Shadows
Something wasn't right. I could feel it within me, a writhing, pulsating, worming sensation deep down, in the darkest reaches of my being.
At first, it was little more than faint nudging. Here and there, things seemed off, or stopped making sense, like a puzzle with one or two pieces missing while you had the picture of the box next to it. You could imagine what pieces should be there, indeed, you had an image next to the puzzle itself, but there were great, gaping holes in the picture, gnawing away at any sense of wholeness or gratification, slowly eating away at the conscience, before the entire puzzle is dashed, returned to the box, and banished to some dank, dark closet, never again to be put together.
These sensations grew ever more frequent as the days and weeks wore on. Slight disturbances escalated to a profound disjoining of reality from what reality should be. Every wall was a one-way mirror, contained within a striking, smoldering, stifling gaze, ever watchful, ever observant. The walls were spying on me, their observant eyes sweeping over me, robbing me of any sense of privacy.
My dreams, too, were subject to those same invaders, penetrating every nook and cranny of my psyche, every neuron subject so the scrutinization of these foreign presences. The nightmares became even more terrifying as the nights dragged on. I awoke countless times every night, drenched in a clammy sweat trickling down my body, oftentimes without even the faintest recollection of what had occurred during my dreams.
They say that dreams are guarded by Luna herself. Whatever plagued my every moment, sleeping or waking, was clearly elusive, as to evade any peerings by the Lunar Goddess into my subconscious.
The unsettlement at the world that now pervaded my existence continued to grow. Small forms followed me everywhere, lurking behind every corner was some spirituous pony, some ethereal figure trailing me, a shadow; ever near and inescapable.
Soon, these shades began to creep their way further into my life. Every object in my vicinity was a platform for these silent observers. In my bits, in my food and drink, even in my bed there lay some remnant of darkness clinging onto everything.
Even my music sounded empty, hollow, devoid of any spirit, what life it previously had drained by these ghastly apparitions to feed themselves on my increasing paranoia and misery. Where once were beautiful melodies, harmonizing as they wove with and within one another, was now mere vibrations in the air of different frequencies, or terrible, discordant cacophonies, a startling and startlingly obvious scream from the world proclaiming 'this is not right!'
I went about the next few days on nothing less than complete instinct, arising in the morning like an automaton, my daily business now conducted simply as an exercise in normalcy. It was devoid of any feeling, save a growing discomfort and an increased sense of abject terror growing only larger with every passing second of my continued life.
Then, it began. The actions of the other ponies became ever stiffer, and yet ungainly and disorderly, puppets of these horrors surrounding me. Their voices felt unreal, sounding like a clanging bell or a crashing cymbal, pointless noise in a cacophony of senseless sounds and hollow sensation, a pre-recorded noise on a vinyl.
The ponies I had once called friends, family, and neighbors were now as hollow as the demons stalking me, these cloaked infiltrators entering into every domain a facet of existence, material and immaterial, ever watching, their eyeballs hidden by the shadows cast, the strings they held to control the marionettes that were those ponies I once knew so fine as to be barely visible.
I soon noticed the seams holding the ponies together, the nails, the tape, the screws, and glue keeping the illusion from falling apart and crumbling to the earth in a futile heap. Their skin and fur barely shielded their inner clockwork from my gaze, the gears turning just below the surface, somewhat obscured by the poor charade of thinking. In truth they were machines, acting as the cogs and springs churned within their muscles and bones. Strings were attached to their legs, maneuvering them with a blatant contrast between stiff, mechanical movements, and a wild thrashing of legs, tails, and heads.
There were even more startling discoveries in the making. Everything I touched began to take on the feeling of some dank dungeon floor, slime, grit, and water running along my hooves. The food, as well, began to taste rotten, as if it had been left in some deep cavern, far below the surface for years on end. Soon, even this horrific taste faded, as food began crumbling to ash in my mouth, barely retaining the disgusting flavor of mildew and mice excrement as it danced across my tongue.
One night, as I was getting into bed, the blanket covering me refused to lay down to warm my body as I slept. Upon closer inspection, I took notice of nothing less than a string.
I stared at the string closely, following in first down to my foreleg, and then back upwards, where a puppeteer sat above me, his leering face just barely showing from under the hood, a wide smile parting his face, a gash torn into the world, the spawn of hell slowly spilling from it.
He laughed, a mangled heaving of air leading into a screeching cackle, it's noise nearly deafening in the small confines of the room.
I screamed, fleeing into the night, with many a pony opening their windows and doors to see what all the fuss was about, many of them leaving their homes to follow me.
I continued my mad dash throughout the narrow streets of cobblestone, beneath the halo of many a streetlamp. I ran until I came across a stream, collapsing on the bank near a bridge. I slowly arose from my crumpled pile, only to find that now all of my limbs had strings trailing to a lonely figure sitting on a bridge, his hood revealing a crooked, toothy, unearthly smile, a slight, drawn-out laugh escaping from his lips.
The ponies that had followed me began to crowd around my tearful form, muttering amongst themselves. I, meanwhile, could only stare at the starlit reflection in the water.
There, staring back at me, surrounded by others of his kind, was a puppet.