Traumatic Loss, And Its Effects
This story is a sequel to “Cupcakes”, by Sgt. Sprinkles
Chapter One
A lot can change in 8 years. Fluttershy is now the co-owner of an animal sanctuary 15 miles north of Canterlot. Twilight Sparkle now travels Equestria, searching for any that may share her unique abilities. Rarity and her younger sister own a clothing company in Manehattan. The Cakes have retired, leaving their bakery to Pinkie Pie. The Apple family still works their farm. Granny Smith passed in her sleep at the ripe, old age of 93. Scootaloo’s fate, however, isn’t as happy. She fell into a deep depression after the death of her mentor, Rainbow Dash, who died in an “accident” 8 years before. Her spirits were hardly lifted when she received an invitation to come to Pinkie’s house, “For a very special surprise” it said.
It was early evening when she arrived at the small house (Pinkie had moved a few miles away from town). She was about to knock on the door when she heard hoof steps behind her. She turned to see Applebloom walking up the porch steps.
“Scootaloo?”, she asked, “Scootaloo! I haven’t seen you in forever!”, she said as she bounded up the steps towards her friend.
“Good to see you too, Applebloom”, she said as a faint hint of a smile appeared on her face.
“Where have you been? I saw you last fall at the harvest festival, but then it’s like you up and disappeared on us!”, Applebloom was almost bouncing.
“I moved back to Cloudsdale a couple days after that.”, she replied, the hint of a smile still present on her face.
“How long are you here for?”, asked Applebloom.
“Just for whatever Pinkie has planned I guess”, Scootaloo answered.
“I don’t want to hear it,” Applebloom’s smile had turned into a look of disdain, “You’re gonna come stay at the farm for the weekend and I’m not taking no for an answer”, her smile came back.
“Sounds great.”, Scootaloo tried to sound enthusiastic.
Pinkie’s front door flew open suddenly, startling the two fillies.
“I thought I heard voices!”, Pinkie said.
“Hey, Pinkie.”, the two said, almost in unison.
“Well, what are you waiting on? Get in here before you catch cold.” (Even though it was the middle of June).
Pinkie ushered them in to her over-decorated living room.
“I’m so glad you two could make it!”, she said as she took a seat on a bright blue sofa.
The three carried on with small talk for the better part of an hour.
“Not to be rude, Pinkie, but you didn’t invite us over just to chit-chat did you?”, asked Scootaloo, as she took a bite out of one of the cookies Pinkie had brought in.
“Oh goodness no. I’ve got something special for the two of you!” Pinkie said as she walked out of the room towards the kitchen, “But first, I just realized that I didn’t offer you anything to drink.”
I am pretty thirsty, thought Scootaloo.
Pinkie returned balancing a couple glasses of water on a tray on her head.
“Here you go”, she gave one to each of them. “Bottom’s up!”
They both took a drink.
Hm, that tastes kind weird. She must get her water from a well or something, thought Scootaloo as she took another drink.
Then she noticed Pinkie was just standing there, staring at them.
“What?”, asked Scootaloo.
“Just waiting.”, answered Pinkie.
“For what?”, she asked again.
“You.”
Scootaloo then noticed Applebloom slump in her chair. Her limbs went limp as she managed, “What’s going-“, and she was out.
Chapter 2
She was in a field, no civilization as far as the eye could see in any direction. She was alone.
“HELLOOOO?”, she yelled, the smallness of her voice shocked her. “Huh?”, she was confused, she looked down and then behind herself. She was little again, her wings weren’t developed yet.
“Hey kid!” She turned to the voice, and just about fainted. Walking through the knee high grass was Rainbow Dash.
“R-Rainbow Dash?”, Scootaloo asked, her voice was shaking, tears welling up in her eyes. She ran as fast as she could to meet Rainbow Dash. She could barely see for the tears in her eyes, and her face hurt from the huge smile she was wearing, but she didn’t care. She was getting so close, but wait, what was happening? Something was changing. Darkness came up from the ground around Rainbow Dash’s hooves. Like shadows, but 3 dimensional. They wrapped around Dash’s body, then began to pull.
“NO!”, screamed Scootaloo.
The shadows pulled and twisted, bones snapped, flesh began to tear.
“NOOOO, LET GO OF HER!!!!”
Scootaloo couldn’t hear the crunching or snapping, or even her own rage filled screams, her heart was pounding in her ears. The tendrils of darkness continued to tighten; until they pulled the cyan pegasus apart. Not in two, or even some large hunks, but simply tore her to shreds.
“NO NO NO NO!!!!”
Scootaloo was galloping as fast as she could, but getting nowhere. She let out the longest and most profane stream of expletives Equestria had ever born witness to. A tendril lashed out, striking Scootaloo with impossible force, sending her flying backwards. She had felt something snap when the thing had struck her, now she was waiting the moment before her fall finished the job. But it didn’t. The ground opened up before her, and she continued to fall.
Down, down, down, down, down….
Chapter 3
“WAKE UP!!!” The voice was loud and sudden.
“WAKE UP, SLEEPYHEAD!!!” The voice was louder, and she was being shaken now.
“Go away…”, she mumbled.
“Go away? You’re my guest!”
Scootaloo felt a sudden, sharp pain on her cheek, accompanied by a loud SMACK. Her eyes shot open.
“Hey, what’s your-“, she stopped short as she noticed her predicament.
She was strapped, fore-legs, hind-legs, and head, to a large wooden table. She was looking up, right into Pinkie’s frowning face.
“Problem?”, she finished Scootaloo’s sentence, “What’s your problem, huh? I invited you into my home and you sleep right through half the fun!”.
“What are you talking about?”, asked Scootaloo, more confused than scared.
Ugh,I’m still dreaming. She thought.
Pinkie rolled her eyes and moved out of Scootaloo’s line of sight. She moved the table, spinned it 180o and tilted it down.
“This fun!”, Pinkie chimed.
Scootaloo blinked a few times at the new scene laid out before her.
There was blood, lots of blood. It covered another table, and the nearby wall. It ran in streams on the floor, towards a drain a few feet away. Scootaloo gagged a little, her dreams were never this detailed. Pinkie bounced over to the other table, splashing in the blood. She started loosening some straps, that’s when Scootaloo noticed what was strapped on to it.
“I-Is that?”, she whispered.
Applebloom, mutilated, almost unrecognizable, undoubtedly the source of all the blood. Scootaloo looked at her, from head to hoof. She had been scalped. Her left eye was missing, the right hung by the optic nerve. A crooked smile had been cut into her cheeks. Her fore legs had floral patterns carved into them. Her chest and abdomen were flayed open, most of the organs missing, those that weren’t hung out in all directions. Her cutie marks were gone, after all that work to get them. Large spikes protruded from her hind hooves. Pinkie finished loosing the straps, allowing the mangled corpse to slide off the table, onto the floor.
“I wanted to wait til you woke up, so she could spend her last hour with her best friend, but NOOO. You had to sleep three times as long as you were supposed to, so inconsiderate. I finished her and got bored so I broke down and woke you up.” Pinkie said, walking slowly back to Scootaloo.
Dang, I must’ve forgotten my pills this morning. Scootaloo thought.
“How, wha-. What’s going on? These dreams are getting worse…”, Scootaloo mumbled.
“Dream? You think you’re still dreaming?!”, Pinkie fell on the floor and started laughing.
“How’s this for a dream?”, She walked over to a wood stove and pulled out a metal rod, glowing orange on one end. She walked back over to Scootaloo.
“Wakey-wakey!”
Scootaloo frowned, “Wha? NO, WAIT! AHHHH!”, she screamed as the rod was pressed into her cheek.
“Still think you’re in a dream?”, Pinkie smirked as she put the rod back into the stove.
“Bu- Bu- It can’t be real!”, Scootaloo started pulling on her bonds.
“Don’t waste your energy, that leather’s held down stallions twice your size.”, Pinkie said, with an air of pride. “And I promise, it’s as real as a cockatiel.”
“But, how could you? Why would you?”, Scootaloo’s heart was racing.
“Hm, you’re the first pony that’s ever asked me that, most just beg for mercy.” Pinkie looked genuinely surprised, her smile quickly returned.
“Well, I’ve told you about how I got this” she pointed at the three balloons on her flank.
“After that first party I threw for my family, I took up baking. Once, I accidently cut myself while baking some cupcakes, I bled a little in the batter; well, I baked them anyways. They were so delicious!”, Pinkie closed her eyes and licked her lips, relishing the memory.
“’Wow’, I thought to myself, ‘I need to make some more of these! I couldn’t use my blood of course, I had to get some elsewhere. I thought about this for a while and it came to me! My brother, Mudd Pie, I could use his blood! I’d never liked him, he was always annoying me, breaking my things, doing all the things little brothers do. So one night I got some one of mom’s kitchen knives and put it in the barn. I went back in and got Mudd out of bed, and convinced him to walk out to the barn. Once we were out there I bucked him in the side of the head, it knocked him out cold. I drug him over to a nail driven into the wall. I tied his fore-ankles to the nail, so now he was hanging on the wall a few inches above the ground. I slid a bucket under each of his dangling hind-legs then slit his hind-ankles. It took a couple hours but he finally quit dripping, then I hid his body in the woods and hid my jugs of blood in my room. I used the money I was making from selling my cupcakes to buy better tools. After just a month I had killed everpony in my house. Except for dad, he hung himself from a limb of our big oak tree, I had been saving him for last. I moved here to Ponyville because I was getting lonely, and because I had just used the last of my older sister’s blood. Well, 12 years later, here we are!”, Pinkie was panting, she hadn’t taken many breaths during her tale.
Scootaloo stared at her, open mouthed.
“Now I have drains in the floor that fill a reservoir, saves a lot of effort.”, Pinkie added, she stretched and yawned,
“Well, that’s enough chatter, let’s get started, shall we?”
She walked over to Applebloom’s corpse, reached inside her chest cavity, felt around, and pulled out a bloodstained scalpel. She held it in her mouth and walked back over to Scootaloo, who still hadn’t fully grasped the situation.
“Y-y-y-you can’t do this! PLEASE DON’T DO THIS!!!”, Scootaloo was fighting her bonds again, to no avail.
“Pff, please. What do you have to live for? After I harvested Dash you’ve been nothing but a burden to society.” Pinkie said, matter-of-factly.
Scootaloo stopped fighting, stopped breathing, stopped thinking.
“W-what did you just say?”, she asked.
“Oh yeah I forgot to tell you!”, Pinkie set her blade down and swiveled Scootaloo’s table 90o to the left.
“Rainbow Dash came to join us this evening!”
Sitting on a pedestal, among dozens of other mounted ponies, was Rainbow Dash. Her eyes were black glass, jagged seams criss-crossed her body. She was posed as though she was standing, right fore-leg raised and bent forward, wings outstretched, pleasant smile on her face.
Scootaloo’s world stopped. Pinkie’s excited voice slowed and faded. High contrast images played across Scootaloo’s vision, one of her long dead parents, one of friends she had moved away from, several of Rainbow Dash. All were pleasant. All were of things that had been torn from her. None of which she had the power to reclaim. Time started again. Scootaloo’s heart was beating hard, very hard. Her breathing was fast and deep. Her skin tingled.
“What’s up with you?”, Pinkie asked as she cocked her head to one side.
The images still came, with increasing speed, they were now a blur, super-imposed over Scootaloo’s vision. She felt violated, all that has ever been dear to her has been lost, irreversibly torn from her life; and one of the reasons was standing in front of her. All of her pent up rage, formed and compounded by years of violent loss; all her anguish, stored and not allowed to show itself for fear of judgement; all of her confusion, all of her frustration, fear, hate, bitterness… chose this moment to rush forth, eager to pour themselves into a deserving soul, and destroy it. Every muscle in Scootaloo’s young body tightened and flexed, the leather straps that held her may as well of been thread. She exploded off the table.
Pinkie barely had time to suck in a surprised breath before the orange pegasus slammed into her. She managed to get one good stab in the filly before the scalpel was knocked from her mouth. Pinkie was on her back, Scootaloo straddled her abdomen slamming the pink mare’s face with her bare hooves. She held up her fore-legs in an attempt to fend off the attack, they were broken in seconds and lay uselessly at her sides. The barrage continued.
Both were screaming but Scootaloo’s cries of anger drowned out Pinkie’s screams of fear and regret.
Both of Pinkie’s eyes were blown in seconds, her teeth broke, her jaw dislocated and shattered, one strike connected with her trachea and she began to suffocate. I’m sorry, she thought, just before the structural integrity of her skull failed and the next blow killed her. The blows kept coming, kept coming until the earth pony’s face was nothing but a thin film on the tile floor, kept coming until the blood on Scootaloo’s hooves began to become her own. She slowed her assault, slowed, slowed, slowed, and stopped.
She flopped onto the floor to the right of Pinkie’s headless body. All of her rage had been spent, now for the anguish; the tears began to flow. She sobbed, she sobbed for her parents, she sobbed for Rainbow Dash, she sobbed for herself, she sobbed because it was all she could think to do.
Chapter 4
She stopped a few hours later. She got up and walked over to Applebloom’s corpse, took her hairbow, and breathed her friend a silent good-bye. She walked past Pinkie’s body, briefly considered beating it again, but settled on spitting on it.
She continued to the other side of the room, to where the mounted ponies were stored. She recognized several, ranging from young fillies to large stallions, but her eyes settled on Dash’s stuffed skin. She started to cry, but had no more tears left to shed. She thought about saying something, but the words wouldn’t come. She nuzzled her mentor, there was no warmth, but she enjoyed every second of it. She stepped away, gazed into those black eyes one last time, then turned to go. Outside, the sun was up, she guess it was around 6 or 7 in the morning. She slowly ambled down the trail to Pinkie’s house to the main road, then towards town. For the first time in years, she felt good.
