“And that's how I learned the most important rule of livin'!” Granny Smith shook a waddling forearm from where she reclined on the living room sofa. “The only safeguard against hammerhead sharks is havin' webbed toes!”
“Jee, Granny...” Apple Bloom lay across the carpet in her pajamas. The preteen stifled a tired yawn and smiled sleepily. “That's a swell story.”
“What's so swell about it? Poor fish went hungry for a fortnight!” Granny blinked blearily at the walls of the room. “Say, that reminds me.” Thunk! Her head fell back, her mouth opening towards the ceiling. “Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz...”
Apple Bloom blinked, shrugged, and slowly got up. “Whelp... that about does it for me.” She stretched and yawned once again. “Reckon I should get some shuteye.”
“Eeeeeeyup...” Big Macintosh tiredly said. The big fellow was already extinguishing the flames in the fireplace.
“Them algebra quizzes ain't gonna do themselves in the morning.” Teetering, Apple Bloom made her way for the stairs that led to her bedroom. A tall blonde shape blurred past her. “AJ? You gonna hit the hay sooner or later?”
“Y'all go and turn in,” Applejack spoke over her shoulder. She was still dressed in afternoon casual and she hugged a leather satchel to her chest. “Just got some late night chores to finish. Then I'll wash up and turn in.”
“Well, don't stay up too late!” Apple Bloom called after her. “I still need someone to carpool me to soccer practice tomorrow!”
“Dun you worry yer cute little head, sugarcube...” Applejack paused at the rear screen door and winked at her family. “Yer big sis wouldn't miss drivin' you around for nothin'!” She nodded at Big Mac. “Leave the light on the porch on, if ya could, Macky.”
“Eeeeeeeeeyup.”
With a light kick, Applejack burst her way out of the house. She strode briskly across the back lawn of the Apple Family farmstead, whistling pleasantly to herself. She shifted the weight of the heavy satchel in her grasp, all the while squinting up at the night sky every few seconds.
Dark clouds were wafting in from every cardinal direction, blanketing the cosmos. Thunder broiled in the distance, coming closer.
“Hmmmm...” The freckled farm girl cracked the joints in her neck and quickened her pace forward into the pitch black countryside. “...a mite ahead of schedule, ain't we...?”
She didn't need a flashlight for the trek ahead. Applejack knew the path by memory. One by one, rows of apple trees passed by her left and right. Thunder rumbled more and more frequently as she passed a dense array of foilage... then happened upon a broad clearing. The patch of free soil was almost perfectly circular, and in its center there stood a tiny wooden shack—slightly larger than a stereotypical outhouse.
Applejack approached the southern face of it. There were multiple locks affixed to a rusted hinge. She whistled as she reached into her left pocket and produced a key. She used this to free one of the locks. Then she reached into her right pocket and produced a second key. This too had a fitting lock to work. Identical steps were repeated with her left rear pocket... her right rear pocket... her left sock... her right sock. Six keys for six locks. Finally, there were two remaining combination locks. Applejack entered the date her mother was born... followed by the date her father died.
Click.
Finally, the wooden shack was free to open. Applejack shouldered the satchel and yanked at the handle with her free hand. The door resisted a bit, dragging a curved trench in the inert soil below, but ultimately she opened it all the way. After a deep breath, she pivoted sideways and shimmied inside. The thunderclouds above were practically growling at this point. She calmly averted her eyes, focusing instead on the shadowed interior of the shed—now turning pitch black as she closed the door behind her.
Creeeeeak.
The whole shack groaned—reverberating from the thunder above. A tumultuous hiss built up outside—practically milliseconds after Applejack had sealed herself within the tiny shelter. Hot-and-cold air could be felt blowing through the tiny crevices in the wooden foundation.
None of these things frightened Applejack. She hummed a tune—calmly—all the while repositioning the satchel so that it rested against her bosom. She slid her arms through the straps and tied the bands securely behind her neck and shoulders. Then—reaching blindly through the claustrophobic air—her coarse farmhands made contact with a dangling lightbulb. She yanked a thin chain, and a pale yellow glow haloed her inside that confined space.
“~Mmmm-mmm-mmmm~” She calmly fished into one of her pockets and produced a plastic bag. Inside were tiny sterilized needles. “~All Ah'm taking with me are the pieces of mah heart.~” Casually, she took two separate strips of metal and pricked opposite thumbs until they bled tiny crimson droplets. “~And all Ah'll leave are smoke rings in the dark.~”
Continuing to hum, she reached to her left and pressed her bleeding thumb against five intersecting points of a pentagram stenciled against the inner wall of the shack. She then proceeded to do the same towards the right wall. This took no more than fifteen seconds. Once done, she sucked one thumb—than the other—then reached down...
...to a set of rusted shackles lingering on the floor. They were attached by chains to thick iron stakes that had been pounded hard into the rocky earth an untold eon ago. She clasped one cuff around her left ankle, and then the other around her right. Applejack gave the shackles a few good shakes to make sure that they were firmly secured. She kicked at the air, watching with approval as the chain lifted, rattled, then settled.
By now, the thunder outside was deafening. The whole shack started to shake. As it did so, the dual pentagrams flanking her glowed—starting at the bloodied points and spreading like hot copper wires encircling one another. The wooden walls shook on their foundation, and the howling winds took on a frightful cadence, resembling a hellish chorus rising over invisible mountains on all sides of the ranch.
The single lightbulb flickered, casting epileptic strobes over Applejack's freckled face. She tugged at the straps of the satchel for good measure, then braced herself against the walls of the shaking shed. Outside, it was as if a ghostly steam engine was tightly encircling the clearing. She took one deep breath. Two. A third—and she reached to her left...
...where a leather-bound lever awaited her grasp. Her fingers clasped tightly around the handle. Then—after a tense pause—she viciously yanked the lever down.
CRANKKKK!
The roof of the shed flew open to blinding bloodlights like a yawning clam.
Flecks of dirt flew skyward and into a swirling vortex of copper clouds brimming with red lightning. Applejack's ponytail flew up—as did the lightbulb, dangling wildly on the end of its cord towards the hellish heavens above.
Applejack squinted fearlessly into the demonic anomaly. She counted mentally—and once the moment was right, she released her grip of the shed's walls.
Swoooooosh!
She flew upwards—
Thwkkk!
—only to stop in place, tethered by the metal chains clasped around her ankles. She wobbled there like a fishing lure, suspended against the swirling tempest from beyond that was sucking her opposite of gravity's pull. Bands of lightning licked all across her periphery, giving the treetops of Sweet Apple Acres a silver sheen—like an ocean of red-speckled emerald squaring off against the End Times.
Applejack hovered there—drawn taut against the lengths of chains—waiting... waiting... waiting...
...until at last, the first branch showed, brown and jagged and moist with a fresh coating of viscera. Then there was a second branch. A third.
They were antlers—peaking down through the clouds—surfacing like demonic dorsal fins. There was one set. Then four. Then eight. Then sixteen.
By the time a veritable forest of blood-soaked antlers appeared, the heads followed with them. Dozens upon dozens of necrotic deer heads. Eldritch elk from beyond, with more mouths than they had eyes—all of them drooling and dribbling with meat lust beyond quantifiable definition.
“HRESSSSSSSSSHAAAAAA!!!”
“Yeah yeah! I know!” Applejack blew out the side of her mouth. Without breaking a sweat, she calmly reached to the satchel that was clinging to her bosom. Unzipping it, she firmly grasped a large... large pale brick of grainy material. It was a veritable anvil of edibility, and she held it upwards (downwards?) at arm's length... teasing the swirling death maw of ravenous demon deer heads. “I got yer salt lick right here!” She gnashed her teeth. “But ya rang in too much dang thunder this time! Y'all gotta promise me to be more quiet-like next time or ya ain't gettin' none!”
The elk faces hissed in anger. They spat blood possums and vomited razorbacked frogs and snorted mud centipedes... and other critters.
“Promise me!” Applejack frowned. She wasn't fooling around. “My family's gotta sleep, y'know?! So are you gonna keep it down next time or go hungry?!?”
The deer heads swirled closer. Their menacing eyes flickered with the ghosts of stillborn infants. Hoofed tentacles lashed at Applejack's dangling body in a threatening manner, laced with the sobs of abominable mouthless widows from beyond the obsidian shrouds of undying.
“Uh uh uhhhh!” Applejack hugged the giant salt lick to her chest. “At this rate, yer gallopin' away from this hungryyyyyy!”
The portal to elk-space belched with frustration. Then—finally—there was a surrendering salvo:
“HRESSSSSSSHA!!!”
Applejack smirked in victory. Freckles lit up like stars against a nihilistic miasma. “That's more like it!” She then released both hands from the brick of salt. “Enjoy yer vittles, ya mangy varmints!”
The pale anvil flew up into the cyclone.
A million mouths converged hungrily on it. The sea of antlers interlocked. In so doing, they clamped tight, “clogging” the vortex completely.
“Now I dun wanna see so much as a wink of you until next month, ya hear?!” Applejack pointed up into the fluctuating sky. “Now git!”
The magical anomaly imploded on its own sudden stagnancy. The rolls of thunder reversed, and the cloud formation spiraled quicker and quicker into an infinitesimal pinprick of nothingness.
FLASH!!!
The sky was once again a placid black blanket smattered with sleepy stars.
Gravity took over...
...and Applejack fell, ponytail and all. She held her breath, threaded the needle of the shack's clamshell roof and—
“Htttt!”
Her boots grinded to a stop against the opposite walls of the shed. She halted just a foot above the ground, the chains of her shackles rattling to a stop. At last—half a second later—the lightbulb finished its fall, wobbling to a stop beside Applejack's pretty face.
Taking a deep breath, Applejack closed her legs, landed on the floor, and pulled the lever.
Thunk! The shed roof closed shut. Applejack unclasped the shackles, flicked off the lightbulb, and stepped out through the creaking door.
After some fiddling, she secured all six locks, zipped the empty satchel shut, and began her solitary trek back to the farm house.
“Whew-wee...!” She sucked on the still-fresh cut on one thumb, then the other. “Heheh...” A dusting off of both hands. “Sure beats bein' on the rag.”
