//------------------------------// // Ch5: Special Ingredient // Story: AppleCakes // by Agalakachikaboum //------------------------------// Strawberry Cake opened her eyes. But as she did, she saw only pitch black. She blinked a dozen of times, hoping to get used to the light and see something, but it only made her see less. Were her eyes truly open? She wondered for a second. This is probably just a dream, a bad dream, she tried to calm herself. She was shaking of fright, but also of cold. She was freezing. The young mare tried to move her left hoof, but it was stuck in something. She then tried her right hoof, but the result was the same. She shook both her legs back and forth, but a wall stopped them from the back, and the same metallic but sticky thing was on the front, just like her front hooves were. “H-hello?” she said in a trembling voice. Her teeth were chattering loudly and she let out a soft “brrr” from between them. “Why hello!” she heard at her left. Her eyes grew wide but her pupils became small. She turned her eyes to see from where came that voice, even if she knew exactly who it was. “So, are you ready for cooking lessons, shugarpie?” the shadow asked. She approached the trapped filly so she sees her better. Strawberry gasped as she saw what monster hid inside that innocent mare. A tall pony was standing next to her. Her mane was straight and bright red, except for the long blue wick traveling the long of it. Her blue eyes shot out a very bright light even if there was no place from where it could have reflected. Her pupils were very small, even tiny; we could barely see the black in them. The only thing still visible from them was the shiny sea blue around it, which was small as well. Her eyes were very wide open, more than any other mare she had ever seen. Her white teeth seemed very sharp in her wicked big grin going up to her ears. Her light apple-color skin seemed to take a softly more red color in some spots close to her face. Her ears were down even though her smile was up. She seemed scared- but happy in the same time. “So, how do ya feel? Excited? Happy?” asked the demon, her smile growing wider and wider- Strawberry never thought it was even possible. “Ae feel so happy to give my first cooking lesson to somebody!” she cheered, as weirdly happy as before. “Now, let’s get started, shall we?” she laughed before leaving to the right. She got out of Strawberry’s sight. “Wait, wait! What are you doing? What do you want to do to me?!” she cried, more and more scared. “Well, what do ya think?” answered the demon’s voice in an echo. Her tone seemed slightly annoyed, like if the answer was obvious and the question, stupid. Strawberry suddenly remembered why she came here. “MAKE APPLE PIES!” laughed Apple Pie loudly as the lights opened. Strawberry was revealed to be caged by metallic plates covered with glue around each of her hooves. She was attached to the wall and below her stood a plate filled with a lot of yellow apples. She was surprised to see that kind of apple, since the only apples she ever saw were the red apples of the Apple Family. As she looked up, there were walls painted in a mix of bright red and yellow-orange. On the wall in front of her was written 4 deadly words in blood red that dripped down. “LET’S BAKE APPLE PIES!” She freaked out. On the wall of left, many messages were written down, either in blood or with a gem that scraped in the ceramic. “Need more special ingredients” “I killed her” “Let’s have a party” “I am helping people” “I am a nice person” “It’s so fun” “I’M BACK” The last message was big. Very big. And unlike all the other writings that dried out, this one was still dripping, like if it just has been written. Strawberry took a while before understanding what was happening in front of her eyes. “What do you want to do to me?! Why are you doing this?!” A.P. just replied with a laugh. She ignored the scared pony’s questions and got to the right side of the wall. There was a big bag of tools. She opened it and took out a butter knife. Its end was round, so there was no reason to worry. Though its shape was weird: it was in a “V” form. Its handle was also uncommon, since it was in an apple shape. The knife was all painted in green, except the handle that was red. “What are you going to do with that…?” shrieked the scared mare. “Why,” replied the other pony, “Ae shall prepare the special ingredient, so its quantity grows while Ae prepare the rest,” explained the demon. Strawberry couldn’t believe what she was hearing. The special ingredient? “But didn’t you say I’ll have to leave when”- “When Ae will ADD the special ingredient to the pie, yes,” corrected Apple Pie before the young mare could finish her sentence. A chill got down Strawberry’s spine as the demon approached her once again, but this time, with the broken butter knife. “And how can you make the special ingredient with… that?” dared to ask Strawberry Cake. “Like… THIS!” and as she yelled the last word, the took the handle with the butter knife with her left hand and placed it above the aqua-colored filly, then she grabbed the end of the knife with her other hand and violently entered the V’s opening inside the filly’s back of her elbow. A scream of pain echoed all over the small cabin as drops of blood shot in the air to land everywhere on the ground near the two mares. The demon still had the grip on the knife, and moved it slowly around the elbow. The line got the long of the elbow’s back until it reached the front, where the hard bone stayed. The apple-color pony stopped as she arrived there and took off the knife from the pony’s arm, which demanded some effort since it was stuck deep inside the filly’s muscles. As she did her best to take off the knife, Strawberry started crying. She couldn’t support the deadly pain anymore. As Apple Pie gave herself a last boost, she pulled on the knife of all her strength and it finally pull out. Though, A.P. was pulling too hard and was barely standing on her two feet, only holding herself on the butter knife, so as it stroke into the air along with some drops of blood, Apple Pie lost her stability and fell on her tail, and the butter knife went going as a boomerang before bouncing on the front wall and felling down. As the murderer got back up, Strawberry cried as she let out an ever louder yell of pain. “W-why are you doing this to me?!” she yelled at the apple-color pony. “What did I do wrong?!” “Nothin’,” the pony said as she turned her back to go take the knife. She winced as she saw the broken knife on the ground. She picked it up, and as she went to put it back in the bag, she explained: “Ae’m simply learning to ya how Ae make apple pies.” Apple Pie let the broken butter knife fall down into the bag. Then, she looked up and the crying filly to point down with her eyes. The filly watched in the same place. She was surprised to see the bunch of apples beneath her filling with blood red. Her blood. It was painting the yellow apples into red. “The secret of my pies is in the apples,” shared A.P. “When ya add blood to them, their sauce has less lumps and gets a better taste.” The filly was completely scared after hearing what the pony she beloved so much said. Pony blood? She thought. She did all those apple pies with… Pony blood? “Ahem, now,” started the apple-color pony. “Next step.” She took out a knife out of nowhere- or, actually, her back. The knife was same as the butter knife- but this one was straight, longer, and wickedly sharp. The pony gripped the red apple handle on the knife with her left hand, and approached to the caged pony. “One…” started counting the murderer as she placed her apple-knife at the end of the hoof. Strawberry reacted immediately. “No! Please! Don’t do that!” she begged. But the apple-color pony ignored her. “Two…” she continued counting. The aqua-color pony started crying. “Please…”- “THREE!” She threw the apple-knife inside the pony’s hoof, letting her shoot off a scream. She turned the knife in the pony’s flesh, just like it was a key opening the door. As soon as she took it off, she went to the next hoof and did the same operation. Strawberry Cake was screaming and crying, hoping to be loud enough for somebody to hear her. She knew her tears were useless, but the pain that A.P. brought her was too much. “Stop… People will hear me… They will find you…” tried to reason Strawberry. But Apple Pie just took it for a happy joke and laughed. “Well, then, Ae’ll cut ya tongue!” she yelled. The filly immediately regretted her words. “No! No, don’t, pl-eeeee…” she couldn’t continue because Apple Pie opened her mouth and grabbed the filly’s tongue. She raised her hand up in the air, before letting it fall down along with the knife and cut half of the filly’s tongue. “There,” she sighed in satisfaction. “That should lower your voice.” The aqua-colored pony, now seeing her efforts were useless, just gave up and started crying again. Her tears got down and mix up with the blood, who now gave a more bright color to the dozen of apples below. Apple Pie, seeing she will have now more facility, got back to work. The murderer lay down on her knees until she was at the filly’s knee length. She went right under those and placed a needle at her chosen area. She took her apple-knife and turned it to the back, so that the handle is positioned in front of the needle. Strawberry knew exactly what she was about to do, but she didn’t even try to make an effort to stop her. The apple mare surprisingly started by knocking slowly with the knife. Then, without any warning, she violently threw her hand in the air and made it land on the needle, which got straight inside the filly’s flesh. Blood immediately started to pour out of the hole. Strawberry cried loudly. Apple Pie ignored her, once again. She moved on to the next leg, where she shot her “hammer” back and forth once before whispering a swear. “Ae put it in the wrong place…” she said to herself. She went back to her weapon bag to take out a staple remover. “There. That should do the thing!” She said in a jolly voice before going back to the messed up needle. She placed the needle in the hole of the stapler before pulling of all her strength. Strawberry Cake screamed of pain, but the scream was barely audible. As a river of blood poured out of both holes, Apple Pie drew a satisfied smile on her face. She looked down at the apples, which were now bloody red. She was happy: she had made more special ingredients. “There! Now, I’m finally done!” she happily said, realizing she won’t need to put another needle. Strawberry Cake looked up, her eyes half closed, her mouth open to reveal her broken tongue. She was breathing heavily and sweating like crazy. Her eyes were half closed, and she looked broken down. Apple Pie’s smile washed off for the first time since her arrival. “Aw, don’t be sad,” she tried to cheer up. “I’m done now.” She slightly smiled. Strawberry’s pitiful expression calmed down a bit. “And now that I’m done,” said the blood-stained pony, her wicked smile reappearing. “I will be able to add the special ingredient!” she said happily. “But, unfortunately,” she looked down, though still holding her smile, “ya will have to leave now.” Strawberry Cake’s eyes grew extremely wide. The words she said the day before now became very clear to her. “Though, you will have to leave when Ae’ll add the special ingredient”. Why she found it amusing. She was so stupid. She didn’t mean to leave only her. The apple-colored pony threw her apple-knife on the wall in the back. It broke down the cement and stuck in it. She took another apple-knife from nowhere, exactly identical to the first. “Bye, bye.” She placed the knife inside her skin, right above the pony’s heart. She entered it deep inside her flesh, pushing it between her muscles. As those broke, she took up her strength to pull the knife down with both her hands on the handle. Strawberry yelled and cried a lot as the world started spinning around her. The apple-knife made its way down until it was half an inch below the filly’s heart. Apple Pie pulled off the knife from the skin violently and put both her hands on her knees while trying to take back her breath. After a few of these I’ll get used to it again, she thought. She got back up and let the knife fall down. “Theeere,” she said, looking at the straight line she made on the filly’s chest. She entered both her hands inside the hole and started pulling, the left hand to the left, and the right one to the right. It ripped off the skin around and it made a flow of blood drip down to the plate, which was now filled. The apples were almost not visible in the lake of blood that rained above them. But, what was sure is that they absorbed every drop of blood and they were now entirely red. As she pulled one last time, the two parts of skin next to the line she cut became two large doors made of skin and muscles. She opened them, and there, in front of her, was the heart of the dying filly. Strawberry started to see everything more far away than they truly are. Her dizziness didn’t let her go a second. It only grew bigger and bigger. Her heart was still beating, but slowly, very slowly. Blood from the muscles around the heart was dripping the long of the pony’s aqua skin. Apple Pie enjoyed her fun as she entered her head inside the hole she made in her visitor’s body. She grabbed one of the veins that passed through the heart with her teeth, and pulled on it until it broke. It flew like a snake for a second, shooting blood all over the place, before dying. Apple Pie, happy and satisfied, clapped her hooves together. “And now, it’s time for you to leave,” she cheered. A.P. grabbed the pony’s heart with both of her two hooves. She pulled on it as the veins on the sides let go and blood poured out of them. Strawberry Cake heard her childhood star laugh in front of her before losing herself. In the deep dark slowly taking place in her view. Apple Pie made a click sound with her mouth and the lights came off. She closed her eyes as she sat down next to the apples. She stopped grinning, but she still kept a smile while hiding her teeth filled with blood. She held the dead filly’s heart in front of the plate. As she squished the heart between her two hooves, blood poured out of it and dripped down into the lake. She smiled in the dark of the underground, and then sang a song that she knows oh so well: “In the dark night When everypony sleeps, I fill the sky With deadly screams. In the pale light Of the bright moon I bake apple pies With torture and doom…”