Pinkie Pie dumped a sack of flour over her head yet again, coating herself in white. After a few moments, Pound and Pumpkin Cake finally giggled, then laughed openly, and Pinkie breathed a sigh of relief. This was not at all what she had expected when she agreed to foal-sit them. Mr. and Mrs. Cake made it look easy, but there was a lot less fun and a lot more work than Pinkie had hoped for. If nothing else, it at least gave her a new appreciation for what the Cakes had to do to keep Pound and Pumpkin the happy little foals she’d known from her play-dates.
“Okay, what’s next…” Pinkie shook herself off and looked over the list the Cakes had left her, stopping when she came to a blank check-box. “Ah-ha! Nap time!” she announced. Once the foals were finally caught, re-caught, and tucked in, she could smile again. The way they snored in their crib was utterly adorable, and that alone was almost enough to make all that work worthwhile. The rest would be play at some point, though she had a lot of cleaning up to do while the twins napped — chasing down Pound, in particular, had made a horrible mess of the store downstairs.
Pinkie turned out the lights, and stopped in the doorway on her way out of the bedroom. “Sleep well!” she called, softly. Then, she froze.
The crib was empty. The foals were nowhere in sight.
“Oh no, no no no!” Pinkie cried, rushing to flip the lights back on. There was a bright flash, then they all went out at once. Pure black shadows oozed out around the door of the toy closet, slowly creeping towards her over the walls, floor, and ceiling. “Pound Cake? Pumpkin Cake?” Pinkie had to work to keep a nervous edge out of her voice, and was pretty sure she hadn’t succeeded. There was no answer, and she scrambled to look through the stacked toys, the spare blankets, and even the toy chest before the darkness overtook them.
A chill crept slowly up Pinkie’s tail, then her spine, and she started shivering. Whatever evil lurked in the closet, it was a thing so dark she couldn’t even see half of the room anymore. It let out a long, hungry groan, so deep it shook the entire building. Pinkie swallowed hard to force down a knot in her throat.
“Pumpkin, Pound, where are you?!” she called out desperately. The foals’ voices giggled all around her, distant and ethereal, and Pinkie took several steps back, retreating from the darkness. That was where the evil lived, she was sure. If she let it touch her… a thousand horrible fates swept through her mind. She fled to the hallway and slammed the door, her heart pounding as she drew a few shaky breaths.
“Easy, Pinkie. Giggle at the ghostly,” she reminded herself, but she couldn’t force a smile back on her face. She had to find the twins, and she had to get out of whatever horrible thing the place was becoming! Pure blackness seeped out from under the door, and the giggling abruptly stopped. Pinkie gulped, and stammered, “Pumpkin—”
She was cut off when the voices of the two foals called to her in unison, as if across space — or perhaps across lives.
“Run,” they said. “It’s coming.”
“What’s coming?” Pinkie asked, backing up as the darkness started to claim the walls and floor in front of her. It crept over the door itself, which disappeared; the bedroom was a black void, populated with evil that lurked behind the deepest shadows. The chill returned, spreading from her spine through her chest and belly and tightening her stomach. “What’s coming?!” she cried out, her voice just short of screaming.
“Run,” the twins begged her. “Run. Run! Run!” Pinkie’s eyes followed a trickle of darkness flowing up the wall in front of her, ignorant of gravity. As it reached the ceiling, she spotted a great black mass over her head, oozing down towards her like a great maw preparing to feed. She gaped back at it. From all directions, the darkness began to groan again, long, deep, and hungry.
“Run!” The foals’ voices were an ethereal shriek in duet. Pinkie screamed back and fled down the hall, and the darkness raced after her, devouring the passage as it came. Pinkie ran for the stairs — she had to get outside, out under the sun. She would be safe there.
But no matter how desperately Pinkie pushed herself, her heart racing as her hooves pounded along the floor, the top of the bannister that guarded the way downstairs never seemed to come any closer. She tried to dive into a side room, but the door was locked, and she had to bounce herself off it to keep running.
Door after door blurred past, and the groaning from within the darkness swelled to a roar as it ate them all without slowing for a moment. Over the noise, the Cake twins kept crying for Pinkie to get away, and she glanced over her shoulder to see the void gaining on her. Inky tendrils shot forward, nearly catching her tail, and she started screaming with abandon, leaving tears in her wake as she tried to make her hooves fly even faster by sheer force of will and terror.
Pinkie realized she was begging somepony, anypony for help, but couldn’t hear herself anymore — she had gone mute, and no matter how hard she tried to scream, no sound could escape her throat. But she was almost to the end of the hallway — if she couldn’t reach the stairs, she could at least jump out the window. She must have been running so long that night had fallen, because it was dark and she couldn’t see anything through the glass.
There was no time to open the window. Pinkie threw herself at it, and realized her mistake far too late.
Little pools of black were seeping in around the corners of the windowsill. Her spine’s chill crept into her mind as she flailed desperately, trying to reverse course in mid-air, but the window threw itself open, and Pinkie sailed out into the waiting darkness. The last vestiges of the world disappeared, replaced by a gaping black void.
With a long, silent scream, Pinkie fell.
~ * ~ * ~ * ~
Luna chuckled to herself, and was immediately thrown into another coughing fit. She managed to force herself back into relative stillness, then pulled her blanket more tightly around herself and scooted closer to the fire. As much as she wanted to enjoy the occasion with her friends in Ponyville, she knew she would have been remiss in her duties as a friend, nevermind a princess, if had she joined them and shared her illness. Luna sniffled, trying — and failing once more — to stop her nose from running. Another tissue soon joined the ashes of dozens of others in the fireplace.
No, she had to stay in. No mere cold, however, could stop her from smiling. She could still have her fun.
“Happy Nightmare Night, my little pony.”
Author's Note
"Sometimes it's just really fun to be scared!" -Pinkie Pie
