• Published 15th Apr 2021
  • 553 Views, 20 Comments

Gifts from a friend - Element of Malice



Every time I see her face on a poster I feel compelled to ring it with flowers and write “my condolences.” I won’t have to wait much longer though, because today my passions will finally become realized.

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A gift for Fluttershy

Fluttershy’s eyes snapped open as though she had awoken from a nightmare then sagged. She was lying on the floor with the strong feeling that something was very wrong. She couldn’t remember when she had fallen asleep. More to the point, though, she found it difficult bringing herself to move.

Part of her thought it could have been sleeping paralysis but then noticed something else, making her current situation even more urgent. All of the animals in that room were sleeping as well. It was unheard of for all of them to be asleep at any given time, a few maybe but not every single one. There was always the hustle and bustle from one critter or another doing other things, but it was silent, and, for once, Fluttershy found that terrifying.

She had to get up and find out what was wrong, but she could barely move more than a few inches. Fluttershy didn’t feel tired. She was as alert as ever. So why was she so hesitant to move?

Eventually, her will managed to win out, getting her legs under her body and heaved with all the strength she could muster, only managing to get her belly just over an inch off the ground.

Why… can’t I… move? Proving to be too much effort, she slumped back to the floor.

She heard hoof steps approaching her cottage door, filling her with relief. She hoped whoever it was would come inside and see she was in trouble. “Help… me…” Her words might as well have been a squeaky floorboard from how soft it was.

The hoofsteps stopped just outside her door. Oh, dear. I think it’s still locked! That didn’t matter for long as the pony outside unlocked the door with magic, trotting in without knocking.

Fluttershy suddenly got a gut feeling that they weren’t there to help and immediately felt unsafe. She watched the black hooves of a midnight blue stallion come into view and stop right in front of her. The pegasus strained to look up at the intruders’ face.

Please be friendly. Please be friendly. Please be friendly.

“My, my. It looks like I arrived just in time.” His words gave off a respectful impression, yet it also sounded malicious. “Hmm, you’re looking a little more active than I was expecting. Let’s fix that, shall we?”

He lifted his hoof and brought it up to an end table, sliding off a particular flower pot Fluttershy recently acquired that morning, smashing it on the ground. She found it on her doorstep with a small note saying: ‘A gift to you from a friend.’ She would have to apologize to them later. If she ever found out who it was.

On the floor in front of her, the flower pot laid in a heap of dirt and broken pottery. Fluttershy looked at the flowers impressively shaped in the likeness of her and her five friends. She had plans to plant their seeds in her garden and eventually surprise her friends with them.

She inhaled the aroma they gave off, making her body relax even farther than it already was. Wait, were they the reason for her weariness?

"Who… Who are…"

“I’m sorry, what? You’ll have to speak up. I can barely hear you,” the stallion said mockingly, putting his ear close to Fluttershy. He then chuckled at his own joke, leaving her on the ground and going over to the window.

“I’m kidding. I know what you’re trying to ask me. You want to know who I am, why you can’t move, all that fun stuff.” The stallion opened the window, then sat on the sofa. “Consider me….a friend.” He gave a pause as though he expected her to know what he meant. “Maybe I should be a little more explanatory.”

The note from the flower pot levitated and was set in front of Fluttershy’s face. It was then adjusted slightly to the side.

“It’s not blocking your view of me, is it?” The ‘friendly’ unicorn said. “I want to make sure you have a good look at your killer before you die. It should be obvious by now. I’m the one who gave you those flowers. Do you like them? I made them especially for you.”

He waved his hooves above his head like he was giving a front page headliner, “Eternal Sleep. It has a nice ring to it, don’t you think? The pollen releases natural particles that cause the body to relax. It’s relatively harmless in small doses, and some could even use it as a sleeping aid. However, prolonged exposure, as you can tell, will eventually lead to muscular fatigue. After some time, you fall asleep, then your heart relaxes and…

He paused briefly, as his smile took on a more sinister edge. “You never wake up.”

They’re not sleeping. Fluttershy thought about all of her animals lying still around the room, finally noticing neither their mouths nor chests were moving. And at that moment, Fluttershy felt a rage burn within her. She would not let such a crime go unpunished.

Fluttershy attempted to stand again, and this time she nearly made it. She stood only a few inches short from her full standing height, sweat dripping from her brow.

“Wow. You are way more resilient than I took you for. Why is that, I wonder? How is it that you are resisting…? Ah, I got it! Your proximity to the Everfree Forest probably exposes you to potentially hazardous substances every single day! No wonder it’s taking so long!” He slyly grinned.

Seeing it made Fluttershy feel sick with hatred as she furiously glared at him with all her wrath directed at him.

“Yes, yes! There it is! There's the famous Stare I have heard oh-so-much about!”

The stallion eagerly hopped off the couch and closely examined Fluttershy’s spiteful expression. “Marvelous. Fascinating. Remarkable!” He gently moved her head, looking at her stare from multiple different angles in awe. She wanted to slap his hooves away from her face, fight him, and throw him out of her home. But it took all the strength she had just to keep from losing her balance.

"My… real friends… they will…."

"Your… your what? Your ‘real friends’?” He laughed like she'd told him a joke. “My dear, you don’t have those. Not anymore. Not after what I did to them.”

Fluttershy’s face fell as did her ambition, looking at him in disbelief. He spoke on her behalf, mimicking her voice.

“Why? Why would you do something so awful? Have you no shame? What did we ever do to you?”

He then went back to his regular voice to answer. “Oh my dear, you did nothing. There was only one I was truly after, and I am going to eradicate all remnants of their existence and everything they achieved because they never deserved it!”

“I can probably guess what you’re thinking about saying right now.” He briefly imitated Fluttershy again. “‘What would your mother say about this?’ If mother were here... maybe I wouldn’t be so lonely. Maybe dad wouldn’t have rejected me. Maybe he wouldn’t have abandoned me on the steps of a stranger in the dead of night.” He sounded angrier as he went down the list.

“Maybe I wouldn’t have been excluded by all the other foals my age. Maybe, maybe, maybe! Forget what could have been. This is here and now! And right now, the past is catching up to my sworn nemesis!”

The stallion lightly kicked Fluttershy’s hooves from under her, knocking her back to the ground with little effort. He then sat on the couch again next to the window and breathed the fresh air.

Fluttershy landed next to the toxic flowers, breathing heavily from exhaustion, feeling her body affected more by their pollen.

“Let me tell you a story. When I was a foal… No, what you heard earlier isn't part of what I'm about to tell you, though that is also true.” He smiled and lay back on the couch with his hooves behind his head, looking at the ceiling.

“Anyway, at an early age, I dreamed of going to Celestia’s School For Gifted Unicorns. Sound familiar?”

He looked expectantly at the mare like she would agree with him but was disappointed by what he saw. “Oh, come on, Fluttershy, you know this. That should have given it away like a rosebush in a daisy field. Think, use your head, who do you know that had a similar— Yes, her.”

"Twilight Sparklypants. Get it? Smartypants and Sparkle put together? Forget it, moving on. You wouldn’t believe just how talented I was for my age back in the day. I could - and still can - recite by memory paragraphs from books that even grown-ups had trouble reading. But I didn’t just read. I recreated what I learned and turned it into my own experience.”

The fiendish stallion gave a nostalgic sigh. “So many wonderful memories. When the testing day finally came around, determining whether I could attend the school, I knew I would pass with flying colors. What I didn't expect were the judges being so impressed they congratulated my skills. They said, 'You’re eligible to become Celesta’s next protege.’ Is this making sense to you yet?”

Fluttershy was getting very peeved. Did this guy ever shut up? This stranger barged into her home, mur… Murdered her animal friends, and started gloating about how special he is! But she was powerless to stop him. Fluttershy used up all her strength the first time she stood against this monster in pony skin. Even though she was trying to stand again, her body may as well have been glued to the floor.

“Well, it’s about time. That took much longer for the narcotic effects to kick in than it should have. I guess I should wrap this up before you go to sleep permanently.” He used magic to pull Fluttershy’s limp body up by the neck, but not in a harmful way.

“Twilight Sparkle never deserved to be Celestia’s protege.” He slowly closed in on Fluttershy. “She stole that from me! Back then, I thought, ‘Oh, okay, I guess she’s better than I am.’” He paused, then let out a sinister chuckle. “But after the Nightmare Moon incident and every other world-ending crisis that followed, I learned that it was an unfair situation! I came to realize back then she had magical potential, yes, but Celestia didn’t even look at what I could do. Her so-called ‘demonstration’ was nothing but a freak accident! Twilight had no control over her magic! I did! I would have been the one chosen for greatness, not her!

"I would have finally been noticed for the talent and greatness I was born with." His voice trembled as he spoke, struggling to suppress all the emotional pains he had felt throughout his life.

He stopped right in front of Fluttershy, putting his face inches away from hers, forcing her to look into his dark yellow eyes.

He spoke again, lowering his voice. “And don’t you even think it was a one-time event. I tried to be her friend for years. But the only way she could ever have noticed me was if I was made of parchment wrapped between two bindings! To her, like everypony else, I didn’t exist.”

He paused, taking a deep breath to calm himself from his crescendoing outburst. “All the while, after she moved to Ponyville, it seemed every month there would be yet another article about ‘Twilight and her ‘friends’ saves Equestria again.’ Then to rub it in, she becomes an alicorn! If I had gotten my hooves on that scroll instead of Celesta’s pride and joy, I would have solved it in half the time she did and been the one everyone was talking about.”

Finished with his rant, he gave a sadistically charming smile. The stallion gently brushed Fluttershy’s hair behind her ear and softly stroked her cheek. He then tenderly lifted her chin.

Fluttershy gave a weak moan as she strained to keep her eyes open, but she was quickly losing the battle. She couldn't even gather the strength to spit on him, and she so wanted to.

“And to think, in another timeline, I would've been considered one of your ‘real friends.’ Who am I kidding? From the moment I laid eyes on you, I would have even asked you to be my fiance. Too bad that’s all in the past. No hard feelings really, I just took into account that if I only went after Twilight, you and the gang would have banded together and defeated me before I got my chance to shine. But the way I see it, this is proof that I am superior to her and you in every way, succeeding where all those other fools had failed. Oh, they will be talking about this for generations.”

Without warning, the stallion pulled Fluttershy into an embrace. In response her muscle memory tensed as it would if cold, wet, slimy tentacles were wrapping around her body.

Hearing Fluttershy rapidly breathing uneven breaths, the stallion started softly shushing her and stroking her main. “You’re okay, you understand me after all, right? you spend a lot of time alone.” She did calm down but that didn’t mean she was any less horrified about being this close to this embodiment of a nightmare. “For so long, that's how I’ve felt. I'm tired of being nothing and considered less than an afterthought, but right now with you, I feel complete.”

A muffled boom sounded in the distance making the stallion’s smile just a bit wider and much more sinister.

“And it sounds like Twilight... is history.”

Fluttershy did the only thing she could do and closed her eyes. That was moments before she felt his lips press against hers. She had never been so terrified in her life, but her body was too weak to even shake. There was no hope of preventing him from doing whatever he wanted to her. And after what he had just said, the things that came to mind were anything but pleasant.

He eventually pulled away, then maneuvered to Fluttershy’s side. “I know what you’re thinking, but don’t worry yourself. True, I may be a vengeful murderer merely seeking much-deserved attention, but even I wouldn’t stoop to that.” The stallion actually seemed to retch at having to even allude to the act, offering her a single look of pity.

The stallion nuzzled her, sliding his hoof to her cheek, causing it to pull against her throat, slightly tilting her head to the side. He then sniffed her mane before whispering into her ear. “Sweet dreams, my little angel. You’ll be with all your ‘real friends’ soon enough.”

The pegasus was let go, and she hit the ground, her consciousness beginning to fade. A tear escaped from the corner of her eye. She was going to die alone in her cottage. How long would it be before someone else found her?

The stallion went to the window, closed it, leaving the normally vibrate cottage deathly silent. “I’ll make sure your funeral’s a blast. After all, you can’t spell funeral without ‘fun.’ Ha-ha-ha!"

As he walked away, the last thing she heard was him singing to the tune of a nursery rhyme in a melancholy tone.

“Six little presents lined in a row, all wrapped up with a scarlet bow…."


The first one helps to clean your room

Use it too much, and it’ll go boom


The second is a dress that fits just right

But the necklace might be a little too tight


The third one helps at the apple farm

Work it too long, and it’ll cause you harm


The fourth is a nice and sugary treat

That will mince you up like a piece of meat


The fifth helps you to fly so high

But go too fast, you’ll fall and die.


The sixth gift is by far the best

Just close your eyes and lay to rest