The Gate
It's funny, really. All the money and power in the world, and yet none of it could buy the protection she needed. Not from muggers or vagrants, no, but from the deepest recesses of a troubled mind. The terrors that haunted her dreams were out in numbers tonight.
How did she ever let herself get so vulnerable? How could she imagine for a second that she would always be safe? It was all a fallacy, there was no safety to be found here. This gloomy, empty hallway was a window to a depressed and fractured soul, torn asunder by the very cognizance that constructed the bones of her psyche.
The grandfather clock chimed and her eyes darted to its dim face, storied by the many rustic engravings surrounding it. An eerie clanging echoed throughout the entrance hallway of the extravagantly decorated mansion she called home. One. Two. Three rings. It was three in the morning. Breathe in. Breathe out.
Diamond Tiara's hooves were sweaty, leaving a glistening trail on the hoof-rail. All she had to do was proceed down into the vestibule and approach that engraved ebony door. She took one cautious step, balanced precariously on her back hooves; her front set were rather reluctant to leave the railing. Hoof hovering over the void between the step that supported her and the one at the outset of her descent, she shivered; her violet nightgown flapped around her legs.
This was foolishness. Where was Randolph? Why couldn't her father be awake? Why did her mother have to live at the institution, in the padded jail they called a patient’s ward, of no help to her whatsoever? Why did she have to be all alone? Just her and the cold air, cascading down the staircase to the door. She had to proceed, though. She had to.
Heart pounding in her neck, Diamond Tiara’s hoof fell to the lower step, clopping dully against the polished marble beneath the velvet rug. So far, so good. Still, she remained upright, clutching the rail like a lifeline. Another careful step. Her eyes were screwed up. The door was inching closer. Another step. And another. Why, oh why did that awful dream have to wake her?
Always the same. A stranger at the door. But the door was never locked in those awful visions. Always the same, waking up scared and shivering. Always the same.
Always.
She was there, at long last. The ground floor of the foyer. Free of the chilly embrace of the rail, she fell to all four hooves and sank low to the floor. Her teeth chattered. Her limbs quaked. Randolph didn’t lock the door. The dull light from a distant candle was dancing upon the golden handle of the deadbolt, which was in an unfriendly position. What if the gate was open?
What if the gate was open?
The smell of the agapanthus in the vase on its golden pedestal in its niche by the door assaulted her dry nostrils. It was all she could discern. Or was it? No, no, she could hear it now. Rain. It was raining outside. Her shaking hooves carried her closer and closer to the ebony tombstone. As she neared that door, the sound of the storm grew louder, the wind growling like a swarm of thestrals. Thestrals! Who knew what was out there? Flying rats. Untold scores of wild beasts. Strangers. Always at her door. Always.
No matter. She was almost there. Her sleepy joints creaked with the careful, controlled movement. A flash of lightning. Yes, of course, there had to be lightning. The entrance hall flooded with a blinding, ghostly glare, reflecting upon the polished floor and into a gilded mirror over the door. Her scared doppelganger peered into her soul.
She was a coward. No! She was better than this. Diamond Tiara was notorious. Powerful. Wealthy. She would not allow the darkness to defeat her as though she were some pathetic, crippled blank-flank. She inched closer. Closer. The door was within reach. The cold metal of the deadbolt caressed her underhoof. Click. She was going to kill Randolph.
A job well done, though. How brave, how noble! The mighty Diamond Tiara was successful. Afraid of the dark? Yeah, right. She turned to proceed back up the staircase and to the warmth and safety of her bed, with its fluffy pillows and its thick, heavy sheets with fanciful designs of spirals and fractals and…
The gate. The gate!
She would not be tall enough to see out of the circular window at the throat of the door. The creeping paralysis of anxiety kept her rooted to the spot, eyes fixed on the stairway to Heaven. The seconds inched by, one by one. The sweat beaded around her withers, staining her fur and freezing her blood. Another flash of lightning. A roar of thunder.
She had to check. She turned to face the door once more.
A full minute. One long, agonizing minute, and her slick hoof found the deadbolt latch. Click. The door was unchained once more. She found the door handle. A peek. A peek into the abyss of the dead of night. That’s all that was required. She would find the gate securely locked and her irrational fears of the horrors of the dark of twilight would, perhaps, be sated. The handle turned slowly under the ministrations of her limb. Any moment now, the weight of the tall, black, imposing slab of wood would swing inward, no doubt by a fierce gust of wind, and allow the full rage of the thunderstorm to permeate the mansion, letting in who knew what other aberrations.
The latch was free of its tomb in the doorframe. The wind was silent and still. Diamond Tiara pulled it open, eyes tight. Without any rush of air, the door was difficult to keep ajar; the weight was instead demanding it close again. She opened her eyes. The clouds were bleeding their precipitation without prejudice. Puddles littered the walkway and drowned the lawn in sorrow. Her eyes travelled along the lanterns illuminating the path.
The gate was open. The black, iron bars of the protective crib of her home were swinging dully with the wind as it picked up once again. Easily remedied… the switch on the side of the house would initiate the automatic locking mechanism. The gate would close and lock and Diamond Tiara would complain to her father about the incurably inept butler. All she had to do was reach out and flick it.
Demonstrating bravery she did not feel, she stepped onto the raised doorway and reached out of her sanctuary. She could not feel the switch. The rain was throwing itself against her gown and she had never felt so cold in her life. Stretching out her tiny frame, she felt along the outside wall, body pressed against the doorframe, trying to reach the out of sight switch. The impossibility of the act struck such a blow that she could have fallen into eternal slumber. She would not reach the gate switch without crossing the threshold and submitting herself to the storm and whatever lurked beyond the reach of her vision.
She did not know how long she stood there, the door pressing against her haunches, her foreleg aching with cold and the strain of extension. Her night clothes, soaked beyond measure. Leaning forward, she peered around the corner and saw the switch. It was literally a foot out of reach. She would not have to venture far into the night. However, she would be unable to keep the door open.
Was it worth the risk? Would she be safe? Another flash of lightning, this time, a series of them. Though her retinas burned, she raked the lawn, the walkway, the edges of the house in rapid succession. She was alone. There was nothing out there. No reason to be scared. The darkness returned. Diamond Tiara stepped out into the rain, feeling the door close behind her. She moved toward the gate switch.
No one heard her scream.
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I can't wait to read this!
I'm not going to lie, I legitimately gasped a few times during this and got massive chills at the end. This was very good, though.
4142015 Hope you enjoy it!
4142048 Thanks. If ya gasped and got chills, then you should know how I felt when the idea struck me as I woke. It's the effect I wanted readers to feel.
4142080 Coming from you. I know I'm going to enjoy it!
Perfect song for this... Fear of the dark by Iron maiden
That was awesome! You certainly have a way with words!
That... was... so awsome!
Dawwww. I can't even enjoy her suffering with cover art that cute.
Nightmares aint no joke
I claim all credit for this story, because I made you remember...
ARE YOU AFRAID OF THE DARK!?
HAAAVE YOU RUN YOUR FINGERS DOWN THE WALL
AND HAVE YOU'VE FELT YOUR NECK SKIN CRAWL
AS YOU'RE SEARCHING FOR THE LIIIIIGHT
It sends shivers down my spine.
I've missed that feeling, never had one in years. Probably because most horrors nowadays focus on adrenaline rush rather then that creeping feeling.
Creepy. Also short yet powerful
i.imgur.com/6MrWqNZ.png
Psshhh...this was boring, both compared to what I've seen and heard, and to the reactions of the others. My results were skewed, but even so. I fucking RMEd at the end. Come on. You can do better. Maybe try a collab with, say, LemonStone. But really.i1.ytimg.com/vi/A1NLcdWBN7U/hqdefault.jpg :twilightunenthused:
4144239 And that, my friend, was an absolutely useless, not to mention quite unpleasant, comment. You do better.
Night Terrors are pretty insane. It's almost worst when you're a lucid dreamer. Why? Because you're aware. You know. And you can feel.
This was fantastically done. Glad I waited to read it at this late hour. I was tempted to turn on some atmosphere music much like that rain site. While it was creepy, as creepy as MLP can get, but it feels like I hit a brick wall at the end. Can't help but feel maybe one more scene could of better presented the soundless screaming. Now that's horrible, screaming or trying to speak in dreams and your voice won't go above the faintest whisper at best.
I got off topic a bit. Great story. Wish there was more like this. It's not much but have my like and my fav!
Very creepy and surreal. Reading this makes me glad that I forget almost all of my dreams the instant I wake up.
4145970 Opinions, my fellow Fimfictioner. Opinions.
4146599 Opinion is one thing, simply bad-mouthing something is another. If you had attempted to provide some actual reasons for why you did not enjoy it as much as others, and didn't simply call it "boring", then your comment would not have garnered all its downvotes and we would not be having this discussion.
4147898 1. I smell a flame war if this goes on
2. The comments below heightened my expectations, and I've seen My Little Amnesia
3. I only noticed the downvotes once you pointed them out to me
4. I am actually quite relieved to be have a conversation with a fellow Fimfictioner, instead of my notification box being filled with threads
5. I may have stumbled upon the greatest concoctalypse since Nightmare Chrysalis. I'll make a blog post about it later. For now, let us be merry. Ish.
6. Honestly, the ending was cliched. Come on. You gotta admit at least that.
7. I haven't actually down or upvoted the story.
8. Do you have any way of proving I left those comments?
That was terrifying.
Fabulous work.
4147956
Look, I don't know what you were expecting, but I wanted this to be as close to my dream as possible. That's the main reason I wrote it. If I wanted to take this to the moon, I would have, but I'm trying to put in words an experience similar to what I go through alarmingly often when I dream. Nothing more.
4147964 Thank you, good sir
4147973 I too have written about nightmares—they can make marvelous muses. It's a good thing your prose held up to the task of capturing what they feel like.
IT was very atmospheric.
4142393
(speaking of nightmares, that episode inspired nightmares in my childhood self for months
)
4142140 Maiden fan? Awesome.
4144142 Sounds like you enjoyed it! Thanks
4142155
4142204
Thanks, glad you both enjoyed this little creep into a tortured, sleepy cranium
4142339 That they ain't.
Very good. I wish I could turn out stories/chapters of this quality in a night. Damn these writers blocks.
Stay Awesome
RDD
Ps-still waiting for WRTMI.
I think you got that last part all backwards. You probably meant: "From mugger or vagrants, yes, but not from the deepest etc." Unless her money and power does protect her troubled mind, anyway.
Have you heard of Guy de Maupassant?
Eh, I can relate. To the fear of the dark, I mean. Rare are the times I actually have dreams, and most involve complex machinery attempting to kill me or someone who I'm in the point-of-view of, instead of pastel miniature equines.
Still, a good read. Faved, upvoted, etc.
I'm not sure how I feel about this. Did diamond scream out of simple fear of the dark... Or are you saying something was out there and got her?
Seriously, I'm getting chills. I'm not sure if can keep this favourited. If something did get her... That seems just cruel. Too cruel, even for diamond
4144148 Thanks for the approval!
4145984 Soundless screaming is definitely the worse thing eveeer! But, and I'll direct this to 4175212 as well, I got no further in the dream that inspired this than everything with the door. I don't know what was out there or specifically why she screamed... and I'm the author! I not only left it open for readers, but for me, too.
However, I just woke up from another MLP dream with a pretty enjoyable concept, and since I remember very little of the MLP part (I was having a totally unrelated-to-ponies dream and suddenly Luna and Twilight are there, what), I'm free to actually create something complete, just using the dream as a diving point. I wrote down the concept as soon as I woke, and I'm expecting this one will be a lot more fun, silly, and longer than a dark fic like what DT went through.
4157558 Techno-killer dreams? God, that sounds horrifying!
4150088 Thanks. WRTMI will be coming... funnily enough, part of the dream I described in the comment below featured what's happening in the next chapter of WRTMI.
4153170 You're close, but what I wrote is what I meant: she doesn't need protection from muggers or vagrants, no.
4154361 Nope! Should I have?
4177225
Well, this story reminded me of one of his; it has quite a fever dream aspect to it. I especially liked how it was all contained to one character, which hightened the sense of claustrophobia and impending doom.
Well done.
As a kid I was afraid of the dark too.
Really great writing, and the ending made me shiver. (Stupid internet keeping me up late at night...)
But...
what exactly happened? It seems to me, that when she went outside she was attacked by some kind of trespasser, but it's kind of unclear.
5775502 I don't know. My dream never told me and I stayed as close to it as I could. I had a few ideas, but left it open to interpretation
That gate switch is...outside of the house?
Wouldn't that be really poor security?
That was pretty good. 10/10