"It's Twilight Sparkle's balloon!" Maggie yelled. She was sitting in her room, playing with the My Little Pony dolls her mother had bought her for her birthday.
"Apple Jack! How are the apples?" Maggie said. She took her Twilight figure out of the balloon and sat it on top of her Apple Jack doll.
"Spike! You landed the balloon wrong!" Maggie continued, laughing to herself.
"Oops, my bad!" she giggled, in a faux Spike voice.
There was a pounding at the door, and Maggie’s mother stuck her head in. “Magdalena!” she yelled. “You quiet down this instant! Your mother is trying to listen to God!”
Maggie’s eyes lowered. “Sorry Mom,” she whispered. Maggie’s mother terrified her. She wished she could go back to the days when she was nice, for instance, when she bought these fun My Little Pony toys. Maggie and her mother used to be real close—in fact, Maggie could recall waking up on Saturday mornings, climbing into mother’s bed, and putting on My Little Pony. It was… a fun time. Until he started yelling. Now the only show that was watched around this house was “My Time With Jesus.”
“You be a good girl, now, you hear?” Maggie’s mother said. “Otherwise God is going to get you. He’s been watching you and he’s not happy with what he’s seen. You’re a bad girl, Maggie. We’re… I’m so disappointed.”
Maggie started to tear up as her mother slammed the door shut and presumably went back to watching TV. She dropped her spike figurine and sulked. This had been happening more and more often recently, and she was sure that the TV had something to do with it. Whenever Maggie tried to talk to her mother, which was a feat less and less desired lately, she could almost always expect a slap on the face for distracting her from God’s Message About The People And How They Are A Bunch Of Grievous Sinners.
Maggie… All Maggie wanted was to play with her ponies. They reminded her of the good old days, and besides, they were adorable and fun. Twilight Sparkle certainly never slapped her in the face. Twilight Sparkle was a good friend. As Maggie put away her toys and contemplated another day of sitting silently on her bed, she wished Twilight Sparkle could help her. If only the magic in her horn would work.
* * *
“Do it, sweetie.”
Maggie woke with a start. The last wisps of a Technicolor dream about horses faded away as she tried to figure out what was going on. It sounded like a fight was going on outside her room—bumps and moans echoed in through the slightly cracked open door to her bedroom. She hugged her Twilight Sparkle figurine to her chest, and silently stepped out of bed. She inched her way across the room, trying to get a peek out through the sliver of air between door and frame…
“He commands it.”
With one eye closed, Maggie peered through the crack and saw her mother standing in the hallway, apparently talking to herself. With a sudden creak, she turned to face Maggie, daggers in her eyes.
“Magdalene, you shall pay!” she roared.
Maggie’s mother rammed the door in; the wood crashing to the floor like it was made of paper. Maggie screamed and jumped backward, pressing herself against the wall. There was a whoosh, the sound of air sliding past itself, followed by a bang, and Maggie felt little strands of hair falling onto her legs. She turned her head to see a knife sticking out of the wall, mere inches from her ear.
“Get back here you sinner!” Maggie’s mother screamed, insanity in her eyes. “God wants you to die!”
Maggie screamed again, and dove under her bed. She began to cry as bumps and bangs resounded around her, and as her mother grunted, trying to pull her knife out of the wall. She crawled as far under her bed as she could, reached the wall, and curled herself up into a ball. This was it. This was as far as she could go.
“Twilight Sparkle, help me,” she whispered, tears falling from her eyes.
“Gotcha you little demon!” Maggie’s mother cried, her hand appearing under the bed, once again grasping her knife.
Maggie screeched and pounded the rickety floorboard. There was a sudden moaning noise, but it didn’t come from her mother. She looked down for a moment, her tears ceasing.
She was sitting on a trapdoor.
Quick as a pistol, Maggie scooched over to the side and propped open the small, never-before-seen door under her bed. She stared into the depths before her. She could only see darkness. But up here, she could only see death. As her mother cried out again and shoved her hand under the bed again, Maggie jumped into the hole.
* * *
“It’d be silly for you not to at least try.”
“Well, if I wanted to do something that dimwitted I would’ve just thrown myself off a balcony and have been done with it!”
“Dashie, you have wings. That wouldn’t kill you. What in Equestria are you even talking about right now.”
“I’m… I’m not sure. I feel funny. My head… hurts…”
With a groan, Maggie sat up and opened her eyes. Her head was killing her. It took a few moments for her to remember what had just happened. She jumped up, panicking. Where the heck was she?
At least she was still alive.
Maggie looked around her. She was in a rectangular room with doors in all four walls. The door to the north had a gold frame. It looked inviting and safe. Magdalene picked herself up off the floor, hugging her Twilight Sparkle figurine to her chest, and walked cautiously through the door.
The room she entered was fairly empty. It was the same shape and size as the previous room, but this one had no doors in it save the one she had just passed through. The were a few assorted piles of what could only be identified as poop lying around on the floor, and a pedestal sitting in the center.
There was… there was something funny hovering above the pedestal. It looked like a black crescent moon next to a black star. It was a like a flat image projected onto nothing, and yet, it looked real. Not only that, but, it looked inviting. Maggie wanted to touch it. She took a step forward, and her foot found its way right into a pile of poop.
Maggie screamed and fell forward, throwing her hands out in an attempt to protect herself. Her Twilight Sparkle figurine went flying. She fell, face-first, directly into a pile of poop. Maggie shrieked, picked herself up, and tried to clean herself off. Thankfully she had managed to close her mouth before impacting, but the poop was still all over her face.
Maggie sighed, and then looked up. “Twilight? Where’d you go?” she called out. She crawled around the room on all fours, looking for her figurine, but it was nowhere to be found. She stood up, and began to worry that she would have to start sifting through piles of poop, when her eyes fell back on the pedestal in the center of the room.
The item had changed. It was no longer a flat image—it was… it was a little pony plushie. It wasn’t Twilight Sparkle, but she had a gorgeous brown mane and a lovely darker brown coat. Her cutie mark was the crescent moon and star symbol from before. Maggie chirped excitedly as she ran over and hugged the little pony.
“You’re my new friend, pony!” Maggie sang as she ran her fingers through the plushie’s mane. “It’s going to be okay, we’re safe down here! I don’t think my big ugly mother would be able to fit through that door that I went through.”
As Maggie nuzzled the plushie, she began to feel a little tingly. She ignored it, however, and hugged the plushie, desperate to believe her own encouraging words. She was so enamored with the new plushie, though, and after a few minutes, she felt… better, enough to stand up and try to look around. She hadn’t realized it before, but Magdalene was hungry. Ridiculously hungry. It may have been due to the fact that her mother barely fed her, but suddenly, hugging this little plushie, Maggie realized how hungry she truly was.
Maggie peeked outside the gold-framed room. The room she had fallen into looked just as it had before. Completely empty, and lined with doors. She cautiously stepped out into the middle of the room, and looked around.
“Which way should we go, new friend?” Maggie whispered to her plushie. The plushie didn’t respond, so Maggie walked into the door on the right. It was, again, the same size and shape as the initial room, but this time, it wasn’t empty. Along with the piles of poop from the other room, this room seemed to contain a few little jumping bugs of some sort, as well as a strange machine filled up with a liquid that looked ominously like blood. There was also another door in this room, a door with a skull above it.
Maggie walked over to one of the little bugs and stared at it. “You’re kind of cute,” she said to it. Maggie reached her hands out to pick up the bug, and without warning, the creature jumped forward and bit her hand.
“Ouch!” Maggie screamed, jumping backwards. “You’re not nice at all!” she yelled at the bug. She threw a rock at the bug with her other hand, and it promptly died.
Maggie frowned, and closed her eyes. She could feel something seeping from her hand, and she nervously opened her eyes to look at it, expecting blood. Instead she saw… a hoof. Her fingers were gone and her hand had rounded out into a flat stump, topped with a brown layer of keratin. Maggie screamed and stumbled backward.
“What’s going on?” she shrieked. She held her arms up next to each other. One ended with a hand, the other with a hoof. “What did you do?” she screamed at the bug’s remains on the floor. The blood seemed to swim on the ground, drawn to the machine in the center of the room. Maggie stared at it, entranced, and didn’t even notice one of the other bugs sneaking up behind her.
“Aaaaah!” Maggie screamed as the bug tackled her backside. She swiveled around and smacked the bug with her new hoof, sending it flying into the wall where it died a quick, momentum-based death. She stared at its remains as they too started to seep toward the machine in the center of the room, and then looked back at her arms. She still had one hand. Something felt… different, though, in her rotation. She swirled around again, and caught sight of something brown out of the corner of her eye. Maggie turned around as best as she could to see her backside, and screamed again. A brown horse’s tail had sprouted from the base of her spine, bouncing lightly behind her.
Maggie sat down, reached around to her back and picked up her tail with her remaining hand. She ran her fingers through it, and then looked at her hoof. Something was happening here. She looked down to where she had dropped her plushie. It stared back at her. Her tail looked exactly like the plushie’s.
She tried to cry, but all that came out was a strange high-pitched squeal. So instead, she made silly faces and hugged her plushie tight. She didn’t know what was going on. She also wasn’t sure how she felt about it. She extended her forehoof and probed it with her remaining hand. It felt quite stable, kind of… kind of good actually. She brought her hoof clapping down to the floor, giggling at the echo-y clop sound it made. It… it wasn’t bad.
It actually felt kind of good…
Maggie bit her lip, and walked cautiously over to the third and final hopping bug creature. It glared at her, as if it knew what she was about to attempt. Maggie closed her eyes, and swung her hand at the bug to smack it into the wall. The bug chomped down on her hand before it was propelled into the wall and killed. The pain stung, but Maggie kept her eyes open and looking at her hand.
Her fingers started to retract into her hand, leaving a fleshy disc which soon ballooned outward to match the width of the rest of Maggie’s arm, well, at this point, foreleg. Her wrist creaked and melted away into the rest of the appendage, and a layer of dark keratin started to grow out of the top of Maggie’s hand. In just seconds, Maggie was looking at a newly crafted hoof where her hand had been. She stared, and then clapped her two forehooves together.
Clop, clop, clop…
She squealed and began to jump around. It felt fantastic! Maggie tried bending forward and walking on all fours, but it didn’t really quite feel right yet. She stood back up, and looked back at her plushie. It grinned back at her. She ran over and scooped it up with her hooves, hugging it to its chest.
“We really will be best friends, won’t we plushie?” she giggled. “Look at me! I’ve got hooves and a tail!”
A groaning sound emitted from behind her, and the machine in the middle of the room exploded. Magdalene screamed and jumped back. Blood splattered everywhere. She coughed, and looked up.
The machine’s exterior had shattered, leaving plastic debris everywhere. The tank of blood also shattered open, expelling its contents throughout the room. Sitting inside the now almost-empty tank, however, was a strange-looking bag with two needle-like implements attached to it. Maggie crept up to the machine and slowly gripped the bag between her hooves.
Those needles sure looked sharp.
An evil, evil look began to cross Magdalene’s face, and before even she knew what she was doing, she stabbed herself in the knee with the implement.
She screamed and fell over. Blood seeped from the wound, and was absorbed into the bag, which, for some reason, began to spit out pennies. But Maggie didn’t care about that. She just curled up in pain as the bones in her lower body began twisting and reforming. Maggie let out a scream as her legs bent over and backwards, as her toes began to retract into her feet, which rounded out and began to grow the same dark keratin layer as her hands. The changes were becoming more and more painful… but they felt better and better. Maggie tried to stand up, to observe what had changed this time, but found she was unable to. The best she could manage was a quadruped stance, which she accepted with gusto. Her head was still entirely human, and she lacked fur, but other than that she was entirely pony.
A cackle of glee started to rise out of Maggie, but when it reached the surface, all that sounded was a high-pitched whinny. She gasped and covered her mouth with her forehooves.
“Can I still talk?” Maggie asked out loud, scared. That worked perfectly. Utterly confused, she started to trot around the room. The plushie continued to wink at her from where she had dropped it.
“I don’t know what’s going on,” Maggie said out loud, mostly to herself, but partially in case the plushie was alive. “But I think I’m a pony now. Which is kind of cool. And if I am, that means that maybe I can find Twilight Sparkle and Rainbow Dash and everypony else and they’ll help me out of here!”
Maggie clapped her hooves against the ground excitedly. “But first, I have to find them!” she exclaimed. “I’ll check through this door.” She pushed the door framed with a skull open with her head, and trotted through.
She was greeted by the sight of a man sitting on a floating hobbyhorse. Everything about him seemed starved, desolate. Skin was falling off of the man’s body, and the horse seemed little more than a skeleton.
“Hello, my pretty,” the man whispered, his voice like nails on a chalkboard. “I see we have a new contender in our midst.”
“Who are you?” Maggie whined, scared out of her mind. “What are you talking about? Do you know what’s happening to me?”
The figure on the hobbyhorse lets out a low laugh. “Oh, young mare, you have so little idea of what you have gotten yourself into,” the man said. “You were sent here, my darling, you were abandoned and betrayed by the two people closest to you. It’s almost sad to see such a young girl go this way.”
The man stops laughing. “But it’s not. Because I am quite pleased. And I think you will do quite nicely.”
With this, the man and his horse started floating toward Maggie. She screamed and galloped awkwardly into a corner.
“You cannot hide from me, my child,” the man cackled. “I am Famine, and I always end up finding the little lost children.”
Panicked, Magdalene shoved her head between her forelegs. “What am I going to do, what am I going to do???” she muttered fearfully to herself. She came upon a rock on the ground. Determination in her eyes, Maggie picked up the rock in her mouth and flung it as best as she can at the man.
The rock impacted with the hobbyhorse’s head, and with a screech, it disintegrated. The man fell to the ground, landing on his feet.
“Indeed,” he muttered. “It does appear that it is time to teach you a lesson.”
The man blinked, and suddenly he was surrounded by a cloud of flies. The man cackled, and the cloud of flies suddenly unleashed a torrent of bullets at Magdalene. She screamed as she was barraged by pain, screamed as millions of pin pricks burrowed into her skin and dark brown fur burst out of it, screamed as her face stretched and pulled forward forming a snout, screamed as her neck elongated, screamed as her ears stretched upward. Magdalene bleated and kicked around, now completely pony, utterly helpless to the wretched man’s advance.
“Yes, you’ll do quite nicely,” the man said, cradling Maggie’s crying head. He let out a cackle, and all went black.
When Maggie woke up, all she could feel was pain. There was an intense pressure on her back, and when she turned her neck, she could see the man who called himself Famine sitting on her back. He grinned at her, and commanded her to walk, and Maggie, in spite of herself, could not find it in herself to disobey. She walked, she jumped, and she stood, obediently, and fearfully. But most of all, she felt hungry. As the days stretched on into months, as she assisted her assailant in ending the lives of child after child, Maggie started to lose all sensation but one. She had never felt so hungry in her life.
She sure wished she could eat that Twilight Sparkle figurine.
