"Come forth, come forth." Said a rather small, brown earth pony in town square. He stood upon a stand lifting him no lower than ten feet in the air. The wood itself was oaken, and stand itself was the width of a hovel. The town square itself was located in the middle of the grand city of Canterlot, the capital of Equestria. The brown stones that made the foundation of the roads and side walks were place diagonally to each other, creating a zigzag pattern that stretched throughout most of the city. The buildings that surrounded the square were your typical sort. Three or four story town homes that could house upwards ten or fifteen families. These housings may not have been comfortable living inside of them, but considering the economic situation of the land in its current state, few could refuse the housing.
"There has been news of death in the city!" Exclaimed the pony, making various energetic gestures atop his stand. "Fear thine neighbor, fear thine brother, fear even thine lovers, as long as the killer isn't caught, everyone is said to be suspect!"
"Why is he speaking like that?" Asked Rainbow Dash, directing her attention to her friend Pinkie Pie.
Pinkie Pie simply shrugged, before saying, "I don't know, maybe he hit his head on a rock or something."
"Do you think the murders happened?" Rainbow Dash started walking away.
"I don't know." Pinkie Pie replied in her typical blissful and ignorant tone.
"Well, we should probably get back home." Rainbow Dash chuckled.
"Yup!" Pinkie stuck her tongue out of her mouth, and started trotting out of town square, and towards one of the nicer districts. Pinkie Pie, Rainbow Dash, and the rest of their friends lived rather well. This is mostly due to them all having something to do with the crown, especially with Twilight Sparkle being a princess. Rarity and Fluttershy even live in the castle now, while Pinkie Pie and Rainbow Dash live in the upper district.
"Did you hear who was...killed?" Rainbow Dash said, taking in a deep breath.
"Can we not talk about this?" A single tear rolled down Pinkie Pie's eye as she walked on. It was rare to see Pinkie so somber, even in the most abysmal of situations and circumstances.
"You're right, it's too soon." Rainbow Dash said, joining Pinkie in the somber atmosphere, "It was only a few days ago anyway."
The two continued walking along, seeing all the people of Canterlot. They were a once happy people, with the word of murder spreading around, as well as some less than acceptable act that have been happening in the lower districts. There have even been words of disease spreading in the city, which has indirectly cut off Twilight Sparkle from everyone else. It was dark times, dark times indeed.
Pinkie Pie made her way home with Rainbow Dash, and they both stepped in to see some familiar faces. It was Rarity sitting on a red velvet couch placed perpendicular the place where Fluttershy was sitting at the north end of the room. Rarity had had recent contact with the two mares, as well as having contact with Applejack just before her recent demise. As for Fluttershy, there have been some problems with rodents that would only respond to her unique technique.
"Hey." Rainbow Dash said, walking in and sitting down next to Rarity. She let out a quiet yawn, and laid back into the couch as Rarity looked over at her.
"Deary?" Rarity said, "Are you okay?" She directed her attention towards Pinkie, who was acting rather off.
"I'm fine!" Pinkie feigned a smile, and perked up instantly.
"It's just that...well....a lot has been going on lately, and you and.." Rarity suddenly stopped talking, and looked around, and after seeing Pinkie was keeping her composure, she continued with, "Applejack were really close. We were all close to her, and with everything being so recent, we thought we ought to come by, and say hello." Rarity produced a weak smile.
"Yeah." Fluttershy said, looking around the room, trying to keep away from having to make eye contact with her friends.
Pinkie kept looking around as her friends kept talking. To her everything coming out of their mouths was white noise. Her heart was racing, and she couldn't look anyone in the eye, or risk weeping like a baby separated from her mother. The tick tock of the clock was not helping much either. Tick tock, tick tock, the noise droned on in Pinkie's head, giving her a minor twitch each time a second passed. Then there was the red rug that stretched throughout most of the living area in which they were sitting in. It was a nice rug, garnet red with a mural depicting something rather mundane. It was a few ponies, three of them, standing on all of their legs, and facing towards the north end of the rug. However, Pinkie was seeing something different. There was the first two ponies, standing there as normal, one orange, and the other a lime green. On most occasions the other would have been a very pretty yellow, but to Pinkie, it was pink. There was another strange property to it. The pony, in form and in hair, looked awfully like Pinkie. Well, a Pinkie Pie from the rock farm. It had long straight Pink hair, and strangely it had a few rocks on her back. The pink pony on the rug quickly snapped its neck over to where Pinkie Pie was sitting and then instantly turned back to the yellow pony that would normally be on that tapestry.
"I think I should go to bed." Pinkie said, once again feigning happiness as she slowly trot up the stairs, and into her bedroom. The bedroom is something you would come to expect from this pink party pony. Pink curtains with graphics of cupcakes on them. Her sheets were a pinkish red, while her bed was a white as pure snow. She had pinkish carpet, but it was covered in so many dolls and other various knickknacks that it would be almost impossible to tell.
Pinkie Pie sluggishly crawled into bed, and pulled her blanket over her body, bringing her to a nirvana of warmth. She heard it again, that metronome, this time coming from a clock sitting just next to her bed. That tick tock would, on most occasions, put her to sleep, but tonight it was just a bother. It might have been the depressing conditions, or it might have just been that the clock was just aggravating that evening. Whatever the case, that clock ended up being shut off, and Pinkie quickly drifted off to sleep.
Pinkie jolted up from the cold stone covered ground on which she was laying, and took account of her surroundings. It was not a place she had been before. There was a gargantuan brown barn to her right. To her left there was what seemed like hundreds of miles of corn. The sky was also rather peculiar, as it was an eerie shade of red, almost crimson, but just a bit darker. She began to walk around in circles, and her feet seemed to carry very little weight. It was as if she was floating ever so slightly off the ground, just enough that she felt it, but she could still touch the ground.
"Where am I?" Pinkie thought to herself as she started walking, almost as if by instinct to the barn. The door was nothing out of the ordinary, except for its unusually large size. Pinkie paid no mind to it though as she burst in. The smell of well used farm equipment, and animals. With that being said, there were no animals in the barn, at least none that Pinkie could see in the dimly lit building, and the only piece of farm equipment was a sickle and a shovel at the very end of the building.
Pinkie slowly started walking towards these instruments, as she felt something she had not expected to feel in this hay lined barn. It was a cold breeze. Cold is an inappropriate term, it was freezing, as if ice was hitting her from both sides. Her breathing began to slow as she continued walking farther and farther down the long walk way that lead to the other end. Then, the room started to dim ever so slightly. Swiftly Pinkie's head turned to the side to spot a figure in the dark. It stared at her with an empty gaze. The figure was nearly unrecognizable, it certainly wasn't a pony she knew. Along with that the only discernible feature on the figure were a set of ghost like red eyes.
Pinkie's heart was racing as it continued to stare at her with that paralyzing gaze. It took a step towards Pinkie, and Pinkie took a step back.
"Who are you?" Pinkie asked, as her heart began to sink upon looking at this being.
The figure took another step towards Pinkie, and dissipated in a cloud of black fog.
Pinkie continued walking towards the end of the room. Step after step towards those two tools. Pinkie began to sweat as she continued walking, becoming ever closer to the end of the barn. Another gust of wind hit her, and the room began to become that much darker as she slowly approached the end of the barn.
Then, she arrived. She stared at the two tools. The sickle made sense to be in the barn, but it had a wicked aura around it. It just made Pinkie uneasy. It was a bit larger than most sickles she would have seen in farm country, but other than that, nothing strange. The shovel on the other hand didn't fit as well into its surroundings. It was a diamond shaped shovel, made of a blackish material that was mostly likely iron or something similar. Its handle was made from splintered wood, and at the end a spike. Perhaps it would have been for making small holes for seeds or something, but it still seemed out of place to her.
Pinkie paid no mind to the shovel, but she did pick the sickle up in her mouth. It was cold, far colder than she would have expected considering that it had been laying in hay. The sickle was also a bit heavier than she expected, mostly coming from the end where the blade sat there, tilted ever so slightly at an angle, staring at her.
There was something she noticed upon picking it up. She no longer smelled the odor of animals and a hard days work, but of the city. Specifically the slums, a place that she seldom goes, due to the less than acceptable conditions within it. She was just outside of a shanty town which sat there to the north, and to the south of her, an apartment. Pinkie didn't know what it was , but something compelled her into the shanty town.
Entering into it, there were many a bonfire, and ponies were wandering around. Most of them sick, and more than that starved. Mares, stallions, and foals, all of them looking as if they didn't have a meal in days. Then, the bodies. The lower district was a dangerous place, as one would expect, but it was also a place where the peace keepers didn't pay any mind. So, as a result of all that, you would find random bodies laying around the streets, in alleys, and even once there was a family of earth ponies found dead, mutilated, and raped found in a fountain. She continued walking through the streets, looking at all the ponies wandering through the ghettos, as if searching for a better life, but considering their circumstances no such life exists.
Pinkie let out a heavy sigh, before a crash, a scream, and what sounded like a steady drip. Pinkie, slowly walked into the building where the sounds were heard, and saw something that was grisly to say the least. There she was, Applejack, hung from the fan on the ceiling. A steady drip of crimson blood came from her various lacerations, one of which being on her crotch. She had only one eye, and where the other eye would have been, there was a scrunched up piece of paper. The chain was made from razer wire, and it was an anomoly that she wasn't completely decapitated by this point. As for her hooves, massive iron bolts were shoved into them, digging into bone. This was all a horrible sight, but then, Pinkie dropped on the spot, when she saw, cut into the flesh up Applejack, "Look behind you."
Quickly, Pinkie Pie looked behind to her see a familiar face, a pony for sure. It jumped at her, screaming, and just like that Pinkie was awake. Her bed was covered in sweat, and her heart was racing faster than a sonic rainboom.
"Was that?" Pinkie thought to herself as she crawled out of bed. "No, it couldn't be."
Author's Note
Welcome to a New Nightmare, I hope you enjoyed the story!