A short existential horror. Apple Bloom accidentally time travels a fraction of a second into the past, and realises she's the only one there. The world continues on around her, yet she's not in it.
The present is an infinitely thin span of time bordered by endless past and future. Everyone you know and love balances on that line. What if you fell off?
Written to be exactly 1000 words for the 1000 word contest (Horror).
Cover image made by me. Special thanks to SpoonierThanThou and Steady Gaze for pre-reading!
Featured 22/06/23 - 24/06/23. Fanfic reading. Translations: Ukrainian
Chapters (1)
Really spooky, really effective existential horror. Best of luck in the contest!
Nice prompt of existential horror. Sad to see Apple Bloom unable to do anything, and horrific how it moves on without her
11616777
Thank you very much for the kind words (on this and my last fic too!)
And here I was wondering if it wasn't scary enough :p
One would think they'd notice her food being eaten and bed being slept in, even if she herself is imperceptible.
11616831
That would involve that information being sent into the future ;)
11616833
I'm not sure how that does or doesn't work, but I'm fairly certain that the problem can be solved by going to Fluttershy's place and punching Discord in the face.
I wouldn’t mind living in a world like that. At least I wouldn’t be constrained to the expectations of the world. I would feel so much more free than the life I’m living now.
I wonder if the tree of harmony/ twilight's castle/ cutie mark map is still there? They seem to have some kind of guiding intelligence and extra sensory perception, so interactions with it could tip it off and relay information to the future where it also exists.
Also as Venerable Ro said, discord could absolutely find her if he just looked in that direction.
11616885
You don't know what you've got till it's gone. Besides, how would you feel if it were as if you'd just died, and then somehow lived to see what happens, except everyone else is a ghost?
Good horror to me, and I'm glad this is just a story.
I like this story. Good luck in the contest!
wow that was amazingly well written and executed on a chilling premise! this is the sort of short horror I wish I could carry out
Wonderful. It's inspiring, and reminds me of a story I'm working on where Twilight explores a second back, and a second ahead. I hope it is just as good as this!
NOOOOOOOOOOO YOU CANT JUST LEAVE OFF LIKE THAT
That aside, this hit a little to hard. Awesome job!
11616922
If you want my honest opinion, right at this moment something like that would make me feel like a weight has been lifted. Then the next thing I would do is use whatever resources I have available to survive. Think of this as my way of expressing how done I am of dealing with mass amounts of people. All I can think about is the freedom it would provide.
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Is it?
11616984
It's okay, the Langoleers will be along to clean up soon.
Now this is an amazing piece of unique existential dread. The fact that everyone obviously exists beyond Apple Bloom's reach is so interesting, especially how she can see how ponies are moving on without her from their ghostly lack of presence.
11616993
Honestly, I can't think of anything worse happening. The situation effectively renders the victims life pointless. They can't communicate with anyone, they can't affect anything and they can't own anything. Anything they touch immediately reverts back to how it was, so they can't choose anything for themselves. For example, if they attempt to cook, the food will immediately revert to its previous state as they can't affect anything. They have to steal all their food right off someone's half eaten plate (which that person won't notice) and use another persons bed. Eventually, they'd have to use someone else's home. All the while, reality itself has forgotten about them. They are, for all intense and purposes, dead to the world.
11617119
Thank you for the kind words! It makes me so happy to see that others get it. I was worried that this type of horror was only really scary to me, but I'm so happy to be proven wrong. You understand why this terrifies me so much, and why it's a fate worse than death. Perhaps after the contest is over, I'll re-write a longer version with this premise, because there's only so much I can explore in 1000 words.
There's a whole other side to this premise that I didn't have time to touch upon, that being that it's symmetrical. The Apple Family and the CMC are likely both as scared as Apple Bloom is. There's no happy party here. Also, it's a random event - who's to say she's the first it's happened to? An inspiration for this was Background Pony. Perhaps in a longer fic, Apple Bloom could find a way out? There's a lot I think I could do with the premise.
Poor little girl 😢
This is an interesting twist on the ‘last man on earth’ premise, and I would like to see where this would go in a longer story (as you have indicated you might do in the comments).
I do think your actual prose (the way you write) is a little weak, but that may be because of the word limit. The first paragraph is probably the worst of it. Something to keep in mind, maybe.
Otherwise, a very solid entry. Best of luck in the contest, fellow competitor!
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It's not a word limit thing, I'm just not a good writer (yet?). My first fanfic on fimfiction was my first ever creative writing project, making this my second. I never did well in English during school. If you want to gift me with more specific feedback, my DMs are open - advice is greatly appreciated and very valuable for me at this stage.
Now that it's published, I don't intend to modify this fic much/at all, although I can learn for the future.
Best of luck to you too, fellow competitor!
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Better than I did, anyway!
Sure thing; I’ll dm you with some stuff that helped me later. And no worries, you’re doing quite well for someone who’s new to this.
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You'd be screwed if you got sick with something,though. Even if viruses, parasites, and bacterium from the world cannot infect you, you still have the stuff that's already in your body, and if you end up with some kind of dietary imbalance, would you even know enough about it to look the subject up on your own?
What will really bake your noodle (and what the author conveniently ignored out for sake of a story):
Why are only ponies and animals affected?
(Don’t give me any lines about consciousness/sentience/sapience. The universe is indifferent to such things.)
((Then again, it’s MLP so you can always lazy-author hand-wave and just say “magic”.))
Sorry but I can't suspend my disbelief for this one. 1000 words isn't enough to ease me into it, so it comes across as ignorant rather than existential.
11616833
You can only send information to the future. The past cannot receive information from the future. You have that backwards. Sending information to the future is extremely simple, we do it literally all the time.
Yikes, that is a terrible way to go. At least she can still experience the world around her and see what is going on but still...
Great work word-smith.
11617263
I probably should've clarified that I meant moving information to the future at faster than the normal rate. If her time is advancing at 1 second per second, as is everyone else's, she'll never 'catch up'. It's a weird premise, and admittedly doesn't make a whole lot of sense. I get if you can't suspend disbelief for that reason. Thank you for being constructive.
11617260
It's a story about a magical talking pony that travels through time. That's just the rules of the universe I set up in the finite word count.
In other words: Magic *waves hands about*
And then the Langoliers showed up.
static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/langoliers.jpg
Not one of Stephen King's better works... severe flaws in internal logic, characters who were walking tropes... just laughable.
11617263
Instead of everyone moving forwards on one timeline, imagine that each moment is a different timeless universe and everyone is simply moving from one to the next. It's one of the ancient hypothesis of how time works, I think.
So, if Apple Bloom is one second in the past, it means she arrives at each of these slices of time after the others do.
I hope you find this plausible.
11617127
I feel like you managed to touch on the other side enough using the missing posters of Apple Bloom, with the small amount of words you were allowed to use. I think the subtlety of the small detail made it more profound.
Delish, that looks like a winner to me. Very relatable
I *really* love the idea that, after someone has "lived" in a time period, they move forward and are no longer present in the "past." So Apple Bloom is stuck without her family since they aren't there anymore, and conversely, they're stuck without her, since the same applies to the "future"/"present" (depending on perspective). I feel like horror (especially the psychological stuff) is an under-explored genre for this fandom, so this contest has been awesome. Good horror is hard to come by, but you nailed it, considering the constraints
11617252
My thoughts are on things like my recent fractured and dislocated shoulder. I would definitely have to play it safe. Although I’m not exactly the type of person who goes skydiving, Rocky Mountain climbing, or goes 2.7 seconds on a bull named Fumanchu.
I am scared.
Good Job!
Woah. That's freaky. Nice work!
11617284
Yeah, I had the same idea as soon as I read the title card. And while that movie adaptation was on par with direct-to-video I rather enjoyed the short story. Well, maybe not so short. King has a way of padding out a softcover book from essentially 50 pages to +900 (Yeah, looking at you "It")... Thick enough to stun an Ox as a weapon.
11617717
Just in case it needs to be said, I had no clue this movie existed when I wrote this.
I did however take some inspiration from this image, which might've been inspired by that.
The more I think about this the less sense it makes... Why does her influences get 'overwritten' if influences travel only into the past? and why do things only change when she doesn't perceive them? I feel like this is something other than time travel but I really can't wrap my head around it. I do love the cover art, it gets the idea across very effectively
11617982
Would horror be as scary if the mechanics were fully understood?
Also thank you - I'm pretty pleased with the cover art :)
11617983 It depends on how well the mechanics are conceived of, and how one goes about explaining them.
If it's something brilliantly existential, then it can 'trap' the character and make it more horrifying. If it's just a technological infodump like "How It's Made"... then no.
Was drawn by the cover art, and it was short enough I decided to check it out. I didn't feel much for this and my thoughts are basically the same as overdue's were.
If she exists a second in the past and the timelines are then running parallel to each other then how is it time only moves when she's not looking? Why are living things invisible but everything else is not? And if everything she tries gets overwritten because it's "in the past" then how does she eat? Wouldn't the food stop existing once it's in her mouth?
There's also the contradiction of her room. "Come home, Apple Bloom." Okay, but if she "came home" her family already tossed or moved most of her stuff like she was confirmed dead rather than her being "missing." THAT would be a nice coming home present.
With only 1000 words there's only so much you can do, but while the premise is interesting, it kinda feels more like a "feel bad" story at times rather than an exploration of a concept. "Apple Bloom would go hungry that night." "Apple Bloom slept on the floor that night." It's a little heavy handed at times.
There's also no impetus for this. The synopsis says she accidentally travelled through time, but she literally did nothing to cause it. It just randomly happened.
Sorry if I seem a little too critical to a new writer. While I didn't personally get invested in this story I'm glad that quite a few were able to see what you wanted to convey. Hopefully you'll continue to improve and write even better stories in the future. Nice job making it to the feature box.
Every once in a while someone has a random idea/struck of inspiration, and creates something that just works.
Great work! 👍
11618271
This is genuine criticism, and one that a few have had, so I guess I'll share my interpretation.
I will say though that the exact mechanics are left intentionally ambiguous. Part of that is because it's 1000 words, but most of that is because it's a horror fic. The idea is that if you know exactly how everything works, it ceases to be scary, and whatever the audience imagines as the explanation will usually be scarier than what the author can give. Horror thrives off fear of the unknown. In an earlier draft I do explain these details, but it leaves no room for imagination and simply wasn't scary. There's a reason horror games aren't scary to the developers; they know exactly how everything works.
That being said, this is my interpretation of the mechanics. This is not "canon" (nor how I genuinely believe time to work), but merely an interpretation for people who didn't enjoy this because the mechanics don't make sense. If you did enjoy it, don't read this; It could ruin the story:
Living creatures are inherently different from the world around them. The universe is a constant backdrop, while living things are passers-by. Time exists as an infinite number of discrete "instants" that living creatures teleport between to experience time passing. Additionally there is something unique about the 'present', where changes made in it are reflected in the future. Living beings have the ability to change the backdrop; change the world around them. These changes get preserved. They're left behind once they move on from the world. Changes Apple Bloom makes to the world would still exist in the past from her, however the next time instant she's teleported to does not contain those changes; the changes as she sees them are overwritten. Like the world around her got copy pasted over her. Things she acts upon carry through her only as long as she is acting upon them. I hope this makes sense.
As for the conscious observation thing - observing something is acting upon it. Living beings are inherently different, and one observing or otherwise sensing it means they're acting upon it. That's why things only 'update' when she looks away. Imagine quantum mechanics from things like Outer Wilds or reality. If this still doesn't make sense, that's totally fair. Trying to write a fully consistent and logical time travel story is an exercise in futility (and insanity). I accepted this from the start and wrote some perhaps convoluted rules. Ultimately the reason for anything in fiction is "it makes for the best story", and I find things moving when you're not looking and influence being over written to be fundamentally creepy phenomena.
The exact way in which she goes back in time is described as an accident, in the same way that "the backrooms" begins with "If you're not careful and noclip out of reality". It's phrased like it's a thing that could happen to anyone at any time, just for unintentionally doing something in just the wrong way. The idea that it's just completely random, a glitch of sorts, aims to amp up the fear. It could happen to anyone. It could happen to you. You just have to look at a clock in just the wrong way. Apple Bloom "no clips" through time. She did something exactly wrong, although that's not to say she deserves this fate. I combined this with chronostasis, AKA the stopped clock illusion, since it's a real thing that you may have even experienced before. The implication being that you, the reader, are not safe from this effect.
As for the photo at the end - they don't genuinely believe that she's coming back. They believe that she's dead, and by that point are on the final stage of grief. It's left as a reminder of sorts, a memorial. Virtually all hope of her return is gone at that point. However, no body has been found, so there's always some. Until concrete proof of her death is found, there'll always be some shred of hope, some fantasy that she'll return. That's what the photo is clinging to.
You're right about the heavy-handedness at points. In the earlier draft I mentioned, it was even worse. I'm still learning, and I really appreciate your feedback, I need critical analysis like this in order to improve. Thank you.
11618419 Those "feel bad" sections don't work because they tell rather than show. So it's in your face that this should make you feel bad when more subtlety would make it work. So it's not the message, but the way it's WORDED that makes it bad.
For example, instead of just saying "She slept on the floor that night" it would be better to emphasize her mental state. So upon seeing the photo telling her to come home it could be like:
So in your version this mental state could be implied, or it could just be that she's being "polite" like when she didn't want to eat from the other plates once there were only three.
In general the descriptions are good, but we could stand to be in Apple Bloom's head a little more. This would be a major thing for anyone to experience, let alone a little girl, so with so much time on her hands it would be good to see how she occupied herself. Though, again... limited word count.
Now, I didn't focus on the missing posters having been taken down, implying weeks or months have passed by. That's why the emptying of the room felt a bit abrupt. It actually does do a good job of showing time has passed, though if Apple Bloom has gone that long without any contact with another living thing I think she'd have broken earlier.
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That would certainly hit a lot harder! Thank you for elaborating. If I return to this after the contest, I'm sure its word count will balloon
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>I'm sure its word count will balloon
11618994
You know something while yes this would be a weird way to take it maybe this is what happened to Apple Bloom's parents. (We've never had a definitive explanation on that just that they're gone and not anywhere near them they haven't actually shown Graves or anything like that so just the memorial of the two trees intertwined) and they somehow find her in the asynchronous time zone that she's in so at least she has someone there even if they can't interact with other people she has her mother and father again yeah it would be a sad and horrific thing to others but it would be a bittersweet happy thing to know that they were always there watching their family but never able to interact with them after what happened to them.
11623391
That's actually a really sweet interpretation! Really wholesome and bittersweet.
If you like, you could write it - I give you permission ^^
11623411
Will do it will take a while since whenever I have inspiration takes me months to even get started on a story
Will there be a sequel to this, and/or a spin-off taking place on the other side?