Pumpkin Pasta, Part 2 [Halloween Special]
The full moon crests the center of the star-filled sky and hangs close to the earth, its eerie light held at bay by the tall, flickering torches littering the back yard. The stomping of hooves and the sound of the festivities and laughing is climbing to a fever pitch, ponies of all description hanging off of each other, dancing with each other, shouting and cheering and drinking heartily from their deep paper cups. The babble emitting from the sound station has leapt into high gear, the tempo quickening as the current song nears its exciting climax.
The mixer mare conducting the beat bobs her head eagerly, whipping her dark blue mane all around her neck as she rocks out. The body paint running along her torso and limbs create simple shapes and patterns in her white fur that outline her features, a style choice that each of her roadies and other assorted help mimic. Her workers are spreading out now, each positioning themselves in a specific place in the yard and awaiting something. The party guests seem to be none the wiser, letting the workers pass by unheeded and unacknowledged.
When the song finally reaches its scathingly fast ending, the lights on and around the turntable flashing and strobing to the effect, the music suddenly mellows and is met with a deep, ghostly groan that fills the yard. As this happens the maestro’s workers each blow out their assigned torch, bathing the yard in a mix of darkness and moonlight. And something else.
The mare on the small soundstage lifts her forehooves over her head and hangs them spookily as the phantom winds and wails seep from her mixer, the clear, unseen body paint in her fur suddenly glaring to life and glowing, highlighting the shape of her skeleton in a ghastly neon green. The workers do the same, many ‘ooo’ing and groaning at the guests, eliciting amazed sounds and laughter.
”Do you kids CAAAAAAANDYYYY!?” a chipper voice bellows over the crowd as the music and sound effects die out.
All attending look around, trying to locate the source of the question. Eventually many begin to point up into the sky, gesturing at the pink cotton candy pony perched atop Anonymous’ roof, a large item in hoof.
”I’m not hearing a YYYYYESSSSS!” she shouts again. Stallions and mares of all ages shout up at her, informing her that they very much DID like candy.
”Welp that’s too bad! Cause we’re ALLLLLL OOOOOUT!” she replies, earning herself whines and good-natured boos from her audience.
”Wellllll—!” she continues, turning to regard the large object in her hooves, “maybe we have a LITTLE left!”
Cheers, stomping and other audible pining for sweets is returned to her. Without further ado the party pony smirks and lifts her mysterious instrument up into the air to impose it against the moon, giving everypony a clear look; it was some sort of hoof-cannon. She hauls the barrel into the bend of left foreleg and cradles with rear with her right, facing the void of her tool overhead of her targets. A second later a loud crack splits the air, the small cannon flinging dozens of tiny specs wrapped in glowing paper up into sky and raining them down on the guests.
”Wooo!” Pinkie hoots, twisting around and dropping her cannon to feed it more ammunition.
As she continues to fire volleys more ponies begin to stream out into the yard to identify the commotion, leaping into the fray soon after to get their share. The glowing mare behind the turntable sets it to play a general tune and descends from the small stage toward the punch and cider, clearly ready for a break. Everypony was either looking at Pinkie, scrambling to get candy, or working; everypony was distracted by something.
It’s time.
You’d found the items you could actually use, rearranged some of the boxes and moved a few others out of the way. The work was done, the prep was done. Now all you needed was the guest of honor. Your mind wanders to the human as you and your three companions exit the prepared shed through the side door, satisfied and anxious to continue.
Like most times before, you would be heading the operation. It would give you the chance you needed to try and learn something, if anything. If you were feeling generous, then you were a scout of sorts, an ‘information gatherer’.
If you were being honest, you were probably more like a guinea pig, a test subject to try out new theories. You were going to be on the front lines doing what you had to for the betterment of the Cutie Mark Crusaders, relaying your gained knowledge to them to improve their own chances. That, or the girls weren’t too keen on putting themselves in the crossfire and you were always eager to volunteer…
In the end you were like a big lightning rod. You took the most heat, but you also saw the flashes of light closer up than anypony else did. You experienced them firsthoof. Tonight, like many times before, your target, your spear of sky-splitting fury and sound, was Anon the Human. It’s time to get started, and for the first time in a long time, you actually feel ready.
Which is why, when Applejack and Twilight Sparkle begin to cut through the candy-crazed mob and beeline toward your location, you can’t help but feel a sense of concern for the stability of your carefully set strategy.
“U-Uhh, hey SIS,” you say deliberately. You clear your throat and nudge Twist in the side, quickly fixing your face into an expression you hoped looked nice and innocent. “What, uhh… what’re y’all doin’ out over here?”
Your sister and a listless lavender octo-pony stop before you and acknowledge your party. ”Well, way ah hear it, there’s supposed to be some’a our merchandise out in this here shed,” Applejack says. “Pinkie’s right busy, so I reckon it falls to us to find’em if anypony’s gonna be enjoyin’ all our hard work.” Werejack reaches up to tug her non-existent Stetson down over her brow in a sign of pride, then frowns, realizing too late that she wasn’t wearing it. After that she casts you and your friends a weary eye, examining each of you as she speaks.
“… what exactly are Y’ALL doin’ out here near Anon’s shed? Not fixin’ to cause mischief, I hope.”
A small chorus of worried laughter erupts from you and the girls and carries on for a long time, even after it becomes clear about half way through that the Werepony before you wasn’t joking. You stall for as long as you can – until you run out of breath, even – hoping to come up with a reasonable excuse to assuage your sister’s distrust.
You swallow and take a full breath. “Uhh, we was just, uh… w-well… we were—”
”Playing hide and seek!” Frankenloo blurts. Her face twists slightly at the realization of how childish that sounded.
”Yes,” Banshee Belle confirms, clearly as impressed with her lie as she was, “we were hiding.”
Werejack furrows her brow. “Hidin’? In… the same place? All together – that right?” she recounts, being sure to emphasize the flaw in your story.
Horseshoes, the one pony you always had to mislead was the LITERAL element of honesty. The mare who had more mind to sniff out a falsehood than any other. All the better too that she was you sister, and by now had very intimate knowledge of both your group AND their shenanigans.
”We’re, uh, TH’UPER good at hiding, ma’am,” Twist tries, but with the look your sister is giving all of you now doesn’t bode well.
”Well, whatever you girls were REALLY doin’, go on ahead and do it somewhere else, now.” She motions sideways with her head, making your heart sink. “And just in case y’all mighta’ been confused: mindin’ yer manners in Mr. Anon’s house extends to his storage room. Go on now, y’all can do your hidin’ and seekin’ somewhere else. We got work ta’ do, right Twilight?” Your sister turns and pats the lavender pony on the back with a rubber-clawed hoof.
”Doesn’t matter,” Twilight replies in a despairing voice, her dull eyes staring out at nothing, “nothing matters.” The very short but very awkward pause stands out like a swollen hoof in the midst of the candy-fueled merriment in the background.
”Uhhh huh… right.” Applejack brushes off the muddled purple pony’s mood and moves on, a zombie-like Twilight trailing close behind. “Well, y’all have fun. And don’t go expectin’ me not to find ya’ if I find y’all were rough-housin’ or rummagin’ through his personals!” She whips her tail for emphasis as she and her companion slip through the door you just left, leaving all of you out in the cold to ponder your newest counterattack.
“Dang, dang, dang!” you curse, stomping your hoof and huffing in frustration.
”What’re we gonna’ do now?” Scootaloo wonders aloud glumly, falling onto her rear to think. “We can’t do it with her around!”
You sit, too, squeezing your head between your hooves, willing yourself to think of some last-minute, clever way out of this. Nothing is coming.
”We ju’tht gatta’ get them outa’ there…” Mummy Twist mumbles, scrunching her eyes shut. “Think, think, think…”
”This is hopeless…” Banshee Bell whines, hanging her head.
Stopped at the starting line after all that prep!? Not like this…
The only thing the four of you can do now is worry in place, hoping, praying that something might come along to give you an opportunity. Hard reality is your only answer; the party goers hoot and scream, ignorant to your plight, and Pinkie continues to fire her party cannon into the growing crowd without care. AJ and Twilight weren’t coming out, and you had no idea what sort of timetable you had to make this work before it was time to go home. For all you knew they were accidentally unraveling everything you’d just spent an hour setting up in their attempt to find the one thing they needed.
You could try and talk to them? Maybe you could even explain your plan? No, that wouldn’t work. It was all a big trick, a setup, a lie. Applejack wouldn’t go for that. Maybe you could convince them some other way. Maybe you could say… maybe you could tell them…
You slump, your sprayed white mane falling over your face. You had to assume that all the other fillies were in similar states of defeat since none of them were saying a word. You were wrong.
A bandaged forehoof lands on your shoulder, startling you into looking up. The other girls do as well, each examining the mummy queen. Twist stares off into the crowd, squinting behind her glass at something that you couldn’t see. She doesn’t say anything, but her face is set in determined stone.
“Twist…?” you start, eyeing her carefully.
”The plan doe’thn’t change,” she replies cryptically, still weighing her hoof on your shoulder as she peers off into the distance.
”You thought of something!?“ Frankenloo exclaims as she leaps to her hooves.
”Follow the plan,” Twist reiterates, turning back and looking you straight in the eye, “I’ll get them out.”
“What… what’s gonna happen? You… gonna be alright?” you ask, withering slightly under her seriousness.
She grins however, tapping you gently on the face and turning back to look far off into the crowd towards Anon’s house.
“I’ll be fine, th’weetheart,” she replies playfully, “ju’tht don’t me’th thi’th up.” The mummy queen paces forward to delve into the mass of ponies and get to wherever she was headed, but before she makes the plunge she stops short, turning to you instead.
”A-Ahh… ju’tht in ca’the I don’t make it…” she says, clearly troubled, “I need you to… to go into my room, take all the th’tuff in between my mattre’th on my bed, and burn it.”
You instantly understand. The sudden weight of her request hits you right in the chest. The three of you nod in solidarity, setting your faces in a hard mask so as to not get emotional. The bespectacled mare gives you all a sad smile before turning….
Then pausing again and returning a second time.
”And… and UNDER the bed…” she continues, peering away and rubbing her upper foreleg with a hoof. Her face is visibly warming. “… and in the clo’thet… and behind the dre’ther… and in between the page’th of my book’th…”
The three of you shift awkwardly, as does Twist.
”… and in the spa’the behind the pull-away tile above the tub in the bathroom…” she goes on, now whispering. The shame is clear both in her voice and on her face. “It… It’th the eighth one up and tenth one acro’th. On the left… It ju’tht… it pop’th out…”
Even though she’s now staring at the ground the three of you nod anyways – just, with a bit less pride this time.
”Okay!” Twists exclaims, slapping herself on the face a few times before whipping around and bolting, her voice just barely fighting through the sounds of Pinkie’s audience, “you’ll KNOW when it’th time! Good luck!”
Reinvigorated, you look to Frakenloo and place both your hooves on her withers, shaking her a little. “Scooter’r not, yer still the fastest outa’ all’a us. Still think you can make it back in time after goin’ to get’im?” you ask. You look her straight in the eyes, searching for any hesitance or doubt. There is none.
”Yes ma’am!”
Now to Sweetie, who immediately straitens her back when your eyes fall on her.
“Twist might not be around’ta help ya’, so you’ll have to be able to move that big’ol rock all on yer own with your magic. Think ya’ can do it?”
”I KNOW I can,” she replies staunchly, puffing up her chest and saluting you. It’s now or never. All you have to do now is wait for a sign.
”Alright! I’mma hang ‘round here. You girls hunker down somewhere where y’all can keep an eye on things! If it goes well, be sure to skedaddle so nopony gets wise! I’ll see ya’ soon!”
Your cohorts scatter. Sweetie rushes north toward the gate while Scoots goes south toward the house. Now if you could just make sure that your timing was good enough, both inside the shed and out, you would be a shoe-in!
Your tattered black dress flutters as you trot toward the west-side fence wall and nose your way into some shrubs, deciding that this would be the best place to stay if you wanted to have a clear view of the shed and avoid your sister should she emerge. The sticks scrape your sides as you push your way in, and the soil under your hooves is a bit muddier than you were expecting. You weren’t exactly averse to getting your hooves dirty, but your viscous perch was constantly giving way and sucking your shoes into the muck.
Sweetie would be horrified.
All the better that it was you here instead.
Pinkie positions her cannon between her legs, lighting and firing her ‘tool’ once more into the guests to cries of laughter and half-serious disgust. Some particularly smashed mares even wave at her and gesture to themselves. Pinkie naturally obliges them, firing volley after volley into the waiting crowd.
You didn’t exactly plan for Pinkie – who could? That didn’t mean she wasn’t making an excellent distraction for you. If you could get AJ out and Anon in, then few would care what was going on behind them. Even fewer would come snooping; not even the girls would come around to avoid suspicion.
That said, with the way Pinkie was firing that thing, she definitely wouldn’t have candy for much longer. It would be best to start now, but you couldn’t move until Twist did, and you hadn’t seen her for several minutes. Several long, tense minutes.
You squint your eyes, trying to spy the mummy filly through the twigs and brush, but you can barely make out the ponies passing five hooves in front of you thought all the obstruction. As the time continue to tick by you begin to hope that nothing had gone wrong whilst you were split up. You didn’t much like lurking in the bushes like some sort of weirdo, but it would be far worse if Twist had failed, or if she’d signaled you and you hadn’t seen it.
Worse yet, what if she had and you were the only one that missed it?
Aww apples, here comes the self-doubt. You picked a bad spot to hide, didn’t you? Should you find a different place to wait? Did you have time to move? Growing antsy, you peek your head up from the bushes and look around, trying to spot something, the ONE THING you need to. Unfortunately, you can’t spot Twist. Even more unfortunately, somepony else spots you.
Someponies, rather.
Judging from their cups, Rumble and his boypals had decided to escape the mania and grab something to drink while they caught their breath. Now, however, they were all staring at you, puzzled and even afraid. Featherweight is pacing backwards slowly, as if at any minute you were going to pounce out of the bushes and drag him inside like a creeper. Neither you nor they can break eye contact or even try to conjure something to say.
You begin to sweat.
Maybe the weird face had lost you a few points. Tripping on your own hooves and falling flat on your snout the moment after trying to start a conversation MIGHT’VE earned you a round or two of pointing and giggling when you passed by them in the halls. It was only natural.
This? This was going to plant you square on the grapevine. Cement you in the channels of coltish gossiping for weeks – and weeks was if you were lucky.
A despairing chuckle bubbles in your chest as you attempt to mentally explore how boned you were going to be in class tomorrow. How utterly ruined your reputation would be now that they’d spotted you watch ponies from the bushes like a freak. Just when the thought of leaping from your hiding spot and rushing across the yard to escape their worried stares is becoming worringly inviting, a sound reaches you from across the yard. A eardrum-testing wail that sounded like feedback from a mic.
You have to force your ears down against your head to escape the horrid screech. The schoolcolts and the crowd mimic the action, cringing until the sound finally dulls to a low buzz. A familiar voice reaches your slowly recovering ears, massively amplified and extremely bassy, as if the speaker had their lips pressed right up against the felt of the receiver.
”I’TH THI’TH THING ON’R WHAT!?” the booming voice slurs, drawing everpony’s attention to the sound stage. On the turntable, gripping a microphone between her hooves, is Twist. You can’t see her very well from how far away she is, but even from this distance you can tell how disheveled she is.
”DO YA’ GET IT? IT’TH REALLY LOUD! HAHAHA!” Twist laughs at the explanation of her own joke so hard that she nearly falls from her makeshift platform. There’s a cup gripped in her left hoof that sloshes and drops amber liquid onto her arm and the mixer below as she sways.
”THI’TH IS – HIC… I THINK THI’TH IS MY FAVORITE TH’ONG, YOU GUY’TH,” she mumbles against the mic, mostly intelligible. She lifts her cup to her mouth and takes several hard gulps, yanking it away a moment after and retching dangerously as if she were about to vomit. Thankfully, she doesn’t, and goes on as if nothing happened.
”YOU GUY’TH ARE GON-GONNUH—“ deep breath, “OKAY, OKAY, JU’THT LI’THEN… I’M GONNA DO IT NOW. LI’THEN, I’MMA’ DO IT—”
The tan filly takes a large breath and you ready your ears for the onslaught, your jaw tightening in preparation for the disaster, the slow cart crash that was about to take place.
”WE’RE NO TH’TRANGER’TH TO LOOOOOOO-OOVE!” She sings. Or tries to. Her voice bounces violently between flat and sharp during even this single line, and that’s not counting the loud voice crack in the middle of the last word. “YOU KNOW THE RULE’TH, AND TH’O-DO-AAAAIIIIII!”
You flinch as the mic feeds back again, the brave hero standing atop the sound stage swishing her rear to a melody that only she could hear.
”A FULL COMMITMENT’TH WAT I’M THINKIN’ OOOOF, YOU WOULDN’T GET THI’TH FROM ANY OTHER GAA–HIC–AAAAL!” She takes a step sideways and nearly falls again, this time presumably slipping on one of the vinyls from the loud record-scratch sound.
The roadies scattered about the yard appear stunned in place. Perhaps they weren’t able to comprehend what was happening, but they definitely weren’t lifting a hoof to stop it. Pinkie’s attention has also been drawn, her cannon smoking but silent as she peers curiously over the edge of the roof with an amused smile. A crashing sound to your left causes you to instinctively duck back into the bushes, and thank goodness.
It’s Twilight and your sister, both of whom had come out to investigate the commotion. AJ’s face is mish-mash of dread and disbelief. The box she’d just been hauling on her back had been dropped and forgotten on the ground.
”AIIIIIII, JUST WANNA TELL YOU HOW UM FEEEEEEL–HIC–IN’!”
And she’s off. Octo-Twilight follows behind her, if much slower. The light brown werepony pulls far ahead and barrels across the yard toward the filly she was supposed to be chaperoning tonight. She groans anxiously as she passes you by.
“No no no no no no no no—!“
You leap from the shrub, heart pounding. You ignore your scummy shoes and your twig-filled dress for the stretch of grass leading back to the shed, full-on sprinting as hard as you could, harder than you ever had. In no time at all you skid into the storage shed and bump into some boxes, nearly falling backwards into the quad trails of mud you’d created on entry.
Fast fast fast, go go GO. Close the door, DON’T shut it. The lamp… THE LAMP. You forgot about the lamp!
Too high. FIND SOMETHING. WHERE!?
”GATTA’ MAKE YOU – UNDER’THTAAAAND!” replies the sliver of space you left in the doorway.
You spin in place, looking for something, anything, that you could stand on to reach the lamp, preferably not one of Anon’s boxes. You spot a miracle in the corner, a hoofstool, and rush to it, yanking it away from the wall and popping it open under the swinging orange light. You climb it and stretch as hard as you can, but you can’t quite reach the lamp, even while standing on the edge of your hooves.
”NEVER GUNNA GIVE-YOU-UP, NEVER GUNNA LET-YOU-DOW – H-HEY! LET ME DOWN! LEGGO!”
You freeze.
“L-LEMME GO! PUT ME D—!” the speakers object before sharply cutting out. Your blood chills at the sudden silence outside, and you can only imagine what’s going on. No time. Focus on the mission. For Twist.
You set all four hooves down on the step ladder and look up, setting the flickering orange light in your sights. You push up and off with all your earth pony strength, your right forehoof nudging the bottom of the lamp and, to your delight, slipping it from the hook hanging from the ceiling. Not as delightful, however, will be your landing.
Your rear hooves slam hard into the stool, shaking it, your already poor balance forced to the extreme. You were on a one way trip to the ground. The only thing you can do as you fall is try to cradle the lamp against your chest to keep it from shattering on impact. It doesn’t, but the stone that collides with your side nearly shatters you.
You gasp hard, wind knocked out of you, ribcage blazing on your right side.
“WOW! Oooo, ow-ow-ow,” you whine pathetically as you set the hot lamp safely on the ground, kicking your back hooves to try and burn out some of your pain rush. Eventually you find the will to get to your hooves, but it takes a moment, a moment you might not have to spare.
A pained sigh escapes you as you limp across the shed and replace the step stool in its proper place. You have to waste more time rearranging some particular boxes that Twilight or AJ had presumably returned to their proper places, but after that you can’t seem to find anything else that needs adjusting. If you missed or forgot anything then you aren’t figuring it out anytime soon.
Alright.
Get ready.
Without another thought you lean down and fling open the tiny shutter on the lamp, blowing out the small candle inside before scooping the whole thing up into your mouth. You curse softly around the small iron ring clutched in your teeth, realizing late that it might’ve been a little easier to put it where it needed to go if you could actually SEE. It takes a little while of rooting around with your hooves with no luck before your eyes begin to adjust to the low light and you spot it, that small space you and the girls had made in between the boxes before you left that you just remade. Just as you reach out a hoof to push inside and make sure that it was the correct place, the doorknob twists and the door swings open, bathing half the room in light.
It’s good that you had the lamp in your mouth or you might have screamed.
Panicking, you jam your face in between the boxes and then yank it back out, stuffing the small item inside.
”Why were you out there…?” a masculine voice mumbles to the wind as a large something steps into the shed behind you, just in time to miss you haphazardly shoving several containers around to hide the evidence.
”OH ANON, IT’S YOU,” you say much less convincingly than you intended, desperately trying to settle the adrenaline spiking in your blood from the close call.
It WAS him. Skimpy costume and all, just like you planned. He was clutching the box your sister had dropped on her way out in his claws. His eyes narrow as he focuses them toward your shadowed form.
”Applebloom? That you?” he says, setting the box down on the ground and nudging it back into place with his foot.
As he approaches you, you can’t help but notice that many of the thin rips and cuts in his costume had seemingly been aggravated while he was gone, widening and showing you just a touch more than before. The one curling around his left thigh is especially bad. You can see every flex of lean sinew tensing against his smooth skin as he kneels down. One of those claws finds the back of your ear and you take a sharp breath, your heart already strumming from the contact.
”You, uh… havin’ fun? Standing here all alone in the dark?” he teases, chuckling as he plays you like a harp with those devilish fingers.
”Y-… yeah…” you answer dumbly, the pain in your side melting away.
Your eyes dip dangerously, shamefully low before jerking back up to meet his own shining jewels head on, your face burning with embarrassment at the thought of him catching you eyeing his nethers like a pervert. The sweet pumpkin smell you spotted in his scent when you first saw him tonight was even richer than before. He must’ve just got done in the kitchen. Unbidden images of Anon wearing an apron and nothing else assault your mind, your head spinning.
“A-Ah mean, ah’m here to-to… look for the, uh…” you ramble helplessly, the warm fur around your cheeks bristling further as you try to remember how to speak.
”The… apples?” he finishes, much to your relief. “That’s what the little orange and green one said you were doing. Are you still looking? I told Pinkie where they were…”
“U-Uhh—” Your voice hitches slightly as the light from the open door behind him begins to slowly dry up.
He peers up in thought and furrows his brow in confusion, spying the empty chain hanging from the ceiling.
”Wait, why is… what happened to th—?” he starts, only noticing how dark it was truly getting inside after it was too late.
Your chest strums harshly as the door slams shut, snuffing out the party and drowning the two of you in darkness. A second sound follows swiftly afterward, a quick bang against the doorknob. Anon wouldn’t know what it was, but you did; it was a chair being wedged underneath the handle of the door outside.
For all your… erm… careful examinations of his getup over the time you’d been here, you’d never once seen a pocket on him. This time was no different. That said, you weren’t about to take the chance that he produced a key and simply left. You needed to keep him in, and the door opened outwards; easy enough solution. Now even if he could unlock it that door would still be closed to him, barricaded from the outside.
Scoots came through!
The human makes a sound of surprise and turns, presumably reaching out for door in the darkness. The light from outside had burned itself into your eyes again, so you couldn’t quite see what was going on, but the sounds of the knob wriggling to no avail is more than enough to paint you a picture.
“What happened?” you ask the darkness innocently, smoothing out your expression even if he couldn’t see it.
Now all that was left was Sweetie Belle.
”Oop… someone musta’…” he replies, trailing off as he releases the handle and swiftly turns around, his form a dim blur as he passes by you.
You silently hope beyond hope, crushing your eyes shut as the human’s footsteps begin to tap towards the shutter, the next most obvious means of escape. He gets dangerously close, his grabber wrapping around the cord most likely, before another loud sound gives him pause. A clattering against the sheet-metal door he was trying to pull open.
This one was Twist’s idea, but Sweetie was the one who had to see it through in the end.
Now wedged against the shutter from the other side was very likely a large boulder your team had found a little ways past the fence. It was massive and extremely heavy. Sweetie could barely get it off the ground with her magic, and Twist could only help support some of the weight herself before stopping for a break and sucking on her inhaler. It probably took a miracle of willpower for the Banshee filly to magic it the rest of the way through the gate and set it down on the other side alone.
The rock would keep the shutter from bending and folding like it should, stopping the bars at the base from sliding up and halting the entire process. You can hear the human tug once on the cord fruitlessly, the inch of grass-obstructed light peeking through at the bottom his only reward.
The shutter wouldn’t rise, couldn’t. They’d done it. You were completely trapped.
”Uhh, hello?” Anon says, raising his voice a little, “Is someone out there? We’re, uh… we’re in here!”
No response. In fact, if what little sound you could hear through the tiny slat at the bottom of the shutter was any indication, Pinkie had started up her cannon again, and the stock running music on the turntable had overcome Twist’s invasion and been restarted. Everypony was predisposed and deafened. Nopony was coming.
H-Holy crabapples is this actually working? It’s almost hard to believe, but every passing moment Anon’s calls go unheeded, it looks more and more to be true.
“W-Wow… ah, uh, guess we’re stuck in here, huh?” you continue, trying to contain your burgeoning excitement.
”… hello!? Is… can anyone hear me!?” Anon tries again, ignoring you. He gently taps against the side wall with his fist. There’s still no reply. Nopony could hear it.
The distress rising in his voice is actually a little surprising. Sure, the whole point of all of this was to creep him out a little, but you weren’t expecting him to get so anxious so soon.
Anon doesn’t say anything for a long while, only occasionally reaching out and banging on the wall with his fist. The level of force he uses grows over time. You expect him to turn to you, say something, joke like he always does, but he doesn’t.
After a while the thin sliver of light at the base of the shutter begins to flash rapidly, giving you still images of the human wordlessly, desperately, yanking on the wire to open the shutter.
“Anon?” you whisper softly, thinning your eyes and stepping closer to where you thought he was.
You hear and partially see him turn to face you. He lets out a small, nervous laugh. You think you can see him lifting one his claws to run it through his mane.
”… sorry, redhead,” he sighs, and you can hear him attempting a smile through the words. “It’s just, uh… well… hnn.”
The human cryptically pauses there and shuffles in place, saying nothing more. When he gets tired of that, his form noticeably shrinks in the darkness, body bending to set him on the ground in a cross-legged sitting position. He breathes deep and slow now, and you can see him rocking his knees up and down, antsy, uneasy.
Was this the opportunity that you were waiting for? The one you and your friends had worked for? He did seem pretty frightened… but, something about this felt… wrong, off. This wasn’t the coy, half-fear that you were expecting. He wasn’t jumping at shadows and then laughing them off. He wasn’t teasing you about being afraid of the dark while snuggling close like how you imagined this. He was huddled in the corner, saying nothing and fidgeting to himself.
“… Anon?” you whisper after another minute of silence. The gentle sound of hoofsteps is loud in the tight space as you approach him.
”Mmm,” he hums again, distant.
You stop before him, trying to find his eyes in the darkness. “You alright, Mr. Anon?” you whisper with some concern, lowering your head to nudge his hand with your snout. He doesn’t react to your touch at first, but after a moment his grabber turns and gently laces its fingers through the fur on the side of your cheek.
”I’m alright, Applebloom,” he lies, petting the side of your face attentively. As much as you would enjoy melting into the sensation of his touch, the vague guilt that was starting to gnaw at you was becoming too much to ignore.
”Mr. Anon.” you repeat with a little more determination. You take a step closer and sit in front him, scrutinizing his obscured expression.
”I… distinctly remember saying that our heart-to-hearts would only fly if you stopped calling me Mister,” he whispers, and you can see a hint of his usually bright grin in the darkness.
You roll your eyes, partially glad that the object of all of your awkward desire couldn’t see how you reacted to his lame attempt to avoid your concern.
“Anon.” you say again through a smile, shaking your head.
”Mm.” he hums, waiting for you to continue. You don’t. You know he knows what you want to know, so you wait. After a moment of silence he seems to relent, growing more fidgety the longer you didn’t say anything.
”Alright, alright…” he says, smoothing his fingers over his eyelids “Sorry, it’s just… so… when I was younger, way, way before I knew any of you, I kinda’ had a… you know, a thing,” he says, tapping his fingers against his knees.
“A thing?” you question, thinning your lips as you mentally shooed away the first lewd, obvious thought that came to mind.
”Yeah, you know, a… a trapped thing, a-a… tight spaces thing?” he admits, shifting his legs beneath him. “I never had it that bad, though. It’s been so long since I was all closed up I guess I… I kinda’… forgot, and it all came rushing back to me… haha.” His little laugh at the end comes out sharply, its legitimacy suspect.
You open your mouth to speak but can’t think of anything to say.
You’d heard of this type of thing before. Granny told you once about your great, great second uncle Charcoal from Pinkie’s side of the family, who had a terrible fear of being outside. She said she’d only met him a few times, and on the first time, not understanding his condition, drug him outside to ‘get a breath of fresh air and smell the trees’ after hearing that he almost never went out into the forest – or even saw a farm before.
She said he froze up and started looking all around, terrified, as if something was gonna hop out and get him. Said she tried to talk to him but he wouldn’t answer. Eventually he even started crying. Wouldn’t stop until his folks came out and set things right. She told you the same thing could happen with ponies, but the opposite. Folks who just shut down when they were all locked up in a tight spot.
Like Anon was doing. Right now. You screwed up again, but bad this time. Unlike all the other numerous, NUMEROUS times you dropped the ball, you weren’t the target of the punishment this time; Anon was.
In your big rush to throw everything together you’d never even established how, if at all, you were supposed to signal the girls to let you out. You were too busy thinking of yourself to care about how Anon might feel about being locked in a metal box with no escape. Now you, or more importantly, he, was trapped here. Forced to experience something terrible at the hooves of somepony he invited into his home to feed and entertain.
What would your sister say if she heard what had happened in here? That you were lower than dirt, most likely. She wouldn’t just up and SAY that, but she’d think it. Granny too.
This was a mistake.
“This… this is all mah fault…” you admit quietly, hanging your head low and squeezing your eyes shut. “Ah went too far this time, this never shoulda’ happened at all… ah’m sorry.”
”Hmm?” he hums in response. The guilt drilling a pit into your stomach grows as his hand returns to your face, caressing you softly. Like you deserved to be comforted for trying a little introspection and honesty.
”Scoots lied to get ya’ in here. Ah told’er too. It’s mah fault that you’re trapped in here. This was all just a stupid… stupid…” you trail off, not sure where to go or what to say.
”Ahh…” the human replies softly after a moment, lowering his hand away from your face and setting it back on his knee, waiting a while before he continued. “So… so the doors?” he says, motioning across the room with his hand. His subtler movements are starting to get a little easier to see in the dark.
“Yessir!” you answer, bitterly cheery, “ah told’em to do that, too. What ah DIDN’T say was when ta’ let us out ‘r nuthin’ because ah just GATTA’ be a big, stupid – aw, dang! Ah’m so sorry! I didn’t know y’all were-were—“ You stop, pausing before you started making excuses for yourself.
’They’re a dime’a dozen an’ everypony’s got’em!’ Applejack’s voice chides in your head. The best you could offer him now was to wait until the party outside calmed down and yell for help, but you had no idea how long that would take. The frown etched on your face grows and you hang your head lower, running through all the times you might’ve stopped this before it happened in your head.
Two grabbers reach for you, each seating itself on an opposite side of your withers.
”Alright.” The human says finally, his voice calm but neither scornful nor cold, “thank you for apologizing. That was very big of you.”
He praises you so easily after what you did. He could’ve done a lot better if he really wanted you to feel worse about what happened. Granted, you’d never known Anon to be particularly resentful about anything, so his gentleness now wasn’t totally out of character – even if you deserved worse.
”Out of all the ponies and dragons and-and… flying spaghetti monsters in Equestria, you’re the only one who knows anything about this thing of mine. I can’t hold not knowing against you. Still… if you’re feeling repentant, there’s something you can do.”
You lift your head, searching out the glowing orbs watching you in the darkness and peering back into them.
”Talk to me. It’s not so bad when we’re talking. Tell me…” he stops, pausing to think. “… tell me something about yourself. Tell me about the real Applebloom. Something nobody else knows. It’s only fair, right?”
You think you can see the faint outline of his lips turning upwards and your heart leaps. Eager to step up and set things right you open your mouth, ready to say anything, to babble out anything that came to mind at a moment’s notice for the sake of keeping up the conversation.
“U-Uhh, okay, umm… mah… mah favorite color is, uh… it’s pink.” you begin, your face twisting in discomfort as you say it. “Ah, uh… tell everypony that mah favorite color is red, even the girls. Ah don’t want’em to think ah’m some sorta’ pansy…”
”Mm.” Anon pats you gently on your left shoulder. His pleasantly warm claws still drape across your withers and hold the back of your neck. “I understand. Still, don’t be afraid to say it if you think the time is right. Your real friends would probably appreciate it, right?”
“That’s… that’s what sis says, too,” you return, blinking at him.
He chuckles under his breath and nudges you in the cheek with one of his thumbclaws. “Well, then start LISTENING to ONE of us. Preferably me.”
You choke out a laugh, but the quiet aftermath carries on. The faint whisper of the outside world touches your ears again, alerting you to the fact that you’d gone quiet.
“Uh… um…” you try, scouring your brain for a topic of discussion that could hold you up longer than the previous one.
The human slowly slides his hands from your body and sets them back on his legs, his soft breathing filling in the blank spaces in your muttering. You watch the faint outline of his chest swell and retract, the slats of his bare skin expanding the rips and then moving away to slack them. Your eyes jam shut, and after a moment of shaking useless thoughts from your head:
“Why a… why a pony?” you ask.
”Hmm?”
“A-Ah mean, your costume,” you clarify, lifting your hoof to point even though you weren’t sure the tall biped could see it.
”Ohh.” He drops his head to inspect himself. “I, uh… I thought it’d get a laugh, I guess. Haven’t gotten too many tonight, though,” he says matter-of-factly, reaching up to tug the small ear-band out of his hair and examine it with his fingers. ”Didn’t think too much about whether it might be taken the other way. I’ve been getting a lot of looks tonight… hopefully I haven’t been offending anyone. That’d be just my luck, right?” he says, clicking his tongue.
Your mouth crinkles, a civil war raging in your brain to decide the right words to answer him with.
“Ah don’t… think that’s the reason…” you object, leaving it at that.
”Yeah?” Anon replies. A moment later he furrows his brow and makes a regretful sound, a playful smirk emerging on his face.
”Ahh, I just thought of something. What if I opened the door for interspecies Halloween costumes?”
You offer him a confused look but little else, and your silence seems to encourage him to continue.
”Aw, man! I bet you money that Twilight’s gonna come next year in big, like-like…” he stumbles, measuring something in the air with his claws, “HOBBIT feet, and gloves with big noodly tentacles wiggling out.” He wiggles his digits in the air for effect.
You snort loudly, holding back the sound behind a hoof. “Haw-Hawbit!?” you interject through your giggles. “What’s a hawbit?”
”They’re these, uhh—” he continues cheerfully, halting to repeat that measuring motion in the air again before dropping his arms in defeat. “Hah, nevermind…” The human lifts a hand to smooth over his face, gathering his thoughts.
“Aw jeez – you know she’s gonna have a mask, too. A flat-faced fleshy thing, and it’s gonna have these, like, these beady, soulless little eyes, and I might actually pee,” he laments with a grimace.
His face softens noticeably as you chuckle at his premonition. He joins in, lifting the ear band up and setting it back into place on the crown of his head.
”Well, what about you, redhead?” he asks as he settles down, reaching a claw through the darkness to pinch at your black dress.
“M-ah costume?” you reply, your voice cracking horrifically as his grabber comes dangerously close to grazing the tuft of fur on your chest. You clear your throat and take a breath to clear your head, only to fill your nose with his chocolate-tinged breath.
You were…
Pretty close to him right now, weren’t you…?
Your face prickles and you lean away instinctively, your brain working diligently to answer his question as the heat on your mug began to seep into your head.
“Ah’m, uh… ah’m Pony Mary,” you answer simply, swiping some loose, sweat-damp white mane out of your face as he released you. ”Ah thought it’d be scary, but ah don’t think anypony is too scared’a me. ‘Least, not in the way I was intendin’…” You frown as you remember the apprehensive faces of Rumble and the other colts staring at you warily from the punch table.
”Ohhh,” he replies knowingly, leaning back and peering at the dark ceiling before returning his gaze to you. “Well… I’m not exactly a pony horror expert, but, I’m gonna take a huge shot in the dark here and say that you’d probably get really spooked if I said her name three times, right?”
You scrunch your snout at the questioning of your courage and fold your hooves across your chest. “Nuh uh. Besides, ya’ can only summon Pony Mary by sayin’ her name three times while lookin’ at yer reflection in a pool’a water,” you say, smiling smugly at your superior demonstration of horror lore.
The human merely smirks at you, the playful sparkle in his eyes returning. “Pony Mary,” he whispers.
You scoff, unfolding your forelegs and setting them back down on the ground. ”Very funny, but ah ain’t a little foal no more. Pony Mary ain’t really real.”
”Pony Mary,” Anon repeats, tinging his voice in omen and winning a smile from you as he reaches up and flexes his digits.
“Now look here, ah told y’all—“
”Pony…” he starts, pausing for dramatic effect and leaning in closer, wiggling his digits dangerously.
You return his gaze with a determined look of your own, silently daring him to go through with it, to finish so you could prove how unafraid you were.
”… Mary!” Anon exclaims, lunging his hands out at you catching you in your sides – your weakest points – in a surprise attack. You bark with laughter as he tickles you, enduring the raw torture for only a few moments before defiantly squirming out of his powerful energy-draining grip.
“Haw!” you sneer at him in the darkness, turning up your nose, “see? I ain’t scared, not even a little bit! Y’all’r barkin’ up the wrong tree if you think you can sc—!“
Something moves behind you.
Where the large wall of boxes should be. Your heart skips as a chilling second of self-doubt courses through you. You whirl around, squinting at the wall of dark boxes, scrutinizing them.
“… Did… did you…?” you whisper.
You chance a glance back at Anon. His form is unmoving and his face is trained ahead on the same boxes you were observing. He doesn’t say anything.
A moment passes, and you can just barely hear the party outside again. It sounded so far away. A moment more; nothing. The very second you begin to assume it’s just the age of the wood whining and all of this was all just in your head, you hear something else. This time it was a quick scratching noise, like something stiff was being ground against smooth metal.
It’s coming from higher above you. Your heart races as you jerk your gaze up toward the shed’s tin ceiling, and you SWEAR you see something move behind one of the boxes at the top of the stack. You swallow hard and immediately pace backward, not taking your eyes off the wall of cardboard for a second.
”Your, uh… that your little pals tryin’ to prank me, too?” Anon asks softly, hiding the edge in his voice behind the fake smile you could hear on his lips.
“This place’s too high up, they can’t just-just… Scoots can’t fly. How would they get up on the roof?” you question hastily, turning to him.
You immediately regret looking away.
A hissing sound comes from the direction of the boxes. The heavy thud that immediately follows flinches you unmercifully. Terror courses through your veins as you twist your head around and scan the darkness desperately, spotting the origin of the sound in an instant.
It was a box, one close to where you thought you saw movement a second ago. It had tumbled from the top of the stack and fallen to the ground, spewing its contents onto the floor. With that emergence comes a sour, pungent smell that suddenly invades the tiny space you and the human occupy.
Rolling out of the box is a mass of… of something. Something slimy and wet and oozing out around the cardboard in a way that made your stomach churn. You can’t quite identify what it is. You don’t want to.
“Is…?” you whisper, not daring to look away from the inky black void the box had created at the top of the pile with its departure. “… is somepony… in here…?”
No answer, no sound. In fact, now that the shed was lacking of you and Anon’s voices, everything had suddenly gone unusually quiet.
A line of sweat crawls down the back of your scalp.
You back up further, whipping your tail about behind you as a tool to find Anon. It lands against his arm and you use it to guide yourself to him, pressing your bruised side into his own for the comfort of his warmth. He doesn’t stay, unfortunately. Instead he slowly climbs to his feet and slides them across the ground, feeling around with them to properly transport him along the wall of the shed at your backs without bashing them against any of the boxes lying about.
”Okay… very funny…” he whispers to nopony, presumably sliding his grabbers against the shelf-hitch on the wall at his back, for what purpose you didn’t know.
“Anon…” you say in reply, careful not to raise your voice too high for fear of, fear of… fear.
Something tiny clatters to the ground near your hooves causing you to jump, stirring up your already impassioned nerves further. The human curses softly and bends down, picking the small item off the ground before rolling and sliding it around in his claws. Matches, it was a match box for the… the LAMP!
Ohh, why, why, WHY did you have to hide it over there!?
You stare back at the cardboard wall, almost positive you can spot the tiny space where you snuck it away. The thought to go over and retrieve it enters your mind – and is immediately and decisively obliterated from all possibility. It doesn’t even have a chance.
The rate of the human’s breathing has increased. His claws scratch the small match pinned between his fingers against the patch of rough paper on the box. This goes on until he makes a frustrated sound and presumably tosses the bad match away, poking his fingers back inside for another.
Scratch, scratch, scratch, scratch. Every small noise is a like a beacon. A lighthouse at sea advertising your location to everything malevolent in the world. You swallow hard, turning away from the boxes for just a moment.
“H-Here, let me tr—“ You wince away as a light springs to life at his fingertips, punishing your night-sensitive eyes. You blink rapidly, rubbing at your face with your hooves in a poor attempt to ward away the spots. When your vision clears up enough to see Anon’s face, he gasps, pressing his back up against the wall. You turn just in time to see a pair of misty red eyes flash in the darkness.
”SKKKKKREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!”
“AHHHHHHH!” you bellow, leaping to avoid it as it hurdles down on you from the boxes. You crash into Anon, sending you both hurdling to the ground. The light in his claws sputters out in the tussle.
Night vision once again hampered, your eyes have to strain to examine its shape in the dark. You can just barely make out a serpentine tail swishing through the air above you as it viciously claws its way up the wall you just had your backs to. Two crimson orbs covered in a thin film of grey stare back at you, a toothy maw falling open as another inpony sound rattles from its grizzly, grime-covered body.
It’s going to leap at you again. The moment it looks like it’s about to pounce you throw your fiercely shaking limbs out, spreading them to cover as much of the stallion behind you can. It would likely be your very last action as a mare. At the same time a long arm snakes across your chest and pulls you sideways, desperately attempting to switch your positions.
A massive plume of grungy wingspan unfurls under the ghoulish face in the shadows and it leaps from the wall, hovering above you in all of its horrific glory. You clench your eyes shut tight and wait for the end, wait for Pony Mary to do her work with you. You’re shaking harder than you ever have in your entire life, and the heartbeat pounding in your ears is the only thing reminding you that you’re still alive.
The sound you hear next isn’t any of the ones you were expecting.
It isn’t the fiendish creature descending on you with a gruesome, life-ending wail. It isn’t the sound of your pitiful screams as she tears you limb from limb. It isn’t even the sound of Anon declaring his love and respect for you at the very end, lamenting bitterly that he never had the chance to be with you, no.
It’s the sound of the metal shutter being thrown up into the air.
Your eyes are stained with bright light as the fourth wall of the shed is forced open and the sounds of the party suddenly flood inside.
”Applebloom!” a comforting voice yells with authority, “Y’all got some explainin’ ta’-ta’-T-TARNATION!?” The werepony bracing the door with her body is taken aback by the being floating menacingly above you. The fillies at her side, all previously hanging their heads and sulking, gasp.
”Wha’ the TARTARU’TH I’th THAT?!” Twist slurs as she juts a hoof.
”There they are!” Pinkie exclaims happily. She also points a hoof in your direction, instead drawing attention to the downed box in the corner. Its grim contents, in the light, are actually the mushy remains of apples. The soggy-looking red skin sacks continue to slowly creep out of the box with the pink pony’s observation.
”Or… used to be.” Pinkie amends with a grimace. She flinches back as the pink and yellow phantom floating above you spins around and sends her a ghastly hiss. “NNGEEH–! What is—!? Is… is that—?”
”Fluttershy?” Werejack says, furrowing her brow at the creature. She leans her head forward to get a better look but has to hastily pull it back a second later when the creature moves away from you and barrels at her instead. Your sister stumbles backwards, tripping over the boulder she just displaced to free you. “Q-QUICK, GRAB—!”
The Flutter-Creature collides with her, wrenching her away from the shutter and into the yard. It even gets a few feet up into the air with the hearty farm pony before losing its upward momentum and crashing them both into the ground. The small crowd outside trots out of the way to avoid their tussle. The shutter dividing you and Anon from the world falls an inch and then halts in place, the cord caught by the clip on the pulley and preventing it from hitting the ground. Eager to escape, you and the human leap up and run out into the grass, passing the girls as you go.
”H-Help me out here! A-Ah can’t—! She’s in one’a her w-weird thingies!” your sister exclaims, valiantly holding down the strange mare writhing about in her hooves despite her trying to break free with an animal fervor. ”S-She’s, dang! C’mon now, ah can’t help ya’ if ya’ don’t – OW!” Applejack winces, yanking her right foreleg back. “You BIT me!?”
Several mares in the crowd drop their drinks and experimentally step forward to assist. As you rush forward to help her yourself, you see the surprise in her eyes shift to anger, her temper guiding her back legs in between herself and the batpony. She kicks, shoving Fluttershy away hard and narrowly into YOU, forcing you to slide on the ground to avoid her as she takes flight and begins to gain altitude.
”AW, SHOOT! DANGIT!“ AJ curses, only able to watch as her friend soars into the air.
The Flutter-Creature frames itself against the moon as the music from the turntable across the yard cuts out. She pauses there, presumably so she can change her positioning and swoop down on you again. But she doesn’t. Instead, she just hangs there, suspended and distressed in the rainbow aura surrounding her, jerking about and whipping her tail in fury.
”W-What…?” you huff, looking around to see if anypony else was witnessing what you were. Among the blanching and startled faces in the audience, you spot the source of the yellow pegasus’ difficulty. Several multicolored horns within glow with magical might, telekinetically restraining her.
The batpony screeches and flails as she’s forcefully brought down. Several earth pony and pegasi mares surround her as she reaches the ground. With another round of distressed grunting and hollering, Fluttershy’s form vanishes behind the mass of clumsy inebriated ponies. They all pull away a moment later to reveal her once more, bundled tightly in orange ribbons and streamers.
“Hisss! Weeeeh!” she whines, lashing her tail about as she rolls afrantically in the grass.
”What in the gawsh-darn is goin’ on around here little lady!?” Applejack says as she jogs up to you, bouncing looks between you and her friend. Soon she expands her glare to encompass the rest of fillies present. “Explain yerselves! Now!”
Twist, Scoots and Sweetie draw up on either side of you. Even Anon paces up to join you, exchanging you a sheepish look that you bounce to your disheartened friends. You’ve gotten the attention of many ponies in the crowd as well, all silently watching and listening for your explanation.
“W-Well…” you say, peering up into your sister’s usually vibrant but now hard green eyes and wilting under her presence. “... It’s a long story…”
-*-*-*-*-
The back yard is quite clear now. Many of Anon’s guests had left with the excuse of having work the next day, but many others have filed into the house to escape the chilly autumn night. Some stragglers remain, however, most casually sipping whatever drink they could get their hooves on in the dry spell of the aging party. Some even continued playing games in the far right of the yard alone. The spooky skeleton DJ took your bespectacled friend’s rowdiness with her sound stage surprisingly well considering the ruckus it caused. It didn’t change the fact that the music had long since gone.
At the far end of the fence you can see Anon swinging his gate shut and latching it, closing up the exit to the outside after he’d gone and rounded up any stragglers beyond. He’d changed out of his costume. His stretchy body suit was already going through hard times when he met you in the shed, and after the close call with Fluttershy it was practically falling off of him. He… might not have gotten as many laughs for it as he wanted, but he definitely got some complaints after he changed out of it.
Golly, you can’t imagine why.
As guilty as you still felt about locking the two of you up, you could still manage to shed a tear for the great loss of his pony-themed outfit. Gone forever to time and cherished in your memories evermore. Parting is such sweet sorrow. Too bad you won’t be able to part with the extra chores you’ll be taking on for the next week as punishment for your, uh… ‘prank’.
You sigh, setting a mud-scuffed hoof on the step behind you as you peer into the blank wood of Anon’s back door. It was difficult to see much of anything from the back stoop, but if you had to guess, your sister was still inside being tended to by Fluttershy. The last time you saw them, the guilty pegasi was still dabbing her leg with a damp handkerchief and apologizing profusely for her poor attitude.
You hadn’t heard all of their conversation, but apparently Fluttershy had been feeling ill lately after a bite she received from a surprised fruit bat. She couldn’t remember much of what happened after she arrived at the party, only that she felt overwhelmed, scared and crowded. She said that she was compelled to hide, to get away from all of the noise and bright lights. Apparently she’d been hiding behind the boxes in that shed for almost two and a half hours before you and Anon finally rattled her cage enough to get an audience.
Turning the light out probably had a big part to play, too. Another great idea by yours truly. Then again… if you hadn’t done what you did, then she might still be in there. Waiting, lurking. She could’ve even attacked Anon when he was all alone. That was a frightening thought, even for an excuse.
At least everything turned out alright in the end.
Everypony was safe, and apparently this little problem with Fluttershy had cropped up more than once before. It was common enough that all of her friends knew exactly how to deal with it when it happened to pop up again. Shame they didn’t have the opportunity to do it before you locked yourself and somepony else up in a tiny room with her.
That somepony else is approaching you now. His Nightmare Night costume is gone, but a fragment of it lives on in the tiny black ears poking out of his mane. His usually light steps now trudge heavily in the wake of all of his hosting fatigue catching up to him.
”How’s everybody holdin’ up? No mental relapses since I’ve been gone, I hope?” he asks with cautious optimism, strolling up and taking a seat on the empty space of stair next to you. “Your sister isn’t going to turn into some sort of vampire horse too, is she? I’ve seen movies. The Bite is always the first omen.”
The cartoonishly dark edge to his voice mines a chuckle out of you. “Hahaha, ah wish… maybe she’d forget about how grounded ah am.”
”Fat chance,” the human snarks, leaning back into the door behind him to relax.
The two of you sit a while in comfortable silence, listening for the occasional whistle in the wind or faint murmur from inside the house. The sloshed ponies in the yard occasionally look to the two of you and smile, waving dopily in your direction until you mirror their gesture. Though the event was starting to wear thin and lots of ponies had left, the ones who remain are still in good spirits.
Even Anon, likely tested and worn from your little stunt, was smiling gently, eyes closed as he enjoys the breeze. You examine his serene face, mesmerized by how untroubled he looked after everything that had happened. You almost don’t notice when he opens his eyes and peers back at you, shooing your gaze away and warming your face.
”… There’s pie in there,” he says, smiling in your peripheral.
“Mmm.” you hum.
You keep your eyes pinned to the ground, knowing you might not be able to say what you want and speak clearly if you were constantly being reminded WHO it was you were talking to. The human nudges you gently in the side with his own, and the brief contact strums in your chest.
”It’s really good,” he goes on. “I made it myself.”
“Ah’m sorry.”
He pauses. His eyes are focused on you even more than before, you can feel them. You take a deep breath and try to find the right words, not getting very far along before your lack of explanation started to become noticeable and awkward.
”Ah’m, uh… ah ain’t thought’a nopony but mahself the whole night, and because of that I made yer night worse,” you say, shuffling your hooves against wooden steps beneath you. “Ah figured now that we’re out and everything’s settled, ah should apologize proper. So, uh… so… yeah.”
You press your lips together, wanting to say more but stifling yourself for fear of further ineloquence. After a while without a response you turn and find a large grabber right near your face. Before you can move away the human smothers your snout in his warm palm.
“Mmph?” you hum under his hand, closing your eyes as he slides it up into your mane and pats it on your head.
”I already said I wouldn’t hold it against you. Buuut… if the dark, rotting spirit of Pony Mary demands a more formal reply; apology accepted.”
He grins and continues combing his claws through your stiff, hair-sprayed mane. Your eyes blink lazily from the attention, goosebumps rising on your scalp from his touch. No matter how many times you were touched by a colt – however rare that was – it never failed to affect you in a significant way. You couldn’t stop yourself from obsessing over even the tiniest amount of contact, even if it was brief or unintentional.
Anon’s touches were never either of them. Each one lingered a moment. Each one was delivered with gentleness, sympathy. You can’t imagine ever being tired of them, and when he pulls his hand away you can still feel it on you, warming you.
”Don’t go serious on me, now. It’s a terrible habit.” He laughs and grunts softly as he pushes off of the steps and onto his feet. He reaches for the doorknob above your head and pops the door open a bit. “C’mon, let's go see if they left us any whipped cream.”
Your brain doesn’t catch up to his request until he gently bumps you in the back with the door, inspiring you to abandon what was probably an extremely doofy expression and hop to your hooves. The two of you step inside the laundry room and then push farther into the house, turning right to head down the hall that connected the end of the living room with the kitchen, downstairs bathroom, and closet. It seems as though the majority of ponies inside the house have all crowded into the living room and taken seats. They either squeezed onto the couch, pulled up a chair, or took a space on the ground.
All of them are facing a nearby wall out of your line of sight, the one just before the stairs. Most or all of sit within hoof’s reach of one of several bowls of warm, freshly made popcorn scattered among them. Many, too, sit or carry wide paper plates and napkins, each protecting a slice of creamy orange pie from the furniture and vice-versa. A few of them catch sight of the two of you passing, and Rarity waves at you from behind Twilight.
“Pinkie thinks she’s close to getting it working, darling! We’ve saved you a spot.”
Anon makes a sound of acknowledgment and continues on, idly sliding his dull claws against his wall as you navigate the back hall and slip into the kitchen. Once there you notice a few minor changes from before, primarily the wealth of empty paper cups left behind and the mess of pie tins scattered about, three of which were still mostly full. Anon grabs two plates as you wash your hooves in the sink and then pull yourself up onto the stool where your sister once sat, overlooking the slabs of pie with reserved excitement. They smelled delicious, and you’d tasted the human’s cooking before.
It was a craft that, even as a pony who belonged to lineage concerned with food, never came particularly easily for you. Unlike you, Granny had been making pies and a mess of other things for years. Built up quite a reputation for doing it, too. The way you’d always heard it, your Great Granpappy and Great Granny Apple were prolific farmers but never cared much for the actual cooking. So, if Granny Smith wanted something tasty growing up, she’d have to make it herself.
It was how she earned her Cutie Mark.
Now Grandpappy, may he rest in peace, was supposedly NOTORIOUS for having two left hooves in the kitchen, no matter how hard he tried. Granny kept on cooking even as she got older, turning it into a favorite hobby. Apparently lots of the family gave her trouble for years for being a hoity-toity ‘Kitchen Mare’. Some even poke fun to this day.
In jest, of course. Their objections never survived long after they actually tasted her food. Folks didn’t seem to care much nowadays if mares did some cooking. Regardless, most of the things YOU tried to make came out as large, charcoal-colored masses with the texture of chalk and dry leaves that tasted like, well… bad. The talent was another thing of MANY qualities you admired in the tall biped, even if you didn’t think of it much.
”Here?” he says, aligning the knife in his claws to make out a moderately sized piece. He moves it aside to make the imagined piece bigger before you can answer. “Here?”
You nod before he can make it larger, but the human slides the knife again anyways before pushing it into the sweet treat, dividing you out a great big piece. You grin at his enthusiasm despite not knowing whether you’d be able to eat it all. After taking a piece for himself and setting it on his plate he turns and flings open the ice box, pulling out a small white tub. The lid snaps off and the first big helping of whipped cream is served onto your piece, the second onto his.
He catches you observing the mouth-watering display, distracted, and quickly dollops a bit onto your nose, whipping around afterward to put the tub away like nothing happened. You huff and cross your eyes to examine his minor act of war, counting the both of you lucky that he was putting away any additional ammo before you could return fire. He turns back to find you still cross-eyed and lapping at the top of your snout with your tongue.
”Y-Your face! Haha!” he laughs gleefully as you whip a hoof up and collect the cream from the tip of your nose. You fix your mug into a grumpy frown as you lick up rest. He doesn’t buy your sour expression for a moment. As this exchange occurs a sound emerges and begins to rise in intensity gradually from the living room, an ominously low and slightly melodramatic tune.
”IT’S STARTIIIIIINNNNNGGGG!” Pinkie yells from the same location, her own volume dwarfing that of the music entirely and likely reaching the outside. Confirming this thought, several ponies from the back yard trickle into the living room as you do, many of whom funnel off into the kitchen behind you. A projector placed just to the side of the couch – fitted with a familiar reel of film – patters away as it flashes a screen of dim black and white opening credits onto Anon’s light blue wall, the one that everypony had been looking to expectantly when you entered. Among the guests is a face you hadn’t seen the entire night – possibly for good reason.
The level of gross you now feel can only be experienced by a sister with a brother.
Big Mac is dressed in some sort of-of… thing, that nearly rivals Anon’s own costume in suggestiveness. He was a dressed up as a ‘farm colt’, but not in the usual sense. His outfit is tight-fitting and almost lacy in places. Snug, but not… intentionally so. Like the poor guy had to fight his way into something that didn’t come in his size, and now all of his, er… male bits, were being emphasized even more than normal. Unsurprisingly, the space he’d claimed for himself on the ground was surrounded by mares, the three closest ones being a smiley Twist, a… grumpy-looking Rainbow Dash?
AND your sister, ahh.
”Hurry, hurry!” Rarity Doll insists, pulling your attention from your kin as she slid from her spot on the couch and sat in the space below to make room, several ponies at the edge of the pile breaking off to blow out the lights. Noticing the lack of space you begin to round the group, mumbling around the plate in your mouth.
“ ‘Scuse mer. Ah’ll, uh, ah’ll jus’ sih over—“
”Oh, c’mere!” a deep voice objects. A long arm catches you around the barrel and lifts you off of your hooves.
You whine a little at being carried like a foal, but pause instantly when you realize just who it is that’s taken you into his arms. Anon passes his plate to his soon-to-be couch neighbor Fluttershy, freeing up both of his hands to settle himself down into the empty space Rarity had made for him. He presses himself in against the back cushion as much as he can before setting you in the space between his legs, his thighs wrapping around your hips on either side. Fluttershy, who had presumably lost her costume during her mental transformation and likewise had her face painted into a scarecrow, hoofs the human back his pie as the movie begins in earnest.
Every time Anon shifts behind you, you can’t help but shiver gently and hope that he doesn’t notice. You can feel him breathing against your back. The body heat pressing in all around you is unignorably pleasant, and not even biting into your massive helping of pie serves as a competent distraction for his proximity. Your temperature rises at least a few degrees as a result of his warmth equalizing with your own, but that isn’t the only reason for the change.
Not by a long shot.
The spooky music coming from the projector crescendos and a title splashes onto the makeshift screen before you in dripping, runny letters: IT CAME FROM THE BOG! Assorted ‘ooo’s break out from the movie watchers, both out of awe and the intention to ‘scare’ the others with creepy ghost noises. You feel him chuckle against you. His every sound transfers both to the spot right near your ear, and even more intimately through his chest.
Despite your desire for this to go on forever, the next hour and a half passes you by like a dream.
Your friends gasp when the swamp thing appears and drags its first unsuspecting victim deep into the muck of its bog. They laugh when the ‘dopey everymare’ lead bumps into her boom mic and then goes on like nothing happened, frowning at something off screen. They boo, hiss and throw popcorn at the wall when the evil scientist mare with the taped-on unicorn horn strikes the leading colt across the face. They cheer when that same evil scientist is ALSO dragged into the bog by her creation, lamenting all the while that her ‘beloved daughter’ had betrayed her. It’s pin-drop quiet as the leading mare struggles with the creature in the climax of the film, the male lead cruising toward a messy fate of his own that he only narrowly avoids through her intervention. More cheers, these ones a touch more quiet and groggy, when the quiet nerdy mare finally gets the colt in the end. They both even share a passionate kiss as the circular wipe draws into the center to end the movie.
The yawn that starts the wave of sleepy sighs is your own. Your comfortable spot cradled against Anon’s gently rising chest had nearly lulled you off to sleep more than once in the film’s final minutes, and the night was starting to wear on after all your adventuring. Pinkie wearily approaches the projector as the reel starts to run empty, poking at it until it falls silent and the brightest light left in the room sputters out.
You stretch the stiffness out of your limbs as the human behind you does the same. Following that, you take mostly empty plate into your mouth and dismount the couch. You instantly miss his close company, but now that the movie is over you no longer had a reasonable, non-creepy excuse to enjoy it.
The next several minutes consist of you waiting in a series of lines. One to toss your plate in the trash, one for drinks of water from the kitchen faucet, and another to get into the bathroom. The final line is one you abstain from, the one that was carrying the vast majority of the ponies remaining out of Anon’s front door
They shake his hand, hug him, and occasionally even sneak in drunken gropes or pecks on the cheek that he laughs off. Among them are the rose triplets, the mailmare, and even Mayor Mare, a pony you were surprised to find hadn’t left earlier with the other ‘work tomrrows’. Each of them thank him for the time and file quietly out into the night beyond, brimming, buzzed, and satisfied.
As Applejack reignites the lights you run a fetlock across your eyes and peer up at the clock on the wall. Nine’o two PM. It’s getting late, and you still had to walk home. After the long round of goodbyes had ended, the only remaining ponies in the house now are you, your friends, your brother, your sister, and the full cast of her closest friends.
”Alllllrighty, let’s get ta’ work, girls. Ah’mma grab the dustpan,” Applejack drones drowsily, heading off into the kitchen. She’s tailed loosely by Rarity, careful to avoid stepping on the small sprinklings of popcorn left on the ground.
”I can’t believe they just threw it on the ground, the nerve,” she grouses, earning her a tired laugh from Anon.
”Don’t be too hard on’em; I started it,” he says. “Just this and the kitchen is fine. You can leave the stuff outside. Oh, and any decorations are fine, keep those up.”
Rarity and your sister quickly sweep up the mess on the ground while the rest of you scatter about the house looking for empties, paper plates and candy wrappers. Thankfully the vast majority of guests had at least kept their trash on the tables and countertops for easy collection if they couldn’t find a trash can. You regroup with the other fillies during this time, but few words are shared between you. Each of you are content enough to work together quietly as you try and stay awake.
Twist, who likely came down from her buzz sometime during the movie, is the hardest one to keep lucid out of the four of you. When you and the girls question her on whether or not she’s okay, she simply nods her head, stating that she vomited a while ago while your sister was scolding her, and that she felt much better now. She doesn’t say so, but you assume that your sister also impressed the importance of her not speaking a WORD about ANY sort of booze to Jitterbug under fear of her father de-flanking the both of them and sending Twist to military school.
You’d met the stallion.
He’d do both.
Beyond her wellness, nothing much else is discussed. The trash was clear, any non-paper kitchenware was cleaned and dried, everything that anypony could think of had been done. Thank goodness for that. Celestia you were exhausted. The only thing that was left now was to say your own goodbyes and set out on your way home.
That is, until Pinkie waddles in from the back yard clutching a tripod camera in her front hooves.
”Okay fillies, group up! We’re gonna’ end this thing right! Yes, you too Dash! Get in there, group up!” the pink pony barks, brushing off the pegasi’s complaints and motioning to the front of the couch. Rainbow Dash huffs and pulls the floppy gravestone hat from her head, tossing it onto said couch before making her way over to sit in front of it. As the others begin to congregate, you dip into the hall and slip back into the bathroom to inspect yourself, not having remembered to do so on your first visit.
Your white-face makeup has bled much farther into your face from you sweating. A big smudge of it was completely absent from the bruised part of your forehead from when you fell, replaced with the lightest traces of green from the grass staining your fur. Your dress was in bad shape on purpose, but it had deteriorated further since you arrived. Much of it was thinning and tearing where the clothespins held it together. Your cream-and-cherry mane felt crinkly and gross, and unless you could summon the energy to get into the bathroom at home before Sis and Mac, you were probably going to be sleeping in it.
You’re were a mess, and you say that as a filly who didn’t shy away from getting messy.
This probably… wasn’t going to be your best picture…
”C’mon, squirt! Your pals are keelin’ over in here! I think we just lost the mummy!” Pinkie exclaims from the living room.
You’ll just have to make do.
Whatever; you weren’t planning on missing the picture regardless of how you looked.
”Comin’!” you reply, slapping yourself a few times on the cheeks before trotting back out and rejoining your companions, all of whom were lined up and waiting.
From right to left, in no particular logical order, was a werepony, an octo-pony, a mummy queen, a toy doll, a Frakenloo, a banshee, a zombie, a scarecrow, a farm colt, and an Anon, all with their own costumes and face paints in various states of disrepair. They each look to you expectantly, waiting for you to join them. The cotton candy pony is poised behind the camera, ready to leap into position when the time came. A smile spreads across your face as you go to join them, your irreplaceable friends, ready to commemorate the crazy, perfect night you all just shared. Anon, kneeling, pats the spot next to him with his hand, inviting you closer.
It’s funny. You’d spent a large chunk of the night trying to get close to him, but in the end the only thing that won you any real time with the human was royally screwing up. It didn’t feel like you were much closer to unraveling the secrets of the fairer sex after tonight, but right now, in the moment, you can’t seem to care.
You draw up to the human’s right side, perching yourself there and waiting for Pinkie’s warning. You peer to the left quickly, noticing how many of your friends had thrown their hooves over and around each other’s withers in comradery.
Anon’s have been left bare.
You know just what pose you want to take. The perfect one to encapsulate all that you’d experienced tonight. Slowly, your reach your left foreleg up and lace it over the human’s shoulders, grinning triumphantly as you do.
”Okaaaaaaay… I think this thing still has one good shot left in it, so let’s make it count! Get ready….” Pinkie says, making a few last-second adjustments to the tripod. You are. You are ready.
Or…
Wait…
Something is…
You furrow your brow slightly, trying to isolate exactly what was rubbing you the wrong way.
”Okay! Here we go!” Pinkie exclaims, setting the camera and then darting away from it, taking her place on your sister’s left.
It takes a moment, but soon you realize the problem. You couldn’t put your hoof on it before now because putting your hoof down was the entire problem. It was just hanging there. Suspended above the human’s shoulder. Blocked by an unseen force inside you; hovering…
HOVERING.
Your eyes widen in horror as the pieces finally line up.
You’re not going to make it.
You focus all of your being into moving it, putting it down where it was supposed to be before it happened, but you can’t.
You’re not going to make it.
The small space between his body and your hoof is like the distance from one side of the planet to the other.
YOU’RE NOT GOING TO MAKE IT.
No.
NO.
STOP.
All you can do before the flash blinds you is flick your eyes toward the lens, stare directly into the unfettered camera with terrified awe as it mercilessly seals away your image, and your fate.
Forever.
~Fin~
Also LikedSimilarAuthor
- ghouls · 4.3k words · 494 26 · 11k views
- Kind of Brony · 13k words · 397 14 · 15k views
- Uh-hmmm · 5.1k words · 266 10 · 3.7k views
- Uh-hmmm · 5.6k words · 361 31 · 8.4k views
- Uh-hmmm · 4k words · 391 17 · 6.1k views
- Cackling Moron · 2.2k words · 220 1 · 4.2k views
- Frostybox · 6.1k words · 176 2 · 3.9k views
- Uh-hmmm · 2.1k words · 474 25 · 10k views
Stats
Page generated in 0.189 seconds
Total duration
1,039 users online
1,663,611 hits today, 2,156,967 yesterday
FIMFiction
My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Fanfiction
Designed and coded by knighty & Xaquseg - © 2011-2024
Follow & Support Us
Support us
SubStar
Chat!
Discord
Follow us
Twitter
MLP: Friendship is Magic® - © 2024 Hasbro Inc.®
Fimfiction is in no way affiliated with or endorsed by Hasbro Inc.®
As Gordon Ramsay would say
"Blood well done you bastard"
This story is pretty dang good.
Well written and Brilliant Plot (sorry for saying plot).
Enjoyable chapter, but I gotta say, I’m pretty confused by what’s happening at the very end, there. Is AB like … keeping her hoof an inch above Anon’s shoulder and for some reason hesitating to set it down on his shoulder or something? If so, why?
8519255
Google 'hover handing', it's a known cringey/awkward thing where someone goes to put their hands around someone's shoulders but they're too awkward to touch them.
Anyway great chapter, hopefully not waiting too long on more content. Really enjoying this story!
Oh god no she did the ultimate virgin move, the hover hand
.
This was the best chapter so far!
Haha, I am going to imagine that she succeeded.
This story was amazing. A few grammar errors and some unclear/unfinished sentences, but few enough that they were able to stand out. I would like to know if Twilight ever regained her confidence in the end. Hope to see a sequel some day!
Sucks that it's finished. Would have liked more.
My only question is: what is RGRE?
8835715
Reverse Gender Role Equestria. Basically the mares do the protecting of the Stallions, etc.
8838607
Ah. Thanks
Don't get me wrong I liked the story,
however I truly believe that many writers take the oblivious love interest thing way too far. It goes from being funny to being irritating. No one breathing is that oblivious. Having the love interest miss cues is fine for a while, but when you beat it to death over long periods, it drags the story down. I ended up skipping parts and scrolling through paragraphs simply because watching the main character beating herself into the ground, stopped being fun to me.
Again, I do like the story and the writing is excellent. Just not my cup of tea. Which is why I gave it a thumbs up, even with the criticism.
My two cents.
The Monk
Cute story. I kinda wish AB got that hug out of it. Oh well. Thanks for creating and sharing Ghouls.
Lol even after years, this story is bomb. If only there were more