She stands ramrod-straight behind the counter in the otherwise vacant Sugarcube Corner. Despite the lack of customers, a wide, toothy smile is plastered across her face, so bright it seems to reflect the sunlight. She spent all day making sure the store stayed tidy and pleasant to shop around in; whenever a customer purchased a cake, it was quickly replaced with a fresh one from the back room. The tables were wiped down almost before they even were sullied in the first place.
And all the while, that sugary sweet smile never left her face.
Late afternoon sunlight streams in through the window, splashing across the wooden floor in the dining area and the large table that holds all of the bakery’s famed cakes along with their glass stands. Other products line the walls, from cookies to muffins and even to cooking utensils, but those are mostly for show—ponies go to Sugarcube Corner for cakes, and she knows this. That’s why she makes sure to keep the display table full no matter what; that’s why she doesn’t go outside and play, despite the warm, breezy weather. She has to make sure the store runs perfectly. That’s what a responsible mare would do, and she is a responsible mare. She runs a shaking hoof through her mane.
She is responsible.
The front door suddenly crashes open; the bell whips back and forth from the impact, and in dashes Mr… She frowns. What’s his name? Then it comes to her, and she almost lets out a tremulous laugh. Of course she knows his name—she knows everyone’s name.
“Hiya, Mr. Cloud!” she says with a stiff wave.
He gallops to the counter, chest heaving with every ragged breath. “Wife—birthday—forgot cake.”
“Uh-huh! I’ve got a bunch already out that would work great for any birthday!” She waves at the display table and gives herself a mental pat on the back.
“No good,” he says, finally able to talk normally. “It has to be a chocolate mousse cake, and it has to have exactly three red roses in the center.”
She gives a low whistle. “That’s a tall order. When do you need it for?”
“Tonight!” He leans on the counter and grabs her hoof. “I’m very very very sorry, but this is very important to her and I nearly ruined it. Can you do this for me? Please?”
Baking something as difficult as a mousse cake while running the bakery? She cringes at the thought, then gulps. They would be able to do it, and since They’re out for the day, she’s expected to do it, too. It’s what a responsible mare would do, and she’s a responsible mare.
She is responsible.
“Three hours,” she says, doing the simple math in her head. “I can do it in three hours, so come back at seven and I’ll have it all baked up, dolled up, and ready to eat up.”
His eyes brim with tears. “My dear, you cannot know how very much this means to me. Thank you sincerely.”
She waves him out the door, then scrambles towards the kitchen. On her way, she passes the stairs leading up to the second floor. The very top is shrouded in impenetrable gloom that seems to stretch towards her, dark tendrils reaching, clawing. She shudders and ignores it; it’s what any responsible mare would do.
It only takes a few moments to drag everything she needs onto the counter, and a few more to get the mixer set-up. Then, as she dumps in the egg yolks, she hears the bell out front ring. She darts back out, not even glancing up at the dark, gaping abyss that awaits.
A pair of elderly mares meander around the premade cakes; every now and then, they lean in to take a sniff. This makes her smile flicker—what if they accidentally touch one with their nose? Then someone else won’t be able to eat it, and she’ll have to throw it out. She instantly pushes that thought away. She’s a responsible mare, and there’s nothing wrong with a customer inspecting the product. Accidents do happen; responsible mares like her can look past that, and she is a responsible mare.
She is responsible.
A few quick steps bring her up behind the two customers. “Anything I can help you fine young ladies with?” she chirps, and instantly realizes her mistake when one of them jumps, accidentally knocking into a cake stand. Both stand and cake fall with a loud thump to the ground to lie there, unmoving, lifeless. Dead.
The startled old mare twists around, eyes wide with fright. “Oh my, I’m so sorry. Is—is anything broken? Is anypony hurt?”
She rips her gaze away from the cake, its corpse still after being thrown so recklessly, and gives the mare a wide smile. “I’m the one who’s sorry,” she says. “I didn’t mean to surprise you like that!” She bends down and lifts the glass stand in her teeth—thankfully it’s still in one piece. A tiny chip is missing from the rim, but otherwise there’s no damage. “And it looks like the stand is a-okay.”
“Dear,” the other customer says to her companion, “I’ll cover that. I brought some spare bits.”
The first mare frowns. “Nonsense, it was my fault, and I’ll pay for—”
“And I overrule both of you,” she says, grin growing wider. She wants them to come back to the bakery; if they don’t, then They’ll be disappointed. They won’t say so, but she’ll know. “I’m super sorry for causing such a mess, so please—pick a cake. Any cake!”
“You mean—to take with us?”
“Yeppers!” She waves a hoof over the entire table. “Whichever one you want.”
“Are you sure?” The old mare who knocked the cake over glances away, so she widens her smile even more. Ponies love being smiled at. “I—I don’t feel comfortable doing that.”
“I insist. It’s on the house, courtesy of Sugarcube Corner!”
As the two customers reluctantly discuss which cake to take, she goes into the kitchen to get a trashbag and towels. Even when she doesn’t look up the staircase, she can feel herself being drawn towards it. It sucks at her, pulls at her, grabs at her, cries at her, goes limp in her hooves. She shudders and continues back out of the kitchen just in time to see the front door shut behind the two old mares. Her gaze slides over the cake display.
Except for the one that was knocked over, every single cake is still there.
She shakes her head, then sets to wiping up the mess. There’s still a lot of work to do in the kitchen baking Mr. Clover’s cake, and she’s barely started. As she scrapes up the goopy icing, her stomach lurches. Her attention wanders towards the stairway, where silence reigns. Deafening silence. Shrieking silence.
She is responsible.
Minutes later, the mess is gone and she returns to the kitchen, where she dumps all the mousse ingredients into the mixer. Before she can even begin to bake the cake, the mousse has to be mixed and set in the refrigerator to chill. Her shaking hooves dump in a cup of sugar that almost instantly dissolves in the syrupy mix. It flows, thick and rich, dark and decadent, sticky and wet.
The bell rings again out front, so reluctantly she abandons the mixer. A responsible mare knows her priorities, can plan and organize and make sure everything gets done. She knows to help the customer first, but to still get Mr. Clasp’s cake done on time as well. A responsible mare can do this easily, and she is a responsible mare.
She is responsible.
Back out front, the sunlight has gone from golden to bright-orange. It still jets across the floor like someone threw a bucket of orange paint and didn’t bother to wipe it up. As she looks around, her brow furrows. Noone is there. The bell definitely rang, though. She knows this—she heard it.
“Hello?” she calls. Nobody answers.
A sudden thought comes upon her—what if someone snuck in, wanted to skulk around? Her body begins to shake even harder than before, even as her smile reaches from cheek to cheek. She listens as closely as she can, but can’t make out any hoofsteps. What does that mean, though? Almost nothing.
Then her gaze lands on an envelope lying on the counter. She darts over to look at it, and a sigh of relief bursts from her lips. It has her name written on it in large, loopy hoof-writing—she recognizes it as belonging to one of her friends. Whichever one it was, she must have come and then left right away after she dropped this off. Her tongue slides out as she tries to match the writing to a specific pony, but after a moment, she shrugs and gives up. It isn’t important; she can figure it out later. She can read the letter later, too. It probably holds an invitation to a party; what else would her friends send her?
A sudden longing grabs her, demanding that she leave. It tells her to go to this party, draws her to abandon the bakery, the cake, the job, the life, and spend time with her friends. She shakes her head and drops the letter back on the counter. A responsible mare takes care of the important things first before having fun. Besides, she’s shaking too much to read it in the first place.
She is responsible.
Back to the kitchen, again past the beckoning, shrieking, reeking maw of the stairs.
It only takes a few more minutes to finish whipping up the mousse for Mr. Class’s cake. She pours it out into a pan, watching as it drips, slides, oozes, gushes, bubbles out of the bowl. The porcelain crockware clatters down against the table, then she slides the mousse into the refrigerator, where it will spend an hour chilling. Thickening. Congealing. She can’t fail. If she does, if she lets down this customer, They’ll think she’s a failure, that she’s not a responsible mare. They’ll never forgive her.
Before she can start baking the cake portion, she hears a long wail come from the stairs. Her body quakes, and she can't help but cover her eyes. There’s nothing she can do about this. She’s responsible; she has to see to the most important things. Her smile widens, so much so that her tired cheeks begin to ache. Listening to imaginary noises is not something she can afford to do right now. She tells herself it isn't important. She tells herself it isn't real.
But she’s responsible.
After a long moment of her squeezing her eyes shut, the shriek cuts off abruptly. She breathes a long sigh, then turns back to her work. The cake batter is much easier to mix than the mousse, but she still pats herself on the back as she slides the pans into the oven to bake. A glance at the clock shows her that six o’clock has just arrived. With an entire hour left, finishing the cake in time won’t pose any problems. They’ll forgive her for losing two customers; They’ll forgive her for what she did. Accidents do happen. But she's a responsible mare, and surely They’ll forgive the responsible mare.
The two cake layers come out, then go into the refrigerator to chill with the mousse. Nothing has happened in the bakery proper since the letter showed up; she ambles out to take a look around, almost managing to completely ignore the horror waiting for her up the stairs. Orange sunlight has deepened into deep red. She stops short, eyes shaking. One step back, then two, and then a third before she turns and sprints back into the kitchen. The light there is pale, fluorescent. She can stay there.
She spends five minutes, ten minutes, twenty minutes pacing back and forth, thoughts firmly on the letter. Maybe if she closes her eyes, she can go out and grab it without running into something. Maybe she can keep her fears in check until she has the letter and returns to the safety of the kitchen. On a whim, she reaches into a cabinet and pulls out an old radio. It turns on without complaint, and a few turns of the knob has it playing a jazzy, calming piece. Her smile loosens. A thin-legged table serves as a place to set the music, where she can easily reach it.
She jumps when the cooking timer suddenly goes off; its loud buzzing rattles in her ears and clashes with the soft music. Her hoof comes crashing down on the “off” button, and she gives a weary sigh. The time has come to wrap things up. Out of the refrigerator come the two layers of cake along with the soft, quivering mousse. Its dark color has paled into a very light brown, exactly what one would expect of this particular dessert. Now that the cake is cool, she can slather it with mousse without having to worry about it melting off. This she does in a matter of minutes, expertly shaping and smoothing and crafting despite her shaking hooves until what she’s left with is a flawlessly smooth masterpiece. She squeezes whipped cream around the edges of the cake, then picks it up to take it out front, where she left the roses. The sun should have nearly set, so her hoofsteps are sure, moreso than they had been all night. This is her moment. This is her chance to prove that she is responsible.
Then another high-pitched keen rings out. She is responsible.
Her hooves scramble, tripping over each other and sending her flying sidelong. The cake goes flying through the air, while her head crashes into the spindly table she had set the radio on. Radio, cake, and pony all go crashing to the ground; mousse flies along with sparks, and the glass plate shatters along with her hopes.
“No no no,” she cries through her smile, vision flashing. She can’t see well, but not so badly that she misses the ruined cake. It was an accident; she hadn’t meant to throw it so hard. She hadn’t meant to! Just a light toss, just enough to jostle it, to make it laugh and smile. Just a little bit!
The radio’s music has changed; it still plays the same song, but nearly inaudible due to the loud static now coming out of the speakers.
“No!” The clock chimes; it’s a quarter-hour until seven. There’s still time to make things right. She can still fix this.
Using both forelegs, she tries to gather the entire mess into one pile of cake and mousse, but a sharp pain jabs her brain as a shard of glass embeds itself in her flesh. She still scoops, pulls, shapes, almost like a filly trying to build a sand-castle at the beach. The radio continues to play its grating music. Why won’t it stop? She’s trying to fix this! Why won’t it stop?
A small scab on her lip breaks open from the intensity of her smile. “Please,” she sobs. “Please, just—I didn’t mean to. I didn’t mean to! It wasn’t on purpose!” But no matter how hard she tries, the moment she lets go, the entire conglomeration of ruined cake and broken plate sloughs down and spreads out on the floor.
The radio crackles loudly, then lets out a loud, piercing squeal. It hurts her ears. Blinking through tears, she reaches over and turns the knob to “off”. The sound continues. She turns the volume down the entire way. The sound continues. She tries to change the channel.
The crying continues.
“Be quiet,” she says, picking the radio up. None of the buttons or dials seem to work; it won’t stop. Why won’t it stop? She smacks it irritably, hot tears splashing down her face. “Be quiet!”
Instead of turning off, it starts to cry more loudly.
“Stop it!” She hits it again, harder, and like before, the noise intensifies. She can’t even hear herself think anymore. She wants to see if she can fix the cake, if she can satisfy the customer, if she can prove to Them she’s responsible, but this stupid thing just won’t stop crying.
Why won’t it stop? She punches it, gives it a hard shake.
“Stop it!” she shouts, as though the machine might listen. Why won’t it stop? “Stop it!” Why won’t it stop? “Why won’t you stop?” Stop it! But she doesn’t listen.
The radio comes crashing down on the ground once, then twice, then a third time. A wordless scream rips its way past her lips as she slams it against the kitchen floor over and over and over again. She can’t hear anything; all she knows is that her blood pounds in her ears, she wants the radio to stop making noise, and nothing will ever be the same for her again.
A few moments later, she realizes she’s just sitting there on the floor, covered in mousse and cake and blood. The radio lies across the room, having finally gone quiet at some point during her blind rage. She can see the mark on the wall where it hit after she hurled it as hard as she could. She can’t stop smiling. She has to keep smiling. She’s a responsible mare. Responsible mares do what they have to do no matter how bad things get. She’s a responsible mare.
But she’s responsible.
She hears a chime from the front room, then a stallion’s voice. “Hello? Is anypony here?” Mr. Cloak. “I’m here to pick up my cake?”
Maybe if she stays quiet he won’t hear her. Maybe he’ll just leave and never see this and everyone will forget anything ever happened. She sniffs, then sobs. Slow, measured hoofsteps make their way closer and closer, and then he pokes his head into the kitchen. His eyes bulge wide open.
“What in the princess’ name happened in here?”
She sniffles again as globs of mousse drip from her mane. “I tried,” she says through trembling lips. She has to keep smiling. “I tried as hard as I could, but—but there was an accident.” The last word comes out as a long wail; her smile, which she had kept on her face all day, finally shatters, and she breaks down into choking sobs. She feels a warm hoof pat her on the back, but that does no good. It won’t fix what she did.
She’s responsible.
Minutes pass this way, with her screaming and shrieking while this stallion whose name she can’t remember awkwardly tells her everything will be okay. Everything won’t be okay. He doesn’t know. She realizes in a moment of dark clarity exactly why everything won’t be okay. The stairway beckons to her, promises her what horrible things await her in the coming days. She knows what will happen.
So she breaks.
Her face cracks into a wide grin. Choked sobs still squeeze their way out, but she turns to Mr. What’s-His-Name anyway.
“Please, don’t bother with me,” she says, hiccuping. He notices her expression and quickly steps back. “I’m really sorry! I didn’t mean to ruin your wife’s birthday!”
He gulps. “I’m sure she’ll understand,” he answers in a shaky voice. “I’ll—will you be alright?”
“Yeppers!” She hides her injured leg; he must not have noticed the bleeding. Good. “Hey, tell ya what—it won’t be a chocolate mousse cake, but please pick whichever cake out front you want. On the house.”
“I couldn’t—”
She jerks to her feet. “Really, I insist.”
A moment passes where he stares hard into her eyes, then finally nods. “Very well. Thank you for the kindness.” He turns to leave, then glances back once more. “And… take care of yourself.”
With that, he walks quickly out of the kitchen.
She takes the time to clean up the mess, even going so far as to mop the entire floor, because that’s what responsible mares do. She washes her leg and disinfects it, because that’s what responsible mares do. Then she goes out front and stands behind the counter in the dark bakery, because that’s what responsible mares do. The stairway still calls her name, but she can no longer hear the words, no longer feel its magnetic draw. Today's a new day, a day where she can prove that she's a responsible mare and not just the mare responsible. She glances down at where she left the letter; it’s gone. She wonders if it ever was real in the first place. Perhaps it was.
The moon is already high in the air by the time They return home. The lights flick on.
“Hi!” she says in a chirping voice.
Mr. Cake yelps and jumps backwards. “Pinkie!” After a moment of silence, his wife pats him on the back to calm him. “Pinkie, I—what were you doing here?”
“Keeping watch on the shop,” she says. She has to smile. Responsible mares smile and leave their woes behind until they’re done for the day.
“Well, that’s…” Mrs. Cake clears her throat. “Admirable. Are the twins in bed?”
“Yep!”
“Did they cause you any trouble?”
“Nope!”
Mrs. Cake smiles, then prances to the howling stairway. “I’ll just go say goodnight, then.” She can’t see the darkness that engulfs her, swallows her, never to let her out again.
“Say, uh, Pinkie,” Mr. Cake says as he turns the “Open” sign to “Closed” in the window. “You didn’t have to stay open this late.” Then, on his way into the kitchen, he glances at her and sees the bandage wrapped around her leg. “Hey, what happened to your—”
A shriek from upstairs slices through his sentence, and without pause, Mr. Cake gallops up into the abyss. She knows she’ll never see him again either. Mrs. Cake’s cries are soon joined by her husband’s.
Without dropping her smile, she slowly walks out from behind the counter and over to the window, where she turns the sign back to “Open”. The store can’t close, not yet. She’s a responsible mare. She has to prove to Them that she can be trusted, that she can be loved.
Because she was responsible for everything.
