The Old Mansion

Later in the night, as the blue moon rose high into the sky, Mix-Up stirred awake from his slumber. A stiff breeze rushed past the teenaged stallion, pulling him out of the comfortable embrace of his short nap. He could feel the chill of winter air looming overhead, teasing his nostrils with a dry, almost snowy, wind.

He groggily pulled himself up, shivering off the sudden cold snap that appeared to have fallen overnight. He immediately wrapped his feathered wings around his body and desperately looked around the room for the source of the sudden cold. He had assumed, although incredibly unusual, that the crisp winter air was slithering through an open window or an unforeseen hole in the wall. However as his eyes quickly scanned his immediate surroundings, he found himself in a situation much more puzzling than a winter's day in spring.

He found himself in a cage only it wasn't quite a cage. It was true that even in the moonlight he could only make out the outlines of bars surrounding him. However there were no bars on the top, a clear and obvious design flaw if it was intended to imprison a pegasus. As his eyes adjusted to the darkness, Mix-Up recognized his new supposed prison. It was a giant baby crib.

The crib was...not quite there. Mix-Up could feel a firm, springy mattress under him, but the crib as a whole appeared faded, almost glass like. He could hear the creaks of the crib's wooden joints whenever he moved, but everything was made of this ghostly material.

“What is going on?” he mumbled to himself, pulling himself up to the crib's wall and peered through the glass like bars.

From what he could recognize, he was in the same room that he fell asleep in not two hours ago. The faded wallpaper made that easy to determine. However now the room was populated by ghostly echoes of bedroom furniture which shimmered that same greenish blue glow. He could make out the shapes of the other furnishings, recognizing them as a dresser, changing table, a school desk, and toy chest, but even that was difficult to do considering the glass like material that made up each object.

“Oh wonderful, you’re up,” a voice of a mare spoke through the darkness, “I was afraid you were going to sleep the whole day away.”

Into the moonlight floated in an older unicorn mare, dressed in an Elizabethan nanny outfit. Her mane was tied up into a bun on the back of her head, partly hidden behind two pointed ears that stood straight and attentively on top. Her body was tall and willowy, standing about a head and a half taller than Mix-Up. Everything about her body language appeared rigid and authoritative. Her fur, once a deep coffee color, was faded and spectral, almost appearing translucent when in direct moonlight. She walked not on legs, but a ghostly trail that tapered off her body and faded into nothing the closer it got to the ground. As she hovered in closer the wintery chill in the air seemed to only increase.

Although Mix-Up hardly ever believed in such things, the floating mare appeared to be some kind of specter or spirit caught between worlds that he heard so much about. “What is...?” he said scrambling up to his feet. His startled mind finally remembering the word to describe such a sight, “you’re...you’re a ghost!?”

“Nanny,” the ghost corrected with a snap, “and I will be referred to as such.” With a click of her invisible hooves, the ghost recomposed herself and cleared her throat. “A colt your age really shouldn’t stay in bed so late in the day.”

Giving Mix-Up barely a minute to process everything, the bars of his crib magically lowered before he was pulled out by the glow of the unicorn ghost’s magic. He was rather crudely hoisted into the air and despite his weak protests was inspected from end to end like a statue.

“H-hey! Quit it!” was all the surprised Mix-Up could manage to say. He struggled inside the nanny's magical hold, even going as far as to flapping his wings in a futile attempt at escape.

The nanny tsked, promptly ignoring the audible arguments from the magically bound pegasus. "Honestly, I don't know how you were put to bed without proper protection. It's a wonder you didn't ruin your bedsheets."

"Proper protection? What are you talking about!?" Mix-Up shouted, "let me go!" His wings fluttered and flapped a few more times for good measure.

"Well it’s already late. We shall get you fully dressed once you've eaten," the nanny plainly stated, pulling Mix-Up through the air as she walked off.

Leaving the ghostly furnished nursery, the nanny carried Mix-Up into the mansion’s main hall. An uneasiness was felt around the place as wooden boards creaked and groaned. The low noises rumbled through the very foundation of the building like slow moving thunder. It was as if the walls themselves were slowly bending just slow enough to not be seen by the naked eye. Was this mansion about to fall in on itself?

The pair entered the dining hall where evidence of ghostly activity continued to leave its mark. The wooden dining chairs were still scattered across the floor, but now had ghostly echo versions of themselves lining up on both sides of the long dining table. Each echo was made of the bluish-green otherworldly ghost glass from before and gave off a most peculiar mist.

A solitary glassy highchair stood at the other end of the room, growing ever more solid as the pair stepped closer. It’s shape seemed to shift and morph into slightly different forms until finally snapping to its final form once the two ponies approached it. By the time Mix-Up was dropped onto the ghostly wooden chair, the whole thing moved and grew to be just the right size for the teenaged pegasus.

The nanny took her spot beside the translucent high chair, clipping its tray into place and tying a faded blue bib around the colt’s neck. She then reached for a number of glass jars that seemed to materialize out of nowhere. Completely invisible at first, the bottles glowed and began to take shape against the nanny's touch. She placed four of these small jars on the high chair tray and popped the lids off of each one, one by one. Each of these jars came with their own paper label which were yellowed with age and decorated with fine lined calligraphy. The baby food inside glowed with a similar spectral light as the ghost nanny. In the dim moonlight, Mix-Up could make out subtle differences in color of the various jars, but they all appeared to have that similar, mushy texture.

As his unfortunate meal was conjured up before him, Mix-Up took the time to examine his infantile bindings. It appeared to be made of a heavily polished hardwood, but that was difficult to determine considering the almost transparent texture. It felt real enough and it surprised him that there was even a highchair big enough for him. He craned his neck around the seat to get a better look at the locking mechanism that kept the tray firmly in place. Perhaps, the hopeful young stallion hoped, perhaps he could find a way to unlock it from where he was sitting and escape this embarrassing situation.

The colt’s investigations were cut short by a sharp, stinging pain smacking against one of his forehooves. “Back straight!” the nanny shouted as she waggled a ghostly metal spoon in Mix-Up’s face, “a proper colt does not slouch.”

Mix-Up yelped, recoiling in pain as his hooves pulled away. His back shot straight up and pressed into the cold wood back of his seat. Not a single inch of his back bent forward. “Whadja do that for!?” the colt shouted, rubbing his hoof.

This ghost certainly had one heck of a swing. And what a walloping too! He could have sworn he was going to get a bruise from that. After momentarily nursing his injury, he had planned on saying a few choice words to the uptight ghost, but before he could say a word a metal spoon carrying a small glob of baby food shot into his mouth.

“Hush!” the nanny snapped, pulling out the spoon and scooping up another mouthful of slop, “I don’t want to hear a single word until you’ve finished your breakfast.”

Mix-Up struggled to swallow the first mouthful of baby food. It’s texture, bland flavor, and supernatural origins all made his tongue numb. He wanted nothing more than to spit out the stuff and refuse another mouthful from the obsessed spirit. He wanted to escape and run off from this haunted place. But for some strange reason, no escape plans turned into action. Instead, as if by instinct, he swallowed the watery mush and the nanny was right there with another spoonful waiting for him.

The baby food was unbelievably dull. A food so heavily processed and grinded down to a fine pulp, it only remotely tasted like the fruits and vegetables it claimed to be. The orange mush tasted like old carrots that were bitter and soapy. The tan one tasted of starchy apples. The yellow, at one point might have tasted vaguely like bananas, now tasted sour and musty. It all made Mix-Up curl up in disgust.

Spoonful by spoonful, the dull flavored muck was scooped into Mix-Up’s mouth. He wanted nothing more than to resist, but the nanny's forceful hoof was determined to feed her charge by any means necessary. When he tried to turn his muzzle away, the nanny would yank it back with her magic. When he tried to keep his mouth closed, the nanny would painfully press the spoon into his face until he conceded. When he refused to swallow, the nanny would have another spoonful waiting for him. It was an exhausting and tedious battle of wits.

In record time, with the task handled quickly and with clockwork efficiency, all four jars were emptied and set aside where they eventually faded into nothingness once more. With the meal concluded, the nanny untied Mix-Up's surprisingly clean bib and folded it on the tray.

“There, now that we’re fed we can get you ready for the day,” the ghostly unicorn stated, magically pulling Mix-Up out of his bindings.

The food didn’t sit well in Mix-Up’s stomach. There was nothing in that meal that made him nauseous, but the thought of being fed spectral baby food by some sort of ghost nanny made him uneasy. What made him even more uneasy was the fact that he led her do it. Looking back at it now, he kicked himself for all those wasted opportunities to escape. Why didn’t he run?

The pair exited into the hallway where the groans and creaks of the mansion still echoed off the warped wooden walls. Mix-Up struggled less this time around as he was ferried from room to room, not out of submission, but exhaustion. His wings were starting to get sore from all the squirms and flaps he tried to pop the magical bubble around him with. This break in his resistance gave him a moment to really take in his surroundings.

Much to his surprise, the hallway, despite its water damage and rot, appeared different. They were subtle changes, but easy to spot for the colt’s keen eye. For instance, the paintings on the wall no longer hung askew or seemed as torn as before. One particular painting caught his eye because of its tarnished gold frame that even in its old, neglected age had some shiny spots that twinkled in the moonlight.

Before tattered and ripped, the painting now had some life brought back into it. The canvas had less holes and the paint was no longer chipped and faded. The picture was a portrait piece, illustrating a lavishly dressed mare standing beside a young colt in front of what appeared to be an ornate, white stone fireplace. The mare was a gorgeous looking earth pony with a royal blue coat and emerald eyes. Her mane, styled up into a regal looking dutch halo braid was sky blue and almost appeared crystalline in the painting.

The colt at her side, frustratingly enough still had most of his body tattered and faded. From the quick examination Mix-Up was able to give it, the young colt had a blue coat although finer details like his face and eye color were almost impossible to make out as nature seemed to take most of its fury out on that corner of the painting. He did appear young though, no older than five or six. Mix-Up couldn’t even fly at that kid’s age.

The nanny floated Mix-Up back into the nursery where she immediately made a beeline for what appeared to be some sort of glassy changing table. To no surprise, it appeared big enough to accommodate him as well.

"A good and proper colt should ALWAYS wear protection," the nanny firmly stated as she laid the colt on his back.

Mix-Up nodded nervously, pressing his body into the spectral pad under him. He didn’t quite understand what she meant, but he found himself submitting easier so to not upset the spirit. But he didn’t have to wonder for long because shortly after scolding the colt, the nanny extracted a folded white diaper out from underneath the table.

Against his initial reservations, and again such submission was strange for the young stallion, Mix-Up allowed himself to be diapered. He didn't want to push his luck with the ghostly nanny. He hoped that it would show her that he was willing to cooperate. At least, that's how he rationalized it. Even as the diaper was wrapped around his waist, he struggled to convince himself that this was for the best.

The diaper was plain white and had a crinkly plastic shell on the outside. Inside was a soft and pillowy material that thickened it up several inches. It appeared to be the perfect size for Mix-Up, not fitting too loosely or too tightly. The nanny was meticulous with her diaper changing, ensuring that everything was lined up just right and that the ruffles in the leg gatherers were all folded in.

The pair’s next stop was a large walk in closet that hugged the far wall. The nanny magically carried Mix-Up most of the way, but deposited the diapered stallion on the floor before entering the small dark room filled with shadow cloaked clothes.

Once Mix-Up touched solid earth once more, his legs wobbled to cope with the added fluff of the diaper. It felt like he was wearing a giant, crinkling pillow around his waist, bowing out his legs and making him stand with a wide, embarrassing stance. Just what had he gotten himself into?

The nanny emerged minutes later with a number of outfits folded up into neat piles floating beside her. "Madame Jewel has approved a number of outfits that you are allowed to wear tonight,” she stated, examining each outfit and barely looking up at Mix-Up.

“Where...exactly is Madame Jewel now?” Mix-Up inquired, still trying to get used to the bulky diaper between his legs.

“I’m afraid Madame Jewel is out of the house and won’t be back for awhile,” the nanny passively replied, juggling five outfits in the air with her magic, “but a colt shouldn’t worry himself of such things. What you should focus on are your lessons.”

“My lessons?”

“We shall begin once you are fully dressed,” the nanny said as a single set of clothes was pulled away from the rest of them and floated over to Mix-Up.

It was a simple dress suit outfit resembling an old Victorian school boy uniform. It consisted of a dark green long pants, a gray vest, and a bright white long sleeved undershirt. Every piece was crisply folded and pressed, carefully laundered as if they were brand new.

Mix-Up was helped into the outfit despite his initial protests. Wearing a diaper was bad enough, but having the ghost helping him get dressed in such a childish outfit made him feel silly all around. Hoof by hoof the nanny threaded the stallion's limbs into the outfit, taking great pains to ensure the seams were straight, the straps were neatly tied, and the whole ensemble was free of unsightly wrinkles.

"Follow me," the nanny said once she was finished. With a pivot on her heels, she spun around and began marching over to the far end of the room.