definitely still an edge to be felt. Maybe he should leave it alone longer, let more of it melt before-
"Lance!" he heard Posey call out on the other side of the street.
"Yeah?" he called back as he got to his hooves with an irritable grunt.
"This place is unlocked," she said, pointing her hoof as he limped his way over to her.
The store's sign was completely missing and the windows were boarded over to make looking inside impossible. But just as she had said, the door was unbarred and the handle seemed to work. It figured that the least welcoming place they'd come across since leaving the boutique was also the most accessible.
"Better than staring at burn cream through bars," Lance replied as he noted the silence of his watch and then pulled the door open.
The fog had made it difficult to tell the size of the building from the outside, but the first glance inside made it blatantly apparent. It was easily the size of three or four of the other forsaken businesses they had trotted past, and that was just what they could see of the front area. There wasn't much at all there though...just a sales counter off in the distance and what looked like a rusted, dented up refrigerator wrapped in chains sitting there in the middle of the empty sales floor. Behind the counter they could see a door that might have lead them inward were it not for the boards nailed over it. Unlike the boutique, there was only the very lightest layer of dust on everything, probably owing in large part to the tremendous increase in empty space.
With the chains on the refrigerator making it plain they weren't going to get it open on their own, the counter was the only place that might be hiding anything of interest. They started heading for it, but as they drew closer to the lone appliance in the center of the room it became difficult not to notice a few other details. The dents were mostly in the refrigerator door...and they were mostly outward like something on the inside had made them. Below the door there was also a dark maroon stain left behind by blood that had leaked out onto the floor and dried up. They found themselves altering course slightly so that they could have a bit more of a comfortable distance from it as they passed by.
Given the grisly sight in the center of the room they were both silently anticipating something even worse behind the counter. But for once their expectations were subverted for the better. As they rounded the side, Lance caught sight of the second most beautiful thing he'd seen since last waking up. Resting on the floor underneath the counter was a first aid kit, with the clasp undone. Fearing for a moment that it was a trick, Lance lifted the lid. To his relief he found that although there were a fair amount of things missing, it still had a decently sized roll of gauze, a couple tubes of ointment, and a packet containing four pain killer pills remaining.
"Are those pills safe?" Posey asked, looking down curiously at the tablets she couldn't quite recognize on sight.
"Yeah, they're the same kind I have at home," he replied.
"Good," she started before rummaging around her pack until she found her bottle of water. "Take them and I'll start fixing you up a bit."
"Here?" he asked, giving the macabre refrigerator a sidelong glance.
"Well it's cleaner in here than the boutique was, we can hide behind the counter, and if anything comes in through that door way over there we'll hear about it long before it spots us. Now lie down," she explained, wanting to cut off any objections before he could manage to say them.
He took another glance toward the door, then nodded to her before easing himself down so that he would be easier to work on.
"Good, just tell me if I'm doing anything wrong okay?" she requested as she reached for some ointment.
"I will," he replied.
They didn't say a word to one another aside from the odd sharp intake of breath and quiet apology whenever her hoof brushed a cut or burn just a little too firmly. Some part of him wanted to just talk with her then, but the rest of him wanted to be fixed up and on its way before anything else could find them. Posey appeared too concentrated on her work to ponder one way or the other. It didn't take long before the ointment and gauze were both used up. His left thigh was now bandaged over, and the dressings covering his midsection had received a new layer to cover the trails carved over his ribs.
"Too much more of this and I'll have married a mummy," she mused aloud, signaling that she was finished and he could get up.
"Thank you," he said before getting back to his hooves, taking it slow. The combination of ointment and pain killers was starting to kick in by then. He took a few experimental steps and found that he was once again fairly mobile with minimal pain. While he would still have to be on the lookout for a health drink that wasn't so stubbornly frozen, this would at least keep him going for another few hours. "That feels so much better already."
"When we get out of here you are confined to the couch for a week you hear me?" she ordered, her words at odds with her mannerisms as she ever so gently nuzzled against him.
"To recover or because you're mad at me for getting hurt?" He was unable to help but smirk slightly as he asked the question.
"Both. I hate having to see you like this," she clarified further as she pulled back and placed her water bottle back in her saddlebag.
Wanting to take advantage of his newly re-found mobility, Lance turned back toward the front door, only for his slight increase in enthusiasm to be stomped flat by an odd detail. "Posey...nothing came in here, right?"
She quirked an eyebrow and looked over in the same direction. "No, I checked a few times. Your watch didn't make any noise either." Posey had planned on following that with 'why?', but she soon spotted 'why' and froze just the same as Lance.
It was the refrigerator. The chains were gone.
...
"It's only a refrigerator...we'll just go right past it and-"
They both jumped as a loud bang came from the center of a room. Followed by another. And another. With each noise the neglected appliance shook slightly.
"...like I said, we'll just go right past it while never taking our eyes off of it then out the door," Lance continued with a bit less certainty behind his words. Posey nodded, going first just in case. She wasn't about to let some kind of fridge monster undo all the bandaging she'd just finished.
They moved with all the haste they could manage while still staying quiet and giving the impromptu prison a wide berth. Whatever was inside didn't seem able to break the door latch...and as they drew closer Lance realized his watch was still not making a peep despite the proximity. He found himself growing curious as to what was inside but had no idea where the compulsion was coming from. It felt like when he had tried to abandon the watch hours upon hours ago in the cafe and found himself unable. So despite every lick of good sense remaining in his head, Lance slowed to a stop, leaving Posey to continue on briefly before noticing he wasn't behind her anymore.
"Lance? What are you doing?!" she asked at a whisper.
"...I...I think we have to...open it?" he replied sounding as though not even he was believing what he was saying.
"Wha...huh?!" Posey looked at him as though mice had just started crawling out of his ears.
"I know I know, but trust me...please?"
"...I'll...okay. I've got your back," she acquiesced in exasperation, moving closer to him. Every instinct she had was quite visibly telling her she was about to have to beat something off of her temporarily stupid husband.
He took a deep breath, steeled his nerves, and started forcing himself toward the increasingly noisy appliance. The door shook with each blow, the intensity seeming to increase a little with every step he took toward it...that or his nerves were playing tricks with him again. It seemed to take ages but finally he was within hoof's reach of the door latch. Half preparing himself to dodge to the side, he slowly reached forward.
The sudden lack of noise was somehow worse than a louder one would have been. Lance stopped cold as the banging inside of the refrigerator stopped for no readily apparent reason. When the rusty hinges gave a loud creak and the door began to slowly swing open he hurriedly backed away a couple steps. Nothing emerged. There was nothing inside even capable of emerging. There was only dried blood spatters all over the inner walls.
And on the single shelf remaining inside sat a copy of 'The Mastery of Sewing' with a spool of thread and needle atop it.
He blinked, then scowled as his body slowly realized it wasn't about to be attacked. "Fine," he grumbled as he picked up the two items.
"What are those?" Posey asked once she too had confirmed they were safe for the moment.
"They were left next to yo-...they were left in the hospital after we got separated," he started, closing his eyes tightly and pausing a moment to come up with a less horrible way to word it. "I saw them again when I got off the elevator, and here they are now for a third time. I think if it's going to keep escalating like this I'd rather just take the blasted things already."
Lance had done quite a good job explaining where the two items had come from, but he'd done nothing to explain what they were, so Posey looked down to the book in his hooves. "Oh wow I haven't seen that book in ages, I remember you had this even before we moved in together," she mused, easily recognizing the sewing related tome. "Why is it important now though?"
...
He took another moment to close his eyes and fabricate an answer. "I...I don't know."
...
"Maybe you should look inside then?" she asked with a discerning look on her face. It seemed to strike her as the next obvious step that he should have already thought of on his own.
He couldn't exactly just say 'no'. In fact doing anything other than opening the book would make his discomfort even more obvious. So he set the book on the floor and opened it, finding the reason for it's importance night instantaneously. Posey's resultant gasp at the sight made him feel as though he were falling into a familiar trap all over again.
There was another picture taped to the very first page. It was of their daughter, still a filly, with partly bloodied bandages wrapped around her head. She was sitting with a deflated, weary posture, facing away from the camera in what was clearly their Cloudsdale home. Behind her lay Ashley, somewhat crudely sewn together again. Beneath the picture, written directly on the page with a thick black mark was a single sentence.
I tried again daddy father.
When Lance looked over to his wife again he found her with eyes closed, taking deep breaths as she tried with all her might to keep herself together. He didn't say a word. Finally she opened her eyes and looked at him with a stare intense enough to practically bore a hole through his skull. "We have to go home."
He still didn't say a word for a while. Now he was being pulled back to the depths of the hospital, back to a conversation that had been interrupted. She'd given him a chance down there. The one thing he never wanted to tell her and she had been so open and accepting of him that for one instant he had thought that maybe, just maybe, he could stop hiding so much and tell her the truth. Then it was gone...had been gone forever as far as he'd known. He'd wasted the chance to trust her with the truth the same way he had trusted her with everything else. This was a second chance...and even though it still hurt him so much to even think about telling her, he was getting tired of being with her and being anything less than overjoyed for her presence.
"Posey...down there before we ran for the elevat-"
"Not now."
"...what?" he asked incredulously. This had been the same mare who had threatened to stay there unless he confessed everything to her after all.
"You were right down there...we really don't have time. I mean look what happened after that Lance. I...still want to know everything you were trying to tell me but not now," she explained while looking down at the photograph. "I can't even really tell if this picture is real or not can I? If I can see you...die...and then find you alive again, it seems like a fake photo would be foal's play. So...I don't know if Fluttershy is here or not...but I know for certain you are."
The minor shock slowly faded from Lance's face, replaced with...he didn't know what. There was no sense of relief, or comfort, or surprise, or anything he could quite put into words. Just a vague sense that...something.
Having noticed his lack of reply, she continued. "Right now I want to get you out of here Lance, and that photo is giving us a clear enough destination. If Fluttershy really is there, then we'll find her...but right now I need to think about the stallion I know for a fact exists. So let's just go alright?"
...
"Alright." He pushed the vague feeling aside, leaving it to gnaw at the back of his mind until it hopefully faded away entirely. "Do you have any ideas about how to get there?" he asked, trying to move the conversation toward more practical matters.
"I don't even know where here is," she confessed with a worried look on her face as they moved toward the door. "It's not still Ponyville is it?"
"I don't think so. I don't remember any of the buildings I passed by looking like these," he replied as he pushed the appliance store's front door open and took a step outside. His eyes traveled upward back to that red cross symbol above the medical supply store across the street...then they widened slightly as something clicked.
------
"There, see? That wasn't so bad, the salesmare was very nice, and now we'll have a dryer that doesn't make Fluttershy run to our room crying about a monster banging around in the laundry room when we want to let it dry a load overnight," Posey said cheerfully as they stepped out into the sunlight. Lance sighed, though he still easily wore a smile as he briefly glanced up at the medical supply store across the street before replying.
"You'd think I'd be getting used to the taste of crow by now," he joked as he looked back to her, having expected a far more troublesome time of replacing their old dryer.
------
"Lance? What is it?" she asked as he continued looking up at the broken sign.
"Posey...I think we're back in Cloudsdale..."