The Hands Reaching For Me
I can't remember having the life of a normal filly, nor the life of a filly at all. I suppose it was like any other pony, a simple life where I was raised in the casual demeanor that the slow, steadily progressing community of Ponyville. Everyday I see the same faces stroll through the town, and everyday they have the same expressions, reacting in the same way they did for the same small events that stirred in the people's social lives. Such is the way of a small town, I imagined.
It was a simple background, an uncomplicated world that brought my personality and thinking into existence. I would imagine that my life would mirror the ways of the other ponies in this town, that I would be another face in the crowd. Although most ponies wanted differently, I yearned to blend in, to be one with the world. But I was not.
My mind belonged somewhere else.
Every night I saw a dark world, one that seemed to reach above me. In this world there was the din of grey normality, a blended nature filled with indifference and slow growth. It was like Ponyville, but duller, starker, and always hanging over my head like a musty storm cloud. But that wasn't the part of the world that frightened me.
It was the creatures.
These creatures, they stood tall, they were lanky. They had beady eyes that faced forward, looking down their judgmental noses that sat over their frowning and screeching mouths. Some had manes, but on the tips of their heads, their necks left bare. They stood on two legs, and were tall, their knees bending outward as they walked. They draped cloth over their bodies that lacked the basic coat of fur, and were slim, VERY slim, standing like poles with their eyes staring like glowing lights in the dark.
They attacked me in these nights that the nightmares came, hitting me with the ends of their front legs. The hooves they had were the most frightening of all the features they possessed, as they were split into thin parts, like spider legs. The parts would work together like a machine, grabbing, holding, yanking, and would ball together to pound at me like a hoof. I would feel the very skull in my head rattle, my body becoming crushed, as they would attack. I would scream, I would beg for mercy for the monsters to stop, but the creatures would be unforgivable.
Soon I couldn't scream at all. I couldn't hear: it would all become fuzzy. The sounds of pain would come from my mouth and the visions of these creatures would blur in a dark background. I would feel tears streaming down my eyes, blood surging in my throat, yet I would be lying on the ground like a broken vase.
There was always hundreds of these creatures, all the same, all with the ugly, deformed face that a lead one would have. As the vision of the night progressed, the creatures would merge into each other, until they became one, disgusting being, who would finish my body until it was beaten to the pulp. When I was on the brink of death, when I was too consciously weak to wake my own mind from the dream, the creature would grasp my shoulder, bring it's head to my ears, and breathed these frighting words between it's gnarled teeth.
"Lyra, you shouldn't have been born."
It was this whisper that woke me up in the nights sweating ice from my brows. The scream that never escaped in my nightmares would run through my throat in the reality of my bedroom. For hours afterwards I would stay up in the night, terrified of sleeping once again. I suppose that's why I'm always tired in the daytime, although I never admit it to anypony.
I have tried to get help on this, really. A persisting nightmare certainly isn't good for anypony at all. I've been to three psychologist ponies, yet none have helped. They either wouldn't understand or would state my dream as preposterous.
I've asked friends. All thought I was crazy.
"Maybe Luna will come and solve the nightmares eventually," say some ponies from time to time. To my distraught she never had. I gave up hope on the idea the princess would come.
Twilight Sparkle, a respected unicorn in Ponyville, tried to help as well when I visited her one afternoon.
"There is always a scientific reason for things like this," she stated proudly. Yet I was in her library for hours with her instruments and to her frustration, nothing was found about my problem. She apologized, and I took it sincerely, as I found she was just as concerned as I was about the situation.
Some other ponies weren't so.
"It's just a terror phase," said some.
"Perhaps you read something scary," said others.
"Oh Lyra, you crazy mare!" laughed even others. I was hurt by all of these comments.
The nightmares were true, I believed. There had to be a reason. Why was I the only pony in this happy-stricken town that had such terrible visions at night? Constantly? Why did these nightmares make me feel different, make me feel insane, make me feel like an outsider to Ponyville's social norms?
My name is Lyra Heartstrings, and I have a problem. I dream about creatures.
I call these creatures a name that sat like a terrifying shadow in my conscious.
They are humans.