Element of LauGHTeR

"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!" Pinkie Pie screamed as she woke. Tears were falling down her pink face. The images from her dream where still fresh in her mind. The blood, the screaming, the laughter, every detail was etched into her mind making her shake.

She knew who did it. She knew why she did it.

"PLEASE STOP TORMENTING ME!" Pinkie screamed. Her heart was racing. She knew she had to calm down. After all, it was just a dream. It was a nightmare, but she was so happy in her dream. It scared Pinkie to even think about it.

She shook her head and sighed. Her gaze difted around her messy room until it fell upon the single mirror in the room, which was a small mirror on her bedside table.

What she saw scared her possibly even more than her nightmare. Her normally poofy hair lay lifeless flat against her hair. It was her.

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!" Pinkie screamed and began to cry again. She was grateful that the Cakes weren't home to hear her.

She had awoken like this for the three days. The nightmares were getting worse, every time she seemed to wake up screaming louder than the night before. Pinkie took a shaky breath and looked at her clock, trying hard to not look at the mirror beside it.

"12:01, again," Pinkie sighed, still shaking and shivering. "I wish I knew how to get rid of her. She's the one doing this to me. I HATE YOU!"

She began to cry harder. After a few minutes, an idea hit her.

"TWILIGHT!" Pinkie gasped. "She can help me. Maybe she has some sort of 'make nightmares go away' spell!" Pinkie began to smile. She felt her hair poof back into place.

"Ha ha ha ha hmph!" Pinkie shoved a hoof into her mouth to stop her from laughing.

It sounded just like the laughing in her dream.

~~~~~~~~~~~

Twilight was having a reasonably pleasant morning. She had woke up early which gave her more time to finish the book she fell asleep on. It wasn't that the book was boring or anything, it's just, well....she was really tired.

She easily finished the book and moved onto the next. Her parents had sent her a bunch of books from the Canterlot library and she couldn't wake to read every single word in them.

Rainbow Dash stopped by (more like crashed into the tree) and they had breakfast together and chatted for a bit. Rainbow was almost finished with the Daring Doo book she was on she Twilight went ahead and let her take the next one home.

She was glad Dash was enjoying the series, even if it was for ponies much younger than her, but Twilight thought she's keep that detail to herself.

It was a normal day, or as I call it a boring day, simply because normal is boring. In our sorry excuse of a world, everything in normal. I wake, eat, go to school, go to work, eat, sleep, repeat. Of course. My life has absolutely nothing to do with the story-well, except for the fact that whatever I write with add to or change the story.

Then, came the knock. It was a soft knock, not the kind of knock you would expect from an overly bubbly pink poofy ball of energy. So, naturally, Twilight wasn't expecting to find Pinkie at the other end of the door.

"Oh, hey Pinkie Pie. I didn't know you were coming!" Twilight said with a smile. The smile quickly faded with Pinkie only responded with a nod. "Pinkie, is something wrong."

"It's these nightmares, Twilight!" Pinkie blurted out.

"Nightmares?"

"Yes, every single night for the past three days I wake up screaming and terrified of what I see. Everything is so real! It's terrible!"

Twilight nodded.

"That sounds like what would happen to my cousin, Straight A. She suffered from nightmares until the day she...." Twilight trailed off, but Pinkie knew what she meant. Twilight mentally cursed herself. 'That was not what Pinkie need to hear!' she yelled at herself. 'What's wrong with me today?'

"I'm sorry."

"It's okay, I never knew her. My mom told me when I learned a spell to cure nightmares."

"So you can help me?" Pinkie asked, her eyes shining.

"Well, it depends on why your having nightmares. With my cousin, it was genetics, a disease only unicorns can get and it's passed down from generation to generation. Though, if you have unicorns in your family-"

"No, it's not that. I think my great uncle was a pegasus, though." Pinkie said.

"Well, it would have to be like a parent to pass to a different race, so we can rule that out. That's good because my spell can't cure that. Another reason for nightmares in some sort of gory tragedy or scene that the pony experiencing these nightmares has seen."

"No, that can't be it." Pinkie shook her head.

"Hmmm, maybe if you could describe the night-"

"No!" Pinkie went from confused to scared in seconds. Twilight could almost see the memories of the nightmare flash before Pinkie's eyes. This  gave her an idea.

"Hey! I know a spell that will let me look at your memories and I could-"

"That's even worse!" Pinkie squeaked. "There has to be something else."

*THUD*

Both sets of eyes turned to the source of the sudden noise. A lone book had fallen off the shelf. Twilight trotted over to it.

"Sorry." Twilight muttered. Her horn lit up and the book slowly began to rise. She flipped it over and was about to shut it when her eye caught a word on the page and she gasped.

"What?" Pinkie asked.

"The source spell! How could I forget! This spell lets me find the source of anything. If you just think about your nightmare while I cast the spell, I'll be able to figure out why your having nightmares so I can find the proper spell to get rid of them!" Twilight was excited now.

"I'm not sure that would help." Pinkie said.

"Don't worry, just try to remember your dream."

"But-" Pinkie was cut off by Twilight's horn glowing. Pinkie began to think about her dream. She had been taught long ago that when a unicorn is performing a spell, you do EXACTLY what they say to do. If something goes wrong, you and/or the caster have a high chance of dying. Magic is unpredictable.

The spell took but mere seconds to complete, and Pinkie barely noticed anything.

"Done." Twilight stated. "This is strange, the nightmares are coming from some sort of evil spirit within you."

Pinkie's eyes shrunk, but Twilight was too busy thinking aloud to notice.

"I gotta warn the princess, this could be a threat to Equestria! No, better stop it first." Twilight said, then she turned and looked and her friend again "I know a spell to remove the spirit-"

"Twilight, don't-"

"It's okay! It's completely painless and I cast a containment spell on the spirit once it's free."

"It's not like-"

"It will only take a second." Twilight closed her eyes and her horn began to glow. Before Pinkie Pie could protest more, she was shot with a powerful beam of purple energy. Well, it didn't exactly shoot her. It passed through her, pushing out-

"No!" Pinkie screamed. Behind her, laying on the ground with smoke coming off her body, what a pony that looked just like Pinkie Pie. Except, this Pinkie had straight hair.

"What the-" Twilight began, but was interrupted by when this Pinkie clone began to laugh. It sounded just like Pinkie.

"Thank you, Twilight Sparkle," The straight-haired Pinkie spoke. Then she opened her eyes. They were blue, like Pinkie's, but looked cracked. It was like her eyes were glass and  somepony had hit them hard with a hammer. The Pinkie was laughing even harder now.

"You idiot! You've killed us!" The real Pinkie looked at a Twilight with hatred in her eyes.

"Oh, no! Not at all! I think I'll spare you and your mage. After all you DID free me." The pseudo-Pinkie giggled.

"Mage?" Twilight asked.

"You don't know what a mage is?" Fakie (running out of names here) asked.

"Of course I know what it means, but why did you call me that?"

She only giggled in reply.

"Why are you talking to her? Stay away from Pinkamena!" Pinkie (the real one) screamed.

"Why? I've already granted you immortality," Pinkamena laughed.

"Pinkamena?" Twilight asked, so confused her brain could explode into a billion tiny pieces.

"That's me!" Pinkamena smiled. "Well, I'll be off now!"

Pinkamena was about to leave when the sound of a doorbell stopped her.

"I'll get it!" Pinkamena said, but didn't move an inch. Then, spot they heard a scream and the sickening sound of something falling to the ground with a plop. The sane ones dared not imagine what it was, and the other knew.

"Okay! Bye!" Pinkamena cheerfully said. Then she turned around and marched out the now open door.

The two remaining ponies stood in horror at what they saw in the door way. Some innocent pony was standing there, their head on the ground next to her looking shocked. The body fell over into a poor of blood invading the library.

Pinkie and Twilight knew exactly who did it.

"Hehe, oops."