The main hall was staffed and populated by pony-quines, which I’ll refer to as ponies from hereout. There were ponies in wheelchairs, ponies on gurneys, ponies behind desks… all stiff and unmoving wood covered with a cloth that made them all look ghostly. The silence was penetrating my ears and I heard the quiet ringing get louder before Apple Bloom made the first step.

“Stay close, Ah’ll keep ya safe,” Apple bloom whispered to me. I moved and pressed my side to hers so fast she nearly misstepped. “Are… are they movin’, or anythin’?”

I shook my head and glanced at them as we slowly walked around a resting couch. For the surrealness of the moment, I could see the hospital being ran as just another day in the office before everypony was frozen in place and swapped with dolls.

The main room was some kind of admittance or waiting room, but there weren’t any entrance or exit doors. “Apple Bloom, let’s check that wall. Maybe the door is just invisible,” I suggested. We moved to the wall and tapped out hoof on it. “Nope, just a wall,” I sighed and my side left Apple Blooms so we could turn around.

I was the first to scream and wrap my forelegs around my guardian filly. Apple Bloom just cocked her head to the side and hummed. “Snickers, weren’t they all facin’ different ways a second ago?”

I looked up and opened my eyes to see the room full of ponies facing us with their cloth covered eyes. It was the most unnerving thing I’d ever seen and the place wasn’t even letting us out yet. “What the hell is wrong with this place?” I asked Apple Bloom. “I said no mannequins, so I get a hundred of them just watching me… how about this,” I let Apple Bloom go, “I wanna get out of this hospital without any troubles and wake up at home with my fillies around me. Can ya give me that?!”

Apple Bloom tapped my back and I screamed again, this time I glared at her. “Did you have to do that?!”

“Snickers, Ah’m gonna check the nurses station like the voice told us a couple times. Maybe there’s somethin’ there.” She started to walk away but I wouldn’t let her go far without me. My side was pressing so hard against her that she actually barely bucked her hips and sent me bouncing away from her. “Give me some space ta breathe, Snickers. Yer as clingy as a burr.”

I scoffed at her and ran beside her again. “Excuse me for being so scared I peed a little when I saw a dozen ghost faces looking at me, next time I’ll be sure to boil a pot of water and offer them tea before they try to eat my soul from my ears, or whatever.”

Apple Bloom and I reached the station, I kept looking around and standing guard from the ponies that were still looking at the wall we’d faced. “Snickers, has one’a these things tried ta suck yer whatever outta yer where ever?”

“No, but they could,” I replied and looked back to see the filly shuffling through papers. I looked at the desk and at the far end was a map. “Hey, check that out,” I pointed to the paper and turned back to the ponies, who were now back to their original positions. “Fucking creepy ass place,” I mumbled.

Apple Bloom’s tail swiped across my right leg. “Stop that now, it doesn’t seem as bad as it was. No monsters, just a bunch’a statues. They didn’t do nothin’ til we knocked on the wall, so that’s probably what set ‘em off. This map, here… seems ta be of the floor we’re on and all we’ve gotta do is follow it.

“Maybe right to the exit. Wouldn’t that be as easy as applesauce?”

I nodded and backed up to the filly. “Yeah, great. Let’s go before these things come to life and hunt us down like the yummy snacks they think we are.”

I heard Apple Bloom whinney, then I realized she was laughing, too. “Snickers, yer a riot. C’mon, scaredy colt, let’s get outta here.”

I followed closer, but not too close, again. “Hey, I was wondering something.”

“What’s that?” Apple Bloom answered.

“Well, when I had the language thing, I heard two or three words sometimes. One of the first was a mix of mother and sister, do you know what that was about?”

Apple Bloom looked aside at me. “Well, duh… oh, you don’t know, do ya?” I shook my head, not even knowing what she was starting on. “Well, all ponies know Ponish from when they start ta understand. It’s a… um… ansistery, um… ansistery knowin’, or somethin’.”

“Ancestral knowledge? As in, you all know it, and other stuff, from birth?”

“Yeah, that’s the stuff! Anyway, we gotta go ta school ta learn what is and what ain’t, and one’a the things is that Ponish uses a word for a bunch’a different words. Like,” she thought for a second and worked her tongue in her mouth. “Mother, can also mean… sister. But, if we say it with a little change… mother can mean… Ah can’t say it easy like. Well, it’s when ya have a mom and the mom has a sister, and that sister is the mom of a… Babs Seed is one ta me.”

“Oh, you mean cousin?”

“Yeah! That’s the word… Ah guess, if the words don’t happen naturally, they get ta be a bit hard ta say fer a filly like me.”

I walked beside her in silence, save for out hoof steps, as we walked around various obstacles down the halls on her map. “So, Ponish can be a contextual language? A cookie can be a cake, for example?”

“Maybe, Twilight’s the one ta ask, since ya can’t go ta school fer two more days. We’re almost there, one more turn and we’ll be home free.”

“Facehoof.”

“What?” She asked.

“I’m walking on all four, so I figured I’d say it instead of doing it… you just had to say ‘home free’.”

“Oh, c’mon… ya don’t really believe that bad luck word non...sense. Facehoof.”

We looked at an exit door that had no less than six ponies facing us. “Yeah. Exactly, now what?” I asked and we looked at one another. I looked back to the ponies and cocked my head. Apple Bloom did the same.

“Ah dunno. Maybe go under them? Or around…”

We watched them for a few seconds and then looked back the way we came to a completely now empty of ‘life’ hallway. “What the…?” I asked and then Apple Bloom poked me. “What? Is something… wrong?”

The ponies were closer, their masks, the sheets covering them were pulled tight from the part of their mouths being open… and damp. “S-snicker… are they movin’ and… droolin’?”

My gulp could be heard echoing back from the empty hallway. “I… don’t fucking care. Just back away slowly and check the map again. Maybe we should have turned right at the last left or… something.”

I looked over when the map crinkled on the floor and when I looked at the ponies their mouths were tearing free and black blood was dripping from their maws. Their mouths that were split into three like a horror beast from Nightmare Town. “Snickers, the map--”

“Is fucking pointless right now! The blood’s back!” I shouted and wrapped a foreleg over her to keep her looking at them with me. I glanced at the map under hoof and we both looked up in time to see one of the six open their mouths enough to break the cloth to the point that it slid back slowly exposing the wooden dog-like face with a mouth full of razor sharp barbed teeth. Wood or not, those were gonna hurt.

“Where do we go, Snickers? Can we go back?” she looked past me and I followed her line of sight down the empty hallway, I caught the no longer ponies a pace away from Apple Bloom about to bear down on her neck, the closest with its jaws split open inches from biting down.

“Get back!” I shouted and pulled her down, glaring at the dog monster. “Bad dog, go away! Sit, roll over in your grave…”

Apple Bloom squirmed out from under me. “Okay, Ah think we gotta look at ‘em and they don’t move. Or… maybe they move when we say something, so stop talkin about movin’, okay?”

“No, that’s not it,” I said and blinked, noticing two others come into view. “You’re right. When we aren’t looking they come closer, I just blinked and… fuck, I did it again. The whole gang’s here for the party. We need to get somewhere safe, where we can get away from these and get our bearings. Can we get to a nearby room? I’ll keep watch on these, go check, quickly as you can.”

Apple Bloom left me staring into the open maw of death on two of the things while three more were almost to the point they tore free from their cloth coverings. My eyes started to sting at the corners and I was starting to fight the urge to blink and it had only been fifteen seconds.

“Snickers, there rooms ‘re all locked and the halls are empty now. There’s nothin’ but these left… Ah hope.”

“I… gotta blink. We gotta take turns, I can’t keep this up, it’s too dusty.”

“Blink, I’ll watch’m fer a bit.”

I blinked and closed my eyes, rolling them around for a second. I opened them and counted five. “There’s one missing!” I turned my eyes back and found the missing one at the end of the hallway. “Fuck, fuck, fuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuck!”

“Snickers, ya say that so much it’s losin’ it’s meanin,” Apple Bloom told me.

“Fuck you and fuck this place! There’s one behind us…”

“...Fuck,” Apple Bloom mumbled.

“Exactly. Stay with me, we’re going down the hall we haven’t and you’ll have to back up, we’ll be tail to tail until we pass the corner and then they’ll all be facing us again. Don’t blink… please, don’t blink…”

“Are ya talkin’ ta me, or yerself?” Apple Bloom said in a more confident way than I could have imagined.

“Both… mostly me. Okay, back up, slowly. Try to blink switching eyes if you have to. We can do this, just one step at a time. One step at a time. One step at a time.”

“Snickers, would ya stop talkin’?! It’s makin’ me think about stuff that…”

“That what?” I asked and looked at where Apple Bloom was, a wooden dog was there instead, standing over where she should have been. I was alone and looking at the whisps of dust that was once my closest friend. I started to feel rage and pain building in my heart, but a sharp sting on my neck heralded the end of that vision.

Author's Note

2 down, x to go. Harmony ain't winnin' so easy though.