Cupcakes: Reason and Madness

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“Like it?”  Pinkie asked.  “I made it myself.”  She twirled around in her hoof-stitched dress of pony skins, the unicorn horn necklace clinking as the limp pegasus wings flapped around her.  With a final bounce, she stuck her forelegs out, letting her oddly straight mane wave about her with the momentum.  Despite her grace, her movements were stiff and jerky.  Almost robotic.  However, the skull-like grin never left her face.

Desperately, Dash pleaded with the smiling pony before her.  She writhed in the rust and blood caked shackles that kept her locked against the wood-framed rack.  “Pinkie please, I’m sorry if I did anything to you.  I didn’t mean it.  Please let me go.  I promise I won’t tell anybody.”

“Oh Dash, you didn’t do anything.  It’s just that your number came up and, well, I don’t make rules.  We can’t turn back now.”

Dash was tearing up.

How could this be happening?  The thought shot through her like a bolt of pain.  Pinkie's steps faltered a moment before continuing, taking her ever closer to the bound and frightened pegasus struggling in her bindings.

“Aww, don’t be sad Dash,”  said Pinkie, still grinning eerily.  “Look, this’ll cheer you up.  I brought you a friend.”  Seemingly out of nowhere, Pinkie produced a brightly painted blue and yellow skull.  It was about pony sized, but it had a very defining feature: a beak.

Dash gaped in shock.  “Is…is that….is…that?”

“Hey, Dash lets hang together.  These ponies are lame-os.  Dweebs dweebs dweebs,” Pinkie mimicked.  Her grin faltered, turning into a dangerous sneer before morphing back.  “I caught her right before she left town.  Remember when I left the party for about twenty minutes?  That wasn’t enough time to play with her of course; I had to wait till after the party to do that.  But boy am I glad I did.  It was worth it for the flavor alone."  Pinkie Pie rubbed her stomach, her eyes rolled back in ecstasy at some memory.

"Griffons taste like two animals at once, it’s amazing.  I know she didn’t have a number like everyone else, but when was I gonna get another chance to try griffon?  I probably should have asked where she came from so I could have gotten more, but I forgot.  I’ll tell you what though, she was quite the fighter.  She lasted a long time, which was a lot of fun for me.  I got the chance to play with somebody other than a pony and try new things.  It’s too bad she had such a meanie mouth.  She said so much bad stuff I just had to take her tongue out.  You know, bad language makes for bad feelings, Rainbow Dash.”

Dash didn’t have anything to say.  She just sobbed and twisted in her tight bonds.

No, no, no, no, no, no …  That single word repeated over and over in her head until it rang, until it seemed to shut out all other sounds.  And yet still the scene played out before her like some sick puppet show.

“Well,” said Pinkie with an air of finality, “that’s enough reminiscing.  It’s time to begin.”

o.o.o.o.O.O.O.O.o.o.o.o.-.-  -.-.o.o.o.o.O.O.O.O.o.o.o.o

With a scream of primal fear, Pinkie Pie awoke.  It had been two months since Rainbow Dash's disappearance and her circle of close friends had run themselves ragged looking for her, Pinkie most of all.  They had even combed the Everfree, fighting manticores and worse, trying to find where she might have crash landed or … a body.  She should have been at home in bed after a long night of searching.

With a rising sense of panic Pinkie realized she was no longer there.  She was in a dark place, a place that smelled of blood and rot.  And worse.  Her stomach heaved at the smell and emptied itself across her chest.  She was upright and tied to a chair or some other kind of seat.  The rope that bound her was rough and despite the emptiness around her, she knew she didn't have a blindfold on.  It was just that dark.  Nothing was as it should have been, nothing was right.

“Whoops, you aren't supposed to be awake yet.”  The light voice of a filly echoed in the small chamber, so out of place it derailed any thoughts Pinkie might have had.  Pinkie could only gasp and shudder in response, her stomach still doing back flips from the smell and that horrid hyper-realistic dream.  “Feeling a bit nauseous?  Well, let's brighten your night up with a party.  You'll love our guest.”

Pinkie glanced up into the dark, confusion firmly etched on her face.  A party?  Guest?  Suddenly, a spotlight snapped on and Pinkie couldn't stop screaming for a long time.

Rainbow Dash – or rather some sort of hideous mockery of her – slumped on the floor in front of her.  Crudely stitched lines crisscrossed over her skin while gaping holes where her eyes once were stared blankly out.  Her mouth was forced into some form of a grin, a crude smile drawn from the deepest pits of Pinkie's nightmares.  The spaces where her cutie marks should be were instead a mismatched assortment of colors.  Her mane and tail were obviously in bad repair, having lost most of their strands.  She had been stuffed with … was that icing?

Pinkie screamed until her voice was raw, screamed until her head pounded.  She couldn't take her eyes off her oldest and bestest of friends, now only a sick plush toy for some twisted pony.  Only after what felt like hours of screaming could she gasp for air and even then, it was more a sob than a gasp.

“Aw, did I frighten you?  Sorry about that.  I figured we should get introductions out of the way.”  The filly's voice was cold, Pinkie realized.  Cold and harsh.  And frighteningly familiar.  Whoever did this to Dash, could it be someone she knew?

With an effort that seemed herculean, Pinkie looked at Dash's desecrated corpse not but a few feet from where she sat.  So close were they that some of Pinkie's vomit had splattered on the pelt, marring it with colorful bits.

“Why?  Why did you do that?  Oh Dashie, who could have done something so mean to you?”  Pinkie thought she had whispered the words but the filly answered.

“Who?  Who?  WHO?!  Oh, you silly filly, you did of course.”  A filly stepped into the spotlight next to Dash's remains.  A dim pink filly with straight hair and a grin that set Pinkie's teeth on edge.  But her eyes.  Her eyes were so distant.  So empty.  The only thing she lacked was a cutie mark of her own, her flanks as blank as the day she was born.  “Surprise!”

“Wha … ?”  Pinkie stared at the familiar filly.  It was impossible.  It was … her.  Her as a young filly.  “How?  What is going on?  Who are you?”

The filly rolled her eyes at Pinkie, her grin stretched to an unimaginable degree.  She nudged Dash's stuffed corpse and leaned in close, her whisper sounding in Pinkie's head more than her ears.

“She's not all that bright, is she Dashie-pie?”  The filly-Pinkie kissed Rainbow's check lovingly, unaffected by the sight or the smell that surely had been coming from it.  From her.  From Pinkie's Rainbow.  Pinkie lurched in her bounds, suddenly very angry.  More angry than when her friends hadn't come to her party.  More angry than when Discord had pushed all the happiness out of her.

“Get away from her you big Meanie McMeanerson!”  Pinkie started to thrash against the ropes, grunting with the effort of trying to free herself.  Filly-her sat back with a smile and watched as Pinkie wore herself out, managing only to make her hooves sore.  Soon, the chair she was on toppled over and sent her crashing to the floor, panting with the effort.

The filly laughed, harshly.  Pinkie had heard that sort of laugh before.  It was when ponies were laughing at you, not with you.  When they were sneering behind your back.  Every other time she had heard it had made her mad but this time all it did was make her want to cry.  A memory bubbled to the surface of her mind, a memory of her sisters as fillies.  They were laughing but not with her.  They were laughing at her.

“Aw, poor Pinkie.”  The filly-her stepped close and bent down, causing Pinkie Pie to lean away from her as best she could.  The filly ignored her and stroked her check gently.  “Remembering some bad thoughts are we?  Some not-so-nice times with the old family?”

“Wh-what?  When did that ever happen?”  Pinkie tried to hold onto the memory, tried to remember more but there was something stopping her.  It was old, that was for certain.  Her sisters were near her current age now but they were so young in that memory.  Something in Pinkie's normally bubbling mind found the whole thing stranger than she found most of life.

The filly got up and walked back over to Dash, slipping a hoof around her ragged remains and pulling her into a hug.  “Pinkie's got issues, Dash.  You should hang with me more often.  I've got issues but at least I know about them.”  Pinkie looked at the two of them for a moment, confused.  Then she began to giggle.  The filly's smile slowly faded.  “What?  What are you laughing at you twitchy moron?”  Pinkie couldn't help herself.  She burst out into laughter, thrashing about on the floor.  The filly stomped her hoof angrily, bringing more giggling out of the prone pony.  “Stop it, you idiot.  There is nothing funny going on.”

“Ha, yes there is, ha,” Pinkie gasped out, between more bouts of giggles.  She shook her head.  “This is some ca-razy nightmare.  I'm just worried about Dash, that's all.  Wow, you had me going, eh, me!”  As Pinkie spoke, she calmed down until she had stopped laughing altogether.  She looked up at the filly-her, her eyes bright.  “So, what's it gonna be now scary-me?  Spiders?  Bugs?  Oh!  Nightmare Moon, she's always creepy!”  Pinkie bounced on the floor as best she could as the filly stared blank faced at her.  A grin appeared on the younger Pinkie's face as she snuggled into Dash's corpse.

“Oh, silly filly.  Likes the willy.  Eats it with a yummy smack and drinks the juice as a tasty snack.”  The sing-song quality of the filly's voice slowly changed from Pinkie's into that of her younger sisters.  Slowly, Pinkie's smile faded into a confused and hurt expression.  “Always crying, never trying.  She has a mouth that never stops but only cause it's filled with Pop.”  As she sang, fragments of memories bubbled to the surface of her mind.  Her sisters sneering at her.  Her mother's hurt and frightened face.  Her father with a look that turned her stomach.  And all through her mind, she heard her sister's voices.  “Papa loves Pinkie, Papa loves Pinkie.”  She screamed.

With a gasp, she found herself back in the darkened room with the rotten remains of Dash and her filly-self.  Her face was wet.  Something hurt inside her.  With a start, she realized the singing had stopped and the younger her was looking down with a sneer.

“What?  Can't handle it?  I thought that's why you were here.  To remember.”  As she said this, she reached out and smacked Pinkie's head.  At the strike, another memory came up, one of happier times.  Her and the girls, all sitting around a campfire in Whitetail Woods.  It was one of their first camping trips.  Pinkie remembered this memory, as strange a phrase as that was.

o.o.o.o.O.O.O.O.o.o.o.o.-.-  -.-.o.o.o.o.O.O.O.O.o.o.o.o

“So, that was my life back then.  Really boring, I know.”  Twilight had just finished telling them about her foalhood.  Her time before Celestia discovered her, before she became one of the most powerful magic users ever.  Mostly books she had read or classes she had attended.  Most of the girls were smiling.  All but one, anyway.  Dash groaned and ran her hooves down her face.

“Uh, yeah!  That was like, super boring Twi.  No offense but I am so glad it hasn't been that boring here.”  Twilight laid her ears back and glared at her pegasus friend, causing Dash to grin uncertainly back.  “Uh, I mean, uhm … hey Pinkie!  I know nothing can top my super-cool foalhood but I'm sure you've got some wicked stories!”

Everypony saw through Dash's lame attempt to deflect Twilight's annoyance, Rarity going so far as to roll her eyes away from the offensive pegasus.  But Pinkie didn't care.  It was her turn, yay!

“Oh yeah!  Like, there was …”  Pinkie put a hoof to her chin in thought.  Now that it was brought up, she really didn't remember much from that long ago.  "Let's see …"  The time that, no that was … or was it?  Pinkie began to get oddly nervous, like some sort of pressure was building inside of her.  Sweat beaded on her face as she struggled to remember something, anything!  Her friends, faces once bright and happy, had slowly turned into confusion and concern.

“Uh, well.  I can't really think of anything.  Wow, Pinkie without a story to tell, that's a first eh girls?”

Something in her voice sounded off, even to her ears.  Nervous.  Why was she nervous, she was around friends right?  They wouldn't judge her because she couldn't remember.  Heck, other than that cutie mark story, there really wasn't much on the farm, right?  Her family, but they were … boring.  And … mean?  Where did that come from?  Pinkie glanced around the campfire at her friends.  They were staring at her with concern on their faces.

“Sugarcube, is there somethin' wrong?”  Applejack cocked her head to the side.

“Yes, darling, is something the matter?  You seem awful jittery.”  Rarity winced at her own choice of words.  “I mean, more than usual.”

“Oh girls, my foalhood just wasn't anything special, that's all.  Hey, who wants to tell ghost stories?”  Pinkie's friends shared a glance.  Pinkie was random but this nervousness was something rarely seen in their hyperactive friend.  Pinkie for her part couldn't understand what the fuss was suddenly about.  Her smile flagged a small amount.  “What?”

“Uhm, nothing Pinkie.  Why don't you go first?  Your stories are always so much fun.”  Fluttershy's voice was as calming as it had always been and Pinkie clopped her hooves together.  She got to go first, yay!  As quickly as it had come, the nervousness left.  As did the strange feeling she had only known a few times before.  Fear.

o.o.o.o.O.O.O.O.o.o.o.o.-.-  -.-.o.o.o.o.O.O.O.O.o.o.o.o

As the memory faded, Pinkie realized she wasn't tied up any more.  The circle of light remained, as well as the chair and ropes.  She raised her head, looking around her.  Dim shapes in the shadows loomed.  Lumpy and oddly familiar shapes.  She whimpered at the change.  That filly and Dash's corpse were no where to be found.  Suddenly, a hard knocking sounded out from somewhere above her.

“Pinkie dear, I know you like your ... alone time in our storage basement and all but please remember to watch the sacks of flour this time.  It took poor Carrot a week to clean up your last little oppsie.”  Mrs. Cake's voice rang down from Sugarcube Corner above.  It was kind and concerned.  Pinkie remembered, she had gone down to the basement for some 'quiet time' after so long without her Dashie.

"I will Mrs. Cake," Pinkie's voice called out hollowly.  With a distinct lack of energy, the pink party pony pulled herself upon her hooves and – ponderously – plodded up the precarious stairs.