Chapter 1. Background Checks.

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In between the quiet burg of Ponyville, and the wondrous capital that is Canterlot, lies the Everfree forest. Easily the weirdest and most bizarre place in Equestria, if not the enitre planet of Terra. Most Ponies avoid it now-a-days but it wasn't always like that. You see before the invention of trains, Ponies had to use a road that ran straight threw the Everfree, and one day somepony had the dumbass idea to set up a RestStop at the halfway point in between the two cities. This puts it smack dub in the middle of the largest section of the Everfree, or as some of my coworkers call it, Discord's Dartboard. We call it that because the further you get into the forest the more weird things get.

Granted I am aware that some ponies live near the edge of the Everfree, myself being one of them due to my line of work, and I've even heard there's a Zebra named Zecora who actually lives in the forest a little ways out from Ponyville. However those places are around the smaller and less dense areas of the forest. The area Discord's Dartboard is located in is the major section of the wilderness, and as I stated earlier, the deeper into the forest you go, the weirder things get.

From what I can tell the Everfree RestStop, named for obvious reasons, lies somewhere around the Inner ring of the DartBoard, where weird stuff happens on a regular basis, while the really freaky stuff only happens once or twice a month. If your wondering what I mean by "Inner ring" allow me to explain. You see Discord's Dartboard is set up like, well a dartboard.

There's the Outer ring, the Outer area, the Inner ring, the Inner area, the Bull's eye, and in the center of it all there's the Bull's pupil, ground Zero for strange. Ponies that travel there either never come back or go completely Batshit insane, I'm talking full straight jacket, hundred different medications just to hold a conversation insane. As for the Bull's pupil itself, some Ponies have speculated to what it actually is. Some say it's where Discord himself was born. Others say it's a portal to another dimension, and the reason Ponies go insane is because they're unable to comprehend it, and it completely warps their world view. A certain few believe it's an Alien Spacecraft which sends out some kind of brain scrambler to keep itself hidden and after centuries of being here its warped nature itself. What do I think? I don't really care what it is, just as long as it doesn't come near me while I'm working.

Onto the store itself. It's open 24 hours a day, 7 a week. If your where to go inside you'd see a number of things. The first thing you'd notice is that there are row after row of off-brand chips, cookies, potted meats for the Griffin customers, and several other snack foods, some of the expiration dates for the canned goods are suspiciously missing, like they where filed off years ago in some misguided attempt to control inventory turnover. There's also a faded "Wet floor" sign in the way back covering what "was" a crack in the foundation by the cooler, which had long since turned into a small pot-hole, and has now metamorphosed into a collection of points from sticky spill-offs over the years, forming a mixture tar pit, collecting countless insect corpses, and the occasional small mouse.

Oddly, nopony's ever complains about the aesthetic, and by some providence bordering on the supernatural or criminal, the heath inspector has repeatedly signed off on the business, always kinda ignoring faint smell of what I can only assume is some kind of mysterious chemical cocktail that has since become the defining characteristic of the establishment. Somehow more noticeable than the family of mutated Raccoons that lives in the crawl space below the grease trap. At least, we think they're mutated anyway, at the very least they have to be inbred to the point of mental retardation, while Alpha of the group, a 3 foot tall son-of-a-bitch named Rocco has been spotted multiple times, chewing on people's wagon wheels, and has gotten the absolute crap beaten out of him by a Manticore who we call Scar due to his missing eye at least 17 times or more, and keeps coming back to his hidey-hole when we were sure that he was dead this time. Apparently Rocco and Scar have some kind of long standing rivalry that started some time after I started working here three years ago. Like the Bull's Pupil, nopony's really sure why the two hate each other so much, some think Rocco clawed out Scar's eye over some food, others say that Scar ate one of Rocco's brood, as for me, don't know don't care.

The lingering smell I mentioned earlier, a sweet combination of honeysuckle, ammonia, vomit, and who knows what else, has never been positively identified. But the prevalent theory is that it's coming from the cracks in the foundation, wafting up from the underground, it's strongest right after a rain, which happens randomly here, and is pugnet to the point of tear inducing if you get too close to the storm drains that where build along with the road to prevent flooding, and yes that does happen in the Everfree. Even Scar and Rocco refuse to go within even a few meters of it, choosing to have their brawls on the other side of the road in a little clearing that Scar made by knocking down several trees, presumably while trying to get Rocco off his back.

Back to the inside for a minute, if you needed to use the bathroom when coming in here, you might have the pleasure of meeting the Bathroom Cowpony. He exists as part urban legend, part urban fact, because even though he's never been officially confirmed to exist, we have several security camera recordings of a stallion fitting his description entering the building, heading into the bathroom and leaving. But what makes him a legend is what ponies claim to see him doing in the bathroom, nothing disgusting or criminal, just weird. I remember one story of a Pony going to pee, only to see a stallion dressed as a cowpony handing out balloon animals, and some are even more bizarre, like the pony who says he walked into the bathroom only to see a stallion wearing a cowpony hat sitting at an old-fashioned grindstone like they have at blacksmith shops, grinding an axe. When he walked in the Bathroom Cowpony stopped what he was doing, looked up with a smile and a tip of the hat and said "Come on man, come on with it." The Pony, understandably uncomfortable with the situation went to find an employee, but by the time anypony came back to the bathroom, the Cowpony had vanished grindstone and all. Now the Cowpony that may or may not haunt the RestStop bathroom, appears to follow a code of rules.
1st is he never appears unless there's only one other pony in the room with him, that being you.
2nd is that he never hurts anypony, whether it be intentional or by accident.
And 3rd is that he's always polite, always says hello, never gives any back-sass, and always smiles.
Honestly, he doesn't seem that bad, especially compared to the other weird stuff that happens in that place. If you go inside you might instantly get a toothache, a strangely common phenomenon that nopony really understands, it should go away on it's own after a couple of hours.

Now for the last thing you'll see if you enter the RestStop. Me, sitting behind the counter, because out of everypony, I am the only full-time employee aside from my manager, the great-great-grandcolt of the pony who first built this place, and unlike him I'm almost always here. You may catch me reading a book, or play one of those hoof-held video games. Why? Because for some reason the internet doesn't work out here, and cell phone service is dicey on good days and nonexistent on most. If you need to make a call you can leave and go towards either Ponyville or Canterlot, preferably Canterlot since it's higher up, and the only other big hill is of deeper into the woods, and you don't even want me to go into all the reasons that's not a good Idea. Or alternatively you can pay 5 bits per minute and use the store's landline, that little arrangement was cooked up by my manager, and as much as I don't want to I have to actually enforce it, because he checks the phone records on a weekly basis and if I don't enforce it, that money comes out of my pay check.

While you're here don't be offended if I don't strike up a conversation, because if I'm being completely honest, I don't always know for sure if everypony that comes in though these doors is real or not, and if I had to acknowledge everypony in that place the could actually be real I'd lose my mind. They don't need anymore of that going on around here, I guess the point I'm trying to make is this. Weird things happen to me working at this crappy RestStop in the middle of the Everfree, I honestly wish I could decide which was the weirdest thing that ever happened to me, but I can't, there's just so many.

Since I've started working here I've seen a total of four coffins inside the store on three different occasions, not dead bodies, coffins empty ones. I've met dozens of ponies wandering in towards either town from the woods, claiming they'd escaped aliens or changeling hives back when the changelings where a problem, or cultists, and they had no money but needed to make a call, and "Can I please just let them use our phone before "they" find them." But rules are rules, I'm not going to lose my pay or even my job just because you didn't escape captivity with a little bit of pocket change. I know greedy of me, but my philosophy is that I don't have to get involved without involvement being force upon me. That being said, I do give them a stealth potion my cousin makes for me incase I need to escape the RestStop myself, and tell the pony to drink it if they want to get back to town safely.

Then there's Farmer Brown, and yes that is his real name, he is, or I should say "was" a farmer on the Canterlot side of the Everfree, he's primarily the reason we sell meat products. Once in a while one of his animals dies, and he sells it to us.

Anyway this one time he got mad at us, and complained about the bulk feeder that we've been ordering for him. He insisted something was wrong with the product because all of his animals suddenly had the faces of some kind of ape creature that a Unicorn named Lyra Heartstrings insisted was called a Human. I'm sure nopony but her knew what a Human even was so after getting back to the matter at hoof, we settled with him by charging a significantly discount on his next couple of purchases. He stopped coming in one day, and I hear they found him, well, what was left of his body inside a bedroom at his farmhouse, one that had been locked from the inside. As far as I know they still haven't figured out what happened.

But now that I've gone on and on about where I work and the strange goings on there, you're probably asking yourself, "Who am I" "Who is the pony writing this." Well, allow me to tell you.

My name is Bright Eyes. I'm a stallion, average height and weight, light grey coat, and black mane. I'm a Unicorn, and my Cutie Mark is a bloodshot eye that's more or less identical to my normal eyes. You see, most little fillies get their Cutie Marks when they discover their special talent, I got mine when I was diagnosed with Chronic Insomnia, in short I'm unable to fall asleep, like at all. Nothing the doctors gave me could put me under, sleeping pills, anesthesia, sleeping spells, hypnosis, forced coma, about five years ago I tried to have Princess Luna put me to sleep, used all her power on me, couldn't even make my eyes heavy. I was about to stop there, but Luna asked Celestia along with Princess Cadence and Princess Twilight to help her the following night. Even with the combined magical energy of four Alicorns I couldn't so much as get drowsy. Honestly I don't have a problem with not being able to sleep, I was just happy for the chance to meet the Princess. The doctors said that aside from needing to consume more food than other ponies my condition was totally harmless, it even helped me out sometimes I could study for tests all night, improve on my puzzle solving skills, and do other things that most ponies don't have enough time to do. I took this job because I felt like it would be more beneficial to the owners to just have one full-time employee, instead of having to hire three different ones for the daytime, dusk, and dawn. That being said I do have a 1 hour break, which I'm going to be using to write these entries, so the manager has me train part timers in my spare time when nopony else is around.

I decided I should make this after somepony nearly got in the middle of one of Rocco's and Scar's rumbles. I asked the manager about it, and he said it was okay just as long as I didn't mention his name. For situations where I need to use his name I'll just call him the Boss, since that's what he is. I'll be glad to tell you all some stories later, but right now I got to get ready for work.

Chapter 2. Half a pig, no I'm not joking.

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HELLO PONIES OF THE INTERNET. Bright Eyes here, just like I told you. By the way, feel free to call me Bright. Everypony else does, mostly because it's my preferred name. So then, first off, here's everything you need to know before I continue. A couple decades ago, before the invention of trains, Ponies used a road to get from Canterlot to Ponyville, and that road just happened to cut through the densest, and strangest part of the Everfree forest, an area known as Discord's Dartboard.

A couple years after the road was built, a Pony who's name I honestly do not know, got it in his head to build a RestStop at the halfway point in the road equal distances from both Canterlot and Ponyville. Both the road and the RestStop are still operational to this day and get a moderate amount of service. Which is where I come in.

I work as a cashier at the RestStop. I'm a light gray Unicorn stallion, with a rare case of Chronic Insomnia, which not even the power of FOUR Alicorn princesses can cure, as such I am unable to fall asleep, EVER. This makes me perfect for this Job since the store is open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and sometimes longer. If you were to go inside you'd probably see me sitting behind the front desk, doing my best to just mind my own business, I'm real. You may also see somepony else, or someTHING else, if you are curious about the reality of anypony, or anything else, including yourself while inside that small ammonia scented flickering fluorescent collection of off-brand junk food, dirt, four walls, and a roof, may I recommend that you follow my lead, and mind your own business, you will be saner than you would have been if you tried to investigate the anomaly that is that place. Believe me I know. I've been working at that RestStop almost non-stop for three years, and at this point I doubt that I could quit even if I wanted to. But enough about me, let's get back to the interesting things that happen at the RestStop.

I spent a decent amount of time yesterday at the start of my shift, after I made the first post here, trying to decide which story would be worthy of being my first to document to the world, then anytime I tell somepony outside the RestStop anything about what happened there in, I know what to expect. Ponies don't believe it, or the just don't WANT to believe it, I mean imagine the difficulty that "I" had trying to call the sheriff's station in the outlier district of Canterlot, to explain that half a pig broke into the store and is currently running amuck, breaking things, and screaming with the voice of a Banshee.

Here's how the conversation would have looked like to an outside party. "Yeah, I meant "half a pig." Yes a pig, the front half, no this isn't a joke, I'm at the RestStop. What do you mean "Which RestStop?" the shitty one in the middle of the Everfree, you must be new, can I please talk to somepony else?" That's when she finally put me through to Blue Star. Blue Star or Blue as we call him, being the sheriff's deputy, the one that in his words "Drew the short straw" all those years ago and had to come out to the RestStop for the first time back before his hair was all white, now this doesn't mean he's old from what I can tell he's middle aged Unicorn, around 35 to 40 years old, now don't hold me to that I'm just spitballing here, although if his hair wasn't white already I'd expect it be turning grey in some areas, I don't know how his hair turned white but apparently it happened before I started working here. But enough about that let's get back to the Pig.

You see Blue's been in enough times know that all I have to say when he picks up the line is "It's half a pig, it won't stop screaming, and I can't catch it." Then he grunts, mutters something about it being "Pretty frickin weird," then comes out here to help me catch the thing, but Blue's a good guy. Anyway I asked around, but nopony knew where the pig had come from. I should have probably mention that this was back when Farmer Brown was still alive. He came down to take a look and provide his expert opinion. According to Farmer, the pig had somehow been chopped down the middle, but miraculously none of the important organs like the Kidneys and Spleen where hit, nothing supernatural about it just really unusual. Afterwards the pig stayed at the local elementary school as part of the mascot for the summer a scientist and his team from Canterlot Proper offered the school a thousand bits to let them take it, for science I suppose.

Anyway I don't mean to ramble, but my point is that it's hard to believe some of these stories if you haven't been inside the RestStop at least once, maybe you have. I mean we're the only RestStop I know of in the Everfree forest, the road we're on connects two cities where Royalty live, If you ever been traveling from point A to point B, and didn't take the train there, it's not impossible that at least one pony reading this has found themselves at my door. Maybe looking to get some snacks, maybe to make a call, If you have a strange memory of a weird place that somehow doesn't seem to fit with the rest of your memories, then there's a chance we've actually met. Although I wouldn't know your name or remember your face since as I stated in my last entry, I'm not entirely sure whether or not everypony who walks through those doors is real or not.

Anyway back to last night, I was sitting behind the counter with a pen and a book of note paper we usually use for receipts, trying to remember the strangest thing that had happened to me, that still falls within the realm of believability. I'm had plenty of things that happened to me that was strange, but are so unbelievable I won't even waste anypony's time ever trying to tell them. I call those the "Try'n'Forget" stories. I was trying to pick out a story that would be good here when one of the part-timers, a Changeling named BugSpray, interrupted my concentration. Here at the RestStop we have a long list of part-time employees. The Boss likes to hire transients, drifters, hitchhikers, passers-by, and runaways. Ponies looking for a few days of work, and can be easily replaced. He has a little shack for them to stay in out back, it has four bunks, four dressers, a wood burning oven, a fire extinguisher incase of fire, and an axe for chopping wood, or incase something tries to break in. I try not to get to know the part-timers since they're only there for a few days or weeks, never really long enough to form any lasting or meaningful friendship unless your super clingy.

Anyway back to BugSpray. BugSpray's been working here for almost a year now, he started it as a prison work relief program, apparently he was a part of Queen Chrysalis's army that attacked Canterlot, he unloaded wagons twice a week, he was also the only one of the 12 prisoners that didn't straight up disappear during a freak snowstorm last winter. Granted the other prisoners where all Minotaurs and Griffins, but I still respected him for it. BugSpray served his time, and when he was released, he came to work here, cleaning the store and unloading wagons, he comes in six times a day for each of his 30 minute shifts. Actually now that I think about it, I'm not exactly sure what he does during those shifts, the store's never clean and supply wagons only come twice a week exclusively during the daytime hours, as per an arrangement following the incident, maybe one of these day I'll actually ask BugSpray what he does for the Boss. Anyway all I know is that he's the closest thing to a friend I have here, and when he approached me at my register last night I knew something unusual was going on, he was sweating bullets, as pale as his insect like carapace would let him get, and was on the verge of passing out, he kept glancing back at this Pony in a suit that had wandered into the store and was standing next to the frozen drink machine. BugSpray told me that he needed to talk to me NOW. I told him to go ahead, but he refused to say anything unless I followed him into the freezer. I usually hate to leave the front of the store unwatched, like any store we have the occasional shoplifter, plus there was that one time Rocco got in and made off with a jumbo sized bag of chips and two cases of cigarettes, but BugSpray seemed serious, so I made an exception for him and once with were in the sub freezing safety of the walk-in cooler, BugSpray asked me if I had seen the guy in the suit, I said "Yeah I saw him."

He asked me if I knew the guy and I said "Yeah I'd seen the guy around town." his name was Stone Pillar or as some people call him Pillar, he was a dark grey Earth Pony with a Black mane, and he was running for some kind of office, I can't remember which one, but he'd stop by the RestStop every now and then, he drove a big black horseless carriage that somepony named Mustang Steel had invented, which was powered my something called Bio-deasel, which from my understanding was a mixture of boiled vegetable oil and coffee grounds. I didn't know that much about him from in Canterlot, but he was definitely a local, I remember that his picture was framed in my highschool's trophy case for one of those sports competitions that he had won years and years ago before I got there, Canterlot has a lot of things to be proud of but I knew of Pillar. We weren't exactly acquaintances but we still talked to each other sometimes, about the weather schedules and stuff like that.

I told all of this to BugSpray, who shook his head and said, "No, no that can't be Pillar."

I asked,"Why not?"

BugSpray told me, "That can't be Pillar, because Pillar's dead, I killed him two days ago. His body's in my dresser back in the cabin right now."

That's where things started getting weird. I really don't want to do this, I realize how awful it is to pause a story at a place like this and I was only just now taking my lunch break and was down at my house near the Canterlot side of the Everfree to document the last things before I forgot. I still have to eat, change out of this dirt covered uniform, did a lot of digging last night, plus I don't want to leave the part timer alone with all those lawn gnomes until we figure out what's going on with them. Oh shit, I forgot to mention the lawn gnomes. Okay so I'm so scatterbrained right now, like I said it was a very strange night, between the Hoof Plants, farmer Jr. no relation to Farmer Brown, and that friendly cultist that wouldn't leave me alone, I've hardly had any time to collect my thoughts, and of course the BugSpray and Pillar situation, I promise I'll come back and tell you all about it. But first I'm gonna grab some donuts.

Chapter 3. Lawn Gnomes, Hoof Plants, a Cultist, and a Dead body. It's gonna be a long night.

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There are times when this world drifts so close to the fabric of reality that I can here something calling me from beyond that vail, sometimes when I get too close, I can feel that thing on the other side tugging at the corners of my mind. I'm worried about BugSpray, he doesn't seem to be taking this so well. In case you don't know, BugSpray and I work at this crappy RestStop in the middle of the darkest, densest, weirdest parts of the Everfree forest, on a road that cuts through an area of the forest affectionately called Discord's Dartboard. As you can expect from the Everfree weird things have been happening weird things have been happening there for as long as it's been there, I only started to tell some of my stories about the crazy shit that I've seen, and if you haven't caught up yet, I'd like invite you to check out chapters 1 & 2 if you get the chance.

Now If you have read the chapters up to this point or at least chapter two you must be itching to know what happened with BugSpray and the dead body of Pillar. But right now I have more pressing issues to cover. You see after returning to work after posting chapter 2 here yesterday, I was delighted to find a stack of receipt paper sitting neatly in the register counter, the notes written in my own sloppy hoof-writing. Now you may be asked yourself "If this guy's a Unicorn why is he writing with his hooves?" and the answer to that is because I feel we Unicorns rely too much on magic. Granted it is the defining quality of our race but that doesn't mean we should solely rely on it for everything. Pegasi can use their legs to run, Earth ponies can use their brains for science, and we Unicorns can use our hooves to write simple notes damnit.

Back to the notes, I don't actually remember writing them, but then again I don't remember a lot of things. It is possible that I'm working too hard, or maybe the fumes coming from beneath the RestStop are messing with my memories, or perhaps I wrote them but then forgot them when the whole BugSpray and Pillar thing happened, at any rate I'm not one to (No pun intended) look at a gift horse in the mouth, or any other animal in any other orifice for that matter. Admittedly my hoof-writing isn't the best, and at times the words on the receipt paper become hard to read, so if anything in here seems unbelievable, it's probably because I copied it wrong, or you just need to get a more open mind. I'm going to be listing these of by the time I wrote them.

7:00: It's getting dark earlier these days. Probably a sign of winter coming.

7:30: Farmer Jr. came into the RestStop tonight asking about the hoof plants. I told him that they weren't there anymore, he left his phone number scribbled on the back of a coupon for 15% off bulk pig feed from an online retailer. I think he's trying to send me a message.

8:00: Rocco and Scar are at it again, this should be entertaining.

8:05: Once again Scar was the winner, to add insult to injury he decide to take a piss on the angry raccoon, Rocco retaliated by biting down in Scar's family jewels, needless to say Rocco was thrown into the side of the RestStop with the force of a cannonball, I would have been concerned for the little bastard if I didn't work here long enough to know that no matter what Scar throws at him, Rocco's always get back up and be back with a vengeance the next time around. Who knows, one of these day he may actually win.

9:00: I think maybe some kids are trying to play a prank on me. I found a lawn gnome behind the pork rinds, I don't think much about it and I put the little guy in a box behind a counter. But then I found another matching lawn gnome in the soda case, I added this one to the box as well. It wasn't until I notice the third and fourth lawn gnomes that I started to suspect something. I had taken the garbage and found gnomes perched atop the branch of a tree next to the dumpster, staring down at me like gargoyles, I used my magic to grab them down, and put them in a box with the other four, when I got back to my desk I found a note in my chair written in what I hope is red ink. It said simply "I'm in the walls" I don't know who wrote it, but the paper smells like oranges for reason, with a hint of copper. I'm beginning to think this isn't red ink.

10:00: There's a strange scratching noise coming from the tiles above the cash register. I fear one of Rocco's brood has infiltrated the building again. I'm gonna have to call that one Pegasus who can talk to animals, I think her name was FlutterShy. I'll wait till my suspicions are confirmed to make the call.

11:00: Farmer Jr. called the store, he asked about the Hoof plants, I assured him they weren't there anymore and if they ever showed up again I would call him. I think he's starting to suspect that I'm lying.

12:00: One of the cultist recruits wandered in from their community in the inner area of the woods. They hate it when I call them cultists. I don't get how anypony could stand living that close to the center of Discord's Dartboard, I mean I get antsy just being on the inner ring of it. For clarification Discord's Dartboard has a 500 mile radius around the Bull's Pupil which is in the exact center. The outer and inner Rings, as well as the Bull's Eye, all add up to 50 of those miles. The outer area adds up to 300 miles, and the inner area is 150. Now as stated in the first chapter the further into the woods you go the weirder everything gets. The RestStop is in the inner ring, which mean plenty of bizarre things happen here but nothing too scary and life threatening, the little community the cultists set up is some where in the middle of the inner area which means that weird stuff happens a lot and most of it is dangerous. Anyway back to the cultist himself. I know the recruits supposed to interact with the outside world, but from time to time they'll sneak out, never go any further than this RestStop, and they'll by a pack a cigarettes. They aren't supposed to try and recruit new members until they graduate to the "honorable senior" cultist status, but this one isn't a very good cultist. I know they aren't supposed to have names, but I'm gonna call this one Smoker, I'll let you guess why. Well Smoker stayed in the store for at least half an hour trying to convince me to go back to the compound with him, they hate it when I call their home a compound. He tried to appeal to my logical side, but then I let him know politely, but firmly, that I was not interested in logic. I can't remember when he left.

2:00: I found myself digging again. Sometimes on slow nights I let myself drift, my mind goes somewhere, and when I come to I wonder where I was just now, who was that controlling my body while I was gone. I like to think it's my way of letting my consciousness take a rest even though my body can't actually sleep, I call it Zombie Mode. The only explanation I have for it is that my body does those things "I've" done so many times before, that I guess it's learned to do it without me. Like some kind of hyper-advance muscle memory. Here's a list of all the things I'm sure my body did before Zombie mode shut down.
My body restocked the cigarettes.
My body rotated the flavors in the frozen drink machine.
My body scrapped the mold off the bottoms of the ice buckets.
My body emptied the rat traps.
My body found four other lawn gnomes and put them with the others.
And somewhere along the way my body found a shovel, went out back, and started digging a hole.
Actually I shouldn't say my body started digging, I have been or rather my body has been digging this hole off and on for the last few months. Usually I come to after a few shovelfuls, this time I actually added another foot before I snapped back to reality and asked myself, "What the Tartarus am I doing?"

3:30: I just noticed a door at the end of the hallway past the walk-in cooler. How long have I worked here and never noticed that door before, it seems disappointingly ordinary as far as doors go, except for the fact that it's warn to the touch and feels like it's vibrating. I tried the handle but it's locked so I went back to my post and noticed a thing in a trench coat standing outside, around where Rocco and Scar had their fight, just outside the reach of our lights, and dangerously close to the edge of the forest. From what I can see it's seven feet tall and looks like an emaciated Minotaur. I can't tell if it's looking at me, or if it's looking past the building at woods on the other side. I wish it wouldn't stand there like that, still, with it's arms reaching down past its knees. The scratching against the tiles on the ceiling over the counter is getting louder. I looked up to poke the tile with a broom and when I looked back the thing was gone.

3:45: A Pony came into the store rolling a large white ice chest behind him, he had sunken blue eyes, wiry hair coming from his nose and ears, long boney legs, and paper-thin skin which would have shown every vein if it weren't for his sleek yellow fur, I took a peak at his cutie mark to see it was a meat grinder with meat oozing from the little holes. He wore a bowler cap and smelled like milk. I had definitely never seen him before. He asked if we would be interested in partnering up with him, he sold ground meat at discount prices, but I told him our store doesn't do well with the "fresh food" category before recommending he try his hoof at making jerky, before he left he scooped about a pound or so of raw ground meat from the ice chest into a piece of parchment paper, and gave it to me as a "sample." Once he left I found another lawn gnome waiting for me. I put the gnome into the box with the other eight. As for the meat I gave it to Rocco and his group, I know it's not a good idea to give food to pests but I figure as long as the have that they won't try and steal any snacks for a few hours.

4:00: BugSpray just told me something very strange about Pillar. This is the part of the story I left off on in chapter 2. I asked him what he meant when he said he had killed Pillar two days ago, he said he would explain when Pillar left. I left the cooler, and went back to my desk.

4:30: There was a Pegasus kid named Cloud Slasher, who went to the same high school as me, and Pillar. Slasher was just a year ahead of me, but looked much older, and acted much younger. I lived out in the outlier district of Canterlot which was considered a small town compared to the rest of the capitol, and small towns get bored, for entertainment some turn to gossip, some turn to sinister pastimes, the latter often fueling the former. There were rumors around town that Slasher liked to torture and kill small animal, rumors that Slasher's parents and siblings always locked their bedroom doors when they went to sleep at night. The rumors didn't slow down any after the fire at Slasher's house, and Slasher was the only one to escape, unscathed. Scientists are still debating over how it was even possible for a house made of clouds to catch on fire. As for the rumors, they went into over drive following day, when Slasher revealed his cutie mark a bloody knife carving a red X, which would sometimes bleed when Slasher was really excited about something. I remember one of the rumors being "I once saw Slasher gleefully stomp on a lizard, throw his head back, and laugh." Some short time after his house caught fire for the second time, Slasher left town. The story went on that he'd gone off to join the army, I didn't know what to think about that so I simply, didn't think about "that." I would have been perfectly happy to never think about "that," but after all these years, after five long years of blissful ignorance I'm force, to think, about "that." Why? Because Cloud Slasher, just came into the store and ordered a cup of coffee, he's sitting in one of the booths, talking to Pillar. Smoker's back, asked if I could spare some time to talk about his fake religion, they hate it when I called it a fake religion, and I told him that I was busy and that he had to leave. He seemed upset, but fuck him, I got my own shit to deal with.

4:45: Slasher and Pillar sat around for a while and didn't buy anything but two cups of coffee. When they both finally left I let BugSpray know, he had been hiding under a blanket in the walk-in cooler, I don't really understand why he would willingly do that, his insect wings look like they would break if he buzzed them too hard. After that BugSpray explained to me exactly what happened. He told me he had finished his last shift a couple nights ago, when he saw Pillar's vehicle pull over into a ditch at the bottom of the hill behind the store. BugSpray being the good guy that he is, went to go see if Pillar needed any help. He said when Pillar pulled up and got out of the vehicle, he could hear what sounded like a loud crunching noise coming from further into the forest. BugSpray went to investigate, that's when he saw something. When I asked him what he say he just started speaking Changeling, I can't speak Changeling so I nodded along empathetically. The only word I managed to pick up was "Strega" which is the name of a liquor we carry. Whatever it was that BugSpray was saying, it made him race back to his cabin and grab the axe. He heard something outside and he jumped out swinging the axe every which way, and that's when the axe made it's way into Pillar's skull. BugSpray was a good guy, but he was in a bad situation, he stopped his panic attack and checked on Pillar to see I he was actually dead, which he was. There was nothing BugSpray could do to change that fact, it was an accident. BugSpray was on parole, there was that "thing" in the woods and BugSpray had to make a decision so he dragged Pillar into the cabin, locked the door, and heaved the body into his dresser which he also locked. BugSpray took me to the cabin out back and showed me the body, after seeing the body in well enough light I can confirm 100% that it was Pillar, not just because of his unmistakable face minus the axe wound in it, but also because of his phone, and wallet that where in his pocket. Now I know all of you Changeling haters out there are going to say "Well if he really did kill Pillar then who's to say he had one of Changeling buddies disguise themselves as Pillar?" And to that I say, BITCH if he had one of his changeling pals be disguised as Pillar, then why the fuck is he showing me this? Anyway I told BugSpray to keep this hidden and that we'd deal with it when I got off from work.

5:00: I finally got tired of the scratching, and pulled our ladder out of storage to see what the Raccoon was doing up in the ceiling. But when I pushed back the tile the only thing up there was another five gnome, that makes a baker's dozen so far. Where the fuck are they all coming from

6:00: The thing in the trench coat is back and so is the cultist. I probably should have described him before now so here it goes. He's a bright orange Pegasus with a blonde mane and tail, he's also dress in a crimson robe that covers his cutie mark, the insignia where his cutie mark should be was a smily face with the elements of magic as the eyes, along with the other five elements of harmony and all the basic mathematic signs, Plus, Minus, Multiply, Divided by, and Equals, surrounding the face. Honestly I kind liked it, it was like something Mathletes would have on a shirt. Anyway back to the preaching cultist. Smoker came in demanding an audience with me, insisting that if I just listen to him, I would see that his belief's reasoning was "superb", and "flawless", and that I would be a fool not to join him in the "perfection" of Logic and Nirvana that is his belief structure. I was about to tell him to get the hell out again, but then I looked at the thing in the trench coat. Deciding that I could kill two birds with one stone, I agreed to listen to his pitch, if he would agree to ask the thing in the trench coat to leave, that way I'd know if it was dangerous or not and I could get him out of my mane either way. Our hasty verbal contract in place, I steeled myself to listen. Honestly, he did make a few good points, but I suppose it's to be expected from a viral thought experiment strong enough to convince perfectly normal ponies to abandon their real lives and go live in that commune it the woods, past a crappy RestStop, in the middle of the weirdest place in Equestria. They call themselves the Mathmatists, they believe that Ponykind exists to fulfill two moral imperatives, to decrease suffering, and to increase happiness, now seeing as how one of the most blessed of virtues we ponies have is harmony, I would agree with him. However the Mathmatists actually made a scale for this, which leads me to believe that Twilight Sparkle actually came up with this one night when she was drunk and threw it away where it was found by some religious wing-nut who started the cult. A successful life increases happiness more than suffering. A decent life decreases suffering more than happiness. How "good" a pony is can be determined by the spread between the happiness increased and the suffering decreased. Obviously if the individual has a negative spread, that is if they have increase happiness less than they have increased suffering, or if they they've decreased suffering less than they've decreased happiness, that the individual is bad. Therefore if an individual causes a tremendous amount of both happiness and suffering, one can use this perfect rubric to determine whether the individual was good or bad, it's simple right? Well the mathmatists believe that the world has been about good and bad in the wrong way for eons we've been attempting to increase happiness when instead we should have been focusing on decreasing suffering, as happiness is a fluid concept and the more happiness you create the harder it is to sustain as happiness has a clear set of diminishing returns, suffering however is constant, suffering results from happiness coming to an end. Suffering is pure and eternal, for a Mathmatist to be supremely good, they must simply end all suffering. That is why the Mathmatists are working on a bomb to destroy the entire planet, by ending all life on the planet, they end an infinite amount suffering into the future, with every life the avert an entire lineage of ponies that would be born into a life of suffering will no longer, every death is a preemptive mercy killing, every happy moment that will no longer occur pails in face of all the sad moments that are likewise prevented, and so as Smoker explained, their murder suicide cult believes that killing is a kindness. I told him that his ideas were stupid, and that he was stupid, and that now he had to go tell the thing outside to go away. Bit of a dick move on my part but hey, I kept up my end of the bargain.

6:30 : The phone rang, now this is strange for two reasons, first because it was "not" the landline it was the cell phone even though we barely get cell phone service out here, and second because it was "the" cell phone, the one I took off Pillar's body. Now I'll admit, I was stuck in a bit of a moral quandary since BugSpray confided in me. On the one hoof, BugSpray had killed somepony. On the other, it was an accident and BugSpray's parole officer may not see it that way. I thought that I would have more time to figure this whole shit-storm out, but when the phone started to ring, I knew I had to make a decision. I answered it, I didn't speak at first the voice on the line was one I recognized.

"You have something that belongs to my boss." It was Cloud Slasher.

"His cell phone and wallet?" I asked.

"What? No we don't care about that shit, we can buy more phones, we can get more wallets, you know what I mean." He was right, I did.

"It was an accident." I explained.

"We know. We want to make a deal, you give it back, we pretend this whole thing didn't happen."

"Can we do that?"

"Absolutely."

"Um, alright when?"

"Around 7:30"

"Alright does that spot behind the RestStop with all the Hoof plants sound good to you?"

"Yeah, seeya then." He hung up.

7:30: BugSpray came in for his shift at 7, and I explained the deal to him, he wasn't thrilled, but as I laid it out very clearly, we didn't have a choice. I say "we" because I was now involved in it, and they knew that. We pulled Pillar's body out to the place me and Slasher agreed to and made a point to stand far enough away as to not get our legs grabbed. Pillar's Vehicle drove up a few minutes later, Slasher was driving, both he and the still living Pillar got out without a word, sized us up, and walked over to the body. As BugSpray and Slasher moved the body into the back of the vehicle Pillar and I just stared at each other, keeping eye contact the whole time. Slasher wrapped the body up in a tarp and blanket, when it was over, Pillar put a hoof on my shoulder and whispered in my ear. "You done good." When they where gone BugSpray started crying an I went back inside the store. It was almost daytime and that's when the new part-timer was supposed to take over.

8:00: The new part-timer's late and I'm over due for a lunch break. I made the best of my extra time here by putting name tags on the lawn gnomes, I'll bring them home and later leave them around my house, I get lonely sometimes don't judge me.

8:30: I walked into the bathroom and saw the infamous bathroom cowpony, he smiled when I came in and said in a sing-songy voice. "Come on man, come on with it." I checked a glance at his cutie mark and saw it was a frowning mask like you'd see above the stage at a theater only without his smiling partner to jolly up the mode. I looked to the cowpony and asked. "Is everything going to be okay?" The bathroom cowpony took a second to think and walked past and when he was right next to me he stopped and said. "I appreciate it." Then he left, I honest don't know what that means.

Well that's the entirety of the receipt paper notes but I did make a point to start keeping an actual journal for me to document this kind of stuff in. The lawn gnomes have been fitting in well at my house, and I'm glad that issue with the dead body got resolved. But I have a feeling that I have seen the last of either the thing in the trench coat or Smoker. I also ran the word Strega through an online translator and apparently it's the Changeling word for Witch, so I guess there's a Witch in the Everfree, that's something to be concerned about. Other than that I guess all I have to say is I hope you all enjoyed and I hope you keep reading.

Chapter 5. I am SO sorry.

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I should begin this by say that I am truly sorry to anypony who read Chapter 4. I had no idea what was going to happen, the Element Bearers and the Royal guard have assured me that every trace of the story has been removed from the internet, and that there's nothing to worry about.

If you where unfortunate enough to have read Chapter 4, try to forget everything. If you experience nosebleeds, dizziness, migraines, or hallucinations, go immediately to the emergency room. If you have a recurring dream of being on an island made of song, yes, you read that right, song, under no circumstances should you approach or attempt to open that blue door with a painting of a crow on it. Just wait till Princess Luna comes and destroys it.

If you haven't read Chapter 4. There is no Chapter 4, it doesn't exist, forget it, forget you ever heard of it.

Now then on to the actual chapter. By now you probably know that there's a crappy little RestStop on road that runs through the largest part of the Everfree Forest, and that weird things have been happening here for as long as I can remember. Several of the Princesses have personally asked me to stop writing about it, following the events of, well chapter 4. Once again, I am sorry. But I explained to them that what happened was a one time thing and in the three years I've worked here nothing like it has ever happen, so they agreed to let me keep writing, as long as if another thing like it happened again I would first pass it by some moderators, which is a polite way of saying death-row inmates. Celestia gave me the email address of a death-row prison warden and said that if I used a special code, which I'm not going to write down, that they would take care of the rest. I'm not sure if this is morally ethical or not but the "Moderators" are on death row so I guess that their going to die either way. Maybe I'll if that weird thing that caused all this shows up again I'll just not mention it in my journal and try to forget I ever saw it.

I'm not actually working right now it's the first legitimate break I've had since writing and posting the Chapter 4. It seems like so long ago that I started writing this when in reality it's only been a couple of days, time moves funny here, flowing fast and slow at the same time, like molasses out of a shotgun. It's been a good thing that I've been keeping a journal I got a couple minutes before the battery on my new laptop dies, and I think now might be the perfect, if not only change to transpose my journal entries before the battery runs out or the blood loss gets to me, at this point it's a race to see what happens first, before any of you worry I've already called Blue. He didn't answer but I left him a message telling him where I am and that I need a right to the hospital. Right after he picks up dinner for the Wormwood orphans, Chopper and his little sister. Blue and the other deputies have been taking turns checking on them, and bringing them food in an attempt to make the whole thing less tragic. They've been living on their own ever since the incident that totally did not happen in the nonexistent Chapter 4. There I go again off on a tangent, I guess I'll get right to it and write up my journal entries while I still can. There are a lot of them so get comfy, I've also dated them since it's been multiple days and nights since Chapter 4. I'll do this in later chapters if there are greater spaces between posts.

November 2nd, 9:00 pm: So much has happened since the Nightmare Night incident that we're not aloud to talk about, I've been much more busy dealing with the aftermath along with the Cult. The Mathmatists have been cleaning out our inventory on a daily basis, planing ahead for some sort of secret event, that I only get to here about in hushed murmurs and whispers. As I would expect Night is coming earlier and the weather's getting colder. The lawn gnomes have followed me back to the RestStop. I went to take a piss earlier and found them littered around the store, I know their the same ones because they have the name tags I gave them in the same places I stuck the tags to their little bodies, I guess they prefer this crappy little RestStop over my crappy little cottage near the Everfree, I can guess why, I'm hardly ever there and most of the rooms are dusty as crap, I would sell it and come live in the little shack behind the RestStop with BugSpray, but the Boss deducts some of my pay for rent money, plus I can barely stand working all the way out here, if I had to live here and never leave I'd lose my damn mind, and like I said a few chapters ago we don't want or need any of that going on. Anyway I collected all the little gnomes and set them up in various places behind the register.

November 3rd, 2:00 am: The thing in the trenchcoat is back, he's standing just outside the door staring in, and he's been there for almost an hour now. On the bright side, no name based pun intended, I haven't had a customer come in since he showed up. On the not so bright side, I can't help but thing that he's trying to put thoughts in my head, he won't be able to though, I've had way too much practice. I've also started calling it a he, because I've noticed that it doesn't have female breasts common with Minotaurs and other bipeds, how I even know what female Minotaur breasts look like is my business. I probably should have mentioned this earlier but Pillar came in today before the sun went down. He sat in one of the booths drinking coffee for a while, eventually Cloud Slasher showed up. Slasher had a word with Pillar before storming up to my register shouting at the top of his lungs, he grabbed a display of lotto scratch offs and threw it across the room. It was obvious that something had upset him, that's when I took off my headphones.

"Everything okay?" I asked stupidly. I knew damn well that everything was never okay.

"Did you hear a word I just said?" Slasher asked in annoyance. I explained to him that I had taken to listening to music through headphones to drown out the sound of screaming that had begun to periodically radiate through the air vents, I guessed the screams must have stopped a while ago, or maybe I had simply just imagined them, or maybe I was just reliving the events that happened in Chapter 4, either way I didn't need the headphones anymore. At this point Blue walked into the store, his white mane and mustache looking whiter than normal.

Slasher, I could see became instantly aware of the deputy's presence. "Where is he?" He half whispered, half growled. "Where's the other one?"

"BugSpray?" I asked.

Slasher sighed. "Sure, "BugSpray"."

"He's not due for another twenty minutes."

"Well when he gets here, tell him we need to have a chat." With that, Slasher let out a shrill whistle and left the store, Pillar jumped out of his seat and followed close behind, and Blue helped me pick up the mess and put the lotto display back together without asking a single question, I wish more ponies could be like Blue.

When BugSpray got to work he told me he had been having weird dreams, dreams of something enormous, living, breathing, underground, the dreams always end the same way, with the RestStop collapsing into a giant sinkhole, and that when he woke up he could feel a kind of tingling sensation at the point of his horn, like when Chrysalis would give the hive orders through brainwaves. I told him that Slasher was looking for him, that's when BugSpray grew solemn, and asked me if he could show me something. In the freezer behind a stack of boxes labeled "Non-a-prior", Whatever the fuck that means they've been here longer than I have, there was a blanket, and behind that blanket was another Pillar.

My first question for BugSpray was, "You stole the body back?"

He looked at the ground sheepishly and shook his head like a filly that had just gotten busted for cooking meth.

"You killed another one?" I asked.

"It wasn't me this time, I swear." BugSpray said pulling back the blanket past the dead Pillar's face to reveal a deep gash on his heck. "I followed him from when he last stopped by, I was going to ask how there could be two of him, when this big pack of TimberWolves showed up and jumped him, I turned into a fire drake to scare them off but when I did I noticed that they had already ripped out his windpipe, so I brought him back here and put him here when you went to the bathroom."

"Wait did you notice any of the lawn gnomes outside." I asked.

"Yeah actually, when I came out I saw one holding the door open, why?" He asked.

"It's nothing, I guess I should start keeping an eye on them." I replied. We agreed to wait for Slasher to call us like he did last time and we'd explain what happened.

3:00 am: The thing in the trenchcoat is finally gone. He left claw marks on the glass of the front door, I checked the security footage to confirm my suspicions, he always stays outside the range of the cameras, why can't I remember what his face looked like?

3:30 am: Smoker was the first customer in the store after the thing in the trenchcoat left, I told him that I was surprised that he was still alive, he mistook this for a compliment and said "thank you." I asked him if he was ready for the "big event", but he just stared at me blankly. I could tell that he had no idea what I was talking about, so I filled him in on how I had put it all together, the unusual cultist activity, the hushed whispers, the buying up of all of our supplies, I could tell that something was about to happen. Smoker went pale in the face, then ran out of the store before I could finish, the 2 bit frozen drink still in his hoofs. I know I should write up an inventory loss slip for the theft, but I just can't bring myself to do it, as hard as it is to explain there's just something about Smoker that makes me genuinely feel sorry for him.

6:00 am: I caught myself digging again. I don't know how long I was out there, or who was running the store while I was gone, the hole was so deep now that I nearly couldn't climb out of it on my own. I should maybe consider the possibility of one day seeing a doctor, or at least tying a long rope to somewhere and throwing it down into the hole for an easier exit.

8:00 am: Smoker is currently crying in the dry storage closet. I could barely make out the story through his sobs. Apparently Smoker was sent on some kind of "Vision Quest" for the last week and had no idea what the other cultists had been stocking up for, when he went back to the compound earlier he found the whole place completely deserted, beds were left unmade, some plates had food on them, a fire still burning in the fireplace, everypony's robes were still in their personal milk crates next to their sleeping bags, but the ponies, all of the ponies were simply gone. Smoker isn't taking this very well, but I have a business to run, so I asked BugSpray to help me carry him into the dry storage area. I figured that he could work through some stuff in there, and maybe when he's done he'll just go home. I can't help but feel like this is my fault, I mean I know I never gave exact details of the Mathmatist compound, but I made ponies aware of their existence by posting information about them on this site, I know Celestia says that ponies are free to follow whatever religion they desire, but that still doesn't change the fact that most ponies aren't comfortable with cults, even if their way out in the Everfree forest away from everypony else. But who know's maybe I'm just over thinking things.

November 4th 9:00 pm: That Pegasus that talks to animals just left, she said that all the snakes are gone this time, but I have my doubts. I tried to also get Rocco and his clan to leave but she said that they where, "Very insistent to stay." I told her to try again. She tried giving Rocco some kind of death glare to intimidate him into obeying, but Rocco responded with his own rabies foam filled snarl, which promptly scared the living day lights out of her, and me. I wasn't surprised that little stare didn't work, Rocco's one of the only things I know that constantly gets his ass kicked by a manticore, and still gets up meaner than ever the next time around.

November 5th 7:00 am: Rocco and Scar had another one of their brawls, only this time it was interrupted by a pack of TimberWolves. Oddly enough Rocco and Scar worked together to scare them off and kill who ever stayed, before going right back to each other's throats. I'm beginning to think that their little fights are less about territory and more about personal honor at this point. I'm not sure if animals have a sense of honor, but there's clearly some kind of respect shared between the two, underneath all the resentment, I mean.

5:00 pm: Pillar came into the store again today, and made some thinly veiled threats. He asked about BugSpray to, but I told him that I was tired of being the go-between, and he had business with BugSpray he needed to take it up with BugSpray. That's when Pillar started getting weird.

"You know this place is just a big experiment, and your the little mouse." Pillar said.

At this point I was done with his shit, so I asked him to either buy something or leave. So he bought a pack of toothpaste, and started to undress in the store and rub to toothpaste into his fur.

"They tell me that something's wrong with your brain, is that true?"

I tried to be polite and avert my eyes and answered. "Yeah."

"You have some kind of mental condition?"

"Yeah." I answered again.

"That's too bad."

At this point Pillar's fur was coated in toothpaste. He walked over to the frozen drink machine, and filled a large cup with the sugary red concoction before turning it upside down on top of his head. Then he shook himself violently, flinging bits of cold sticky debris across everything from the ceiling to the walls, some of it landing only face but I tried not to let him see me flinch. I knew this was all just some elaborate attempt to intimidate me, and I didn't want to give him the satisfaction.

"What is it exactly?" He asked as he trotted back to where his pile of clothes waited for him.

"What?" I asked.

"What is your condition? Paranoia, Schizophrenia, you Gay?"

"No." I answered. "It's some kind of chronic insomnia, I basically means I don't sleep."

"You don't sleep." He asked sounding genuinely interested. "Like, never?"

"I can't fall asleep, I haven't slept a single day since I was a kid, I got my cutie mark the day I was diagnosed with it, I don't know if it's some kind of rare genetic condition or if I was destined to get it. I tried to get it cured but nothing worked, a couple years ago I tried to have Princess Luna put me to sleep but she could do it, not even with the combined power of the three other princesses, the doctor say I'll be fine but one day it'll probably kill me, probably through shock or something like that. But until then I handle the effects as best I can, mostly by working here."

Pillar nodded, a look of gleeful realization on his face. "That must be it, that must be why "he" can't reach you."

"Why who can't reach me?"

Right then, Slasher came into the store. He wrapped Pillar in a blanket and ushered him out to the waiting vehicle. A moment later he came back in and offered me 150 bits for the security tapes for tonight. I gave them to him and before he could leave I asked. "Hey, before Pillar said something about somepony not reaching me, you know anything about that?"

Slasher looked at we with surprise which he soon masked by a cold stare before saying "It's none of your concern, just enjoy those hundred fifty bits, and don't mention this to anypony."

I found his statement strange but didn't care either way, I wonder what I'll spend this money on.

9:00 pm: I was beginning to suspect something wasn't quite right in the store. I've been finding empty candy bar wrappers, strewn about, security tapes mysteriously deleted, strange noises coming through the walls in the middle of the night when I should be alone, at least more strange noises than usual. At first I assumed it was just the raccoons, but now I know the truth, now I know that Smoker has been living here for the last two days, he just walked out of the supply closet wearing a bathrobe, nodded to me as he grabbed a stack of flower jerky and went into the bathroom. It had not even occurred to me that Smoker had never left. I also noticed that his cutie mark was a 4 leaf clover with a yellow star in the middle of every leaf. This leads me to believe that his special talent is just plain dumb luck, mostly since he was the only one to not go missing from that whole cult disappearance. Maybe one of these days I'll ask his name.

November 6th 4:00 am: It finally fucking happened. I suppose it was only a matter of time, I know that I should be feeling regret, or shame, or any other emotion that people normally feel after something like this happened, but all I feel is embarrassed. I came out of Zombie Mode a couple of hours ago with a shovel wrapped in my magic, I'd been digging again, and this I had made some serious progress, the hole was, or I should say IS around 7 feet deep at this point, the steep walls made of loose red clay, it took me a while to realize that I was staring up into an inky black night peered with uncountable stars, when some of the bigger celestials started to move. I realized those stars were actually the soulless red eyes of the mutant raccoons staring down at me over the edge of the hole, probably looking for food, shameless beggars. I chucked the shovel out of the hole, and that's when I heard it. Imagine the sound of a sword hitting a watermelon, like a solid wet THWAK. Now imagine the watermelon gurgling and falling over like a sack of potatoes, whoa this metaphor's kinda getting away from me here. When I climbed out of the hole, I saw the shovel standing upright, with the business-end firmly lodged in the bottom of the neck of a still twitching Pillar. The Pillar was almost dead when I got to his side, in some kind of final act of defiance he spat blood in my face and wheezed out a toothy laugh before falling still. I felt the slightest amount of respect for him, before I entered a mental state that I can only describe as subdue panic. The first thing I wanted to do was find something to wrap the body in because surely, Cloud Slasher would come looking for it soon.

When I went into the store I was surprised to find that Smoker had taken it upon himself to work the cash register while I was gone. He was currently ringing up one of our regulars, Neat Freak a pony with a soap bar cutie mark who always bought soap and boiled peanuts. I grabbed the tarp off the shelf took it outside and that's when I learned something. Pillar is heavy, like really heavy. I understand that a body is basically just a meaty, fleshy, water balloon full of guts and excrement, but nothing could prepare me for how leaky, and gross, and heavy a dead pony can be. It was only by some miracle that I managed to drag Pillar through the back door, and into the freezer without being seen, took all my strength to pull the mass behind the boxes under the stack with the other three, and when I had finished I had worked up a sweat, even the cold of the freezer wasn't enough to keep me cool. As I stood there letting my breath come out, and letting the adrenaline wear off, I took stock of my situation. That when it dawned on me, THERE WERE 4 PILLARS IN THE FREEZER WITH ME, 4 PILLARS, WHERE THE FUCK DID THE OTHER TWO COME FROM? The freezer door opened and I turned to see Smoker pulling in a dead Pillar by the legs, he stopped made eye contact with me, and when he saw the dead Pillars at my feet, I said the only thing I could think of. "Well this is awkward." Smoker and I decided to open a bottle of Strega, and have a few drinks, he explained that he had accidentally killed Pillar a couple times, once while he was fixing the roof of the shack and the back end of a hammer had gotten stuck in Pillar's skull, once when he had broken Pillar's neck while slamming open the bathroom door, and just now when a light had come loose and slammed Pillar in the face before one of the bigger pieces of glass slit his throat. I was beginning to understand that Pillar was surprisingly easy to kill, at one point BugSpray came into the freezer to get a box of cookie dough, didn't even acknowledge all the Pillars.

I'm sorry to stop here but my laptop battery is at 5% right now, so it's obvious that I won't be able to transcribe the rest of my entries before time runs out, and I don't even have enough time to tell you how I even ended up at the bottom of that hole underneath the store, with a broken leg. And I don't mean the one I've been digging, I mean the one that was behind the locked door near the freezer. But I can tell you that I can hear somepony moving around above me, which is good because I'm not entirely sure I'm alone down here. Now if your reading this I means that I managed to upload my story, if your not then, what even are you? Somepony just called my name from the top of the precipice, I think it was BugSpray, I wonder what happened to Blue? Actually why didn't Blue ever so up, or at least call back. Come to think of it, I seem to remember Blue didn't survive the Nightmare Night incident, wait then how the hell was Blue there when Slasher showed up that one time? I promise that if I survive long enough to recharge the battery on this thing, I'll come back and tell the rest until then I guess this story is to be continued.

Chapter 6. Written by Lucky.

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Hey everypony, it's me Lucky Star from the Everfree RestStop. You can just call me Lucky, and I'm proud to be the newest member of the team. The Boss was so impressed with how I managed to stay inside the store for several days without leaving or going insane that they offered me a full-time position while the regular clerk, Bright is out recovering from his leg injury, Happy Monday everypony.

The other guy asked me to do him a small favor while he's getting some much needed R&R. He gave me the password to his laptop and detailed instructions to transcribe his journal entries from last week, in exchange he agreed to keep me on as a full-time assistant after he gets back. I get to learn what to expect on the job through his first-hoof documentation, and he gets to continue his weird little story, now don't know about you, but that is what I call a win-win. If I'm being honest, this is probably the best thing that could have happened to me right now. Ever since the program mysteriously dissolved at the Mathmatist Community, I've been feeling very lost and vulnerable, I've been losing weight and having trouble sleeping, and when I do I keep having these weird dreams of some enormous being deep below the RestStop waiting to devour us all. I believe the condition is called depression, but I have faith that I haven't been abandoned, clearly a mistake was made and I was overlooked, if any of my old brothers and sister are out there and see this post, PLEASE, please contact me, tell the seniors they forgot about me, I'm not mad, I miss you, I love you.

Before I get started. Some Royal Guard ponies came by and suggested that if this story type blog was going to continue, that I make a PSA. If there is anypony still alive that read the story about what happened here on Nightmare Night, don't wait for symptoms to start, PLEASE go to the nearest emergency room, or call the Canterlot Center for Disease Control, and tell them you are experiencing the effects of Rommel's Syndrome.

I also want to say a few things about myself. I'm a Pegasus pony, Orange fur, Blonde mane, and my Cutie Mark is a 4 leaf clover with little Yellow stars on each of the leaves. Now some ponies might thing that Pegasi can only fly, walk on clouds, and change the weather, which we all can. However some Pegasi are born with special abilities which we affectionally call Quirks, the nature of these Quirks usually tie in with our Cutie Marks, weather it be talking to animals, the kind of after image we leave behind, or something physical like massive muscles or goggly eyes. My Quirk has to do with my Luck. I have the ability to either give or take away the luck of anypony around me, the only problem is that I'm not able to control it very well. My quirk usually gives and takes luck as it sees fit, usually giving it to me while stealing it from other ponies, like those three times I killed the same Unicorn, I think his name was Pillar. I was surprised the first time, my luck stealing never really killed anypony before, the second time I thought that he had come back to life, the third time was when Bright explained that Pillar somehow was able to reincarnate himself leaving his dead bodies behind, and reappearing somewhere else, that was his theory at least, as for me, I think he has some kind of cloning machine in his basement that makes a new him every time he dies. Anyway back to the Journals.

I'm going to do my best because the guy's hoof writing is awful, here's the parts I could read.

7:00 pm: The thing in the trenchcoat was standing out back when I went to take out the garbage tonight. I don't know why he keeps visiting my store or why I've never gotten a good look at him. He was standing at the tree line just beyond the dumpster, staring as he ever did, tonight I stared back. The hinge of his jaw began halfway up his face where his nose should have been, the edges pulled back to either ear in a skeletal grin, his tiny milky white eyes were beads behind the oily black hairline that hung down straight in bangs all the way to his cheek jowls, his impossibly wide mouth bisected the head between greasy hair and wet flesh, drool I would assume. We stood there, 15 ft apart staring at one another for what might have been 10 seconds or 10 minutes until he finally turned away, his legs bent funny, in a way that they shouldn't be able to bend, he landed on all fours before galloping off into the woods. I don't know if I've seen the last of the thing in the trenchcoat or not, but this was the first time I got a good look at him.

Holy shit did you guys read that? This is some crazy shit. Sorry, Lucky again. I promise I'm not gonna do the running commentary thing, I just had to say Holy Fuck, y'know. This is some weird stuff, I mean I remember him telling me a couple weeks ago to go outside and talk to a thing in a trenchcoat, I'm super glad I didn't now, what the Tartarus. Okay that's it I'm done, back to the transcriptions.

8:30 pm: A mail pony came and dropped off a package for me. I signed for it and took it inside. I haven't opened it yet, something tells me I shouldn't.

1:30 am: Rocco and his band just came into the RestStop. They didn't even make an effort to sneak, they just ran in and climbed up onto the shelves. They're where about 27 of them in total. I grabbed a broom up in my magic and made my way to shoo them off when I noticed the LARGEST King Cobra I had ever seen in my life. It was having a staring contest of death with Rocco, who was hissing and snarling with fury that he only has in his fights with Scar. I slapped it in the head with my broom over and over again, slowly pushing it outside before closing the door. Rocco charged out the door and began to wrestle with the snake, the two made their way into the woods leaving me alone with the others. Looks like Rocco's gang will have to stay here for the time being until we get this snake mess taken care of.

2:00 am: I called that one Pegasus, FlutterShy again. I told her that the snakes where back, and that there where more than usual this time. We went to the usual space and when we opened the vent, a huge Anaconda wrapped around her and pulled her in with the speed of a bear trap slamming shut. I stared at the vent for a moment before walking back to my post. There was no way in Tartarus I was dealing with that.

2:30 am: I asked BugSpray to cover for we while I went to explain to Princess Twilight at one of her friends might have been eaten by snakes. As I walked outside I tried to think up a way to break the ice, that's when I saw FlutterShy come out from around the corner. Her mane and tail where frazzled, her coat was covered in some kind of glossy liquid, and she had a look of melancholy pleaser on her face. As she walked up to me I saw an army of snakes rush into the surrounding woods. When I asked her what happened, she just said that there where a lot more snakes than usual, hundreds and hundreds of them, she had never seen so many in one place before, not even in her dreams. Before she left she told me to call her if anymore snakes needed taming. Was that suppose to be a suggestion or a flirtation? Either way I had some Raccoons I needed to relocate.

3:23 am: It's quieter than I'd like it to be. The package form yesterday afternoon still sits on the counter where I left it. The label is made out to me with a return address I don't recognize. The rectangular parcel is wrapped like a Hearth's Warming gift, with red and yellow stripes, and it feels heavy, I would say it's just the right size for a dead cat. I can't think of any realistic reason I shouldn't open the package. But there is just something in the back of my mind telling me that to open this would be tantamount to opening Pandora's Box, that the contents of this little parcel will irrevocably charge the course of my life in a way that may have seemed impossible before, I feel like this box is full of butterflies ready to create tsunamis and I'm just not sure I'm ready for that yet. I think I'm just gonna teach Smoker how to clean the drink machines.

3:25 am: Smoker's passed out in a hammock in the supply closet. I think he finished that bottle from earlier on his own. I guess I'll go and clean the drink machines myself.

5:45 am: The Hoof plants are growing faster than I had anticipated, they are now past the elbows and almost to the shoulders. When I went out to check on BugSpray to see if he had survived that whole snake invasion earlier, I saw that the crop had caught a curious coyote that had got too close, it was not pretty. I also noticed Rocco was still alive, and was wearing the Cobra from before as a hooded scarf. I caught him sitting on the roof tossing Cheesy Puffs to the crop of Hoof plants. This is why they're growing too fast, they're eating way too much, if this gets out of control I may have to torch this crop just like the others. I don't want to it sends shivers down my spine whenever I hear the way they scream. How is it even possible for plants to scream?

7:30 am: Looks like BugSpray's alive, he came in for his morning shift looking pretty terrible. He filled up on coffee and told me that he hadn't been sleeping too well, the bad dreams had been keeping him from getting a restful night, didn't help that this time he woke up to see a horde of snakes slithering deep into the forest last night. I wonder if I should tell BugSpray about my condition. He asked about the gift-wrapped package sitting on the counter I told him that it had been delivered here yesterday and I didn't know who it was from. He asked if I was gonna open it and I told him that I had a bad feeling and pretty much decide to never ever open it

10:00 am: I decide to open the package. Without any fanfare or drumroll I'll just tell you that what I found inside was a brand new laptop computer. I never owned my own laptop before and the only computer that ever belonged to mean was a crappy little Pon-E 1000 that I put together as a kid. I've always used my neighbor's computer, or the browser on my phone to access the internet, this could be a game changer, the box also contained a signal repeater and some other gizmos. I know this is crazy, but I think I may actually be able to access the internet from the RestStop now. There was a hoof written note at the bottom of the package.
It read as follows.

Dear Bright.
Hello, I left a comment on your page, there's something I want to tell you. I'm enjoying these stories you're writing but I think if you actually sit down and write out one story at a time in between the entry log, that you will get a lot more upvotes. Forgive me for being blunt, but right know it seems like you have been telling us a lot of half stories thrown together with the main one about the whole situation with the resurrecting Pillar.

I think you'd do great if you write out a whole story at a time if nothing different immediately comes up. I bet you'd get a lot of upvotes and attention, it gets kind of confusing right now, maybe start with when you got there and work your way up to now, or maybe just write about things that happened this past year, like when the Hoof Plants started growing. I'd bet that would be super awesome. I'm so fascinated by the weird goings-on, but at the same time a little muddled about the order. I can tell you have a great talent for writing but I just thought maybe I'd offer a suggestion to help. Please do not take offense, it's just something I was thinking hope everything is going well for you.
Sincerely Anonymous

Great looks like another one of my readers tracked me down, I should have expected this since I gave out the place that I work. At least their not coming to my house though. Thank you whoever you are for the laptop I'm definitely keeping it.

10:15 am: I turned on the Wi-Fi card and noticed that for some reason there are dozens of secured networks around the RestStop, most of which have 4 or 5 bars. The names for the networks are pure gobbledygook, like this one, 1E7G7C7TA11GUY232331324. Who the Tartarus is transmitting Wi-Fi out here?

11:00 am A couple of hour ago a Griffin came into the store to by a pack of beef jerky and some gas for his vehicle. I didn't think much of it at the time, but then he came back in asking if we could help him out with something do the road, I never got his name but he was a big guy, he had black fur, and a thick feathery beard. He said he was having car problems. I told him I wasn't a car guy, and neither were BugSpray and Smoker. He insisted he didn't need a car guy just somepony else to see what he was seeing. Smoker agreed to watch the counter while BugSpray and I followed the bearded Griffon down the hill and around the curve, close to the spot where BugSpray saw that Strega thing in the woods. He couldn't vividly remember what it was, after we got everything sorted out with Slasher, and things started to go back to "normal" I asked BugSpray to describe the thing, but he just shook he head saying he didn't see it, but he felt its presence.

You see Changelings have the ability to sense and absorb emotions, different emotions have different effects.
Love gives them power.
Hatred gives them sadness.
Sadness gives them displeasure.
BugSpray said that whatever that Strega thing was, it was emanating pure, unfiltered, unadulterated, Bloodlust. Which is something that not just Changelings but other creatures can sense as well. Changelings are just much more attuned to the emotions of others. BugSpray said that the Bloodlust emanating off that thing was so powerful it took all he could not to pass out from pure fear. I realized that I wasn't the only one at the RestStop with a list of Try'n'forget stories so I dropped it.

Back to yesterday. The Griffon's car was parked on the side of the road, close to the same spot that Pillar's vehicle was broken down.

"So yeah, my car started acting funny." The Griffon said as we neared his vehicle. I began the wonder why we walked this whole way when we didn't have the tools to fix things. I mean my magic could have helped out in the case of a dead battery or even a busted tire. But if the axle was damaged or the engine was shot we were out of luck. I had bought a vehicle repair book some time ago after Pillar first came in with his vehicle.

The Griffon kept going. "I pulled over onto the side of the road when my electricals all started going haywire, I killed the engine, then when I tried to turn it over again, nada." I could see at this point that the vehicle was a big black SUV similar to the one Pillar owned, only newer and shinier. I could also see that the hood was open.

"I don't see what's so weird about that, you need us to call a tow-" BugSpray began before he was cut off by the Griffon, rudely I might add. "Would ya let me finish, anyway I popped the hood but everything was in order, thought maybe it just needed some gas so I went up to the RestStop. When I got back I saw this."

We rounded the car we saw the "this" he was being so vague about. A small oak tree, maybe 4 or 5 years old was growing up from the ground beneath the car, through the engine, and stretched upwards at least 9ft. The trunk of the tree had swallowed or I should say engulfed a decent portion of the engine and from the looks of it the car had been parked there for years.

"Intersting." I said. "And you're sure that wasn't here when you stared driving?"

Before he could snap at me he spun his head around and looked at the forest.

"You boys hear that?" He asked. We stood still and listened but I couldn't hear anything.

"No." I answered. BugSpray just struggled.

"You boys know what an Anglerfish is?" The Griffon asked as he backed up to the back door of his vehicle and opened it.

"Not really." BugSpray answered.

"I spent some time with Sea Ponies a while back, told me an Anglerfish is some kind of deep sea predator." The Griffon said as he moved back the passenger seat, pulled up a secret compartment from beneath it, and retrieved a large automatic rifle made by Griffons, along with a vest plated with leather and metal, a pair of saddlebags which held cartages of ammunition, and a pair of bandoleers which held small little bombs filled with various liquids. Now I'm not a gun guy so I can't tell you what kind of gun it was, but it was big, and impressive, and cool looking. The Griffon checked the clip and clicked something on the gun which I guess could have been the safety. Like I said I'm not a gun guy but I sounded super cool. BugSpray put a hoof on my shoulder and slowly backed away from the Griffon, pulling me with him. But the Griffon didn't seem to mind us one bit, he was focused on whatever he heard in the woods. "If I'm right, you boys have an AnglerFish in them woods. Not surprising since this is Discord's Dartboard."

"But you just said that Anglerfish are deep sea creatures." I told him.

"I know what I said." He snapped, as be grabbed a pair of high tech military goggles out of the little compartment. "I don't know what to call it though, it's acting like an Anglerfish. It's putting something out there to lure me in, make me think I'm hearing something that I'm not, then when I go looking for the one thing BAM, it attacks."

"You mean like a siren." I asked.

The Griffon looked at me over his shoulder with a smirk and said. "Yeah, like a siren." He closed the door, putting the googles on and pressing a button on the side making them flash for a second. He then turned back to the woods standing on his hind-legs while holding the gun in his talons. "You two may want to get out of here, this could get dangerous. Don't worry 'bout me, I've dealt with these things before I'll be fine." The Griffon pointed his gun an marched into the woods, while BugSpray and I made out way back to the RestStop.

2:00 pm: It's time for me to go home. I haven't used the laptop yet, but maybe tomorrow I'll start to type up these journals.

November 8th 6:00 pm: It's getting dark so early these days, I noticed that Bearded Griffon's vehicle is still at the bottom of the hill with the tree growing through it. I would not call that a good sign.

11:00 pm: I burned the rest of the Hoof plants, I finally know what's going on, and like that pony who sent me the laptop suggested, I'm going to be telling the full story behind the Hoof plants. A long time ago I noticed what looked like strange mushrooms growing in a patch near the dumpster behind the RestStop. I didn't think much about them except that it was strange that Rocco's brood wouldn't go near them. When I took a closer look at them, I could have sworn they looked like the soles of hooves poking out of the ground. As the weather got warmer I kept an eye on the crops, The started getting longer and looking more and more distinguigshedibly similar to pony hooves, sometimes I would ever see them squash a bug that had wandered too close, eventually they started getting longer and growing joints eventually growing legs, Pony legs, the would bend down during the day time and extend in the moonlight. I dug one of them up one day when we were really slow at work, I called Farmer Jr. to ask for his professional opinion. To the untrained eye, the Hoof plant looked just like a normal pony hoof, smaller than an adult's, but larger than a foul's, adolescent, teenager maybe, at the place where I had dung it up from it turned into a gnarled root that smelled like sassafras, and throughout the plant tiny hair like leaves where sprouting. Farmer Jr. stood in the RestStop fo an hour looking it over before asking if we had anymore of those things, I lied and told him no. I asked the Boss what he wanted me to do, he thought it over for a couple days then they told me to keep them. I think they expected to be able to make some money off them somehow, but eventually everypony forgot they were there. Well everypony but me, and Farmer Jr. or coarse.

Jumping back to now. Here's what lead me to torch the plants. I was sitting in my little area, thinking about what might have happened to the bearded Griffon, when I first heard the sound of a baby crying somewhere outside. I was alone in the store and my first instinct was not the heroic that most ponies may have had, to go running outside to see where the poor baby was. My first instinct was more callous and rational and in the form of a question, How the Tartarus did a bay get all the way out here without me hearing it coming? Something wasn't right. The sound of the cries which I could deduce were coming from the tree line were getting louder and louder, and more and more desperate. I looked around for Smoker but couldn't find him anywhere. If I was going to investigate the potential forest baby, I was gonna have to do it alone. I remembered the Griffon hearing the siren call of that thing he called an "Anglerfish", I remembered BugSpray telling me about the sound of crunching and the Strega Witch, and absolutely no part of me believed that I would be safe if I went into the woods, or that there was really a crying baby out there, but what if? I grabbed the crossbow I keep incase of robbers and went out back, using my horn to light up the dark, the crying seemed to be moving deeper into the forest, quickly, like the crying baby were being carried off by something that didn't have to stop and move around trees or physical barriers. I walked into the forest just far enough to see the last thing I ever expected to find. It seems that the Hoof plants had extended slightly further than the little patch outside the RestStop. Those plants that I had been watching and burning whenever they got too aggressive were not as controlled as I previously believed, because out here, just a few steps into the woods, was a Hoof plant that I had missed, that I had never trimmed, or culled, or burned, that was left free to grow as large and wild as it possibly could. Out here was a Hoof plant that had grown so large it had fallen over, it had grown past the shoulder, it had grown its own neck, and head, and torso, and crotch, and legs. Out here was a full pony body huddled on the ground and attached to the soil by thick talons of brown roots, and the weirdest part of all, was that the body was one that I recognized. The body, the fully grown Hoof plant was Pillar. I don't know what possessed me to touch him, maybe I just wanted to make sure that he was real, as if touching him would prove that one way or another. When I did his eyes opened and cracked a smile, he couldn't move the roots had him firmly stuck in place, but this Pillar Plant could talk, and talk he did. We stayed out there talking for over an hour, I won't go into everything the Pillar Plant said, but I will say this. There is something UNDER the RestStop, something big and powerful, something plotting, and me, and the Boss, and every other pony who worked there have been working in a cloud of this Dark God's farts. I felt extra terrible setting the fully developed Pillar Plant on fire with my magic, after I burned the rest of the crop of Hoof plants, but honestly what choice did I have? When I got back to the RestStop, Slasher was waiting for me. He knew I knew, and I knew he knew I knew. I was halfway expecting what came next, but not expecting him to enjoy himself quite so much. Slasher locked the front doors then proceeded to beat the crap out of me. I'd like to say I got in a few good hits as well but that would be a huge lie. Our fight was as one-sided as one of Scar and Rocco's brawls. I don't think I laid a single hoof on him, although I did get his fur all messy with the blood from my face, so I have that going for me. After I was beaten to the point where most Ponies would be unconscious, Slasher dragged me across the RestStop to the hallway past the bathrooms, past the walk-in cooler, and up to that big strange door that I had only just noticed a couple weeks ago.

"Why are you doing this?" I asked as he banged the door three times.

There was a sound from the other side, and Slasher yelled, "OPEN UP IT'S ME."

The door cracked open, and Slasher dragged me into a room I had never seen before. It looked like an old office, the was a desk next to a wall of monitors with security feeds from all over the store and the perimeter, security feeds from cameras I never knew existed. In the middle of the room was a large hole that looked like it had been created with a team of Jackhammers.

"It's time for you to meet my boss." Slasher said as he dragged me to the edge of the hole.

"Pillar?" I asked, to which Slasher let a hearty laugh. "HAHAHAHAHAA, No not Pillar you fucking raisin-brained desk jockey. My boss put a crop of Pillar's Plant copies out there and hired me to watch them, made them from Timberwolf ooze that he infused with Pillar's DNA. The one you talked to was the last of them, and the ones out back where the new crop. Now we're gonna have to relocate and make more."

"Wait if Pillar's not behind this, than who is?"

"HAHA you really thought Pillar was behind all this? Earth Ponies may be good with plants, but their expertise stops at kicking trees and brewing cider. Those Pillar Plants where made with Elder Magic, like the stuff Discord uses, and before you ask, no Discord is not my boss. My boss is much bigger than some idiot politician or trickster avatar, he's on the same level as the Princesses, and ten times as old, but Pillar already told you all of this, didn't he?"

I half-expected Slasher to go continue his explanation into a sort of cliche movie villain exposition, followed by a song and dance routine, but instead drop-kicked right into the hole. I think one of my legs is broken, at least I assume that's what the bone poking out mean, but hey, I'm not doctor. I would be really worried right now if it weren't for the fact that I swiped Slasher's Cellphone in the fight, never underestimate a Unicorn with too much free time on his hoofs. Just as I expected Slasher had the same network as Pillar, which means he somehow had service out here. I put in a call to Blue's direct number which he gave me after the rookie he sent out here got his badge stolen by Rocco, so I'm sure he'll be along shortly until he gets here, I'm just passing the time updating my journals.

11:30 pm: Somepony just dropped the laptop into this hole with me. Maybe it was Slasher, maybe he thinks I'm dead, maybe I am, again I'm not a doctor. Who ever it was I think is was I think I might have heard the sound of boot spurs clicking against the tile as he walked away. I guess I'll boot this thing up an start transcribing my journal entries before it's to late.

Okay so that was the last of his journals. You're probably wondering to yourself, "Where was Lucky while Slasher was beating the crap out of poor old Bright?" Well I had gone into town to see a movie, yes I went and watched the Power Ponies movie, if you haven't seen it yet go see it, IT WAS AWESOME. I guess I'm lucky I went when I did (no pun intended) otherwise this Slasher guy might have tossed me into that hole as well, probably after breaking my wings, cause otherwise what would be the point? I was the one that found Bright, when I came back to the RestStop I couldn't find anypony. When I went to BugSpray's cabin I found a note saying he had gone out on a date, good for him. When I came back in the store I notice that door at the edge of the hall cracked open slightly, I also found a really poorly made bomb behind the register, but it didn't take long to disassemble. You can thank the mandatory bomb-building at the mathmatist program for that. No big deal just me being my typical heroic self.

I just caught myself digging. I don't know what happened, one minute I'm here next minute I'm in an 8ft deep hole out back with a shovel in my hoofs. Bright mentioned that he sometimes digs a big hole out back, whatever I'm just gonna post this and go to bed.

One last thing, if anypony knows who this Smoker guy is please tell me.

Chapter 7. The Griffon with the beard.

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Hey guys Bright here and let me just say, recovering from an injury SUCKS.

Recovering from an injury when you can't fall asleep, sucks worse.

Recovering from an injury when you can't fall asleep, while simultaneously hunted by a sociopathic lackey of a dark god with a personal vendetta against you, sucks even worse.

But what sucks even more worse is having to do all of the above, and still being called into work, because as the Boss puts it, "The new guy is a complete and total moron, with willful and malicious idiocy that borders on the criminally insane." And so, here I am, against the doctor's advice, and my own better judgement, at the shittiest, most batshit crazy RestStop in all of Equestria, only a little worse for wear.

What's really incredible is that I've only been back a day, and there's already a body count, more on that later. My right hind leg is in a cast from the ankle to flank just below my Cutie Mark, and I've elected to use crutches. Because unsurprisingly, the RestStop is not wheelchair accessible. The cast has several signatures and messages, which is very strange because I have no memory of anypony signing it. But it could be a result of the pain meds, or maybe everypony signed it after the surgery while I was still doped up on medical opioids, and a metric FuckTon of painkillers. Here's what the little messages say.

Try and stay out of trouble-B.S. This one's from BugSpray.
LUCKY WAS HERE❗From whoever Lucky is. This one's also in crayon.
Get well soon-Twilight Sparkle. From Princess Twilight.
Feel better darling-R.💎 From Rarity.
🎈Call me when you get out so we can have a party-Pinkie.🎈From Pinkie Pie.
Feel awesome-R.D.🌈 From Rainbow Dash.
You can tough it out-A.J.🍎 From AppleJack.
Hope you feel better.🦋 From FlutterShy.
I'll call you if I need you back at work. From the Boss.
Feel well Dreamless One🌙 From Princess Luna.
Be seeing you soon-C.S.❌🗡 From Slasher. How did he even get into my hospital room?
There's also this one note that was taped to my legs. It's got Celestia's crest on it. Here's what it says.

Dear. Bright Eyes.
I hope this letter finds you well. Rest assured, that a warrant of arrest has been placed on the Pegasus pony known as Cloud Slasher, and he will be brought to justice. It pains me to see one of my little ponies harm another, and I wish you a speedy recovery. I have also begun an investigation on these Pillar Plants as you call them. We have taken the deceased Pillars in for autopsy. The original Stone Pillar claims he has no connection with Cloud Slasher, other than Slasher attacking him in his residence and draining him of a significant amount of blood. As stated in your Journals the Pillar Plants seem to have the cell structure of Timberwolves infused with pony biology. This was done by a type of Elder Magic practiced by the Titans, back before the original Alicorn, Holy Cross, sealed them in various tombs across the land, putting the more violent ones in a death like sleep, while the others where free to meditate so long as they did not meddle in pony affairs. This information was spread as legends when Luna and myself where children. Only spoken of in fairy stories and ghost tales. As such we are unsure how much of this information is reliable. However there's no need for you to be concerned. I merely mention this because I feel you have the right to know, being so involved with this. As I said before I wish you a speedy recovery, and my condolences for the death of your friend, Blue Star during the incident which took place on Nightmare Night. It should please you to know that he was promoted to Lieutenant in the wake of his death. I believe I should be getting back to my duties so I'll leave you with this. Should you ever wish to speak call me, and I shall make an appointment for you.
Sincerely. Princess Celestia of Equestria.

She also gave me her phone number. I didn't even know she had a phone. I wonder if the doctor will let me keep the cast after it comes off. I also noticed a final signature which was in a language I didn't recognize it. Which is annoyingly cryptic. It was also done in sharpie fairly recently I might add since when I touched it, I got ink marks on my hoofs. I would check the tape logs to see who or what I let get so my "delicate area" but the Boss had every camera in the place removed. I guess there was something about finding that secret room full of security camera feeds to bring personal privacy into the public discussion. I feel like the act of removing ALL of the security cameras was a bit of an overreaction, especially with Slasher still out there. Like Celestia said, the Royal guard have issued a warrant out for Slasher's arrest, as well as confiscated the dead Pillar, and the remains of the bomb, they're taking this whole thing very seriously. As for "Pillar" things have gotten a little more interesting, as Celestia said in her letter, the "Real" Pillar had no connection to Slasher in the slightest aside from that one police report of an assault Pillar had filed on a Pony matching Slasher's description. Due to the whole situation of his dead doubles going public, along with statements from me, BugSpray, The Boss, and Farmer Jr. which connected him to Slasher, he's suspended his election campaign and made several media statements say that he had NOTHING to do with any of this. The Sheriff's been sending a new deputy, an EarthPony by the name of CrackShot out here to check on me at least twice a day, once around lunch, and again after the sun goes down.

CrackShot isn't from around here, which is why he agreed to replace Blue as the new RestStop babysitter. He's around average height and weight. With a Brown coat, with his mane and tail being a much darker brown, and a mustache thick enough to plant a yard flamingo in. His Cutie Mark is and old fashioned Pirate pistol with a little explosion coming out of the barrel. His eyes constantly Telegraph the statement "Knock that nonsense off." I've yet to see him smile even once. I'm not sure if CrackShot will become the next Blue, or the next Slasher, right now he could go either way. CrackShot was the one who dropped he off at work today. I'm not supposed to walk any long distances for a while, which is fine guess.

I mean it's not like I WANT to walk back and forth to a place I barely spend any time at, especially with my busted leg, I can't even count the number of times, I've been jumped by a pack of Timberwolves on my way back and forth to from my house, and If that happened while I still have my gimpy leg, it would be game over.

On the way to work, we drove past the Vehicle that belonged to the Griffon with the beard. The one staked in place on the side of the road with the tree growing. I asked CrackShot about it, but he just shrugged and said that I should worry myself with other Pony's business. I asked him about the Griffon, and he just shrugged and said that he probably got lost in the woods like some other Ponies. A search and rescue effort was underway along with the Ponyhunt for Slasher, and he was confident that they would find both of them quote "one way or the other."

After CrackShot dropped me off today. I went about my regular shift starting duties. I reconciled Smoker's til, not at all surprised to see that he was somehow 150 bits over. I logged all the invoices that had piles up while I was out, the I emptied the trash cans, I was hoping that I might run into the Bathroom Cowpony. But the only thing I found in the Colt's Restroom was an obese Minotaur, punishing the toilet and surrounding air with an unholy fury that deserves it's own scary story. The sun was just starting to go down when I hobbled my way out to the dumpster, balancing trash bags against my crutches, and probably looking like a baby deer learning to walk, if that deer was drunk, and fat, and carrying several bags of garbage. The scorched earth near the dumpster was the same as I'd left it, blackened down to the subsoil. I looked to the place past the trees was another patch of smoldered remains, one that I incinerated past all hope of identification, just to make sure it was actually dead.

Before I turned to go back in I noticed something odd on the side the dumpster. At first I thought it was a children's toy stuck to that dirty outside wall, but the I realized that it was moving, breathing, crawling, slowly eating the gooey drippings off the rust of the dumpster. It looked like a giant tomato caterpillar, it was about 8 inches long, and as it got darker I swore I could see the thing give off it's own light source. The squishy caterpillar thing didn't seen to mind my presence, it even let me feed it an old taffy that I had in the pocket of my apron, it was mint and I didn't really like it. The critter glowed a little brighter as it ate the taffy I gave it, and I gave it a gentle pat. Its hide wasn't as wet as it appeared, in fact it appeared to be covered in tiny clear hairs.

"Hm you're not so bad." I said while it nibbled at the candy. "I guess not everything out here needs to be scary."

It wiggled and crawled away to a place in the back of the dumpster with more gunk, and I went back inside.

Smoker has taken up smoking again. He had quit for a while, but then explained the suffering he was causing himself by not smoking grossly outweighs the suffering he was causing us through secondhand smoke, mathematically speaking it didn't make sense for him to quit. I was hoping that he was beginning to shed his cultist philosophy after the entire compound mysteriously vanished but now I'm starting to fear that he can't be rehabilitated. Then again, he could just be using his "faith" to make excuses for smoking again. Whatever, today was a pretty normal, well not normal, but average day at the RestStop. We had some strange ponies visit, we had some normal ones visit to, and along the way I went into Zombie Mode, finished a book that I've been reading, made some boring Journal entries, and even got online to browse the internet for a while, there's another package sitting under the counter addressed to me from a return address I don't recognize. I took a gamble with that last package and it turned out to be something great. But that was before Slasher tried to kill me by feeding me to his dark god, and once again my gut is telling me not to open it.

I got a phone call today at the store a few hours after sundown, It was pretty late, hard to say when. Smoker was asleep in his hammock in the dry storage room, and I couldn't remember the last customer. This was somewhere in that temporal wasteland between dusk and dawn I wander into when I forget I have a phone that has a build in clock. I answered the phone.

"Hello"

"Bright listen very carefully. You don't know me, but what I'm about to tell you will save your life. But only if you follow my instructions, and do exactly what I say. In the drawer to your right is a pencil and paper, get then, write this down, these are the rules to your survival, make sure everyone inside reads them." I did as he said and started writing.

"Number one. Do not leave the store, do not go outside under any circumstances, if your Changeling friend is in his little cabin bring him inside, I don't care if he's balls deep in Princess Celestia right now, get him, bring him inside, and don't let him or that Pegasus who lives in the closet go outside, tell them if they do the thing will kill them."

"What thing, you mean the thing in the trenchcoat?"

"The Qalupalik? Nah that thing's jumped ship yesterday, everything has all the animal, monster, even some of the plants, they sensed what was about to happen and bolted, all accept that family of stubborn Raccoons, and this manticore with one eye."

"Wait you know what it is, what is it?"

"I'll tell you about it some other time there's no time right now. Number Two. Do not drink the tap water, don't even touch it, don't smell it, don't look at it, it's bottled water from here on out."

"Number three. Don't trust your eyes, your eyes can be liars, make you see things that aren't really there, only believe in what you can touch, hear, and smell, never taste anything though, if you taste something, it can force it's way inside you, and possess your body, if anyone wants to come in you open the door and poke them."

"Where?"

"ANYWHERE IT DOESN'T MATTER, JUST FEEL THEIR SKIN TO MAKE SURE IT'S NOT A ILLUSION"

Right then I heard a knocking at the door. I looked to see a trio of ponies with a wagon outside. It was AppleJack, along with her big brother and grandmother. I had forgotten that our shipment of applesauce was scheduled for today.

"Hang on I got to go help the Apples move in a shipment of applesauce."

"WHERE YOU EVEN LISTENING DON'T GO OUTSIDE, YOU GO OUTSIDE AND YOU'RE DEAD."

"Look it's right out there, there'll be three ponies with me and BugSpray. Two of which being the strongest Earth Ponies in Ponyville, and one of those two being one of the bears of the Elements of Harmony, I'll be fine."

"Fine. Go get your applesauce, and then don't go outside for ANYTHING, I'll be waiting for you to come back."

I grabbed my crutched, walked up to the front of the store and yelled. "JUST A SEC I GOTTA GO GET BUGSPRAY." Before moving out back to get my changeling friend. Found BugSpray asleep in his bed, I poked at his face a bit to both wake him up, and make sure he was in fact real. I then told him he had to wake up, and that the shipment of Applesauce was here. He begrudgingly buzzed his wings, flew out of bed and up and over the RestStop. I went around the side, when I got to the dumpster I noticed something. The glowworm from this morning had formed itself into an enormous cocoon against the back of the dumpster, I can't explain why exactly, but this filled me with some sort of, I don't know, what's the exact opposite of existential dread?

Euphoria?

Existential Hope? Is that what optimism feels like? Again, I don't know, it doesn't make any sense, but seeing the weird garbage eating caterpillar thing begin the brave journey of transformation gave he this tingling feeling in my soul, like this was some kind of sign. It reminded me of this old filly's story, The Worried Caterpillar, just when the caterpillar thought that his world had come to an end, he became a butterfly.

"With everything that's been going on, my world's been feeling like it's coming to an end for a while too little buddy." I said to the cocoon. "Maybe I'm also on the verge of a metamorphosis, maybe this job doesn't have to be so strange and scary, maybe it can be strange and cool." At that moment, I decided that whatever hatched from the cocoon, be it a Butterfly, or moth, or monster, I was going to name it Light. I was turned to go help BugSpray, but then I remembered the mutant Raccoons that would love to have this little guy as a snack.

I gently picked up the cocoon in my magic and carried it with me out front where BugSpray and the Apples where busy moving some crates of Applesauce into the store.

"Well hey there young'n." Granny Smith said from onto of the wagon. "Yer that feller AppleJack's been talking 'bout, the one who can't fall asleep right."

"Yes ma'am." I kindly replied. "Uh, this my sound strange but, can I touch your hoof? I just want to make sure you're real. With all the pain meds I've been on, I'm not to sure about anything anymore."

"Sure thing sonny." Granny Smith said extending a hoof, which I pressed to my own for a couple seconds.

"Thanks. Oh and can I trouble you for a jar to put this cocoon in?"

"Sure, but why you pluck it outta the wild in the first place."

"Well, around here we've got a kind of Raccoon problem around here, and those little vermin will eat anything they can get their mouths around. One of them even killed a Cobra, and wears it little a hooded scarf from SaddleArabia."

"Say no more. I got a little something here, just a sec." Granny Smith said before reaching into the back and taking out a large jar with a twist on lid. "You put that little cocoon in here, and poke some holes in the top."

"Thank you." I said taking the jar in my magic and placing the cocoon inside. It just about fit with there.

"Well hey there Bright." AppleJack said walking up to me with Big Mac and BugSpray by her side. "I'm glad yer' back work'n here, to be honest that Pegasus friend of yer's is kinda weird. Kept flirting with me and accidentally blow'n smoke in my face. Took all I could to not buck his teeth out, and took even more to keep Big Macintosh from doin' the same."

"Y'up." Big Mac said with a twinge of bitterness in his voice.

"Well to be honest he's not really my friend, he's just I guy I work with." I replied. "He use to be in this misguided cult that tried to end all suffering by blowing up the entire planet, but then all of them went missing and he started living in the RestStop. Normally I'd tell you to go break his face but I kinda owe him since he's the one who pulled me out of that hole in the back room."

"Am I your friend?" BugSpray asked.

"Yes"

"Oh, well, be seeing ya." AppleJack said awkwardly.

"Oh, One last thing, can I touch both of you for a second. I just want to make sure you're both real, all the pain meds have made my mind all crazy, and it's hard to tell sometimes."

"I guess so."

"Y'up."

I patted my hoof on AppleJack's chest, then Big Mac's.

"Alright that's all I needed thank you."

As me and BugSpray went inside he asked how I was feeling. I told him the pay was tolerable, he nodded like that was the kind of answer that he was looking for and said. "Oh yeah I also noticed that the phone was off the receiver so I hung it up."

"Hm well that's not good."

"Why not?"

"Well there was this guy on the phone saying we shouldn't go outside for anything, he said the was something out there."

"Well I won't be going back to sleep anytime soon so I guess I'll just stay inside. Is there anything else he said."

"Yeah, he said not to drink the tap water, and to touch everything because our eyes can be tricked."

"Is that why you asked to touch A.J. and Big Mac?"

"Yeah."

"Should we wake up the new guy?"

"Nah just let him sleep."

I went behind my counter, and put the jar on my desk while BugSpray when off somewhere else. I had just finished poking l bunch of little holes in the jar's lid, when suddenly the Griffon with the beard came into the store. I almost didn't recognize him as the same Griffon that went off into the woods after the creature he called an Anglerfish. He had lost weight, his beard was more unkept, and he smelled like he bathed in a tub of pee that somepony had farted in.

"Oh hey, you're still alive, cool."

Did I mention that he was holding a pistol when he walked in? The thought crossed my mind for the briefest moment that I wondered "what happened to his big gun?" I didn't have time to ask him, he quickly found the locks on the doors, used them, then covered the short distance to my register, gun extended and directly aimed at my face, between my horn and my eye brows.

"WHY THE HELL DID YOU HANG UP ON ME?"

"That wasn't, me that was BugSpray."

"WHO ELSE IS IN THIS BUILDING."

"Well let me see." I said thinking. "There's you, me, BugSpray, the other cashier, unless he went into town again, and this little guy in the cocoon, probably the raccoons to."

At that moment BugSpray walked out of the freezer, and (No pun intended) Froze at the sight of the bearded Griffon still pointing the gun at my head. He might have been tempted to take action if he hadn't been carrying a 50-Pound bag of frozen corn over his shoulder. Instead he just raised his free hoof and said softly, "Hey man, we don't want no trouble, if your after the cash go ahead and take it, ain't no heroes here."

The Bearded Griffon laughed in an obnoxious way and said. "Well there's at least one. The name's RazorBeak, and I'm here to save your sorry asses."

BugSpray and I made eye contact. A lot can be conveyed in just an instant if you know the person you're looking at. He was trying to see what I wanted to do I was trying to tell him to relax, this was neither the worst, nor the weirdest thing to happen in that room.

"Okay." I said. "What do you need us to do RazorBeak?"

"First off in need to ask did anyone come into contact with the tap water?" When we both shook our heads no he continued. "Okay listen, there's something EVIL under the RestStop. Nobody's leaving here until I understand what it is, because I know that someone's working with that thing, I saw it in my dreams, I know you have to.

"Actually, I can't fall asleep, BugSpray didn't you mention some weird dreams?"

Right then Smoker walked out of the dry storage closet stretching and yawning. RazorBeak snapped him into a chokehold before he even knew what was going on and jammed the gun against his head.

"ARE YOU FUCKWITS EVEN LISTENING TO ME?" RazorBeak screamed. "I JUST TOLD YOU THAT THIS WORLD, AS YOU KNOW IT, IS JUST A FACADE. THERE'S A DEVIL HERE, AND ONE OF YOU IS WORKING FOR HIM." He looked at both of us for some kind of reaction. I don't think he got the one he was looking for, I just shrugged and said. "Neat."

Right then Smoker surprised the fur off everypony by half yelling half laughing, "LET'S DO THIS, I'M NOT AFRAID TO DIE!" Before reaching up, grabbing the gun pressed against his head and pulling the trigger.

Now I've seen a lot of weird stuff working at the crappy RestStop. I've been nearly killed once or twice. I've watched the same pony die over and over in front of me. I've seen things that may or may not be real because I can't dream, and sometimes I wonder if my mind is making up for that in other ways. I've seen ball lightning, ponies without fur with blue skin, a pony with two head, a talking dog, and Elvis Prancly impersonator that my have been a little too convincing. I've seen so much weird stuff in that room but this. This was the first time I saw a look of surprise like that on anypony's face, and it was absolutely priceless.

"Wha-What the hell is wrong with you ponies?" RazorBeak asked backing away from us.

"There ain't noting wrong with us, Mr.Griffon." Said Smoker now free from the headlock. "The real question, is what the hell's wrong with your gun?"

"How'd you know I was outta ammo?"

"I didn't."

There was a loud thud as BugSpray dropped the sack of corn. He was next to talk. "I think maybe you should get outta here pal, while you still can."

"Afraid I can't do that." RazorBeak responded. "Not until this thing is dead, and not until I-"

I heard a wet thunk before I saw anything, before RazorBeak went lip and hit the ground. When My eyes caught up to the situation, I hoped that what I was seeing was a hallucination, but the look of fear on BugSpray's face told me that this wasn't the case. The Pony standing behind RazorBeak, holding a bloodied shovel. The Pony that had just saved our hide was smiling a toothy delighted smile that he only made after inflicting the kind of pain he just inflicted, with his bleeding Cutie Mark contrasting the pearl white color of his teeth.

"Hey Bright." Said Cloud Slasher. "You miss me?"

He stuck BugSpray and Smoker in the walk-in freezer. Smoker is and always has been a go with the flow kind of pony, so he went into the freezer voluntarily. BugSpray put up a fight which is why he ended up bruised, bloody, and barely clinging to consciousness. From what I could see, RazorBeak looked like he might be dead, at best he was out cold in the slowly spreading pool of his own blood. Slasher pulled a couple of chairs out of storage and placed them both in front of the cash register facing one another. He made me hobble over to the first one, then spun the other around and sat in it backwards like a "Cool" school teacher from the 90s.

"I want you to know-" He said. "I'm not mad at you, neither is he, he wanted me to relay the message."

Slasher's face still had specks of green blood in it from when had heated the crap out of BugSpray.

"Your boss?" I asked.

"Yeah he was upset at you for what you did to Pillar, or Pillar's Clones I should say, he wanted me to show you what happens to bad children, you where supposed to meet him, but the that all got cocked up, huh."

"I-I-I guess it wasn't my time to die." I answered. That's when the smile faded from Slasher's face he shook his head at me and said, "Die? No-no-no-no-no, you weren't supposed to die, you can't die we need you."

I saw some movement behind Slasher but tried not to break eye contact. I was RazorBeak, he was alive, and right now my best shot at getting out of here. He was moving on the ground regaining consciousness, but miraculously not making any noise. I tried to keep Slasher distracted. "Your boss tell me more about him, who did he find you, who is he?"

Slasher chuckled and said. "Oh he's got a lot of names, but you'll meet him soon enough, and this time, we will not be interrupted."

"What about my friends?"

"I don't care, they could join us, they could die, they make no difference, I mean it's not like your the Bearers of the Elements of Harmony, we don't need the full set of RestStop employees we only need you. By the way Bright, I wanted to ask, did you guys even figure out who placed that bomb?"

I laughed softly. "Yeah the police took it, they know it was you, they know everything, well almost everything. In the grand scheme of things they know very little, but they do know you tried to kill me and put the bomb in the RestStop.

Slasher shook he head again. "Wrong on both accounts. If I wanted you dead you'd be dead already, did you know that the knife on my Cutie Mark can materialize into an actual knife, see we Pegasi have our own little special magic abilities, we call them Quirks. Number two, a bomb, seriously not my style, I don't even know how to make a bomb."

"But I do." RazorBeak said from right behind Slasher before yanking his head back and (no pun intended) slashing Slasher's neck with the point of his beak, neatly slicing his head halfway off. Blood erupted out in a couple spurts, then stopped, and Cloud Slasher was no more. I was sure there was more he wanted to say but couldn't.

"That's whatcha get." Said RazorBeat as he flung Slasher's lifeless body onto the floor, his blood pouring out and mixing with all the rest. It was gonna suck for the Pony who had to clean all this up. On the plus side, Slasher was dead, and I know how RazorBeat got his name now. When we opened the freezer we found that Smoker had gone all bad nurse on BugSpray, sticking clumps of frozen meat all over his face. "For the swelling." I made all of us a fresh pot of coffee, and we all took seats around the booths at the window. Just incase a nosy passerby decided to... pass by, we put a trap over Slasher and moved the wet floor sign next to it. For about half an hour we just sat and drank coffee in the pregnant silence. When we were all done with out third cups, BugSpray finally spoke, his jaw and over all face was swollen to Tartarus and back, but we could still understand what he was saying.

"Uh so why haven't we called the cops yet? This is clearly self-defense, I got the face to prove it."

"Yeah." Said RazorBeak after some lengthy deliberation. "Yeah let's call the cops, that'd be good, but tomorrow, you and me gotta have a serious talk Bright."

I called CrackShot from the only phone in the building with any reception, Slasher's Cell. The deputy listened to what I told him, which was the basic and most simplified version of what happened that night, and he said he'd be on his way right after he got out of bed and put is uniform on. I called the Boss next, he was not happy, he then told me next time I should call them first. Wait nexttime? Right now the others are at their booth staring at the window, Scar's scratching at the door like a cat, which I have never seen a manticore do before, and I'm sitting at my laptop documenting the night while the memories are still fresh I know this isn't over yet, and I think the RestStop is gonna have to close for a day or two but when it opens up again I'll be here, be writing my journals, and doing my best to ignore anypony who walks through those doors.

I guess that means this is to be continued.

Chapter 8. My Final Chapter.

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Okay so it's been about like an hour since my last post we've haven't had any customers yet, and if the RestStop weren't an active crime scene I might have asked one of the others here to mop up that large pool of blood into the little pothole in the floor near to cooler. For those of you who are out of the loop, you may want to catch up by reading the previous chapters.

I don't know what CrackShot's personal grooming routine looks like, I have to assume that he spends at least 20 minutes a day in mustache prep, but even factoring that in he should have been able to make it to the RestStop by now. I called him in a few minutes ago to make sure that he hadn't gone back to bed, and to make sure that I hadn't imagined that phone call in the first place. The Conversation went something like this.

"Yeah?"

"Hey CrackShot, you on your way?"

"Yeah sit tight, we had a little emergency."

"Okay."

"Yeah to road between town and you is blocked off."

"Okay, which one?"

"Both of them, even the hiking trails. Musta been one of these freak storms that happen out in there, never seen anything like it."

"Well can't you just drive here?"

"No I can't, all the roads are covered in trees."

"Well you're an EarthPony can't you just move them out of the way."

"No I can't, the trees can't be moved, their still in the ground."

"But you said they where covering the road."

"They are but they aren't, you know, fallen."

"What are you saying."

"I'm saying the trees are growing out of the middle of the road, both here and on the Ponyville side, that's what the little emergency was. The Apple family was just getting back into town when these trees started growing out of the ground, nearly flipped their wagon over, they're all okay just a little shaken up. As for me I've been trying to find a way through all morning, I'm about to head through on foot, just to be clear you said you heard from Cloud Slasher last night, has he made any other contact?"

"Actually the phone call was from this Griffon called RazorBeak, Slasher's here though, he came in, some stuff happened, and now he's dead. RazorBeak's here to, he's the one who killed him."

"WHAT? You're telling me there's a dead body, and the Griffon who made that body dead at the RestStop."

"Yeah, I already told you this on the phone earlier. Where you not listening?"

I really missed Blue.

"I'm sorry." He answered. "When the phone rang earlier I had just woken up from this beautiful weird dream of a dark god calling me into his eternal grace, taking me by the hand and guiding me into a blessed oblivion, freeing me from all the pain and suffering of this mortal prison, nurturing me like a child, and inviting the world into a realm of higher existence, allowing me the privilege to devote myself to his glorious servitude."

"...Okay... I, I guess I'll see you when you get here."

I ended the call and checked the charge on my phone. The battery was sitting close to 50%.

"So what's the deal Lucille?" Asked RazorBeak.

"CrackShot is on his way here on foot, but we might have another problem."

"You mean besides the one eyed Manticore and the Raccoon posse scratching at the door."

"Holy shit, you guys see that." BugSpray asked pointing out the window.

I couldn't quite make it out from where I was seated behind the counter, and I didn't feel like hobbling over a corpse just for a look, so I just asked. "What is it?"

"There's a bunch of Ponies out on the road, their all walking this way." BugSpray answered.

"What you say?" Asked Smoker, who had suddenly taken interest. He pressed his face against the window for a better look. "Those aren't just Ponies, I know them, They're from the Mathmatist community. That's Wormwood, and Fossil, and there goes North. At least those are the names I gave them."

"They friends of yours?" RazorBeak said closing the frozen drink machine.

"Family actually, well they were anyway, before they disappeared, but I don't remember them looking like that."

"Like what?" I asked now intrigued enough to move past Slasher's body, while at the same time getting an uneasy feeling in my gut.

Smoker took a second to find the words, but all he came up with was, "They look funny."

They continued walking closer to the RestStop, close enough by now that I could see them, at least a dozen ponies. The closer they got the more details I could make out, and the more I wish I couldn't. Their eyes were milky and pale, maggots were crawling out of infested crevices all over their bodies, their fur dirty and covered in lesions and bruises. Smoker was certainly not wrong, they looked, funny but at the same time scary. I'm sure you know the stereotypical Zombie walk, the shuffle of an undead body unpaired motor skills, the scariest part of these ponies weren't walking like that, they where walking 100% perfectly normal. Just a bunch of decaying Ponies out for a stroll. There was a loud crash that suddenly snapped us out of our, probably rude, staring. We all turned to see that RazorBeak had pulled the frozen drink machine to the floor, and was attempting to fly it over toward the front door. The stinky syrup concoction spilled out all over the ground, mixing with the congealed blood, and coating the floor in a warm red, brown, and purple viscous soup. There's no way we won't have an insect problem after this.

Smoker and BugSpray didn't have to ask what was going on. They seemed to instantly know the plan and began yanking down whatever they could. Before anything got to the door I took everything in my magic before opening the door letting Scar along with Rocco's little Clan inside, before closing the door and piling the levitating objects against the glass door.

"You boys think stay alive long enough for us to survive?" RazorBeak asked.

"We've got almost 20 years of experience staying alive between the three of us." BugSpray said in a joking manner. "Don't forget I was with Queen Chrysalis's army back when she first tried to take over Canterlot."

"You mean during the Royal Wedding?" Smoker asked.

"No there was this other invasion plan 12 years before that, it was more of an all out siege than an invasion. We all tried attacking one part of the shield around the city, most of us were warn out by the time the shield went down, and it was only because the one casting the spell ran out of energy, most of us in the vanguard where captured and the others escaped."

RazorBeak looked to me and asked. "You got any weapons in this place?"

"Not unless you count the wild animals currently in the corner, plus the shovel that was used to knock you out, and some really hard jerky, but your welcome to whatever you can find." I answered. That's when he stared Macgyvering some spears out of chair legs and some broken glass. That all was about 25 minutes ago.

About 10 minutes ago the RestStop lost power. Our only light source being the faint illumination coming from Light's cocoon, which I am keeping in my lap after one of the Raccoons tried to get at it. I would use my horn but I'm currently using it to power the Wi-Fi so I can write this. It's been pretty quite here, aside from the wet guttural whispering coming from those "ponies" outside. RazorBeak's still searching for weapons while BugSpray finds thing to push against the door and windows, and assuming he hasn't fallen asleep Smoker has taken the back door. I was feeling pretty useless after RazorBeak confiscated my crutches so I figured I had to take this opportunity to type out and post the account of what happened, just incase CrackShot gets here too late or, Celestia forbid, doesn't get here.

In the spirit of preparedness I should say a few things to whoever reads this post. Or is it Whomever? I can never get that right.

First to the Boss. I'm sorry about the mess.

Second to an old Marefriend from HighSchool. I'm sorry we didn't run into each other one last time.

Third to the Princesses. I am truly honored that I got to meet you, and hopefully become friends during these past few years, I'm especially grateful to Princess Luna for trying her hardest to help me when we first met.

Forth to my followers. I'm sorry I won't be able to share more of my bizarre stories with all of you.

Fifth to Lucky. I'm sorry I never found out who you actually were, I think we could have been friends.

And Finally to whoever keeps dumping tar into the RestStop dumpster. I hate you, do you have any idea how hard it is to clean that stuff off or how disgusting it is to have to clean it in the first place? If your going to dump tar then go to the actual dump, it would be quicker and easier to do that than to drag it out into the middle of the Everfree just to put it in a dumpster that's not even yours. Where are you even getting Tar?

Anyway I guess the only other thing I have to say is that It's been a weird, crazy ride.

This is Bright Eyes from the RestStop. Signing off one last time.

Chapter 9. STILL ALIVE MOTHERFUCKERS

View Online

I DIDN'T DIE

I'm sorry it's been so long. I Just got my laptop back from the police after everything that happened that night. Special thanks to whoever gilded me by the way. I don't know what to do with internet gold, but it brings warmth to my soul. Anyway I know everypony is probably wondering what happened.

Last week, I met a Dark God.

We were in the RestStop for hours, without power. It's cold this time of year so we all huddled around a plate of scented candles, and ate snacks. Smoker almost dozed off a couple of times before BugSpray decided to loot the energy pills behind the counter and handed them all out. We all took a few washed them down with cold coffee and told ourselves it was for alertness, but all they did for me was create a heartbeat arrhythmia. In hindsight it would have been funny if those things broke in here just to find the four of us dead from heart attacks, not counting the 27 Raccoons and the one eyed manticore. Well I guess it wouldn't necessarily be funny, it would be more of like, mildly to morbidly amusing.

BugSpray tried to strike up a conversation with RazorBeak a couple of time, but the bearded Griffon wasn't very social. I think one of the little interactions went down like this.

"So, you army?"

"Nah."

"I was in the army, the Changeling army I mean."

"Yeah, you mentioned something about that."

"Yeah, so, those things out there, any idea what we're dealing with, you ever seen anything like that before."

"No."

"Got any family?"

"No."

After that point I stopped listening. I checked Slasher's phone throughout the day, it wasn't getting any service anymore, I tried to call the police, but even that didn't go through. When the battery got to 5% I turned it off, we might need it later for an emergency call. Eventually the adrenaline pills started to wear off, and I remembered that my leg was still healing from a complex fracture, maybe I shouldn't have agreed to come back to work so soon, but then again hindsight's 20/20. I picked up the jar holding Light's cocoon in my magic and did that whole cripple walk back to the front desk to grab my meds, and while I was there I spotted the still unopened gift wrapped package on the shelf beneath the register, I decide to ignore it and grab the employee whiskey bottle that was behind it, we told ourselves it was for our nerves, while all it did for me was give me an even worse heartbeat arrhythmia.

A few more hours passed, after we killed the first bottle we opened another, then Smoker got into the energy drinks, because well, we all needed mixers. but at some point the former cultist pulled out his stash and lit a joint, without asking I might add, and proceeded to turn the whole place into a hotbox. I can't remember if I had taken my pain meds so I went ahead and took'm, and as the sun started to set I had two thoughts competing for first place in my mind. The first was that it sure is getting dark early these days. The second was that I thought we might be getting a little too fucked up to handle what's about to happen.

Time became even more illusionary than normal, both because of the battery on my laptop dying, and because the second hand smoke from Smoker's weed was seriously messing with all of out senses, I think even the Raccoons were high, the point I'm making here is that we had no idea how long we'd been waiting, we started measuring the time in candles, our snack food and moral raced each other to depletion, no thanks to the Raccoons who were one by one peaking glances at Light's cocoon, I thought the first one who tried to make it into a meal was giving the others ideas. At one point BugSpray brought me away from the others to ask what I thought about RazorBeak, I told him that he was the nicest guy who had pointed a gun at my face all week, but BugSpray told me that he had a weird feeling about him, I reminded BugSpray that he had killed Pillar a couple times and maybe he should get off of his high horse (No pun intended).

"Hey." RazorBeak yelled at us from the room. "What are you two talking about?"

"Anime." I lied, I think he bought it.

"Get back over here, I don't need any more dead bodies piling up tonight." RazorBeak was in the corner between my desk and the dry storage closet, warming his talons over the candle plate, aside from Light's cocoon it was the only source of light in the building, and was casting shadows that could easily be described as spooky if I weren't in such a serious life or death situation, some of the shadows looked like faces, smiling, laughing at us idiots, it was like King Sombra decided to come back to life again just to fuck with us. One of them asked me what time it was, holy crap I was tripping.

"You okay man?" BugSpray asked, snapping me back to reality.

"I honestly have no idea."

"Y-you even figure out who placed that bomb?" Asked Slasher in a gurgle.

"What do you mean, I thought you did."

"Not me, bombs aren't my style, don't even know how to make 'em. Who do you know that can build a bomb?"

"Well where's Smoker?" I asked.

RazorBeak picked up a spear, formally my crutch that he had duck tapped a knife to and asked. "Who the Tartarus is Smoker? Is someone else here?"

"Smoker, y'know the other employee."

I looked at BugSpray who just shrugged and said, "I don't know no Smoker. How many pills did you take man?"

I was dumbfounded, had I imagined Smoker this entire time, did I just Tantabus this pony into existence? I tried to sit down on the tarp but it turned into me lying on my back while the room spun I could feel the Pony debris squishing between that tarp fabric as I rested my head. How much of any of this was real anyway?

"Your losing it y'know." Slasher said into my ear.

"Yeah, I know." I responded thinking back. Back to all those years ago, when the first doctor tried to prepare me for life with my condition. There weren't that many other cases before me, and certainly none as serious, so they didn't know how everything would play out, but every case had a few of the same side effects, weight loss, fatigue, headaches, all the signs of a normal physical illness early on. But as the condition developed there would be more "interesting" side effects. Hallucinations, memory loss, trouble using magic. They said that the patients that experienced the condition normally had at least one of them, but never all three. Seeing as how I'm pretty good at magic, I ruled out the third symptom, which left memory loss and hallucinations, of course there were some cases where patients didn't experience any of the later symptoms, back then that was what I was told mine would be, but as I got older I began to doubt this. When I first developed Zombie Mode I thought I was experience memory loss, but it turns out it was just my consciousness shutting down and letting muscle memory do its thing. My mind wandered back to the surgery where I got my leg fixed, I should mention that I'm always wide awake if only halfway lucid during surgery, if you want to know what it's like I'll tell you. The truth is it's kind boring, you just lie down, let the doctors do their thing, and try not to move until their done stitching you back up.

"You wanna know something cool, usually when I hurt somepony bad enough they pass out from the pain."

"Yeah no dice with that, if that could happen to me I probably would have died in that hole."

Right then Smoker walked out of the bathroom. I pointed at him and yelled, "THAT GUY, SEE'IM RIGHT THERE, THAT'S SMOKER."

Everypony turned to where I was pointing then back to me.

"What you mean Lucky?" BugSpray asked.

"Oh so he's Lucky." I said to myself, just now realizing that I had never asked his real name up until this point.

"Wait so I'm Smoker?"

"Yeah, but that's just what I called you because I didn't know your name."

RazorBeak put the improvised spear down and turned his attention back to the fire. "We gotta get him under control."

"You should open the package." Said Slasher.

I was about to say something before a thought dawned on me. "Hey wait a second, aren't you supposed to be dead?"

"Aren't you supposed to be dead?"

"Touché Slasher"

"Who are you talking to?" BugSpray asked.

"Slasher."

"Well stop it, you're freaking us out."

Two more large candles burned from start to finish before RazorBeak decided that help wasn't on the way, and that our best chance of survival was to just through caution to the wind and fight it out with the things outside. I disagrees but RazorBeak informed me in his own polite way that it wasn't up for a vote. We peeled back the layers of barricade just enough to get a view of the outside, and once we knew what we were dealing with, we could come up with a better game plan. Only he couldn't actually get a good look because something was blocking the view, something just on the other side of the glass door. RazorBeak yanked the rest of the barricade down and took a few steps back to marvel at it.

"Oh wow, you don't see that everyday." Lucky said.

We were trapped there inside the RestStop and on the other side of the door a network of trees had grown together, they were twisted into knots and pressing against the glass. It was so densely pressed into a single wall of tree trunk, that not even light could get through it, for all we knew it could have been day time outside.

All of us where silent until RazorBeak said something we all agreed with. "We need to get out of here."

We checked the back door, but it was the same thing. I often wondered how long a pony could stay inside the RestStop without any new supplies coming in, I had run that scenario in my head probably a million times on boring nights, when there was nothing else to do. I had run this little thought experiment for countless different contexts, how long could I survive if the RestStop were transported back in time, or to another planet, or if there was a Zombie Pony Apocalypse, which actually happened a couple hours ago. What I had deduced that under ideal circumstances I could live off the supplies on hoof for 4 years IF I could find a source of water, six weeks if not. However ideal circumstances these were not. We had either smashed up, weaponized, or eaten almost half of our supplies. If we where trapped here it wouldn't be long until we were eaten alive by the various carnivores inside with us or were drained of all our energy by BugSpray. While I was pondering this in the hallway by the cooler, we heard the sound of glass shattering from the main room. RazorBeak raised his spear and lead the was back, the wall of trees was still there on the other side of the doors, our mess was still there, everything was as we left it with one exception, the tarp was pulled back, and Slasher's body was gone. A series of hoof prints coagulated in the blood leading from where he should have been to the shattered glass of the front door, like he'd just gotten up, walked over, and was absorbed into the trees.

RazorBeak turned to us and said. "Okay, I'm gonna need you boys to think real hard, is there any other way out of this place?"

"Well there is that hole." Lucky said. I had completely forgotten about that hole myself.

"Hole, what hole?"

"The hole in the secret room back here, past the cooler."

"Secret room?"

"Yeah, right over there." Lucky point to the blank space in the wall where the door use to be. The Boss had decided that the smartest thing that they could do when the found out about that secret room was to remove the door, build a good ole fashioned wall, and forget all about it, but apparently that only works if everypony agrees to forget all about it, which apparently Lucky hadn't. I was fine with never seen that hole again, by it was seeming pretty useful right about now.

"You're telling me there's a secret room behind there, and a hole in that room that we can maybe fit inside and escape? Why didn't you boys tell me this earlier?"

"I actually didn't know about the secret room until now." BugSpray said.

"I personally wanted to forget the whole thing since that where I broke my leg."

RazorBeak rushed past us and started breaking down the door with his spear. As he did so I grabbed BugSpray and pulled him aside to talk to him.

"Hey, I should tell you something." I said. "I opened that package."

"The one that looked like a present?"

"Yeah."

I'm not sure at what point I finally cracked and opened it but I've been carrying around the content of that box in my pocket for at least one candle. Just like the last package there was a note with this one. It read as follows.

Dear Bright.
I didn't expect you to use my letter as part of the story, but thanks, LOL. I didn't mind you using it, that was very neat. I liked it and was very surprised thank you. I enjoyed your stories from the very beginning that's why I wrote what I did. I was surprised that you used my letter, but in a good way LOL. Thank you, I'm honored, really honored. I also appreciate you taking my advice. I know that things have been getting more and more dangerous so I've sent you this as a gift. I hope you don't ever have to use it, but I want you to have it just incase that Slasher guy comes back.
Sincerely Anonymous.
P.S. Don't forget the double-tap

Underneath the letter was a small hand gun. I knew just enough about pistols from playing video games, to know how to check the clip, and sure enough it was loaded.

I showed the gun to BugSpray who said. "That a Thunder 380."

"Is it good?"

"Well it's a gun, so it'll probably have more stopping power than a chair leg, why don't you've it to him?" he asked pointing to our "Fearless leader".

"I don't know our trust him well enough to give him a gun, and besides the box was addressed to me so it's technically my gun."

"Yeah good point."

"Y'all ready or what time to see what's down here."

"Just a second gotta grab a few things." I yelled back. I rushed over to my desk, grabbed my stash of stealth potions, the lawn gnomes, my laptop, and finally my journal book. I stuffed all of these into my saddle bags, then tied Light's little jar to a rope and put it around my neck, before walking back over to the place I had broken my leg a week ago. "Alright lets do this."

"Gotcha, anything we should know?" RazorBeak asked

"Well it's a 10 ft drop more or less, which is how I got this broken leg."

"Got it, all right then I'll got first, then the animal, then you two can carry him down." RazorBeak said before jumping into the hole. Like he had instructed I picked up Scar and the Raccoons in my magic and lowered them down into the hole, before BugSpray and Lucky grabbed my by the shoulders and lowered me down. Once we reached the bottom I used my horn to light up the surrounding area.

I should probably mention that it stank down there, I mean compared to the stink up in the RestStop. We had spent several hours above ground in a room with a dead body, unrefrigerated food, and the combined body odor of RazorBeak, Scar, and Rocco's little horde. We where all eating snacks and canned goods which tasted and smelled like they were past their expiration dates, and I think somepony probably threw up in a garbage can. My point is that we were all smelling pretty bad, to the point where I was doubting that I still had a sense of smell. But once we went into the whole, I knew for a fact that I had it. The smell down there made our RestStop funk smell like cologne. The very worst putrid odors from the storm drains around the RestStop were nothing compared to this. Is it possible for a smell to be heavy? I ask this because that's the best word I could think of for it, not thick, just heavy.

BugSpray and Lucky took turns barfing as they lowered me down, and when they were done RazorBeak handed out the torches that he had made from chair legs and rags soaked in liter fluid. I don't know what that Griffon's deal is, but he sure is cracked in the head. Back to the cave itself.

The cave was a straight tunnel starting under the RestStop and heading off somewhere, I'm not sure where to since it had been a few hours since I was able to think straight due to Lucky's weed. The cave was also tall enough for all of us to stand comfortably, I also noticed that there was a slight incline taking us downhill as we walked further into the hole.

"What the Tartarus is this?" RazorBeak asked after about 20ft. He waved his torch at the wall and I saw that somepony had spray-painted a message on the cave wall in red. It said in shaky hoof-writing "Rita the raccoon tried to eat the cocoon." I said it a few times in my head and looked to the Raccoons that where currently riding Scar like a war mount, with Rocco sitting comfortably of Scar's head. The Hoof-writing was eerily familiar, especially the capital R, but I couldn't remember why. There was also another lawn gnome on the ground beneath it, which I picked up with my magic and stuffed into the saddle bags with the rest of its brethren.

We continued further into the cave, RazorBeak was way ahead of us while I was at the tail end, hobbling along as best I could with just a single crutch. The deeper we went the more narrow the cave got, and the stronger the smell got along with it. Nothing about being down here, away from the RestStop felt like an improvement over our previous situation, but it wasn't until we made it to the tree, that I decided that we had messed up.

I didn't know how long we'd been walking down there, maybe a half mile or so, crutch miles feel like a lot longer than normal miles, but we eventually came upon an enormous black tree taking up the width of the cave. It looked like one of those thousand year old sequoias that was big enough to put a two lane road through.

"Holy shit." RazorBeak said.

I was the last to see what everypony was so wide-eyed about and gawking at. As I got close I noticed that the tree, in addition to being enormous had some characteristics that you wouldn't expect a tree to have, specifically Pony body parts, a good number of front and hind legs poking out everywhere and right at eye level was a Pony's face.

Lucky looked at the face intently before saying, "Hey, I know that guy, that's StarGazer." When Lucky poked StarGazer's face with a hoof it peeled off and plopped to the ground like the piece of meat that it was.

"Yeah I don't think he's gonna make it." RazorBeak said sarcastically as he pulled something out from behind his wing and stuck it to the tree where the face had been.

"What's that?" I asked nervously.

Surprisingly, it was Lucky who answered. "That looks like a C4 plastic explosive to me."

RazorBeak chuckled and said. "Well you win the prize for that one RainColt."

"My name's Lucky."

"Whatever, this is the last of my explosives, I've been trying to kill this thing piece at a time for the last week, but it keeps growing back. Now I know why, I have to kill the root system, blow it up, if I kill the brains the rest of the network will die, and my work will be done here."

"Oh, so it was you who put the bomb in the RestStop." I said in realization.

"Yeah well back the I thought the building was the epicenter of the whole thing, but now I know better, finally get why they call this place Discord's Dartboard."

"Hey." Interrupted BugSpray "Bright was still in the building when you planted that thing."

"I know."

"Uh guys." Lucky said trying to get their attention but it wasn't working.

"You knew! He could have died if that think went off."

"Guuuys."

"Look Bug-Boy this is war, not your little power grabs to get all the love in the land, Real war, and in real war there are always casualties, you can't make peanut-butter without smashing a few nuts."

"HEY GUYS."

"WHAT!" Screamed RazorBeak. "I'M A LITTLE BUSY."

Lucky pointed back the way we came, we all turned to see Slasher standing in the middle of the path, a wicked smile on his face and blood pooling around his hind legs. "Hey boys, you miss me?"

BugSpray turned to me and screamed. "BRIGHT, THE GUN."

I pulled the weapon out with my hoof and chucked it as hard as I could. It smashed Slasher in the face and he fell over. I was very proud for the two seconds it took me to realize what I had done wrong. I turned to the rest of the group and said "Oops."
RazorBeak's jaw had dropped so low it looked like the bottom half of his namesake was about to fall off.
Lucky just stared blankly probably still processing what had just happened.
Scar and the Raccoons all collectively face-pawed.
And BugSpray just looked at me like had sneezed on a painting.

What came next almost happened too quickly for me to comprehend. Something burst out of the wall next to us, an enormous object the size of a car, and shaped like a hand had wrapped it's fingers around me and pulled me into the wall. went it let me go I began falling, then as I hit the ground below me I began sliding through a dark tunnel as something pulled me by my hind legs. It felt like I was being swallowed. It went on for a while, dirt filled my nose and mouth, and then whatever it was spat me into a pitch black room, onto a rocky wet piece of ground. I landed on my bad leg, and probably broke it again.

"Well." I said to myself. "At least this time I managed to hit Slasher." As far as last moments of life go, slight improvement over the last week. I sat up and looked around. The room I was in was cool, not cold, and cavernous. I could hear my breath echoing off the wall, I could also hear something else breathing. All at once I became aware of another presence down here, an entity in the room with me. It's hard to explain, in the same way I remember it being hard to explain a dream right after you wake up, sounds like you have to experience it to understand, but the feeling's like being plugged into a shared consciousness with another intelligence that was putting thoughts directly into my head. I imagine that's what Changelings feel when they enter into the hive-mind.

"Welcome to my home." Came a loud voice from somewhere in the mostly pitch black room. "I'm sorry it's taken this long to meet face to face."

"I can't see anything, the light from this cocoon isn't that bright (No Pun intended)."

"What part of Dark God don't you understand?"

At this point I was like OH SHIT, I'm in the room of a dark god, he sounds like an internet troll. I guess that would make sense. Well, might as well get this over with. "You think you can maybe turn on some light so I can actually see who I'm talking to?"

The voice let out a very annoyed sounding sigh and exclaimed. "Uuuuggghhh, fiiiiiiine."

Out of nowhere the entire room turned into a intense furious bright white, all I could see was pure light. I covered my eyes but even then I could see the bones of my front legs through my eyelids. Even with the meds that shit hurt.

"TOO BRIGHT, TOOOOO BRIGHT, SPLIT THE DIFFERENCE, PLEASE."

"Wow." Sighed the voice. "I didn't realize you were going to be such a big baby."

And then, just as suddenly, the brightness relented. After a moment my pupils adjusted, and I could see who, or I should say what I had been taking to.

"BEHOLD." The thing exclaimed. "AND TREMBLE BEFORE THE DARK GOD."

The "Dark God" as it called itself, was the size of a full grown elephant. It was swollen and round and had a tanish-yellow hide. The best animal I could think of to compare it to would be like an enormous Tick, with six rows of stubby arms, six rows of sagging breasts, and a pony sized head on the top that contained the face of that Human thing that had appeared on Farmer Brown's animals a couple years ago. It didn't have any neck that I could see, and it's body connected to the ground at the widest point of its stomach making it half buried, and as the cherry on top off this whole bizarre sundae was that he had a red mohawk. He smirked at me and asked. "What do you think?"

"About what?"

"My hair, isn't it amazing." He looked up at his mohawk.

I chose to flatter him. "It certainly is Godly, (no pun intended)." In all honest it was pretty cool, I'd probably have a mohawk like that if I didn't have this thing about putting gel in my mane.

"Hahaaa, it is, isn't it."

I tried to push myself to my feet when I realize my leg was broken, I just then dawned on me that I was immobilized, underground, without any weapons, and was probably still high from Lucky's weed. There really was no chance of escape here. "Y'know if you're gonna kill me, do you mind just getting it over with."

The Dark God looked at me and rubbed his head. "And here we go, what is it with you Ponies being, so untrusting, so prejudiced, why is it you see something you don't understand you either run and hide or fight, I swear you Ponies have spent so much time staring up at Celestia's Sun that you've been blinded to nearly everything else. Let me tell you something, I'm not the monster here, you are."

"Wait what? Why."

"Because you wrote about the ritual that was preformed on Nightmare Night, your the reason all those Ponies died, you should have died yourself, but since your unable to sleep so the curse of Rommel isn't effecting you, if it isn't lifted you will become a Jinx for the curse and it will spread across the land bathing everything in distortion, and to even the elements of harmony will be able to stop it."

"Wait so you brought me here to dispel the curse, that's all?"

"I also wanted to ask you to stop killing my constructs."

"You mean the Pillar Plants?"

"Yes, I made them from Pillar's DNA, they where supposed to be enforcers of the peace, guards who would keep the more bizarre and dangerous things in the Everfree in check."

"But what about Slasher, he beat the shit out of me, that guy's awful, and he's following your order."

"Well excuse me for thinking that people have the potential to be reformed, Discord was able to be reformed by a pegasus, so why can't I reform a sociopathic pony. I hired Slasher because I needed somepony to train the Pillar Plants in proper pony behavior which in hindsight was a mistake on my part, but I'll have you know that I gave him very specific orders not to kill anypony, which he agreed to."

"BUT YOU'VE KILLED TONS OF PONIES, THE CULTIST, THEIR ENTIRE COMPOUND, LUCKY WAS THE ONLY ONE TO SURVIVE, AND THAT'S JUST CAUSE HE WAS ON A VISION QUEST, AND TO ADD INSULT TO INJURY YOU TURNED THEM INTO ZOMBIE PONIES AND SENT THEM TO THE RESTSTOP, THAT SEEMS PRETTY INCRIMINATING."

"Actually no, I hate to be the one to say this, but those guys killed themselves, and yeah it was really sad, I mean a mass suicide is really fucked up, but if you listened to them you'd have seen it coming from a mile away. I think it was pretty obvious. I mean consequentialism, mixed with a moral obligation to end suffering, it makes me want to slit my wrist just talking about it. And as for turning them into zombies I wasn't just going to let all of those perfectly good fully formed adult bodies turn into chow for the Timberwolves, do you even know how hard it is to make one of those from scratch? It's not easy I'll tell you that much. I then sent them to the RestStop to retrieve Slasher's Body, I was hoping I could get him home without any permanent brain damage, which I just barely managed to do. I think the next time you see him you should apologize. I swear ever since movies made Zombie Ponies into monsters, people see a dead pony come back to life and they either think run of kill, I mean what happened to calling this a miracle, nopony freaked out when Holy Cross came back to life, I mean hell he was made into an Alicorn for it."

"Okay wait, so your say that Holy Cross was like those mathmatists out there, just a reanimated corpse?"

"Is that really what you want to talk about Bright?"

"Okay but doesn't "Dark God" sort of imply evil?"

"Before that whole King Sombra thing happened Dark God had a completely different connotation, but my branding doesn't give you the right to burn a nearly complete construct with emotions and feeling to death. If you ask me I'd say you deserve the ass whooping you got."

"So your not evil."

"No. I'm not evil, I was created by the titan Gaia to watch over the Everfree and make sure nothing from the epicenter escapes into Equestria."

"Wait so are you not the reason for all the weird stuff going on in the Everfree."

"No I'm not, like I said before me and my constructs just keep the more dangerous weird stuff in check, that's all I know. If I'm being honest I don't know what half of the things in the forest even are, this place radiates crazy and not even the most ancient titans know why. The Hoof Plants and Pillars where because of me, and I'll admit the smell from the storm drains was me to. But as for all the other stuff my guess is as good as yours, a lot of the things in the woods give me chills."

"So what happens now?"

"Now I lift the curse on you, put the forest back the way it was, and sent you and your friends home."

"Wait what about the bomb RazorBeak strapped to you?"

"Ah don't worry, that's just the place I store the dead bodies for fertilizer, this isn't even my real body, I just made it in my image from plants and other forms biomass, one thing you should know about gods, we're all basically just ghosts with superpowers."

The Dark God summoned a light in each of of it's twelve hands and a dark red orb was pulled out of me before being dispelled by the blue lights.

"Oh one more thing, you might want to cover your eyes on the way back up."

At that moment a giant hand burst out of the ceiling and pulled me up, the next thing I knew I was coughing up dirt on the side of the road outside the RestStop. It was morning and the RestStop was a wreck. RazorBeak, BugSpray, and Lucky where all around me and covered in black dirt, Scar was gone supposedly out in the woods, and the Raccoons where running a loot train, stealing anything that we hadn't already eaten or broken and bringing it out back to their nest.

"Oh hey your alive." RazorBeak said.

"What happened down there man?" BugSpray asked.

"I'm not really sure."

"Yeah well your lucky you got out when you did, your friends made me wait a minute to give you a chance to get out."

"Wait for what?"

"For this." RazorBeak answered as he pressed a button on his remote detonator and somewhere deep in the woods came an explosion that rocked the ground and made birds fly off into the sky. A black cloud rose and I could help but think about what happened to Slasher despite all he did to me.

"Welp." Said RazorBeak. "If you don't mind I'm gonna go get lost before 5-O shows up." Then he flew off into the forest, hopefully never to be seen again, and that's what happened.

I'm on bed rest until the RestStop is fixed. CrackShot is on personal leave from the police force and I didn't care to ask for details, so when we do get the RestStop up and running we'll have a new deputy babysitting us, I'll try to tell you about her another time. From what I can tell BugSpray and Lucky haven't been having their bad dreams anymore and things have begun settling back into our own little brand of normal. I've got the lawn gnomes at my place, and I'm still waiting on light to come out of his cocoon. Now I'm sure there's gonna be more weird stuff going on while I'm gone. But if you guys want to tell me a weird story you have I'd be happy to right about it if you sent it to me.

Until next time, this is Bright from the RestStop signing off.

Chapter 10. Does anypony know a good plumber?

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Hey everypony Bright here, just sitting in my bed writing. I'll be honest I wasn't really expecting anypony to actually email me some weird stories when I asked in the last chapter. But I have gotten a good number of emails, most of which are either some version of an urban legend somepony inserted their name in, or just kind greetings that say get well soon. However one of the emails has caught my eye and is believable enough to have actually happened, kinda like some of my stories from the RestStop.

But before we get to that, let me give you guys an update on what's been happening the repairs on the RestStop are still underway and the boss decided to convert the room in the back into a kind of break room for us to stay in between our shifts. The boss said he came to this decision after the hole in the floor mysteriously filled up with dirt, he said he plans to bring in a vending machine, microwave, and even a jukebox. Lucky has officially moved out of his little room in the dry storage closet, and moved in with BugSpray in the shack out back. RazorBeak gave me a call on my phone and told me to call him if I had any questions about any weird monsters I see out in the Everfree while working. He also explained that the thing in the trenchcoat is called a Qalupalik. It's apparently some kind of amphibious troll that wanders around the world, it's basically harmless despite it's disturbing appearance, and really only wants a friend. I really hope it shows up again one of these days. There now that that's settled, lets get onto the email.

What initially drew me in was the tag-line, "Does anypony know a good plumber?" After reading it, I decided that it was the kind of story worthy of being posted. I'm going to be transcribing the email off my phone then giving you my thoughts on it afterwards. I'll be doing this for other emails I decide to post here.

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Hey Bright, before I get into this I wanted to ask if you know a good plumber? I fucked up one of those stupid ritual things that everypony's doing, and know my shower is leaking, there's also some faceless Pony in my kitchen. My landlord come tomorrow and he's going to kill me when he finds all of this, especially because I also have a cat and I'm not even supposed to have pets in the building I live in.

Let me back up, this whole thing started when I was drunk messaging a mare on this dating app on my phone, and she said the only way that we would be able to meet up is if I did this weird ritual thing where I summon a ghost or some shit, I think she called it Mia-culpa or something.

Actually I just pulled the message up on my phone and her exact message was, "The decaying flesh will not rest, I am the Alpha and the Omega, I have seen the burning cities consumed the land." The she gave me a link to the ritual instructions. "Our souls meet when darkness spills, Mia-culpa Mia-culpa Mia culpa." Blah Blah Blah. She was a weird chick. At least I think she was a mare. I could really see her face, her profile picture was just a black background with two shiny orbs that kinda looked like eyes. I could also sorta see some features but it looked like her fur was grey and I couldn't really see her mouth, but she had really clean hair. I wasn't about to rally for somepony who didn't take care of herself.

Anyway, I weight the pros and cons of spooky rituals vs trampoline booty as best I could on five shots of patron, and at the time I thought it was totally worth it. I set my phone's alarm for 3:26 am which was the time the ritual was recommended to start at, but since my phone is about five years old and has been dropped in the toilet several times it went off at 4:00 am. FUCK. I was also supposed to have a friend during this thing, but my bestie recently got incarcerated for selling heroin on the corner of Westwood Park and Eastern Avenue. Shoutout to my main man.

Anyway I sat up and turned off my alarm, but the moment I turned it off I suddenly drunkenly passed out again. I woke up 20 minutes later and actually got out of bed this time, stumbling across the room in the dark, because apparently you're not supposed to turn on the lights because if you do a ghost will pop out OOOOOOO. I was supposed to find a candle and light it, but my hangover just made me trip over the several candles I placed on the floor. Eventually I gave up, flipped on the light switch, grabbed a candle from my desk, and just for curiosity's sake looked out my window to see what my ghetto Baltimare neighborhood looked like at 4:20 am. The street was empty, except for some Rando wearing a black rode and giant pointy black hat, he was staring up at me through the window, I could really see his face.

I swear, Baltimare's gone to the fucking Diamond Dogs, first gang wars, now some kind of weird-ass shadow cult, I mean for fuck sakes. Anyway I lit the candle and looked at my phone for the instructions. I was now supposed to knock on my bedroom for 66 times, with the very last knock being timed on the 4:06, but since I had fucked everything else up I just did a shave and a haircut knock and then walked to the hallway, my bedroom door was opposite the stairs, and looking down that dark stairwell was pretty spooky. I thought I saw something move on one of the lower steps but I just shrugged it off.

For the next step I was suppose to close my eyes and walk down the stairs chanting Mia-culpa over and over again. I'm not an expert in other languages up I know that Mia means "my" in Italian which is apparently some old EarthPony language from before we all became one nation. I'm not sure what culpa means though so I assume it's some kind of rare dish made by the Ponies who originally spoke Italian. I tried to close my eye and walk forward while talking about Italian food but I tripped. Turns out that thing I saw moving was my cat FishSticks I startled him and went running under my hoofs, I ended up tripping over him and falling down the flight of stairs landing on my back as my head hit the wall. At some point the stupid candle went out as I flailed down the stairs, but at the time I was too concussed to care. I rolled up from the ground groaning in pain, and decide that I would just continue to go through the motion, which now meant hiding in a closet of some kind and waiting for the ghost to play hide and seek with me. I chose the kitchen pantry because I had an open bag of potato chips in there, so I made my way into the kitchen, and as I stumbled heard several soft whispers behind me. I spun around, hoping that I was right about FishSticks knowing how to talk there was nothing there except for a figure standing in the corner. I stopped, blinked, and it was gone. I remember thinking to myself that I really needed to lay off the patron.

As I honed in on the closet the alcohol and concussion finally caught up to me and I stumbled to a stop, before vomiting up watery patron all over my kitchen floor. FUCK. My ass was landlord grass. The combination of alcohol, concussion, post vomit uneasiness, and the anxiety of a looming eviction notice caused my emotions to go haywire and I unleashed a violent sob, mucus and tears riveting down my face. I then heard a noise from outside the kitchen, I looked to the Kitchen window and spied that stupid shadow cultist out in my back yard staring in at me, I must have looked like a pathetic idiot weeping in front of my kitchen pantry.

Too ashamed to confront him, I just crawled into my pantry and shut the door sliding through the puddle of my own sick as I did so. Which didn't help the fact that it was so cold in there I nearly froze my tail off, my air conditioner was probably broken and I would have to call the landlord about it, but that would mean sedating FishSticks and stuffing him a suitcase under my bed, and it was at that point I realized I needed to reevaluate my life, maybe I shouldn't drink as much, maybe I should give FishSticks to a better home, maybe I should stop using an app to hook up and start actually looking for mares to get into relationships with, maybe I should move out of my shit neighborhood with the Cult members running around at 4 in the morning. After going through an entire existential crisis in my pantry I decide to say "fuck it" and end the entire stupid ritual. That crazy bitch could have her culpa by herself, not to mention the fact that I still have 37 more ritual steps to complete, which include lighting 8 more candles, stabbing a Voodoo doll, spinning around in a circle shouting "YOU'RE IT YOU'RE IT YOU'RE IT." Before ending the whole thing by going down to my basement and looking into a mirror, but not actually looking into it, which made absolutely no fucking sense.

As I got up to open the door I heard a low moan behind it and froze, praying to both Celestia and Luna that it wasn't my landlord. I cracked open the door to see the Cult member standing in my kitchen staring at me. I finally got a good look at him, he definitely didn't have a face, I guess getting your face taken away is some kind of new cult initiation now. He didn't react to my presence, he just fucking stared at me. I don't even know how to deal with faceless cult members so I just stared back. We stared at each other for about five minutes before I finally got the balls to move. I walked out of my pantry and went back up stairs, his eyeless gaze followed me as I moved but he didn't do anything else that would warrant a response after that I went up to my bathroom to take a shower, and now my shower head is leaking which I blame on the stupid ritual, so if you know any plumbers in the Baltimare area I would really appreciate it if you send them my way.

Could you also have that Pegasus named FlutterShy fly over and take care of FishSticks for the day, or a couple weeks depending on what happens, and maybe also send some cops my way because the faceless pony hasn't left and I don't want to try and make him leave on my own. I understand if you can't do all that but could you at least try? please.
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My first reaction to reading this was just "wow." I replied to this with an email of my own.

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Dear, {I'm not putting his name in this for privacy reasons} I personally don't know how to deal with ponies without faces. I thought I saw a pegasus without any wings, but then I realized he was just a normal EarthPony. I'll be sure to tell Celestia about this, maybe the Element bearers will be able to deal with this. Unfortunately I do not know any plumbers at all, but I would personally consult the phone book. As for FlutterShy taking cat of your cat, I'm fairly certain that she will, even without me asking her to. Lastly I suggest that you do actually move away from where you live, you might be able to come word at the RestStop when it's fixed, I'm sure the Boss would let go work here till you get back on your feet.
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After sending this email I called Celestia and she told me she would sent the Element Bearers, as well as a platoon of soldiers for support. She said that the "Faceless Pony" has been taken into custody, and that it didn't even make an effort to escape. It just stood there, oblivious to everything, like it was blind or something. That's what I read from Twilight's official report Celestia sent me along with the email that everything was alright. I don't know how she got my email address though, What am I saying, she probably got it from the place everypony else got it from.

Anyway I hope you enjoyed this little donation story. I know donation story's not a good name for it but I don't know what else to call it. Still I hope you enjoyed.

This is Bright from the RestStop, but not right now, signing off.

Chapter 11. A demon needs my help.

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Hello again Bright here with another email entry. So, quick little update before we get started, Repairs on the RestStop are just about finished and I should be back at work later in the week. So you should expect me to be sharing some of my own stories before long. However that doesn't mean that I'll be stopping these email entries. I'll get to them when I can, but don't expect to see them on a regular basis. Now with out further ado let's get started.

First off let me explain that I'm a monster. I don't mean in the sense that I'm a terrible person or anything like that, I mean it in the sense that I'm a monstrous demon from Hell that feeds off fear and misery. You may be wondering why I'm writing this to you. It's because I need help, not specifically your help, but help from any sentient life form. I'll get to the specifics in a minute but first I need to explain why I need your help at all.

About 1600 years ago, before Celestia rose to power, some practitioners of black magic discovered an ancient spell book and summoned me to this plain of existence to do their bidding. Only one of the Warlocks, I think his name was FireStar, messed up the ritual so that I was no longer wound to do their will. Apparently they wanted me to enact an apocalypse that would destroy the current world order and set them up as leaders. I decided that was a bit much so I slaughtered them all instead. I might have enacted the apocalypse anyway, killing them first just to punish them, but FireStar's screw up caused me to be summoned with only a tiny fraction of my power, even so I left him alive, mostly because he seemed like a good lad. If I recall correctly he went on to be a baker later on. I burned the summoning scroll and went back to my plain of existence, where I had been tormenting lost souls with my kids.

Now for a history lesson. The dimension where I come from is known as Hell, It's a place where damned souls go when they pass on to the afterlife. Now that may sound a bit like Tartarus, and for good reason. You see about 3500 years ago there was a war between us demons, some of the more evil Titans, and the various races of the land lead by the first Alicorn Holy Cross. In the end Holy Cross was victorious, he locked the Titans in various tombs throughout the land and we demons had to give up Tartarus as a sort of peace agreement. I believe you use it for housing the worst ever criminals like that Tirek fellow. We demons have roughly the same amount of power as the Titans, with our king Satan having the same magical and physical power of an Alicorn. We don't usually do anything since after the war, like changelings we feed on emotions mostly suffering, we don't actually need to leave Hell to get it. Hell is a plain where all the damned souls go when they die. Now granted that doesn't seem like a lot when you consider the very few tyrants that have existed through the centuries here in Equestria. However the Universe is an immeasurably large place, and some of the life forms out there aren't as kind and harmonious as you ponies, needless to say we are in no short supply of damned souls to torment.

However it seems like I should have killed FireStar after all, because unbeknownst to me he had transcribed the summoning ritual and bequeathed it to his children after he died. The scroll was lost for centuries until one of FireStar's modern descendants discovered it in his great-grandfather's attic while preparing for an after-death estate sale. He decided to get it translated out of curiosity and afterwards he decide that the contents would make a great "Creepypasta" which from my understanding is some kind of scary story or urban legend that's been spread around the internet. He even included the original incantation for flavor. This was a few years ago when that fad of ritualistic stories had still been blooming. To my great surprise and distress, my summoning instructions became somewhat popular, at this point I hadn't been to Terra in over a thousand years, and back then I had been summoned by the most powerful dark wizards at the time, know every few days I was being whisked out of hell by some drunk teenagers shining lights up at their faces in them bathroom trying to scare each other. You see a long time ago, when literacy was exceptionally rare, my summoning ritual was extremely complicated. But now in the days of blooming literacy rates and Poggle Translate it's become absurdly easy to preform. Luckily for me thought, FireStar didn't just fuck up when he summoned me, he fucked up when he transcribed the ritual as well, so that I'm not bound to anypony's will when I get summoned. This is a good thing, because drunk teenagers, pony or otherwise, usually ask me to do some pretty weird stuff. However I still only get summoned with a tiny fraction of my full power, so I usually just terrify them to their very core before whisking back to my level of hell so that they won't bother me again. That was until Windy.

Windy is a six year old Pegasus filly who found my creepypasta summoning ritual in her edgy older brother's room a couple months ago, and decide to try it out for giggles. Be chance she got the ending right. I suppose it was bound to happen eventually, It was only a small mistake FireStar made in the transcription after all. The problem for me is that she not actually evil in any sense of the word she's just a normal filly. What's weird is that she didn't get her Cutie Mark by summoning me, I'm not entirely sure how Cutie Marks work but summoning a demon could be considered pretty impressive. Getting back to the "not evil" thing Windy has summoned a demon powerful enough to enact an apocalypse, but all she has me do is material candy and puppies out of think air. Her parents are always flabbergasted when they arrive to pick her up from school and she's surrounded by at least eight puppies.

At this point I don't even care about destroying things and feasting on souls anymore, I'd really just like to go back home. Which is why I'm emailing you. From what I can tell you're the only one who's possibly going to take this seriously. I need you to get somepony to preform my banishing ritual so I can go back home to Hell and live in peace. The steps aren't even that complicated.

You just draw a pentagram on a mirror, light seven candles, and read the following words.

"Demonym magister ab antigua, dono tibi Mia corpus Gracia libera bolbus, ego vivere in vitae in tra corpus Mia, ego Imola an Amamiya, nos faw nei huma nei creatur ei, nos apetimos mortos et infernos, pradhucat in fin hominis, Amen"

Now since you probably won't understand any of this, and the ritual has to be understood to be preformed, you should probably show this to the princesses. They'd know the most about this and they'd also might like to know about the ritual so the could remove it from the internet so drunk teens will stop summoning me.
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So yeah, like the demon said I didn't understand a bit of that incantation so I just told the princesses about it and they said they'd take care of it. Anyway I should be back at the RestStop next time I upload but I will upload more of these fan stories when I have the time, just make sure that they're true and they're on the same level of weird as this story and the story from the previous chapter. This is Bright signing off.

Chapter 12. Something Weird came into the Reststop today.

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Hello Everypony I am back working at the Everfree RestStop, and let me just say one of the very few perks of working here is that there's not many things out here important enough to get stressed about. I'm speaking from my own experience and in no way am I recommending you go out and try to get a job here. You have to have a certain mindset to work here, I learned that early on and fortunately for me I had that mindset on default, said mindset being calm and apathetic about everything. In my case I have that mindset due to my condition, for those of you who skipped to this chapter or who haven't been paying attention, I have a rare form of Chronic Insomnia which not even Alicorn magic can cure, the basic premiss of it is that I never sleep, ever. However I have been known to go into a kind of trancelike state where my body just autopilots everything, but that's not technically sleeping since my body stays wide awake. I wasn't always like this, when I was a little kid I would sometimes worry about living up to my own expectations for adulthood, which I now realize was completely absurd when you consider that the town I grew up in is the capital of lowered expectations, whose only claim to fame is being the most rural and low tier section of Canterlot, and the place where it rained frogs that one time, don't ask. It's not nearly as interesting as Canterlot Proper or where I work.

I work at the only 24-hour RestStop in the Everfree forest, and as far as jobs go, it's not the best, but it's not the worst either. I work as a clerk and I don't have any ambition to climb the corporate ladder, it's a family owned business and I rather work on as the clerk instead of being the actual manager, since even if I do become the manager I still have to take orders from the boss, and I rather have him work as hard as me instead of just sitting on his ass and reap my rewards. Anyway back to the explanation of the store. Some days churn by without incident, moving the world one step closer to oblivion or whatever, those days are my favorites, when I can pass an entire shift by reading a book and minding my own business. I don't need to climb a mountain or visit a canyon to know what Zen feels like, for me tranquility is a quiet empty RestStop at 4 in the morning.

Of course somedays aren't as uneventful, I've experienced rude customers, drunkards, vicious raccoons that fall on the chaotic evil spectrum of the DND alignment, a handful of armed robbers, and about a hundred other things I can only classify as weird. I had one the last type of days yesterday.

Now for clarification I should mention that there was a period of time where the RestStop was open, but the local wildlife of the forest hadn't taken root since the whole Tree God thing happened. We've still got Rocco's brood and Scar to worry about, but at least I don't have to worry about a mad pony hunting me down. Oh I probably should have mentioned this earlier, the authorities actually managed to catch Slasher. They found him stuck underneath a boulder, apparently that's where he ended up after the Tree God jumped ship. But back to the story.

We had been busier than normal in the days leading up to this, some of the wildlife and fisher agents form Ponyville and Canterlot Proper had been patrolling the woods pretty heavily, and considering the location our little reststop is the only place for miles to get food or fresh coffee. I'm not exactly sure what the hubbub was about, but I would guess everypony's been on edge ever since those cows were mutilated. Okay, I think maybe "mutilated" is too strong of a word to use. Let me explain, lately somepony has been sneaking into cattle farms and shaving the cows bald, who knows why, small towns get bored. I wasn't paying attention to the time because I never do anymore, not since the time the clock tried to steal my soul, but it was late in my shift in the middle of the night when the deer poked his head inside the Reststop.

I had just finished my book and was checking my phone for weather updates when it happened, the glass door was pushed slightly ajar and deer with an eight-point rack of antlers was slowly inspecting the store, scanning its gaze form one corner to the other, nostrils flaring with each sniff. It stopped moving and pointed its giant black eyes right at me. I remained perfectly still, except to put my phone down because this was simply more interesting than the possible snow storm headed our way in the next few weeks.

We stared at one another for just a moment longer before the deer pushed the door the rest of the way open and stepped one foot inside. Now whatever you're imagining right now, it's wrong, and I know that's my fault because I'm telling you the story, so I apologize. There were a few key details to this "deer" that I haven't mentioned yet. First, the deer's head was about seven feet off the ground, and second, I could see through the glass of the front doors that this deer was standing upright. From antler tip to pelvis the deer was just like any other ordinary whitetail that I had ever seen in the woods, tan fur, long neck, confused expression, the works, but at the legs he turned into something else. If "Kangarooish" was a word, I'd call his legs Kangarooish. He stepped a Kangarooish foot into the store and waited, like he was making sure the ground wasn't going to fall out from below him. When it didn't he put the next foot forward. The door shut behind him and the deer started walking down the RestStop aisle, his antlers barely missing the fluorescent lights hanging from the ceiling by mere millimeters. That's when something that had happened earlier came back to me.

I didn't think much of it at the time, but when I got to work one of the other workers said something interesting. I was taking over the safe from the only other full time clerk, Lucky. Who according to what I heard from a pretty reliable source, has been pretty salty ever since his cult went and had a mass suicide without inviting him. Before he left he told me that the lag was getting worse and maybe it was time we did something about it. You see there's something wrong with the mirror in the Reststop bathroom. There's a delay in the reflection by about half a second, sometimes if the weather's acting up it gets much worse, or at least more noticeable, we had plans to replace the mirror but couldn't do it because we're lazy and mirrors are expensive, and besides how important is to see your exact reflection in real time anyways? It's a bathroom in a shitty Reststop, not some fancy salon or boutique. But that wasn't the weird thing he told me, the weird thing was that a pony wearing hunters camp had come by earlier and left his number, telling Lucky that it was imperative that he contact him incase we see anything unusual.

Given where we work, I had dismissed that as being too vague to have any meaning at all. What is unusual in the Everfree Forest? A solar eclipse? A bipedal deer? A completely normal day? Besides I don't work for him and if he's looking for the deer creature he can find it on his own, back to the story. I watched the deer walk slowly towards the bagged chips display an put his nose to it, sniffing voraciously before stepping back and scanning the entire store again. His arms, or forelegs, whichever they were dangled at his sides with cloven hooves as he walked over to the refrigerated drink case. He tapped the glass a couple times with his antlers before figuring out how to reach out and pull the door. It was like watching a toddler figure out a puzzle, it's frustrating. I almost got up to help him but finally, mercifully, he got his hoof around the handle and the door creaked open. I had to hold back my laughter as the deer fumbled with a bottle of water and somehow managed, barely, to pull it out of the case before sticking it in his mouth and chewing at the cap until it ripped open. He then leaned his head back with the bottle sticking out of his mouth and stared right at me as he guzzled the whole thing down in one continuous stream. Next he sauntered over to the coffee machine and gave it a whiff, the smell apparently agree with his disposition and he reared back and shook his head fiercely, probably for the best. Finally the buck finished his round and walked right up to me and stopped on the other side of the counter. From this close I could smell the creature, and surprisingly he smelled like grape soda. He tapped his hooves on the counter a couple of times then looked back to where he had dropped the bottle of water, then back to me.

"Okay." I said, not knowing what else to do.

He tapped the counter again so I went ahead and punched in the code for a bottle of water at the register.

"That's gonna be 3 bits."

The deer took a step back, looked down at himself and started patting his body where his pockets would be if he were wearing any pants, then he looked up at me and blinked a few times.

"Look you're putting me in an awkward spot here." I said.

Right then the creature started belting out a strange animalistic noise that I can only describe as some sort of unholy combination between donkey and dolphin.

"I don't know what that means." I deadpanned over his noise but then he just got louder and louder before throwing his head back and emitting this weird call into the ceiling.

"I don't know what you're saying." I said back. "I don't speak deer."

The creature threw its head back down and barfed up a total of five coins before using his tongue to put two of them back in his mouth and swallow them like menthols, and then I was silent. We both looked at the coins, then to each other, then back at the coins. After thoroughly processing what had just happened I picked up the coins in my magic and inspected them to find that they were indeed legal currency.

"Okay."

I wiped the coins off and added them to the till with the rest of the money. The deer turned towards the door and flicked his tail at me a few times before I noticed the strange group outside the Reststop. At least half a dozen other deer were out there, each standing tall on two Kangarooish feet, and staring right at me. There was another stag, a pack of does, and at least one four feet tall fawn. The buck struggled to get the door open, I ask about to ask if he needed some help but before I could he had it wide enough to slip outside. Then they all left, walking proudly to the forest line, it wasn't until five minutes later that it occurred to me that I should have taken a picture or something, without any proof I guess it's just going to turn into one of those weird stories that nopony ever believes. I dug through my backpack and found a book that I hadn't read yet, I opened to the front page and began reading, It was another hour before I had another customer come into the store.

So yeah that's basically it. I'm not going to put timestamps on different occurrences anymore, because I'm still not entirely trusting of the clock yet. But don't worry I will keep posting stories as they occur, and feel free to send me some of your personal stories, just note that they have to real and they have to be weird.

Until next time guys. This Is Bright, signing off.

Tales from the Everfree RestStop

by FanboyGamer3E

Chapter 1. Background Checks.

Chapter 2. Half a pig, no I'm not joking.

Chapter 3. Lawn Gnomes, Hoof Plants, a Cultist, and a Dead body. It's gonna be a long night.

Chapter 5. I am SO sorry.

Chapter 6. Written by Lucky.

Chapter 7. The Griffon with the beard.

Chapter 8. My Final Chapter.

Chapter 9. STILL ALIVE MOTHERFUCKERS

Chapter 10. Does anypony know a good plumber?

Chapter 11. A demon needs my help.

Chapter 12. Something Weird came into the Reststop today.

Chapter 13. A PSA