The Mansion (Revised Edition)

4

I fell three stories, expecting for the sudden impact to kill me. But, I never hit the floor. Instead, I splashed into the water which nearly submerged the entire first floor. The fires that were once ablaze here had completely died out, but the ashes still hovered in the thick air. I swam blindly in the darkness away from the maniac, and searched for somewhere to hide.

“Where are you my dear?” She fluttered down with a blazing torch in hoof, and from the surface of the water I could clearly see her blood striped face in homicidal fury. “Come out and play.”

Where do I go? Only broken fragments of wood remained floating in the great dark expanse. I waded through the rooms, one by one, but Fluttershy quickly followed me through the maze of a mansion. There was no purpose of running; I would have to risk hiding from her if I wanted to bide my time.

“Come out, Twilight. I can’t wait to tear you apart limb by limb!”

I spotted a small crevice in between the boards of the wall far in the distance. I paddled through the water, careful not to alert her with the sounds I made, and wedged myself inside a dark hole.

“Are you here?” She pointed the torch in my direction and squealed. “Oh, did I spy a little pony here?” She skimmed over the water towards my hiding place, swinging her torch around. “If you come out, I promise to kill you quickly!”

She must have found me. She approached me with hysterical laughter, swinging the fire wildly. Fear began to arise again as my legs cramped and my head dipped deeper into the water. I grabbed ahold of a post, but even with the support I knew that I could not hold on for long.

Then a miracle happened. She passed over me and continued into the next room. But as she did, the light illuminated my surroundings. I realized that the water I swam in was not at all pure. It was colored rose with the blood of all the murdered ponies. I lifted my hoof slowly out of the water to find that I was now covered in a layer of thick red slime of coagulated blood.

“If you’re not going to come out and play,” shouted Fluttershy from the adjacent room, “burn like Applejack.”

At first, I was confused at what she meant. But it soon became clear as flames swept across the ceiling. She was going to burn down the entire building! Smoke soon began to fill the room and rubble came crumbling down.

My hindleg nudged against something deep in the tainted water. It was too soft to be wood, and it was quite massive. I was gripped by curiosity so I reached my hooves down, instantly grasping a round object. I lifted it slowly, unknowing of what to expect, but when I realized what I had discovered I dropped it and held my hooves to my mouth to prevent myself from screaming. It was the festering head of Pinkie Pie that stared at me, eyes imploded and mouth still in a smile. I saw the head descend under the water once again and become nothing more than a dark shadow among the crimson floor. I retreated further into the back of the crevice and I found myself wading in the muck hoping for another miracle.

“Are you there, Twilight?” Fluttershy turned and flew straight towards me. “I thought I heard you, dear.”

I ducked my head under, allowing only my snout to surface for air. The light grew brighter, and she leaned against the entrance to my spot. With the light now shimmering only inches away, I saw that Pinkie’s organs had not floated far from her head. Chunks of organs and every part of her internal mechanism hovered freely in the water in a grainy slurry. I realized that my tongue was caked in the same fleshy and stringy debris.

I vomited. Even though I hadn’t eaten in days, I managed to produce a large quantity of sick gastric goo. I brought myself back into composure immediately, but it was too late. Fluttershy found me.

“Oh, there you are, Twilight.” She stared directly into my eyes. “You shouldn’t have run off like that - we weren’t done talking.”

I was a dead pony. There was no possibility of escaping as she stood by the only exit with the sharpened metal rod in hoof. “Fluttershy, you don’t have to do this. I’m your friend! I’m your-”

“Friend?” Her eye twitched. “You really think that I have friends? Oh no, dear Twilight, all my friends abandoned me long ago and left me to die. All my friends didn’t give a flying feather whether I lived or died. So do you know what I did?”

I clung onto the back wall, away from the point of her metal spear.

“I left them. I hid myself away in the forest, away from the eyes and mouths of those ponies, and instead I found my friends, the animals. Unlike ponies, animals can’t hurt you. So I lived in that forest my entire life, away from everypony forever.” The veins in her eyes began to bulge. “Do you know what it feels like to be so alone? The animals talked to me, occasionally, but they couldn’t satisfy the desire for a friend. Do you know what it’s like for nopony to ever show you kindness? No. Of course not! The weak Fluttershy died a little every single day in that cottage. She wished for anypony, just one pony to reach out for her, but she never saw anypony. So, do you know what I happened? The last remnant of her died crying and struggling to stay alive until the end.”

“Fluttershy, no, don’t say those things!”

“Then I was born; from the ashes of her heart I rose up like a phoenix, revived. Strong Fluttershy. Assertive Fluttershy. Bucking-won’t-take-no-for-an-answer Fluttershy.” She thrusted the rod and struck me on the shoulder. “I learned that kindness only makes your heart bleed. And so, the one who is before you now is the real Fluttershy, the only Fluttershy So you ask me to be your friend? Ha! I don’t bucking need your friendship, and I’m bucking going to kill you!”

She retracted and then hurled the weapon for a second strike, this time drilling through my arm.

The pain was instantaneous. I flailed in the water, and it began to turn into a pure red soup of death. I attempted to pull my arm away, but found that I was pinned to the back wall. I saw the blood spurt out in torrents as I was unable to do anything.

Then I heard something whiz through the air, followed by the sound of metal on wood. I slowly turned my head to the other arm, which I saw was now pinned to the other side of the wall by a silver dagger.

“Rarity wanted me to give you that,” she said while smiling. “I knew about her plans, so we made a promise to kill off the others first.”

Only a weak croak came out of my throat, but was then followed by an explosive gush of blood. I screamed.

“So where did she head first? The medical room of course, where all the knives and drugs would be. But it was a good thing that somepony killed her off first. It was you Twilight - I could see through that soft marshmallow act you’ve been playing ever since the beginning.

“No!” She was wrong. I could never harm anypony.

She laughed like a maniac at my suffering. “Can you feel it, Twilight? I know the truth, I’ve always known that truth that you’re the killer. I saw you kill Rarity and Pinkie Pie after you ‘blacked out’.” She twisted the knife and stared at me menacingly. “Don’t tell me. Don’t tell me that you seriously didn’t know you killed them! It’s true, isn’t it? You don’t know! Ha!”

She had to be lying to me. She wanted to humiliate me through guilt. There’s no possibility that I could have hurt my friends. There’s just no-

“Did you ever wonder why you faint so often? Let me tell you, dear Twilight. When you faint, you lose control and become like me, a monster. It feeds from the the darkness within, Twilight. Deep inside you know that there’s a lust for blood, and you need to just hear that beautiful symphony of screams in terror. Just like Rarity. You laughed at her when she begged for you to end it quick. But you didn’t.”

No. I didn’t kill her.

“Of course, you immediately galloped away, after disposing of her body in lavatory. I fished her body out and let everypony think that you were an innocent victim. I even supported your ridiculous story as an alibi so that you could continue killing everypony.”

Stop it. I don’t want to hear these lies anymore.

“Then came Pinkie’s turn. She smiled at you even until the end. At one point, I even thought that mare was some sick sadistic mule. But then I learned that she smiled because - wait for this, can you believe it- because she loved you! Even when her lover was tearing her apart, she smiled because of love. ‘Oh Twilight, this isn’t you, stop it. I love you, Twilight, no matter what’. Ha! Of course, you had to ruin everything by breaking her heart.”

I must be delirious. I was hearing these terrible things because I lost too much blood. It was those nightmares from before. All I have to do is close my eyes and endu-

“Applejack. Yes, even Applejack. I never thought that you would try and poison her liquor. Nevertheless, she drank up everything you gave her without a question. Of course, she was too intoxicated to warn anypony about what you did.”

Now, I knew that she wasn’t lying. All the pieces fit together so perfectly in my head. I remembered everything: Rarity, Pinkie Pie, and Applejack. I remembered the void, the darkness within my mind. I was trapped and too afraid to escape that place alone. Beyond the shadowy veils was the painful reality of killing everypony I loved so dearly. If only I were brave enough to walk through the darkness alone, maybe everypony would still be alive.

I realized what lead to this doom. It was friendship, or the lack of friendship. Everypony here needs somepony, a friend to help them through the darkest moments in their life. Fluttershy stood before me as proof of my failure to realize what could have been done to save us all. Moreover, I failed myself. I was never the one to reach out for a friend. Yes, I had feared for years the deep dark desire and deadly consequences - but I didn’t even try to seek help.

I looked around myself at the floating butchered bodies of the Mansion’s previous guests, covered in black grime. They too must have fallen into chaos by the same folly.

The true victim was friendship.

Now, as I gave my last breath, I wondered what friendship could have been. If only, somepony would have shared its magic with me. We could have had big adventures, Rainbow Dash. Tons of fun, right Pinkie? I could have learned from your beautiful heart, Rarity. Always faithful and strong, Applejack. “...sharing and kindness, Fluttershy?”

“What?”

The beams supporting the story snapped and the Mansion collapsed upon itself. The framework of the grand building fell like dominos. Ashes roared about the entire room, clouding the amazing scene unfolding before me like a sandstorm.

The chaos eventually settled, leaving me on top of a mountain of rubble, still pinned to a large portion of the wall. Blood stopped flowing throughout my body, and I knew my time on this world was coming to an end. The blood and water drained into the seemingly never-ending abyss below, but everything around me was still moist with fresh blood. To my left was a pile of rubble, which a crushed wing of the yellow pegasus protruded.

Off in the distance was the grand door, still locked and to the end refused to open like our hearts. There was no one killer, as we had killed ourselves. My eyes slowly closed, and I too joined the other mares in death.