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Death awaits1,115 words
A Glorious Morning1,514 words
Lost in the Forest1,620 words
Welcome to Sunny Town1,671 words
A Grisly Find1,517 words
Run for your Life1,279 words
Escape?1,030 words
Story of the Blanks9,466 words
Credits43 words

Run for your Life

Apple Bloom took her instructions to heart, and sprinted across the bridge into the darkness beyond. Her legs pounded back and forth as she shone her torch ahead, trying to see where she was going. The fog was making it almost impossible to see where she was going as she ran for her life through the darkness. All around her were voices, speaking in many tongues and tones. The worst ones were the screams. Voices that were disembodies floated through the air, tones of death and voices begging for their lives to be ended from the pain.

Just then, there was a loud noise echoing from the ground ahead of her. Apple Bloom stopped, to see the Earth come apart before her, and a hand smashed out of the Earth. Another of those creatures emerged, in an even worse state than before, mostly bone rather than flesh and muscle, but with the same black skin and horrifying red eyes that glowed like lamps in the night. Apple Bloom ran around it and continued down the path. She was regretting ever doing this. She had run off from her sister and she had let her own curiosity get the better of her.

And because of it, she was going to die. One of things would get her. It was like being the player of a horror game, only this time there was no seperation between the events that were unfolding and the player. There was no screen. There were no respawns. There was no chance at trying again.

If she died, she was dead. Permanently, totally, finally dead. With absolutely no way of coming back at all.

More and more of them emerged from the blackness, staggering over like zombies. A mishmash of clothing clad them, ranging from native dress to uniforms of Union and Confederate soldiers. Reportedly a battle had been fought here during the Civil War, and it seemed now that the dead were rising to claim the bodies of the living. Gunfire suddenly echoed through the forest. It was a very familiar sound. The sound of Applejack's shotgun.

"Ah just have ta follow the sound and Ah'll be safe!" she cried, doubling her efforts to get out of this mad place. She knew she would probably be grounded for having run off, but there were worse things than being grounded, and one of them was being dead. Something she wasn't hugely keen on being right now, as she enjoyed her life, and was quite keen to get back to it.

More creatures lumbered after her, when Apple Bloom suddenly saw a discarded musket on the ground. She picked it up, and checked it. To her amazement, the weapon was loaded, ball, gunpowder and ramrod all there, and furthermore the percussion cap was set to fire. She pointed the weapon at a zombie that was close, and fired. The weapon kicked back in her shoulder, the recoil massive and violent, as huge amounts of smoke and superheated gas came out of the end of the barrel. Joining it was a tiny metal object, a minie ball from observation, which confirmed this weapon to be Civil War era. The ball flew through the air and impacted the zombie. It tore clean through the skull, leaving a splatter of flesh and dried blood as it fell, the skull disintegrating as it fell back into the Earth. With no time at all to reload, Apple Bloom dropped the musket and began to run once more, hearing more percussive bangs from a shotgun, as well as what sounded like a semi automatic rifle. Maybe Zecora was assisting in fighting these monsters off? It was something to be hopeful for, and she kept going, before suddenly more emerged from the treeline, causing her to turn and quickly run to a side path.

It was a terrible mistake, to say the least. As she cleared another few trees, one of those creatures swiped at her, and for the briefest of moments their skin made contact. Apple Bloom felt as though her arm had been set on fire, and collapsed onto the ground in agonising pain. As she brought her arm up, her skin began to turn black as the landscape around her became crimson, the colour of dried blood.

"NOOOOOOO!" she screamed, as the darkness consumed her. Scratch and bite marks appeared all over her skin as the discolouration continued. Her eyes lost their former colour, iris and eyeball changing and merging to form one colour. The colour red. The world changed to nocturnal colours in her vision, as her hair began falling out in clumps, increasingly looking torn and like tissue paper, a matted, jagged, broken mess that terminated in sharp, broken edges. Her trainers decayed, full of holes and dark in colour, as her jeans became full of holes and tears. Her shirt was a similar mess, and her bow was full of holes and torn fabric. By this point, her transformation was complete. She collapsed to the ground, her body ruined, blackened, and one of them.

She was a Blank. "No," she whispered. "This can't be it. It ain't fair!"

"It is perfectly fair," said a voice, and she looked up to see Gladstone walking toward her, still the image of death, surrounded by even more of those zombie creatures than before. "You can never leave our embrace now. But the outside world will never harm you. You can stay safe, and immortal... forever."

Applejack loaded some more shotgun shells. She was lucky Zecora had several weeks worth of ammunition here, and she could use it well. Her father had trained her to shoot, and she was very accurate by all accounts, if the steaming pile of courpses all around her was anything to go by. Just then, she heard another sound. Like a voice walking towards her. She raised the shotgun to her shoulder, and stepped forward to the clearing, expecting another of those things.

But nothing could have prepared her for what she saw. Walking (or was it staggering towards her?) was a creature with skin as black as night, covered in scars and blood, with glowing red eyes and a torn bow, as well as ripped clothing. It was her own little sister. Apple Bloom.

"A-Apple Bloom?" she gasped. "Wh-what in God's name happened ta ya?"

The creature replied, in a hoarse, yet distinct voice, that echoed of pain, and yet the signature country twang was there. "Applejack..." it wheezed. "Help... me..." It got closer and closer.

"Don't ya take another step!" Applejack demanded, closing her finger around the trigger.

"End... my... suffering..." the creature said again. "Kill... me... please..."

Tears in her eyes, Applejack nodded. "Lord, fergive me fer what Ah'm about ta do." She squeezed on the trigger, and discharged both barrels at once. The flames roared out of the barrel as the twin shotgun shells slammed into the creature, tearing it into a mass of blood and flesh as it hit the ground. It was too much, and Applejack collapsed onto her knees weeping. She had supposed to look out for Apple Bloom, but she had failed her sister completely. She had been taken by those things, and now she was dead by her own hands. Applejack knew that if she survived this night, she would be going straight to hell.

"Do not worry," said a voice behind her, a girl in an 1850s outfit with glowing eyes. "Let me take you back!"

"How?" Applejack whispered. "Ah'm a murderer. Ah just killed mah own sister!"

"Do not fear, as all can be undone," the girl said again. "Return to reality!"

Just then, all went white.

Author's Note:

Bet you didn't see the game over ending coming!

What do you think will happen? Find out tomorrow, in the concluding installment of Story of the Blanks!

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