As Sweetie Belle heard the front door close downstairs in the Boutique as Rarity went off with her friends, she was curled up in bed in her dark bedroom, the Boutique suddenly dead silent. Usually, Rarity stayed up for awhile, working, but not tonight. Tonight, she had to go somewhere.
Sweetie thought for a moment. She hadn't been able to hear what Rarity and her friends were talking about, but their voices had sounded worried... What had happened that had caused Rarity's friends to get her at this time in the evening? Sweetie wasn't sure, but she knew Rarity would be back soon... She fluffed up her pillow a bit more, laid her head to rest on it, and quickly fell asleep.
***
Sometime during the night, Sweetie Belle awoke with a loud gasp, shaking and sweating. She had just had a bad dream. She couldn't remember what it had been about, as the details were already fading, but she knew it had been bad. Very bad.
Sweetie got out of her bed, and carefully maneuvered through the dark to her bedroom door. She opened it and peeked out. The hallway was covered in gloom, and the Boutique was still as silent as a grave.
Carefully trotting down the hall, Sweetie made it to Rarity's room. She pushed the door open, peeked in, and stopped. Even in the dark, Sweetie could make out Rarity's perfectly made bed. Sweetie panicked a little at first, but calmed down when she remembered Rarity had gone out earlier in the evening... but wouldn't she be back by now? Sweetie wasn't sure, as she had no way of checking the time, but convinced herself that Rarity was just busy and she would be back in awhile.
Sweetie was heading back to her bedroom, but stopped, remembering the last time she was asleep, she had had a terrible dream, and suddenly didn't feel like going back to bed. She instead went downstairs into the kitchen, turned on the light, grabbed a cup in one hoof, went over to the sink and filled it with water. She sat down at the table, still shivering slightly, an aftereffect of her nightmare, and slowly drank her water, trying to get her nerves under control. After awhile, she finally began to feel drowsy and calm once again, but didn't feel like going back upstairs. She leaned her head against the table... I'll rest just for a minute, she thought to herself...
***
Sweetie suddenly sat up in the dark, awoken by a noise. At first, she was completely disoriented, and she had no idea where she was, and suddenly realized she was still sitting at the kitchen table. The second thing she realized was that her face was all wet; while she had been asleep, she had accidentally spilled the rest of her water, and her face had been right in the puddle. The third thing she realized... was that the kitchen light was off. And she had remembered turning it on when she had came downstairs.
Perhaps the light went out, Sweetie thought, but making her way to the switch in the dark, she saw that the light hadn't gone out by itself, someone had turned it off.
"Oh, Rarity's finally back!" Sweetie said out loud happily. She quickly raced upstairs to Rarity's bedroom, turned on the light... and stopped, confused. Rarity's bed was still empty. She was not back yet.
"Rarity?" Sweetie called to the empty bedroom, confused. No answer.
Just as Sweetie was wondering what was going on, the light in Rarity's bedroom went out- all by itself. Scared now, Sweetie quickly backed out into the dark hallway, in time to see a shapeless shadow, darker than all the others, moving along the wall towards her.
Sweetie backed away from the shadow as it got closer, she being too scared to scream. Suddenly, as the shadow on the wall reached the area where Sweetie was, two glowing red eyes, narrowed to slits, opened on the shadow.
"Sweetie Belle," the shadow hissed in an echoing, whispery voice that made Sweetie's blood run cold.
Upon hearing the voice, Sweetie Belle finally found her voice and she screamed, and ran past the demonic shadow, down the dark hallway, but the shadows swirled, and suddenly the hallway stretched, stretched on and on, and there was no way Sweetie could make it to the staircase. Nevertheless, she kept running through the gloom, but the staircase moved farther away as the hallway stretched on endlessly, and was lost to the darkness, and all the while, demonic laughter, cold, whispering, and still yet very loud echoed all around the terrified filly.
Sweetie stopped running, panting, sweating, and out of breath, but a dark black shape was rising up in front of her, a dark shadow with demonic red eyes, and a curved red horn atop it's shapeless head...
Sweetie screamed, turned around, and ran back in another direction, but the hallway stretched again, so far that the end of the hall was lost in total darkness, and Sweetie was running through the gloom, terrified, jumping away from dark shadows that peeled from the wall and reached out at her in claw-like forms.
Suddenly, the world seemed to snap back into reality for a moment, and the nightmarish hall was once again just a normal dark hall- and Sweetie Belle was standing right next to the staircase that led to the downstairs part of the Boutique. Without a second thought, the little filly tore down the staircase as fast as her legs would carry her, but suddenly, a mass of shadows was rising up behind her, laughing in an echoing, guttural, demonic voice, and the staircase stretched, stretched on and on, going downwards for infinity into the never-ending darkness-
Sweetie Belle cried out as she went sprawling across the floor at the foot of the staircase and looked around in the gloom. Everything appeared to be back to normal, until she saw the pairs of glowing green dots trailing purple vapor floating in the darkness, coming from the work room and floating towards her.
As the filly, already driven half-crazy with terror, looked on, she realized that the glowing dots were actually eyes, and the demonic eyes were on the pony mannequins that Rarity used to help design dresses.
Sweetie Belle froze for a moment, and then ran into the dark kitchen, her legs feeling like they weighed a thousand pounds, but the fridge door burst open and a wave of shadows, complete with glowing, glaring eyes spilled out.
Sweetie faintly heard screaming, but wasn't aware that she was the one doing it. All she was focused on was getting out of the kitchen, which she did very quickly as the shadows followed her, back into the dark front room of Carousal Boutique. The demonic mannequins had disappeared, a fact Sweetie vaguely noticed as she ran through the dark, towards the front door, almost to the safety of outside-
All by themselves, the lights flashed on in the front room, and at the exact same time, the mass of shadows following Sweetie flung out a claw which slashed into the side of the filly's neck. Sweetie fell and blood spurted from the wound, standing out shockingly bright red against her snow-white coat, and began to puddle on the floor.
As Sweetie began to lose consciousness, the front door of Carousal Boutique was flung open, and the filly was vaguely aware of a shape moving towards her.
"Help me..." Sweetie murmured, and then she blacked out.