A Doctor's Nightmare

by garatheauthor

Rating: mature
Tags: Dark, Sad, Princess Luna, Original Character, Mystery, Tragedy, Gore, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic
Length: 4059

Why do bad dreams happen to good ponies?

Why do bad dreams happen to good ponies?

For over a month now every night has been filled with the same imagery. Events from my past that to this day still haunt me. What do they mean and why is my subconscious terrorizing me in such a fashion?

Will tonight reveal the source of these thoughts or am I simply in for another round of more questions than answers?

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Published 2016-08-30 20:30:01 UTC
Last updated 2016-08-30 20:30:01 UTC

A Doctor's Nightmare

Ponies always have a misconception about lucid dreams. They assume they’re these magical events where you can turn your mind into a personal playground. Some lucid dreams are like that but the vast majority are like train rides. You have some control over movement but in the grand scheme of things it’s the train the dictates where your journey begins and ends.

The dream I was currently in fell in the latter camp. I could control my body to a limited extent but only if I was willing to cooperate with the narrative that played out. This had been the case for well over a month now with the same dream being replayed night after night.

Before me was a house. It was an imposing place. An old manor that some aristocratic family in Canterlot might own. The exterior was clean and pristine with walls that were freshly maintained and a gardens free of even the most minute imperfection.

I didn’t want to go inside, though no alternative was offered to me. The narrative wanted me to enter so my hooves moved, leading me over to the front door. Step after step brought me closer until I stood before the it. It was a heavy thing crafted of a cracked and heavily weathered elm.

A hoof came down and I knocked upon the surface. The door simply opened, putting up no resistance to my advance. I peered inside, attempting to look into the entryway. The dream refused to let me cheat, creating an artificial fog I could not see through.

It was a trap. I knew as much. If I wanted to see inside I’d have to walk in, putting myself at the mercy of the narrative. I inched my way forward, with my first steps being tentative in nature. Once my body had cleared the door it slammed shut with a mighty crash.

Mentally, this caused me to smile. On my first night with the dream that had been enough to wake me. Now, it was little more than a cheap jump scare which I ignored.

The fog lifted and the interior of the entryway came into detail. It had a vibe of being well lived in. A small set of beige drawers leaned against an ivory wall. Upon them rested several silver framed photographs and an expensive looking, though mass produced, vase.

A family lived here, mine to be exact. This was my childhood home. That detail somehow always seemed alluded me until I saw the picture of my father and myself playing catch.

We were a proud family, being one of the pillars of Canterlot society. Oh sure there were bigger names, the Riches, the Bluebloods, the Sparkles, but we still made our own little splashes from time to time. At this point in my life my father was a minister on Celestia’s council and my mother was the president of a regional newspaper.

The light rhythm of piano music filled the house and my attention was immediately drawn away. It was a rather poetic melody. One that could only belong to my sister. She must have been in the music room.

I began to approach, heading up the stairs to the second floor. The music acted as my guide, navigating me through the home that I had not seen in decades.

The song began to pick up in both pace and volume as I neared the room. The source hidden away by one of the few surrounding doors. Then as suddenly as it started the music stopped and with it a dagger was driven into my heart.

“No,” I heard myself say. The voice was far younger than the one I sported in the waking world.

I pushed through a door and my fears were proven correct. There was my darling sister sprawled out upon the floor.

She had been so young. Barely old enough to enter school. Yet, fate judged that her time in Equestia had come to an end. I was the one to discover her like this, having just come home from soccer practice. I myself barely out of foalhood at this point.

There was a peaceful expression plastered on her muzzle. Clearly she had not been expecting death when whatever calamity struck. Her last memories were happy ones and that is the only silver lining I could take from the situation.

I tried to approach her, to reach out and stroke one of her blue cheeks but the narrative denied me that much. She was scenery and not to be interacted with.

The sound of myself crying was jarring but understandable. After all I viewed this memory from the eyes of my younger self. I had even joined in on those tears the first few nights but now I was numb to it. The mind could only take so much sadness before it became mundane.

The scene froze and in a flash the years began to trail by around me. I grew from a young colt to a stallion. My cutie mark ended up being a heart. This made me quite the target for bullies. A heart was a symbol of love and something a young colt was supposed to be immune too.

After my sister’s death my parents had become a lot more hands on, spending every waking hour with their remaining child. I was fine with this as I never had many friends in school. It was an all-colts affair and most of the student body was convinced I was a queer due to my cutie mark.

If I was a mare that mark would have put me on the path for a job in marriage counseling or something along those lines. Instead my parents and I perceived it differently. I decided upon finishing with my secondary schooling that I was going to enroll at Canterlot University in the faculty of medicine. I ended up graduating there with full honours as a licensed surgeon.

With my degree I instantly got a job at the prestigious Royal Canterlot Hospital. It was the greatest medical facility in all of Equestria, being funded exclusively from the treasury of Princess Celesita. The motto was to treat all as equals from pauper to prince.

When my trails through time finally came to a halt I was inside of an office. I was much older now, being at the end of my internship at the hospital.

While the events in the house were without a doubt the worst in my life what was about to happen would be a distant second.

In the room with me were four other doctors. Three of them were interns like myself, Racing Stripe, Fertile Crescent, and Sugarcoat. The final was the then head of surgery, Doctor Blueblood.

He was a noble stallion who hated the idea of his royal heritage so much that he preferred the prefix doctor over prince. Sadly, his name is now associated with his son whose greatest accomplishment is waking up in the morning.

Doctor Blueblood looked up at us with a smoldering rage. “She passed last night.”

He was referring to a patient at the time. A filly who had come in with liver issues. It was a simple enough surgery and the ponies in the room had all been active on the procedure. She shouldn’t have died but apparently the universe saw it differently.

Worst of all there was the question of malpractice. The autopsy showed that her cause of death had to do with the heart. An organ that was in no way faulty or damaged before, during, or after the procedure.

He began to delve into a lecture. “There will be a proper examination on her death. I do not wish to place blame on any of you, but any doctor who can kill a foal on such a routine surgery is not fit to work in this hospital.”

“Sir, you can’t honestly think that we had anything to do with this,” I said before my younger counterpart repeated it. I’ve tried to stray from the script before but it never worked. No matter what I said as the observer, my acting counterpart would stick strictly to his lines. So what was even the point in trying to change that?

Which one of us had fucked up? The me standing there was terrified, the one watching from 25 years in the future had the foresight not to worry. That stallion was now in Doctor Blueblood’s seat and had received a medal for excellence in the field of medicine from Princess Celestia herself.

It would turn out that the foal’s death while mysterious had nothing to do with the performance of any of the doctors in that room. Though, the incident would rock us all and leave a lasting impact.

Doctors were good ponies, but even they developed vices. Each of the ponies in that room aquired one soon after. Fertile Crescent became a gambler, Racing Stripes hit the bars a bit too frequently, and Sugarcoat surrounded herself with stallions that were far too handsome and too young for a mare like herself.

I already had a vice at that point. Though mine didn’t tarnish my reputation or career. Half the reason I was now head of surgery had to do with my skill. While the other half came from the fact that unlike my colleagues I could keep myself presentable in public.

We were ushered out of the office and led towards the filly’s room. As we walked through the hospital all eyes were upon us. Those eyes were figments of my memory but a chill went down my spine. There was a very real pair of eyes in that crowd and they were watching me.

I tried to shake off the sensation as we entered her room. The filly was long gone but her personal belongings remained. At the bedside were two ponies, a mare and stallion, her mother and father. They were furious, of course they were.

They screamed and berated us, repeating phrases we had used to reassure them the past couple of days. We all looked guilty. None of us had done anything wrong yet we all took blame. If only we were better.

We would be one day, I reminded myself. Every one of the doctors involved with that liver surgery would save hundreds of lives over the next two and a half decades. We were good ponies; I was a good pony. No matter what vices or flaws we held.

The mother was cut off in the middle of an explicit as the room froze and began to bleed away. This peaked an interest in me. My nightmare had always ended at the hospital. Whatever came next was going to be an unexplored landscape for me. I was both mildly intrigued and horrified to see what the narrative could muster next.

I ended up in a park and my stomach dropped. It wasn’t a very popular place, just a little stretch of green on the edge of town. I had only been here once in my entire life.

“No,” I muttered.

My heart was hammering away in my chest. Why would my consciousness bring me here?

“It didn’t,” a voice boomed.

I whipped around and cried out in shock. There was something behind me, a monster comprised of the darkness. Fierce red eyes stared at me and a powerful demonic hoof took a step forward. A smile crossed the beast’s face revealing row after row of impossibly sharp teeth that glowed like the moonlight. Black tendrils oozed from its back, slithering across the ground towards me.

A tentative step from the monster turned into a full blown sprint as it barreled towards me. I screamed loudly before turning around and bolting away. My hooves pounded upon the gravel trail with me refusing to look over my shoulder.

I didn’t need my eyes to confirm that the monster was still in hot pursuit.

As we continued to run, the path became more and more overgrown. The shrubs that bordered the trail spilled over and their branches smacked me in the face. They cut into my flesh, drawing thin trickles of blood.

The bright pain that blossomed was the least of my concerns. The path was becoming more feral and winding as it changed from gravel to matted down and uneven grass.

A part of my mind knew what was about to happen but it was being suppressed by the raw fear for the beast that stalked me. Turn after turn brought me closer and closer to the end. Until finally, I took a final corner and was confronted by a hedge.

It was a hedge of buckthorn, a very nasty species. The bark was coarse with many tiny barbs that could pierce into the flesh of a pony’s hide if they weren’t careful. I was not as I tumbled into the bush going far too fast to even think about stopping.

Pain ebbed into me as the barbs tore at my skin cutting it open in a wide variety of places. I could feel as the blood oozed down my flank, my haunches, my ribs. It was everywhere but none of that mattered as I saw the horror in front of me.

An object rested right off the bridge of my nose. It was a skeleton. That of a foal. Its hollow eyes stared right into me. I tried to speak but all that came forth was a garbled mess of bloody words.

The skeleton shuddered and began to grow a layer of disgusting rotten flesh. I gagged as detail after detail was plastered onto the colt. His skin was split open and bubbling with decomposition. An eye hung out of the socket, held on by a thread of tendon. There was exposed cheek bone from a gash inflicted upon his face.

He blinked with his good eye before speaking, “Doctor Keys?”

A wet scream came from my mouth as I attempted to close my eyes. They would not shut. Something was holding them open. I then attempted to scramble backwards, having just as much luck.

The colt looked at me and brought forth one of his decayed hooves. He dragged it tenderly against my cheek. I shivered under his touch, it was cold and clammy feeling of a mixture of torn wax paper and bone.

You did this, I thought to myself. The colt froze and as if my confession was enough it came to an end.

The hedge disappeared and I was placed upon solid ground inside of a room of white. It was an endless abyss for as far as I could see.

“You did what?” The voice said again. It was the beast but softer, more feminine.

I turned to face it, being taken aback by who was behind me. It was Princess Luna. She stood there a few meters away looking at me with a tame neutral expression. Her eyes betrayed her though, the blue in them was on fire.

“What are you doing here?” I asked.

“You did what?” she repeated.

I swallowed and tried to look away but her magic embraced by head, forcing me to stare at her. Those eyes, they were the ones I felt back at the hospital. The anomaly in an otherwise mundane nightmare.

“You know what I’ve done.”

“We do not.”

My vice and talent went hoof in hoof. I was talented with the heart, always had been even from a young age. When my sister died it had been an accident. The filly in the hospital a perverse game. The colt embedded in the buckthorn a cheap thrill. I imagine the sensation I felt at stopping his heart was equivalent to what Doctor Stripe’s felt after a shot of cheap rye.

“I killed them. I killed my sister, that filly, that colt, and so many more.”

I didn’t feel sadness or remorse at the statement. Not that it seemed that Luna expected me too. She simply stared at me, passing judgement.

“Do you consider yourself a good stallion?”

Yes. “No, of course not. I’m a murderer”

“Do not lie to me. Your dreams are my domain.”

“Yes, I am a good stallion. What are eight lives when I’ve saved hundreds?”

That took her a back and in a way that felt nice.

“So are you going to have me arrested?” I asked.

“No. We are unable to do such a thing,” she replied.

Now it was my turn to be surprised. “What? Why not?”

“Because I have no proof beyond what I have seen here. Last time I checked dreams do not hold up in a court of law.”

That made me chuckle. “You’re a princess.”

“And my sister, in her wisdom, has eroded our powers over the centuries. Plus, it would cause a crisis.”

“A crisis?”

“Indeed, imagine how ponies would react if they knew that the contents of their dreams could get them in trouble. I do not wish to be branded as a power hungry tyrant once more.

“Well then, I guess we are at a stalemate.”

Luna looked at me for a second before bursting out into laughter. “Stalemate, not at all. You will turn yourself in?”

“What makes you think I’d do that?”

Luna grinned and approached me, placing her heavy hoof upon my shoulder. “Because we control your dreams. Which means every day you go unpunished we will turn the night into complete and utter agony for you.

I stared up at her, feeling the blood drain from my cheeks. “Oh.”

Author's Note

This was a little experiment I wanted to try in writing from a first person perspective. I got the idea literally on the final day of my work term.

If you enjoy the fic please like the fic, favourite the fic, and if you want to see more fics like this fic make sure to watch me.

Epilogue 1: 8 Months Later

I didn’t turn myself in, at least not at first. I lasted nearly three weeks under the carefully crafted vengeance of Princess Luna. She kept her promise, coming up with fresh inventive ways of punishing me.

Then one day I ended up on the steps of my nearest police station. I couldn’t remember how I got there but she had won. I was going to turn myself in.

At first the officers at the desk couldn’t believe my confession. I was a hero after all, a good pony. By tartarus one of the cops there had even been under my knife at one point. I heard them talk, coming up with ideas of blackmail and that I was being set up.

Half an hour later the first corpse arrived at the station. I was locked in a cell at that point. By the sixth hour all eight had been discovered and now there was no question of my guilt. Only the murderer could have had such in depth knowledge on their whereabouts.

I slept like a baby that night. My life was over but for the first time in months I was rewarded with a pleasant lack of dreams.

The trial turned into the biggest news of the year. I was on the front page of every newspaper from Vanhoover to Manehatten. The case was so big that I was going to be getting a royal trial.

In Equestrian law a regular judge can only give a sentence of up to 45 years in prison. A princess on the other hoof could pass harsher judgements, including death.

That was the word on everypony’s tongue. Would I be the first pony to receive the death penalty in over two centuries?

My trial was escalated even higher in the media circus when new broke that Princess Luna would be my judge. This would be her first case in over a thousand years. On the first day in court I stared at her as I entered, my hooves shackled together. She stared back and I could have sworn there was an amused smile upon her muzzle.

I was sentenced within a week. My lawyer’s only shield was to call in character witnesses. Ponies who I worked with or knew before all of this. Some of them gave me truly moving speeches.

Of course that was nothing compared to the side trying to get me executed. They had parents who would glare at me as they delivered fiery sermons about how every day without their foal was agony.

At one point I was asked if I had any shame. I responded that I did. Though, I doubt for the reason they were expecting. I was ashamed because my vice had been exposed. I was like the alcoholic that hit rock bottom in a very public setting.

In the end, my life was spared and Luna simply sentenced me to eight life sentences with no chance of parole.

By sundown I found myself in a cell with another murderer. He said I disgusted him.

Prison was not an easy place for me. I was a soft stallion thrown into a world of scum. The guards hated me and my fellow convicts treated me even worse. Apparently child murder was even taboo amongst them.

I was honestly just glad that the nightmares had ended. Who cared what happened during the day when I could finally sleep in peace. Something I had been doing for the past seven months.

That was until a week ago when the nightmares resumed again. Those custom designed by Princess Luna herself. Clearly sending me to jail was not justice enough for her

So here I am in the last moments of my life with a noose of copper wire hanging from my neck. I stand upon my bed, only one step away from death. I look up and see myself in the mirror. A good stallion looks back at me. I apologize to him before taking a single step forward.

Epilogue 2: Princess Luna

Princess Luna was seated upon her balcony, looking over the city of Canterlot. It was the middle of the night with the moon hanging high in the sky. On her table was an ivory mug of coffee and a copy of the Canterlot Crier.

The newspaper was opened to a page far away from the front where long dead new stories posted their last gasping articles. A short column told the story of Doctor Key’s suicide. Apparently the stallion had opted to leave the world in a far timelier fashion then waiting for old age

Good Riddance, Luna thought as she took a sip of her coffee.

She was about to move onto more stately matters when a knock came from her door. It was curt and came without a request from a servant to enter. It could only be one pony.

“Come in sister,” Luna said.

The door opened and in stepped Princess Celestia. She looked tired, probably winding down from her own day as Luna’s was just getting started.

“Hello, Luna,” Celestia replied.

She trotted over and sat across from her. The two of them exchanged a look before Luna broke the silence.

“Can we get you anything? Some coffee, perhaps?” she asked.

“Do you have any tea?”

“No, we do not. You should know that by now.”

Celestia shook her head and smiled softly. “You really should start drinking it. It’s good for your health-” she paused “-speaking of which, I heard you’ve been seeing a doctor.”

Luna froze. “And of what concern is it to you?”

Celestia remained kind though her voice gained a certain edge to it. “We don’t do things like this anymore, Luna.”

She shook her head. “He killed eight foals. Eight foals, Celestia.”

“I know but we still have rules that must be followed. That you must follow.”

“Last time we checked we played within them. He received a fair trial and we even starved off the idea of giving him death.”

“Yet you killed him anyways.”

“He killed himself.”

The two of them sat there in silence. Luna looked out at the city while Celestia looked at her.

“I just don’t want ponies labeling you as a monster again.”

Luna smiled. “It’s not so bad. I’ve been calling myself one for years.”