Arcturus took out the cilantro from the plastic bag. He set it to the side, and began preparing all the other vegetables. Lemons, onions, peppers, tomatoes, all paraded on the kitchen counter in a beautiful arrangement of colors.
Glass bottles of virgin olive oil, tequila, and vinegar sat at the edge of the counter, waiting for him.
Arcturus checked the recipe book again. Ceviche required fresh salmon, which Morning should be bringing for him any moment now.
Taking the knife in his mouth, he slid the cutting board with the banana peppers to the edge of the table. He began jerking his head up and down, and the knife in his mouth began to sloppily cut through the peppers.
The struggles of a pegasus chef….
He grunted in frustration. The knife was dull.
Arcturus yanked open the knife drawer, and froze in shock. There were no knives in here, but there was a lot of blood. A broken razor lay on its side, pointing at the words in the center. “Help me,” it said in shaky, crimson letters.
A sudden migraine struck Arcturus, and he groaned in pain. He slammed the drawer shut, and the pain immediately receded.
He went on as if nothing had happened, and opened the next drawer down. There was more blood, and an ominous looking clump of gore. Another migraine flared up in his mind, but he still read the message. “Find Doctor Pharus before…” the message was then abruptly jerked off, as if the pony writing it had collapsed. Or had been dragged away.
Arcturus looked down at his hooves, seeing some congealed blood pooled on the floor. It was under the banister, so it had been concealed. The blood was still glistening. The blood in the drawers hadn’t clotted either. These messages had been written recently.
There was another spike from his migraine. He felt as if somepony was in here with him. Something horrendously malignant that wanted nothing more than to cause him pain.
Whoever had written these messages had known he would be cooking today….
There was a loud bang from somewhere around him. Arcturus slowly looked up, seeing all the way down the hallway leading out of the kitchen. At the end of the corridor, there was a door. There was another bang, the door shook, and Arcturus flinched.
The door opened up a crack, and a mangled red hoof reached out. He realized in terror that the hoof had been flayed. “Come hither,” a voice whispered. The door began to open slowly, and Arcturus began to trot towards it. “That’s right,” the voice purred hypnotically.
The apartment door burst opened, and the flayed hoof retreated into the darkness. Arcturus looked bewildered as Morning came through with grocery bags. He looked back at the door down the hallway at the end of the corridor. It was now closed.
“Something smells really good,” Morning said, approaching the kitchen counter and putting down the salmon. “A lot of meat and vegetables, eh?”
“Yeah,” Arcturus said, returning to the counter where he had been cutting vegetables. “I need more proteins.”
Morning looked him over, sensing something was wrong. But she was distracted. “Wow, have you been working out?” She then looked up to the top of his head, and cocked her head as if she was trying to see him in another perspective. “He cooks, he cleans, loves classical music…” she gestured to his ear, “and he has a piercing.”
“Don’t forget that he has an excellent taste in mares,” he added, and she blushed.
What piercing? He touched his ear, and found it hot and sore. It had been recently pierced, and now looking in the mirror, he saw a silver ring in his right ear. It was rather stylish, so no complaints from him.
“It’s very sexy,” Morning added, and gave him a puzzled look again. “I can’t put my finger on you…I’ve never dated a stallion with such a broad spectrum of interests. It’s like you get into these moods, and suddenly you want to go study brain anatomy, or you want to take cello lessons, or you want to cook.”
“Live life to the fullest, my lovely Morning Glory.”
He honestly had no idea what she was talking about, but it turns out that he was very forgetful, and had learned to just go along with it.
“I adore it when you call me Morning Glory,” she said, shrugging off her scarf and relaxing.
“Well,” Arcturus said, slightly confused. “What else would I call you?”
Morning giggled. “My real name, maybe? Do you still want me to call you Master Arcturus? Or does it depend on the time of day?”
What in Equestria was she talking about? Perhaps…Another migraine stifled the thought.
He went to his medicine cabinet, and reached up for some pain relievers. “I know I am a Night Terror, but you are my mare-friend, and therefore exempt from calling me ‘Master’.”
“That’s not really what I meant, but….” Morning paused, and then smiled. “Why don’t you and I do something fun tonight?”
Arcturus downed several pills, screwed the lid back on, and tossed it back up. “We can go to the park. The Sparks will be playing in the amphitheater there.”
Morning’s eyes lit up. “How did you know I liked The Sparks?”
“You mentioned it on our third date,” Arcturus said knowingly, “and I know you as a filly had the biggest crush on their guitarist.”
She had a big grin on her face, but her joy faded. “But, all the tickets are probably sold out.”
Arcturus opened one of the kitchen drawers and produced two VIP concert tickets. “Night Terrors get exclusive privileges.”
Morning rushed into his embrace, hugging him tightly. “I love you,” she whispered. “Not because you buy me lots of stuff, but because I know you care about me more than anything else.” She drew back a little so they could look each other in the eyes. “I’m all yours, so stop spoiling me.”
Arcturus leaned forward and kissed her. “I love you more,” he said. “You are my clarity, my resolve, my grip on reality.”
He glanced over her shoulder, back at the door at the end of the corridor. What was in there?
Sirius groaned, awakening on the cold, smooth floor of what appeared to be a warehouse. He blinked into awareness. Everything ached, and he tasted something chalky in his mouth.
Where am I?
He managed to stand, his hooves trembling. Sirius surveyed his surroundings as his vision cleared. The place was vast and empty, and the dirty skylights allowed some moonlight to filter through, but otherwise it was a cold, dank and dark place.
How did I get here?
Sirius tasted the chalky substance on his lips again. He wiped it off with his hoof, and the fur had white smears of some powder on it. Sirius was confused. Licking the powder, and then sniffing it, he immediately felt a rush of energy.
Amphetamines…Sirius was doing drugs again. He couldn’t remember anything though.
Did amphetamine usage affect memory?
He couldn’t recall the information on the drug type. All he knew is that he was going to get one hell of a headache later on.
Sirius was frightened. What was going on? He couldn’t even remember buying the drugs in the first place.
“I’m losing control,” he whispered to himself, frightened.
He had noticed something like this before. He had recurring blackouts and there were increasingly lengthy stretches of time that were unaccounted for. His brain had been first skipping a few seconds, barely noticeable. But then seconds turned to minutes, minutes into hours, and now it felt like he had been mentally absent for almost a full day.
What had happened in all those hours he had missed?
Sirius began to trot towards what appeared to be a large loading dock with huge garage doors leading to the outside world. He needed to get back home.
In his mind, he tried to backtrack. What was the last thing he remembered doing before it all went dark?
Sirius strained his mind, and realized that the last memory he had was of him getting a coffee from Sparklebuck’s. Had there been something in his drink? Was somepony out to get him?
It couldn’t be. That wouldn’t explain all his other blackouts. Still…maybe somepony was trying to poison him with increasingly larger doses of the toxin.
Sirius couldn't go home. He needed to get himself to a hospital. Something was obviously wrong.
He arrived at the exit of the warehouse, and found the large garage doors were locked shut. Sirius turned around, and bucked the door hard with his hooves. He bucked again, the latching mechanism shattered, and the door was yanked upwards by the spring loaded bearings.
Immediately, Sirius was blinded by flashing red and blue lights at the other end of the block. Cold air brushed his face as he shielded his light sensitive eyes.
He slowly adjusted to the bright lights and the intermittent wails of the police sirens. Spotlights had been set up, bathing the brick backside of an apartment building with light. Apparently something very interesting was to be found there.
Dozens of the Night Guard were all faced the other way, shouting at each other, trotting back and forth, and questioning witnesses. Some kind of big crime scene had happened here.
Sirius wanted to avoid the mess down there, but the closest hospital was down that road.
He was intrigued though, and trotted on the sidewalk. As he drew closer, he now saw the blood on the wall. While he had been strung out in the warehouse, there had been some kind of mass killing out here.
Sirius entered the crime scene, but the Night Guard were too busy to take note of him. He was just another onlooker.
Sirius gasped. On the brick wall where all the spotlights were trained on, there was a grisly message. A pony’s entrails had been nailed to the wall to form the words, “Necron wuz here.”
The entrails hung down from the last ‘e’ and led down to the pony which the entrails originated from. The disemboweled stallion lay in a bloody splatter on the floor. Four other ponies lay there on the crime scene in equally horrific states.
He overheard a witness crying, the mare was hysterical. “Some lunatic with a meat cleaver bucking skewered those thugs! He kept on screaming that his name was Necron, and was just painting the walls with their blood!”
Wow, Sirius thought. That’s pretty crazy.
He suddenly had a headache. Groaning in pain, he decided that he needed to get to the hospital as quick as possible. The sooner he got there, the sooner somepony would be able to take care of him. He needed to get a handle on this thing.
As he drew away from the police sirens, and the general commotion, he felt more at peace. His headache faded in the gentle ambience of the city night life.
The moon had set long ago, and the bright streetlights and storefronts illuminated the streets. Dozens of ponies trotted by him on the busy sidewalk, a sea of faces and each one only lasted in his memory for a brief moment.
Taxi carriages rushed by on the street, their drivers cursing angrily. Sirius wandered by a newsstand and saw Nightmare Moon on the front page. She was standing with several Nightborn legislators. The paper was enchanted, and the grayscale image was moving. He had seen such papers before, but he had never really paid attention.
Nightmare Moon was shaking her head, and the legislators were shaking each other’s hooves. The caption above read, “Nightmare Moon Approves Increased Military Intervention in Fringe Colonies.”
Sirius was reminded of his home. Despite all the pain the place it held, he could not forget it.
He paid the pony at the newsstand for the paper and began reading it. “The Fringe Colonies have always harbored outlaws, remnants of the Church of Celestion cult, Dayborn invalids, all ponies with checkered histories. Nightmare Moon’s new crusade against them will make Equestria safer for all of us.”
That had been a formal statement from one of the Empress’ generals.
Sirius folded the paper under his wing and continued trotting, lost in thought. He wondered how his family was doing. Were they happier now that he was gone?
Sirius knew Cepheus missed him, and Sirius missed him as well. He never had such a great friend.
Sirius sighed, feeling lonely in this vast city. He focused his thoughts on getting to the hospital, but he never made it there.