A Nightmare
There Scootaloo was, standing at the precipice of night, the dewy scent of moon-bathed grass and chill of the waning winter season muddling her senses. Ancient and bent tree boughs cast crooked shadows that seemed to twist and contort into strange, spindly figures, writhing in tune to the chorus of wind-blown branches like the creaking of old bones.
A mortal chill slithered down her spine. She knew this place. She'd visited it in her dreams on occasion before she'd come into her own as a filly. Before she'd found friends, before she found someone to look up to. Back when every day was a living nightmare, each seemingly without end.
All of a sudden, ice entombed her heart as the distant echoes of squelching flesh reached her ear. She knew what was happenning, what was going to happen. Soon, she'd hear them again. Those screaming, tearing, ungodly voices...
The world was silent.
Then she heard something. Distant cracks, like bones breaking over and over, clearer than the echo before. She stifled a gasp. It... it's back! No. No! Her mind raced. Shut up, this is just a dream! It can't be real. It can;t! I-I can just bite myself and wake up! Like thi-
"Agh!" An all too real pain throbbed through the injury she'd just given herself. "Oh Celestia...", she muttered.
I have... h-have to hide. Can't let it find me. Can't! Won't! One thought occupied her mind; she had to hide. She looked around herself, searching for a tree hung low enough to climb. She was running out of time – with every second wasted searching, the crackling noises grew louder and louder.
She sprawled out onto the forest floor, low as she could, little orange limbs stretched taut with fear. Her ears were perked up, and her purple eyes peered through the thick grass before her, the pale moon their only light.
Again the sickening cracks echoed, only a bit quieter than before. Just when Scootaloo was beginning to think she was safe, an errant blade of grass brushed against her side, drawing forth a surprised yelp.
Sound died out once again.
The filly jammed her hoof into her mouth as hard as she could, sweat trailing down her forehead. Stupid! Stupid! Stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid!
As if on queue, the wet noise of breaking bones rose to a fever pitch, growing louder and more intense by the second. Shivers wracked Scootaloo to the core, a pitiful whine slipping passed her hoof into the darkness.
The noise grew and grew. Her eyes frantically scanned the trees before her, desperately seeking an escape. Just as she'd risen to move, however, darkness began to eat away at the edges of her sight. She looked up, errant locks of her tattered, purple mane matted against her cold forehead. Her heart sank at the sight of a thick, black cloud devouring the weak moon.
That's... that's n-not fair, she thought.
It didn't stop; the sound. It never stopped. Every second became a cacophony of wet flesh and snapping limbs. The darkness choked her vision. Her breathing became ragged as the last of her sight was taken from her. She only wished it happened sooner, for just as the light died, she saw something round the nearest tree.
Something big.
For a third time, sound died. No cracking of limbs, no squelching of dead flesh. Nothing.
Her unsteady, sobbing breaths rang thunderously in the sea of black. She choked for air, fear born convulsions ripping her oxygen from her, tears stinging the corners of her eyes. They spilled down her cheeks to her now clenched jaw, her jagged gasps tearing apart the dead quiet.
The seconds inched along. She lay prone, trapped in her own skin, a slave to her fear for the longest moment.
And that moment faded into a minute...
Her ears darted around violently at the slightest noise. They picked up on almost every detail; the fall of dead pine needles, the licks of cold sweat as it matted and soaked her bristly fur, even the blinking of her eyes all roared like thunder in her ears. Almost everything... except for it...
Her own breathing cut through the silence like an angry storm, if not a bit less boisterous. The forest remained calm, as if to mock the scared filly. Hot tears still leaked from the corners of her swollen, jittery eyes, burning her cheeks in the frigid air.
Perhaps it had gone? Perhaps it had overlooked her and went to find somepony else; some other prey to torture? She only hoped.
The few minutes trickled into a few more...
This brief calm had slowed her rampant heart, and steadied her haggard breathing. Slivers of pale light painted a familiar scene on the black canvas before her; the piney forest, almost exactly as she remembered it. A hideous, black scar of steaming vitriol tainted the image, like the trail of a thousand leprous snails, with a foul stench to match. She silently thanked the cool breeze at her back for keeping the smell at bay.
A sudden, cold fear stabbed at her heart. She looked to the trees, a bad feeling welling up in the pit of her stomach. No branches swayed in the breeze, no rustling danced on the wind, and all solace bled from her heart.
Rasping, like the wan death cries of a small creature, filled the area. A familiar chorus of snapping bone and wet flesh followed closely after, amid an odor more foul than an open sepulcher. Tendrils of darkness lapped at the edges of her vision, threatening to steal it once more.
No... Please, Celestia, no...
The rancid notes of a hundred voices lingered on the wind as the clatter of dead teeth, perpetually shifting in their tortured fleshy home caught her ear. The young filly's blood froze as its mouth slowly yawned open, sputtering noises unlike any nightmare she'd ever conceived, every sound guttural and slimy, soaked in the pained cries of a thousand damned souls.
Scootaloo bolted up, stock straight and bucked with all she had back at the decayed... thing behind her. She didn't dare to look back as she tore off into the night, the angry screaming of a dead orchestra hot on her hooves.
Her small wings buzzed furiously, adrenaline surging through her veins as she forced herself on through the twisting, endless forest. She felt like she'd run for miles, and yet that sea of black voices had never lost a beat, never once slowed down – she'd put everything she had into that kick, and it did nothing.
Terror-stricken as she was, she never saw the fallen log in her path, nor the deathly fall she'd landed mere feet from. But when she landed, she did see... it.
Mounds of blackened flesh plastered to hollow, rotten bone formed its hulking torso. From its grotesque body sprouted a thousand, million gangly arms laced and tipped with spidery lengths of fractured bone and sharp cartilage. Then came its face... sweet Celestia, its face! An overstretched amalgam of a hundred half-recognizable ponies, their severed heads stitched together like a quilt of dead memories, faced Scootaloo. Their mouths were pulled apart, lips little more than dangling chunks of pale flesh, and their eyes were little more than hollow sockets, silently screaming in terror.
Scootaloo, crushed under fears' iron heel, gazed on from the ground as its unhinged maw rattled off something she couldn't hope to understand. It stretched one of its lanky appendages toward her, chunks of skin dropping off like molten slag as its spiky finger moved for her taut neck. She gasped as the thing dug into her flesh, and felt a sharp pain, almost like a hard pinch, right where it'd stabbed her.
Her vision blurred.
The dark forest melted into more familiar, clinical shapes. White walls. Fluorescent lights. Ponies in lab coats. The stench of blood.
Blood?
Definitely. The subtle, coppery smell coming from a pink-maned, white mare, nursing what looked to be a broken nose. She was standing over Scootaloo, saying something. It was more noise than anything at this point, but it was a pleasant sort of noise. Like a mother cooing a child to sleep.
After all that frightful harrowing, and freed of the nightmare beast that had been stalking her, sleep sounded good. The little filly's eyes relaxed as her world faded into an indistinguishable blur and she finally succumbed to unconsciousness.
Her work done, Nurse Redheart sheathed her empty syringe and put the group of orderlies behind her to work, carrying the now still Scootaloo back to her padded cell in the psyche ward.
"Poor thing", Redheart thought aloud to nopony in particular. "First her parents, then her idol..."
One of the orderlies, a burly stallion whose name escaped her at present, lingered at her side in the hall. "Ain't seen a filly buck that hard in all my years'a work", he said, gesturing to the nurses' bloodied nose. "What's with her, anyway?"
"Haven't you read her file?", the clinically white earth pony inquired, shoving her crooked snout back into place with a loud yelp.
An innocent if pleading grin scrunched up the stallions' blocky face and he shrugged. Redheart rose up with a sigh and motioned for him to follow. She started down the hall, backing out of the psyche ward and heading towards the waiting room.
"She's an orphan", she began, a tentative air of sorrow in her tone. "Parents died when she was five; some crazy accident up at the weather factory. Had no living relatives, so we had to shack her up in a foster home. Hearsay tells me most of the kids gave her a hard time for her inability to fly."
The stallion at her side whistled in morbid surprise. "Tough break, eh?"
Redheart looked to him, a note of sympathy escaping her veneer of professionalism. "You have no idea", she muttered. "There is- was a bit of a silver lining to it, though."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah. She met this pegasus, Rainbow Dash. Talented aerial speedster, borderline arrogant, reckless, but with a heart of gold."
"Can't say I heard'a her..."
Redheart shot him a doubtful stare, eyes half-lidded in mild vexation. "The one everypony in town thinks is a lesbian?", she shot at him.
The stallion nodded as if stricken by an epiphany, and Redheart rolled her eyes.
"Anyway, she looked up to Rainbow. Idolized her. Had a fan club and everything." A wistful smile played at the edges of her mouth. "I saw them around town a few times. Way they acted, you'd think they were sisters, I swear." The smile faded from her face as she carried on. "Then one day she up and disappears. No note, nothing. Far as I could tell, she must have been the only thing keeping the filly sane. With her out of the picture she just... broke."
"Damn shame...", came the stallion, eyes hung low as the two rounded the corner into the waiting room. "Hey, uh... this is gonna sound kinda weird, but do you maybe wanna... get dinner later?", he asked out of the blue, an awkward smile on his rugged face.
Redheart cocked her head and stared hard at him incredulously. She shook her head and cantered off without another word, a mildly bemused stallion staring after her, and thoughts of the nights' ordeal that would haunt her for months to come.
A/N: I started listening to creepy ambient music one night and felt like writing something up that was at least a little unsettling. It was fun, and even if it didn't meet my haughty expectations at first (hardly surprising, being the first actual thing I've written in a long while) , it was better than another night grumbling at politically charged YouTube videos.
I'd also be the first to admit that it wouldn't be half as good as it ended up without help from Ziggy05, who so kindly accepted a random strangers' request to edit his work. Thanks again. Again.
Cheerio.