//------------------------------// // Chapter 20: Fright Night // Story: The Enforcer and Her Blackmailers // by scifipony //------------------------------// It felt like one of those dreams where you become aware that you were dreaming and you feel like you've woken up. You get to make choices, talk, do things but realize you can't move and you have no control, and realize that you've woken up in another dream. You find yourself somewhere where you don't belong. And you recognize it's not where you want to be. And then you see there's blood. A smear went across two kitchen floor cabinets and across the face of the stove, making a downward arc to a shattered soup bowl. On the stove simmered a small stock pot filled with, from the smell of the garlic, probably marinara sauce with olives. I saw carrots, macaroni, and celery on a sideboard along with appliances and cutlery. The table in the bay window was set with one place-setting and a daffodil in a little vase. I looked out through sheer drapes to see the apartment building from which I had stalked the comedian Rye Bald. In the middle of the kitchen floor, on white and black checked linoleum, lay the heretofore mentioned pink stallion, with a black-dyed mane judging by its yellow roots, bruised and broken with his face growing puffy, his right foreleg bent the wrong way, and a bloody kick mark across his ribs. He lay there moaning and shivering, trying to cover his head with his hooves. I looked at my hooves and could only conclude that the somepony who'd beat him was me. The sleepwalking incidents all suddenly made sense. They weren't due to a backfired force spell or to the side effects of Flowing Water's cure. Running Mead had somehow twisted my will to his own. Sunset Shimmer had claimed that I'd acted inebriated, but I had been unreasonably successful in manipulating her to the point of getting into her bed—maybe even having had sex with her—to the moment just before getting her to try nettle-ewe, which, of course, because Sunset's drinking binges were well known, was a perfect strategy for Running Mead to find influence in Canterlot Castle. My first time "sleepwalking," my last memory of Running Mead was me refusing to sell product. Both previous times that I had woken up from the dream, I had woken at a key moment when I was about to violate my deepest principles. Mind control. Magical mind control. One of the most illegal magics; short of raising the dead, a unicorn could do nothing worse. It was always a bad practice to read something into a pony's name when examining his cutie mark, but his was a mug spilling a foamy yellow liquid. The ability to metaphorically make a pony drunk and pliant and having a name like Running Mead were too much of a coincidence. Like I had with Grimoire, he had doubtlessly assumed the name. His special ability might even be a spell he'd learned to cast very well. And here I stood, suddenly awakened, facing the ultimate decision point: the ruin of my life. Tailor's voice said, "Stop toying with him. Put him out of his misery, already." I jerked my head around, looking into the living room. I saw evidence of the damage I had caused last visit, but Rye Bald had put everything back in place, taped up the glass of the china cabinet, and put a cardboard patch where the mic stand had punctured the wall between the living room and kitchen. On the ugly avocado green carpet, in the doorway to the kitchen beside the sofa, Tailor stood near Streak. She peered over his shoulder, her wings flared to balance on the back of the sofa. On impulse, I bellowed at them and screamed profanities. I had no doubt that up to just seconds ago, I had acted insane. Their rabbit brain took over. Had you ever wondered whether ponies could jump backward? Well, they proved it. They did, Streak going as far as the door. That gave me fifteen seconds or less to find the best solution. After that, intuition told me, everything got worse. I glanced at the marinara. I had been in the living room; I knew what could be seen from there. I knew I faced the greatest performance of my life. Two lives depended on it, mine most importantly. I prepared Levitation. Meanwhile, I reared and crashed down on the floor. Then reared again, whinnying madly, but creeping further from the door. The third time, I swept the counter with my tail, dumping a colander, knives, and glasses to the floor as I came down square on top of the comedian, my hooves to either side of his head. I dragged him under the breakfast table and put the chair between us. I reared again, another bellow already escaping my throat. I scattered utensils as I backpedaled into the view through the kitchen doorway. This gave me time to ready my force spell while moving things around the kitchen. I lifted the stock pot and, as I rotated it toward me as if to spill the contents. I hit the silvery vessel with a green force bolt. The pot, alas, rocketed through the glass window to the street below, but the viscous liquid inside cooperated perfectly. Suddenly super-heated, it exploded outward making a wet, hollow thud. I'd triggered my quick draw levitation spell as if to catch the liquid right before me and it did pretty much as I hoped. The boiling glob fanned around me, but didn't hit me. Unfortunately, it wasn't marinara. It was probably minestrone, and it was more brown than red. I grabbed soup-coated leaks and hurled them to the floor as a last touch, jumping back as I did, crying, "Well! Didn't know a force spell could explode somepony. Did you?" I turned to Tailor and Streak, but they'd already spun away, gagging and staggering. I followed them, blocking their view of the kitchen. "Well, you're not going to be any help! Go ahead, leave. I'll clean the mess up; I could use the anatomy lesson. Tell Running Mead it's done." "Yeah, we will," they said, the door shutting rapidly behind them. Everything would have been perfect, but for the stock pot and the window glass in the street at 3 AM. Nevertheless, looking through the window, I saw the pair dash from the building, never glancing in the wrong direction. I stuck my head out the window, waiting for them to rush around a corner, then levitated both the dented pot and the broken glass back up. It was at this point that I realized Rye Bald had gone unconscious and that he was bleeding from a gash on his right shoulder. I found a jar into which to levitate the small puddle while I put magical pressure on the wound. Unconscious, he might bleed to death. In any case, I wasn't going to leave him here, but looking at his face and side, I began to wonder if he might have a concussion or internal bleeding. If he died, I became a murderer. I could cauterize the five inch wound, or try healing him. I chose the latter because a burn scar was just one more thing I would have to ask him for forgiveness about, and to make this work, I would have to beg forgiveness. I had to stop the bleeding. I substituted the mason jar and my knee to apply pressure in place of the levitation spell, pressing the rounded glass into the wound while pushing the healing magic behind it. After a few fits and starts, my aura sunk through his skin. How long I worked, I didn't know. I was too frightened to marvel at the scenery. I just asked for the instructions and forced the skin, sinew, and blood vessels to mend. Though I was certain I did a shoddy job, I found the skin sealed around the wound when I finished. The few other cuts had stopped bleeding on their own. Of course, he might have internal bleeding. It might already be too late. What he needed was a real doctor. But, if I dropped him off at a hospital, there would be questions. If I left him without being seen, he'd surely identify me. Running Mead would be furious, deadly furious. But if he died? I knew a doctor who wouldn't ask a lot of questions. I hoped. I levitated the blood on the outside of the jar to the inside, then cleaned up the floor around and under him. In a moment of inspiration, I found a paring knife and coated the cutting edge before tossing it to the floor. A culinary accident might put the constabulary off the track. The jar went in my saddle bags. I suspected Running Mead would trust his eye witnesses and take Rye Bald's disappearance from that perspective. Nothing would hit the newspapers; he'd take that as a cover-up of a botched constabulary operation. Assuming Rye Bald didn't blow the whole thing wide open... I'd deal with that later. Meanwhile, I had to find him help while keeping him alive and out of the grasp of the constabulary. I gave the room and my clothes a quick going over, and swabbed up with ammoniated floor cleaner from underneath the sink. I ended up lying atop the stallion and teleporting him a dozen times through empty streets and alleyways through a darkness made all the more concealing by clinging pre-dawn fog. That nopony, especially no-constable, noticed was a miracle in itself. I knew where I could find a wagon that wouldn't be reported stolen. I just had to make sure I could get to it. I cast Don't See Don't Hear Don't Look as I slunk up the steps to the second floor apartment. Were Running Mead still here, he'd have had a guard outside. I peered through the window at the shadowy furniture, anyway. I listened at the rollup garage for a minute, then worked a minimal force spell on the padlock until I cut through the loop and rotated it open. I dropped it in my saddlebags, then slowly rolled up the garage door, minimizing the hard to hide noise. It was a relief to both find the wagon and to find it empty, though the unmistakable mediciny saccharine smell of nettle-ewe lingered. I levitated the stallion into the cart, on top of rags I scrounged, and took a minute to see if I could get him to drink a mug of water from the laundry sink. He drank until he began coughing, then lapsed unconscious again. I took off my costume and fixed my hair into pigtails. Soon after, I left the garage closed with the lock hanging in the hasp and pulled through the empty streets of Canterlot. An hour later, as the sky turned blue, then purple and orange, I was on the switchbacks down the mountainside. Thankfully, the brakes worked sufficiently that I didn't lose control. At the bottom, I checked Rye Bald and found signs of life. He was sweating now, and cool to the touch. I trotted onward through growing exhaustion. Five leagues found me at the Kettle turn-off near Ponyville an hour after dawn. None of the early morning haulers paid attention to me, other than saying good morning. I pulled on down the farm road, past barns and by fields. I saw farm workers in the distance bent over vegetables, but if a lone pony pulling a wagon with oddly small wheels was remarkable, nopony showed it. I recognized the irrigation path, and the ditch, and the trail that lead into the forest. I even saw our wagon ruts. I had to levitate it through the loose dirt section and was soon traveling deep into ever darkening forest. Soon I could not tell if it was night or day, except for occasional breaks in the canopy where sun would shine down like a spotlight on a stage. Once, I heard something creeping along side, keeping pace. I shot a force bolt that direction and heard nothing more. The comedian, if anything, seemed less responsive and I found myself shaking. Eventually, I came to the clearing with the blue leaves that I could only assume secreted a contact poison. I solved the problem of traversing it by putting on Grimoire's horseshoes and using the discarded lattices that the zebra had protected her cart with. I put a section down crushing the leaves below it, pulled the wagon that distance, put another section down, pulled further, retrieved the first section and put it ahead of me, pulled, and so on. I soon found myself at a wide-boule tree that had been hollowed out to make a living home. Gourds and drying herbs hung by ropes from the branches. Some dappled sun occasionally made it through the canopy to play lights on the few windows. I hesitated to knock on the door, stopping with my hoof an inch away. For some reason, I was certain the zebra wouldn't be home, that all this had been folly. My life had been a folly. If Rye Bald died, I'd be his murderer. I should have taken him to the hospital, played it safe, gambled for a lesser ruin! What have I done?