Blue Frosting

"Good bye, Princess Pinkamena. The Party Ponies will be lonely until you return," replied Apple Bloom in a montone that suggested she had recited it dozens of times before. But this would be the last time.

"Princess?" pleaded Apple Bloom, "The Party Ponies have been your friends for so long and had so so much fun playing with you. Could we ask one little favor?

"What is it?" asked Pikie, annoyed that her prisoner was changing the script without permission.

"We get cold at night. It would stop the draft if you could move that barrel in front of the red boxes. That way all your Party Ponies could sleep at night. Please? Please, please, please? We promise we won't ever ask for anything again."

Begrudingly, her captor agreed, and shouldered the barrel into position. Then the insane mare skipped up the stairs and locked the cellar door. The little filly exhaled a long sigh, half of relief and half quiet resignation.

She had lied. She did not get cold at night. Her tormentor's drug-damaged brain did not see was that the barrel was part of a series of steps up to the shelves at the back of the cellar. Although it was hard to be certain in the dim light, it looked like the key to her escape was stored in several large glass jars on the top shelf.

It about ten minutes for her to push the last piece of the stairway, a large wooden crate, against the barrel. She rested for several minutes, took a drink from her dirty, foul-smelling water bucket, and then started up. It took several tries with her bad leg, but she was able get onto the barrel. From there she clambered up on top of the boxes. From there she was within an leg length of three bottles labeled tile cleaner. Just as she stretched out to reach them, the chain when taut. "No!" she cried out. "No! Not now. Not this close!" She stretched out farther, but at that moment her bad leg buckled and legs flailing, and she hit the hard packed floor with a thud. She didn't yell out, but she gave herself a good ten-minute cry before getting up and trying again. This time, she found a cracked broomhandle she could use as an extension. Holding the stick in her mouth, she hooked one, two, then three bottles and sent them crashing to the ground, making a large, irregular puddle abutting the red boxes and the shelves.

Apple Bloom clambered down and went to the cellar wall. She removed the loose rock known only to her. Behind it was her most prized posession, the one Pinkie would most certainly confiscate: a match. The filly walked to the edge of the fluid and struck the match. She stared at it for a few seconds and dropped it.

The room was bathed in a fireball of light. Apple Bloom's muzzle was scorched and everything smelled like burnt pony, but there never a time in her short life that she happier than right now. A lake of fire raged in the cellar, tongues of flame licking at the shelves and support columns. Checking to make sure her chain wasn't fouled, she strode into the wall of beautiful orange and yellow lights.

She screamed, just a little, before she found peace.