blackpest

by mushroompone

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I'm ashamed to say that, for a time, I tucked the object away.

I don't think I really had a reason. The thing was just… I dunno. It was nagging at me, in a way. There was something so distractingly magnetic about it, as if my eyes were being physically dragged back to its dull surface by a force outside of myself.

It almost seemed to hum, to whine, to buzz against my wooden desk. I could hardly read a sentence without being drawn back to it.

Eventually, it became overwhelming. I would sit at my desk to read and just find myself staring at the object. It was like pulling a loose thread on a sweater. The longer I looked, the harder it was to look away. The closer I stared, the stranger it seemed. The longer I thought, the more my anxieties seemed centered on that hollow hunk of plastic.

So I did what any graduate student with work to do would have done: I stuck it in the bottom drawer of my desk and tried to forget about it.

That worked for a while. The drawer did not seem to hold me quite as intensely as the object itself.

What am I saying? It absolutely worked. It had gone out of my mind entirely in hardly three weeks; a side effect of my disordered mind latching onto every little event with the power of an alligator's jaws. There simply wasn't enough room for everything. The little mystery of the woods was overtaken by much more real, measurable, tangible worries.

Overtaken, that is, until I came back from shopping one afternoon.

I entered the library the way I always did: overburdened by bags of books and groceries. Something spilled onto the wood floor as I turned to close the door behind me.

Magical multi-tasking may have been a talent of Rarity’s, but it certainly wasn’t one of mine.

"Spike!" I called. "Spike, come help with the groceries! I've got frozens!"

I didn't hear anything, aside from what may have been a nervous groaning from the baby dragon.

"Spike?" I yelled again, this time less certain.

From somewhere upstairs, I could hear Spike's claws scrabbling against the floor. I was working to separate the books from the groceries when he came bouncing down the stairs, his eyes downcast and flicking back and forth with a nervous sort of speed.

He came to my side with quick and purposeful steps. His eyes never left the floor as he wordlessly began to gather the loose produce.

I stopped messing with the noisy paper bags. "What's that look for?"

Spike froze, the escaped orange in one claw. "Uh… what look?"

"The guilty look," I said. I sighed lightly and then, with my best mom voice, asked "What happened?"

"Wha-- nothing!" Spike put his tiny claws behind his back and stood up ramrod straight.

"Is something broken?" I asked, stepping forward.

Spike backed up one step. "No, I didn't break anything!"

"Did you spill something?" I asked. “Something staining?”

"No!"

"Well, what happened, then?" I demanded.

"N-nothing!"

I stared at Spike.

He tried to stare back, though his eyes quickly darted to the left.

"Do I need to get Applejack to come and give you a lecture about honesty?" I asked.

Spike swallowed hard.

"What happened?"

Spike sighed. His body sort of deflated as he realized he wasn't getting out of this one. "Well, I had this itch right in the middle of my back," he explained. "I mean right in the middle. And I couldn't reach it-- see?"

He demonstrated by reaching both claws around and grasping at the air near his back.

"Mm-hm…" I mumbled.

"So, I decided to look around for something to help me scratch it," he continued, still avoiding my eyes, "and I thought a pencil would be perfect! So I went into your study--"

I bristled at the mention of my study.

"I didn't break anything!" Spike insisted, holding both of his claws out defensively. "I just went in your desk looking for a pencil because I… I couldn't reach the ones on the top."

I clenched my teeth. "Mm-hm."

"And then when I saw you had a video game, I thought I'd… try it out." He looked down at his feet. "I'm sorry, Twilight, I was just--"

"Wait, wait--" I cut Spike off. "A… video game?"

Spike looked back up at me. "Uh… well, yeah. You had an SNES cartridge in your bottom drawer."

I knit my eyebrows together. In my head, I was running through a seemingly infinite list of acronyms, and yet couldn’t come up with a meaning for this one. "SNES?" I repeated haltingly.

Spike sighed again, this one more out of frustration than guilt. "The Super Nieghtendo? You bought me one for my birthday two years ago." Spike cocked his head. "Wait… you didn't know what it was?"

A little flicker of a memory came into my mind. Had it been Shining Armor who had mentioned it to me? Or maybe… somepony from school? Two years seemed like ages when it spanned a gap between life stages. Two years ago might as well have been last century.

But-- yes, there it was. Those grey cartridges, with the stickers on the front! The Legend of Gelda, Super Mareio Sisters… Just like the one in my desk in every way, only the one I had was missing the colorful label.

"A video game!" I exclaimed, smacking my forehead with one hoof. "Of course… just a video game…"

Even as I said it, as if trying to convince myself, that feeling came over me again. Like I was wrapped in a dense fog, or maybe up to my fetlock in swamp water. A dulling of the senses.

Barely there, of course. Nothing to worry about.

"Uh…" Spike shook his head clear of my incoherent comment. "I dunno, Twilight. It's kinda broken."

"Broken? Broken how?" I murmured, my voice hardly articulate.

I pushed past Spike on the stairs. My hooves were walking me up in unsteady, misplaced steps.

There was a buzzing, I could have sworn. This distant hum at the fringes of my mind.

Spike stood still on the bottom stair. "What about the frozens?"

I paused, turned, and cast a quick spell over the bags on the floor. They looked instantly frosty, even on the outside of the paper. Funny-- I hardly even thought about it. It was like it had just spilled out of me.

Spike crossed his arms. "How come you've never used that trick before?"

But I hardly heard his words, instead trotting down the hall and into my bedroom. The fog around me was growing denser with every step.

And the hum was getting louder.

There, beside Spike's bed, was the SNES-- another grey, plastic box with some creative patterns of scoring to make it appear futuristic. Spike had stuck the object--a cartridge, of course!--into a slot on the top.

An additional device was attached to the box by a wire. It had two large buttons and one control stick, sort of like the one used to pilot modern airships.

It was something like a miniature arcade cabinet-- I had seen those around town before. There was a piece that stuck up off the back and housed a small display. The pictures made by the game were locked behind thick, curved glass, and the machine hummed and whined and whirred almost constantly. Like a sewing machine, I guess.

The humming, yes. Very close to my ears, closer than the device was. Like a whisper right into my ear, words in a language I didn't understand.

I squinted at the display.

It was nearly completely black, with a single word printed in bold--yet stylized--white letters in the center.

"Blackpest…" I read aloud.

"I dunno what it means or anything," Spike said, having materialized beside me while I was otherwise occupied. "I think it's the name of the game, but I can't get past this part."

I kept my eyes trained on the screen. It had an odd, flickering quality, as if the heart of a hummingbird was the source of its power. Perhaps a tiny mouse on a tiny wheel.

Spike pushed in closer to me. "It doesn't do anything. It just looks like… that. None of the buttons work."

I reached out with one hoof and pressed one of the buttons.

The display sort of hiccuped, but did not advance.

I tried the next, with the same result.

I paused, then mashed down both buttons and used my magic to spin the control stick in circles. The display flickered a few times, but steadied itself.

"I tried that!" Spike complained. "I tried all sorts of stuff. I think it's just busted."

I kept pounding the buttons. One, one-two-one, two-one-two, two-two--

"Twilight!" Spike pulled me off the buttons.

I stopped to look him in the eye. The humming seemed to ebb.

"I tried that, I told you," Spike explained, his claw retreating guiltily.

"But-- but--" My gaze dragged itself back to the display. "But why would it be like that?"

Spike scratched his head. "Well, I dunno. Maybe the stuff inside's messed up."

"Inside…" I repeated.

I used my magic to yank the cartridge out of the console and peered into its open edge. All those little metal strips, all the electronics rattling around inside… anything could be wrong. So many little pieces…

"Yeah… inside," Spike repeated. He reached out and put a claw on my shoulder. "Say, Twilight: where'd you get that thing, anyway? It doesn't have a sticker."

The question took a little too long to pierce through the fog and reached my mind.

"I found it," I responded, muddled and delayed.

Spike's claw withdrew from my shoulder. "Uh… where?"

"The woods."

"The woods?"

Hm.

Was that strange?

I looked down at Spike.

He had this sort of terror in his eyes. The kind of terror that comes when the pony closest to you is acting just a little bit off, just a little bit screwy; a desire to reach out, and instinct to run away.

It was strange. And he was scared for me.

I clucked my tongue and forced an uncertain laugh. "Oh, come on, Spike," I said, waving a hoof dismissively. "You can find all kinds of stuff in the woods. Bottles, and... and rocks, and photos, and--"

"Yeah, and cursed stuff, maybe!" Spike folded his claws together and took two steps away from me.

The fear was growing.

Calm down, Twilight. For SPike, you have to calm down.

I sighed. "That's not how curses work. You can't curse just anything, it has to be constructed with certain magical elements."

Spike sighed wearily and put his face in his claws.

Perhaps it wasn't the comfort he wanted, but I could see him relax as I turned over into lecture mode. The words tumbled out of my mouth as I stared at the cartridge, turning it over and over in my magic.

"If not constructed with magical elements, a cursed object has to be targeted," I explained, all of it low and breathy. "There's just no way anypony could have known I'd be in the right place at the right time, let alone that I'd pick up and activate the object properly. It can't be cursed… it wouldn't make sense."

Spike peered at me through his claws. "Only you could make curses sound boring."

I said nothing.

What was in there? The inside of this thing was so dark… anything could be in there.

"Well…" Spike cleared his throat. "What are you gonna do with it?"

I held the object--Blackpest, as I suppose it was called--away from my face and considered its construction. There wasn't a lot holding it together, after all. Just two small screws and I'd be able to get a look at whatever was inside.

"I guess I'll open it up," I said. "Maybe I'll be able to fix it."

Spike narrowed his eyes. "Well, what does it matter? It's not like you play video games."

I cocked my head and watched as Spike toddled out of the room. "You're not curious?" I called after him.

He took another step backwards. "Huh-uh. No way, Twilight-- I've heard enough campfire stories to know that no video game is worth the curse."

"I told you, it isn't--"

Spike made a final sound, almost scolding me for continuing. His footsteps fell into an odd little rhythm as he descended the stairs. He could be a pragmatic little dragon when he put his mind to it. There weren't many ponies his age that would turn down a game.

He never was one to be especially curious, I suppose.

I, on the other hoof…

Now that I was thinking about it, really focusing on it... the game cartridge even felt strange in my magic. Where the feeling came from, I couldn't say. It was rather like having déjà vu, I suppose; utterly unable to be defined, and yet certain. A difference, or perhaps a familiarity, that could never be named.

The display on Spike's console may have been blank, but it, too, seemed to still be flickering. As if it were trying with all its might to show me something, but couldn't bring it to the surface. Like a little spark of the game was still inside.

I could feel it.

I could feel… something.

A little spark of… of something!

"Spike?" I called.

Even from here, I could hear Spike's sigh. "I'm putting the groceries away!"

"Okay…" I murmured.

Something… something!

The feeling was familiar. Adjacent to familiar, really. It itched at the corners of my mind, gently but insistently. Like smelling something you hadn't smelled since childhood. Like that last question on an exam you know you studied, and just can't bring to bear. Like trying to remember a very old song.

Two screws.

That's all that held it together: two screws.

I could open it now… right now, with a little magic and a clear space.

The static was wrapping me up again. The fog so dense I couldn't see my hoof in front of my face.

Everything I heard had the same distant and tinny sound.

Everything I felt had the same warm and muggy film.

Everything I saw was of the same washed-out tone.

And yet, I hardly noticed it.

I wandered to the door of the bedroom very slowly, and pricked one ear up.

Spike was dutifully putting away groceries, as evidenced by the rustling of paper bags and the gentle sounds of his claws on the tile. I had to strain to make them out, but they were unmistakable.

He was acting out a punishment I hadn't even given, I thought. What a strange thing for him to do.

Kind of unlike him.

I said nothing of it, just walked back over to my desk and placed the game down in the middle of the wood.

The screws had nothing to set a screwdriver into, no little 'x' or line or foreign polygon for grip. They were perfectly smooth on the top. Little half-domes. Impossible to remove without magic.

A challenge. A special one, just for me.

I lit my horn and wrapped my magical grasp around the top of one screw. It came out quite easily.

Encouraged, I moved to the other screw, pulled it out, and set it beside the first.

The top of the cartridge made a little click as it unlatched from the bottom, and I pulled the game apart.

The inside was… well, let's say it appeared to be quite underwhelming. Exactly what you'd expect of something like it: a little green board, with a few black microprocessors plugged into it here and there, a few golden threads running from one side to the other. It reached down to the bottom edge of the cartridge with golden fingers, kind of like a fork.

It looked quite normal.

How to explain this to a non-unicorn…

If you've ever been to a Nightmare Night party, especially one for little foals, you probably put your hoof in a bowl of peeled grapes. It's a fairly popular game for light-hearted scares; take a regular object, like grapes or spaghetti, but make it feel as if it's eyeballs or guts. A well-placed sign, or a cleverly-told story, and even the smartest foal will believe you whole-heartedly.

A little bit of suggestion. That's all it takes. I tell you it's worms, and by gum you'll believe it.

The suggestion, here, was of a video game. I knew what one should look like on the inside, as I'd seen it in several reference books on circuitry. It looked precisely as I might have expected. That was the clever part.

But the suggestion was not the truth of it.

Or, I suppose, it was a half-truth. The game was still a game-- even if it was an unfinished one. It fit into Spike's console, it loaded up a believable title screen. Anypony with any experience in video games would have done just as Spike had: declare it broken and move on, perhaps a little disappointed, but certainly not willing to poke around any longer.

The whole truth, though, could only be found by a unicorn.

I reached little curling tendrils of my magic through the circuitry, poking and prodding at each element in turn. Some of it felt normal, and some of it did not.

Some of it made me smell fire.

Some of it made the humming much louder.

Some of it sent a little shockwave through me, lighting up my shoulder or my nose in an electric tingle.

And then I found it.

The little sign. The little hole in the shoebox, inviting fillies and colts to put their hooves in the bowl of maggots. A hole in the magic that said 'here, Twilight. Come take a look. Come feel it.'

It may look like rice, but I assure you: there's maggots in there.

Feel.

Feel it, Twilight.

Aren't you curious?

Go on. Feel it.

I fell backwards, and the light from my horn extinguished.

The fog dissipated.

I was breathing hard and fast. My heart was throbbing in my chest. I felt woozy, almost sick. I had never been scuba-diving, but I had to imagine this is what the bends felt like.

It was in my head, of course.

I leapt up from the floor and quickly swept the pieces of the cartridge into a drawer with one hoof. The way they clattered into the bottom made me flush with embarrassment. Such a stupid thing to be scared of. A little foal's toy, a little imagination.

It was just plastic.

I slammed the drawer shut.

Deep down, I promised myself that I'd never touch Blackpest again. Perhaps not in so many words, but in feeling.

Deeper than that, though, I knew I'd be looking forward to the next time I had the library to myself.

I was, after all, a certified magical talent.

I could take whatever this thing had to throw at me.

I was sure of it.

Comments

[Thought Prism]

Okay, now we're getting somewhere. I was almost right about what the object was, and the theme of the story seems not to be any tangible horror, but rather fear itself, entwined with the morbid curiosity and dread born of the unexplained.

[mushroompone]

10452635
Ah, as usual you're picking up exactly what I'm putting down... I'm hesitant to say more, since I don't want to end up giving away my own ending! I will say fear and paranoia is absolutely a central theme. I will also say there are some more tangible things worth being afraid of; fear must come from somewhere, after all.

[SIGAWESOME]

10452635

the theme of the story seems not to be any tangible horror, but rather fear itself

10452664

I will say fear and paranoia is absolutely a central theme.

FDR: Nothing to fear but Fear Itself
Blackpest: Y̦̗̪o̤̱̰̬̰u͓͙̯͖̼̜͡ ̳̦r̡͈͙a̫̪͕n͈̪̜̝g͇̬̝̘͎̩?̼̪

That is a pretty nasty set of symptoms there. Reminds me of a combination of Bourges' obsessive, mind enslaving Zahir and the rotting, crumbling decay caused by tin pest

[mushroompone]

10454721
This is going to sound totally sarcastic but I genuinely love it when people link me to stuff in the comments it's cool to know that what I'm writing is concrete enough to become a small part of that literary canon in a reader's mind

I would tell you what I had in mind when I came up with this story... but, again, I'm wary of giving myself away so soon! Rest assured, I'll be ready to chat when it's all wrapped up

[Ice Star]

But-- yes, there it was. Those grey cartridges, with the stickers on the front! The Legend of Gelda , Super Mareio Sisters … Just like the one in my desk in every way, only the one I had was missing the colorful label.

That first name has some very unfortunate implications.

[Moosetasm]

There's just no way anypony could have known I'd be in the right place at the right time, let alone that I'd pick up and activate the object properly.

Well, it’s a good thing Twilight doesn’t have any easily tracked habits, like taking a walk on the same day each week, at the same time, with the same route and…
Uh oh