“Do you need to go back to your house right now or anytime soon?” Pirouette asked, swishing her back a little with her tail rubbing against her hooves..

“Nope,” Snails replied, taking a gulp. Holy Cheese and Crackers! She’s like, posing for me even now, plain seducing me! “My parents had this special event with some of their friends to go to tonight that will last even early into next morning. It’s not like they especially trust me, but they thought that their thing was so important that they could just let me be alone…”

“Well, not exactly alone if you’ve got me,” Pirouette giggled, “you silly.”

Snails, seeing them getting closer to his house along the gravel road but still not quite understanding why Pirouette kept on walking slowly behind him, scratched his cheeks. “Oh, hehe,” he said, “and I was wondering as well--”

“So, since you don’t have to go there, that’s good!” Pirouette exclaimed, shifting over against an adjacent bush for some reason with the dark raspberries matching her mane and coat wonderfully. “Don’t go home! Not like anyplace hot or bright or like-- and, uh, don’t do that! Yes!”

Snails looked on as tiny pulses of magic went along Pirouette’s face. Is she like sweating or something? “Oh, alright,” he replied, finding himself walking backwards on the path without even really thinking, “so what’s the plan?”

“Where we go depends on what we want,” Pirouette cryptically responded, her expressions moving from nervousness back to calm as she moved her cloak upon her body a little.

“Were you thinking going home to your, erm, home?” inquired Snails.

“Oh, yes!” Pirouette waved a hoof through the air as she led Snails along a corridor with tall raspberry bushes and rusty metal gates off of the main path. “We can continue things there.”

“Things,” he repeated, not really liking the ominous look of the sprawling, gnarly trees coupled with the moldy piles or rock around him as they went along this unfamiliar path. Her smile also seemed to morph into more of a smirk, though she still swooshed around her mane in such a pretty way. “Pirouette?”

“Yes?”

He ducked to avoid a huge, scarred-looking branch. “Pirouette, I guess your place is this temporary-type housing that’s maybe like an isolated, abandoned barn at the edge of Ponyville?”

Rather than reply, she popped over to the right into a sudden gap in the row of bushes. Snails just blinked. Gosh, she seems to ‘poof’ into existence being so fast sometimes. “I suppose that’s a ‘yes’.” He followed as his eyes scanned the clearing around him.

“It’s not quite a home kind of home, but it’s a place for when I, well,” Pirouette said, not finishing the sentence as she saw some of the color draining from Snails’ face. He stared upwards at the various tattered curtains, the broken windows coated in thick dust, the ancient looking wooden sidings, and everything else that made up the very dark and very cold seeming giant barn before him. Pirouette did some kind of little dance in place, rubbing her glasses with her hooves as Snails turned back at her.

“W-well, uh,” Snails began. Don’t you dare blow this! Don’t you dare! A first kiss is already your pocket right now, and you’re about to go for gold! About to get to second base! Now suck it up! Second base beacons! With a jumble of metaphors he’d heard from his stallion friends bouncing about in his skull, Snails took in a big gulp. “S-sure, we c-can s-spend some time here.”

Pirouette nodded back as Snails felt, somehow, his confidence building.

“And as for what exactly we can do here,” he began.

“Exactly,” she repeated, still nodding.

“Now, with the n-night drawing especially l-late,” he said, feeling a deep warmth starting to spread through his insides as Pirouette so beautifully rubbed her hooves into her mane, “I must c-confess to you.”

“Oh?” She sat down upon the stairs into the mysterious barn.

“I c-confess that,” he continued, standing up straight but still having nervousness almost drip from his features, “I’d r-really like to take our date f-further. Then, u-uh, doing m-more--” Spit it out already! He closed his eyes tightly. “Doing adult-things with you.”

Oh, come on! That was a terrible way to put it! He peeked out to see her looking as pretty as just a moment ago, still smiling. “Oh, what kind of ‘adult things’?”

“Why, l-like,” he replied, senses so filled with raw emotion, “I w-wish we could do s-special adult things.” When she cocked her head to the side, he went on, trying to clean up his voice. “Like, uh, well you know I just had my ‘first kiss’ not too long ago.”

“Mine too,” she cooed back, opening the barn door behind her a bit yet still gazing at Snails.

“I confess that I want,” Snails said, “to have-- no-- to give you my first--” He had to gather strength from deep inside of him, still sensing that strong inner heat to guide him along. “I want to give you my first of another adult thing.” He clutched his own body tightly as he saw the darkness around them getting thicker and blacker. “Can we?”

“Yes!”

Pirouette seemed to vanish into the barn as her holler back to him seemed to gather a wispy, unearthly quality. The word appeared almost to hover around the air atop Snails’ head. He took in a large breath, and he watched as the night’s darkness somehow became so full and so cold.

Snails stepped up the stars and pressed his right hoof against his cheek. He hesitated as his eyes adjusted, the moonlight helping at least a little. Somehow, Pirouette’s last word had managed to seep into him, with the stallion feeling as if the sound of her reply had triggered a wave of deep heat through his insides. Awkwardly rubbing his legs together as the heat migrated to between his legs, he waited still in place for a minute.

“Pirouette?” Snails pressed his hoof against the ancient barn door, his voice faltering a bit as he watched the shadows sliding about the dank expanse. “Is everything, ah, okay?” He stepped forwards, the door loudly creaking open. His breathing tensed up, his mind feeling mostly blank, as he took into account the huge, mostly empty main room and the smaller rooms off to his right. “I’m happy to be here with you and all--”

“You,” murmured a slight, wispy voice, seemingly coming from nowhere.

Snails felt the cold, dry straw matting up beneath his hooves as he wandered around. Sensing something off somewhere in the lofty area above him, his eyes slowly slinked about. He brushed up against a rusted pitchfork and a pile of what felt like rusted barbells. The moonlight shone through the numerous cracks and gashes in the ceiling, at least giving him a bit of light, yet that also gave some hint of malevolent character to every last shadow he saw.

“Pirouette,” he muttered, hearing a quiet ‘brush-brush-brush’ sound from deep over inside the next room. He let his mouth hang open, the chill wind blowing his mane about his face for a for a moment as he gathered himself." Whatever her problem is, whatever she wants to do, whatever game she’s playing, and whatever the hay she’s trying to say— well— I just— simply— don’t care! “Are you in here?” The feeling that Snips had joking called ‘the need to breed’ ached inside of Snails like a throbbing illness. “Pirouette?” He poised with his hoof over a decayed, old door with a large metal star.

He heard nothing but silence. Snails grit his teeth together, determination rising within him. We’re long, long, past the time where I can stand this jerking around, Pirouette. You and I know exactly what kind of ‘adult things’ we both talked about. Creepy brushing noises, as repetitive as a metronome, amped up in volume as he prepared to enter the barn’s side room.

“Something about me,” said a voice that Snails could barely hear, making him wonder if it was just his imagination. He simply put his hoof down upon the wood, letting out a deep, strong breath, and pushed it forwards. The whole world seemed to stop for a moment as he stepped inside the other room.

Redness, a vibrant and deep color that seemed to fill up the whole room, assaulted his senses. He blinked repeatedly before taking a deep breath. What looked like an alien strobe light coming from all over the ceiling suddenly shifted into a red, glowing orb in the middle of the floor, quite a ways away from him yet feeling far too close nonetheless.

“Pirouette,” he mouthed, not saying a single bit of it. Bright— deep— red right there, gosh, it’s like I’m seeing some kind of of...

Snails couldn’t even sense his heart beating as he looked out at the floor. That side room where he stood, all secluded off from the rest of the barn, had grimy stone walls besides various rusty metal shelves filled with rustier tools, moonlight only darting in slight strands every which way. He tried to make out the unusual-looking figure before him.

That large, black-bathed something sat right in the center of the room, facing off against the opposite wall away from Snails, with its features indistinct other than two tiny, bright red dots upon the top of the object. The more Snails concentrated on the figure, the less he seemed to see. Though the being looked so much like a mere optical illusion, a very real, very sharp surge of terror went through Snails’ body.

Body quivering, with the open door beside him feeling thousands of feet away, Snails forced himself to stand up straight and raise his voice just the tiniest hair louder, “Pirouette?”

The figure turned over, those burning red eyes aimed straight at Snails’ chest. His eyes seemed to grow into saucers as he watched the mare facing him on all fours. The creeping darkness around her seemed to eat up her fur, black burns layering atop slashes of decay upon her dark grey body. Her featureless face, almost all covered in shadows, opened to reveal a large slit with some kind of unearthly, sickly red film dripping out of it.

Snails couldn’t say anything back. He couldn’t think anything back. All of his body functions seemed to have just stopped.

She moved forwards, body shifting across the floor with her hooves seemingly melting against the ground. It all seemed so alien and so wrong. Snails shut his eyes tightly for a second, his body pressed up against the cold, hard stone behind him. He sensed her presence lined up right in front of them, then, his mind counting down the moments until he’d have to look out once again.

“Pirouette,” he whispered, so faintly that he couldn’t even hear his own voice, “so that’s you? Right?” She apparently could hear him nonetheless, making a gentle noise by shifting about ever so slightly. Her breathing sounds then seemed to coat all sides of him, pinning him against the wall like aerial hoofcuffs.

He heard a soft yet sharp whine, something like a mental cry, and he forced his eyelids open, tiny bit by tiny bit. He made out the dark, mysterious figure before him. Head faced against the ground, he lifted it up, finally getting a sharp, lit look upon her face. A face… without eyes?

Snails finally let out a huge scream, his hooves wailing up in the air as he felt his heart beating like crazy. The mare’s small, smooth holes where eyes should have been leaked out a stark, inky blackness below him, her unicorn horn bathed in dark red energy matching the dark red aura oozing out of her mouth. Snails, still screaming and still shivering in fright, locked his hooves against a wooden pole to his side.

The mare simply glared up at him with her non-existent eyes, breathing out with a stark, low growl. As drips of thick redness poured off the side of her face into the straw below, Snails pressed his body against the wood besides him, digging in as terror kept its grip on his senses.

“Snails,” moaned the mare, this time sounding a lot more distinct but still just as menacing.

Snails finally realized that he had jumped straight up, causing him to grip onto part of the ceiling itself and finding himself sitting awkwardly atop a shelf. He tried to steady himself, bringing his raging fight-or-flight responses back under control, and he raised his voice. “Pirouette?” he asked, looking over at the big, poofy tail curled beneath the mare’s black body, “what in the hay is all this?”

“That’s right...” the figure moaned back, circling around underneath Snails’ position like a hungry lioness awaiting her prey. Pirouette’s horn lit up a bit more, grey and black ripples going across her red aura. “Gosh, your fear is so incredibly delicious. And, I’m surprised, you scream pretty girly for a stallion.” An absolutely nasty-looking grin curled across Pirouette’s face. “Even tastier to drain.”

“And, so, your ‘adult’ things,” he called out, though he didn’t have to wait for an answer. His eyes suddenly flashed over to the wood he sat on, creaking with this weight. He looked down to see her simply nod back, her red, glowing eye-less areas narrowing. Snails saw the wood snapping in two in his mind’s eyes, and he tried to curl himself over to reach the top of a hard-looking solid metal shelf across from him.

“Surprised?” Pirouette let out, a low, raspy chuckle following. Snails saw her shifting more towards the door as his hooves positioned themselves more carefully upon the shelf underneath him. He felt oddly used to seeing her like that already, what with a semi-dangerous climb down focusing his attention elsewhere. Pirouette raised a hoof and rubbed it against the bottom of the shelf. Snails gasped as he saw her hoof pass right the through the wood, like something out of an optical illusion.

“Uh, yes,” he eked out, going carefully down to the next to last shelf, “yes I am.” He made out Pirouette’s body sliding to the side, her mane flicking against the metal. That brought a soft brushing noise with a tiny clang at the end. Dear goddesses, none of that was for show, for the party, at all. She really is some kind of ghost. But did she mean everything else that she said? Did she really like the dancing? The hoof-holding between us? The kissing? It all seemed so sincere!

“Then you should, uh, be ready for your worst nightmare, boy,” Pirouette declared, her mane passing over her eyes as she stood up straight. Yet her words sounded as hollow as, well, a ghost, with her tone of voice then hesitant and soft. As she focused her attention on the bottom shelf well beneath Snails, she pressed her hooves against it, apparently trying and failing to keep from having them dissolve seconds later. She then made a weak groan.

With quite a different feeling filling up his senses, Snails safely slid himself over onto the sturdier metal shelf, his body leaning up against the wall as he turned to face his spectral date. Pirouette braced herself against a bunch of barrels to her right, ignoring Snails, with her front right hoof scratching against the wood and her front left hoof transparently penetrating right through it. She hopped slightly forwards.

That made her let out a low “oopsie”, her ghostly body quivering a bit as she made it onto the bottom shelf only to immediately fall back onto the floor. Snails stared as he stepped down his own bunch of shelves. Pirouette followed up by brushing her mane with both front hooves and murmuring, “Stupid spectral translucence, can’t even climb up a set of blasted shelves without hyper-concentrating.”

“Ahem,” Snails interjected, hopping completely off of the shelves onto the floor.

“Oh, right,” she muttered before clearing her ghostly throat. She then stood up straight. “So, ah, prepare to be scared out of your wits! Ooooh, gonna get you!” She oozed a bit more red blood-like fluid from her mouth.

“I’ll bet,” Snails remarked— putting on a bit of a smile for the first time as he noticed just how Pirouette’s swagger seemed completely forced. He couldn’t begin to explain it. Yet that fire that she had lit inside of him, burning ever since their first kiss as they bobbed for apples, seemed to course along every inch of his body.

Pirouette stepped away from the barrels, her body leaning down as the moonlight from a gigantic gash in the ceiling bathed every inch of her. It seemed as revealing as ripping the wrapping off of a present, and Snails felt just as satisfied. His smile grew wider as he saw how her grey, partly transparent body looked more ‘sleek’ than ‘creepy’ in the strong light. Her fluffy and thick crimson mane naturally drooped over a good half of her face, putting the matter of her non-existent eyes out of the picture. Even the mysterious film dripping out of her mouth looked less like ominous blood and more like gooey raspberry jam every second .

She looked beautiful for a ghost, more like a slender gothic girl than anything else. Pirouette made a cat-like pose as her plot shifted up and her head shifted down. Her head swayed from side to side as her tail stuck up and her voice made a deep groan. She clearly wanted to keep looking creepy in true Nightmare Night fashion. But, in Snails’ heart, that ship had already sailed.

“Confused?” Snails asked, putting on a very masculine poise as he stepped right in front of his date. He held his chin up, his hooves positioned along his sides just as his de-virgin-ized friend Pokey Pierce had told him. Be assertive. Be dominant. She knows what you want, and she doesn’t want to let you in on the secret that she wants it every bit as badly.

“I, uh,” Pirouette murmured, scrunching her face and letting the seeping red stuff coming out of her mouth slow to just a trickle, “I know you’re… still scared at least a little bit…” The bafflement flashing through her senses just made the mare seem even more adorable in a dorky sort of sense. She anxiously brushed her two front hooves together as she sat down flat upon the ground, one of her solid hooves bending in hilarious fashion upon one of her ghostly hooves and making them look like a pretzel. “Now, you, ah…” She took a gulp, and she tried to warble her voice once again. “Now… you… know… the truth about me… ooooh…” She stuck out her tongue and slurped her lips.

“You know, Pirouette,” Snails went on, having walked up such a way that had had pinned the ghostly mare into a brightly lit corner, “I think it’s long, long past the time that we stop the playing around.” He chuckled as he saw Pirouette crumpling further into a sitting position before him, her body almost freezing in place. “It’s Nightmare Night. It’s our first date. It’s gone great so far. We’re alone in the abandoned barn at the edge of the Everfree. The full moon is out.”

The full implications of Snails words slowly started to hit Pirouette. Pieces of her body seemed to fade in and out of transparence as her cheeks turned from dark grey to pink. She couldn’t even begin to say anything back, though.

“You don’t need to mention a single word, Pirouette, because I know,” Snails continued. His breaths had grown steady, and his legs opened out from the throbbing that had returned from between them. That’s it! Be steady and be strong just like Pokey said— that’s the ‘alpha male’s’ way of thinking! “You met me thinking that I’d be easy to scare. You led me on all this time, thinking that you’d get a nice easy mark. I guess you type get energy or whatever from fear. But you unlocked something, even if you didn’t want to. You lit this fire. You can feel it burning in me. And I know it’s burning for you too.”

Pirouette hardly managed a response, simply nodding at Snails’ words. The stallion finally stepped up directly in front of her, his face mere inches from hers. She glanced down his body, seeing exactly how ready he felt, and she seemed to shiver. She reflectively turned her head around and faced against the wall as she made a ghostly whine, far more emotive than scary.

“You and I are here in this in barn, together totally alone for the first time. And I know it’s been on both our minds, after all,” Snails said, brushing his chin as he tried to make out the inner war going on inside of the trembling ghost girl before him. He could hardly keep himself from simply pouncing on her. “For both of us, well, we entered this barn with—”

“Oh, gosh,” Pirouette sniveled, whimpering as her dark shaded back flashed different colors.

“With our cherries,” Snails finished, laying things on the line as his heart pounded hard inside of him. He gazed upon Pirouette’s slender sides, as perfect as anything he could have ever dreamed out, as she turned her head and sniffed loudly.

“You’re my— my— my— scare mark,” she murmured, rubbing her head against the wall as her flanks remained presented out right in front of Snails’ face, “and it’s— it’s— I like you, I really like you, but it’s just, not—”

“I don’t care.”

“My, my eyes,” she moaned, running her front hooves through her mane, “and everything else aren’t cute in ‘normie’, in ‘normal pony’ terms. Just look at my—”

“I! Don’t! Care!” Snails called out, throwing his hooves against Pirouette’s backside and getting a face full of her tail. Cold yet fluffy sensations fluttered through him.

“Even if I did fail to truly scare you, sure,” she answered, putting on a pleading tone that clearly didn’t match the supplicant, pleasing pose of hers, “that’s one thing, but— gosh— the ‘normies’ don’t do these sorts of things with ghosts! They just can’t!”

“Listen, sweetheart,” Snails growled, stretching his body over on top of Pirouette’s and rubbing his muzzle against the back of her neck, “the answer to anything and everything you can say is ‘I don’t care’. And—” He grit his teeth as his front hooves massaged Pirouette’s shoulders. “If you say another word implying that I should care, then I’ll have to plug that hole .”

“Oh, my goodness!” Pirouette screamed, curling her head backwards as Snails ran his teeth against her left ear. She sensed every last inch of his stallionhood, hard as steel, as he nudged it up along her thigh. She made sing-song like, ghostly sighs as Snails’ body rubbed perfectly on top of hers.

Snails shifted a bit off of her, gazing down upon her flanks. Her marehood, totally solid-looking as well as dripping wet, responded wonderfully to his touch. Pirouette squirmed about in place as her face contorted with pleasure. He bent over and gave her slit a set of long, slow slurps, and her magical red aura built up around his mouth. She didn’t just taste marvelous, his tongue feasting all about her flanks; she tasted tingly and bubbly against her lips almost like magically-charged champagne.

He finished up, kissing along her thighs, and he looked over to see her back hooves rippling with black electricity. He stood up behind her and lined up his stallionhood mere inches from paradise. Hesitating, he planted a trail of kisses against her back, rubbing her tail all between his hooves as well as across his cheeks and chin.

“Oh, for Celestia’s sake, do it,” she groaned. He found spots of her tail fading and out of existence, her ghostly red aura blinking through her body, Pirouette revealing some kind of inner energy. “Take my virginity! Please!”

“Do it,” Snails repeated, feeling suddenly extremely nervous at the moment. She’s there, I’m here, and it’s all… all… oh, gosh… He felt very exposed at the moment, the moonlight bathing him as much as it did Pirouette.

“Make a real mare out of me,” Pirouette moaned, her back hooves sliding across the floor to fit Snails’ position even more easily, “and treat me as a flesh and blood lover, please, oh, please...”

He thrust himself forwards. Flashes of dark shapes and colors lit off all in front of him, the sensations like nothing he could have even imagined. Her body glowed from head to hooftip as she repeatedly let out her low, wispy whines. He slid himself out and forced himself right back in again, enveloping her entire back with his chest and front hooves. She somehow seemed to shrink for him, fitting perfectly underneath his body as his stallionhood rutted her..

Thrust after thrust, he went on and on. His mind seemed to melt with wave after wave of bliss. Bursts of sticky, wet coolness flashed in between his legs. She seemed so wet and sloppy on the inside, somehow. She felt so loose and so fluid, yet so inviting and so tender. Snails pulled out once more, panting hard, and he gazed downwards.

His eyes twitched as he saw her thick red, raspberry jam-like goo— tingling with ghostly energy and sharply cold— dripping along his stallionhood. He looked upon her flanks, seeing a huge, oozing hole in the middle of her rear almost like a mold of gelatin shoved with a big fork, and he trembled, not even sure where to begin. Pirouette— her tail and mane already melting before him as well from a solid mass into a pony-like shape of quivering, energy-filled goo— let out a half-scream. She sounded nothing like a ghost and everything like a mare in heat.

Animal instincts completely took over. Snails, his mind given to one purpose and one purpose only, slid himself back into her plot once more, feeling that crashing upon his senses of deep, almost painful coldness with wonderful wetness. The pleasures just couldn’t seem to even begin to stop. He dominated totally over her, molding her with every move of his hooves and his still hard stallionhood. Snails braced against the ground, grunting loudly as he bit down upon her mane. The strands went from solid locks to ghostly goo to tingly liquid in his mouth in a split-second, leaking right out of his teeth. The sweet, sugary taste was just amazing.

“Oh, I don’t even— ugh— know if I can— oh, holy sweet gods— stay solid at all for you anymore,” she moaned, making delicious-sounding pants as Snails rutted her. Those words only made him dig his hooves into the ground, let something like a restrained roar, and start again with full force, working like a jackhammer. She banged her head against the nearby metal shelf with every pump, half of the time passing right through while half the time sounding a huge clang.

“Pirouette, tell me!” Snails suddenly hollered, feeling his body slinking even closer to the floor as all four of her hooves melted shorter and shorter like candles from the blissful sensations going through him. “Tell me ‘I’m yours’!”

“I’m yours!” Pirouette shrieked back, barely sentient anymore as she got slowly ground right into ectoplasmic nothing. “I’m yours forever, Snails!”

“Say ‘you own my plot’!” His thrusts seemed sloppier and sloppier, the sounds of his stallionhood slapping into her gooey, disintegrating flanks almost like a hard, metal whisk getting shoved into delicious cake batter. “Say it, damn you!” He tried to grab her mane once again, but his hoof passed right through as her locks faded completely into a ghostly outline in the air.

“You own my plot!” Her voice seemed to amp out even louder, her body shivering through every last solid or at least semi-solid inch that remained. Snails grunted as he mashed his teeth, ready to pop his load at any moment. “You own me! You’ve got me!” The thrusts somehow managed to get even faster, surging red blasts of bliss-soaked magic making her look like a power coil. “I’m yours! I’m your toy! I’ll haunt you wherever you go!”

“I’m going— oh, gods— I’m going!” Snails burst out, tears of sheer pleasure pouring along his face. His body seemed to burn with a continuous chill yet blissful fire, freezing tingles bathing him both inside and out as her dark red gooey essence covered him.

“Oh, please, shoot it inside— inside— oh, gods— fill my cold ghostly thing with your hot, sticky seed— every last warm drop— melt me! Melt me! Melt me!” Pirouette screamed, the barn filling up with ghostly wails that might as well have alerted all of Ponyville.

Snails collapsed downwards, his mouth slurping against the back of her neck as he shoved himself as far as he could inside of her. That was easier said than done, her body decaying almost completely second by second. Still, Snails embraced her the best he could, hooves locked against her gooey, glowing semi-solid hooves, as he poured himself out into her. His stallionhood throbbed, hot love juices almost pouring out. The powerful sensations, causing red and black magical flashes to set off like firecrackers across the entire barn, seemed to just burn his senses from the sheer pleasure.

After some huge space of nothing passed, Snails took a deep breath, blinking rapidly. His mind coasted atop a wave of frothy, sensual bliss before he came to his senses. Having clearly slept, he spun about in place for a moment, eyes darting around left and right. The whole barn looked the same, his body lying down right beside the door between the tool room and the rest of it. Holy cheese and crackers, how long was I out? He tried to stand up, but he immediately slipped over and tumbled out the door into a stack of hay.

“What the,” he muttered, brushing himself clean.

“Mind the ‘me’ spilled on the ground there, sweetheart,” said a familiar voice from somewhere above him.

Snails stood at upright attention, scanning everywhere around him. The moonlight still shone out, although he seemed to have gotten a least a nice nap. The barn seemed totally empty.

“Eyes up here!”

He turned his head straight up, and she saw Pirouette’s smiling face, although her body looked about halfway transparent. He took a deep breath, and he sensed Pirouette sitting over on top of his shoulders with her ghostly limbs tussling his mane. She seemed almost like a watercolor painting— a faint outline around an shapely body without much there except for limbs and a mouth.

“Sorry, Snails, I didn’t last that long in more ways than one,” Pirouette remarked, giggling.

“How long was I—”

“Oh, only fifteen minutes or so,” Pirouette replied, and she patted against Snails’ cheeks. He blushed as his eyes feasted on her pretty body. “So, sweetie, I think you should probably get going to bed for real.”

“Oh, right,” Snails muttered, letting himself yawn. He reached up and scratched his chin, heading for the main barn doors out but stopping right beside the door. “But, uh, I had—” He tapped his two front hooves together. “I had told mom and dad that I was staying over at someone else’s house.”

“Awww, that’s sweet,” Pirouette commented, flowing off of his back and brushing against Snails’ back. He couldn’t believe the surreal experience— the ghost’s touches against him feeling more like static tingling or smacks of wind than anything solid.

“So, ah...” Snails cleared his throat. “Just to be clear: Your house is…”

“You’re looking at it,” Pirouette said, flying off of him and sailing around by the ceiling of the barn. Her ghostly hooves kicked against the open window as she made a loop-do-loop, aiming over back at Snails.

“Okay,” he replied.

Pirouette took a spot next to an old lantern besides a stack of boxes. Before Snails had time to blink, she had shrunk herself in and snapped the latch shut. Snails stepped over, eyes wide open.

“Of course,” Pirouette went on, her voice sounding rather tinny coming from inside the lantern, which glowed at every word, “I understand if you’d rather go home. I’ll see you tomorrow, then?” Before Snails had time to say a word, Pirouette made another low, painful-sounding ghostly wail. “Oh, well, I understand if you never want to see me again, ever. Especially after lying to you. Trying to scare you. Using you just as a possible source of pk-energy from scaring you, treating you like a battery rather than a stallion. You can just, well, go. If you want to.” The voice grew more and more faint, as did the light inside.

Snails leaned over, holding up the lantern in the middle of his front hooves and gasping. “No, please! Pirouette!” He had a hard enough time with normal mares— adding the whole undead angle just made it all ridiculous. “I— I— I’m more than willing to sleep over with you!”

“Really?” asked the cute, squeaky voice from inside the lantern.

“For the rest of the night,” he went on, “until the next morning.”

The door flew open, and she sailed through the air over back upon his back. “Oh, that’s just fantastic! And, well—” She made a funny sort of burbling noise. “There’s not just here in the way of, ah, accommodations for the corporeal. But there’s some primo straw right over there.”

Snails didn’t feel in the mood to argue, as much as he missed his fluffy cotton pillows from back home, so he sighed softly as he walked to the least dusty corner of the barn. He reached down and matted out the straw into something like a bed, lying flat. As he tried to his best to make himself comfortable, barely succeeding, he gazed upon Pirouette’s body shifting in the air above him.

“Can I, please,” she said, putting on an adorable tone to her voice as her ghostly body perched over yourself, “ah, sleep in you?”

“I had, well, kind of assumed you would,” Snails said, patting down a clump of hay to his right. He smiled. Meanwhile, Pirouette just let out a big laugh.

“No, you silly, I mean ‘sleep in you’,” she went on, the ghostly spirit moving down until her felt her coming over his fur. Snails just awkwardly blinked back at her. “Of course, I could spend an hour or so to concentrate myself solid again, and then the romantic cuddling would be nice, but trust me that you’ll love this even more.” Not even sure how to begin to think about this, Snails froze perfectly still. He felt her trademark coldness rippling up his sides, her magical aura coursing around the straw below him. “Just calm yourself down. Relax, sweetie, this won’t hurt a bit. In fact, well, this sort of closeness is a bit more than you’d ever get from a ‘normie’ girlfriend.”

Snails felt tiredness flow through him. Yet, with his mouth opening up and his body relaxing, he seemed more peaceful, more content. As he sensed her dark, red energy going off inside of his body, her coldness transmogrified into something else. He seemed more, somehow, full— as well as, actually, pretty warm.

“Pleasant dreams,” Pirouette murmured. Although the voice seemed to come from inside his own head, Snails nodded off just the same. “Thank you, Snails, for making my Nightmare Night one to remember forever.”

Several hours later…

Snails stirred, feeling himself overcome by a funky sensation. He blinked as he slid upwards in the straw. Everything, from his hooves to his face to his chest and all in between, felt soaking wet. He pushed himself the wall, trying to stand up, and he marveled at the mixes of thick white love juices and foamy red ectoplasm that coated where he had lain. He made a low moan as he tried to brush the goop off of his own fur, merely rubbing it in further. His colthood seemed bathed in enough ooze that it looked as red as a jalapeño.

Snails glanced to the side, and he saw Pirouette— looking solid enough as she had during Nightmare Night— standing above him on a clump of crates. She whistled quasi-innocently as she looked out at the pretty sunrise.

“You slimed me!” Snails cried out, pointing his front right hoof straight up.

“Moi?” Pirouette replied, looking like the cat that had swallowed the canary.

“Well, you could have, at least, waited to ask or something,” Snails grumbled, getting ready for the door. He hoped that he could slip over to his house for a nice, long shower without anypony noticing. “I’m coated in my own seed and worse right now! How am I supposed to keep half the town from laughing at me?”

Pirouette scoffed, “well, whose fault was that! Mister ‘horny enough for four sequential morning woods in one single morning’, sheesh!” She danced a little circle in the air before she hopped over the crates, adjusting her mane. “You can’t imagine what it felt like to share that mind with you!”

“I’ll bet,” Snails muttered, and he stepped on out of the barn and over towards Ponyville. He heard a ‘plink’ noise behind him, making him spin about. He watched as what had once been Pirouette standing in the doorway behind him flashed into nothing. It felt like looking at a movie with a scene missing. He glanced over closer, however, and he spotted a bright silver ring on the ground besides the door jam.

Our promise ring! Snails picked it up, sliding it over a hoof, and he took a deep breath. I had almost forgotten winning that for you! Now, then, what the hay is going to happen now?

“Why, I’m coming home with you, silly!”

Snails glanced all around for the exact source of Pirouette’s disembodied voice. “Uhhhhh…” Oh, gosh, I hope she’s not reading my thoughts! He wandered around in the forest cleaning for a moment, coming back onto the path towards the Schoolhouse and then to his home.

“Relax, sweetheart,” Pirouette went on, “you mumble. Ghost. Good hearing. That sort of thing. I leave your private thoughts alone— I have to or else I’d lose too much pk-energy. We shared a body, remember?”

“Where…”

“Get out of the bucking light and you’ll see!”

Snails, already about halfway to his house, ducked below a gigantic maple. He hesitated for a moment before seeing a red band of magic appearing over his promise ring.

“Yeah, ghost, sunlight… that’s like oil and water. No thank you, sir! Anyways, you said you were a comic book nerd, right? So, you know the drill already. Dim place, dark place, nighttime, then I’m all yours. And while we can only pop each other’s cherries once, we can have all kinds of more fun a much as we want.”

Snails nodded, seeing the back door of his massive ranch house on the horizon. Yet he immediately hopped over behind a large apple tree, picking up a set of scratching noises nearby. Eyes wide open, he froze for a bit.

“Gosh!” Diamond Tiara called out, speeding out of a set of bushes across from Snails’ house. She panted again and again, sweat just flowing across her face, as she stood in the middle of the grass. “I can’t believe the Mayor wasn’t kidding!”

*Rawr!*

The animal sound made Tiara shoot upwards and over to the right, with her mane fluttering every which way. She squeaked as she ran away. Meanwhile, Snails just shrugged from behind his treet.

Lyra, costumed as a wolf, leapt out into the middle of the clearing right behind Tiara. She laughed, brushing her tail with her front right hoof, and she ran back into the bushes. Snails heard her roar yet again.

After a moment had passed, Snails sped over and made it into his house. Picking up some kind of apology type letter from Snips below him, he walked through the hallway. I guess Applebloom broke up with. Serves him right, honestly… He stepped over, feeling astonished that nopony had spotted him yet, and he made his way to the bathroom.

“So, Snails, what’s your plan?” Pirouette asked, the voice seemingly coming out from behind Snails’ back.

Snails shut the door, locking it, and he turned on the nice, hot water to the shower. He slid off the promise ring and placed it on the counter, sighing as he tried to wonder how to begin to break things to their parents.

“Step one: Introduce you to mom and dad. Step three: Live together in boyfriend and girlfriend harmony.”

“Wait, what about step two,” Snails muttered, not even finishing his thought as the desire to enjoy his shower filled up his senses. He shut the curtains and bathed himself in the warm goodness of the water pouring out onto his body. As he rubbed himself over with shampoo, he breathed out and saw a red trail spewing out of his mouth. He closed his eyes and chuckled.

“Oh,” Pirouette muttered, and Snails sensed her presence coming up behind him in the shower, “Well, it’s my fault. I should have planned things out better. I never plan anything right. I just jump from ‘mark’ to ‘mark’, going from city to city these past several months. Ponyville was next.”

“Mark?” Snails asked, brushing his mane profusely as he relaxed in the shower.

“Yeah, I suppose I should let you in on all the ghost lingo,” she remarked, and he slid open his eyes a bit to see her spectral body lying flat top the sink to his far left, “if this is going to get... serious between you and I. Well, ah, I guess for you ‘normies’ we ghosts seem a lot like ‘buggies’—”

“Changelings?”

“Righto,” she said, rubbing her back upon the towel besides her. The filly’s pretty, long mane seemed to almost sparkle. “Those insectoid freaks feed on ‘love’, whereas ghosts feed on... ‘strong emotion’. Well, technically, we feed on ‘energy’ per se, or what we call pk-energy, but since a ghost would be fried into nothingness biting an industrial power cord— trust me, I’ve tried it— we just try and nab ‘emotional energy’ from live ponies more than anything.”

“Let me get this straight,” Snails interjected, thrusting open the shower curtain as he took his hooves out of his mane, “you bit a power co—”

“Ugh, I was young!” Pirouette groaned, putting her face in her front hooves. That didn’t do much, given that they looked as translucent as the rest of her body. “I had only died a few hours before! Or more like, even, a matter of minutes before! Cut me some freaking slack!”

“Died,” Snails whispered, not wanting to have to think about the whole implications of ghostly natures, “Well... gosh.”

“It doesn’t matter. I really can’t remember anything from back then, many months ago, that well anyways,” she went on, floating over to the bathroom’s rug and running in place atop it, “and none of that is important. What is important is that although all ghosts need to feed the same, most ghosts don’t do it the same way. There are four main types of ghosts.”

Snails hopped out of the shower, all clean, and started rubbing himself off with a gigantic blue towel besides him. He looked off at the closed window and made a little breath. “Well, let me guess, you’re a strawberry-flavored type, judging from your tasty red slime.”

“Hardy, har, har,” she shot back, “anyways, the first division is between ‘shakers’ and ‘shades’. The second are what you usually think of when you hear the term ‘ghost’— glowing, pony-shaped globs that haunt objects, places, and— rarely— specific ponies because they cling to feelings from their past life. Like that old mare Sweeney... she spent her life tending to a nice garden at the edge of Hoofington kind of close to the scenic forest and, after her funeral, tried to return right back to it and sing to her tomatoes. I think she’s still there now, all these years later. Anyways, shades can’t move anything real. They can’t pick things up. They usually barely make a sound. They just float about.”

Snails tried to think back to ghost stories around the Colt Scout’s campfire. He closed his eyes again and nodded his head. What a weird world there is outside of Ponyville!

“Pretty sad, when you think about it. I’ve been told that most of them just cling to corners and softly cry. They just linger,” continued Pirouette, “and eventually they’ll fade away. In contrast, you have ghosts like me. I’m the rarity, the kind of ‘action ghost’ known as a ‘shaker’. We can concentrate and manage to do all kinds of stuff. A lot of us throw things to scare ponies. We creak stairs. We open and shut doors. We burst pipes. We leave mysterious prints in snow. That sort of thing. Quite fun.”

“You said ‘four main types’, but that’s just two,” Snails commented.

“That’s the first division, kind of like how ponies are either mares or stallions. The second division, kind of like how ponies are either ‘fliers’, ‘buckers’, or ‘casters’, is between ‘runners’ like me and ‘trappers’.”

“I don’t like the sound of that last one.”

“Those ghosts stay in one place and try to spook whomever comes by. They tend to feel attached to said place a bunch; maybe it was their house, their favorite library, their old classroom, their boyfriend’s apartment, or something like that. Sometimes, they try one of the other three options to get pk-energy. They attempt and make ponies laugh, cry, or scream out in joy. Eh, it’s the odd ghost that goes for chuckles rather than scares, but I’ve met at least one face to face. They’re out there.”

“Where?”

“Ol’ Bill Nose,” she remarked, smirking.

“Bill Nose?”

“Oh, I’ll show you around to my, uh, ghost ‘family’ sometime soon enough!”

“So, wait a second, ‘trappers’ can be either ‘shades’ or ‘shakers’?”

“Yeah, so, of all ghosts, I guess like forty-five percent or so are ‘trapper shades’ and another forty-five percent are ‘trapper shakers’.”

“Something’s missing,” Snails remarked, “hey, hold on, what’s the other ten percent?”

“You’re looking at them, silly!” She flipped around in the air and coasted her girly body into the shower stall, her mane getting solid enough to rub against the shower curtain. “Or, I should say, you’re looking at one of them. A ‘runner’!”

“Runner?” Snails scratched both his cheeks.

“We’re legendary, if I do say so myself,” she went on, “since we break the rules that ghosts otherwise seem to go by. We don’t stay put. We don’t even stay in one city for long. We also have the strongest power— the best ability to really suck the energy out of ponies and turn them into dry husks if we wanted.”

Snails seemed to melt into his spot in the corner of the bathroom for a moment.

“Oh, well, I’m the rarest of the rare— a nice runner,” she triumphantly declared, her hooves waving over her head, “I really don’t know why. Maybe it’s just because I don’t really remember… just not being able to recall not being a ghost ever...”

“Why aren’t more ghosts, ahh, nice?”

“Well, I dare say that most of them actually are!”

Snails just cocked his head, looking amused yet disbelieving.

“Think, Snails! The ghosts that are nice tend to leave ponies alone. Period. Thus, you don’t even notice that they’re there! Also, well, it’s hard to show that you’re nice when most ghosts can’t exactly even talk.”

“And runners are...”

“Well, let me kind of explain it in depth. ‘Runners’ are ghosts that really move from place to place a lot, and thus they tend to really, really have things that just ride on them. They’re got like splinters in their mind, driving them crazy. They’re angier, sadder, and more emotionally-charged. They’re sure stronger too.”

“Interesting!”

“An old woman that just still wants to tend to her garden after death isn’t a runner. She sure wouldn’t become one. A successful musician murdered by his ex-wife for cheating on her all through his gigs that wants to turn the lives of every last past romantic conquest into pure torment, letting out his constant rage upon the living... that’s a ‘runner’.”

“Wow!”

“And, well,” she said, her voice growing a bit faint, “I bring up Starshine Blast there because, well, he scares me. Not just since he tried to stick my head into a tuba... ugh... most other runners just plain scare me.” She turned to face the door, her voice now just a whisper. “Actually, I’m the only runner that my friends have ever met that they’ve even considered liking.”

“Pirouette?” Snails asked, stepping up behind her.

“Gosh,” she murmured, banging her head into the door. She became solid enough to make quite a bumping sound followed by leaving a gooey red stain on the wood. “I just wish that I could remember... but... I just can’t...”

Snails simply reached behind her and kissed her along her cheek, his hot breath shooting out onto her neck. She swooned from all of the intimate attention, making a feminine moan. His hooves ran down to her sides, her sleek, semi-solid body rubbing up against his perfectly. he didn’t say anything affectionate. He didn’t have to.

After several minutes of tender embracing the two of them turned over to the door. I guess we’ll keep things secret for a while, figuring out how to break this to my parents. He motioned over for her to get back into the promise ring, and she nodded, though getting more solid for a moment.

But then the door swung wide open.

“Oh, sorry--” Snails’ dad began, but he froze in place-- leaning against the bathroom door with eyes growing wider-- as Pirouette awkwardly smiled and rubbed against Snails.

“So, uh, you seeing my girlfriend and I kind of post-foreplay in the bathroom, it’s-- uhh-- it’s a Nightmare Night surprise!” Snails suddenly exclaimed.

“Boo!”

The End

Author's Note

Thank you very much for reading you amazing people! *hugs* Please point out any errors, and do please leave lots of comments!