Chapters The two ponies stood across from each other in a dimly-lit empty studio, a would-be purple-maned fashonista and her former blue-maned assistant.
"Suri, please don't go into Snow Alley." Coco begged, "Don't go into Snow Alley."
"What's Snow Alley?" Suri asked.
"I can't tell you." Coco said, "Just don't go. Don't go. Don't go! DON'T GO!!"
Coco's sorrow-filled eyes wept blood as her screams echoed deep inside Suri's ears.
Suri Polomare awoke with a shriek of her own and wiped the cold sweat from her brow. Her nightmares were growing worse each
Suri dragged herself into Marebucks with a splitting headache and put on her green apron and hat. Another grueling day of serving ungrateful customers awaited her.
"Suri, you're late again!" her manager, Daily Grind, barked, "You've been dragging all week!"
Suri desperately wanted to splash a cup of hot coffee in her boss's face but thought better of it and struggled to put a smile on her face.
"Sorry, Ms. Grind." she managed to say, "I've been getting migraines."
"Get a prescription, then." Daily advised.
Suri had to remind herself of the silver lining that Daily couldn't afford to fire her. Compared to everypony else, she did most of the hoofwork in the shop, and she was the only one pulling a doubleshift. She put in more hours than Daily. The constant nightmares over the past two weeks didn't help matters though.
The dream was always similar, yet different. She was in a dark room staring at somepony else, Coco Pommel, Prim Hemline, Hoity-Toity, Rarity, anyone related to her failed rise to stardom. They would always warn her not to go in Snow Alley, but she had lived in Manehattan for years and as far as she knew there was no street called Snow Alley. Then something horrible would happen like they would cry blood, vomit blood, shed their skin, or grow a second pair of eyes. The worst part was there was no reason or explanation for it; Suri wasn't taking any medication, and she didn't watch horror movies.
Suri had only made it an hour into her shift when the one pony she wanted to see least of all stepped through the door, Coco Pommel.
Suri loathed her former assistant turned traitor and the one blessing of living in the rough part of Manehattan was not having to see
Coco pranced right up to the register as if she were happy to be there and looked at the menu board behind the counter.
"Hmm..should I try the Zap Apple Spice or just get my old standby, the Coco Mocha?" she said with a giggle.
"I think you should leave and never come back." Suri whispered without thinking, but loud enough to where Coco could hear it.
"S...Suri?" Coco asked awkwardly, "Is...is that you?"
"Welcome to Marebucks. May I take your order?" Suri asked, trying to pretend that Coco was just another customer.
"Ms. Polomare?" Coco continued, trying to make conversation, "How have you been? It's been months, hasn't it?"
Not long enough. Suri thought, Just put in your order and go.
"Suri?" Coco asked, "Aren't you going to say anything?"
"May I take your order, Coco?" Suri repeated.
"A small Coco Mocha, to go, I guess." Coco decided.
"One small Coco Mocha to go!" Suri shouted to Cuppa Joe, the barista on duty.
"No wait!" Coco gasped, "Can you make that a Zap Apple Spice, after all?"
Make up your stupid little mind, Coco. Suri thought.
"Scratch that, make that a small Zap Apple Spice to go, m'kay!" Suri corrected.
Now she's got me saying 'm'kay' again, brilliant. Suri groaned inside her mind.
Suri had painstakingly trained herself to stop using her verbal tic because she hated how her co-workers made fun of her for sounding too uppity. Coco's presence brought everything back.
"Your order will be ready in just a minute, m'kay!" Suri said, trying to swallow her resentment.
"She's tryin' ta sound like one a' them hoity-toity types again." Cuppa Joe said in his gruff lower Manehattan accent, not caring if Suri heard him.
I'm better than Hoity-Toity, you talentless bum. Or at least, I could've been. Suri wished to herself.
Joe passed a cup of what he thought was Zap Apple Spice to Suri who passed it along to Coco. Coco stirred it long enough to let some of the heat escape and took a few sips. She instantly started coughing and to Suri's abject horror, weeping blood.
"This is Cinna Spice!" Coco realized, "I'm allergic to cinnamon!"
"What happened to your eyes?!" Suri shouted in terror, thinking her nightmare was coming true.
"My bad." Joe admitted, "Gave ya tha wrong cup."
"It's a rare condition." Coco explained, "It only happens with cinnamon though. It's mostly just irritating, kind of like a nosebleed."
"What do you know about Snow Alley?!" Suri demanded, "Say something!"
"Suri...are you okay?" Coco wondered, "It was an accident. Maybe I should leave."
"Suri's scarin' away the customers!" Joe commented.
"You're the one who gave her coffee she was allergic to, you dolt!" Suri argued.
"What's going on?!" Daily demanded.
"Sorry, Ms. Grind." Joe conceded, "It was an accident."
"Do you want some jetsetter type to sue us all out of a job?" Daily inquired, "Do you?!"
"How was I supposed to know she was allergic?" Joe asked.
"Joe, you take the register." Daily ordered, "I'll help make orders. Suri, why don't you take the day off?"
"Ms. Grind, please! Daily!" Suri begged, "Don't fire me."
"I'm not firing you, Suri." Daily said, "I'm actually trying to help you. You say you have headaches, right? Why don't you go home and
"Thank you." Suri said softly, hanging up her hat and apron, and following Coco out the door.
"I didn't mean to get you in trouble." Coco told Suri once they were both outside.
"Just don't embarass me like that again, m'kay!" Suri demanded.
"Suri...do you need a job?" Coco asked, blood still dripping from her tear ducts.
"I...well I..." Suri stammered, "Hemline blacklisted me, remember?!"
"I wouldn't be allowed to hire you since I'm Ms. Hemline's assistant now, but maybe I could put in a good word with Rarity and..." Coco suggested.
"I'm not working for that two-bit, wannabe, upstart...." Suri fumed.
I already asked Rarity. Suri secretly thought but didn't want Coco to know, She can't afford to hire any more help.
"What is Snow Alley? Where is it?" Suri asked again, trying to change the subject.
"Snow Alley?" Coco wondered, "I've never heard of it."
"You told me about it. In my dream." Suri explained, "I keep having these nightmares. They always tell me not to go to Snow Alley."
"I don't know." Coco said, "I used to have nightmares about changelings attacking Manehattan but it turns out that I just needed to
"You take sleeping pills?" Suri asked, "Do those help?"
"Yeah, I guess." Coco replied, "I really need to get back to work. The Marebucks uptown is closed because the manager's sick and it'll
"I think I'm just going to go get some sleep, m'kay?" Suri said, quickly trotting away.
She's still pretty mean but I feel kind of bad. Coco thought. But Ms. Hemline's decision is final.
On her way back to her cold, drafty apartment, Coco bought some sleeping pills at the local pharmacy. She took twice the recommended dosage and soon fell asleep.
This time, when Suri was back in the darkened studio, she was greeted by Coco and Rarity. who both kept their eyes closed. She tried to say something sarcastic, but couldn't open her mouth to speak.
"Don't go, darling. Don't go, don't go, don't go." Rarity repeated.
"Don't go in the snow. Don't go in the snow. Don't go." Coco chimed in.
Shut up! Both of you shut up! Suri wanted to say, Wake up! Wake up!
"DON'T GO!! DON'T GO!! DON'T GO!!" both of Suri's tormentors shouted in unison, opening there eyes to reveal bloody buttons sewn to their sockets, matching the same color and style as the buttons on Suri's cutie mark.
"AAAAHHHHH!!!!" Suri screamed herself awake again, "Make it stop!! For the love of Celestia, make it stop!!"
Suri trotted around her room frantically, beating her head against the wall as her headache grew worse and worse. Blood dripped from her nostrils as the pressure increased and she galloped out of her apartment, slamming the door behind her. The cold air outside dulled the pain somewhat and she tried to trot it off. She ducked without thinking into the alleyway next to her apartment building and collasped into a snowpile that had built up outside.
Suri staggered back onto her hooves and to her horror she realized she was standing in the once place she was told not to go. But there are plenty of snowy corridors around Manehattan? Isn't Snow Alley one specific place? Did she have to stay out of any small space that happened to have snow on the ground? There wasn't anything or anypony there anyways, so what was the danger?
Suri managed to creep back up to her apartment door where a certain somepony awaited her. Coco had returned to torment her in her waking hours, to mock her, to belittle her, to condescend her.
"What the hay are you doing here?" Suri demanded, "How do you know where I live?"
"Your boss, Daily Grind, told me." Coco admitted, "She's worried about you, Suri. I'm worried about you."
"Worried?!" Suri retorted, "Daily Grind works me half to death and you sit around all day so prim and proper with Ms. Prim and the rest of your debonair buddies! That was supposed to me, m'kay, me!!"
"Suri...it was your choice..." Coco reminded her, "You sabotaged Rarity and forced me to help you do it."
"I know that you idiot, and you ruined everything!" Suri lamented, "You blabbed to that wannabe and her stupid friends and ruined my life! I'll kill you!!"
Coco saw a glint of pure madness in her former boss' eyes as Suri lunged at her and tried to strangle her with her hooves. Ponies didn't have fingers to wrap around others' throats but they could apply more than a bit of pressure with their hooves. Coco struggled to get the least bit of air as the veins bulged in Suri's own throat and the whites of her eyes tinged red.
The nightmares and headaches fueled Suri's rage and madness as she pressed down harder and harder as Coco's face went blue. Suri was only satisfied when Coco stopped moving, her muzzle stayed blue and her tongue hung out of her mouth. It was only the call of a passerby that broke Suri out of her trance.
"What's going on over here?!" a passing stallion asked.
Realizing what she had done, Suri quickly stepped in front of Coco's body and gave a nervous chuckle.
"We're...rehearsing a scene from a play we're doing, m'kay!" she stammered, "It's called...Snow Alley!"
"Oh yeah, Snow Alley, based on that novel." the stallion commented, "You see, in the book, the crazed mare kills her best friend and gets away with it but the in the play it's the other way around, the friend kills the crazy in self-defense only to find out that her crazed friend was already dead."
"Sounds...complicated..." Suri decided.
"Anywho, I'll let you get back to yer murderin', ya crazy broad." the stallion said jokingly.
What makes you think I'm not the best friend? Suri wondered as the stallion trotted away.
"Suri....Suri..." Coco said in a gutteral voice from behind her, "Suri...why did you kill me? I only wanted to help."
"Wait! Stop! Stay away!" Suri begged, "You're dead!!"
"You went to Snow Alley." Coco warned, "I told you not to go to Snow Alley."
The undead Coco reached out her own hooves and grabbed Suri's shoulders.
"I told you not to go...I told you...wake up! Please wake up! Suri!! It's me, Coco!!" Coco shouted in Suri's ear.
Suri fluttered her eyes open as she found herself back in the alley, shivering from the cold, with Coco standing over her.
"Stay away! Get out!! Please!!" Suri begged.
"Are you okay? What happened?" Coco asked, "Your boss told me where you lived and I found you passed out here."
"That was just a dream?" Suri wondered, "But I killed you, and you were weeping blood, and you were dead but still talking and..."
"Was it the nightmares again?" Coco suggested, "Wait...what do you mean you killed me?"
"I....nothing...just a dream, m'kay." Suri replied, "Do you smell cinnamon?"
"Some annoying salespony sprayed cinammon perfume on me even after I told him I was allergic." Coco explained, "That makes twice in one day. These eyebleeds are driving me crazy."
Suri finally noticed that Coco's eyes were still bleeding and gave a bitter chuckle at the fact that she herself really was being driven crazy.
"Coco, my horrific omen inducing friend." Suri announced, "Would you like to come inside for some coffee? I promise no cinnamon this time, m'kay?"
"Sounds great." Coco replied, "But I wouldn't want to stain your carpet."
"Oh, I'm sure it's already been stained with fluids of every kind." Suri pondered and then shuddered.
"I love what you've done with the place." Coco surmised.
"It's nothing really, m'kay." Suri said, "How about that coffee?"
"Suri you really are an idiot." Coco spoke up, "Trying to fool Prim Hemline. Trying to fool Rarity. Trying to fool yourself. It's no wonder you live in this disgusting little hole in the wall. It suits you."
"Ex...excuse...me?" Suri responded in a mixture of shock, anger, and fear.
"You need to just be done with it already." Coco continued as she trotted forward, "The headaches are never going to stop. They just get worse, harder, stronger, louder."
"SHUT UP!!" Suri screamed as she could feel the pain throb in the back of her mind.
"Suri, why are you yelling at me?" Coco said in genuine surprise as she backed away, "I didn't say anything."
"You just said all those horrible things!!" Suri said, "You want me to kill myself!!"
"I.....I....never said that." Coco stammered, "Are you...hearing things?"
"NO!!" Suri screamed in defiance.
"Kill yourself, kill yourself, kill yourself." Coco said abruptly, "Nopony wants you. Nopony needs you. Nopony loves you."
"JUST DIE!!" Suri shrieked in agony as tears filled her eyes and she reached for her coffee mug.
The crazed pony lunged at her former assistant again just as she did in the alley (or did she?) and bashed her on the head with the mug, shattering it and leaving a deep, nasty gash that trickled a river of blood down Coco's forehead.
Coco's eyes rolled into the back of her head and she slumped over, collapsing onto the carpet. Suri gave an insanely victorious cackle as she believed she had triumphed over her tormentor and her headache started to ease.
"She's gone! Coco's gone! She can't hurt me anymore!" Suri cheered, "I've done it! I've killed her! She tried to kill me...help me...be my friend...but she said mean things....but I was mean to her...but I...but she...snow alley....snow..."
Suri hyperventilated as the realization of what she had done washed over her. Coco had never said those mean things, Suri only imagined them. Coco had only ever been kind to her, even after she had done nothing but mistreat her. Poor Coco. Poor Coco. Poor Coco.
Kill yourself. Kill yourself. Kill yourself . Suri thought, You killed Coco. You killed Coco. You killed Coco.
"Suri!!" Coco shouted all of a sudden, snapping Suri back into reality.
"Coco...forgive me...please..." Suri sobbed, "I didn't mean to....not again...."
This time Coco wasn't hearing it. Coco gave a look of pure rage as life came back into her eyes and blood soaked her muzzle. Suri had only knocked her unconcious and this time she wasn't imagining Coco's reaction.
"I tried to help you." Coco said in tranquil fury, "Despite everything you did. You made me help you cheat Rarity. You barked orders at me like I was your slave. I go out of my way to check in on you and now I'm going to have a giant scar on my forehead the rest of my life."
Coco's repressed anger got the best of her as she pummeled her former boss into the floor with her hoof. She smacked Suri around again and again and again. Suri herself collapsed against the wall in a daze, but still lucid enough that she could hear Coco. Suri's right eye was swollen and puffed over, her face a wash of blood and bruises, and one of her teeth chipped.
"Snow alley..." Suri muttured.
"Snow alley?" Coco questioned, "You said that before...snow alloy!!"
Coco's eyes widened and her face went blank in utter realization at what had happened to Suri.
"Snow alloy! That's it!" Coco repeated.
The melancholy mare punched the wall with her hoof and it cracked into flimsy drywall as white specks scattered on the carpet.
"The walls are snow alloy!" Coco explained, "This is an insular substitute that's been banned for years! It's been known to cause nightmares, headaches, and hallucinations."
Coco looked at Suri who was now shaking and cowering in sorrow and fear. Coco gave the tormented mare a look of pity and guilt so deep that it would put Princess Luna to shame.
Coco wrapped her arms around Suri again, this time feeling nothing but the warmest affection. She burst into tears and blubbered for several minutes.
"Suri...Suri...I'm so sorry..." she whispered, "No wonder...no wonder you've been acting like this...breathing in that awful poison...I can't
"M'kay...." was all Suri could manage in response.
Suri slowly struggled back onto her hooves and wiped the blood from her muzzle. She could only see out of one eye and saw Coco still lying on the floor.
As soon as Suri was discharged from the hospital, she followed Coco to a nearby alleyway. It looked almost like the one right next to her apartment, or at least the condemned building she thought was her apartment.
"So I'm going to be committed against my will?" Suri asked, "Padded rooms and straight jackets?"
"Not if you can figure out why we're here." Coco explained.
"It's starting to make sense." Suri recalled, "I was here, in this very spot, as a little filly. There used to be a theatre here. My parents took me to see a play called "Snow Alley". They couldn't find a foalsitter. It was a murder mystery and I was so young. I cried so loud when that poor mare was strangled on stage that my mom and dad had to drag me out. Dad was so angry. They started fighting. A mean looking stallion pulled out a knife and demanded their money. Dad said no, so the guy stabbed him. Mom got stabbed too and the guy ran. My tiny mind couldn't handle it. I repressed it, and then..."
Just then, a massive flurry of bats flew out of an opened sewer main and surrounded the two mares.
"I see now." Suri said, "I shall become fear. I shall become the night. I shall become a bat, m'kay."
"Dr. Brain Trust will see you this evening." Coco reminded her.
Suri checked in at the psych ward just as she was told. Dr. Brain Trust awaited her to give the first of many detox sessions. Suri became a model patient as she withdrew from her chemical exposure and came to accept her repressed childhood memories. But in the back of her mind, she could not forget the bats.
Several months later, a frightened mare not unlike Coco galloped away from a big, burly stallion brandishing a knife.
"Hand over yer purse lady before I take somethin' else from ya!" the stallion threatened.
"Somepony help!!" the mare screamed.
A black streak swooped down from the sky and swiftly kicked the mugger into the wall. The mugger barely had time to respond before a gloved hoof punched him right in the jaw. A Suri-shaped mare in a pointed black mask and cape held her hoof against his throat.
"You're not just some punk mugger." she said in a gravely voice, "Where are the drugs shipping? Where is the snow alloy?"
"Go to Tartarus." the mugger swore.
"I've already been there." the mare said as she gave the stallion another smack, "Where are the drugs going?! I won't ask again!"
"Ace Perfume Plant!" the mugger shouted, "Who are you?!"
"I'm Batmare." Batmare said.
Batmare slunk through the streets to Ace Perfume Plant that was currently being used as a front for snow alloy, a former insulation material that could also be mixed with cinnamon perfume dye into a recreational drug.
Inside the building, the main mare in charge directed her dealers and thugs.
"Keep it moving!" Prim Hemline ordered, "We don't have all night!"
"Ms. Hemline?" Coco asked, "Are you sure about this? Suri Polomare almost died from snow alloy exposure. It drove her insane. And all this cinnamon is making my eyes bleed."
"It's also going to make us wealthier than the two princesses combined." Hemline remind her.
"I can't go to jail!" Coco begged, "It isn't safe for a pony like me!"
Frantically looking for a way to escape, Coco jumped into a cinnamon vat without thinking before Batmare had a chance to grab her. She splashed into the chemicals but Batmare managed to glide onto the catwalk and help pull Coco back up. Batmare still saw Hemline out of the corner of her eye and threw a batarang at her, smacking her in the back of the head and stopping her in her tracks.
"No!!" Coco shouted as she managed to pull herself back up and grab Batmare.
Batmare instinctively defended herself by grabbing another batarang and slashing Coco across the face, giving Coco a bloody carved smile.
Batmare gasped in horror as she had once again caused Coco serious physical harm and instead leapt down and tackled Hemline.
"You're going away for a long time, Hemline." Batmare said.
"I'll be out in four months with my connections." Hemline said smugly before Batmare bound her hooves with rope.
Coco stumbled around on the catwalk, feeling her bleeding mouth. She caught a glimpse of herself in the reflective metal floor. The chemicals had turned her mane green, her fur a brighter shade of white, and her lips red. She smiled as widely as her carved grin and broke into a laughter louder and madder than anything Suri could hope to produce.
"ALFRED!!" a certain human billionaire shouted as he nearly leapt out of bed.
"It was the talking ponies again, wasn't it, Master Bruce." said the man's mustached butler.
"The nightmares are getting worse, Alfred, and weirder." Bruce Wayne explained, "My life is being reenacted by a bunch of female cartoon horses. What did Scarecrow put in that toxin?"
"I don't think Scarecrow is to blame for falling asleep in front of the telly during a My Little Pony marathon." Alfred said to himself.
"I don't know, Alfred." Bruce pondered, "I wouldn't mind being Batmare."
"Coco? Coco?" she asked, "Are you okay?"
Suri trotted over to Coco who was completely limp and eyes shut. Suri placed a hoof on Coco's ribcage and felt no breath or movement.
No. No. No. Suri thought, She was alive. I only knocked her out. She just beat me up. My eye is still puffy.
Suri looked at the cracked drywall that Coco had "punched" and saw where she herself had smacked into the wall in frustration, bruising her eye.
"Coco. Wake up." Suri begged, shaking the mare, "Coco, please wake up. Please."
Coco lay perfectly still, the draft rustling her mane and fur.
"Coco!! Please!!" Suri pleaded, "You're not dead!! It's just a cut!!"
Suri took another look at the gash and saw a large shard embedded in Coco's skull.
Suri gave another maddened cackle, louder than before, as her mind finally snapped.
"You don't have to be alive to still be friends, m'kay." Suri said with psychotic glee, "I'll put you back together and we'll be best friends again, m'kay!"
Suri galloped to her room and returned to the kitchen with the sewing kit she hadn't used in a very long time. She took a kitchen knife and and cut Coco's chest open, slowly extracting all the organs and intestines that would rot away and make Coco smell bad. Blood and guts soon littered the floor, soaking Suri's fur red. The last thing to go were Coco's eyes, those could be replaced, with buttons! Suri was fulfilling her cutie mark at last!
Coco's corpse was now a hull of fur, flesh, and bone. Suri grabbed a paintbrush from her kit and began to paint the inside of Coco's skin with an industrial strength sink cleaner that could also double as a plastinization agent.
Coco's insides soon became like brick while her outside was still snuggly soft. Suri stuffed Coco full of a spare stock of wool Suri kept for a sweater she never finished. Suri then extracted the shard, stiched Coco's skull back together, and finally sewed large plastic mismatched buttons over Coco's sockets. The ragdoll "Coco" smiled, or at least that's what Coco saw as she warmly embraced her. As Suri hugged her "reborn" friend, she could hear whispers behind her.
"Snow alloy did all that?" a soft mare's voice asked, "I'e never seen a case this bad before."
"This is an extreme case." a stern stallion's voice explained, "Some ponies have stronger reactions than others. If she had lived in that condemned building a few more months, she might have lost her grip on reality altogther."
"Poor thing. Holing up in that abandoned building after losing her job." the mare said, "I guess it's better than living on the street."
"She's one of the lucky ones." the stallion said, "That nice mare agreed to help pay for her care in a psychiatric ward."
"Maybe she has a chance then." the mare commented, "I read that she was an up and coming fashion star before some sort of falling out. Guess it must've really crushed her."
"Ms. Polomare? Ms. Polomare?" the stallion asked, "Can you hear me?"
"What? Where am I?" Suri asked weakly, looking at two blurred faces surrounded by light, "Is this Heaven?"
"I'm afraid not." the stallion said, "This is Manehattan General. I'm Dr. Stable and this is Nurse Softheart."
"I'm sorry." Suri wept, "I killed Coco. It was an accident. I tried to bring her back...but I could only bring her back as a doll."
"What are you talking about?" Softheart said, "Coco Pommel is the one who admitted you."
"She's alive! Wait...no she's not...this is just another dream." Suri realized.
"Perhaps I can shed some light." Stable said, "Certain ponies have an extremely severe reaction to even the mildest toxins, and snow alloy isn't mild. Right now, your mind is floating in and out of various realities, each of them as real as your brain tells you it is. Honestly, we could just be two store manniquins that you're talking to while shivering out on the street and you wouldn't even know it."
"So I really should kill myself, after all." Suri said, "Nopony can live like this."
"Don't say that." Softheart advised, "Just try to live in each moment as it comes."
"But the headaches, the nightmares, the madness." Suri responded, "I might or might not have killed the closest pony I have to a friend, I might or might not even be alive myself."
"I promise I won't disappear again." Coco announced, stepping into the hospital room, her forehead wrapped in bloody gauze, "I do make a pretty cute ragdoll though."
"So you are real, m'kay." Suri decided, "You still have the cut I gave you. So I can be cured."
"There's one place we still have to go, Suri." Coco said, "We have to go to Snow Alley."
