Rarity placed the last of her rolls of fabric on the shelf. With a sigh of relief she made her way to her shower. She had been working on a particularly large order and was exhausted for recent sleepless nights. She waited for the water to warm up and praised herself for finishing in time. She took her shampoo out of the cupboard and got in the shower. The warm water splashed across her face and relaxed her. Squurrr Rarity’s ears perked up at the noise. She poked her head out of the curtain and looked out to the hallway. She was the only one there. “Sweetie Belle is that you? What are you doing here?” There was no reply.
Rarity decided she must have imagined it as her horn lit up to move the shampoo through her coat. She always wondered how other ponies bathed without the use of magic, It must be difficult. Crash! A loud noise came from her boutique and this time she was sure she hadn’t imagined it. The ground slightly shook and her shower head pulsed for a moment.
Rarity turned off the shower and quickly dried off. If there was a thief in her shop she was going to stop him. She exited her bathroom and looked around. There was Nopony in the hallway. She trotted to the entrance that displayed all of her dresses. The front door was still locked as she had left it and it didn’t look like anypony broke in, except for the pile of cloth and supplies on the floor. She used magic to put them back in place and looked around. After taking a quick inventory she concluded that nothing was missing and nopony had broken in. But then what made the item fall with such a large crash?
Whatever it was it must be gone now, and nothing was missing so no harm done. But Rarity couldn’t get over the feeling in the back of her mind, the feeling that something wasn’t right. She decided to ignore it and go to bed. The clock said eleven PM and she wondered how she had still been awake after all the work she had done. She pulled the blanket up to her neck line and rolled over, away from the door.
She had to force her eyes shut, however even with how tired she was she couldn’t sleep. The door behind her seemed to taunt her, to tell her to face it and take witness to whatever it wanted.
“Rarity” Rarity bolted upright to the sound of her name. Somepony had whispered it almost inaudibly. She looked around but nopony was there. She opened her window to see if anypony was out there. The streets were bare except for a royal night guard at the end of the street on his patrol. The stars above twinkled and the moon gave the ground an eerie glow. She closed the window and climbed back in bed, her heart pounding in her chest.
“No calm down Rarity” She told herself, “there’s nothing there. It’s just your imagination from being so tired. Your mind is playing tricks on you.” She pulled the blanket up over her head and concentrated on breathing. She felt so tired but just couldn’t seem to fall asleep. Her breathing exercise continued for another hour until she finally fell into a fitful sleep.
“Stitch by stitch threading it together” Rarity sang to herself as the fabric moved through the sowing machine. However it wasn’t like any fabric she had ever sown before. But still her hooves worked nimbly because she had a job to do. Though she couldn’t remember what she was working on, but her hooves seemed to. She began to examine this fabric. It was a tanish color with what seemed to be white fur all along it. On the ends of it were what seemed to be purple rope though she couldn’t be sure. The needle of the sowing machine worked away as she fed the fabric through. Up down up down its rhythmic motion seemed hypnotic. Her hoof slipped and she put it back in place to continue sowing. But then it slipped again, and again. She looked down and saw the white furry fabric secrete a red substance. Each puncture of the needle made a new hole through which the liquid poured from. With sudden disgust Rarity realized it was blood. There was blood seeping from her fabric, and another glance over the fabric revealed that it wasn’t fabric, it was skin. Her skin. She looked down and saw her body was now red, the muscle bare and some bone showing beneath it. She screamed.
Rarity sat up again in her bed screaming. She kicked off the sheets and looked over her body, her skin was on her and everything was right, she put her hooves down on notices a wet feeling, she flipped over hoof to see the back and noticed blood. How had that happened? She got up and made her way to the bathroom to wash it off. The wound was healed but when she looked closely she saw little pinpricks. The size a needle would make. Rarity looked green and threw up in the toilet. She felt so sick and had no idea how the marks had gotten on her hoof.
After she calmed down and her pulse slew she made her way back to her room. She lay in bed with a cold sweat beading down her forehead. Whatever was happening she would deal with it in the morning.
She tried her breathing exercises again and it continued for half an hour, in and out. But she wasn’t going to fall asleep. Rarity was wide awake now.
“Rarity” She jumped out of bed and slammed her back against the wall. The voice had come from the direction of the door and in it stood one of her Mannequins. It wasn’t moving but that was the door she had come through after her trip to the bathroom and she knew it was not there when she trotted in.
She lit up her horn and picked up the Mannequin. After returning it to the shop downstairs she went back up and felt something press into her back. She turned around and saw the very Mannequin she had just placed on the other side of the room. She picked it up, backed to the far wall and sat there staring at it for about five minutes. The Mannequin had not moved. Either she was still dreaming or somepony had moved it before. She stood back up and this time backed her way up the stairs, she was not going to let somepony sneak up on her.
Once she had rounded the corner she poked her head back down, just to make sure everything was as it should be. The Mannequin was gone. This didn’t make any sense, what was going on?
“Rarity! Lets make pretty dresses!” She jumped and turned around. Right in front of her was the Mannequin. Only it now had a black hole for a mouth, the fabric looked like jagged teeth and it had empty sockets for eyes which seemed to cry blood. Rarity screamed and ran the only direction she could: into the shop downstairs. More Mannequins were down there though; they grabbed her and pulled the screaming pony into her workshop. A pair of scissors was carried over to her, they were opened and dragged across her body, she screamed louder as pain shot through her. The tools made cuts all along her body and cut under her, separating her skin from her frame. Once all of her skin was off and her blood coated the floor she was dragged over to a sowing machine, she could not have a coherent thought anymore. The pain was too great. Her hooves were put up on the machine and run through the needle, sowing her forelegs together. The Mannequins laughed at her pain and pushed her further. They forced her head down so her lip was attached to her upper legs. And it cut through her tongue and jaw. Rarity was now unable to scream, how she was even still awake she didn’t know. Was she awake? Was this all a dream? She hopped so. They unhooked her from the machine and took some fabric down from the walls, they took measurements and cut out the lengths they took. They placed it around the body and it fit her like a new skin. Several needles were taken from her pin cushion and they began so sow the cloth onto her. The fabric was blood red to begin with and but wouldn’t have mattered what color because she bled completely through it. “Oh this is no good these colors are going to run” one of them giggled.
Finally a piece was fit over her head like a mask and her face was run through the sowing machine. Pieces were fit over her eyes and mouth, her eye was pulled out with the first stab of the needle then slammed back down, stuck on it. Rarity tried to scream again but her mouth wasn’t able to rip the strip sown onto it. Finally they took a stand and impaled her midsection on it.
With Rarity taken care of the Mannequins then turned to her skin. They worked on it all night and even cut more of it apart when necessary. Finally only an hour before dawn they had finished. They placed the dress over their new “Mannequin” and placed her in the window.
The next morning:
The sun rose as usual. All was quite as the ponies slowly woke to begin their day. The night guards retired to their rooms and were replaced by Celestia’s guard. And that whole day the talk of the town, was the beautiful new dress in the window of carousel boutique, a lovely white dress with a purple trim on a red Mannequin. But it would never be warn because Rarity was nowhere to be found.
