I had been walking for days, my hooves stinging in a sort of tuned out pain with each step. Winter was coming; well, "winter" in the middle of July. I'd been trying to keep ahead of the storm at least until I got to the Nocturnem settlement supposedly out east. I got there a few days ago just to see scraps of metal and the various remains of the inhabitants strewn about by Howlers. On the remaining walls was a symbol of some raider group, I assume.
Nocturnem was gone and I had nowhere else to go but away. At this point, I was approaching the shoreline, the famous Equestrian Vania and its pier. I'd been here maybe... once, as a filly, never even touched the sand. I was too busy with the rides and roller coaster on the pier. Admittedly, seeing it now was almost as sad as it was nostalgic. Even the rust and peeled paint didn't make my inner child falter. The storm was going to catch up either way so I decided I might as well search here for a place to fortify.
Closing in, it was in rougher shape than I thought but I suppose that was to be expected. The plank flooring of the pier was scorched and brittle, with many of the first planks led up to were already ripped up. I balanced across a now exposed underlying support beam and didn't feel much safer when I got to the other side. The planks were fragile, ready to collapse at any moment. It was just a matter of which one would break first. For that reason, I stayed with the beam beneath me, not going to any other rides or structures, only diverging at the end, where the flooring was more stable and a small service shed stood.
Looking back from the last stretch of the pier, I pondered how very carefully the ferris wheel and rollercoaster still remained on such shaky ground. I suppose they were on supports as well but the tension was still there. Taking in the full picture, the unreality set in after all these months.
A dilapidated pier, the soft echoes of joyful playing hidden in the screeching of the carousel's rusted joints. The daunting clouds of unnaturally deep blue creeping with cold illumination inside, sweltering and crunching up, waiting to spring forth pent-up rage. After moving for so many months after the incident, I never let the reality set in that everything has changed. Everypony was gone, sure, but more foundational, everything I took to make up the logic of the existing world was shaken, twisted, shattered and restitched into a distorted kaleidoscope of a mirror, a reality so twisted up yet my reflection remained the same. In this kaleidoscope, I was odd, I was unnatural. In that moment of realization, I understood how out of place I was in this new world, and I felt broken. I felt the shards of my life crash against the pier, the sound of internal shattering muffled by the pained cries of the carousel moving gently along in agony. Then, a new sound muffled all, the wind, the creak, the screech, and the distant storm: the clip of a revolver pressed to the back of my head.
"Move an inch and see what happens," a gruff voice threatened, a hidden shakiness that only made me more anxious. I was petrified as I turned around on his command. I could see he was scared, and his mental concentration on not pulling the trigger was scarce to say the least. He was a short looking stallion, a bit scruffy, more shaggy than grizzled. Clearly his intimidation relied heavily on his gun and his voice, but it worked regardless of his appearance. I wasn't sure what to do as he just kind of stared, wondering what to do with a strange pony like me.
In his eyes, I saw the glimmers of many ideas flash by in an instant. Perhaps survival was among them. Keep a girl around just in case or don't trust a stranger?Would it be easier to just kill me now or risk me getting my possible raider buddies to come back and storm the place? Still, this was all just guesswork on my part, plans I was probably thinking about more than he was. For all I know he could have just been thinking my favorite color was blue before casually mulling over whether or not to put a bullet through my skull. Whatever his thoughts, it was clear he was thinking hard before we heard it.
A wail abruptly came out of the woods off in the distance. It sounded familiar, like the nuclear sirens but organic, an unnatural vocalization of that haunting reverberation of the horns. A demented howl, unlike anything else. We both turned back to stare before I felt the gun against me once more, shaking heavily.
"What is that?!" The stallion demanded, the magic wrapping his gun quivering and unfocused.
"I don't know," I replied. "I never heard anything like that before."
Another howl and the stallion shook more violently, stomping insistently with a loud crunch beneath.
"Don't lie to me!" he shouted. "You were just out there! Are those your raider friends?!"
"No, no, I'm not a raider, I swear, please! I have no idea what that is, but... I don't think that's a pony cry."
"Then what IS it?!" he asked again as a loud creaking sound came from beneath us. I was split between what to say, not sure if I should bring up the instability of the pier or reassure the stallion with a revolver that I indeed had no clue what the continuing siren sound was. I ultimately didn't have to choose either as he looked past me, stiffening in a paralyzed stance and a draining of the face as he uttered, "What is..."
I turned back to see the same horrifying creatures. They were ponylike in general body shape, but the head... That awful, the face. The simple, blurred silhouette from all the way across the pier was still petrifying. Lumpy and bald, sickly pale with no fur, and an oval shape with a protruded snout, extended mostly by unearthly jagged, protruding, needlelike teeth stretching out far from the face. Their beady little black eyes were easy to miss from a distance but rather than being windows to their souls, they were mirrors unnervingly reflecting my own soul back at me, tainted and damned for having seen them. Their tails were as hairless as the rest of their thin ratlike forms. Their legs ended in fleshy hoofless stubs and I felt sympathy pains emanating from my ankles.
A pack of three spotted us from the beginning of the pier and howled with a newfound bass so loud that it sent us both to the ground, pressing our hooves against our ears. Even when the revolver fell and fired randomly, it was completely silenced in the volume of the howl. My ears were ringing so viciously that I fully expected to find blood on my hooves as I pulled them away, if I could even see it as my vision blurred in the searing pain of my ears ringing
Underneath, I felt it, even with the pain. The nauseating final crunch of the support beam. That classic feeling of your gut giving out with it, preparing for the fall. I knew what was coming.
My stomach twisted as I felt myself scraping against the wooden pier to the right, seeing through fuzzy eyesight the Ferris wheel lean right before snapping the wood underneath it as it went over. I reached out for anything I slid toward as the entire pier twisted right, feeling myself slam against some structure as my hearing slowly returned to hear the other structures snapping and crunching under their own weight as they crashed violently into the water below. I stood somewhat with my vision more or less back to see myself pressed against the small service shed, the end of the pier at a 60° degree angle. The howling was constant, but not nearly as loud. I figured whatever they were, they were probably scared off for now from the whole pier collapsing.
My ears still rang a bit and I heard various things still falling into the water but the shed felt somewhat stable. Looking back, though, it was clear I wasn't getting back to shore without a little swim. I observed the water below, a sizable drop, and a break in the wood railing. I felt my stomach knot again as I looked around before hearing splashing buried deep under the ringing. I looked towards shore to see the stallion trudging ashore, soaked and exhausted. I felt both envious and anxious knowing he made it, although I didn't remain envious for long.
The stallion mustered an ungainly stagger as he made it to the shore and once again got sand under his hooves. He stood weakly, staring off, whether in quiet appreciation to be alive or stiffening fear of the trauma he will never forget, I wasn't sure. However, if it was the latter, at least he wouldn't have to live with it long.
The creatures seemed to crawl out of nowhere and before I couldn't utter a single word of warning, they sprung at him, driving those elongated teeth into his shoulder, shredding grotesquely as they came out, turning his flesh into an unnaturally flowing series of strings. I turned my head, shut my eyes tightly, and cursed my ears for hearing the screams and grotesque sounds of a fellow equine being eviscerated. I covered my ears and groaned in an attempt to drown out the sound. There was a strange, sickening surrealism in hearing the cries of a stranger, a stallion who held a gun to my head just a few minutes ago. It wasn't karma, no matter what he did, it was just cruel.
After the stallion was subdued to the pack's satisfaction, they dragged the barely together pieces off as a unit. I felt– no, I knew– I couldn't bare any more, not a single more ounce of this brutality, yet I heard it anyway– a whimper. Somehow, in the back of his jawless form, a violent gurgling of a pained whimper pushed through the bloody strings on his former cheeks and reverberated throughout. He was still alive.
Vomit boiled up in the back of my throat, but I couldn't even bring myself to look away into the faded tree line. Even though I long since got in my vision straight, the world blurred in and out, salty air stinging my stare. My legs felt numb and abstract, like I was floating, hovering over him from a distance like Death, observing, but never coming forth with mercy.
I stared for an hour as the storm blew over, dry snow piling up, soaking in the moisture of the red beach. By the time I managed to force myself down and back out on land far from the red patch, I fit the violent kaleidoscope of reality. I dragged my broken pieces with me and restitched them as I told the tale to anypony I found.
Now, Howlers are commonly known, the cold dealt with, but I never forget standing alone and looking back on the world at the end of a pier. Smiling faces, the sweet aroma of popcorn and cotton candy, the crude, nostalgic smell of machinery, and a sound of sirens and magnificent brightness taking the sky as the shards of my memories clash into each other, forming a violent, beautiful mosaic in my mind.
