Previous Chapters Next
Close
Myositis5,004 words
Malevolent3,601 words
Mystery3,842 words
Memories3,205 words
Macrotus5,600 words
Mayhem6,238 words
Monster4,392 words
Malice6,193 words
More879 words

Monster

“Slender Man?” Dash echoed the filly with a questioning tone. One brow lowered itself to the bridge of her nose, the other raising itself till it matched her hairline.

“Yeah,” Scootaloo replied evenly, lips tightening into a straight line. Her hooves fidgeted against one another just as they had before, the same as every time Dash caught her trying to hide something. It looked like it took all her concentration to simply focus on the elder pegasus.

“Yea- no.” Rainbow spoke as she pressed a hoof to her head. She did her absolute best to not grind her teeth in aggravation.

“What?”

“Scootaloo, this is a really bad time for a joke.” Her eyes narrowed on the filly, debating on whether to leave her in the forest. “I just caught you in the Everfree Forest, at night, with a foalnapper still out there. Making jokes about promises with him is a bad idea, saying you spoke to some make believe monster is even worse.”

“I-I’m not making him up!” The younger pegasus shouted earnestly. It only earned a slow sigh from Rainbow.

“Yes, you are.” Her tight voice spoke. “He’s a myth, a legend. No, not even that, legends are… revered is what Twilight would say. He’s a footnote of some dumb mare’s tale so old that even the princess had problems remembering it.” The pink eyes of Dash were hard as they glared at the younger pony.

“B-But… h-he is real…” A slow growl came from the back of the elder’s throat.

“No. He’s. Not.” Dash spat each word like it was a sour apple. “Scootaloo, I really don’t have time to deal with… more lies.”

“But I’m not lying!” She shouted again, tears were hinging on the corner of her ducts. Dash easily overlooked them through her own tight gaze.

“Oh yeah?” She challenged. “Then tell me how the hay you met him. Did he come to you late at night and offer to tuck you in? Bring you a snack? Or did he take you to school? Maybe he offered to teach you how to fly.” The filly’s face grew mortified with every word Rainbow spoke, every syllable, a different nail driving into her. A blow to the face would have been merciful.

But as Dash watched closely, focused on the foal beneath her, the features of horror morphed into expressions of rage.

“No! That’s what my mom is supposed to do!” The tears trailed down her face. Dash backed up, never losing her expression of anger. “My mom is supposed to tuck me in. She’s supposed to give me snacks, take me to school, and teach me to fly!” She hiccupped at the end of her scream.

“What the buck does that even-” Dash didn’t get to finish her question.

“He was there for me!” Scootaloo shouted again, almost bouncing off the ground. “He kept me safe when my mom was too busy! He taught me how to read, to walk, to do… everything! He’s the only one who ever had time for me!”

“That doesn’t make any-”

“I’m always the one trying to be with other ponies!” The filly was on a full on tantrum. Dash watched on unamused. “Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle always expect me to go to their house! I had to guilt you into becoming a teacher for me! I can’t even get my own mom to pay attention to me!”

The filly took several deep breaths, eyes wide with tears and lips turned into a deep scowl. Dash had her own eyes furrowed, watching the filly carefully. It was hard to take anything seriously with the way she was acting.

“But he came to me.” The coldness of her voice was enough to turn Dash’s anger into confusion.

“What do you mean?”

“He…” Scootaloo bit her lip, turning her gaze to the forest wall surrounding them. It only steeled her determination to speak. “He spoke to me in my mind.” Rainbow made her hoof rub circles around her temple, alleviating the growing pain inside her head.

“This is getting stupid now.” She let out irritably. Scootaloo continued on.

“It’s… It’s like how the Princess talked to me. It’s all these bright colors, and images, and things, and… and everything I didn’t think was possible. But then he’s there, and it all makes sense to me.” The subtle tones of happiness in her voice were about as obvious to Dash as literary errors to Twilight.

“Okay Scoots, cut the crazy talk.” Dash let out in an exasperated tone. She trotted closer to the younger pegasus, but found the distance between them only increasing as her target backpedaled away from her.

“I’m not lying!” She shouted again, her aggravation as apparent as Dash’s own. Neither pegasus was in a position to give.

“Yeah, you are.” Rainbow commanded back. “The Slender Man is just some stupid story. Look, I get it if you wanted a friend. I’ll even tell you that I had a make believe friend growing up, too.” The words only succeeded in getting the filly to shake her head wildly.

“No! He’s real!” She shouted again. With a tight sigh, Dash continued on.

“No. He’s. Not.” Her voice punctuated once more. “You wanted a friend so you made one. Just cut the act now. You don’t need to lie to me about being out here.” Dash waited for Scootaloo to shout again, to demand that Rainbow apologize, that she was anything but a good older sister.

All she got was the almost statuesque image of a heart broken filly.

“H-He is real…” She muttered miserably. “He… He-He made sure I was safe and-and he did such a good job of making me feel safe. How… He is real…”

Dash’s hoof met her head for the second time that night.

She dragged the appendage down slowly, letting it ruffle the fur on her muzzle before slipping free and falling back to the ground. Every part of her wanted to be angry at Scootaloo in some kind of way. The protective side of her was furious a foal like Scoots would be in the forest given everything else going on that day.

The logical side of her, given birth only by Twilight’s presence, was fuming with the idea of how little sense the filly pegasus must have to think an imaginary friend was a valid reason to be in the woods. Then the last side of her, the competitive and sporadic side of the pegasus, was grinding her teeth at the idea of some imaginary friend being more trustworthy and believable than herself.

Did Scootaloo seriously think that thing was real? Did that mean that she, Rainbow Dash, one of the most loyal ponies in Equestria, looked like a bully, trying to make some foal cry? The idea nearly burst a vessel in her mind.

With a low sigh, Dash set her vision back on the smaller pegasus, just a few poor words away from picking the foal up and flying her back home. She half expected to see Scootaloo crying on the ground.

Instead, Rainbow saw something far more… confusing.

Scootaloo was smiling.

“Scoots?” Dash asked hesitantly, her trot forward ceased and pink eyes squinted curiously at the filly. Scootaloo’s eyes were wide, unfocused, but held above a content smile Dash had seen more than once on more than one pony. Still, she’d never seen it in the middle of an argument, in the Everfree Forest, with a foalnapper on the loose.

“Scootaloo?” She called the filly’s name again. Her forehoof waved in front of the filly’s eyes, trying to gain their focus. Dash only succeeded in pushing air.

“This ain’t funny squirt. Cut the act.” Like the command of a hypnotist, Scootaloo began to move again. The smile however, never left her lips. Her wide eyed gaze looked up to Dash. It was impossible for the elder pegasus to miss the look of absolute adoration in her eyes. Something about it was… unsettling.

Before Dash knew it, she had taken a step back. The younger pony didn’t seem to even register the movement. Her adoring eyes and content smile continued to cling to her face, sending chills along the wings and bones of the pegasus the night couldn’t match. Her mouth was going dry. Something was very wrong.

Then Scootaloo spoke.

“He’s here.” Dash turned in a flash.

And there it was.

The creature hung over the trees as if they were bushes, its figure thinner than any of their branches. The blackness of its suit darker than the shadows it must have emerged from.

It didn’t sway, falter, or even twitch. It was still as the dead, and doubtlessly just as silent.

It looked down at the two ponies beneath it, a face of nothing but a patch of white, more malicious than even the most twisted of grins.

Dash didn’t scream. She didn’t move. She couldn’t breath.

She knew what it was, who it was, and only feared what it wanted to do.

The Slender Man.

“You’re back!”

The joyful shout of the filly made Rainbow draw in a cold breath of air. Her wide and unblinking eyes looked at the orange foal, already jumping up and down with excitement at the figure. Dash quickly moved her eyes back to the monster.

Scootaloo, however, was anything but terrified.

“I told you he would come!” She declared to her elder like it was a bet. “He promised me he would come if I came here, and he did! I wasn’t lying and you were wrong!” The filly laughed as she finished her taunt. Dash felt her face paling beneath her coat.

“S-scoots…” She spoke the filly’s name on short trembling breath. “R-Run… now.”

The Slender Man continued to silent peer at her, unmoving and uncaring.

“Why?” The foal asked generally curious. “He’s not gonna hurt us. I told you, he’s my friend. We promise each other lots of things, play together even. Right?”

Dash felt a ball grow in her throat as the pale head turned towards the smaller pegasus, still higher than any tree in the forest. Scootaloo started giggling.

“Yeah!” She eagerly cheered, for a reason Dash couldn’t even comprehend. She sounded too happy, too proud, and far away from unafraid.

That’s when Dash saw Scootaloo gallop to the monster’s side.

Her breath returned to her in a flood of strength.

“Scootaloo!” Rainbow shouted at her loudest. It didn’t stir the monster or the filly now standing next to it with undeniable happiness. One was still as stone, the other bouncing with clear excitement. Her confusion was only overridden by her terror.

“Calm down Dash.” Scootaloo playfully said again. “He’s not gonna hurt me, see?”

All Rainbow saw was a long spindly hoof, complete with claws as white as snow, reaching for the filly. All she felt when they wrapped around the vulnerable pegasus was absolute fear. It felt like spiders were crawling across her coat, and ice freezing the blood in her veins.

“Hee hee, you’re kinda cold.” Dash didn’t think.

She beat her wings faster than she could kick her hooves, pushing off the ground with everything she had. She flew towards Scootaloo and the monster, barreling towards them without a single thought of slowing.

They were right in front of her, just the brush of a hoof’s length away from her reach. She reached out, ready to grab Scootaloo right from the monster’s grasp.

Then they were gone.

Flaring her wings, Rainbow just stopped herself from barreling into a tree. The ends of her wings burned with friction and fatigue, the burst of energy they had gone in an instant. Her hooves touched the rough bark of the natural structure with a rough force, earning a grunt of paint as the traveled along her legs. Still for a moment, she fell to the cool dirt beneath her.

It took her only a breath of air to gain her strength back, standing on all four with wings flared and eyes wide. Her eyes darted left and right across the opening in the forest trees, looking for the monster or Scootaloo.

“Scootaloo!” The foal was nowhere in the open plain.

“Scootaloo!” The filly was nowhere in the sky.

“Scootaloo!!” She wasn’t behind any tree.

“SCOOTALOO!!” Scootaloo was gone.

The tears collected and fell in an instant, blinding the pegasus with her sorrow and regret. The strength in her limbs was gone, the pride in herself vanished. Weak gasps turned into pitiful cries as her legs gave out, sending the miserable pegasus to a heap on the ground.

Sprawled across the dirty floor of the forest, choked sounds echoed around her, mocking Dash’s failure. Her hooves scratched uselessly across the floor, drawing themselves closer to herself. She felt cold, she felt miserable, and she felt alone.

Her mind was as much a mess as her body was. Every thought was a mockery of her failure, how blatant Scootaloo’s words were, and how much she truly believed them. If Dash had, then maybe they would both be safe. Maybe Scootaloo would be back at her home, snuggled in her own blankets, not caught and taken in the grasp of the monster.

That monster.

The Slender man was real.

He was in the forest.

Rainbow Dash was alone.

In a flash of blue, the forest was empty again.

“But she was a proxy,” Twilight began as she read the book lying on the ground in front of her. “No matter what she said, we couldn’t trust her. She wanted him to come. She wanted him to take us. We couldn’t trust her. We can’t trust her.” The unicorn felt a shiver run down her back.

She shifted her hooves along the pillow she rested on, absorbing the warmth beneath her. The fire by her side warmed her coat, gently pushing away the otherwise chilly night. Her magic enveloped a page of the book, letting her eyes scan to the next page.

“Maybe I should have waited for Dash to read this.” Twilight muttered to herself, swallowing on a ball in her throat. “It feels like I’m just setting myself up for nightmares.” She turned her gaze from the book to look towards a closet at the far end of her room. A flash from her horn opened the door, lifting a large blanket from within. It drifted through the air by command of her lavender aura, surrounding her as she told it to.

She still felt cold.

“Dash would probably kill me if she saw I was still awake.” With that quiet declaration, she let her eyes scan the next set of damaged documents, cemented into the book of mythology beneath her.

“Tom is dead, he had to die. I didn’t mean to do it… but I know I did. I, no no, I wanted to do it! He… he didn’t understand why I followed him. He’s the only one who we can trust in this fake world.” Twilight rubbed her hooves together fitfully, trying to generate a heat to combat the cold still enveloping her. It wouldn’t go away.

The unicorn’s eyes shifted over the rest of the documents on the page, seeing nothing but more sketches and pictures of things she could hardly recognize. At first glance, it appeared nothing more than a waste of perfectly good space for text. On reflection, it did more than an excellent job of turning the otherwise simple text into horrifying prophecies.

Her magical horn flipped a page, then two, then three. More pictures, more sketches, all in the sample black and white coloring that made water as clear as blood. That small fact unnerved her. When her eyes saw more words to read, she let her eyes focus on them attentively, reading the script out loud.

“Slender Man. Slender Man. All good children try to run. Slender Man. Slender Man. To him it’s part of the fun.” Twilight hugged the blanket around her closer. “Slender Man. Slender Man. Dressed in darkest suit and tie. Slender Man. Slender Man.”

The unicorn swallowed a ball in her throat.

“You most certainly will die.”

Twilight’s window shattered open.

Not even the magic of Discord himself could have suppressed the scream of terror the ripped from Twilight’s throat.

Her hooves pushed off the blanket, putting the terrified unicorn against the far wall of her room with near incomprehensible speed. Every fiber in her coat stood on absolute end as she pushed against the hard wood of the wall, plate wide eyes searching the room for the invasive object.

Twilight saw Rainbow Dash.

“D-Dash?” Her voice shook as she spoke, shock still permeating her nervous system, causing the random electrical impulses through her. The cyan pegasus looked up at her, form hardly visible with the fire light the only source of illumination in the room.

What little Twilight could see made her gasp.

The pegasus was a wreck, a husk of what she had seen only a few hours before. Her fur was matted with sweat and mud, eyes red and cracked, even her mane in far more disarray than the unicorn thought possible with any speed of flight.

Twilight lost the ability to observe anything else as the pegasus pushed herself into the unicorn’s form. She let out a gasp of shock at the suddenly cold feeling enveloping her. It was difficult to tell if the shivering was from her own natural reaction to the cold, or from Dash shaking against her.

“R-Rainbow?” Twilight spoke her name again carefully, still unable to quell her terrified nerves. For all the times and ways the pegasus had ever entered her home, this was by far the most alien of entrances.

She heard Dash muttered into her coat, in a low voice she couldn’t understand. Twilight only caught it from the feeling of hot breath that pushed against her fur, the only source of warmth she had in the moment.

“I can’t hear you.” She coaxed the pegasus to speak again. Twilight attempted to push Dash away, just enough to free her muzzle from her fur, but found the embrace of Rainbow too strong for her. Biting her lip, she spoke again.

“Rainbow, what is it?” The prismatic mane shook left and right against her. It was oddly comforting, the heat it generated. Regardless, a little bit of warmth wasn’t worth trading her for her friend’s current level of terror.

“Dash.” Twilight spoke again, putting strength into her voice. “What happened?”

The blue face of the pegasus looked up to Twilight. The unicorn gasped.

The red cracked eyes from before were wet with tears.

“I-I… I s-saw…” She bit her tongue, eyes suppressing a hiccup from the back of her throat. “I s-saw him.” The jumbled mind of Twilight calmed at the words as she searched the recesses of her memory for who Dash was talking about. An idea of who came quickly.

“The foalnapper?” Rainbow’s shivering froze, a quick gasp stalling her breath. That was all the affirmation Twilight needed. “What happened? Did he threaten you? Hurt you?” The pegasus shook her head harder and harder as Twilight’s fear grew greater and greater.

“Then what happened Dash? What did he do?”

“I-It’s not… not what he… he just did.” Dash spoke in what Twilight would only be able to describe as sobs. Every word unnerved her already spooked senses. She listened on intently. “He… H-HHe was just there, l-like what Scoo-” A rough hiccup silenced any words the pegasus wished to speak, placing a heavy ball in her throat she couldn’t swallow.

“Scootaloo?” Twilight finished the name in a voice that hid no fear. “Is she okay? What happened? Dash!” The unicorn lightly shook the ponies in her hooves, but it only made the pony hold her closer. It didn’t, however, stop the trembling words that rolled off her lips.

“She’s gone.”

Twilight felt her blood go cold.

“What?”

“Gone.” Dash spoke again, gripping the unicorn hard enough to bruise her beneath the lavender fur. “H-He took her. Gone. There then g-goone.” The tears returned again.

“Rainbow.” Twilight spoke as softly, but commandingly, as she could. “Let go of me.” She felt the hold against her stiffen. “I’m not going anywhere, but I can’t talk to you like this. Let me go.”

A tense moment filled her silent room, broken only by the light cracking of the logs in her fireplace. Dash neither moved nor spoke, muzzle and eyes pressed against the coat of the unicorn in her grasp. Twilight took slow controlled breaths. Her mind, however, raced with every possibility that Rainbow could possibly tell her.

Did they meet the foalnapper? How was Scootaloo involved? Did the foalnapper take her? Maybe Dash saw that, chased him, but he… out ran her? No, that was just impossible. Twilight knew she would have heard a Sonic Rainboom before Dash gave up a chase of any kind.

The logistical unicorn’s thoughts ceased as she felt the pressure around her slowly ebb off. The pegasus’s forehooves unlatched from her, sliding around the fur on her sides before placing themselves on the floor. Her head had yet to lift from Twilight’s chest.

“Rainbow Dash.” She spoke her friend’s name again, in as gentle a tone as she could manage. “Please tell me what happened.”

Small pops and gurgles emerged from the pegasus throat, unintelligible to the unicorn still listening intently to her. The cyan head moved over her fur, matting the lavender coat. Dash pushed her head closer, letting the side of her muzzle rub against Twilight’s underbelly.

“Dash.” The unicorn spoke again, patience wearing thin. “Please, please tell me what happened.” Hesitantly, she wrapped a hoof around her terrified friend’s neck, holding the mare close. It was more than likely it would do little more than silence the mare if she was pressed against her, but Twilight had more of a chance of understanding muffled words than absolute silence.

“I saw the Slender Man.”

Twilight had no idea what to think.

“What? Dash, serious-” She was cut off as the pegasus, inevitably, pushed herself back into the unicorn’s embrace.

“He’s real Twilight. As freaking real as my wings. Scootaloo told me he was, she told me. To. My. Face.” The unicorn felt herself being forced into a rock as Dash’s word quickly fell into the terrified ramblings. She listened on regardless, allowing her other hoof to rise from the floor and wrap around the pony.

“I thought she was lying. I mean, she had to be. A monster like that? Seriously? But he was real, so real. And he’s big, huge, GINORMOUS.”

“Alright, Dash-”

“A-And I couldn’t do anything, me, The Element of Loyalty!” A bitter breath of air coughed from Rainbow’s lips, and it took Twilight a moment to realize it was a laugh.

“He took her. Scoot's gone. Don’t know where. There then gone. Faster than I could even fly.” The discomforting familiar feeling of moistness seeped across Twilight’s coat.

The unicorn had no idea what to do.

Was Dash being serious? She had to be, she knew the limits of pranks, better than most ponies, and this was definitely one too far, especially given the circumstances that they’ve already been through. Then was the Slender Man real? Highly unlikely.

So then… maybe a spell was cast on her? Possible, but Twilight couldn’t sense anything off about Dash aside from the clearly impossible event that she was in tears over. It could be something similar to what Pip was going through, but that was over the course of a week or two, and he was a foal. Dash was a full grown mare with more confidence than even the princess’s, possibly combined. There was no way some pony pulled a trick like that on her.

Then what was left? A monster similar to the Slender Man? That could be possible, but nothing in her encyclopedia of Equestria Beasts and Horrors described anything even close to that thing, and she memorized that book when it came time to telling Spike stories when he was hatched. Could be an unnamed monster? That would just make it the Slender Man then?

The unicorn let out a groan of disappointment, subconsciously letting her hoofs rub up and down the pegasus’s back, soothing the distraught mare. Twilight felt sick, in two different ways now. On one hoof, there was a problem right in front of her, and she had no obvious or even tangentially possible solutions to it. On the other hoof, she felt the sickness from earlier rising in her chest again. It was getting worse by the moment.

She let her head crane backwards, attempting to focus on the ceiling in the hopes of correcting her equilibrium. It was a common fact in medical dictations that a hindered or altered sense of balance is a common cause for queasiness. Throwing aside the lack of causes for losing such a sense, she focused on the easiest solution, establishing a point of reference she could maintain balance from.

Then she saw it.

Again, for a completely different reason, Twilight had no idea what to do.

Her mouth went dry as a desert, eyes wide as the full moon, and stomach heavier then every book in her library combined.

The pale face of the Slender Man was staring down at her.

There weren’t ears upon its head, no eyes on its face or lips over its muzzle. There was nothing. There was just white, bare, patches of skin. Yet, she knew it was looking down at her, staring at her with a hunger she couldn’t fathom.

Everything piled into her throat at once.

Twilight's scream ripped through the library.

Author's Note:

Credits for the image go to Darkho, found on my page. He's just awesome like that.

4,043 views

243

Previous Chapters Next