Madness of Anonymous

Chapter: 7

It had been at most a week since you've stepped outside your home. Deep blue wrinkles beneath your eyes contrast greatly with the paled skin across your face, a sign of your sleep deprivation as you force your body to go even longer without rest. Even if you did black-out a couple times, it only seemed to allow your body to continue without true rest, as you never felt much difference when you awoke slumped over your workbench. Coffee cups, void of their rich warm liquid, lay strewn randomly across your basement, scattered among tools and excess materials. You'd discarded your formal attire long ago when you started the suit's construction, favouring some tacky overalls instead.

Stains of all manner of substances lay splattered across your clothing, sweat beneath the rags accumulating causing your body to give off a putrid odour caused by the strain of work forced onto yourself. The thick, leather-like gloves and apron worn by you have small and large charred patches and burns due to the forging completed thus far. As far as you can see, only the legs have been properly completed, though the pneumatic parts aren't even fitted to the boots yet since you'll need to buy supplies to finish them. Which brings you to the next order of business, going outside for the first time in a week.

Sighing to yourself, wiping the grime from your forehead only to look at the collection of it on the back of your hand with disgust, you silently wander upstairs and lock the basement door tightly. You want to keep this little project to yourself, so you don't need some curious pony stumbling across the designs and unfinished suit. With the grace of a drunk, you slump through your bathroom door and slip into the bath, activating the tap which begins to leak a torrent of mildly heated water into the tub. Once the water reaches to your neck, you disable the tap and strip off your disgusting garments. Thoroughly scraping at the grime clinging to your form, you finally feel much cleaner. You rush through the cleaning just enough so that you step out at a fairly decent cleanliness.

Shaving off any excess hair on your facial features and snipping off unruly stands from the ash-black mop on your head, you trudge out the bathroom and towards your bedroom. You step unsteadily upstairs and collapse onto your carpet floor, but with a jolt of energy you attempt to stand up only to slump over and slam your shoulder against your wardrobe with a grunt escaping your lips. Rubbing your aching shoulder, you open the wardrobe and grab some simple clothing, a t-shirt and trousers with a pair of socks and boxers. Pulling on your lower-body's garments, you begin to tie your shoes laces before descending the stairs whilst casually slipping on your shirt. You quickly snatch a bag of bits from your living room table, as you want to at least enjoy yourself after buying the required things. Rubbing a hand through your pitch-black mess of hair, you open your front-door and exit the house. Locking the door tightly behind you.

Your trip is thankfully more peaceful than you'd expect, any passers by giving you more of a wide-berth. Probably because of your dishevelled appearance. With your path fixed towards the market, you gradually reach the large set of stalls selling a variety of items and trading with the daily gathering of pastel equines. But one stall catches your attention, which is the opposite for all the other buyers in the market. The stall is void of any customers, with only a bored elderly stallion sat behind it with a hoof to his cheek in boredom. Bounding across the market you reach the curious stall and tap your bony finger on the wooden counter, attracting the elder's undivided attention.

"What do you sell?" You ask quietly, eying the pony with darkened eyes.

"Well, I sell metals that I forge myself. I also sell copies of some old books if you want to see them." He says with a gravelly voice, once he recomposed himself.

You crack a smile and ask if you can see his stock. He agrees rather hesitantly, but allows you to view them unhindered. Probably wanting at least some of his stuff sold. You ignore his uncertainty and begin idly scanning the items, intrigued by the metals shown. You also take an interest in the old tomes on display, some with quite useful looking content if the titles are anything to go by. Books involving mechanisms and technomancy soon are held in the clutches of your pale hands, as do a random assortment of metal ingots and other metallic items. You hand him the items and pass him the appropriate amount of currency decided by the furry vendor. You request a bag, to carry your items in a more efficient way, which is a request he obliges with a knowing nod.

Taking the brown paper bag of items, you quickly return home to just place the bag on your basement workbench before locking the doors once more on the way out again. No reason for you not to enjoy your day before shuffling back into your basement, after all. With your bag of bits stuffed into your trouser pocket, you let your arms slowly sway as you move across the town. The baggy deep brown trousers wafting slightly in the cool breeze, the wind sifting up your light brown shirt. Your footwear was tacky with splattered mud stains across the black leather boots reaching up to the top of your ankles. The deep brown trousers worn on your legs had their ends tucked into these leather boots.

Your steps bring you to the outside of some pony restaurant, some of the equine residents sat outside at metal and plastic tables with tacky colouring used for the topmost plastic surface. You hesitate slightly, taking your usually quick steps but with a more calculated look around the area. The restaurant itself seems to have the typical hay-roofing which wasn't unusual for the town. The walls made from a high-quality wood which seems to give you the impression that the large quantity of bits in your pocket seems to be barely enough for a meal here. Regardless, you enter the restaurant and shift uneasily towards an empty table. A strange thing which made you relieved was the fact none of the staff were stood at the door, which would have signalled that you needed to be on a list to get a table. This was not the case, so you took the table without incident. A small dingy plastic table, a dim candle positioned in the centre of the cheap white circle. White painting was donned on the walls, many more of the plastic tables scattered around the room. A cheap wooden bar sits at the far end of the room, one pony stood behind it greeting the many patrons once they approached the bar.

You sit on one of the many foldable chairs which seemed to be the only type of seat available in the entire establishment. You tap your fingers against the plastic, a slight tinge of unease sitting in the pit of your stomach. A strikes of paranoia begin to shoot down your spine, the feeling of freezing rods falling across your back. Drops of sweat clinging to your forehead, dripping down your eyebrows and slipping onto your firmly locked fingers. You begin to shiver, your locked fingers rising to your forehead as another seizure-like attack forces itself upon you. You shake violently, silent whimpers coming from your mouth as your lips remain tightly fixed shut with the only sound being muffled raspy sobs.

Then THEY came. The usual patrons were no more, replaced by gruesome visages. Hunks of raw, rotting flesh emitting a putrid stench which wafted up your nostrils and causing your voice to reduce even further as your throat begins to tighten to shut out the disgusting odour. These mashed up forms of festering gore are positioned in almost comical sitting positions. The forms then snap their "faces" towards you, eye sockets forming as flesh begins to slip from their faces to form void sockets. Decayed green and yellow liquid slowly dribbles from the sockets and slides down the false muzzles to drip onto the tiled floor with a deafening echo. Even more flesh falls from the faces with a loud "slop" as it collides with the floor, causing you to fling from your chair and slam your back against the cheap painting. The impact causing a loud crash to resound around the room in the form of a monstrous echo. The faces snap towards your new position, with some faces turning to each other whilst "whispering". As they attempted to whisper, a similar colour decayed liquid slips from their jaws in an endless torrent, their jaws acting broken and flailing in the air as they attempted to move their jaws to speak. A putrid tongue slaps around the loose jaws of each hunk of flesh, decayed and bloody it splatters the rotten liquid across the cheap plastic tables and one another. A low guttural yipping comes from them as they attempt to whisper, their flayed lips breathing out unnatural sounds.

You whimper even more as the creatures from your past nightmares begin to shamble from beneath the cheap plastic tables, scuttling towards you with guttural hisses and screeches emanating from their fanged maws. You frantically begin to yell for help, and, with adrenaline fuelling your body, you fling a plastic table towards the shambling figures which causes the sound of high-pitched screeching and unnervingly loud wailing. You shield your ears and sprint towards the door, slamming it open with a shoulder and shoving it closed once you exit. You keep your eyes firmly shut to spare them from any more horrors and find yourself in a dark alleyway where you begin to sob in anguish with your eyes buried in your arms to block any sights.

You just sit there in the darkness for at least a couple hours, cradling yourself with your eyes locked shut whilst rocking back and forth against the cobblestone wall at your back. It takes the courage of the Five Hundred to open your eyes to the world once more, finding nothing but inky black both unnerving you and acting as a thick blanket of dark comfort. You shuffle nervously out the darkness, feeling your breathe warm against the freezing night. The coolness sucks away your warmth as you shiver, cooling your body and mind from the near-traumatising event you... think you witnessed? You can't be mad, that definitely did happen!

...Didn't it?

It only took you a couple minutes to make your way back to your home, even more nervous glances coming your way as ponies pass you by whilst whispering to one another as they glanced at you. You don't berate them for it. Instead, you stay silent whilst rubbing your arms uneasily as you pass them, eyes scanning the grassy ground nervously as you leave the town for the outskirts to your wooden house. You enter and close the door only to groan in frustration, as you finally remember that you're missing your bag of items which you bought earlier today, coming to that conclusion when you found yourself lacking the brown bag. Locking the door, you head to the kitchen and make a coffee. Then, once it is made, you return to your living room and settle into your armchair, picking up a random book before flicking the pages as you read silently.

A sudden knock comes from your front door, causing you to glance up nervously. Sighing, you set down your book and now empty cup onto a nearby mahogany table before shambling towards your door. You firmly grasp the door-handle before unlocking it with your free hand. Letting the hand which unlocked the door slip to your side, you use the still gripping hand to slowly open the wooden portal into your household. There, sat on her haunches uncertainly, is the purple form of the town's librarian. She sits there looking up at you nervously, with a half-smile. Sat beside her is a brown bag. A very familiar brown bag.