Equestria By Night

by Dusk Jumper

III: The Porter

III: The Porter

Thump thump thump thump thump thump

Derpy opened one miserable eye halfway. Was that her own heartbeat?

Thump a-thumpa thumpa thump
Thump a-thumpa thumpa thump

Her eyes told her little. She’d lain here for hours, secretly hoping the daylight would banish the impossible things she continued to see, but it had never come. Inside the rotting barn she’d curled up in, it was nearly pitch black. The wood was jagged and had likely given her splinters, and her muscles remained tensed against the occasional screeches of bats.

Thump thump thudda-thudda-thudda-thudda thump thump thump thump

No... It wasn’t her imagination. The wood was vibrating very faintly with a rhythm that seemed to alter every few minutes. What was that?

She dreaded the notion of even lifting her head. She didn’t want this place to be real. Maybe if she lay here long enough, it would stop being real and the sun would rise and everything would be normal and Letterhead would shout at her for being late to work but that wouldn’t be so bad, that wouldn’t be so bad at all, she’d probably try and give him a big hug just for being --

A chorus of shouts sounded a distance away. Ponies? They were shouting words, though she couldn’t make them out. Something about their voices was strange, they were like the lilting, affected voices of clowns, but not funny like clowns...

The voices were moving away. Now they were all but gone.

Her stomach grumbled at her. When was the last time she ate? Or drank, for that matter. Despite the moisture in the air, her throat was parched.

Thumpa thumpa thumpa thumpa - thump a-thump - thump a-thump

Slowly, Derpy rose to her feet. Maybe she was just being a scaredy-pony. Maybe this was one of those times that there was a perfectly reasonable explanation for everything and she just had to find somepony to explain it to her. That happened a lot, right?

She lifted her head to the window. A small copse of lights glowed nearby, set apart from the others, from the inexplicable luminescent web spun over the countryside. She beat her wings.

As she sailed over the darkened ground, she spotted something. Were those fences? This barn... This was Sweet Apple Acres.

What had happened to it?

The wood looked rotten through, and the grass had been allowed to grow almost to shoulder-length, like it wanted to eat the farm up a little at a time. Applejack would have never permitted this. It seemed like every time Derpy brought her the mail she was fixing something... even when it didn’t seem to need fixing.

Stop. Not-gonna-think-about-it! Keep flying, Derpy. That’s what to do when you’re confused. Keep flying keep flying keep flying.

Everything always makes sense in the end.

Even when it doesn’t really.

She was closer to the lights, now. This was near Applejack’s storm cellar, if she remember right. She’d fallen in there once.

Okay, twice.

Floorlights cast a stark cone of light over the dirt road. A loose crowd of ponies was assembled. They all looked... dizzy? Most of them looked a little off-balance. And that one was getting sick in some bushes... Was this one of those rides that spins you around and around?

Those were fun.

The stairs to the cellar were still there, though they looked much different. They’d been paved over with some kind of smooth black stone, and there were little torch sconces burning on either side. It was a lot... fancier than anything she’d seen Applejack build before.

The thumping sound blasted as a door swung open at the foot of the staircase. Derpy recognized it now as the bass line of whatever music they were playing down there at such a deafening volume. Ponies turned as a mare with a plum-colored coat was pitched headlong up the stairs, landing unceremoniously on her rump. She blinked, her eyes glassy, and struggled to stand. Derpy gradually realized what was at work here: these ponies were leglessly drunk. She’d never seen so many intoxicated ponies in one place before, even at Pony Joe’s. And this wasn’t simply hard chocolate sauce like the kind she preferred, it was clearly more potent.

The door slammed shut and the music returned to a muffle. The general murmur fell silent as a large stallion emerged from below. It was hard to tell from up here, but was that Big Macintosh? In place of his harness he wore a black leather vest, and there was something in his mouth that wasn’t that reed-thing he was always chewing on. There was smoke coming from the end of it. Was it on fire? Derpy was so tired of trying to make sense of this place.

The plum pony swayed, clearly having trouble even sitting upright. Big Macintosh loomed over her. In the torchlight, his shadow was massive, and menacing. Derpy couldn’t quite hear what he was saying, but he was mad. The pony beneath him flinched and cowered, at last half-staggering and half-crawling away. Nopony moved to help her.

Big Mac flicked his smoky-stick-thingamadoo-godwhateverwhocares thing into the mud and crushed it with a stomp of his hoof that shook the ground so hard it set several ponies stumbling frantically. He snorted and withdrew to a position just left of the entrance. Derpy spotted her opening.

Swooping haphazardly to ground level she careened into the mud and ground to a gradual halt. Big Mac looked up and for an instant fixed her with a ferocious glare before recognition softened his features, if only a little.

“Derpy Hooves.” He began to move his great mass forward, approaching her very, very slowly. “S’nice to see ya.”

“Big Mac! You don’t know how glad I am to see you. I have to--”

“Glad t’see little ol’ me? What a nice surprise.” He was suddenly very close to her, much closer than she was comfortable with. And he was usually so polite with all the mares... “We ain’t had ya in here yet, an’ it was breakin’ my heart.” There was something in his voice that Derpy couldn’t place. It was so low, and deliberate. He smelled like leather.

She shifted, suddenly unsure what to do or say. “Um...”

He half-grinned. His gaze was a suggestion that was utterly lost on Derpy. “I get off in about fif-teen. Why don’cha find us a little table near the back... where’s we can be alone.”

“I don’t... What? Mac, I need your help! I have to... I have to just...” She trailed off. He kept moving his head closer. She took an uneasy step backwards.

“Oh, an’ I wanna help ya, Derpy. Y’know... I’ve always had muh eye on you jus’ a lil’ bit.” Derpy’s eyebrow went up. “... You with that gorgeous lil’ flank o’ yours.”

Derpy straightened up, stunned. Something inside snapped. “Mac, what the buck has gotten into you?!” The stallion blinked, mouth half-open. “I’ve never heard anypony talk like that in my life and I hear it from the sweetest gentlest strong and silent-est farmpony in the whole world?!” Ponies were turning and staring now. “What in Equestria is the matter with you?!” she repeated, her breathing heavy.

Big Macintosh stared at her for a long, long moment. Derpy thought she could read something there, in his eyes, something in pain, something impossibly large. Finally he broke away and stared very intensely into the blackened distance.

“G’wan inside, Derpy.” His voice was barely audible. “Or else go someplace t’ain’t here.” Derpy’s jaw clenched. She turned him a wounded glare. “... Please.” Big Mac almost sounded like he was pleading, right then, but like everything else today, and every other day of her life, she couldn’t begin to fathom why.

Slowly, Derpy moved past him and trotted down the staircase. Some part of her wanted to cry, but she beat it down. She was done crying.

She could feel the beat in her body now, vibrating inside her chest like a second heartbeat. It was a smooth rhythm, and instead of being scared, she allowed it to excite her as she pushed open the door.

Above, a trio of mares was arriving, their dresses wild, their makeup thick. They giggled at Big Mac and cast him sidelong glances and batted their eyelashes. One coyly stuck out her tongue.

He waved them in. But he did not look at them.

Comments

[RubberLotus]

Welp... this was disturbing.

But what can I say - I never get tired of fics with this premise, and this one's got the cleanest writing style I've seen so far.

Keep it up.