The post office was easily distinguishable from all the other buildings of the town, since its structure was different: only two floors in height, but it encompassed several blocks in area. Solaris and Trevor crossed the street silently, following the light of a couple of lamps along the street, their light muffled by the thick fog.
"This fog is always here…" commented Trevor, slowly moving in a circle, letting his flashlight show the surroundings. "From the first day I arrived, it was always here… you never know what's hiding in there, and that you can't even see…"
"You just have to not use your eyes." Commented Solaris, sniffing the air. "For example, I'm good with my nose. And I can tell that there is nothing strange around here. Except everything we already know, of course." He stated, before trotting towards the door. Surprisingly, it was open, so, the couple fo earth pony entered into the building.
The interior of the post office was quite typical: the main hall was packed with chairs, which filled the empty space almost completely. On the other side of a long wooden counter where the mail ponies probably received the letters from whoever wanted to send them, there was a little empty space, and a couple of doors placed in the clean wall.
"Well then, what are we looking for?" grunted Solaris, looking around from behind his shades.
"Whatever can tell us who sent the letters." Answered Trevor, climbing over the counter and passing over to the other side. "Are you coming?" he asked, before trying to open one of the door. He let out a grunt as the door didn't budge, and started to force it.
The other stallion sniffed again the air, and as soon as he didn't pick up any smell of danger, passed over the counter and joined Trevor in front of the door, helping him. Or, to put it better, he smashed the door with a calculated kick.
"Thank you." Commented Trevor, smirking, and entering into the room on the other side. The first thing he noticed were the immense piles of letters, piled all over the floor of the immense room, as well as a large numbers of cardboard boxes. The second thing he noticed, was the zebra in a mail-pony's suit in the middle of the room, closing a series of boxes with duct tape.
The zebra gave them a quick glance, before returning to his boxes.
"Client services isn't here." he grumbled, while closing up another box. Trevor blinked, as did Solaris.
"I… uh… there is no pony…" he finally stated, still surprised by the sudden apparition. Solaris took a couple of steps, sniffing.
"Why isn't there anyone here?" he finally asked, glaring at the zebra, who ignored him, passing to another box.
"Bunch of lazy workers, I tell you what." grunted the zebra after a couple of seconds. "But if you need info, you can find them yourself in the room beside this one." He grunted, leaving the tape and taking a little golden key from his pocket. "I'm not supposed to give this to you, but who will care anyway?" he grumbled, tossing it to the two ponies. "Just let me do my job." The couple of stallions looked at him, before Trevor grabbed the key and turned.
"Come on." He whispered to his companion. "He's probably nuts. Look at him, still thinking that somepony will actually come to work. Let's get out of here." He said, before turning and exiting through the smashed door. "Maybe we are lucky and are going to find some register or something."
"Good luck in finding what are you searching for." Muttered the zebra, as Solaris turned. "Hope you are not going to regret it." He added, as soon as the stallion left.
Trevor pushed the key into the other door behind the counter ( a heavy, metallic door), and with a loud noise, he opened it, sending up a puff of rusty dustthe door slowly and cautiously, in a way that exasperated the other stallion, letting the stream of light from his flashlight travel into the dark, long room ahead.
"Clear." He finally stated, opening completely the door and stepping inside, searching for a switch. Solaris entered as well, sniffing the air, as a single light bulb lit up: it was a room with two walls covered in drawers, on every one of them stamped a different range of years.
"Oh dear…" he muttered, looking around, before focusing on another door, at the end of the room. "Hey, what's on the other side of that door?" he asked. The other stallion, who was examining a drawer, raised his eyes.
"Dunno. I'm not a mail pony. If you want to check, be careful." He grumbled, opening the drawers and starting to look inside. Solaris returned his eyes on the door. He had a strange sensation, a slight tingling in his spine, as if the door was calling to him, asking to be opened…
"Calm down Sol, that's just your imagination." He said to himself. He walked slowly to the door. A simple wooden door, with a little crack in it. Nothing special. A little piece of paper was glued to the door, spelling the word "Basement". He pushed the door slightly, and it opened silently, revealing a series of steps descending into the dark.
"I'm going down." He called, taking a few steps. "Be ready to run, if I come back screaming like a little bitch."
"Mhm…" muttered the other stallion, not paying very much attention to him. Solaris rolled his eyes and took another couple of steps.
The door slammed shut behind him, sending him falling into complete darkness.
Solaris immediately turned, and began banging against the closed door.
"Trevor! Hey, open this damned door!" he called. There was no response, not even a muffled sound. He turned again, unable to see anything in the deep darkness. He started sniffing the air, raising his ears worriedly.
The air was suddenly filled with strange noises, as if in the darkness a bunch of bugs had suddenly awoken, and started to crawl along the walls. The stallion shrugged, as he tried again to open the door, with no avail. After a minute, his nostrils started to pick up a strong and metallic smell, rising from below the stairs. Solaris gulped, as he recognised the scent of blood.
"Well… apparently I can't get out through here…" thought the stallion, turning and facing the darkness. "Might as well go down… maybe there is a switch…" he muttered, before beginning to descend the stairs slowly and carefully. He could feel the walls quite close around him, giving him a sort of claustrophobic sensation. Until suddenly, he felt the emptiness around him. He slowly raised his foreleg, until he found the wall again. He had probably finally entered into a room since the stairs had also ended.
The sound of little creatures was rising, as well as their crawling on the walls. The smell of putrid blood filled the air. Solaris gulped but started to pat the wall, until he finally found the switch.
As a couple of cold, neon lights switched on, they revealed to the terrified stallion the room: the floor was stained with blood, as well as the walls, while on the ground, near a teddy bear stained with blood, there were the bodies of three mauled foals. Their coat were stained with blood, wile their empty eyes were staring at the stallion.
A large number of fat, white maggots were crawling on their bodies, emitting a disgusting squishy sound every time they submerged themselves into the little bodies' flesh. Solaris turned, just to face a wall stained with blood.
The stairs had disappeared. He turned again, while he felt his beat pumping faster every second, as the panic started to rise: the body bodies had been mauled by claws and fangs, like some sort of predator had gotten them. He examined the room, searching for another door or something. The only thing he was able to spot was a big, rectangular mirror on the wall in fron of him, half stained by dried blood.
He tumbled towards the mirror. He didn't even know why, but he felt drawn towards it. Maybe there was a passage, an escape from this horrible room. He tried to ignore the bugs crawling on the walls and the floor, trying to climb over the dead bodies, to catch a free meal.
He took a quick glance at the mirror, trying to see if there was any passage hiding behind it. As he did so, he took a glance at his own reflection, and froze: the other Solaris in the mirror was stained with blood around his hooves and mouth, some pieces of guts wrapped around his hooves. Solaris blinked behind his shades.
"Yeah…" grunted a voice behind him. The stallion turned, resisting the urge to scream. But as soon as he saw what had spoken, he gave up and let out a loud scream of fear. An enormous, wingless dragon was crouched on the bloody floor, staring him down.
His long, reptilian body was covered in black and dark green scales, while the spikes on his tail and his claws were of a dark shade of red, making hard to distinguish the traces of blood on them. His reptilian eyes were focused on the stallion, as he let out a belch smelling of putrid meat.
"We aren't so different…" he growled, before swinging his head forward, hitting the stallion and sending him into the mirror behind him. Solaris screamed as he felt the shards cut his back, but surprisingly, he didn't hit the wall, but instead continued to fall. He felt his shades fly away from his muzzle. He opened his reptilian eyes, and stared into the total darkness that he was falling through. But he didn't even have the time to think about it before the loud roar of the dragon echoed around him.
"Solaris!" called Trevor, trying to force open the door that had slammed shut. He tried for a couple of minutes, both pulling and kicking it, with no appreciable results.
"You are fucking with me again, aren't you?!" he finally screamed, glaring around him. His voice echoed throught the room, but he received no answer. The stallion shrugged, returning to the drawer. "He probably wasn't even real, eh? I know how you work now. I should have guessed that they weren't real." He added, starting to examine all the papers inside the metallic drawer.
He passed over a bunch of papers that didn't seem to have any use, until his eyes fell on a stuffed paper bag, half hidden under all the other papers. The thing that drew his eye was the fact that his name was printed on an upper corner. He raised an eyebrow, and took it out, ripping it open with his mouth.
A video tape slid out of the paper bag. Trevor binked, actually surprised. No blood, nothing unusual or disturbing. Just a video tape. On its side there was just a white piece of paper with a date signed in pencil, and nothing more.
"Seriously? Only this?" he asked to the empty room, raising an eyebrow.
The walls exploded, as the drawers were suddenly absorbed by the floor, as the walls behind the crumbling tiles revealed that they were made of red , irregular and pulsing flesh. The lights in the ceiling fell down with a crash and a shower of sparks, sending him fall into darkness, apart from the trembling stream of light coming from Trevor's flashlight.
The stallion frowned, and hurried to put the tape into his saddlebag, while his ear flickered when a scream echoed around him.
"Dear, please don't be angry…" he muttered, as he took out a wrench stained with dried blood from his saddlebag. "I'm still searching for our little pudding cake." He added, turning towards the area where the scream had come from, lighting up the willowy form of a mare that was stumbling slowly towards him: a candid mare with a long, fluid orange mane, waving slightly in the air, ignoring the lack of wind. She was seductive in some grotesque way, her intense azure eyes focused on Trevor, her eyelashes fluttering teasingly.
Of course, her ripped-open abdomen and the tentacle-like uterus swinging around beneath her, didn't help with giving her a reassuring aspect.
"Just stay down for a little longer." Trevor said in a muffled tone, before jumping towards the apparition, raising the wrench with his mouth.
-oOo-
Her mouth was filled with the bitter taste of her own blood. Winter Lily sighed in pain and despair, as she tried to use the saw to cut loose her chained hoof. She managed to make only a couple of trembling and imprecise cuts, before stopping, her eyes watering in pain.
"Lily, help me!" called her sister's voice from above the pole where the metallic table was ascending, the other mare firmly chained to it. "I can't use my magic, do something!" she called again, moving her head around, trying to see where she was.
Winter Lily gave out another whimper, before trying again. As soon as the bloody saw touched her flesh, she trembled and moved away her head. She had already tried to saw the chain, but apparently it was a saw for wood. And flesh.
"Lily!" cried out her sister. The mechanism had stopped, and now the metallic bed was immobile, ready to drop the unicorn down into a pool of acid below. Winter Lily tried again, before bursting into tears, screaming.
"I can't do it Fire! I'm sorry, I'm so sorry!" she cried out, her tears mixing with the blood staining her mouth.
"What, what are you talking about?" asked Fire Flower's voice, panic clealy emerging in her tone.
"I'm sorry, I'm so sorry…" babbled the other mare, the saw falling to the ground with a clang. Winter Lily pressed her hooves to her head, her tears falling on the dirty ground. Even with her ears plugged, she heard the scream of her sister, as she suddenly fell through the air, followed by the acute and gurgled scream of pain as she splashed into the acid.
Winter Lily continued to cry, still keeping her eyes down and pressing her hooves over her ears, even after silence had returned to the tent. So, she initially didn't notice the clown-like ponies crawling towards her.
"You were never able to stand up for her… she always took the beating… even for you… you was never able to help her…" they hissed, as the mare noted them and started to tug on her locked-down leg, screaming.
They started to swarm on her, as she screamed in terror, she and her wooden seat falling to the ground, the clownish creepy ponies starting to kick her and hit her with metallic whips melted to their forelegs. She cried and tried to crawl away, her horn shining uselessly.
Until they all suddenly stopped.
They raised their heads, their colorful faces facing towards a side of the tent where the fabric was burning without either flame or smoke.
A loud whimper echoed through the silent tent, as an enormous figure stumbled inside, dragging its chains on the ground.