Tales from the Everfree RestStop

There are times when this world drifts so close to the fabric of reality that I can here something calling me from beyond that vail, sometimes when I get too close, I can feel that thing on the other side tugging at the corners of my mind. I'm worried about BugSpray, he doesn't seem to be taking this so well. In case you don't know, BugSpray and I work at this crappy RestStop in the middle of the darkest, densest, weirdest parts of the Everfree forest, on a road that cuts through an area of the forest affectionately called Discord's Dartboard. As you can expect from the Everfree weird things have been happening weird things have been happening there for as long as it's been there, I only started to tell some of my stories about the crazy shit that I've seen, and if you haven't caught up yet, I'd like invite you to check out chapters 1 & 2 if you get the chance.

Now If you have read the chapters up to this point or at least chapter two you must be itching to know what happened with BugSpray and the dead body of Pillar. But right now I have more pressing issues to cover. You see after returning to work after posting chapter 2 here yesterday, I was delighted to find a stack of receipt paper sitting neatly in the register counter, the notes written in my own sloppy hoof-writing. Now you may be asked yourself "If this guy's a Unicorn why is he writing with his hooves?" and the answer to that is because I feel we Unicorns rely too much on magic. Granted it is the defining quality of our race but that doesn't mean we should solely rely on it for everything. Pegasi can use their legs to run, Earth ponies can use their brains for science, and we Unicorns can use our hooves to write simple notes damnit.

Back to the notes, I don't actually remember writing them, but then again I don't remember a lot of things. It is possible that I'm working too hard, or maybe the fumes coming from beneath the RestStop are messing with my memories, or perhaps I wrote them but then forgot them when the whole BugSpray and Pillar thing happened, at any rate I'm not one to (No pun intended) look at a gift horse in the mouth, or any other animal in any other orifice for that matter. Admittedly my hoof-writing isn't the best, and at times the words on the receipt paper become hard to read, so if anything in here seems unbelievable, it's probably because I copied it wrong, or you just need to get a more open mind. I'm going to be listing these of by the time I wrote them.

7:00: It's getting dark earlier these days. Probably a sign of winter coming.

7:30: Farmer Jr. came into the RestStop tonight asking about the hoof plants. I told him that they weren't there anymore, he left his phone number scribbled on the back of a coupon for 15% off bulk pig feed from an online retailer. I think he's trying to send me a message.

8:00: Rocco and Scar are at it again, this should be entertaining.

8:05: Once again Scar was the winner, to add insult to injury he decide to take a piss on the angry raccoon, Rocco retaliated by biting down in Scar's family jewels, needless to say Rocco was thrown into the side of the RestStop with the force of a cannonball, I would have been concerned for the little bastard if I didn't work here long enough to know that no matter what Scar throws at him, Rocco's always get back up and be back with a vengeance the next time around. Who knows, one of these day he may actually win.

9:00: I think maybe some kids are trying to play a prank on me. I found a lawn gnome behind the pork rinds, I don't think much about it and I put the little guy in a box behind a counter. But then I found another matching lawn gnome in the soda case, I added this one to the box as well. It wasn't until I notice the third and fourth lawn gnomes that I started to suspect something. I had taken the garbage and found gnomes perched atop the branch of a tree next to the dumpster, staring down at me like gargoyles, I used my magic to grab them down, and put them in a box with the other four, when I got back to my desk I found a note in my chair written in what I hope is red ink. It said simply "I'm in the walls" I don't know who wrote it, but the paper smells like oranges for reason, with a hint of copper. I'm beginning to think this isn't red ink.

10:00: There's a strange scratching noise coming from the tiles above the cash register. I fear one of Rocco's brood has infiltrated the building again. I'm gonna have to call that one Pegasus who can talk to animals, I think her name was FlutterShy. I'll wait till my suspicions are confirmed to make the call.

11:00: Farmer Jr. called the store, he asked about the Hoof plants, I assured him they weren't there anymore and if they ever showed up again I would call him. I think he's starting to suspect that I'm lying.

12:00: One of the cultist recruits wandered in from their community in the inner area of the woods. They hate it when I call them cultists. I don't get how anypony could stand living that close to the center of Discord's Dartboard, I mean I get antsy just being on the inner ring of it. For clarification Discord's Dartboard has a 500 mile radius around the Bull's Pupil which is in the exact center. The outer and inner Rings, as well as the Bull's Eye, all add up to 50 of those miles. The outer area adds up to 300 miles, and the inner area is 150. Now as stated in the first chapter the further into the woods you go the weirder everything gets. The RestStop is in the inner ring, which mean plenty of bizarre things happen here but nothing too scary and life threatening, the little community the cultists set up is some where in the middle of the inner area which means that weird stuff happens a lot and most of it is dangerous. Anyway back to the cultist himself. I know the recruits supposed to interact with the outside world, but from time to time they'll sneak out, never go any further than this RestStop, and they'll by a pack a cigarettes. They aren't supposed to try and recruit new members until they graduate to the "honorable senior" cultist status, but this one isn't a very good cultist. I know they aren't supposed to have names, but I'm gonna call this one Smoker, I'll let you guess why. Well Smoker stayed in the store for at least half an hour trying to convince me to go back to the compound with him, they hate it when I call their home a compound. He tried to appeal to my logical side, but then I let him know politely, but firmly, that I was not interested in logic. I can't remember when he left.

2:00: I found myself digging again. Sometimes on slow nights I let myself drift, my mind goes somewhere, and when I come to I wonder where I was just now, who was that controlling my body while I was gone. I like to think it's my way of letting my consciousness take a rest even though my body can't actually sleep, I call it Zombie Mode. The only explanation I have for it is that my body does those things "I've" done so many times before, that I guess it's learned to do it without me. Like some kind of hyper-advance muscle memory. Here's a list of all the things I'm sure my body did before Zombie mode shut down.
My body restocked the cigarettes.
My body rotated the flavors in the frozen drink machine.
My body scrapped the mold off the bottoms of the ice buckets.
My body emptied the rat traps.
My body found four other lawn gnomes and put them with the others.
And somewhere along the way my body found a shovel, went out back, and started digging a hole.
Actually I shouldn't say my body started digging, I have been or rather my body has been digging this hole off and on for the last few months. Usually I come to after a few shovelfuls, this time I actually added another foot before I snapped back to reality and asked myself, "What the Tartarus am I doing?"

3:30: I just noticed a door at the end of the hallway past the walk-in cooler. How long have I worked here and never noticed that door before, it seems disappointingly ordinary as far as doors go, except for the fact that it's warn to the touch and feels like it's vibrating. I tried the handle but it's locked so I went back to my post and noticed a thing in a trench coat standing outside, around where Rocco and Scar had their fight, just outside the reach of our lights, and dangerously close to the edge of the forest. From what I can see it's seven feet tall and looks like an emaciated Minotaur. I can't tell if it's looking at me, or if it's looking past the building at woods on the other side. I wish it wouldn't stand there like that, still, with it's arms reaching down past its knees. The scratching against the tiles on the ceiling over the counter is getting louder. I looked up to poke the tile with a broom and when I looked back the thing was gone.

3:45: A Pony came into the store rolling a large white ice chest behind him, he had sunken blue eyes, wiry hair coming from his nose and ears, long boney legs, and paper-thin skin which would have shown every vein if it weren't for his sleek yellow fur, I took a peak at his cutie mark to see it was a meat grinder with meat oozing from the little holes. He wore a bowler cap and smelled like milk. I had definitely never seen him before. He asked if we would be interested in partnering up with him, he sold ground meat at discount prices, but I told him our store doesn't do well with the "fresh food" category before recommending he try his hoof at making jerky, before he left he scooped about a pound or so of raw ground meat from the ice chest into a piece of parchment paper, and gave it to me as a "sample." Once he left I found another lawn gnome waiting for me. I put the gnome into the box with the other eight. As for the meat I gave it to Rocco and his group, I know it's not a good idea to give food to pests but I figure as long as the have that they won't try and steal any snacks for a few hours.

4:00: BugSpray just told me something very strange about Pillar. This is the part of the story I left off on in chapter 2. I asked him what he meant when he said he had killed Pillar two days ago, he said he would explain when Pillar left. I left the cooler, and went back to my desk.

4:30: There was a Pegasus kid named Cloud Slasher, who went to the same high school as me, and Pillar. Slasher was just a year ahead of me, but looked much older, and acted much younger. I lived out in the outlier district of Canterlot which was considered a small town compared to the rest of the capitol, and small towns get bored, for entertainment some turn to gossip, some turn to sinister pastimes, the latter often fueling the former. There were rumors around town that Slasher liked to torture and kill small animal, rumors that Slasher's parents and siblings always locked their bedroom doors when they went to sleep at night. The rumors didn't slow down any after the fire at Slasher's house, and Slasher was the only one to escape, unscathed. Scientists are still debating over how it was even possible for a house made of clouds to catch on fire. As for the rumors, they went into over drive following day, when Slasher revealed his cutie mark a bloody knife carving a red X, which would sometimes bleed when Slasher was really excited about something. I remember one of the rumors being "I once saw Slasher gleefully stomp on a lizard, throw his head back, and laugh." Some short time after his house caught fire for the second time, Slasher left town. The story went on that he'd gone off to join the army, I didn't know what to think about that so I simply, didn't think about "that." I would have been perfectly happy to never think about "that," but after all these years, after five long years of blissful ignorance I'm force, to think, about "that." Why? Because Cloud Slasher, just came into the store and ordered a cup of coffee, he's sitting in one of the booths, talking to Pillar. Smoker's back, asked if I could spare some time to talk about his fake religion, they hate it when I called it a fake religion, and I told him that I was busy and that he had to leave. He seemed upset, but fuck him, I got my own shit to deal with.

4:45: Slasher and Pillar sat around for a while and didn't buy anything but two cups of coffee. When they both finally left I let BugSpray know, he had been hiding under a blanket in the walk-in cooler, I don't really understand why he would willingly do that, his insect wings look like they would break if he buzzed them too hard. After that BugSpray explained to me exactly what happened. He told me he had finished his last shift a couple nights ago, when he saw Pillar's vehicle pull over into a ditch at the bottom of the hill behind the store. BugSpray being the good guy that he is, went to go see if Pillar needed any help. He said when Pillar pulled up and got out of the vehicle, he could hear what sounded like a loud crunching noise coming from further into the forest. BugSpray went to investigate, that's when he saw something. When I asked him what he say he just started speaking Changeling, I can't speak Changeling so I nodded along empathetically. The only word I managed to pick up was "Strega" which is the name of a liquor we carry. Whatever it was that BugSpray was saying, it made him race back to his cabin and grab the axe. He heard something outside and he jumped out swinging the axe every which way, and that's when the axe made it's way into Pillar's skull. BugSpray was a good guy, but he was in a bad situation, he stopped his panic attack and checked on Pillar to see I he was actually dead, which he was. There was nothing BugSpray could do to change that fact, it was an accident. BugSpray was on parole, there was that "thing" in the woods and BugSpray had to make a decision so he dragged Pillar into the cabin, locked the door, and heaved the body into his dresser which he also locked. BugSpray took me to the cabin out back and showed me the body, after seeing the body in well enough light I can confirm 100% that it was Pillar, not just because of his unmistakable face minus the axe wound in it, but also because of his phone, and wallet that where in his pocket. Now I know all of you Changeling haters out there are going to say "Well if he really did kill Pillar then who's to say he had one of Changeling buddies disguise themselves as Pillar?" And to that I say, BITCH if he had one of his changeling pals be disguised as Pillar, then why the fuck is he showing me this? Anyway I told BugSpray to keep this hidden and that we'd deal with it when I got off from work.

5:00: I finally got tired of the scratching, and pulled our ladder out of storage to see what the Raccoon was doing up in the ceiling. But when I pushed back the tile the only thing up there was another five gnome, that makes a baker's dozen so far. Where the fuck are they all coming from

6:00: The thing in the trench coat is back and so is the cultist. I probably should have described him before now so here it goes. He's a bright orange Pegasus with a blonde mane and tail, he's also dress in a crimson robe that covers his cutie mark, the insignia where his cutie mark should be was a smily face with the elements of magic as the eyes, along with the other five elements of harmony and all the basic mathematic signs, Plus, Minus, Multiply, Divided by, and Equals, surrounding the face. Honestly I kind liked it, it was like something Mathletes would have on a shirt. Anyway back to the preaching cultist. Smoker came in demanding an audience with me, insisting that if I just listen to him, I would see that his belief's reasoning was "superb", and "flawless", and that I would be a fool not to join him in the "perfection" of Logic and Nirvana that is his belief structure. I was about to tell him to get the hell out again, but then I looked at the thing in the trench coat. Deciding that I could kill two birds with one stone, I agreed to listen to his pitch, if he would agree to ask the thing in the trench coat to leave, that way I'd know if it was dangerous or not and I could get him out of my mane either way. Our hasty verbal contract in place, I steeled myself to listen. Honestly, he did make a few good points, but I suppose it's to be expected from a viral thought experiment strong enough to convince perfectly normal ponies to abandon their real lives and go live in that commune it the woods, past a crappy RestStop, in the middle of the weirdest place in Equestria. They call themselves the Mathmatists, they believe that Ponykind exists to fulfill two moral imperatives, to decrease suffering, and to increase happiness, now seeing as how one of the most blessed of virtues we ponies have is harmony, I would agree with him. However the Mathmatists actually made a scale for this, which leads me to believe that Twilight Sparkle actually came up with this one night when she was drunk and threw it away where it was found by some religious wing-nut who started the cult. A successful life increases happiness more than suffering. A decent life decreases suffering more than happiness. How "good" a pony is can be determined by the spread between the happiness increased and the suffering decreased. Obviously if the individual has a negative spread, that is if they have increase happiness less than they have increased suffering, or if they they've decreased suffering less than they've decreased happiness, that the individual is bad. Therefore if an individual causes a tremendous amount of both happiness and suffering, one can use this perfect rubric to determine whether the individual was good or bad, it's simple right? Well the mathmatists believe that the world has been about good and bad in the wrong way for eons we've been attempting to increase happiness when instead we should have been focusing on decreasing suffering, as happiness is a fluid concept and the more happiness you create the harder it is to sustain as happiness has a clear set of diminishing returns, suffering however is constant, suffering results from happiness coming to an end. Suffering is pure and eternal, for a Mathmatist to be supremely good, they must simply end all suffering. That is why the Mathmatists are working on a bomb to destroy the entire planet, by ending all life on the planet, they end an infinite amount suffering into the future, with every life the avert an entire lineage of ponies that would be born into a life of suffering will no longer, every death is a preemptive mercy killing, every happy moment that will no longer occur pails in face of all the sad moments that are likewise prevented, and so as Smoker explained, their murder suicide cult believes that killing is a kindness. I told him that his ideas were stupid, and that he was stupid, and that now he had to go tell the thing outside to go away. Bit of a dick move on my part but hey, I kept up my end of the bargain.

6:30 : The phone rang, now this is strange for two reasons, first because it was "not" the landline it was the cell phone even though we barely get cell phone service out here, and second because it was "the" cell phone, the one I took off Pillar's body. Now I'll admit, I was stuck in a bit of a moral quandary since BugSpray confided in me. On the one hoof, BugSpray had killed somepony. On the other, it was an accident and BugSpray's parole officer may not see it that way. I thought that I would have more time to figure this whole shit-storm out, but when the phone started to ring, I knew I had to make a decision. I answered it, I didn't speak at first the voice on the line was one I recognized.

"You have something that belongs to my boss." It was Cloud Slasher.

"His cell phone and wallet?" I asked.

"What? No we don't care about that shit, we can buy more phones, we can get more wallets, you know what I mean." He was right, I did.

"It was an accident." I explained.

"We know. We want to make a deal, you give it back, we pretend this whole thing didn't happen."

"Can we do that?"

"Absolutely."

"Um, alright when?"

"Around 7:30"

"Alright does that spot behind the RestStop with all the Hoof plants sound good to you?"

"Yeah, seeya then." He hung up.

7:30: BugSpray came in for his shift at 7, and I explained the deal to him, he wasn't thrilled, but as I laid it out very clearly, we didn't have a choice. I say "we" because I was now involved in it, and they knew that. We pulled Pillar's body out to the place me and Slasher agreed to and made a point to stand far enough away as to not get our legs grabbed. Pillar's Vehicle drove up a few minutes later, Slasher was driving, both he and the still living Pillar got out without a word, sized us up, and walked over to the body. As BugSpray and Slasher moved the body into the back of the vehicle Pillar and I just stared at each other, keeping eye contact the whole time. Slasher wrapped the body up in a tarp and blanket, when it was over, Pillar put a hoof on my shoulder and whispered in my ear. "You done good." When they where gone BugSpray started crying an I went back inside the store. It was almost daytime and that's when the new part-timer was supposed to take over.

8:00: The new part-timer's late and I'm over due for a lunch break. I made the best of my extra time here by putting name tags on the lawn gnomes, I'll bring them home and later leave them around my house, I get lonely sometimes don't judge me.

8:30: I walked into the bathroom and saw the infamous bathroom cowpony, he smiled when I came in and said in a sing-songy voice. "Come on man, come on with it." I checked a glance at his cutie mark and saw it was a frowning mask like you'd see above the stage at a theater only without his smiling partner to jolly up the mode. I looked to the cowpony and asked. "Is everything going to be okay?" The bathroom cowpony took a second to think and walked past and when he was right next to me he stopped and said. "I appreciate it." Then he left, I honest don't know what that means.

Well that's the entirety of the receipt paper notes but I did make a point to start keeping an actual journal for me to document this kind of stuff in. The lawn gnomes have been fitting in well at my house, and I'm glad that issue with the dead body got resolved. But I have a feeling that I have seen the last of either the thing in the trench coat or Smoker. I also ran the word Strega through an online translator and apparently it's the Changeling word for Witch, so I guess there's a Witch in the Everfree, that's something to be concerned about. Other than that I guess all I have to say is I hope you all enjoyed and I hope you keep reading.