Chapters A Nightmare On Canterlot High.
Author's Note
In memory of Wes Craven.1939-2015
It followed her...
Princess Luna Adjusted the straps on her armor and prepared herself one final time. It was the dead of night in The Crystal Empire castle she, her sister, and the recently corronated Princess Twilight had been spending the night at. She hadn't told anypony else this, but she had been spending her nights at the castle...fighting something. Something even she could not truly understand, at first she believed that remnants of her persona as Nightmare moon had survived and was causing a series of disturbances in the miasma of her dreams. As she could hear the cries of fillies and colt crying in their sleep from something that she could only feel was pure, raw fear. Luna had gone into the dreams several times as the other princesses slept and she had done her best to scare away the entity that was frightening them...but it was one fateful when she realized it wasn't Nightmare Moon at work. Nightmare Moon only desired power and to rule an eternal night, but even she never did what she saw this...thing do.
It had been one night on the dreamstride when she galloped to heed the cries of a little colt in his bed. The colt dreamed that some horrible monster was after him, chasing him in the depths of the Everfree Forest. Not something uncommon for the little children who have bad dreams to feel. He was a young little tan colt with a sandy mane, still a blank flank but he seemed to be on the verge of his special talent. Maybe he could have been an Ice Cream maker bringing sweet treats to ponies in his village every summer, maybe he could have been Hoofball star that his parents would be sheading tears of joy at a championship, or maybe even a teacher molding the minds of the next generation of ponies for years to come.
He would be none of those things, ever. When princess Luna found the little tan colt in the Dreamstride, she was too late. What she saw this entity do to someone so young, so full of potential, and so innocent. Was enough to sicken and enrage her to wear she had a new set of armor made in her hunt for this beast, which she would slay a thousand times over and send to the darkest depths of Tarrus. For she had found the colt...dead.
He lay in the woods of the dreamstride with his neck chewed open viciously, the colt's blood seeped into the dirt of the Everfree as in reality it was staining the sheets of his bed. The princess's eyes went wide with shock as she stood over him and placed a hoof on his forehead lovingly. Her horn glowing with magic. Though only to comfort the dying soul of the colt and clean him from the state he was in. Whatever had done this had done with savage brutality and no regard for him being so young. Only a creature with no soul of any white light in it, a soul at all, could have done this to a little one. His once vibrant and youthfully hopeful eyes had gone frozen in fear, the expression was not that of a little colt's, his coat had been sticky and matted with the crust of dried blood that had sprayed all over him and the surrounding area, which equated to all over his bed room in the real world. and his muzzle was post mortiumly locked in a shriek of terror. As Luna slammed her hooves into the ground crying and feeling as if she had failed in her duties as the princess of the night, she could swear she heard...laughing, coming from the trees.
Now Luna stood in her armor and it was the night The Element Bearers were visiting the castle, she hadn't the heart to trouble them to help her with this. This was something she had to do on her own. That creature had done something so heinous and repulsive, yet Twilight had dealt with mischievous Demi-Gods, and her when she was still her Nightmare Moon self. Such was not something the little one should ever be troubled with, it would be something she'd destroy on her own. Luna stood in the hallway of the castle, having just finally gotten this creature out of the dream stride, it stood before her a, a creature of its nature could only manifest itself as a swirling mass of darkness, emptiness shrouded in pure evil. Like a cloud of smoke with tentacles and eyes staring at the night princess. "You...You've committed a crime that has left a family to bury their son, you are a despicable thing that must be destroyed, have you any last words?" She said as she raised the lance in her shoulder rig her species used in place of hands to wield weapons. She watched as black bothces dripped onto the tiles, remmants of a wound she infliced with her horn on this wreatched thing. Only one thing was left to do, Luna raised her lance poised to kill...
"Stop THIEF!" Twilight Sparkle shouted as the pony who had stolen her crown, the element of magic, galloped past her with her crown in her side bag. Sunset Shimmer Smiled as she looked into the bag at what she perfecevied to be her birthright. To be a princess beside the great Princess Celestia. Sunset took off as Twilight was hot on her hooves, neither mare knew just what lay ahead for them both. As she ran down the hall to the portal she once used to run away from this world. She didn't see the mass of energy that hitched a ride in her bag. Nor did she pay any mind to seeing Princess Luna, "Princess Luna! Stop her!" Twilight was coming! She used her magic to make her armor be camouflaged as a nightgown, and turned to face the purple mare and do her best to give the illusion she was merely responding to the noise.
"Oh my, Twilight! What in Atherius' name is going on here?" Luna asked Twilight as she looked around for the entity, and was cursing herself for not finishing it sooner.
"That pony! She's stolen my crown, we have to stop her!" Twilight said galloping after the thief, night thieves where one thing, but the destruction of that monster was another. Luna swallowed her pride and followed Twilight in the chase.
It didn't know who this pony was as It sat in her saddle bags, nor did It care, It had felt the dream protector's magic pierce It to the core, and now It was "dying." Its energy had been sapped by her strike and It could feel itself wasting away, but if It could only rest as a shadow in this pony's bag and recover, then It could fight again. To feed on the dreams of sleeping young ponies, then once It got strong enough, those little ponies themselves. Its only drive to spread fear and feed on them; flesh, blood and evenetualy soul. That little colt had been saved by his precious princess just in time, She guided his soul to a better plain of existance and away from Its hunger. Denied by her, It swore vengence on the Princess, but now as It sat beside the crown in Sunset Shimmer's bag, It wanted to sleep..to rest...to.....DREAM.
"UH I always hate going through that thing!" Sunset Shimmer said aloud as she landed in front of Canterlot High. It was the dead of night and she had returned with the true Element Of Magic. Sunset got on her feet and took both the crown and a stolen set of keys to the school from her bag. "Now to put this in the school and be princess of the Fall Formal as I always have been." She said this making her way up the stairs to the school building, and we must take our leave of Sunset Shimmer for now. As her story has been told by other hands, interpreted by eyes who have seen and unseen it, and this tale is not a total retelling of the Story of Sunset Shimmer of the rise of Equestrian magic in this world. On the night as she went to switch the fall formal crowns, As three girls who had been once like the entity, a force in Equestria of power and evil, who would have their own downfall and in this rendition of her world redemption and revival. As Crystal Prep slept dreaming of victory in the Friendship games, and (again in this rendition of their mythos) eventual transfer from that School to Canterlot high. The entity made its way silently across the dark city streets. Hiding disguised among the shaodws of the dark night.
Already It could feel that there was no matron of sleep to protect them here, could already feel that there was only so much equestrian magic, but that magic would grow and when it does, It would come back. It needed a place to sleep, to slumber and wait for the time to return and strike fear and terror into the little ones...though that sunset girl was pretty tasty too. her species...it seemed to get more flavor as they shifted into this new form.
The lights shinned on the marquee of the Plaza theather, the white backing with letters that advertised both the blockbusters and the special events for years it had been open, flickered and advertised a special night in the theather. The black block letters meant little to the entity as it blended into the shadow of a patron cast on the cement of the sidewalk as he bought his ticket. A young man with Creamy white skin and turqouse hair as he walked up to the box office As Sham Rock sold tickets on her shift. "One for the screenings of Nightmare On Elm Street and New Nightmare tonight please Sham." He said handing her the seven dollars for the ticket she printed for him and handed with a smile.
"Enjoy the show handsome." She said with girlish giggle and flip of her straw hat.
"I will so long as you stay pretty." He said as he headed to take his seat, unaware of the thing latched onto his shadow. When it finally felt safe under the dark seats of the main auditorium, It finally settled in to watch the strange creatures performace, mlike a pony play...only contained on a single window that showed the whole spectacle from another window as the spectators watched. I will not go into detail the story Wes Craven told with his film New Nightmare or its precursor Nightmare On Elm Street. I trust you have discovered one; the other, or both for yourself. If you have not, then I leave you to see the genius in their makings for yourself in whatever way you can. I will say though that as The Entity watched the story unfold, it took in the way these...other ponies, or whatever they were. Reacting in...horror at what they witnessed. People like to laugh, and to be moved to tears, and even be scared. It noticed that as much as they seemed to like being scared, the thing on the movie screen with those sharp hands, horribly ugly missing chunks of flesh and sadistic joy as it took lives, was making them...afraid. fear, its food! The entity knew just what it would do when the time came to reemerge and the form it would use to fulfill its purpose.
A Nightmare On Canterlot High.
One final Idealic Summer Afternoon
Author's Note
"Sleep the little slices of death...How I loathe it!" Edgar Allen Poe. Circa 1830's.
"See You next time Kiddies! Pleasant screams!" The Crypt Keeper. Circa 1989.
One final Idealic Summer Afternoon
Sunset Shimmer looked out onto the smooth placid surface of the lake, The entire Canterlot High school and a few of the middle schoolers Apple Bloom, Sweetie Belle, and Scootoloo, had all gone for the last two weeks of summer to a Camp, The Kids of Camp Lackawanna had just left when they arrived to use for the last two weeks of summer vacation, and for many; including Sunset, it had been the best time of their lives. Sunset looked around at the familiar faces she had grown so accustomed to for so long. The Dazzlings, now fully accepted into the Canterlot High family, sat on a floating raft taking in a few last rays of sunshine. Aria, Sonata, and Adagio lay sunbathing on the raft in their swimsuits. Content smiles on their faces as their boyfriend John Sweetstuff watched them sleep from the lifeguard chair that had been propped on the raft. A loving gaze in his eyes as he watched his loves sleep. Apple bloom jumped a skip rope as Silver Spoon and Diamond Tiara held and swung the ends, Twist, Sweetie, and a few other of the younger kids waiting their turns behind them. Though to be fair the Silver and Diamond of this world hadn't always been the brats their pony selves USED to be.
Spitfire and the Wondercolts and The former ShadowBolts played a game of Soccer on the grass behind the summer camp cabin they were all staying in. Neither team had felt any malice or over comptetive spirt as they played, archaic ideals of wining being the ONLY thing that mattetred, that the winners are supperor and losers inferior stripped away and replaced by that all too familiar equestrian magic...the best one of all, Friendship.
"Enjoying the view?" A familiar voice said to her as she turned to see a blue haired tan boy looking at her with a warm smile as he strummed away on an acoustic guitar, Flash.
"Yeah," Sunset said as she smiled softly and sat down on the lake's dock. He took a seat beside her and continued to strum. "It finally feels like...home. Like everyone is finally getting along and we've all united under the power of Equestria's magic." She said as she watched Gilda Griffin and her boyfriend Peter Page turner break out the wooden swords for a sparring session. "Oh Celestia, those two are going to break each other's noses someday with those things." She said blushing as she placed her hand on her mouth to surpress a blush.
"He's gotten really good, Gilda says. lost a lot of weight too. should look good when we graduate." Flash said as he began to play a few notes of Michael row the boat ashore.
"IF we ever graduate." She said, even though she really wouldn't have it anyother way, she knew why things seemed like some old Archie funny pr the eternal timeline of "The Simpsons." She had vowed to never reveal why though.
"What?" Flash said as she had made her colorful little comment under her breath and mumbled.
"Nothing...nothing at all Flash...So...you ready to go back to school?" She asked as he strummed.
"Yeah, Too be honest I kinda though most of us would be too old for this summer camp thing, but seeing us here, having fun, making memories, it just...It gets me right here you know?" He said placing a hand on his chest. "It's like...when you watch The Lion King for the first time as a kid, or ride a bike down a steep hill, with only the wind rushing by as you do. It's like a painting that captures life when it's so perfect you just want to jump in and live inside it. He said as Sunset leand softly onto his side.
"Can I tell you something?" She asked as she felt his hand running through her long red and yellow soft hair.
"Anything Sunset, what is it?" Flash said as she relaxed and took a moment to look again and see Soarin and Neon, a WonderColt and a Shadowbolt, clinking bottle of Applejack's home brewed, home bottled cider together and toasting as they floated in the lake water on inner tubes.
"I had a dream our first night here. It was...strange." She said as Soarin chuckled and shot a squirt of water from a little Water gun at Lightning Dust, the boys got a good laugh at it but She only smirked as she pulled a heavy duty Super Soaker from the pool toys stacked on the dock and pumped it.
"Oh Shit!" Soarin shouted as he dived from his tube into the lake just as Lightning's jets sent the tube shooting like a rocket across the surface.
"I'm gonna get you for that Soarin you chicken!" Lightning Dust shouted as she watched the surface for him to surface. Meanwhile Flash continued gently stoke and pet Sunset like the pony she truly was deep down.
"Anyway...I dreamed I was outside in the middle of the night, and all around the campground...there were...these...oh I can't!" She said with a soft cry as the memory of her bad dream came back to her.
"What happened? Talking about it will make you feel better babe." He said as he began to use his guitar to play her favorite song, The Beatles hit 'All you need is love.' She relaxed at the tone and the memory became less painful to convey.
"Well..,the camp grounds,,,became the school, by the statue of the Wondercolt, the old one. There were these...black bags all around the school, and I know what they were."
"Body bags right?" He said as he stopped strumming and hugged her close, so close he could hear her heart racing in her chest like like a bird trapped in a cat's paw. "Did you open them?"
"Forget it...It was just a dream, that's all it was...dreams can't hurt you Flash; not here, not like they could in my old world." Though she said that last part so quietly he couldn't hear it. They watched as Lyra Heartstrings, Bon Bon and Eric Inkpot fed each other from a carton of vanilla Gelato. Lyra giggled softly as Eric licked a bit of the vanilla treat from her nose. Bon Bon mimicked him by licking a bit she deliberately dabbed on his cheek.
Across the camp grounds, Micro Chip, Starlight Glimmer, Adam Link, Bright Idea, Norman, and Ms. Chrysalis where seated at a picnic table, a game of risk underway. Starlight and MS. Chrysalis working as a team with Russia as their starting country, Micro man and the boys as the U.S. of A.
"You fools! I was expecting more troops! Australia is ours Ms. Chrysalis!" Starlight said with glee as she readied the roll of the dice. Ms. Chysalis chuckled softly and reasured the boys of Starlight's only having too much fun with the game.
"It's Okay boys, she'll calm down soon enough. She said as she twirled a lock of her stringy sea-foam green hair.
"My troops aren't going to hold back ladies. For glory and conquest!" Bright Said with a cheer.
"Imperialist pi....Oh sorry I just don't know what got into me..heheh." Starlight said blushing and giggling as she sat back down and resumed the game much calmer and more level headed.
"REmind never to play D&D with her..escpecially if she wants to be dungeon master." Bright Whispered to Micro.
"I hear that man, I'd be more than happy and down with having a girl play some D&D, but she scares me when we play checkers together." Micro whispered back with a shiver running down his spine.
"You done yet Dante?" Indigo Zap asked as she sat in a lawn chair on the grass as her boyfriend Dante Brushstrokes (real honest to Celestia name no lie) dipped his watercolor brush in the pastel and put the final touches on his girlfriend's electric blue hair. He had long abandoned that stupid red hoodie and trashy grungy style. Now he had a red polo and white dress pants, a School WonderColts cap on his head. He still favored the color red for his torso clothes, but at least now he dressed more dignified than before.
"Almost Indigo, just a few more...here and a little blotch of color here and...there! How's that?" He flipped the canvas around and showed her the portriant he had made of her, Indigo's visage captured in a living blend of colors and lines that bled into each other to capture her smiling face in sheer beauty, only the real thing culd compare. Indigo threw her arms around her boyfriend's shoulders and hugged him tightly with a soft squee.
"I love it! You should have never bottled this talent up all that time you know?" She said sighing softly resting her head on his chest. She held the painting in one hand as he rubbed her back softly.
"Guess I just needed a positive influence in my life to show me being expressive is better than shutting my special talent away from the world." His words made her plant a soft and tender kiss on his lips. So warm, so tender, it was perfect....OR..well at least it was, until Mr. Sombra Blew a whistle on them and told them,
"Cut that out and behave you two!" When he saw Dante Slip a bit of tongue into Indigo zap's mouth. "Hormonal and wired on sugar and caffeine teenagers...I knew I should have gone to Vegas for the Summer." He said pinching a (thankfully) non existent Aneurysm.
"Oh lighten up you old sore head! Have some fun for once in your life okay?" Ms. Cheerilee said as she ruffled his hair giggling softly and setting up another canvas for the two of the adults to paint something on.
"I guess you're right Cheer, what do you think I should paint?"
"Well...If it's not too much trouble, I think I could pose for you to find your inner artist." Ms. Cheerilee said blushing and smiling as she took a seat on a chair and stretched her legs out a bit before placing her hands in the lap of her skirt and smiling coyly at the otherwise scowl and super serial Mr. Sombra to paint her.
The students of Canterlot High and Canterlot middle school had one final gathering on that lake shore that night, the students and teachers, former enemies and new friends. One big happy family. All together under the tell tale sunset for the last day of summer before they resumed their life at school together the next day. Photo Finish lined her camera up with the campers, as hot dogs and marshmallows toasted on skewers and forks. She was hoping to get one final C.H.S Photo in before the daylight was lost. The students all huddled with their teachers and younger comrades together in a group as Finish set the timer for forty five seconds. She ran to the others just as the picture was captured, a Kodak moment that forever personified the joy and happiness, the unity and comradery of all these best friends forever. Reformed villians, new and old faces, everyone together for the last idilliac summer's evening...All was well.
For the last time for any of them...ever.
A Nightmare On Canterlot High.
After the storm...The first day of school.
The skies opened up as the yellow buses chartered to drive the school staff and students home, didn't exactly have the smoothest drive back. The weather hadn't exactly been on the up and up since the previous night, and the fact that it took them three hours to get back into town due to a rash number of road closings; mudslides. and heavy rain fall, was a testament to that. In Canterlot City itself, the bay the city had been constructed on began to rise and flood the lower portion of Downtown. most of the major banks and business, from law offices, to bail bonds, had to shut down for the whole day. Crews drove their heavy machinery into the flood zone in the hopes of containing it and keeping the power on.
Not every place had it as bad as the living disaster movie of Downtown though. As we shift our focus from men at work with trucks and emergency service units, to simple folks in the residential outskirts as the coped with the flood in their own way. On Nancy Street, several saw horses and sandbags where being laid out by a few good men, dads, brothers and older sons. As the worked a little boy sat on the piano bench of his living room and watched them at work. He adjusted the beanie on his head and took another sip of apple juice and sighed.
"Did they say if their gonna cancel school ma?" He shouted into the kitchen as a light creamy woman with light brown hair walked the doorway, a pressed white blouse with a pinafore of denim covering it with tan pantyhose on her legs complimented by the comfortable loafers on her feet.
"No Button, you still have school to get to too, so enough with the cartoons, your lunch is packed and your brother is going to walk with you." Milano Joy said as she went back into the kitchen and hummed to herself as she put the finishing touches on her young son's lunch. On the kitchen counter was a tin lunch box, Spongebob Squarepants leaped in the air a jellyfish net in his hand as he tried to catch one. Spongebob guarded a PP&J sandwich, a packet of Ritz crackers with spreadable cheese, another box of pure, non-concentrated, apple juice, and as a special first day of school surprise, a freshly baked M&M cookie, baked last night for dessert and wrapped up for the following day.
"I'm ready mom!" Button shouted as he entered the kitchen in his new orange and red racing polo shirt, and Levis. His beanie perched on his crop of orange brown hair. Joy laughed a bit seeing her son wear his beanie. The boy would be joining his older brother at Canterlot High soon, yet he still wore it.
"Button, don't you think you're too old to still wear a propeller beanie to school?" She asked clasping the lip on his lunchbox and handing it too him. He took it with a chuckle and shook his head.
"Aww mom, my friends still think it's cool, they complimented me on it all summer. He said as he took his lunch and made his way to the door.
"Well...okay but just for today Button, I don't think the school allows you to wear hats, hey WAIT! Hold it just a minute there Mr." She said as he opened the door. She adjusted his clothes one last time and licked her thumb before wiping a few blotches of left over milk from his breakfast of Cap'n Crunch from his face and smiled.
"Aww Mom! Do You always have to do something like this to me?" Button asked as she wiped his cheek clean. Button sighed hard as his mother finally let him out the door and returned to her stacks of Avon order sheets, an archaic practice that hankered back to the days of John Hughes movies, setting the VCR to record the soaps on daytime TV, before they where taken over by talk shows where men learned their
The next time she saw her son, she'd be hysterically holding him in her arms as an ER surgeon warned her about popping stitches open.
Button Mash pulled a quarter from his pocket and contemplated picking up a bag of Doritos to go with his lunch. The Uncle Dollar variety store was just a hop, skip and a jump from The courtyard of Canterlot middle school. and it was currently 7:45, less than an hour to when he needed to be in homeroom class. Button planned to cross the street to the Uncle Dollar and be back with a bag of cool ranch and in class in five minutes. This is how it went:
Button crossed the street and started walking toward the store, when he noticed steam and wispy mist rising from the storm drains and man hole covers, and seemingly out of no where, someone called out in voice that at first sounded raspy and harsh before clearing to be softer and smoother.
"Hey kid...you wanna buy something to munch on?" Button looked up to she a metal cart, like the kinds you saw on the fair grounds or downtown that sold coffee from a machine that mounted on it. While there was a steaming coffee machine on the cart, there was also a hodgepodge of prick a prack and odds and ends on the cart itself, and on hooks clipped to the posts holding up the cart's blood red with lime green striped canopy. There where plastic bags of cotton candy, and freshly popped kettle corn, various cheap knock off toys with names like Universal Hero, Super Robots, and for some reason James Bond Jr toys of the cartoon's version of Odd-job and the titular JBJ. Their were balloons with various superheros like Batman, Superman, Wolverine, Spider-man, Captain America, and Thor for the boys. Barbie, The Monster High girls, and some colorful ponies for the girls. The pony ones where strangely the ugliest of the lot, all with their small eyes and oddly portioned bodies, sitting around a table with tea cups or frolicking in fields of flowers, Button gagged at the very sight of it.
"What's wrong kid? Don't see anything you like?" The man running the cart said again as button could only see parts of him. He wore a long black coat hanging down to the floor and a bright red and green sweater under it but he could only see it for a moment before he closed the coat up, Why did that shirt look so familiar? And that hat? This was all drawing a vague memory from him. The man chuckled softly before taking a balloon with a pink pony on it from the cart and holding it out too button. "How bout one of these? You know that cost five bucks at the party store? It's because they are jumbo aluminum balloons that could carry you right to the moon..." He paused as if mentioning the moon was making him want to cough up bile and stomach acid.
"Uhhh I don't want those stupid ponies!" He said trying to swat it away as he also tried to back away, sure the man was on the surface a legit salesman, but there was just something pin pricking the boy in the back of her head. Like an old warning from his mother, 'Button never get in a car with a stranger, Button never accept anything from a stranger, Button can you run to the store and get me some tamp...' Okay that's enough remembering mom's advice.' He then reached out to hand him a quarter for the bag of chips on the rack something seemed to come over him, like he did want to buy something, these toys...these snacks they seemed...so cool.
"That's a good kid, buy something...tell your friends about me Button." He said as he held the Cool Ranch chips to him. Button stopped, shook his head, and retracted his arm again. "Something wrong kid?" He asked as Button began to notice something off about the balloons, they began to have horrible images on them, skulls screaming as snakes crawled out of their eye holes, bugs crawling aver gas bloated dead bodies, all green, rotted and slimy. He saw it for only a second, but that was enough time.
"How do you know my name?" Button asked the man as the coat opened and he saw that red and green sweater that matched the canopy of the merchandise cart. Only now that canopy looked old, worn and ripped. Full of moth eaten holes and slashes as if made by some vicious set of claws.
"I guessed." Was the man's only reply, his voice now sounding as if his throat was full if gravel and rock salt. Button looked around, Desperate for an adult that he could trust, A cop, A crossing gaurd, anyone. The streets was empty, where was the morning rush to work? He was going to be late for school, but the bigger concern was this man standing a few feet from the school with this scary cart and where was someone telling him to stay far away from here? Any other man looking the way he did seen around school children would be run out by every adult within a hundred feet, yet here he was, getting closer and closer to little Button Mash. "Come on Button, don'y you want something nice from the knick nack man?" He said again as a hand reach out to him, Button was almost too scared to do much beyond slowly back away, too afraid to turn and make a break for the school. The school, where'd he safe in his Math class doing the morning's multiplication tables, and then reading Wimpy Kid books for an hour, not fearing for his life in the streets as a crazed drifter grew closer and closer to him.
"I..I gotta go Mr...here just take my quarter for okay." Button threw the quarter like a weapon at the man, which seemed to hit his berserk button. It was then that Button got a good look at his face. His skin was blood red and chunks of skin where missing on the cheeks, chin and near those glowing yellow pale eyes. His nose was hooked and crooked as if broken too many times in his life, and that mouth. The lips parted in a snarl as Button saw this man, if you could call something so horrible a man, had teeth like a set of fangs cutting into the lips and making more thick red blood ooze and splatter on the sidewalk as he held his arm out again.
The hand bones all the way to the wrist were sticking up exposed against red sinewy muscles of the arm, bits of what could be wires, but looked like blood vessels or sinews of muscle seemed to be the only thing holding the bones on the arm. The bones made horrible creaking and crunching sounds as they clicked with the moment of the fingers, at the ends of which where these long, curved and shiny steel looking blades. Claws, claws that could rip Button to shreds if he didn't light a fire in his belly and run! Button turned around as his legs finally kicked into high gear. He stopped for only a moment as he felt a burning pain in his arm, It had him! He heard the sounds of cloth ripping and took off like a bullet, loud, otherworldly laughter echoing in his ears as he did. It was then he realized that he was back in reality. People gasped then screamed as he ran all the way to school, he didn't stop to ask them why, all he cared about was getting to the one place he knew he'd be safe.
Sweetie Belle and her friends stood by the flag pole laughing as school started. "So Silver and Diamond go to the magnet program at the High School?" Sweetie said as the much larger and vaster Canterlot High stood across the street from them.
"Yeah, s'why you see them there sometimes" Scootoloo replied."Makes sense given how we're only..." She stopped in sentence.
"We're only what Scoots?" Applebloom asked but Scootoloo never finished. She only opened her mouth to scream in shock and horror as Button Mash finally got to school.
"Hey girls, What are you screaming about scooto...loo?" Button looked down at his arm for the first time since he escaped that,,,whatever it had been, and saw just what he did to him. Button's had four long gashes dripping blood on the sidewalk and his whole right arm was streaked red with blood. When button realized just what was wrong with him, he lost his balance and fell over into Sweetie's arms, much gentler arms to catch him.
Milano Joy dried her eyes for what must have been the millionth time, she got the call less than an hour ago and left the TV on, the lights on, and she was sure the garage was still wide open at that very moment. She was at the Emergency Room in a matter of minutes, and thankful that it could have been worse. She stood outside the glass window of her son's room door, nose pressed against the glass as more hot tears streaked down her face. She was thanking every deity she had ever heard of, that she wasn't in the morgue being asked to identify someone in a freezer as her son. "Button...my little precious button." She said softly as she looked into the glass window at the stitches she'd been warned twenty minutes ago about popping open because she was frantically hugging him and crying hysterically that he was alive, horribly cut from shoulder to wrist, but alive. "I promise button...I'll be a better mother to you," she said though by all accounts she was an ideal one to him as it was. She packed his lunch, praised him when he listened and spared the rod when he misbehaved. She didn't spoil Button but did ensure he had as happy a childhood as any boy could have and was on the cusp of worrying since he would be starting 8th grade soon. She didn't do his laundry for him anymore, but always helped him and taught him how to do it and they often did it together, they cleaned the house together, cooked dinner together, and even occasionally though...IT was strictly on a platonic family way...they still took baths sometimes together, Soley to bond and nothing else.
Joy got the idea when Button's brother Dual Shock was only three. His father was asking when it would be time for their son to bathe himself when Milano brought up an article in National Geographic she'd been reading. The article was about life in Japan, and like many Asian cultures, family mattered more than anything there. One thing Joy found interesting was how families had no such taboos against doing things like sleeping in the same bedrolls or if they could afford them (It was a somewhat old article) beds, and took baths together regardless of age, as there was nothing sexual among family about it, no shame, only bonding and keeping the values in family strong. Her husband was initially against the idea, but relented when he was reminded that they'd sugar coat nothing when it came to their children, no stories about storks or cabbage patches when he/she/they asked where they came from, if they had a daughter Joy would bluntly tell her everything she'd need to know about being a woman when the time came, no sidestepping, no sugar coating, no nothing. The Mash family was all the more happier and stronger for adopting such polices.
Now her son was crying softly trying to get over the pain of having his arm stitched up in the hospital room, an IV providing him with fluids to replace the lost water, blood, and other such necessities to live. He had come around and according to the doctors he'd recover well enough with plenty of rest and going easy on the arm, 'but what about the scars my boy would have on the inside? Can a doctorate tell you how long it will take for those to heal?' she thought as she sat down in the plastic chairs outside the room door.
She buried her hands in her face and cried again as a sad truth hit her like punch in the face. You can try your damnedest to be the best parent in the world, but you can't protect your children from the horrors of the real world forever. She only wished this revelation didn't have to come to her at such a horrific price, wishes...what a laugh that she desperately need that was.
A Nightmare On Canterlot High.
Peter Page turner goes shopping.
Peter Page turner goes shopping.
The more thing's change, the more they stay the same. If you had asked most american women a while back what their favorite shows on television were, the list though not a generalization but rather an abbreviation of the past, would have included Ricky Lake, The young and the restless, Days of our lives, and to a lesser extent Married with children if only because of Peggy Bundy. Now that list may include the like of Swamp Murders, Evil Twins, I almost got away with it, and Deadly Women. A lifetime ago, the downtown district of Canterlot City was home to little corner stores and mom and pop dives to pick up whatever you needed. Now a ton of outlet shops for mega stores sat in the shells of those shops. Angsty, rotten college kids trained specifically to get people in and out of store, the interiors cold not just from the air conditioners, but because big business itself can be as cold as ice.
There are some exceptions to these rules however, even if the ravages of time have ways of sneaking in a sinking their razor sharp steel claws into them as much as all the other places. One such place was called The Pulp...It was a comic and hobby shop that had been nestled in the alley way that a generation or two ago would have been the urban equivalent of the midway at an amusement park. A video arcade, a pizzarea more greasy than a lube job in July, a video store called Sal's back before the days of instant video streaming, and of course The Pulp itself. Once lined the alleyway with neon lights, the smells of musty paper and cheap VHS cardboard, and offered a choice Friday afternoon to blow your allowance before getting home in time for the Friday night cartoons or the late night (heavily edited) movie of the week.
All those stores save for The Pulp had gone under ages ago, their store fronts long shuttered or the windows only granting a vista into empty rooms with rotting moldy carpets and left over tape boxes or sale signs. The Pulp had survived, but just barley. It still carried that distinctive, nostalgic smell of old paper, plastic covers, ancient blue carpeting, and time itself, if you could capture time as a smell. Peter Page Turner walked into the store, as he often did when he had a few bucks to spare and took in what the place had to offer, there was a rack by the front door with all the books on the shelf half off their cover prices, or marked down from them sale price, There were a few glass tanks that held the most popular artists and writers with a little card over the tops held heir names. Peter Looked through the racks on the discount rack and felt...disheartened at the selection. Many of the books on the racks had been titles going back to the age of over-sized guns, muscles the size of parade balloons, and more pouches than a kangaroo. 90's marvel, image and DC comics from that age so many would pretend never happened.
"Hey Mac, know why these are on the discount rack?" He asked the boy behind the counter, Applejack's cousin Big Mac. Mac looked up from the western novel he'd been reading.
"Nope." Mac said with a shake of his head. It was then that another thing caught Peter's eye, On the back was where four long drawn out rips in the ancient wallpaper. The cuts where like a long scratch marks in the wall, four of them that ran in single gashes along the wall, with ragged edges.
"Hey Mac, what happened to the wall here?" He asked reaching out to touch the scratches only to retract his hand back with a grimace, the wall's cuts were emoting an intense heat from the gashes. Why? Somewhere in the back of the few cubic feet inside his skull, and old memory played. It was blurry, like an old track on a video tape all messed up it over scan-lines before cutting to black. 'I'm here with my friends...on..odeon....al my friends...on odeon.' Those voices so tinny, so distant, like shadows and echoes of a long
"Don't know, Ink spot came in this morning and the walls where like that...I thought it had something to do with today's shipment." He said as Peter took note of the new arrivals he was talking about. On the back shelf behind Big Mac were several pieces of Nightmare on Elm Street memorabilia. A few sheets of Topps company trading cards, a replica of Freddy's sweater in a glass display case, the ragged hat on his head, and of course his wicked sharp glove. Not a cheap plastic toy but real steel and sharp as piranha teeth.
"Whoa mamma, that real 80's merchandise?" Peter asked Mac in excitement. As he noticed the silver shiny claws and the gilded bronze of the metal hinges that held that signature stalker, the Springwood slasher's weapon of choice in the glass.
"Eeeyup!" Was all Big Macintosh could say as he nonchalantly read the the book in his hands with the slip cover over it to try and fool anyone who he wouldn't want to see the title. Sultry Stories of Seduction: Farm girl edition. A cheap pulp rag collection of stories of redheaded and Blondie farm girls getting the in and out on in the haylofts and muddy fields, with handsome new farm hands or traveling city slickers testing they're mettle with the hard working lasses of iron Big Mac was all to familiar with. The dreamy look in his eyes, more than an indication he was longing to be in those grainy pages, and the muscular study wudy taking the delicate sunflower of the farmer's daughter for her first wild ride in the hay, but I digress.
"Hey Mac, could you get your nose outta that cheap farm porn for a few to tell me how much for the Freddy glove?" He asked lauging as he turned redder than one of his families apples.
"I'll give it to ya for only forty if ya promise to flip the out to lunch sign around for me." He knew damn well why he wanted him to, he practically could see his hand reaching for the coconut oil under the desk. Peter chuckled and handed Mac two twenties and took off with the out to lunch sign in plain sight for all to see.
Like many cities, Canterlot didn't have a major layout or planning to it. The main downtown section had been built on the shores of a large bay, a bay that every season crab cages could be thrown into to haul up some big blue plump ones, they always tasted so damn good steamed with plenty of old bay seasoning. The houses and most other places where built into the surrounding hills of the valley leading into the low levels. In some places the hills gently curved into the valley, in others they where limestone cliffs that dropped down surrounding the bay. A river ran through the lower sections and while it had been mostly contained over the years by a canal and the system of pipes and aqueducts under ground, the city planning did allow for it to run it's course along the lower sections of a street called canal street that split the downtown lower sections in half with the canal creating two shores on either side with scenic walkways on either bank.
Peter stood looking up higher sections of Nancy street, only a thin wooden fence keeping him from a forty foot drop into a strip of land called "the Pits" The Pits where basically a strip of land where the trees grew wild and the weeds choked the life out of anything but the worst plants to grow in any place. Weeds, poison ivy and oak, all that plus the stony soil and swampy mud holes that dotted all over the place and it made you wonder why no one paved over the place and built something useful here. The land was three miles long by just a mile across and surrounded by high cliffs on all sides, at the tops of which were the Chestnut flats housing block at one end, the municipal authorities offices at another, and a distant member of the Pie family ran a scrapyard and truck depot at the far end. The Pits also housed a few pump houses for the dept of public works to pump sewage to the water treatment plants the city had built to clean up the river and bay. It took forty something years but the water in the bay and river was finally deemed clean enough to swim in, but not as pure it had been centuries ago to be a source of drinking water without treating it.
If that day had been a Hayao Miyazaki film, then this would have been one his signature "quiet moments." Take his work like Howl's moving castle , or his magnum opus Spirited Away . There are moments when the characters often stop and look into the detailed and beautiful backgrounds that the animators spent hours drawing and painting. Peter did the same, looking at the skyscrapers and tops of the houses as he stood behind the fence over looking the high grounds, The Pits just a good thirty feet down a steep muddy gully. Had the slope been muddier, like after a good long rain, then some daredevils would be risking their necks sliding down the sides of the slopes. No such scene was currently interrupting the Miyazaki moment but there was something that would break up the serenity.
Hoops, Scoreboard, Fido, (so named because of his dog like face and the fact that like that old Jim Croce song, Bad bad Fido brown, meaner than a junkyard or a diamond dog, and a new kid known only as Belch Bloats, in his ratty old letterman his dad had worn in his school days, because a dim wit like him would never make varsity. Made their way up the slope to Peter, like wild African jackals about to pounce on a wounded gazelle. Belch let out a good long wet one and Peter turned his head to the three of them. Hoops chuckled and smirked as Score giggled like goofy or that stupid vulture that loved to say "Yup Yup."
"Hey fellas what brings you guys here?" Peter asked as he got his legs ready to mount his schwin bike Miyazaki, so aptly named for that pun he could make whenever he took of, his mind making him the one and only Lone Ranger, with his trusty Native sidekick and brave horse, his peacemaker the only problem solver he ever needed. Belch belched a few inches from his nose, the smell sour milk of some BK vanillia shake and onions...hot dog onions.
"What you got there Petey?" Hoops said reaching a filthy hand out for Freddy's glove. Peter retracted it and hiked himself up higher on the seat of his ride.
"Nothing Hoops, just a little something I picked up to add to my collection." He said contemplating taking it from the case and slipping it on, just to see if the blades are real steel. He swipes the claws at hoops and draws blood then he takes him by the throat and leads him to a wiggly maggoty, festering and rotting can of acid green slimy garbage, then he force feeds the bastard off the blades cracking a trademark Freddy one liner, "You are...what you eat hoops." Hoops looks down to see his stomach sliced open as the maggots craw out the garbage being force fed into him until his cheeks bugle out like a bubble faced goldfish, as Freddy/Peter force feeds him the garbage now stewing in his stomach acid again and again.
"What kinda collection do you run with old junk like this?" The cherry red Belch said as his dragon breath reeked with every word. Peter contemplated again the possibility of taking the hallmark glove of The Springwood Slasher and showing these meat heads just what kinda collection he was into. What was he thinking? He was better than that, it was as some slimy voice was leaning on his shoulder whispering these thoughts into his head.
'Go ahead Pete...try it on for size!' that voice whispered in his ear as he wanted only to get back to Rainbow's apartment and maybe kick back with some episodes of Bordertown or king Star King downloaded off her PS3. Nice and snug watching PSN shows and maybe sipping some soda, not hearing voices telling him to use Nightmare on Elm Street memorabilia to hurt people. Even if they are a pack of immature high school bullies, the ones who often turn out worse than the middle school ones, or not. Peter hopped up on the seat of the bike and kicked off down the hill, his lungs exploding with a single, victorious cry.
"HI HO MIYAZAKI!..AWAY!" He shouted in triumph as the wind blew in his hair, the bike tires spinning like crazy as the Schwin speed down the sttp hill, the houses flying by and the concern of the other boys up the hill leaving him behind as he sped up faster and faster. He was the Lone Ranger, with a noble ride that carried him on the winds, and a noble heart, Who was that masked man? He was. He finally found himself back at the cloudsdale apartments in no time at all. Rainbow waiting for him on the front steps, she ran up to him and hugged him before smirking sly, as she janggled the bag in her hands. The familliar pink and white stripes of Victoria's secret shopping bags, "Seems like I'm not the one who did some shoppping today." He said blushing hard.
At least I bought something more...romantic." Rainbow said taking the class case holding the Freddy glove in her hand and scoffing at it in a bit of disgust." She only half meant it.
"Aww Come on Dashie, I'll make it up too you." He said as they made their way to the lift.
They never noticed the lighting flashes in the sky, another storm on the way, another attack on the way. Unlike the slashing of Button Mash this attack wouldn't be a terrible act of violence that left someone injured. A crab catcher on the bay of Canterlot City, would find something unusually large in one of his crab cages that evening, he hauled in a red sneaker of a little girl maybe four. With her severed foot chewed up by sand crabs still in it. Her body would be dredged up by a screaming rookie on the force a few hours later, four long cuts across her face, and a look of fear eternally frozen in her cold, glassy dead eye...yes, I said eye, one had been eaten away by an eel that made a home in her skull, a hearty meal out of her little brain.
A Nightmare On Canterlot High.
Badly scratched.
Vinyl Scratch lay on her bed, her room walls covered in various posters ranging from the album cover of Pink Floyd's Dark Side Of The Moon, (the album currently blaring on her cheap, but big expensive looking headphones) to a poster for the thirtieth anniversary reunion of Woodstock 99. She lay on her bed as the beats of Floyd pounded away in her ears and her eyes followed the antics of one Peter Griffin on her TV, Vinyl was a huge Family Guy fan. She couldn't hear with the music blaring in her ears, but she had seen this episode so many times that she could recite every joke by heart. She chuckled as she watched the Griffin men puking their guts up in a contest as her bedroom door opened and her roommate Octavia stood in the door way. Octavia never liked the fact that Vinyl always left assorted dirty pairs of jeans and socks and some choice blue underwear all over her floor. That, coupled with the crumpled up chip bags and V8 cans, and it was enough to make one wonder why they where even roommates at all.
"Ugh Vinyl! When are you gonna actually clean this trash dump you call a bed room?" She asked but Vinyl was deaf to the world, ears plugged by music, eyes locked only on Family Guy. Octavia scoffed again and strut over to her before lifting an earphone making Vinyl turn her head and smile at her roommate, who wasn't moved.
"Hey Octi! What's up? Hey you wanna kick back with me and watch some FG? I got the whole freakin sweet party pack you know?" She said showing her the novelty keep case containing almost every episode of the show along with a poker set, beer mug cozies, and ping pong (or beer pong) set. Octavia only scoffed again before running her hands through her on again/off again girlfriend's hair. (Octavia considered herself pan-sexual while Vinyl was more into girls but wouldn't mind hooking up with a guy who was "in touch with his femmine side," or was her definition of "cool") Her attentions made Vinyl sigh contently and coo a bit.
"Vinyl...please clean up in here, She said balling up some laundry and shoving it in her friend's hamper. "I know...it's your nature to be a little...messy, but I prefer not having roaches in this house." She said as she softly patted her friend's shoulder and hugged her lovingly.
"Hey I just left these snack remains from a few hours ago, you know me Octi, I'll clean everything up." She said lowering her ruby shades to show her sad puppy dog eyes. Those eyes, how could Octavia deny anything with those eyes looking into hers? She giggled and scratched her behind the ears, she could never understand why, but Vinyl always enjoyed that. Like some pony from Applejack's farm.
"Okay Vinyl, how could I stay mad at you?...just promise you'll at least have this place in order by morning okay?" Octavia asked giving her friend a little nuzzle. "I have a date tonight, a boy from choir, voice like an angel and he's so...Sensitive." She said with her eyes looking almost like big dreamy, fangirl eyes. "and I just think if I should like him enough to invite him in tonight, I'd hope every room in the house is...adequate." Vinyl only chuckled and took her ear phones off.
"Oh really miss Octi? May I ask why MY room needs to be clean when YOUR'RE the one bringing a date home?" She said with a giggle, Octavia loved it when Vinyl played the pronoun game like that. "You plan on inviting your little soprano to a threesome with the bass dropping queen Vinyl Scratch hmm?" Octavia Blushed and put a hand to her lips, she was used to Vinyl's crass and crude remarks but the notion of...well she never!
"Now Vinyl it's nothing of THAT sort, you really should get you're head out of such gutters you know, I like him, but not like THAT...yet, and for your information, Morty is an alto singer. She said beaning Vinyl playfully with a pillow.
"Morty? Like Rick and Morty?" Vinyl said her knowledge of Adult swim show's showing yet again, she always had to make jokes like that at every chance, it was almost like she WAS a walking Family Guy joke sometimes.
"No Vinyl...His name's Mordecai...and yes he is...well...
"A Regular Show fan?" Vinyl asked showcasing her prowess did not limit itself to AS cartoons.
" no Vinyl, he's a...oh never mind it. Just have your room clean for us by the time we get back okay?"
"Alright Octi, I'll make sure the place is nice an tidy for you and your new friend, She said with a chuckle and hearty laugh. "You're sure you don't have any other things in mind with your date tonight that it required MY room to be clean too?" She said with a playful lowering of her glasses again.
"VINYL! IT INS'T LIKE THAT AT ALL!" Octavia said rather peeved now, and a bit shocked at her friend's remark.
"I'm only teasing Octi, go out and enjoy yourself." She said chuckling again at her joke, "Just don't let him try and go dutch on you tonight okay?" She said smirking smugly.
"Vinyl, sometimes...you're terrible." Octavia said as she left.
"Oh you know you love it Miss Octi!" She shouted in response to her bedroom door, before laughing hard at her own jokes and laying back on her bed sleeping soundly.
"One, two, Freddy's coming for you.
Three, four, Better lock your door
Five, six, grab a crucifix.
Seven, eight, Gonna stay up late.
Nine, ten, Never sleep again...."
These were the words Vinyl heard as she drifted off into that mysterious and still unknown world we call our dreams. There was no matron of sleep, no precious princess of the night, no royal batpony gaurd or miasma of slumber for her to protect on this side of the Mirror. It had free range here, to manipulate the land of the awake and the dream world as well. The barrier between life and death so often kept as thin but close together when one chooses to sleep. Became as thin and malleable as a paper door. This was where Vinyl Scratch found herself. She "woke" with a fright, to find her bed had been transported outside, a chill as real as any cold Autumn's night shivering her to the marrow of her bones. She looked around to find her princess sized bed sitting on a patch of dying brown grass, it was the dead of night, yet somewhere, children were playing.
"What the fuck?" She asked only herself as she looked around at her limited surroundings. A little boy in his best white Sunday clothes and pressed black pants looked up at her, a red balloon in his hands, his skin deathly white and his eyes had the thousand yard stare, not the eyes of a little boy.
"You shouldn't use words like that, it's why Fre...Mr. K punished me." The little boy said with a blank dead eyed stare piercing Vinyl through her ruby shades. She clutched at her chest to be still her beating heart as she looked to see Three little girls not far from her. Applebloom skipped rope as Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon held the rope for her, the other Cutie Mark Crusaders waiting to take their turns, out of the corner of her eye, Vinyl swore she say the glint of metal claws out of the darkness.
"Listen kid...I'm a big girl."
"He likes big girls as much as little ones...calls us his little sheep, because our blood is so pure, he bathes in it to wash himself clean of his sins." The little boy said as nonchalantly as if he'd been talking about his favorite toy. "He put my favorite toy in the fire, said it made me spoiled..I gotta go now." The little boy hopped away on one foot as Vinyl sat up and got off the bed, she continued to watch the little children playing, an almost...maternal instinct kicking in as she struggled to move, frozen with fear. She didn't dream of things like this, ever. Why now was such a dream happening to her? It was then however, that the realization kicked in. A dream, that's all this was, a bad dream. Vinyl pinched herself expecting to be roused from this ludicrous event, but...she didn't.
"OWW! What the?" She said as she pinched herself again. This wasn't...normal. Traditionally the idea of pinching yourself was supposed to rouse you from a bad dream, then why had this only left a red mark on her arm she had pinched? Vinyl looked around again, the children were gone. In their place was a looming white house with a pine green roof and blood red door. The numbers 1428 etched over the doorway. "Okay, now I know I'm dreaming." Vinyl said still in total denial of her situation. "Come on girl, you've seen every Elm Street movie ever made, even the remake everyone but you hated." She said with a chuckle to herself. "This is just a bad dream brought on my marathoning my Elm Street Box set, the same thing happened that time I watched the original eight Star Trek movies and dreamed the borg had gotten me." She said to herself as she walked away from the house...only to find herself walking up to the front door again.
"Forget it brain!" She shouted at seemingly none save her own self consciousnesses. "I'm not doing this, so why don't you just let me wake the fuck up already?!" Vinyl said as she took off running, only to find her feet sinking with every step, the ground had turned to inky black tar that held her firmly in place.
"Tsk Tsk Tsk, a little lady like you shouldn't be using such language." A voice as cold as ice, as if the speaker's throat was coated in slime and razor blades came from all around Vinyl. "Still you deny that what you see isn't real? Still don't know where you are do you? Taking over this world is gonna be almost TOO easy! HA HA HA HA AHAH AHA!"
"You're just a movie, dreamed up by Wes Craven before I was even born!" Vinyl Shouted at the empty blankness, though at this point her suspension of disbelief was wearing thin. She struggled to get her legs to move as it felt like the black, tar like ooze threatened to swallow her up. Her breath began to still as the winds grew louder and howled like some giant from the deepest, coldest circle of hell. King Nimrod the builder of Babel or Atelus. The later who guided the poets into the treachery.
"You know...your folks had a good time watching said movie back in the day... a REAL good time, let's just say...you lost an elder sibling that would have been from what they did while watching the so called "movie." The voice said again as a shape in the ooze took form, the ooze stretched out as a single gleaming claw reached out of the tar and slit along it, cutting it as Atropos cuts a mortal's lifeline to begin the transition to our life after life.
"Wake up Vinyl, it's only a dream it's not real. IT'S ONLY A DREAM IT'S NOT REAL!" She shouted as she shut here eyes, opening them again to see the grinning burned face of Freddy Kruger getting closer and closer. His eyes glowing yellow as his hooked nose shifted as he took in the breaths of air. His skin peeling in holes exposing the sinews beneath, and the long black cape fluttering in he harsh breeze. Vinyl Then noticed that he didn't have the traditional Freddy glove on his hand. This one was like bones jutting out of he muscle of his hand with long steel hook like claws on the bones and even the thumb possessed a claw.
"Not real," Vinyl said her voice as squeaky and timid as a little girl's. A little girl who held her favorite teddy close as he wished away those shadow monsters moving in her closet, or the coat she swore was walking off its hook by itself toward her. "Not real." She recited again with the air of a little girl telling herself there's no green monster under her bed talking to her, trying to convince her to come down under the bed. That was just an old Rugrats episode, and nothing more. Just tv, just pretend, not real at all. A black crow cawed with a scratchy throat somewhere in the darkness, as lighting clapped loudly above her. She repeated her mantra gain. "NOT REAL!" The grown girl voice coming back as she finally opened her eyes and looked up to see a half skeleton, half burned and peeling fleshy face nose to nose, his long steel claws and bone over sinewy muscles of a hand raised as a gleam shined off the ends of his blades. The blades were hungry for flesh, thirsty for blood, her blood. He shouted with a loud,
"RAWR!" His wickedly sharp hand came down oh her, the world went black and..she screamed.
"VINYL! VINYL! WHAT THE DEVIL IS GOING ON IN THERE!" Octavia called banging loudly on Vinyl's door. Vinyl shook and struggled to free herself from the blankets, sticky with the accumulated sweat. In her terror, Vinyl had torn almost all her night clothes from her body, only her tee and underwear remained. Her breath and heartbeat finally steadied itself as Octavia stood in the doorway, her date waited for her in the hallway, she was still dressed in her fine charcoal grew dress shirt and skirt from dinner. Vinyl looked around and shook her head, shaking the nightmare from the cubic meters in her skull.
"I'm okay Octi, it...was just a bad dream is all." She said as Octavia folded her arms over her chest and responded with,
"Some dream if THAT is anything to go by." She said pointing to Vinyl's blanket. Which had four big rips along the fabric, her tee shirt had four short cuts in the fabric along her chest just above her heart. "Now Vinyl, I don't mean to sound more like your mother than a roommate, but either stop watching horror movies before bed, or stop that kind of dreaming." She wagging her finger at her in an almost...maternal way.
"But...But Octavia I didn't...Oh okay no more horror movies before bed." she said, if she had long floppy pony ears, they'd be folded by now, in shame. Octavia walked over to Vinyl and planted a soft kiss on her cheek.
"Join me and Mordicai downstairs for tea and come grands? He baked them himself." Octavia said hugging her friend close. Vinyl only shook her head and lay back down.
"I'm good Octi, you have your fun okay?...Is Morty Cute?" She asked quickly with a giggle.
"He's no Calvin klien model, but he's definitely easy on the eyes." Octavia said with a sigh.
"You know I like my dudes a little less meat head jock and more...art house poet right?" Vinyl replied with a soft flip of her hair.
"Goodnight Vynil." Octavia said as she went out the room to join her new male friend for tea. Vinyl's head fell back against her pillow and she sighed heavily.
"G'night Octi." Vinyl said as her eyelids shut again, she didn't dream at all the rest of the night. The sun woke her up in what felt like only a few seconds as she shut her eyes. For once in her life, Vinyl was glad she blacked out without dreaming a little dream, she was glad she missed the first bed to Slumber Land for once in her life.
As she got up and dressed herself in the rising sun, rising of its own accord because her school principal didn't have the power to raise the sun the way her pretty pony princess self did, no more than her vice principal of a sister could have helped her last night in her nightmare, the way her pony princess of the night self could have. She could almost hear children singing that haunting song in the early morning hazy fog, just as it began to burn away for reality to sink in.
"One, two, Freddy's coming for you."
Then all was silent again, silent and normal in Vinyl Scratch's bedroom...For now...
A Nightmare On Canterlot High.
Twilight Sparkle holds a meeting.
Twilight Sparkle clicked the light on over her desk and sat down in the badly repainted chalk white chair. She took a little purple journal from her school bag and opened it to her latest entry, call it her log of the things going on in Canterlot.
"I'ts been only a few weeks since school started up again and so far at least ten children and young adults have been killed. Only a handful of the deaths are being reported as murders. The rest are incidents where the victims are being found dead in the mornings, often by parents."
Twilight stopped writing for a second to a take a scrap of The Canterlot Quarterly, the city's premiere newspaper and tapped it over the mirror over her desk. The headline screamed the deaths of a so many kids it made one wonder why anyone would even buy it, then you realize, that's EXACTLY why someone would buy it. In its own twisted way, reading about so much death and devastation of another, as long as it didn't directly involve you, it was almost...pornographic. It was like reading pornographic material only with gore and tragedy. A strange and in so many ways taboo attraction and fascination that we all have, and try to deny we have, but can't. For some we do so to hide the emotions of sympathy, or empathy for the words and images we see. For others...not so much. Twilight returned to her writing.
"I want to keep telling myself that there's a logical and rational reasoning behind all this. That Canterlot has just hit a bad time and a criminal psychopath is on the loose. It happens to even the smallest of towns and cities, hell it more often happens in places like Canterlot and gets more attention then when it happens in the likes of New York or San Francisco. That Twilight, the one who would very much like to accept that what's happening here is just a shift in the normal rate of things like that happening in cities like this...Has been replaced by a Twilight who knows there can be something else at work now. Time seems forever stuck only moving when some greater force allows it too, Portals to world's where I have a doppelganger that's a talking winged unicorn princess. Magic running amok as it grows stronger and stronger here...I think it's time to get everyone together...
Twilight closed the journal and picked up her phone, there was going to be a lot of calls and texts to make tonight.
The five other girls and Sunset Shimmer looked up at the still unfinished storefront that Twilight had been planning to convert into a Small library. She had called them and several others to her house, they believed it to be nothing more than a sleepover. Akin to the ones they held with the pony Twilight what felt like a lifetime ago. "Come on," Sunset said making the first few steps to the front door. "The other's are inside already by the sounds of things, we should join them." Sunset began to open the door, already hear the sounds of laughter and games inside, a solemn reminder that with all this death and attacks on everyone with a hint of youth in them, they where all teenagers. teens just trying to live their lives as best as they could. Yet so much had happened to them in what felt like both so much and so little time.
"It sound's like fun in there!" Pinkie said with her usual bouncy attitude. Twilight had pushed all the book shelves aside against the walls for the occasion, at one of the tables, Twilight herself along with Fluer De lis, Indigo Zap and Sunny flare from Crystal prep had a game of Life set up, Indigo threw her arms up in double fist pumps as she was the first player to "retire." Which she made a point to vocally inform her opponents.
"Oh Yeah! Who's bad?!" She said doing a little victory dance, prompting Fleur to scoff and tell her to sit down. The other girls looked to see what else there was to do, knowing Twilight she had the best chairs set up with lamps and plenty of books. Although, true to himself, Peter Page turner sat in one of those chairs,Flash Sentry beside him. A suitcase packed not with clothes, but countless comic books sat open at his feet. He closed the one he currently was reading, and timid little Fluttershy put a hand to her moth in horror at what she was seeing. The cover showed some woman helpless awaiting the hooded and robed faces of Klansmen, something you could never see on the covers of anything today, the comic's title more than spoke for the image and why it was being used, EC comic's Shock SuspenStories...issue sixteen, a Gladstone reprint.
"I tell you Flash, these comics are like nothing you'd ever see today! And they came from the 1950's! I mean...where else can you see the Klu Klux Klan on the cover? And before anyone says anything." He said to the few heads who turned to him at the mention of such a group. "They are portrayed in the book as horrible people, this book showed the side most people at that time didn't see. The clean robes and political rallies that was showing them as "good old Americans?" Not the case here." He went on for a small crowd of the party goers, spinning a macabre but in some ways...enticing tale, occasionally turning to his Gladstone EC reprints and flipping through them. Sure they where dark and often violent, but Shock was a book that told like it was, and in some cases still kinda is. Behind the gruesome beheading, hangings,lynchings, and even drug abuse, where cautionary tales of society exposed for what it can truly be. His praise for the past was cut short by Twilight clanking a spoon to a glass to call the ensemble to her attention.
"Everyone...I have to be honest with you all...I asked you all here because...She looked at all the faces of her friends...from Pixel Resolution at the pinball table (Tales From The Crypt pinball,cost her a bundle but money well spent) to her friends from Crystal Prep breaking form their games to look up at her, To Turner and Flash reading comics, Pinkie and Party Favor who ented from the kitchen carrying bowls of ice cream topped with all the trimmings. Deep down inside, could she bring herself to take away all her friend's fun and happiness by brining up her theories surrunding the wave of death and loss sweeping though town? No, why should she bring her friends into something that could very well be a bad season? Deaths and accidents, if you could call missing and dead young people those, can rise in places when you least expect them, why shouldn't this be no different then those times? Poor Twilight, a deluted logistics beliver to the end...of her ignorance that is.
"Yeah Twi? What's up?" Flash asked her as he set a book down to join AppleJack and Big Mac for a round of Texas hold 'em.
"Nothing...Just wanted to say how I'm so happy to have everyone here tonight." Was the girl could say before helping herself to the sundae Pinkie make for her. Vinyl didn't mention the dream she had of being trapped like a fly and shredded by Freddy Kruger if he was even MORE nightmare educing, nor did her friend Octavia mention a dream she had where she could hear the shrieks and squeals of badly played strings of her signature cello, surrounded by darkness until it broke, and she found herself looking at a younger version of herself. Seated on a stool, stringing her instrument badly, all while the ugly rotted faces of her friends and family, looking no different than the ones in the comics Turner had brought, laughed and laughed at her ineptitude. Until only that hideous monster was left to use those horrible claws to slice each and every string of her cello before running the blades through her charcoal slate hair. He chuckled softly as she sat frozen with fear.
"No standing ovation for you." His cold as ice voice said as those claws began to sink into Octavia's skull, but the ringing of her alarm clock and Vinyl's arrival with french toast and orange juice save her from having her head crushed like a mouse's skull in the talons of an owl in the dead of the witching hour. Starlight Glimmer had one of her long dead father, back from his dead by blow fish toxin, his body bloated from gases, his skin moldy brown, his cracked and broken glasses askew as a fat grub worm crawled from the empty socked of his left eye, tongue falling to the floor as his slmiy gnarled hands reached out to her. Just before they could wrap around her neck, they became those bone and steel blades and the sickly yellow eyes, and that cackle. Like wind blowing through dry dead branches of a long forgotten forest.
These teens where puppets on strings and nooses, With his fleshy hand the anchor points. Those claws where just a quick swipe from severing some of those strings, but leaving the nooses intact, so he could watch them dangle then swing.
A Nightmare On Canterlot High.
"Pixel, we're all going to bed, would you give that Tales From the Crypt Pinball a rest?" Sunset Shimmer said over a barrage of incessant cackles, screaming, squishing noises, and insufferable puns of the Crypt Keeper as Pixel Resolution clattered and hit the flippers of the pinball table, the others at Twilight's had set a bunch of sleeping bags around in a circular pattern around the couch, which folded out into a bed. This bed was for Twilight given that it was her house, though she insisted someone else should get it. "No Twilight, it's your house, you should get the bed." Sunset had told her when she prepared to lay on a sleeping bag with her "emblem'' aka cutie mark.
Reluctantly she agreed and shared the bed with Flash, though he slept in his sleeping bag at the foot of the bed like a pet, not snuggling her, as some suspected he would. Everyone else opted to stay in their bags circled around the fold out, save for The Dazzlings, who opted to sleep in the reading chairs with foot stools. Rarity, as she lay herself down beside Brandon's bag asked the three sirens.
"Darlings, surely those chairs can't be good places to sleep in." She said as Adagio stretched out on the fabricated but still mostly wooden chair and covered herself with a single fleece blanket.
"Don't worry about, we've slept on rocks on the oceans of...back home."
"Not to mention park benches on our first few nights here." Sonata added before curling up like a cat on her chair as she yawned. Rarity shrugged and got nice and cozy in her sleeping bag and had to admit it, though they definitely changed since they last met, these girls were tough. The young adults drifted off one by one to their dreams, or at least tried to mainly due to...
"The Morgue the...merrier!" The Crypt Keeper in the pinball game said cackling happily as Pixel racked up a million on the...fast goring. He hit the flippers as a multi-ball barrage came at hit, he sent them all into the Crypt Keeper's head, causing him to cackle and laugh again and a gain with glee as the lights and chimes rang out through the otherwise silent reading room.
"Pixel for fuck's sake! Stop playing that fucking pinball and go the fuck to sleep!" Gilda said throwing her throw pillow at him. She could weave cusses like a silk worm when someone pissed her off. She glared her yellow eyes at him angrily as she prepared to unzip her bag and wail on him if he refused to listen. Pixel adjusted his shades, one lens round and green the other square and red and held the ball in a flipper.
"Come on Gilda, I'm about to beat my high score." He said releasing the ball and sending it at the thunder cracking bumpers near the top, he then was faced by a bunch of angry eyes of the others as they looked up from the table, annoyed glares that wanted so badly to get some sleep and not fear their dreams for once. reluctantly, Pixel let the ball go down the gutter of the pinball machine and it ended his game. "I'm sorry every one, I'll just...go to bed now." He said and unlike the others who stayed in close proximity to each other and seemed almost; content, almost cozy and snugly being so close to each other as they slept, Pixel parked himself in his sleeping bag under the silent and unplugged machine and was all by himself. Maybe he felt like he didn't deserve to be so close to the others as a reprimandation for being obnoxious with the pinball, maybe it was a choice to simply be his solitary self as he lay with the flippers and bumpers of the table above him. He sat away from the others on a farther side of the reading room at the bookstore/branch library/ at Twilight's house.
They didn't know it, but what they had done, was something of an influence of their roots as magical ponies. One such guest to this party was about to learn this the hard way. The reading room grew deathly silent, only the shadows from the street light outside and the soft snores of so many people gathered to sleep in one place. Invisible to any eyes save magical ones, a soft blue aura floated from the sleeper's, this aura linked them all together as they dreamed, it was like a magical shield. One that blocked any notions of nightmares from forming in their minds as they slept. A black shadow from outside slowly slithered like a snake through the window, before emerging as the form of a man. A man with a hideous deformed face with chunks of burned flesh torn from the sinew of muscles on his cheeks and chin, a red and green sweater, a long black coat covering it, and a dirty worn hat on his head. Then those all too familiar bony hands with those blades growing painfully out of the finger bones as he reached out to the nearest dream he could see playing in Rarity's mind.
She was having afternoon tea with some starlets she'd made new outfits for. 'A bit of worms in those krumpets before I really drive it home should make this interesting.' "Freddy" said as he reached a claw out to the golden mini version of her dream, just a single cut with his claw would turn it into a black as night frightmare. Then he'd kill her, slowly and painfully with a good long swipe, he reached out and...
'Dah!!! What the Fuck!?' He said as he flinched his hand away from her, he looked and now could see the aura ring now a bubble that covered the sleepers entirely. He knew what this was, it was a relic of his time in Equestria, the equine prey he often hunted had used it to elude both him in their sleep and the monsters who hunted them in the daylight as well. there had to be a stray here somewhere.
Pixel found himself standing in some kinda sub basement, a vault deep under some house, it looked so familiar somehow, like he'd seen it someplace before. He walked past the dingy old table with the iron candle stick and stacks of ancient books on top, and nearly felt his heart stop when he rounded a corner and found himself looking at a stone casket. It was ancient, dusty, and....there was a green banner over the it and written in purple letters was.
"Yeeehhahahah! hahahah!" A cackling laughter echoed as the lid flew open and out from it popped a decrepit ghoulish figure, it was him! The Crypt Keeper! "Hello Boils and Ghouls! And Welcome back to our favorite slain show..." He paused holding a microphone to a crowd gathered behind it, the crowd consisted of traditions Lugosi like vampires in black capes and shiny gold medallions and pressed suits, their skin fish belly white and hair slicked back and oiled. Several full moon werewolves, and dry bandaged up mummies all gathered in the crowd, a macabre gathering of ghoulish ghastly beings.. They collectively replied with a loud,
"CAN YOU SURVIVE THE CRYPT?!" And the Crypt Keeper then came up to Pixel and placed his bony, old hand on his shoulder, and cackled again.
"Well, it seems we have a late comer in our final round, tell me good sir what's your name?" He said holding the mic to Pixel and he was only too happy to tell him.
"Pixel Resolution my host with the ghost." Pixel said happily taking the mic from the bony tanned hands happily.
"Hey junior leave the crappy word play to me will ya?!" The Crypt keeper said as she took the mic back. "It's good you showed up when you did too, for you see it's been a rough three rounds here at can you survive, we take you now to our special guest correspondent, The Springwood Slasher himself, Charles Fredrick Kruger!" What he saw next, suddenly made the mood change for Pixel, Freddy Kruger stepped out from behind a black curtain from behind the stage with a mic in his own claws.
"I'll tell you what Crypty, tonight's competition's been a...killer on the contestants." He said this as the first of the black curtains rose behind him, the sight almost enough to make Pixel puke. Principal Celestia and Vice Principal Luna were dead. Hung by their necks over two podiums, their eyes where glassy and empty staring out to eternal emptiness, their tongues flopped out of their mouths and where fat and purple, their faces had gone blue and their lips black. Bellow them, their best male friend Mr. Discord the school janitor was sobbing away in his hands, crying and mourning such a horrible way to go.
"As you can see, the school team was not so good at the trivia round, and their chances of winning where left...dangling by a thread! HHAHA HAHAHAH!" Freddy and the Crypt Keeper cackled at this...Pixel shut his eyes and tried to remind himself 'It's only a dream.' The next curtain rose and behind where three families, The Pie farmers and the cakes (who were like a second family to her) and Pinkie, Hondo Flanks and Cookie Crumbles and their daughter Rarity, and Twilight Velvet, her husband Nightlight, and Twilight Sparkle. One second glance, Pixel realized that the Pies, Cakes, and Rarity's parents...Where in tanks of water...dead. Drowned and sunk to the bottom like a grim version of a dunk tank, their clothes soaked and floating in the water as blood leaked from their eyes and noses. People sink to the bottom when they drown without life jackets, Your body fills up with water and it's taken to the bottom, to lay and wait until the day the sea shall give back all her dead for the final judgement. Pixel could see the empty, almost ...broken stares that Pinkie and Rarity had at seeing their parents drowned in tanks of water, though her parents survived, Twilight was equally as distant at seeing this, People don't always immediately start breaking down and sobbing when they are faced with the lose of those close to them, grief affects us all differently, especially when the loss is as sudden as it seemed here; though for the most part, our initial reaction is turn inward, shut down, and not even acknowledge that our loss is real, whether your're eight or thirty eight, people often tell themselves that the one they lost will be back soon.
"The Family game night...how I love traditions..but enough of that...our new comer will have to face the trials of the house of horrors that old bone boy here calls home, tonight. Will the gamer geek have what it takes? Stay tuned and we'll find out!" Freddy said with a final laugh as the "show" went to break.
He was in a special green room, the kind you'd find on any other production, only no one died on those. He sat in front of the mirror, telling himself none of this was real, he'd had nightmare where he was aware they were only nightmares and yet couldn't get his brain to listen and wake up even though he wanted too. The green room's door opened and HE entered. Once Pixel was amused by his antics, but then again, once they had been only Robert England in makeup and nothing more. "I know you're there." He said not turning around in his seat. Freddy only chuckled softly and placed the bone and steel claws on his shoulder and pressed into the fabric, hard enough to feel it, but not enough to cut....yet.
"I'm not gonna kill you...yet." He said softly scratching the fabric of Pixel's shirt, "I was going after your little friends tonight, but it seems their roots are closer in this world than I thought...For you see, this form is only an inspiration I took from your world to take and make my own." The entity said in Pixel's ear with a hiss.
"Who are you? What are You?' He asked flinching softly at the cold breath on the nape of his neck.
"I'll answer a few questions for you...no strings, no bull shit...for the first few, so let me start by introducing myself. I come from the other side of the universe linked with this one. In Equestria, I was a monster that fed on the dreams and souls of the little young-lings, because of how darn tasty they are, but I found your kind...just as good, maybe better!" He said with as much enthusiasm as someone who found a new place to eat at. "You may know this form as a movie monster, well I saw and I liked what I saw. I took the form of the one your kind calls Freddy Kruger and its been...effective for me." Freddy said as he placed the claws on the mirrored glass and scratched it with a loud metallic screech.
"Did you really kill those people out there?" Pixel asked as he sat almost unfazed by the fact that he was alone with a monster, using the image of another to kill people. The danger just as real as any of the films this thing had came from. Freddy only laughed and put his hands behind his back, his long black coat tails fluttering softly.
"No, I couldn't get to those people you saw in the dream world, and adults...bore me. Though the one that looks like the princess who nearly destroyed me back in Equestria would be almost as satisfying as killing the real deal. No lies though, not even from me. Their all just manifestations I cooked up by looking into your little brain, had to did through a bunch of useless fluff though." Pixel threw his hands up to his head as if he could almost still feel those claws poking coldly like slimy worms feasting on his brain after death. "The things your friends did tonight, the way they sleep as we speak together with each other for protection, its a tactic their ancestors used to survive. A relic of the herd behavior that they used to protect each other from entities like myself." He said clicking his claws and holding them close to his face and growled angrily.
"They hold a sleepover tonight and you compare us to a herd of horses?" Pixel asked still scared for his very life in spite of the things he was saying.
"You know damn well that it exists!" Freddy shouted before slashing just inches from Pixel's face. "You wanna know how I got to you? Your not a pony boy, you other self would never be allowed to herd with them back on the other side of the mirror, because your a Griffin on the other side. A big, dumb, quick to anger, and slow to reason Griffin, and ponies don't like griffins one bit." He said running the claws across his cheek softly with a cackle. "You and I...back where we come from, are not well liked by them. Just look at how even here, the magic and protection their bonds form, it rejected you because of the griffin blood that runs in your veins." He said scratching and drawing some blood from his chin. "Keep that in mind for me will ya? Now I'm afraid tonight's show has been...cut short." He said making another cut on his ear which stung and burned like hell. "Be seeing you all real soon." Cold voice said as the room faded away into blackness before Pixel woke up.
"Hey Pix, Breakfast is ready." Sunset shimmer said poking her head under the pinball table Pixel had camped out under when the dawn had finally come and everyone who had slept so close together was refreshed after the best sleep many of them had in a while. They sat in places around the reading room helping themselves to french toast and bowls of cereal, laughing and enjoying the morning like great friends. Not Pixel, he barley ate anything, he was too shaken up from what happened to him. He didn't dare tell Rarity, Pinkie, or Twilight what his mind had cooked up for their parents, or what it had done to their Principal and Vice Principal, some dreams are better left unmentioned for the benefit of the ones you consider friends.
