We grew up in Ponyville so we’ve always been used to its quirks—strange things have been known to happen around here. Some of these were kind of a big deal—Princess Twilight and the Elements of Harmony dealing with the return of Nightmare Moon, an infestation of parasprites, Tirek’s attack, and the strangest thing of all: Discord himself. But beyond these are the small mysteries, like of ponies you see one day and then never again, or those stories you hear about creepy critters that come in the night and suck out your brains.
But what we really want to tell you about right now is this toy store. Having grown up in the town, having trotted down Main Street with our sisters between the shops and stalls of the market and the hustle-bustle of the ponies of this town, we're very familiar with the place. You probably wouldn’t notice it if you weren’t specifically looking for it; there’s no flashy sign on the sidewalk or on the red fabric awning above to try and lure people in to buy stuff. The only sign is painted in red, flowing cursive script on the windows: “Clockwork’s Toys”. But you know this, don’t you?
Every so often, if our parents or sisters who were with us would allow, we’d press our muzzles up to the windows and try not to let the glass fog up too much as we looked inside. Shelves in the back held board games with mysterious titles like Ponydemic and Arkhorse Horror, whose boxes were painted with rich portraits of dorky scientists and vicious monsters. Hoof-stitched dolls with brilliant, lifelike manes and pony figurines with intricately-detailed faces were laid out on display up front, posed in scenes of domestic life that, while boring, made us wish we could free them and take them on our adventures to find our cutie marks. There was one puzzle on a shelf in the centre that always drew our attention with a particularly interesting painting of Canterlot Castle and a roaring waterfall alongside. And, along with these toys we could see, there were plenty more unlabelled brown cardboard boxes whose contents we could only guess at.
Because, as we’re sure you already know, the toy store is never open. Not in thirteen years of living in this town, passing by the shop fairly regularly, were the lights ever on. The door was never unlocked. And there are no hours posted in the door or windows like in other stores; it doesn’t even have an open sign, plastic or neon. The place looks deserted, and it wouldn't have been surprising if it had been. This in and of itself would have been creepy; however, in Ponyville, it wasn’t too unusual to see a store that looked like it almost was in business, if not for the fact that there was no-one there to run it anymore. We’re sure they’ve become even more common since then.
But there was something about Clockwork’s Toys that always set it apart from those other stores, and it wasn’t just its unique and tantalising merchandise. While those other stores just sat there, gathering dust or getting boarded up or eventually being replaced by new shops, Clockwork’s Toys was different in that there never were the same toys inside it for very long. The process was slow, sure, but older toys would eventually disappear and get replaced by new ones. It took years for us to notice; really, it started with that puzzle with the painting of Canterlot Castle, which one day was just no longer there. There was no mistaking it; this puzzle which we had been looking at for years was gone. Vanished. Even though nopony ever went in the shop. After that, it was pretty easy to see where old stock was disappearing and the new toys were coming in.
And, of course, that wouldn’t have been weird if the store were an actual business where folks would go in and buy what they were selling. But the door remained closed and locked—still is, as a matter of fact—and we never saw anyone in the store. When we asked our parents or sisters about it, they told us that it wasn't something we should worry about, that it must just be a showroom for specialty toys that you could order in a catalogue. The next few days after that we spent looking for such a catalogue, doing some research in the library and at the city hall—but to no avail. Sure, the explanation seemed reasonable enough, but the fact that we couldn’t find anything about it started to creep us out.
After that, though, our parents and sisters seemed to avoid taking us by there, even going so far as to take alternate routes to the market. We were left with no choice but to walk down to the store ourselves, meeting ourselves at our houses and then we’d all three make the trip, chatting and giggling the whole way. That was the summer after we got our cutie marks, so we didn’t have any cutie mark crusading to occupy our time; instead, we spent hours on end just staring in the window and even drawing pictures so we could be sure we weren’t losing our minds when we saw that stuff disappeared.
It was on one of these trips that we noticed that there was a back door to the shop, next to a dumpster behind the line of stores. We could hardly stop shaking with excitement as we reached out to the handle and gave it a wiggle; however, that door was disappointingly as locked as the one in front. When we checked the dumpster for clues, we fell into the piles of empty glass quill bottles—presumably from nearby Quills and Sofas—with a loud crash, though miraculously none of them broke. We all did our best to try and scramble out of the dumpster as fast as we could, while pushing each other down at the same time to prevent escape. It was all in good spirits, of course, as is the way of summer.
School started up again soon enough, and with it came homework and, much to our chagrin, fewer opportunities to hang out or to visit the store. A few weeks after it started, though, it was Sweetie Belle’s birthday so we had a sleepover on that Friday night at Carousel Boutique, with just us three. We did all the standard birthday stuff—we gave Sweetie Belle presents, we ate cake and ice cream—and then we played some games. Two intense rounds of Jenga were followed by a sleepy round of Monopoly and then, to top it off because somehow we weren’t tired, we broke out the Twister in the back room where we were going to sleep.
Once we finished and got our teeth brushed and pajamas on, we settled down in our sleeping bags on the floor—it was only fair for none of us to sleep on the bed, of course. In the dark, we asked ourselves “Truth or dare?” and giggled when “Truth” was the reply.
We asked questions about crushes, which elicited some blushes and some unexpected names that were followed by endless amounts of teasing. We dared ourselves to run upstairs and back down without being seen by Rarity, which thankfully didn’t end in any shouting from the mare who somehow stayed asleep through all the noise we made. And, of course, we did all the other silly things that fillies our age ask and demand in that game.
But then, just after midnight, Scootaloo dared Apple Bloom to do something more serious; she dared her to try to get into the toy store. No, not to break in—just to see if there was any sign of activity or anything. We had never been by there in the night before, and we shuddered; we were scared, but excited. In just a few moments, we had already slipped out of the fuzzy sleeping bags, and were making our way in the dark over to the window. Scootaloo said we were glad we were on the first floor as we slid the window upwards and jumped out with a loud plop on the ground outside. We remember it was a cold night in that beginning of the autumn; we remember standing there shivering, waiting for Sweetie Belle to jump out the window or be left behind on her own birthday (even if we were quick to remind her that technically, her birthday had already passed). Once all three of us were outside, we scrambled across the yard until we reached the road.
From there, it was just a short ten blocks to get to the block where Clockwork’s Toys lay. We ran as fast as we could through the dark from streetlight to streetlight, heads spinning all around to make sure nopony could sneak up on us. It was terrifying running through the dark; we were so convinced that we were going to get caught by the police or somepony that we knew. The latter would probably have been worse, actually—what if Rainbow Dash had been prowling the streets and came across us sneaking out? She didn’t, though. In fact, the whole town was unusually quiet, even for the nighttime, but we hardly noticed over the excitement of it all.
When we got to 3rd Street, we turned left and continued until we got to Clockwork’s. No matter how far we walked, not a single pony was in sight, and there were hardly any lights on even in the houses. We were pretty sure we'd never been out here at this time of night before; our hearts beat wild and fast in our chests as we ran, hoping that our luck would continue. When we reached Clockwork’s Toys and skidded to a halt on the road, we weren’t surprised to see that it looked as it always did, albeit shrouded even more in darkness.
We unfogged patches of the window with our hooves and put our muzzles up to the cold glass but we could barely make anything out in the dark besides the general shape of the shelves and maybe a miniature pony here and there. We even tried the front door, but, as ever, it didn't budge. We sat on the cold concrete of the sidewalk, leaning against the door, and looked out on the town around us. The streetlights were few and far between, so there were large patches in front of us where we couldn’t see anything. We squeezed our bodies tighter, as if that closeness would protect us from some unseen threat out in the dark.
At some point, we suggested to ourselves that we should try the door around back. We didn’t want to go because if it was scary in front of the store, it would be a hell of a lot scarier behind it, and it probably wouldn’t even be unlocked, anyway. But we were left with little choice when Scootaloo, feeling nervous and impulsive, ran around the building and the rest of us didn’t want to be left alone. It was so very dark back there; we could barely see a thing in the shadow of the building. But we groped around with our hooves until we found the horizontal handle to the back door.
To our surprise, it went down at our push. We pulled on the door and it opened; quickly, we slipped inside and shut it behind us with a soft click.
Our hearts pumped harder and faster in our chests as we walked down the aisle in the back. We knew that to our sides lay shelves with puzzles and board games on them, but we only knew this from memory; it was much too dark to see anything. We kept walking until we emerged from that back aisle and had reached the centre of the store where there was a little more light filtering in through the front window. Finally, we were directly on the other side of that window that we’d spent so much time looking through. It was incredibly surreal to look out on the darkened street from outside, where we could see the same dark shapes of buildings we had just been walking amongst.
We approached the display on the windowsill cautiously, inspecting the small figurines that stood in a row. Then, turning around, we faced the table in the centre of the room, the one that had always had the most prominent display. Over the years we had seen many different things occupy this space—board games with mysterious titles, large stuffed penguins, a squadron of green plastic army ponies—but in that moment it lay empty. The mixture of blue moonlight and yellow light from the streetlamps illuminated the bare spot on the table. The wood grain looked weathered and old, nearly beaten away by time.
It was then that we heard the sound of the door swinging open behind us, confirmed by the little tinkle of the bell as the door brushed past it. We froze. We wanted to move, we swear, but we couldn’t—our legs wouldn’t budge. We stood there helpless as we heard the click of the light switch and the room flooded with bright white. Something about the light let us move again, but all we thought to do was to turn around and all we saw was the shape of a pony before it all went black.
“And then what happened?” you ask. You’re leaning with your hooves against the table, peering down so that you’re eye to eye with our miniature form in the dark. You brush one of your chocolate-brown bangs out of the way and then squint your eyes. As you see us more closely, though, your features curl up in disgust. “What even are you?”
“We don't know what happened,” we answer. “All we know is that we’re together and that we've been here ever since.”
“But you look so weird!” you exclaim, standing up. “You look like someone took three action figures and melted them together!”
We sigh. “Then that's probably what we are.”
“Is there anything I can do to help?” you ask, looking down at us. “I could get you out of here. I’ve been comin’ by here all my life—I know what the displays look like so maybe I can reorganise it and the owner won’t know you’re gone…”
“No, he’d notice. It’s been done before.” We looked over to a shelf to our left where a raggedy purple doll sat limp. “It’s fine, kid—we’re gonna be fine. You should just get yourself out of here while you still can.”
“I can’t just leave you…”
As you let your sentence trail off, we see the dark silhouette of somepony in the window. The door is pushed inwards, towards us, and the little bell rings.
“Get out! Now!” we bark, but it's too late. You’re already frozen there, just as we were so many years ago in that exact same spot, just as everypony before you has been and just as everypony after you will be. The light switch clicks on, flooding the room with bright white light. You turn around and fall to the ground. The last thing you see is the glasses-clad face of Mr. Clockwork who has just walked through the door, grinning. His scraggly white beard covers his entire chin and even though his face has become more wrinkled and weathered over the years, it’s still the same stallion we’ve known all these years.
Mr. Clockwork bends down to take hold of your body, slinging it over his shoulder. “Good work,” he says to us.
Frowning, we nonetheless angle our hooves back into position lest we once more face the consequences. We stand there silently, immobile, as Mr. Clockwork disappears from sight.
