Hollow Hope

"Do you think my mom's okay?"

Sunny shuffled to a stop; his blood ran cold, for a moment. He hadn't even thought about it.

"...I think she's fine," Cloudy muttered. "She's...she doesn't get out much, anymore. She's probably still in her apartment."

"Ah."

They continued in silence. The streets were empty.

"She drinks a lot," Cloudy said softly.

"I...I'm sorry."

"You should be, you--" Cloudy paused, took a deep, shaky breath, and continued. "I don't know, all right? I guess it's...half your fault? I'm still mad at you for leaving. But--I guess you don't get to choose how my mom handled it. I'm just as mad at her for giving up."

A bell tolled in the distance.

"We'd be a lot better off if she'd find a stallion, but sometimes I wonder if she even wants to."

"What do you mean?" Another bell rang, its deep tone rolling over the town.

"Most of the guys she brings home are--well, they're as bad as she is. Drunken party stallions. Total assholes. Pretty sure some of them were doing more than just booze."

"What? In my town!?"

"Man, you really have your head jammed up there, huh?"

Sunny looked thoroughly confused.

"...forget it. The one that gets me is that one time she had a real nice guy--maybe not somepony from the right side of the tracks, but...he actually noticed me. Spent time with me. He taught me how to hotwire a car!"

"You sound way too excited about that, young lady."

"Well, at least he didn't cuss me out," Cloudy said. "Didn't throw stuff at me, either. He treated me like I was, y'know. His daughter."

"...so what happened?"

"Oh, he's a bad influence," Cloudy whined, imitating her mother. "He's gonna get you into trouble with the law. I don't like the way he acts around you. Yeah, treating me like a waste of space is fine, staring at my ass is A-OK, but give me the time of day and it's curtains for you!" She kicked a loose cobblestone, and it flew across the street, clacking as it bounced off someone's wall. Another bell rang.

"Who stared at your--"

"Everypony stares at my ass," Cloudy said, glaring at him. "You stared at my ass."

"Wha--I did not!"

"Sure ya didn't." She scowled, and stared at the ground for a few moments, as the bells rang again.

"I'm...I'm sorry," Sunny muttered.

"Sorry doesn't fix things."

They kept walking. The bells finally stopped ringing.

"...don't make a big deal out of it--" Cloudy cut herself off as her hoof clanked against the metal tiles. As they glanced around, they found that the road had disappeared, and that now there was only a metal catwalk running through the void.

"...not again," Cloudy whined. "Ugh, we were almost there!"

"It's the churchbells," Sunny murmured.

"Huh? What, you think they're making it happen?"

"Maybe not, but haven't you noticed--every time we come here, the bells were ringing."

"...huh, you're right. Don't think it'll make a difference, though."

In time, they came to a mighty tower, rising through the void.

"This is the only way through, isn't it," Sunny said, pressing his hoof to the door.

"Yep. Think there's something nasty on the other side?"

"With our luck? Absolutely."

Cloudy chuckled. "Yeah, I'm ready when you are. And, uh, Sunny?"

He nodded.

"Don't...don't overthink anything, okay? Not yet. At least wait 'till we're out of here."

Sunny smiled a little, and pushed open the door.

Inside, the walls were cob-webbed; the floor was wrought-iron grating, rusted in some places, thinly coated in pus elsewhere. Troughs full of blood and jism ran under the floor, leading into massive vats full of the stuff.

"You ever wonder what this place is supposed to be making?" Cloudy whispered.

"I don't think it's making anything."

"I mean, it looks like a factory. Or maybe a really big butcher's shop. It's making something."

Sunny opened his mouth to speak--but Cloudy clapped a hoof over it, and pointed up. Slowly, on a thick rope of webbing, a slim figure was descending. As it approached the ground, its legs unfurled, holding it high above them. As they held still, it turned this way and that, as if to search through the cobwebs on the walls--and with a shrill cry, it plunged two legs into the webbing, and yanked out a pony-shaped bundle.

He felt his stomach churn as the daddy-longlegs opened its mouth wide, and a thick, wriggling length of muscle shot out, piercing through the bundle of webs and into whatever was left inside. Cloudy backed away, whimpering softly.

The daddy-longlegs sat there for a moment--the muscle throbbed gently, though whether it was sucking something out or pumping something in, Sunny couldn't tell. Eventually, the sack lost its shape--balooning out into an amorphous blob--and the longlegs dropped it, letting it burst open and release a glut of foul yellow-white slime into the waiting troughs below. A crowbar clanked against the grating, the only thing that hadn't dissolved.

Sunny lifted the shotgun off of his back, and swallowed nervously. The beast seemed stronger than ever--and when he took aim, and fired, the shot bounced off, apparently without even a scratch.

His blood froze in his veins as the thing turned to stare at him--and his heart stopped when he saw its face.

Where there had previously been a blank white facsimile of a pony's head, Sunny could now see his own head, grinning that frighteningly too-wide grin. It licked its lips.

"Run." Sunny shoved Cloudy away, screaming. "RUN!"