If only the voices could stop...
If only she could escape them, just for a minute, please?
Why, oh why did she choose to assist the witch of the Everfree Forest? What sort of madpony would openly offer their services to a zebra with a knack for all things mystical and otherworldly? Fluttershy asked herself these questions in silence as she slinked through the most horrifyingly disturbing array of trees imaginable, with nothing more than a dimming flashlight to guide her through the blackness. The canary pegasus had never been more terrified in all her life.
A thin, grey fog suddenly whisped across the ground in the midst of the eerie silence of the forest. Fluttershy stopped dead in her tracks. She dare not move a muscle away from the tree she now began to cower behind.
Gimme’ twenty dollahs’…
Gimme’ twenty dollahs’…
My wife is in da’ club…
Gimme’ twenty dollahs’…
The voices had returned, and their disturbing repetition only kept Fluttershy’s hooves glued to the cold, hard ground.
What did the voices mean? What is a ‘dollah’? Why are you talking about your wife in a place like this? The words were spoken in strange, alien slang that only added perplextion to the black, toxic mix of pure fear coursing through Fluttershy’s veins.
She could feel it in her bones. She had felt its presence long ago. There was no doubt about it that somepony, or something, was following her on her blunderous quest. The unkind, freezing air and her keen sense of presence was enough evidence to prove that, but even if something was following her, the real question remained.
Why was something following her? What does it want from her? From what she could guess, it wanted twenty ‘dollahs’, but Fluttershy knew of no such thing.
Does it want the pages? After all, the pages were the reason why she was out late at night and walking through a forest straight out a horror movie.
The pages were what Zecora wanted, to use in some special brew of hers perhaps. That zebra was always such a strange character, but why notebook pages of all things, and why do they have to be these pages in particular; ones that could drive the shy pegasus into a state of madness. Anypony could just run to the nearest parchment store and grab a whole notebook off the shelf for just one or two measly bits.
But no. Fluttershy just couldn’t resist offering her help.
Maybe the answer lay within the pages themselves. Most of the pages Fluttershy had gathered were covered with strange scrawls, but she was too frightened to take the time to study them more closely as she took down each one.
A gust of bitter wind came around, and a single owl hooted off in the distance. After retreating deeper into herself, Fluttershy carefully opened her embroidered saddlebags and slowly retrieved the damp and dirty papers from within the deep pockets.
She began flipping through each of the pages, taking only a few short, but observant moments to look at each one. They were some of the most bizarre things Fluttershy had ever encountered. Some bore words of ill omen, warnings or spikes of bad luck, while others depicted a strange stick figure with an even stranger set of extended forehooves and back legs. Was it supposed to be a pony, or some weird monkey?
Yet on each of the stick figures, one detail out of all the rest always caught her fearful attention.
The figures had no faces, not even the slightest bit of detail scrawled in like the rest.
Gimme’ twenty dollahs’…
Gimme’ twenty dollahs’…
My wife is in da’ club…
Gimme’ twenty dollahs’…
Once again, the voices came back to haunt her; torment her mentally. The mind of a pegasus caretaker was not built to handle such absurd levels of fear.
Fluttershy started to break down, letting tears fall loose from her eyes. Scared out of her wits, she curled up into the fetal position and shielded her eyes whilst folding her ears to the sides of her head. If she could not hear the voices, the voices could not hear her; a desperate rehash of the old saying for when somepony encountered their worst nightmare.
Thankfully, her childish strategy worked, and the voices slowly faded into the ether, leaving behind the same still silence she was greeted with before. Yet even though it felt like she in the clear, Fluttershy kept her ears locked down tight. She peeked one eye open and slowly scanned the darkness ahead of her. She could see the dead, twisted trees as they seemed to stretch on for miles in all directions. She was once on a dirt path that she used to guide herself to each page location, but when the voices found her all alone, she moved to seek sanctuary in the cover of the woods, but not even the shadows could hide her from such lurking evil.
Fluttershy continued to scan the tree line, searching every dark nook and cranny for even the slightest signs of something that could scare the living daylights out of her. With the voices gone, she could concentrate better, and eventually found that there was nothing ahead of her that presented a possible threat.
She needed to get out there, immediately . Despite her kind, helpful nature, the disturbing brutality of such a bloodcurdling scene was simply too much for her gentle mind to bear. She only had seven out of the eight pages that Zecora wanted, but Fluttershy could wait until the daytime to grab the final page, right? She was sure that her zebra friend wouldn’t mind missing a single day of potion-making.
The dirt path she followed earlier was the quickest way to an easy escape. What she may attract didn’t matter to her. So long as she found the path, she could retrace her steps and run all the way back home; back home to her nice, warm bed with her soft, fluffy animals. It warmed her heart a little knowing that such a pleasurable thought was a pure reality at home. Never again will she take her comfortable lifestyle for granite.
Uncurling from her little ball, Fluttershy took baby steps out into the open. She looked left, and she looked right, checking and double checking to the make sure the coast was clear. When it was, she gave a hefty sigh of relief, wiping her brow free of nervous sweat.
But, as soon as she turned around to check the area behind her, the timid pegasus was met with the most ungodly terrifying sight yet.
A very tall, slender, and strangely well-dressed pony looked down upon her pale, dumbstruck face. It was just like out of the drawings: very tall, long limbs, and most disturbing of all, it bore no face; just a blank, emotionless stare that even without eyes seemed to bore straight into her soul. Long, black, tentacle-like boughs protruded out from behind the pony’s back, swaying in the wing like tree branches. Both pegasus and slender being stood there, staring at each other for what felt like a thousand eternities, not a word, not a sound breaking the miniscule silence between them.
All the color from Fluttershy’s face had been drained, leaving behind a very pale shade of white, matching the white of her widened eyes. Just when she thought she was a dead pony, the faceless being began to speak, but just like the scrawls had warned it would. The pony bore no mouth, or no expressional features at all for that matter, so instead, it resorted to a strange, magicless form of telepathy that only further tore asunder the delicate mind of the gentle pegasus.
It knew three words and three words only.
Gimme’ twenty dollahs’…
Gimme’ twenty dollahs’…
Gimme’ twenty dollahs’…
Gimme’ twenty dollahs’…
Gimme’ twenty dollahs’!
Her mind collapsed completely. Fluttershy let loose a scream so loud and so ear piercing that not even the most passionate of banshees could ever hope to match. She screamed with such ferocity, such sheer dread in her high pitched voice, that the nightmarish being before her cupped its elongated hooves over the places where its ears would be.
“Idon’tknowwhatyouwant, andIdon’twanttoknowwhatyouwant, butpleasedon’thurtme!” Fluttershy screeched.
As quick as a flash, Fluttershy dropped her saddlebags, turned tail, and fled out of the dark forest, her piercing screams carrying on for miles in all directions. A small bag of spare bits and the pages that she had spent so much time searching for rolled out of the bag and onto the cold ground. A sudden, rogue breeze carried the papers away in the dark forest, leaving behind the velvety coin purse as a meaningless token that was of no value whatsoever to the featureless apparition.
Or so it seemed…
