Part III
"You don't have to do this, Applejack," Rarity reminded her friend softly.
"Nonsense," Applejack said, shaking her head. "If my stayin' here gives you any peace of mind at all, it'll be worth it."
Rarity smiled to herself. "That's very sweet of you to say," she whispered. "But, really. It's too much."
"It ain't!" Applejack insisted. "Would you look? I'm gettin' into bed right now. Not a hardship."
To prove her point, Applejack tore back the covers of Sweetie's old bed, revealing soft, shell-pink sheets. The subtle scent of lavender rose from the bedding as she did so. While a bit stale, it still felt clean, and Applejack made a show of breathing it in.
Rarity rolled her eyes. "For goodness' sake…" she muttered.
Applejack looked back at Rarity, stuck out her tongue, and leapt into the bed with all four hooves.
The mattress catapulted her back into the air, along with one of the two pillows and the topmost blanket. Rarity made a sound of disgust--the most like herself she'd sounded all day--and pounded her hoof on the floor, but Applejack landed square in the center of the mattress, looking quite pleased with herself.
"Brute," Rarity commented snidely.
Applejack shimmied down further. "A comfy brute," she corrected, reaching down to tug the covers up to her chest.
"Well," Rarity huffed, with a theatrical toss of her mane. "Let's not test the springs any more than we already have, yes?"
"Ugh." Applejack pulled the blanket up to her chin. "Yes, ma'am."
Rarity smiled, though it was something of a grim thing. A sad thing. She looked down at Applejack, all snug in her sister's old bed, and she forced herself to smile.
Applejack suddenly felt like quite the intruder.
She pushed herself up into a sitting position, to the protest of the bedsprings. "I just… want you to know I've got your back."
Rarity's smile dissolved. She stared at her friend, but didn't say a word-- only nodded ever so slightly, barely even noticeable.
"And, uh…" Applejack cleared her throat. "Y'know, however tonight goes… I believe you."
"Mm."
Rarity's face tensed, and her eyes slipped back down to the floor.
"I'm sorry," Applejack said. "Was that not--"
"No," Rarity said, shaking her head vigorously. She sniffed once, light and ladylike. "No, no."
She went silent.
Applejack looked down at her hooves, dark and old against the youthful patterning on Sweetie’s foalhood sheets. “I just mean… Even if this is somethin’ you’re imagining, for whatever reason, I’m happy to be here,” she said. “As a… a touchstone, I guess.”
Rarity pursed her lips and nodded her head. “Of course.”
“Not that I think you’re imagining things,” Applejack said quickly. “I think… maybe you think you’re imagining things,”
Rarity scoffed and rolled her eyes, glimmers of her old self in the way she jutted one hip out. “For pony’s sake, Applejack.”
“Well, I dunno where your head’s at, Rarity!” Applejack exclaimed, throwing her hooves in the air. “All this mindless chit-chat… I dunno what’s got you all twisted up in the first place.”
“I told you,” Rarity said, “I’m overworked.”
“Now, I know that ain’t it.” Applejack leaned forward a little further, resting her forehooves on the smooth bedding. “All due respect, sugar cube, but I know when you’re lyin’. Or when you ain’t tellin’ the whole truth.”
Rarity closed her eyes and set her jaw. Her face flashed with that special breed of exasperation reserved for the teachers of very young students, or perhaps those retail workers unfortunate enough to have an encounter with an overly privileged customer.
Applejack huffed softly. “Why don’t you come here,” she said, patting the mattress beside her, “and talk to me about it?”
“There simply isn’t anything to talk about,” Rarity murmured. She took a small step back from the mattress, head turned away from Applejack. “I’m just… I’m getting old, darling.”
Applejack furrowed her brows, but said nothing.
“I’m getting old, and I’m alone here day in, day out, and--” She cut herself off. Took a steadying breath. “It’s hard not to feel lonely.”
She glanced up at Applejack, no more than a moment. Then, without another word, she started for the door at a brisk walk.
Applejack leaned forward, intending to say more and not managing even a single word.
Rarity paused at the door, one hoof on the frame. "Thank you. This means more than you know," she said.
Then she pulled the door closed behind her.
And Applejack was alone.
She stayed upright longer than she had intended, poised just so, waiting for Rarity to return.
It was hard to understand. Sure, saying goodbye to friends and siblings as they departed from the tiny town of Ponyville was hard, but they were still there. Perhaps not right in front of her, or just down the road, but they were still out there. They would come home-- either in bits and pieces through letters and souvenirs, or all at once come the holidays.
That, plus the fact that Applejack was still just down the road from Rarity.
That she was here. Here instead of working. For two whole days.
And yet, Rarity still felt lonely.
It was hard not to feel at least the tiniest bit bitter about that, even though Applejack knew that wasn’t fair. She couldn’t exactly put into words why it wasn’t fair, but she knew better than to start getting petty with a pony so beaten down.
After a minute or two of silence, Applejack slipped back under the covers.
Being alone in another pony's home was always a strange feeling. Even in Rarity's home, which was very familiar to her, Applejack felt uncomfortably exposed.
She tugged the covers up as high as they would go and rolled onto her side.
Out the window, Applejack could see the bottom curve of the enormous full moon. It cast yellow light, sparkling and diffuse, down onto Sweetie Belle's carpet, illuminating the dust motes in-between. They floated peacefully and silently against the peeling violet wallpaper. They reminded Applejack of stars, even though stars didn't move.
Applejack twisted her hooves into the blankets and held still, gazing out the window into the night. Rarity had quite a nice view of the forest from here, after all. Picturesque.
And so quiet.
Applejack curled into herself and listened. Intently and astutely. She would uphold her end of the bargain most certainly, listening carefully for any sign of an intruder. Or… other assorted funny business.
The gentle expansion of the fluff in Sweetie's pillow crackled in Applejack's ears, her thrumming heart turning it to a pulse, as if somepony were walking through drifts of crisp autumn leaves. She was also keenly aware of her own breath, steady and soft as it was; the deep quiet of the Carousel Boutique made even the slightest wheeze of Applejack's dust-aggravated lungs sound like the whirring of an old electric fan.
There came a creak.
Just one long one. No rhythm to it. Applejack recognized it as Rarity's bedsprings, and figured that the mare had completed her bedtime mane routine and tucked herself in.
Though Applejack couldn't quite put her hoof on why, she felt a wave of relief as she realized that Rarity was under the covers. The logic of a young foal who thought blankets to be the ultimate shield against things which go bump in the night.
Of course, the blanket shield would do nothing against a real intruder. But it still felt safe, somehow.
Applejack took the moment to squirm into a more comfortable position before resuming her guardianship.
The house was still a deathly quiet.
Beyond the house's walls, Applejack could sense the steady hum of chirping crickets. Though each on its own was a manic little thing, they came together in a great wall of sound, like the roar of a crowd at a buckball match. Even so, the sound was muffled by the Boutique's walls, and instead came through like the rasp of a distant machine.
Applejack closed her eyes and tried to filter out the sound of the crickets. Without a sound inside to compare against, though, she found the task nearly impossible.
She began to hum, just little tuneless pops of sound to keep her grounded. The crickets started to fade away.
Then she heard it.
The sound was difficult to describe. Kind of a… kind of a whooshing, windy noise, but less tangible. You hear wind because it's rushing past or over something, but this seemed like somepony's crude approximation of wind, as if they were pronouncing a very literal onomatopoeia out of a comic book.
Whoosh.
Low and quick.
And then, much clearer, hoofsteps.
Somepony walking. Of that, Applejack was entirely certain: she knew the sound of her own hoofsteps on Rarity's floor quite well, and she recognized them now.
She held perfectly still.
The pillow moaned its low static into her ear.
Her heart thudded. Each squeeze a stab of fuzzy sound in her ear.
The hoofsteps downstairs were deliberate. They wasted no time in walking through the entryway, never pausing or hesitating, and beginning to climb the stairs.
Applejack gasped lightly and yanked the covers up over her head.
Impenetrable.
The hooves slowly climbed the stairs. Not hesitating, merely patient. Leisurely. Tired, almost.
While most of her adrenaline-flooded mind screamed at Applejack to get up, to run to the door, to do the thing she had agreed to do, she found herself frozen.
Paralyzed.
Under the covers, air getting hotter as she breathed more fervently, panic building in every desperate pant, heat building faster, blankets sucking around her snout. She felt as if she were choking, drowning, gasping and spluttering at a volume that would surely have her discovered.
The presence on the stairs was not deterred.
The hoofsteps drew closer.
Closer.
Approaching the door to Sweetie's room.
Applejack's breathing quickened ever more, and she reflexively jammed her hoof in her mouth to quiet it.
Closer.
Closer.
Passing by.
Moving away, now.
And onto the next door.
Rarity, she thought, though less the word-- just the shape of her. A rubber stamp Rarity pounded against the inside of her skull.
As Applejack predicted, the steps stopped in front of Rarity's door. There came a gentle rattling, like the clumsy twisting of a doorknob, then the slow creak of a door swinging open.
Applejack couldn't make out any of the finer details over her panicked breathing, but she could have sworn Rarity moved or spoke or something. The hoofsteps wandered softly into the room, and the door clicked shut behind them.
Still paralyzed with fear, all Applejack could do was listen.
No.
Not paralyzed.
Not natural at all.
Held.
Held steady in place, like a shackled criminal or a patient in a straightjacket. Only not that at all-- everything. Every muscle held firm. Every joint locked in place.
The blanket over her.
Like a corpse.
She waited for shrieking and shouting. For guttural and gruesome sounds on the other side of the wall. For some sign that the intruder was having their way with Rarity, bloody as that way might be.
But the bedsprings creaked gently.
And all was quiet once again.
Applejack waited. She could do nothing else, only meditate in the sheer zen of total terror on what it might be like to be a dead body on a silver table. How one might still be able to gaze up through the sheet at the glaring fluorescent lights, umoving, unblinking, and yet undeniably there for every second of it.
Then, all at once, the pressure released.
Like a gentle exhale. A soft sigh. All the tension simply rushed away.
Applejack thrashed forward, her limbs pedaling through the blanket as she sucked in a lungful of cool air. Though her hooves were briefly tangled up in the covers, she fought valiantly through it and dropped to the floor like a sack of potatoes.
This only knocked the wind out of her a second time, and she gasped on the carpet like a fish out of water for a terrible moment.
Without a second thought, she scrambled to her hooves and dove for the door.
She fell into it with one shoulder, hard and heavy, and tried desperately to get a proper grip on the smooth metallic doorknob. Her hooves slipped and slid against the surface like ice. The mechanism rattled under her, trying to obey, when she finally caught hold and--
Nothing.
Applejack froze a moment, staring down at the doorknob in dumbfounded confusion.
Once the realization set in, she began to shake it with all her might.
Locked.
Locked into Sweetie Belle’s foalhood bedroom as an intruder sat on the end of Rarity’s bed, doing Celestia-knows what to--
Applejack shook the knob harder.
Why would Sweetie’s bedroom lock from the outside anyway?
Who would dare lock her into her room?
Certainly not Rarity.
Did it even--
Applejack released the knob.
She fell back one unsteady step, and her eyes scanned the smooth interior of the door for any sort of disruption. A latch, perhaps. A chain. Any sort of pregnant bulge from inside of the door, one which might be disguising a locking mechanism.
Doubting her eyes, she ran her hooves over the door.
No lock at all.
Barricaded.
Was that possible?
How?
Applejack didn’t care to figure it out.
She threw her shoulder into the door, and felt it miraculously absorb everything she had without even shaking on its hinges. Like a cinderblock wall.
She tried again.
Thud.
Thud.
Thud.
No motion whatsoever. No sense of motion, only a growing bruise about the size of a dinner plate under her peachy fur.
Applejack tried to cry out, but found that her voice was about as useful as the hinges on the door she’d just finished throwing herself into. Only a short, raspy, cough squeezed out as she tried to shout Rarity’s name.
Fine.
Brute force, then.
Applejack came away from the door and turned in a tight circle.
She crouched low.
Lined up her shot. Rear hooves at the ready, preparing to kick with all their might.
She didn’t notice it at first. At least, not in that way that caused her heart to stop.
As Applejack prepared to buck the door down, come hell or high water, she happened to look out of the window on the other side of the room. The one which had previously framed twinkling stars, and a beautifully peaceful swirl of violet through the night sky, friendly tufts of dark green trees peeking up from the forest beyond.
She saw that it was now pitch black.
But it took a moment for the fear to kick in.
She realized it mid-buck, and it caused her to falter-- though not before she gave the door half of a mighty kick. It sent an impact shock vibrating up her spine and very nearly sent her toppling over, had she not been so focused on that true darkness beyond the Carousel Boutique.
After shaking off the shock of the kick, Applejack crossed the room.
She likely should have hesitated.
But she crossed the room with no more trepidation than a foal watching a kite soar through the blue.
To her surprise, the latch on the window unhooked without any trouble at all.
She pushed the window out into the nightless night.
The word that came to her first was ‘empty’. And, perhaps, that was the only word which was needed; after all, if something is truly devoid of all light and sound and feeling, it shouldn’t need any other descriptors.
Applejack closed her eyes, shook her head, and reached slowly out the window with one uncertain hoof.
Not a whisper of a breeze.
Not the faintest whiff of fresh, night air.
Not a flicker of light or even the chirp of a single, lonely insect.
Just
nothing.
Applejack pulled her hoof back in as if from a hot stove. She stared out into the expanse, searching for even the tiniest imperfection she might be able to latch onto.
Nothing.
And yet
it seemed
to suck the air out of the room.
Applejack squeezed her eyes shut and, not daring to look down, pulled the window shut again.
The sounds of the Boutique rushed to meet her. She hadn’t realized they had receded.
She opened her eyes.
“Okay,” she whispered to herself, eyes still locked onto that endless dark past the window. “Okay. You’re dreamin’. You’re dreamin’, AJ.”
She looked down at the floor and tried to force herself to laugh, though nothing managed to squeak out at all.
“The day you’ve had-- must be dreamin’,” she joked.
Nopony laughed.
She shook her head. “Just gotta wake up, then.”
Her voice did not echo in this tiny room. This tiny room for a tiny foal.
A tiny foal who didn’t live here anymore.
Applejack patted her cheek with one hoof. “Go on, now,” she encouraged. “Wake up.”
She swallowed hard, the lump of terror in her throat barely budging.
“Wake up, now,” Applejack hissed through clenched teeth. She kept hammering her hoof against her cheek, trying to send a strong enough jolt through her face that she might suddenly find herself bolt upright in Sweetie’s bed--or, hay, perhaps her own bed at home--drenched in sweat but undeniably safe. “Wake up. Wake up.”
She crossed the room, once more, working up a good pace.
Hooves pounding along the wood floor.
A familiar sound. A familiar rhythm.
“Wake up,” she spat, giving herself a smack just short of a punch. “Wake up!”
She grit her teeth.
She tried to focus on her breathing, to bring back any semblance of calm or collectedness which might have once existed.
“Consarnit, wake up!” she shouted, bringing her front hooves down on the floor in a thunderous sound.
Nothing.
She drew in a breath, and it wheezed against the lump in her throat.
No way out.
Sweetie’s room suddenly started to feel very small, indeed-- like a prison cell. Like that warm, dark place between a colt’s hooves where he holds a trapped insect, preparing to release it on an unsuspecting filly. Like the inside of some other being’s skull. Like--
Applejack made a sound, a powerful huff meant to dispel the claustrophobia bearing down on her.
She would have to do something more drastic.
Applejack surveyed the room for possible implements of destruction. This being a foal’s room, nothing easily capable of great harm was immediately obvious to her. Certainly nothing that could serve as an appropriate battering ram.
Although…
Applejack’s focus turned to the vanity tucked beside Sweetie’s bed. A little thing, meant for a small foal just learning to do her own mane. It had a mirror attached to its back, but Applejack could easily snap it off and use the remaining solid wood to push through the barricaded door.
Despite the obvious flaws in such a plan, Applejack approached the vanity.
She grasped one end with both hooves and gave it a hearty shake, testing its weight and solidity. It rattled a bit, the drawers within perhaps still filled with discarded hoof polish and tiny plastic manebrushes, all of which clattered together in an artificial symphony.
But it would have to do.
Applejack yanked on the end of the vanity, pulling it out from the wall at a diagonal. It moaned loudly and forlornly against the wood floor.
Then, she stepped back, intending to move to the other end.
Which is when she saw her.
Again.
Her reflection.
Applejack had never been the type to fret over her appearance, and so focusing upon her reflection was a strange and foreign thing to do. But the figure in the mirror caught her eye, and she paused to look at it more closely.
Such a tiny pause was more than enough.
While Applejack--the real Applejack--was feeling frantic, sweaty, and alarmed, her reflection was entirely calm. Not a peaceful calm, however; it was a stony, seething thing, the sort of calm that comes over somepony only when they are doing their best to hide a veritable storm of emotions lurking beneath the surface. It was a deathly calm. Like the eye of a storm.
Applejack froze.
Her reflection gazed at her with cold eyes. They expressed an icy fury that Applejack couldn’t fully comprehend, and yet knew well enough to fear. Like a bolt of freezing fire, that gaze shot straight to her heart and chilled her entire being.
That, and her eyes seemed to be blue.
Icy blue.
Glittering, powerful, crystalline blue, the kind one might glimpse if they stand on the thickest ice of the frozen north and gaze down into the depths below.
The whole reflection, in fact, was blue. As if all of Applejack’s color had been sucked right out of her, and she had been left to freeze to death on that same patch of thick, blue ice far North of the Crystal Empire.
And the whole reflection sparkled, too. Just like that nefarious glint in the eyes, there seemed to be an aura of wavering, mirage-like magic hugging Applejack’s reflection like a cloak.
Or perhaps like a cloud of insects.
Applejack looked down at her own chest, running a hoof through the peachy fur there, ensuring that she hadn’t turned blue herself.
The same as always. Tried and true, thick and orange.
She looked up at her reflection.
And her reflection was much closer than it had been before.
Applejack yelped and leapt back from the vanity, and her reflection remained rooted to the spot. Impossibly close to the glass. Peering into Applejack with cold, blue eyes.
“You should leave,” it whispered.
Right into Applejack’s ear.
As if it were standing beside her.
Applejack opened her mouth, and found that she could not speak.
“You’ll have to eventually,” it continued, frozen breath kissing the soft insides of Applejack's ear. “They always do.”
Applejack shook her head. “Have to… wh-what?” she breathed.
“They always do,” the reflection repeated.
Applejack swatted at the air beside her head, but her hooves passed meaninglessly through the empty air. She cried out, a tiny strangled sound, and scrambled to the side, trying to get away from the presence which whispered so deep into her own mind.
“I’ll still be here,” the reflection said. “But you’ll leave. And we can’t have that. You’ll break my poor old heart.”
The words seemed so empty and meaningless, drifting through Applejack’s mind like a chilly winter breeze through bare branches. She put one hoof over her ear, pressing it firmly into her skull, hoping for the voice to stop.
But it only drifted to her other side.
“You’ll break my heart, Applejack,” it hissed, though not with any sense of melancholy or loneliness. “My heart’s been broken so many times.”
Applejack shoved at the air, but to no avail.
“You should leave,” the voice continued. “Leave now before you’re stuck for good.”
Applejack wailed wordlessly as the voice wormed deeper into her mind, freezing and sharp.
She had to get out.
She had to get away from the mirror.
She had to break out of this tiny room. Of this cell. This warm, dark prison, this skull, this--
Without thinking, without planning, Applejack broke into a run towards the bedroom door. Full speed ahead. Barrelling, falling ever forwards, her hooves barely keeping up. Slipping on the hardwood.
She connected.
Shoulder first.
The pain spread through her, radiating like a drum head, the dinner-plate bruise already formed and now pained anew.
It gave way.
The door swung open. As if nothing had been holding it there in the first place.
And Applejack went tumbling through the air.
Her momentum could not be stopped, even as the door flew outwards and slammed against the wall with an explosive wham! She tripped, half-running, half-falling, all out of control, hooves scrambling, direction lost, directly into the rail over the stairs.
Into
and over.
Applejack clawed at the air, trying to find some small thing to hang onto, but she went careening over the top of the bannister and was suddenly falling.
Only, before she knew it, she’d hit the floor.
The wood floor of the entryway.
Wind knocked flat out of her lungs, stars swimming in the air above her head--is that where all the stars had gone? Were they flashing in her own mind?--pain numbing her spine to the point where her voice seemed entirely lost.
She couldn’t move. Couldn’t even blink. It seemed that, although she wanted to shout, to cry, to move even the smallest bit, she was frozen in place.
Was she frozen?
Trapped under thick, blue ice?
The images rocketed into her mind’s eye without hesitation. A figure standing over her, featureless through the wavering thickness of the ice, tinted blue and almost sparkling, as it peered down at her curiously. Passively. What an oddity, some poor, ancient sap trapped down there in the ice. Trying to move, bless her heart.
Then another wandered over. It only looked down at her, the same as the first. It seemed to wonder if something should be done, but could not decide. She isn’t alive, is she? Why, no-- she can’t be. Not stuck all the way down there. How many winters ago did she freeze?
A third. Emotionless. Utilitarian in its curiosity, as if Applejack might be good for some sort of salvage mission.
A fourth. Leaning down further than the others.
A fifth.
A sixth.
And, when Applejack finally managed to suck in a breath, she realized that the figures before her were not at all figments of her imagination.
Blue ponnequins. Surrounding her. Staring her down.
Closing in.
Soft hoofs shuffling, canvas on canvas. Boneless things which twisted and bent without regard for the anatomy of the creature they had disguised themselves as.
Applejack screamed.
Deep. Wordless. From deep in the chest.
Just one, singular shout, which seemed to send a jolt through the ponnequins hovering over her.
An electrified, angry jolt.
In one motion, all of the ponnequins--a dozen, she thought, from all across the room--whipped their heads towards Applejack and froze.
“You shouldn’t be here,” whispered the voice, still shockingly cold against her inner ear.
Another shout as Applejack, laying belly-up for her captors, clapped both hooves over her ears.
“Leave!” the voice called from the frozen depths of her mind.
And the ponnequin feeding frenzy began.
Applejack couldn’t quite tell what was going on from within the flurry of limbs and canvas and featureless faces, she only knew that the sound they made--the crunchy, rushing, gentleness of stuffing contracting and expanding--made her think of the pillow, made her wish, beg, plead that somewhere, somehow, her head was still on the infernal pillow.
She pedaled her limbs in the air, but to no avail. She shouted things, either wordless or so fever-stricken that they’ve left her mind entirely, as she tried to fend off her attackers.
One of them grabbed her rear hoof.
Then the other.
They gave her a mighty tug along the floor.
Towards the door.
And Applejack, fearing for her life, for what might lay beyond that lavender door that Rarity was oh-so proud of, kicked one in the face.
Right across the cheek.
It felt disgustingly equine as the head snapped to one side, taking the blow with some semblance of dignity.
Like a pony would.
Only, unlike a pony, this quick twist burst a seam in the neck. Stuffing exploded out of the wound, hanging there in the air like a grotesque fungus climbing the side of the creature.
It didn't quite stop. That would have been all too lucky.
But the creature did slow, as each motion only caused the hole to leak more forcefully, and every lost bit of fluff caused its head to droop on its poorly-supported neck.
Applejack grabbed at the nearest ponnequins and yanked as hard as she could on its foreleg to the same result. Stuffing spilling out like seafoam. A sense of deep confusion which contorted even this featureless face.
The weakness found, Applejack howled her success and redoubled her efforts. She pulled and twisted and clawed at the ponnequins which tried to drag her away, popping seams left and right, drowning in a mountain of stuffing which poured forth slowly, excruciatingly so, from these strange wounds.
At long last, the immense pressure on Applejack's body receded, and she found the strength and time to roll to her hooves and dart away.
To come to the stairs.
To fly
like a frightened bird
up those solid wooden steps.
Hoofsteps ringing loud and true throughout the household.
Heavy. Certain.
And yet terrified.
Applejack blew past Sweetie's bedroom, hooves barely keeping up with the rest of her along the perfectly polished hardwood floors. She skidded to a halt in front of Rarity's room, a maneuver which required as much physical strength as it did a lucky misstep into the bannister itself. Once again, Applejack felt that bruise on her shoulder being aggravated by the scraping sensation, like a piece of dirty clothing along a washboard, her skin twisting around her joints.
“Rarity!” she cried as her hooves came out from under her and her unbruised shoulder hit the floor with a solid wham! “Rarity!”
While Applejack by far made the most commotion in the building, there existed under her own clattering a certain… rustling sound.
Like leaves in the wind.
Like fabric on fabric, pulling and twisting and climbing, piling over itself.
From downstairs, the sound appeared to shuffle closer. Drawing towards the foot of the stairs and beginning to climb, all of the ponnequins in one great form. Like discarded weeds. Like a rat king. Even though Applejack couldn’t see it, she could hear the way they piled over and over and over each other, churning without a care for the wellbeing of their fellow monster, only trying to inch closer
to her.
Curiously enough, the sound seemed to come from behind Rarity’s door, as well.
Not so much churning. Only a constant, low rustling sound. Like curtains in the wind. Like-- like--
Applejack ignored it.
She threw herself against Rarity’s door, grabbed at the knob, and shook it violently.
“Rarity!” she shouted again. “Don’t you worry, now! I’m comin’ to getcha!”
The door only rattled back at her. Not budging in the least.
Applejack released the knob and instead began to pound on the wood of the door. A frantic thing, as she looked over her shoulder into the darkness at the bottom of the stairs. Waiting for the beast she had created to emerge from the shadows, clawing its way towards her.
“Rarity, open up!” Applejack shouted, her voice breaking with the effort. “For pony’s sake, Rarity! Open this door!”
Even as she said it, she knew chances were slim.
Something was in there.
With her.
Something had her.
A ponnequin? Leader of the pack?
Or something worse?
Applejack tried to push the memories of a hundred ghost stories out of her mind, all of them ending in death and guilt and despair and legends that rolled on and on and on, forever and ever.
Death everlasting.
Only the sound of the fabric to keep her company.
Only loneliness forever.
Rarity couldn’t survive like that.
It wouldn’t be Rarity anymore. Not really. It might take her shape, might use her voice, might even hold onto her memories by some cruel fate, but it wouldn’t be Rarity anymore.
Rarity would be gone.
And yet still here.
Applejack pounded harder. She felt the door pulse under her ceaseless barrage. Like a heart. “Whoever’s in there, you open this door right now!” she roared.
And the rustling stopped.
Applejack didn’t dare look back at the stairs. She stayed riveted straight ahead, chest heaving, still beating against the heavy wood door with powerful, rhythmic strikes.
And then
it opened.
And there stood Rarity
alive
her color intact
her eyes alive in the darkness.
Without a second thought, Applejack rushed into the room, all but scooping the tiny unicorn up and out of her way as she tried to close the door. Relief hardly registered in her face as she swooped in and set to work.
She kicked the door shut behind her, offered a sincere “stay here,” and went directly to Rarity’s bedside table. The drawer slid open and practically onto the floor, contents jangling about in a great tangle of coins, trinkets, and beauty supplies.
Applejack pawed through it, all while Rarity watched, and found a key.
She held it up.
Rarity nodded.
Applejack stalked to the bedroom door and locked it with a confident twist of the key. The bolt shot home, and Applejack tested the door with her full weight.
Not enough.
Applejack crossed the room, all business, and came to stand beside Rarity’s own vanity.
She didn’t dare look in the mirror.
One mighty tug separated it from the wall. Another pulled it a stride’s length across the floor, howling against the hardwood. Applejack moved it--deliberately but not at all carefully--across the room, one step at a time, until she at last shoved it into place against the bedroom door.
Rarity said nothing. She only watched quietly, one delicate hoof held to her chest in a show of surprise that did not seem to reach her own eyes.
“Applejack, I--”
“Sh-sh,” Applejack hushed her quickly.
She leaned in, pressing her ear against the wall beside the door.
Listening.
Waiting to hear that sound of fabric on fabric, like a sail billowed by a mighty wind-- no, a thousand sails. All tangled together. All fighting and biting at one another like wild dogs, trying to break free.
But the wind blew.
And the house moaned.
And nothing rustled.
Applejack hesitantly pulled away from the wall. She waited a moment longer, as if expecting the foe to throw themselves into the barricaded door, but no such intrusion came. Only silence and stillness lay beyond the door.
She turned to look at Rarity. “Somepony was in here, weren’t they?”
“No,” Rarity replied. Her eyes would not come up from the floor, instead wandering over the lines between boards. “At least… Well, I was asleep.”
A lie.
But a frightened one.
Applejack sighed heavily.
Moonlight poured in through the window. Back again, as if nothing had changed in the least.
Those yellowed shafts of light draped themselves over Rarity’s waiflike form, and Applejack saw that Rarity was not as she had been left.
Firstly--and Applejack was unsure how she missed such an important detail--evidence of a nosebleed was crusted beneath her right nostril, dark against the paleness of her fur. In fact, now that she looked, the bridge of her snout seemed to be a bit bruised, too. As if she’d been punched square in the center of her face.
Everything else about her was only a feeling, but Applejack more than trusted her senses.
The way she breathed. Right on the verge of hyperventilation without actually tripping over into dangerous territory. A shallow wheezing which caused her head to bob backwards and forwards at an ever-increasing pace.
The way she stood, without that signature confidence and glamour that set her apart from the crowd. From any crowd. Instead, she curled into herself, hooves in a tight and uneven cluster beneath her.
The way her eyes seemed to glitter, but only for the way they flickered from subject to subject. Applejack, the door, the mirror, and back.
Applejack didn’t dare look in the mirror.
Rarity drew in a sharp little gasp, the sort of hiccup that means tears are on the way, and Applejack was broken of her robotic savior mindset.
She rushed in towards Rarity. Large and looming in all of the right ways, a presence that could wrap you up, surround you entirely, keep you safe from all directions at once.
Rarity stiffened at the touch.
Another hiccup.
And then the tears began to flow.
“I d-don’t--” she stuttered.
“Shh.” Applejack lifted a hoof and cupped it against the back of her head, holding her firm and tight. “It’s alright now. It’s okay.”
Rarity drew in a rattling gasp, and the tears came faster.
They rolled down her cheeks, along her jaw, spilling onto Applejack’s shoulder like tiny drops of dew flung from thick blades of grass. She sobbed openly, her chest wracked with the feeling, and fell ever further into Applejack.
Her legs turned to jelly.
And Applejack held her upright.
“I don’t understand,” Rarity forced out. “I don’t understand, Applejack! What’s going on?”
Applejack only shook her head, then rolled it gently over to rest her cheek atop Rarity’s mane. “Hush, now,” she whispered. “It’ll be alright.”
A lie.
But a necessary one.
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This is getting good
What is going oooooon!
Incredible, really. I can't stop reading this.
Breaking the rules of conventional formatting for dramatic effect? Awesome! Reminds me of House of leaves.
Also if this ends with Applejack accidently killing Rarity I'm gonna be so mad at you.
11002838
Yeah if this doesn't have a happy ending or atleast a bitter sweat ending for rarijack then imma be mad and depressed at the same time, hopefully that doesn't happen though
Okay, I'm getting a few more theories about what's haunting Rares, and I can't wait to see if I'm right.
there was more but that's what I wanted to point out.
Christ, the effects that are used in this chapter are spooking me a little. By separating certain key phrases and words, you manage to emphasize certain areas that are used for dramatic effects. Gods, I really wish you weren't this good at writing, cause otherwise I wouldn't be fearing for Rarity and Applejack's lives right now. What the heck are even those ponnequins or whatever doing? Gurgh, seeing as the story is named "Haunting of the Carousel Boutique", I shouldn't even be surprised, but you've managed to keep me in suspense and waiting every step of the way.
yes, a canon moment callback that is also a remembrance of their youth!
this is such good rarijack and i love it so much, wow, amazing, beautiful, perfect
drawn from real life, this one?
ah yeah, that mix of feelings is quite something
time displacement! knew it!
ugh, the tension in this sequence! you are too good at this
oof, so good
great use of abuse of formatting here
so Applejack, I love it
i keep changing what favorite bit of imagery to quote because all of it is so good?
and this entire sequence, ugh. i want to say that the reflections are speaking Rarity's feelings about her past romantic partners, or maybe, all the ponies in her life in general, considering Sweetie Belle has left the house as well? and Opal, too! though by death. agh, just wow. my heart. and we're only in Chapter III!