The Twining

The hotel was cold.

It was always cold, now, no matter how long they fired the boilers, no matter how much magic Shining and his sister pumped into it. It was always cold, and it was always empty, and Shining hated it.

There were lots of things he hated about it – the cold was just the beginning. Being away from Cadance for so long, for a start. For a lot more than just the start, in fact. Flurry, too. He missed them both so dearly, and that was still just the tip of the iceberg. It was his fault, really: he never could say ‘no’ to Twilight. He should have done, though, at least this time. Who cared if she was going to be the next Princess of Equestria? Who cared if Celestia had given her one last test? Surely Twilight had at least five other first picks for ponies to come with her to the Overlook, and surely Celestia could have come up with a better test than this?

Twilight was certain it was to ascertain how well she could handle the isolation of rule, but Shining was privately pretty sure that Celestia both had a stake in this hotel and was reluctant to give up her kingdom quite yet. Send her protege far away and snow her in for a few months, and in the meantime Celestia could enjoy the last of her rule in peace.

A cunning scheme, and Shining was already sick of it. Come stay with me, Twilight had said. It will be fun, she said. It wasn’t fun. It was cold, and boring, and lonely, and Shining wanted to go home. He thought he’d been used to snow with the Crystal Empire, but it was nothing compared to this. Outside the windows was pure white, always, swirling and spiralling and piling so high up that the doors were almost entirely buried. When he was a foal, he and Twilight had fought so many bitter snowball battles, and back then he didn’t think he would ever grow tired of snow. But he was, and he missed his wife, and now he was trudging through the empty halls while he and Twilight fought a very different kind of battle. One of shouted words and tear-filled pleas before Shining stormed off into the maze of corridors.

It had started over breakfast. Twilight could tell he was feeling down, and how could he not be? She’d asked him here for company, for security, apparently at the request of Celestia herself, and then Twilight had shooed him away at every moment so she could work on her ‘memoirs’.

“Ponies will want to read them, now I’m going to be their Princess,” Twilight had insisted. “And I can’t think of a better way to teach some lessons in friendship while I’m at it.”

And so she spent her days at her typewriter in the big, empty hall she had claimed for it, and Shining spent his days wandering the hotel and thinking of Cadance. And sometimes – more and more often – in his bed and thinking of Cadance for entirely different reasons.

Yes, Shining hated this.

And then this morning at breakfast, Twilight had thought it would be a great idea to break the ice that had formed between them by talking about the previous caretakers of the hotel. How Celestia had mentioned the family she’d hired to overwinter it before, and what had become of them.

“They didn’t deal well with the snow, being locked away like this,” Twilight had said, nonchalantly. “By the time the snow melted they’d all gone mad, which Celestia only discovered once she arrived to relieve them. And what she found was… horrible.”

Shining shuddered. “Did they… Did they murder each other?”

“What?” Twilight blinked. “No, of course not, don’t be stupid.”

“Oh. Well, what then?”

And Twilight told him. It took Shining some time to process what she’d said, to finally sink in, and then his eyes went wide. “But… But they were related!”

“Yes, but as I said, they were crazy.”

Shining shook his head in disbelief. “So the father and the daughter? They…?”

“Yes.”

“And the mother and son? They did it too?”

“Yes?”

“And the siblings, together!?”

“Yes, all of them, Shiny,” said Twilight, sighing in exasperation. “They all fucked.”

The coarse words surprised Shining, coming out of his sister. Sometimes he still found it hard to see her as anything but the little filly he was supposed to protect from the world like he always used to. Nowadays he supposed she was probably the one who was supposed to protect him.

“But there’s more,” Twilight said, with a smile that seemed almost sadistic. “As it turns out, that’s happened before. Lots of times, in fact. Almost every family that’s ever taken care of this hotel. Almost like… the place is haunted.”

Shining gave her a very cold glare. “Haunted by what? Incestuous ghosts?”

Twilight shrugged. “Maybe. I’m just saying don’t rule it out. I’ve learned so many things over the past few years, but one of the most important is to never assume something is impossible.”

“Even crazy incest ghosts?”

“Even crazy incest ghosts.”

Shining rolled his eyes and returned to his cereal for a moment, and then the realisation began to sink in and he stopped, mid-crunch. “Wait a minute…” he said, slowly, the gears clunking into place in his head. Twilight must have known what he was going to say because she was making a very concerted effort not to look at him. “You’re telling me that you knew there was an incest ghost epidemic in this place, and you invited me?”

“Oh come on, Shiny, now who’s being ridiculous. I thought you didn’t believe in ghosts?”

“And I thought you said never to rule things out! You’re telling me his place has a history of turning ponies into sex-crazed perverts over winter and you invited me anyway? What is wrong with you?”

“That’s not fair,” protested Twilight, tears beginning to shine in her eyes. “The princess mentioned the idea, and I just… We get to spend so little time together nowadays, and when I’m officially coronated it will be even less. I thought it would be nice to spend a few months together, maybe for the last time.”

“Well, you were wrong,” Shining said, rising to his hooves and shoving his chair back with a sharp squeal against the floor. “This place is terrible, and it’s not as though we’re hanging out like you wanted anyway. You just spend the whole time with that damn typewriter instead. If I could go home, believe me, I would.” His eyes narrowed. “This was a mistake.”

And with that, he’d stormed from the dining hall. Twilight had called out to him, but he’d ignored it, and as he stomped through the halls and his anger slowly dissipated, the regret had started to seep in to replace it. She had sounded so heartbroken, begging him not to leave, but he’d done so anyway. And what good had it done? He’d stomped along the endless corridors until he could stomp no more, and he didn’t feel any better for it.

Such a brave stallion, shouting at his sister just because she wanted to spend some time with you.

Yes, he hated this place. Yes, it was cold and lonely. Yes, he missed Cadance and Flurry. But none of that was an excuse for acting like a petulant foal again. The isolation must be getting to him – there was no way he would have yelled at Twilight like that otherwise. He was just so irritable all the time. So frustrated.

And the corridors twisted and turned before him, an endless sea of repeating chintzy carpet and wallpaper, room after room scrolling past beside him. Infinite, meaningless numbers, one after another. 234. 235. 236. 237.

Shining stopped.

Room 237 was open.

It certainly wasn’t supposed to be. Shining was fairly certain he’d walked past 237 before – he’d walked through most of the hotel multiple times by this point, after all – and he never remembered it being open. None of the rooms were, all shut up tight for winter. But now it was, even if just a crack. A dark sliver, somehow seeming to suck in all the light around it. It seemed to draw him in, too, closer and closer, and Shining wasn’t entirely sure when he had stepped up next to it, or when he’d started reaching out a hoof to push it open.

His hoof fell against the wood, softly, but there he hesitated. Something deep in his gut screamed at him that this was a bad idea, that this was dangerous. Shining had learned to trust his gut: it had saved him more than once in the past, and if he hadn’t written it off as nerves before his wedding it might have even saved him from Chrysalis. This wasn’t nerves. This was something else, and so his horn blazed with magic as he readied himself to push open the door, just in case.

He never got the chance. Something on the other side pushed back before he could even try, slamming it shut and sending Shining stumbling backwards in shock. He was quick to recover, though, breathing hard and heavy.

“Twilight?” he called out, even though that twisting sensation in his stomach told him it wasn’t her. “Is that you?”

No answer. He hadn’t really been expecting one.

“If that’s you in there, I’m sorry I got mad. There’s no need to pull a prank on me, though. You’re kinda freaking me out here.”

Silence.

Slowly, carefully, Shining approached the door again. The sinking feeling worsened, and the darkness he had glimpsed through the crack seemed almost to be seeping out around the edges, contouring the frame. Something was very wrong with this room. Something that wasn’t Twilight. Something urging him to run, flee, get out of there while you still can.

Yet somehow he found himself reaching for the door handle instead.

But the moment his hoof touched the metal, a sudden noise made him freeze, ice spilling down his spine. A giggle, right beside him. He whirled around, only to be confronted by the sight of Twilight standing just down the hall, grinning coquettishly. She wasn’t alone, either, standing beside…

“Mom?” Shining spluttered, incredulous. “What the hay are you doing here?”

Velvet simply smiled in an eerie reflection of her daughter beside her. And then she spoke, and her words echoed with Twilight’s in perfect unison.

“Hello, Shiny,” they said, voices overlapping.

Shining frowned. The feeling hadn’t dissipated, it had only gotten worse. Something was still wrong, this whole situation was wrong. How had Velvet even gotten here? There was no way through the snow even if she’d wanted to come.

That question died along with all the others as the two mares spoke again. “Come play with us, Shiny,” they said, slowly turning, still in perfect sync as their tails flagged and they presented themselves to him. He could see everything, could see them wink, saw how desperate they were for a stallion. For him. “Come play with us,” they repeated, and visions of them lying on the floor, panting and out of breath and sticky – well-fucked and oh so satisfied – began to flash before his eyes. “Forever, and ever.” The two mares gazed back over their shoulders, smiling that same smile, and it was too wide, and there was something wrong with their eyes, and why couldn’t his stomach stop lurching? “And ever.”

Shining covered his eyes with a foreleg, desperate to strike the images from his view. They seemed to be seared into the back of his eyelids, and even in their darkness he still saw his sister and mother, waiting for him, so wet and ready. Winking. Tails flagging. Needy and wanting, and after all he was so pent up wasn’t he, let us make you feel good and forget about everything else, forget about the snow and the lonely halls. Forget about Cadance. Forget about everything except for plunging into us and rutting us just like you need to.

He wrenched his eyes open again, and the visions vanished. The hallway was empty. It had always been empty, of course – had to have been. His mother wasn’t here, couldn’t be here, and even if she were there was no way she and Twilight would have-

Don’t think about it.

Shining shivered and turned back to the room beside him. The door was just a door, and whatever ominous feeling he’d sensed leaking from it had faded to nothing. Taking a brief moment to calm himself and find his nerve again, Shining reached out and tried the handle.

Room 237 was locked.