The Tantabus

It was cold in my dream.

I knew I was dreaming. I had felt the sensation of sleep slip like a silken nightgown over my naked skin. It was a calming feeling, back when I practiced lucid dreaming in order to get extra study time in at school. But not since…

I snapped open my eyes. Around me stood four walls of crystal and glass, fractals of purple and blue and pink. Downy bedding pooled beneath me and cradled me in what little warmth there was to feel.

Deep shadows hid away much of the room, but I could still make out the nightstand and vanity. It seemed like I had decided to dream of Twilight’s castle. Which was weird, since I had never been in any of the bedrooms before.

It took a while to realize in that slipping, slipping neutral state that I wasn’t alone. I jolted toward the back wall at the sight of this… thing.

It was a pony, a wolf, a something—a strangely nebulous four-legged creature made of stardust and dreamstuff. The outer edges of its form undulated and curled about itself much like Luna's mane. It sat motionless on its haunches, between me and the door.

Instinct told me to stand up, to scream as loud as I could, to leap at it and claw and kick and bite like my life depended on it. Instinct assumed it to be the Nightmare, that rotted, mindless beast left over after Nocturne left me. But instinct didn’t remember earlier that morning, didn't see the indifferent, cat-like stare on its eyeless face.

I sat up and crossed my legs. It was an awkward attempt at movement that wouldn’t follow, ’cause I then realized I was a pony in this dream. I hadn’t expected that. Haunches it was.

“Hello?” I said.

It didn’t move. Starlight twinkled in its… well, its everything. Galaxies and nebulae spiraled across—within?—its body, converging and collapsing in slow motion as the silence wore on.

“What do you want?” I frowned at the thing and waggled my hoof at it. Nothing seemed to faze it. It just stared. Without eyes, the silence hit harder than it probably should have.

“Go away,” I said, waving it off. “Go on. Shoo.”

No dice. It kept staring. Talk about a stubborn dream.

That presence, though. It was the one I felt enter me when Luna… I retched as the realization finally struck me, and I doubled over, spitting out whatever would come and coughing up the rest.

She kissed me. That bitch fucking kissed me, and just… Ugh!

It took a long minute for that sense of invasion to subside, and once I felt that I had fully wiped her from my lips, I again looked up at the thing sitting on the rug. Still it stared, unmoving, unblinking.

“You’re the Tantabus, aren’t you?”

It flicked a nebula of an ear in recognition and cocked its head before shifting its weight from one hoof-paw to the other.

“Yeah, yeah, I know. She—” A tingling sensation up my spine got my nape standing on end. “She saved me. The Nightmare isn’t here anymore. Celestia knows I haven’t had a regular night’s sleep in years.” I looked up into the darkness and tapped the tip of my hoof into the bedsheets as I tallied up just how long it’d been. “Seven?”

Had it really been that long?

I looked around. It was strangely quiet. Calm. I could almost say peaceful, but that would imply I was at peace. And still this silence. I couldn’t fucking stand it.

The Tantabus still hadn’t blinked. I wasn’t sure if it could, what with the whole eyeless thing it had going on. God, this thing was creepy.

“Don’t you have somewhere else to be? Go creep on somebody else’s dream.”

It must not have been that simple, or the thing was that stupid. At least it did me the courtesy of looking around like it actually could have fucked off elsewhere. But all the same, that stare came back around, that quiet insistence that kept my heart from settling down.

It felt… different. As if it weren’t just the Tantabus staring at me, but Luna somehow sharing its body, two beings in one. Like… No. That was just me being paranoid. God, I’d been taken over by the Nightmare for so long that I didn’t even know how to dream properly anymore.

“She had it coming, you know,” I said. “She should have never gotten into my dreams. Then or now.”

Still no reaction. Two galaxies collided in its breast and flung their spiraling arms beyond—around?—its forelegs.

“Don’t you say anything? Can you speak?” I pointed my ears forward. “At least bark or something, for crying out loud.”

Nothing.

“Whatever. Maybe it’s better you don’t.” I laid down and rested my head on my forehooves. I closed my eyes for sleep, but then remembered I was already there. How does one sleep in a dream?

I clenched my eyes shut tighter all the same. This was my dream now, not my nightmare. I was going to enjoy myself, damn it.

A deep breath, in then out. Then silence.

And more silence.

And more.

I sighed. This wasn’t going to work. I opened my eyes, and the Tantabus still sat expectantly on the area rug between me and the door.

“What,” I snapped. “Do you want me to feel bad for her? Because I don’t. You know—” I shrank in on myself. “You know what she did…”

It knew what she did. I knew what she did, and everything that came of it.

The manipulation, the betrayal, the plotting, my eventual comeuppance at the hands of Twilight, and then just… burying it all. Burying it for so long, acting like it didn’t exist—knowing that it didn’t exist, as if that childish assertion were enough to will that the truth wouldn’t come back to haunt me.

And yet it did.

It did, and here it was, staring me in the face like a revenant that had clawed itself out from some shallow grave in the backwoods of my mind and still was staring at me—staring, staring, staring with that eyeless face that reminded me of her and my hooves were shaking and I needed to breathe.

Breathe.

Breathe. In through my nose, then out through my mouth. I breathed, and I kept breathing and visualizing myself breathing, here in this moment, and thinking only only only of the breathing in and out and any and all stream of conscious I could muster to force as many nonsense words through the synapses in my brain and flood out the intrusive thoughts with a tidal wave of mental noise. Mental noise, white noise, breathing, breathing—just breathe and feel my diaphragm expand and contract and imagine myself as one of those cut-away diagrams in my freshman biology textbooks.

Eventually, I relaxed enough to hold in a breath—one, two, three full seconds—letting it slowly out through my nose, and my hooves weren’t shaking anymore.

And still the Tantabus stared at me.

Now, though, that silent, judgmental stare felt less like judge, jury, and executioner and more like the loathsome remnant of the monster who deserved every last ounce of justice allotted her. The twinkle of a distant supernova in the center of its face was the closest I’d get to a blink from this stupid thing, and it told me all I needed to know. It really had no goddamn clue what I was saying.

“You’re still sitting there like you want me to do something about it. Well I’m not. I don’t feel bad, and you know it.” Even if it didn’t understand me, I felt better saying it. I laid back down and rested my head on my hooves.

This time, I closed my eyes and didn’t open them again. I refused to open them. That thing wouldn’t get to me. If Luna wanted to repent for what she did, then good fucking riddance.

I was happy she hurt now. I was glad she suffered the Nightmare like I had. I was ecstatic that she knew what it was like to relive that pain.

I was happy.

Really.

Author's Note

Sorry for the short chapter. The next few will be full sized.