The Macabre River
A mezzo-forte of crunching leaves can be heard as my hoof falls onto the ground. The rustling of small trees and whistles in the air can both be heard as I continue to make my way towards the source of everypony’s cries.
The Macabre River
I hitched a cough as some of the dusty air blew into my mouth when I was yawning. I stumbled a bit due to the slightly unexpected smell of iron and funk that lingered in the air for a few seconds before I continued on to my destination. Ponies don’t normally talk much about these parts. The normal troubles are normally when the local Bison were rampaging or some kind of massive dust storm that was going to come through the town. However, the Bison tribes all but became part of our community and dust storms have been easier to defend against. So normally those are the common belly-aches of the town, but then…
The Macabre River
I shake my head as I begin to get a bit nervous as I reached a small hill and started to climb it. Rocks are being kicked behind me as I use them to grab my footing. Soft dirt was always the most troublesome material to grab onto when climbing.
The Macabre River
I stopped my trek as thoughts of the Macabre River resurfaced my mind. The rumors and the theories. The story goes that the river is where some of the older pony dessert gangs bound-and-gagged their enemies and dumped them into the bank. Another one said Discord drank from it and thus it is haunted. Another after another of these ridiculous stories, trying to explain the river’s weird backstory. However the reason for my nervousness is the reports that started turning up because of the river’s main attraction: The fishing business.
The Macabre has a long history of being the holder of the strangest fish known to all of Equestria. It houses Trouts that have multiple eyes, crayfish the size of ants, and various other creepy things that are aquatic. Beings of all races came down to Appleloose to capture these species for sport and recognition. It slowly became the heart of this once rusted, old city in the dust wind. Ponies like Filthy Rich and Prince Blue blood gave the river endorsements, making it known across all of Equestria. This has been going on for about 6 years and the town never looked back. The river was too much of a mystery to be openly accesible to the general public, but bits talk over personal concerns.
“I suppose I am the only one who never trusted the damn body of water” I said as I continued to walk to the delta of the river. The area leading to the delta slowly changed as I walked the straight path of trees and shrubs. The green life still visible due to it being not as dense as a forest and the natural moonlight shining brightly above. The walk was calm and mundane for about 10 minutes before something foul began to creep into the air.
I begin to cough wildly as a potent stench hits my nostrils. The strength of the smell was beyond imaginable thought as tears started to make their way down my eyes. In order to negate the strong smell, I had to take out my scarf and cover my face with it. It doesn’t block off the smell entirely, but the slightest smell of detergent and laundry cleaners helps a lot to offset the incredible smell. As I wiped the moisture from my eyes, I saw trees undergoing unnatural changes; the leaves and shrubs have all turned into a rusted brown and their shapes look mutated and different.
I picked on off of the ground and examined it: The leaf wasn’t its traditional spade shape. The shape is asymmetrical from the left side of the tip to the body. The left side has a strange, unnatural curve that defies physics. It is inverted as it curls upwards towards the body and the underside of has small bumps that makes it look like a case of smallpox. The trees themselves have slowly become contorted from their natural erect stature and reach, the straightness of their trunks have slowly turned into a heeled over pose as I watched in stunned silence. The wood began to make small growls and groans as the base of the tree snapped due to the unbalanced weight distribution on one side. The other trees around the area met the same fate as they all broke apart at the seams. The bent top half was already close to the ground so there was no major topple; the landings were all soft and gentle as the air gently blew around me.
I couldn’t imagine in my worst mortal fears as to what caused this. Could it be due to the stench in the air that made nature itself turn into a retardation of our reality?
‘Now I am just thinking heedlessly due to my own biases’ I thought as I continued on towards the Macabre.
Slowly but surely I inched my way towards the river. Dread and heavy breaths filled me as the scarf became useless in protecting my nose from the smell. The current patch of twisted trees led to the clearing to the river’s entrance and I hastily made my way up. I walked up to the clearing with a bit more haste and diligence, not minding looking below as I only had the entrance in my eyes. In my impatient march, I stepped on something unexpected and fleshy. It had a loud squish sound as I felt wetness on my hoof. I turned around to look at the barely visible ground and saw something beyond my previous normal imaginations.
On the ground laid a group of sardines and a large body of a decomposing possum. The dead and fly infested possum has its mouth open and the guts were a bit smashed in (No doubt from my own hoof), however that was not the unnatural detail that my mind could not properly stomach.
The sardines were mutated and they were eating the decomposing flesh of the possum.
I gasped in surprise and back peddled myself a few feet away from the scene and fell to my haunches. The smell, while being strong, has no immediate effects on me as the sight left me grossly awestruck. The sardines are swarmed around the possum and they as a group are mauling out the guts. I gathered enough courage to slowly make my way to the repulsion and gaze more intently. The sardines have sprout short little legs that look akin to a frog’s flippers, the legs kicking like it's swimming as a means to walk on land. The gills have moss and other fungi attached to them. And as one turned its head towards me, I saw small teeth or barbed surfaces in their blood stained mouths as it went back to its filthy meal. I start to gag and vomit all over the scene, adding to the grotesque scenery. I moved back and sat on my haunches again as the scene flashed in my eyes due to the curse of memory. Thoughts of possibilities resurfaced in my mind as the memory brought up another question: If the sardines were mutated to this point, what of the other creatures around them? What could the smell be the link?
Could the Macabre River be the reason?
I stood myself up with the extreme case of the shakes and went to the entrance of the Macabre River. I passed the small area of gaping, bent trees and walked to the river’s service entrance. Normally the entrance is just a small pier with a fishing boat dock that houses all the fishing gear that has a lot of active ponies around it, but now it's just deserted. The picnic area has been bleached the same rusted brown the trees from earlier showed on the grass below my hooves. A small sign that shows proudly to the world “Welcome to Macabre River” in all capitals; being a facetiously mockery of how disastrous this place looks: it's terrible looking!
'This place is beyond salvageable. The ecosystem is… it's beyond dead.' I thought to myself as I take a step forward towards the docks. The wood panels creaked as I made my way to the mouth of the river itself. I think back to some geographical facts about the Macabre I learned from the brochure a while back to calm my mind: The fact that it isn’t a true river, but a lake that has a weird structure that gives it river-like functionality. There are over 1,405 different species of fish in the lake, and they are all in the wrong environment. All of these facts slightly lifted my mind from the main picture ahead of me. As soon as I reached the foot of the dock into the Macabre’s water however… I stopped in my tracks.
In the water, I saw floating, swollen bodies of mutated fish that all had death’s grace in their eyes. The bite marks on their bellies are large and jagged; uneven when seen in this pale moonlight. Larger fish like Sharks and Hammerheads are also littering the waters before me with gaping holes on their bellies. More sardines and smaller mutated creatures are attacking the last remaining morsels left in the vile liquids. Flies and gnats swarmed and impregnated the bank with all their natural talent, joining the sardines in the decomposing process most likely. Upon closer inspection into the Macabre, there are strange floating logs that are next to the ripped fish and the gnats are all nesting on it as well. Speaking of the moon and its light, the waters reflected the light in a hideous brownish red color. The refracted image of the moon makes it look fuzzy and full of image noise.
The final nail on the coffin however is the smell.
If the smell from earlier was strong enough to elicit strong reactions from myself, then the smell here in the Macabre was further beyond the early scent’s intensity. The best summary I can think of about the great stink is that it smells like pony shit, left in a pipe for years, and was released into the waters with the iron-y smell of blood.The combination brings nothing but unease in myself as it is without a doubt the cause of the crisis at hoof. What is left of Appleloosa’s once great fishing hot spot is that it has turned into a cesspool of beings that Celestia’s defining grace could never save. I am suspicious of the stationary logs that are slowly drifting in the body of water. Since it isn’t alive, I deemed it safe enough to poke at without any kind of hassle. I hastily grabbed a stick from the nearby decayed trees and went back to the dock to pick at the log. I knelt forward a bit into the river while holding the dock to keep my balance, the thick smell once again attacking my nostrils, and with enough effort and ‘please don’t fall into the water’ quick prayers, I managed to scrape the surface of the floating solid. I quickly brought myself back to the dock and looked at the stick in the pale lighting of the moon. The wood has remained its natural light-brown color despite the environmental changes, so finding any discoloration is easy. I looked towards the tip and found that it had changed to a darker shade of brown. Flies from the river began to swarm around the tip at once and the intense smell from earlier has become even stronger.
Disgusted; intrigued but ultimately disgusted, I threw the foul thing into the waters without a second thought. I stepped back because of me answering my obvious question.
‘Did I really just take a whiff of a shit stick? Goodness this place is getting to my head. I gotta get out of here before I do something else from the stink high’ I thought as I begin to walk across the noisy dock towards the mainland.
SPLASH!
“What the HELL?!?” I heard a splash behind me and a strong wind blew in my direction. I looked back into the waters and saw the area of disturbed water. A few seconds it returned back to normal.
Then I saw it
The last thing I saw in that river was the burbling of the filth water and the giant fish creature exiting the waters from below. I saw the water level lower as the mutated fish giant’s body was mostly on the surface than the waters. It had ghastly eyes devoid of life, large lips and wide mouth the size of 7 meters long in width, and large jagged teeth that can total the very dock I am stupidly sitting on right now. I turned tail without a second’s notice and began to run away. Run away from the beyond natural beast of a mutated giant fish before it had the opportunity to devour me. I dared to never look back as the sight of the fish itself was enough to make a full grown stallion wet himself. I immediately ran past the entrance and continued on. Never looking back behind me.
Two years later
I am sitting by a fireplace in a small town on the outskirts of Las Pegasus. I am reading the national newspaper and sipping my cup of ol’ joe. I am currently turning the page from the sports section to the developing stories section. After 3 page turns, I stumbled across a name that gave me strong chills.
The Macabre River
I audibly gulped as I read out loud the following tabloid. “The Macabre River has become the largest environmental disaster in the history of the established Equestria. Contaminated waters have mutated and changed the local ecosystem. A scientist who has taken a sample of the waters has confirmed that the waters possess fecal matter from an unknown being that has existed 4,000 years ago. The cause of the leakage of the fecal matter has been traced to a line of pipes seen underground all around the river’s area. These pipes, theorized by Dr. Merde appears to be an infrastructure that would transport feces by these other beings. More information is being gathered on this hypothesis. In closing, the Macabre River which has been the hot spot of Appleloosa for more than half a century will be closed down for good until the foreseeable future. The river is to be closed off and excavated for further investig-”
I turned white as the true horror inside the river still exists and these ponies are only asking to be turned into food. I ball up the newspaper and throw the thing in the fire, Its contents were too much for me to handle a second look. With the last of my courage and willpower, I picked up a pen and some parchment and started telling my story with the Macabre River. Describing the details, the history, and the hideous mystery I still grimly remember to this very day.