The Nightmare Night Collection

by TooShyShy

Pests

The castle had a bug problem, but only Spike seemed to notice.

He was up every day at dawn, adorned in full bug-fighting gear: apron, gloves, boots, a mask over his mouth. Various cleaning supplies clipped to his belt, including industrial-strength soap he'd ordered from Canterlot and about ten sanitary sponges wrapped in plastic and ready for use. Two full cans of bug spray in each hand. Spike was ready for battle.

First he'd attack with the bug spray, stunning the little pest with some quick bursts from the can. A few more carefully timed bursts and the bug would roll over, its tiny little legs curling towards its belly. A painless and humane death, as the supplier of the spray promised. Then Spike would toss the deceased little critter into a plastic bag he had on hand. The bag itself would be disposed of later, but first Spike had to sanitize the area. That was where his array of cleaning supplies came in. He'd rip open one of his sponge packets, pour a small amount of the specially formulated soap on the spot, and scrub until the floor shone.

Starlight was the first to notice Spike's weird routine. With the other ponies gone so often, of course she was the one to notice Spike's bug-hunting adventures. Even though she didn't want to get involved with stuff that didn't concern her, Starlight felt inclined to approach Spike and ask questions.

“Um, are you alright?” she said.

Spike was busy scrubbing at a corner, the aroma of soap heavy in the air. There were three plastic bags littered around him, each filled to the brim. Spike barely took his eyes off his work as he answered.

“Bugs,” he mumbled.

Starlight frowned. She didn't remember the castle having a bug problem. It was pretty clean most of the time, mostly disagreeable to insects from what she'd seen. However, those plastic bags didn't lie. Starlight could seem them crammed with insects she'd never seen before. Huge beetle-like creatures with unusually long antennae and silvery-dark bodies. Spike had dispatched quite a few of them before Starlight even woke up.

She picked up one of the plastic bags and examined its contents. Her frown deepened. She'd never seen bugs like this before. For one thing, they were massive. Much bigger than any of the beetles she'd seen near the Everfree Forest or around Ponyville. The plastic bag only fit about five of them in all. Given the nearly-full wastebasket at Spike's side, Starlight couldn't imagine how many of them he'd already dispatched.

“What are these?” she said.

Spike shrugged. Truth be told, he didn't care what they were or how they'd gotten in there. He just wanted them gone. He normally didn't have a problem with bugs, but these particular ones made him anxious. They seemed to be crawling all over the castle every morning, indicating some kind of infestation.

Starlight returned to her bedroom, taking the bag with her. Spike didn't seem to notice.

On the fourth day following what Spike suspected was an infestation, he started noticing the holes. They were small at first, scarcely bigger than a claw. He saw them in various spots all over the castle, sometimes at eye level and other times a few feet above his head. When Spike poked a claw through, he saw that the hole went all the way through the wall or floor. They were all perfectly round and some of them were evenly spaced, as if whatever had made them had been trying to create a pattern of some kind.

Spike instantly knew it was the bugs. What else could have made those holes? It seemed these bothersome little critters ate crystal. That explained why there were so many. Another unexpected downside of living in a crystal castle. Spike was practically livid.

Around the same time he started noticing the holes, he started to see even more bugs. He used to see one at a time, but suddenly they were appearing in clusters. He had to change up his tactic a little, often using both spray bottles at once. Spike was running out of ammo fast. The more bugs appeared at once, the faster his supply went. His output of bug spray increased from a bottle every two days to two bottles every day. Spike could have started buying the cheaper stuff from a store in town, but the local kind seemed less effective.

In desperation, he appealed to Applejack. At her suggestion, Spike mixed together some of the Apple family's special weedkiller and some cans of that less effective bug spray. The smell was horrendous and caused Spike's eyes to water, but he loaded it into the empty spray cans anyway. He could tell it was going to work before he even tried it. This was powerful stuff. No bug in Equestria could have withstood it.

However, the infestation only got worse as the days went on. Spike's special bug-slaying blend was effective in every instance, but the bugs just kept coming. He tried to plug up the holes they'd made, but to no avail. No matter how obsessively he bug-proofed the castle, they always found a way in. In fact, his efforts seemed to be attracting them. The amount of holes steadily increased while the bug problem rapidly spread.

Starlight would often see Spike wandering around in the dead of night, spray bottle in each claw. He'd just wander around, muttering to himself as he checked and re-checked every place in the castle he'd sealed up. Occasionally he'd see a bug—or at least thought he saw one—and pounce with the bottle. Starlight wondered if Spike was getting his recommended hours of sleep.

Was it just Spike or were the bugs getting bigger? Suddenly he could only fit two or three of them in one bag. He had to buy the bags in bulk just to make sure he had enough every day. He was having to empty the wastebasket a lot more frequently. Spike was losing count of how many bugs he'd disposed of since the infestation started.

Twilight didn't seem to notice anything. She did admit she'd seen a few strange bugs, but the sightings were so infrequent that she thought nothing of it. Other than Starlight, Spike appeared to be the only one who realized the actual scale of this infestation.

After two weeks, Starlight was sure Spike wasn't sleeping. At the very least, he was only getting about two or three hours a night. He was neglecting his cleaning duties in favor of chasing after those bugs. Starlight saw him at all hours of the night, chasing after what she presumed to be those strange beetles.

The beetles were definitely getting bigger. By the end of the second week, Spike could only fit one of them in each plastic bag. The beetles were also becoming more invasive, or maybe that was Spike's imagination. He'd awaken in the middle of the night, convinced he'd felt one crawling across his chest. He was starting to have vivid dreams in which he'd wake up choking on them. He'd lunge across his bed and open his mouth, vomiting strange brightly colored liquid and beetle parts onto the floor of his bedroom. Then Spike would actually wake up and realize he'd been dreaming. But he always had a weird taste in his mouth.

Every time he saw movement out of the corner of his eye, he assumed it was a bug. But more often than not, nothing was there. However, the overall amount of bugs hadn't decreased. He was just seeing larger groups of them at once, demanding even more of his precious bug-destroying formula.

Twilight told him to start getting more sleep, but she was too busy to actually make sure he did. Her and the others were constantly leaving on friendship missions, leaving Spike to his own devices.

Spike started dousing parts of his bedroom in the Apple family's special weed killer. His entire bedroom reeked, but he was certain the smell was keeping the bugs away. He was seeing less and less of them in his bedroom, but more and more of them everywhere else. At least the nightmares stopped. But Spike started to get headaches, most likely from the smell.

After two weeks of this, Starlight knocked on the door of Spike's bedroom. There was an old book floating above her head, alongside a bag containing the deceased bugs she'd taken from Spike several days ago.

Starlight hadn't seen Spike since yesterday. She'd been a little worried at first, but a quick look around had reassured her. She'd noticed that there didn't seem to be any bugs in the castle. She'd gotten so used to seeing them and the holes they made that she was a little taken aback. Whatever Spike had been doing, it seemed to have worked. The castle was completely bug-free.

Finding it unlocked, Starlight pushed the door open and headed inside. She had a cheerful smile on her face.

“Hey Spike,” she said. “You know those bugs you've been seeing? Well, I think they might be....”

She froze, her eyes falling on something that lay in the middle of the room. The smile fell from her face at the sight, her stomach giving an involuntary lurch. It took all of her willpower not to empty her stomach all over the floor.

The smell hit Starlight first. A sickly-sweet aroma choking out the otherwise overbearing scent of weed killer. Spike hadn't been messing around. He'd essentially saturated his room in the stuff, treating the walls and furniture to a generous coating of it. The bed remained untouched, although Starlight was sure Spike had sprinkled some of it between his sheets.

But the bugs were everywhere. The walls and floor had turned into a writhing mess, massive beetles covering almost every surface. Only a few spaces on the floor—one of which Starlight was fortunate enough to be standing on—were untouched. Starlight could hardly distinguish furniture from carpet. Her eyes started to hurt just from looking at the continuously shifting mass Spike's bedroom had become. However, although that in itself was unsettling, that wasn't what made Starlight want to vomit. It was what lay in the center of the room that was making her stomach churn with disgust and horror.

Starlight only caught a glimpse before she turned and bolted, slamming the door behind her. The image was already seared into her brain. The image of Spike lying there, of the holes, of the pink hive-like structures protruding from his open belly, of the steady stream of beetles pouring from his gaping eye sockets, of a mouth torn open into a ghoulish false grin.

A nest. The beetles had turned Spike into a nest.

Comments

[Vinyl Synth]

Somebody needs to make the last part into a picture or something, the description doesn’t feel like it’s doing the story justice.

[Butterscotch Moonglow]

9530822
I don't know, that was certainly a deliciously scary last image to end this little tale on. Personally, I'm not sure I could stand an image.

[Whiskey Tango Foxtrot]

Kill it with fire. Lots and lots of fire.