My Final Confession: Relapse

Type Setter? What? What do you mean they’ve … could it be interference from weather? Their signal just went dead? The equipment there is very old, are we certain it’s not just a technical problem? Set? Set? Well, try again. We still have the other sites, right?

Loyal viewers, it seems we here at Perfect News are experiencing some technical problems from our relays. Do not fear, the truth will continue to be told. Viewers from the greater West Equestrian plains, we apologize for the lack of clarity and quality of our stream. Perfect News engineers have been dispatched to ameliorate the issue with the relays and we hope to bring the high quality, high definition stream back to you as soon as possible.

Set. Set? Type Setter, please keep the team informed of the situation.

We apologize for the interruption, viewers. Let us continue.

The video doesn’t cut, the picture just changes indicating it has been edited.

The camera picks up the basement bathed in amber light from the overhead bulbs. The sound of Cozy’s wings beating quickly hums in the background as the frame hovers above the brown concrete. “She wasn’t with me when I woke up. I checked the camera and found her getting out of bed a little while after I fell asleep. She seemed fine but she’s … she’s being weird again.” Her voice is wispy and hushed. “I can hear her upstairs but she doesn’t sound right. I can’t tell what she’s doing.”

Zipping up the basement stairs, Cozy suddenly lights on the ground floor. The depth of the night fills the boarded windows and just enough of the street lamp’s false illumination slinks through the corroded panes to hint at the design of the gutted confectionary. The house may not be haunted but it would be an attractive location for the creatures of horror to reside. Cobwebs and dirt are the primary residents of Sugarcube Corner but Cozy pays no mind to the state of the building.

A distant moan slows the pegasus as she reaches the stairs to the second floor. The gain icon appears at the bottom of the screen and much of the darkness is forcibly removed through technology. Cozy’s breathing is bated and heavy with excitement. Slowly, she begins her ascent to the second floor. The stairs are old and creak as each leg carefully, procedurally seeks purchase of the next step. Another moan breaks the silence and Cozy gasps, air catching in her lungs momentarily before letting it out. It was like an injured animal’s howl: raw, pained, and bestial.

Cozy swallows with a resonating gulp and takes the second floor landing. She tilts the camera down the hallway. It’s filthy, much like the first floor, with scraps of trash and broken building material littering the floor. Several doors lie open and darkly inviting. Cozy begins down the hall, pausing to peek inside each door revealing empty rooms in various states of decay. Boarded windows neglect the moon’s light except for the slivers that catch in moth eaten, threadbare curtains that hang like tattered ghosts from forgotten, tarnished rods.The once loved building is a corpse, bare and shriveled.

From down the hall comes a hysterical giggling like a deranged hyena. Cozy’s breath catches again and she grunts. The camera trembles in her grasp but she continues her trek one step at a time. Her breathing has not improved and one can almost hear her heart racing. She comes to the turn at the end of the hall and tilts the camera out again, finding a dead end except for another open door leading to the barren bedroom of the former owners and the stairs leading to the attic. “She’s upstairs. She has to be.” Her voice barely comes through the audio.

Making the turn and taking the first steps up the final staircase, a door awaits at the top. It used to be a bright pink but time has worn it down; strips of muted paint hang like a corpse’s mane and what lies beneath is gray and lifeless--a wormhaunt. The door is open, inviting Cozy. The key released from Pinkamena’s hiding place protrudes from the lock. A string clings to the key with an emblem of dusty balloons reflective in the dim moonlight spilling from the open threshold. A steady warbling trickles down the stairs to the microphone and Cozy hesitates. Difficult to understand, the jargon appears to be a conversation composed of only one party speaking with two distinct mannerisms but sharing the same voice.

“Is she talking to herself?” Cozy questions quietly, making her way up each step painfully slowly.

“… ish … ould … ie.”

“Y … hel .. her.”

“… oo hard. Ired of … rting.”

The voices become easier to distinguish as Cozy approaches the door. The sucking of sobs and shrill moans of misery pour from the mouth of the door. Pausing only long enough to take a deep breath, Cozy has come to the doorway. She mumbles something breathlessly and too quiet to discern before the lens of the camcorder peeks around the cracked door frame.

Inside the attic room posters remind of happier times. Photographs, faded and covered with filth, still cling to the once-bright walls. Pinkie Pie and her friends, the bulk of the town of Ponyville is represented in those images. While time has claimed many of them, a number of the ponies in the pictures are identifiable as victims and yet they pose happily with their friend in the time before the murders. Now they are but ghosts trapped to the wall, haunting the home of their death.

The floor is littered with decrepit party supplies and ticker tape nearly dry-rotted into oblivion. A banner of multiple colors stretches across the length of the room with the webs of long-dead spiders hanging as a reminder that time has marched well-past the days when this room was a place of happiness. The wretched banner bears the words ‘Life is a Party’, though many of the letters are badly damaged. A bed is pushed against the left wall, centered against it with a single wide window streaming the silver light from outside into the room. A pale moon rides low in the western sky and nears its routine demise against the far mountains of the Everfree. Sitting on the bed, curled forward toward the window is Pinkamena. Her shoulders slump with sobs and she places something on the worn quilt still hugging the mattress. A painful moan eschews from the mare as she holds her head in her hooves.

She suddenly jerks upright, cutting the wails of complete misery and sadness in half. “I said stop! You just can’t stop being so pathetic, can you?” The voice is untainted from the desperation previously weighing down the mare and chastising like an angry mother.

“I’m sorry. It’s just so difficult. How many times do I have to do this? Why can’t it ever end right? Is this my curse?” The reply is sloppy and sputters with dripping tears and saliva.

“You’ll do it as many times as you have to. Sometime, maybe this time, it will all be over. There has to be a light at the end of the tunnel. You know that. Even when you can’t see it, it’s ahead … through the darkness.” Higher pitched, Pinkamena attempts to soothe herself.

“Do you really still believe that?” She is barely able to warble the words out as her lungs catch and she swallows the misery lodging in her throat with a thick gulp. “How can you after everything I’ve done?”

“Don’t you see how close you’ve gotten? Every time has been another step forward, closer to freedom.” She replies to herself completely oblivious to the physical distress of her body. She jerks as if something hit her at high velocity and she sings a few broken, estranged bars.

“I like to see you grin…

I’d love to see you beam.

The corners of your mouth turned up

Is always Pink…”

“But,” Pinkamena sniffles, voice cracking, “it takes so much from me. I don’t have anything left to give. It has to end, one way or another.” She crumples forward like wet paper, jerking with sobs before giggling her way back to a sitting position.

“Just end it then. Get one of the kitchen knives you stole and dig them into your arteries. You can’t tell me you don’t know where to cut.” She begins to laugh maniacally. The light from the window framing her in silhouette, jagged teeth twisting up into a sickening grin while her cheeks and neck glisten with tears.

“I can’t abandon Cozy. I won’t do it.” The grin alters and fails spectacularly, concern and fear return in its place. “You know what her life is like and what her future holds if we ever stop trying to fix things. She’ll become a statue forever or die at the hooves of Twilight. You’ve seen it. I love her and don’t want that to happen but I’m empty.”

“I’ll protect her this time. I know what to expect. It will be different. Talking won’t work! You’ve tried almost every time and it never changes. At best Cozy and I have mere months together unless Twilight is eliminated. If not, try, try, try, try, try again.”.

“Try, try, try, try, try, try … try … try … try,” the pink mare rocks to the rhythm of the word.

“The letter. They still love you. All of your friends will love you again if you succeed. It’s a chance at a new life. Stop moping, Pinkie. You can do it.” Tears stream from her eyes and she falls forward, the curtain of mane splaying out and enveloping her body from view.

“But the blood. There’s so much on my hooves. And it’s my choice. It’s been my choice almost every time. It’s not you, it’s me! I’m just as unforgivable! I can’t help her, don’t you see? It’s never going to happen the way I want it too! This is Tartarus! I’ve died so long ago that I can’t even remember it and this is my punishment!”

A symphony of jagged giggles fill the room. “You are weak and worthless, pitying yourself. Sure the lines blur but you are still in control. You’re not dead yet and there is much work to be done. If we can’t have what you want, we can give Cozy what she wants. You can do that for her. Isn’t that what you want? For that child to be happy?”

“Of course it is. It’s… what she deserves. And this torment is what I deserve. I’ll never see the end of my torture but, please, Stars Above, let my Cozy free from your damnation.”

“Then you will stop crying and start planning. Ask her about the crown, though she is small she may know more than you think. Maybe this is the boon from your ‘Stars’.”

“I can do it. I CAN do it! One more time. Whatever happens, I’ve got to try! Just one more time. Please, just give me the strength to do it one more time.”

Pinkamena wrenches up and a bright blue glimmer flashes through her mane as her head snaps to the door. “Someone’s here.” Cozy gasps and falls back a step just as Pinkamena crawls from the bed like a spider, moving supernaturally fast towards the door.

Ducking behind the door frame, Cozy is silent. There’s nowhere to hide on the third floor, just the attic and the landing. Cozy turns the camera to face the door again to find hard, steely eyes glaring down at her with a malicious grin, robed in magenta and gray mane.

“Pinkamena!” Cozy cries out, the camera pitching and tumbling to the landing from her grasp. Upside down, the filly hugs into Pinkamena’s chest.

“Cozy! You scared me.” She kisses Cozy’s head, features softening. “ I thought someone had found us out.”

“I… I was scared when I woke up and you were gone. Are you okay? I thought I heard you talking.” Cozy’s cover appears to be accepted by the earth pony who only smiles amiably and strokes the pegasus.

“I just found something from Mrs. Cake. A letter. It was laying on my bed and addressed to me. It was touching. I’m sorry, I was just upset. You know how I get.”

“I know. I just worry about you sometimes,” her words are steeped in innuendo.

Pinkamena makes a soft cooing sound and strokes the curls of Cozy’s mane. “Come on. We don’t have to sleep in the basement anymore. My bed is a little bouncy but it will fit us both comfortably.”

Cozy turns and picks the camera up. Hovering into the room, she follows Pinkamena and places the camera on a surviving nightstand before hovering over the bed and landing beside the mare. Cozy tucks her front hooves between her thighs and looks down sheepishly.

“What’s wrong?” Pinkamena asks softly, nuzzling the pegasus.

“You said you want me to be honest, right?” Cozy looks away from Pinkamena and lets out a sigh.

“Yes.”

Cozy looks up at her with big, sparkling eyes. “I saw you. You were talking to yourself.”

Freezing in place, Pinkamena grimaces and stammers, eyes wide with embarrassment as her cheeks flush. “You saw that, huh?”

Cozy, laying a foreleg on Pinkamena’s hip weakly smiles. “You really are crazy, aren’t you?”

The pink mare can’t stifle back a chuckle and shrugs. “What gave it away?”

Cozy smirks and giggles a little. “I thought maybe the stories were wrong about you.”

“No, honey, they are correct. Not that I’ve heard all of them, but I’d guess they are pretty close to the truth.” The redness dissipates and Pinkamena talks in a regular tone, her shoulders slope and relax as if some pressure has been released. “But it’s not as bad as it once was.”

“Will you be honest with me, too?” Cozy lays her head against Pinkamena’s side and closes her eyes, nestling her cheek against the warm fur.

“As truthful as I can be, Cozy.” The magenta mare rubs Cozy’s curls.

“You know something you aren’t telling me. What is it?” Warm and soothing, Cozy coos gingerly to Pinkamena.

“There’s some things you wouldn’t believe if I told you. I know, I’ve tried. When the time is right, I’ll tell you everything. For now, just know that we have set events into motion that will mark our end.” Pinkamena speaks with calm assurance, like a spirit guide or the tricksters who tell fortunes for bits in the lower parts of Canterlot. Her prophecy sounds like the ravings of a lunatic, which, of course, she is.

“What do you mean?”

Pinkamena speaks calmly while rubbing the filly. “If we stay here, inquisitors will find us eventually. My best guess is a couple of months. If we run we might be able to squeeze out another month. Your best option would be to leave tomorrow night. Change your mane, give up on your takeover plans, and live a quiet life in some town that even Twilight doesn’t know exists. It wouldn’t be much but you would probably get to live your life free of captivity.”

“I won’t leave you. I don’t care if you are crazy, you’ve been the closest thing to a Mo--friend I’ve ever had.” Cozy wraps her forelegs around Pinkamena and rubs her face in the magenta coat.

“Cozy, I’m old and have lived a life full of pain. I don’t want that for you. You could be a normal filly somewhere far away. You don’t have to be like me. I don’t want that for you.”

“And I don’t want to be alone again. We stay together or we … we die together. Either way I’m with you.”

“Then, as you have said, my dear, our best bet to end this is to kill Princess Twilight.” Her words have the ring of certitude. “It will be dangerous and … we probably won’t win. Or we can sit and wait to be dragged before her like dogs in chains. I’ll do whatever you want.”

Cozy rests against the mare, her eyes closed. She appears to be sleeping and doesn’t answer but suddenly casts her eyes to Pinkamena, slanted and full of hate. “We kill her. We can do it if we work together. If we lose, at least we go out on our own terms. I won’t become her prisoner again.”

Pinkamena bites her lip hard enough to bleed and the light vacates her eyes as she frowns at Cozy’s decision. “We will need a plan. A good one. Let’s put our heads together. Tell me about the crown.”

The pair are conspiratorial, engrossed in whispers. Slowly Pinkamena’s slump straightens while a new, dark glimmer takes root in her sparkling eyes. Pinkamena lowers her head and presses it against Cozy’s. They both chuckle vilely. A moment later, Cozy hops from the bed and moves to the camera, shutting it off.