Applejack Scares the $#!& out of Everypony

“And that’s the end of the story,” Applejack said proudly, reverting back to her normal cheerful voice after having conveyed her story in the scariest and creepiest voice she could imagine herself producing. As she glanced around the barn, she realized she had made a grievous mistake by sharing the story with her friends.

Fluttershy was trembling, looking completely confused and terrified. Tears welled in her eyes. She was not the only one. Pinkie burst into desperate tears and clung to the distraught pegasus, sobbing vociferously. A white unicorn lay motionless on the straw strewn floor, having fainted away cold at the absolute horror of Applejack’s story. A look of bitter disgust and loathing was plain on Twilight’s face as she glared silently at her storyteller friend.

“I, I uh…” Applejack stammered, hoping to find the words necessary to turn the situation around. “I guess somepony else can have their turn ta tell a scary story now.”

“That does it! This party is over. Way to take things too far, AJ,” Rainbow Dash raged, her voice full of revulsion. She sent the air in the barn churning with a few flaps from her strong wings, became airborne, and shot out through the open barn door into the night sky. Fluttershy and Pinkie galloped after her, still wailing and sobbing.

“I hope you’re happy with yourself,” Twilight said bitterly as she knelt down to see if the fall had hurt Rarity when she had fainted.

“Oh for Pete’s sake, Twilight. I was just kiddin' around. It was just a silly story. I didn’t mean nothin’ by it. I’m truly sorry about all this.”

The anger eased from Twilight’s face a bit as she levitated the unconscious Rarity onto a bale of hay. Twilight was still clearly not ready to forgive Applejack for her performance. “You just had to go and try to outdo us all, didn’t you?”

“Hey, Rainbow’s story was pretty darn spooky. It really gave me the jitters, so, when y’all chose me ta tell the next one, the competitive part of me wanted ta give y’all something truly scary ta remember. I can’t apologize enough, Twilight, I really can’t. I shoulda thought better of it. You and Dash might be up for hearin’ something of that order, but I shoulda kept in mind that Fluttershy and the others are a bit more sensitive. Can ya ever forgive me, Twilight? I still want us ta be friends.”

The purple unicorn found the telling of such an offensive story almost unforgivable, but she considered how magical her time with Applejack and the others had been since she arrived in Ponyville. She realized then that she could not let a little thing like this, however disturbing it was, derail her friendship with such a dear friend.

Twilight shed a tear, not entirely knowing if it was sentimental or simply the shock of Applejack’s horror story finally catching up with her. “We’ve got to make this right,” she said, looking her conscious friend in the eye. “We can’t just pretend like this night didn’t happen. You need to go and apologize to the others and, in the meantime, help me with Rarity. I’ll carry her home, but using magic isn’t as physically easy is it looks. I’ll need you to carry her the rest of the way if I get tired.”

Applejack nodded in agreement and followed Twilight and the magically suspended Rarity out into the night.

“What say we stop by Fluttershy’s cottage before we head inta town. It ain’t too far out of the way. She’s probably the one I need to apologize to the most. Her poor little ears probably haven’t ever come close to hearin’ such things before.”

***

Fluttershy looked at her tear stricken face in the mirror. She was a mess, her hair disheveled and her body muddy from a puddle she had blindly tumbled into during her mad dash home. Almost constantly she glanced around the house for any sign of danger. She had turned on every light and ushered all of her pets into the basement as soon as she had arrived home. As she fearfully surveyed the room, her heart racing, she noticed something that made an already horrible night far worse.

There, just on the other side of the window pane, Rarity’s corpse floated eerily in the night breeze. The creature floated out of sight and a knock came at the door. Fluttershy’s mind raced. For once in her life she wished she had a weapon in her home.

An unexpected voice came at the door. “Hey, Fluttershy, it’s me, Applejack. I just came by to apologize for givin’ ya such a fright. I’m really sorry. I wish I hadn’t gotten so carried away describing all the fine details.”

“You can’t come in!” Fluttershy shrieked, picking up a wooden table chair and brandishing it as a weapon should zombie Rarity at any moment burst into the room.

A different creature burst into the room instead. It was Twilight appearing in a flash of sparkling purple, only to be immediately walloped over the head by a chair. Fortunately, Fluttershy’s muscles were so weak, even with the adrenaline coursing through her body, that Twilight was not injured. It still hurt pretty badly and caused considerable damaged to the chair.

Outside, the floating Rarity plunged to the ground as the magical aura of Twilight’s spell disappeared from her. Her limp form tumbled down into a muddy ditch near the cottage. This caused her to wake up with a start.

Applejack scrambled over to rescue Rarity. Just as she leaned over to help pull her friend out of the mud, lightning flashed overhead. The dark silhouette of Applejack against the ghastly night sky caused Rarity to scream in terror.

“What is going on out there?” called Twilight.

“What's goin' on in there?” Applejack called back. “I heard a crash.”

“Oh thank goodness it’s you!” Rarity breathed a sigh of relief as she extracted herself from the ditch.

Twilight opened the cottage door, casting a bright field of light over the front yard. “Get inside, it’s starting to rain.” Her two friends wasted no time in heeding this order. However, when they closed the door behind them, a draft of cold air continued blowing throughout the house. Twilight spotted Fluttershy dart furtively out the open back window.

“Fluttershy, where in the hay are you off ta?” Applejack yelled after her.

Twilight galloped up to the window, but could not make out where her friend had disappeared to in the night. “You’ll have to apologize to later,” she said to Applejack as she closed the window.

Rarity looked astounded and disoriented as she walked into the middle of the room, tracking mud on the clean floor. “How on earth did we arrive here? And, Twilight, why is there a damaged chair with some of your hair wrapped around it?”

This caused Twilight to remember the throbbing pain in her head and shoulders. “Uh, Fluttershy hit me with the chair.”

“Well that’s just utterly barbaric!” Rarity said dramatically as she threw herself on a sofa, unknowingly getting mud all over it. “I must say, Applejack, your horrid little story has driven Fluttershy out of her mind.”

“You weren’t even conscious for the really bad part of it,” Twilight grumbled.

“Well, I reckon now is as good a time as any ta apologize for all that. I’m sorry I had ta go and tell such an awful creepy story.”

“As you should be. That was the most uncouth, disgusting story I have ever had the misfortune to hear. Of all the worst possible things you could imagine to tell us about, you picked the worst possible one. Your mind is far darker and more psychotic than I could have possibly imagined. Applejack, after all this time we’ve known each other, I never could have dreamed that you were capable of being so terrible-”

“You about done now?” Applejack asked, cutting short Rarity’s overly dramatic tirade.

“Oh, I haven’t even started yet. You are beyond a doubt the-”

“I said I was sorry. Can’t ya look inside yourself and find the generosity to forgive me, even though I was bein’ so foolish?”

Rarity looked annoyed, but dropped the harshness in her voice. “I was planning on forgiving you; I just wanted to chew you out some more.”

“We don’t have time for that now,” said Twilight. “We’ve got to find the others and clear things up. Nopony is going to be able to sleep tonight with that story in their heads. We’ve got to stick together and comfort each other.”

“Well, we don’t know where Fluttershy is, so we would be best served to wait for her until she returns,” Rarity reasoned.

“Why do ya think she’ll come back? Between the three of us, we musta scared the livin' daylights outta her.”

Rarity smiled. “She’ll feel bad for assaulting Twilight and force herself to come back and apologize, even if she’s scared half to death.” After saying this, she realized how much mud she had smeared on the sofa and floor. This caused her to frown.

“We’d best re-beautify this place while we wait,” she said. I’ll start by cleaning myself. With this, the white unicorn disappeared into the bathroom and was heard happily bathing while Twilight and Applejack put the room back in order.

***

Just as Rarity predicted, Fluttershy returned, but she brought reinforcements. Pinkie and Rainbow Dash burst through the front door, ready to take on the world.

“Where is Zombie Rarity?” Pinkie demanded. She maintained a stern countenance while jumping back and forth on her hind legs, throwing punches at the air for practice.

“Zombie Rarity is in the bathtub,” Applejack chuckled as she finished mending the chair Fluttershy had broken over Twilight’s head.

Pinkie stopped abruptly and stared hard at Applejack. “Why would zombies want to take baths? I thought they liked being dirty.”

“Give me a break,” said Rainbow Dash. “There’s no such thing as a zombie. It's all safe, Fluttershy,” she called.

Fluttershy walked into the room tentatively. Her mane was soaked from the rain and she looked exhausted. “I’m sorry for hitting you with the chair, Twilight. I was so scared, I didn’t know what I was doing.”

“That’s alright,” said Twilight, still cleaning the floor with a magically suspended mop. “I shouldn’t have teleported into your home like that. I was just in a hurry because I wanted to help Applejack apologize to you all for her story.”

Fluttershy turned to Applejack. “Oh, um, I’d like to apologize to you too. I was behaving like a big baby when you told that spooky story. This is all my fault.”

Applejack shook her head. “I beg ta differ. I was way over the line on this one. Now that y’all are here, except Rarity o’course, I’d like to make it clear ta y’all that I did not intend for the story ta get so gruesome and sadistic like it did. I just kind of got carried away on account of I wanted to tell a scarier story than Rainbow here.”

“Oh, I’ve got scarier stories,” bragged Rainbow Dash. “I could make what you told us look tame in comparison.”

“Let us say that we don’t do that,” Rarity suggested as she came into the room, wearing Fluttershy’s favorite bathrobe.

“Hi there, Rarity, nice of ya ta join us,” Applejack greeted her. “Well, now as we’re actually all here, I’d just like to say that I’m terribly sorry for wreckin’ up the whole evening for everypony.”

“Maybe someday we’ll be able to look back on all this and laugh,” Pinkie suggested.

“I don’t know. I think I’m going to be haunted by those images you described for quite some time,” Twilight said to Applejack.

Pinkie smiled as an idea struck her. “Hey, how about we all tell stories that aren’t full of nasty horribleness,” she said, jumping up and down excitedly. “I’ll start. I’ve got a good one; it’s about how Equestria was made.”