Quills and Sofas Anthology

by Scrying Mind

Nightmares

Shadow Lock bolted upright in his bed, sweating. It had been two months since Twilight and her friends stopped him at the museum, and his nights had only gotten worse. First it was nightmares every week, then every few nights, and soon after he found himself tossing and turning every single night. He hadn’t had a peaceful night’s rest in a full three weeks.

He was losing it; he knew that. His mane and tail were knotted and disheveled, he stumbled as he walked, and his blood-red eyes had deep, dark bags beneath them.

If he could just wake up, everything would be fine. Coffee. He needed coffee.

Without getting out of bed, he started a fire and got the water boiling. He didn’t need to get up; he had dragged his bed over to his stove sometime the previous week. Then he made sure to keep a full pot of water ready before he went to bed. Falling back asleep before he had the energy to go make his coffee... It had happened more times than he cared to think about.

It was a team of bank robbers this time. Every single night, he would be haunted by one of the figures he had pulled off of pages to fight for him. And if he could remember any of the poor stories he’d erased, he knew they would call on him, cursing the name “Shadow Lock.”

So much for traveling. So much for finding...whatever it was he wanted to find. Now he just sat in his little rented room, shaking and spluttering, usually too afraid to walk out the door. Perhaps he would see whatever thing his ancestor had become, calling on him to be next. Worse, he might see the princess and her friends; they might see the failure he was and the promises he had broken.

The kettle was screaming at him. He slowly raised himself to his feet and shakily measured out twice the amount of coffee grounds recommended for the water he was using. He carefully pressed and poured his coffee, but his levitation spell flickered and sent his mug to the counter with a clatter. It fell upright, and only a small stain lay next to it, but Shadow Lock decided to use his hooves to drink.

He scribbled a note in his journal; it had become simply a string of numbers counting the hours he slept each night. Four, two, nine, seven, three, one, and now another four. It wasn’t good, but it could be worse.

At least he was starting to feel more awake.

“Lock?”

His landlord, Hooves, was calling to him through the door. Shadow Lock considered ignoring him, but there was no way he could pretend he was out. He dragged open the heavy wooden door and squinted. He could barely focus on the earth pony with those bright flashing lights and electric currents assaulting his eyes from the room behind.

“Ah, Mr. Lock,” Hooves said. “Are you doing quite well?”

“Yeah... Yeah, I’m fine.” Shadow Lock said. “What’s this about? Have I bothered you?”

“No, you haven’t.” Hooves thought for a moment. “Well, you were making quite a stir last night.”

Shadow Lock winced. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to.”

“I didn’t say you did. In fact, I’m worried about you, and so is Derpy. My friend. Have you met her?”

“I haven’t.”

“She asked me to invite you to lunch today. I thought it might be nice for you to get out of that room.”

“You...told her I was living here? What if she tells somepony else? What if Twilight—”

“It’s fine, I didn’t tell her your name,” Hooves said. “With your insistence that Twilight didn’t know you were here, I find it difficult to understand why you chose to stay in Ponyville.”

Because it’s out of the way, and I didn’t know where else to go.

“Will you come with us?”

“No, I won’t.”

Hooves sighed, shrugged, and looked over Shadow Lock’s shoulder. Into his room. The unicorn could tell that he was judging it. But he wasn’t looking at the moved bed; he was looking at the sad, empty bookshelves.

Shadow Lock used to love reading. He would lose himself in stories day in and day out. The reason he started learning bibliomancy in the first place was to meet his heroes. But ever since he found that cursed book—ever since he found out he was descended from a monster—he couldn’t enjoy reading. He started on his quest of erasure, and he hadn’t actually read a book since.

“Take my library card.” Hooves dropped the small piece of plastic into his hoof. “It can’t be good for you to sit locked in that room all day doing nothing. And if running into Twilight or her friends is a concern, just go out on a weekend; they’ll probably be off on some kind of adventure.”

Hooves walked away, leaving Shadow Lock staring at the familiar rectangular card. He thought of all the thinking and the lack of sleep. He couldn’t take it anymore; he couldn’t take the nothing.

Reading just one story couldn’t hurt.

Author's Note:

Written for the Quills and Sofas Monday Mornings contest on 12/12/2022.

The prompt for this story was "Mornings".