Return to Bittersweet Apple Acres

An alarm awakens me in the darkness; the casual alarm that alerts me of the start to my day. It was the sound of my room door being unlocked by a specific key that my nurse, Sassy Heartstone, carries around 24/7 in the institute I've learned to call home since the ending of my last Nightmare Night.

The very reason I'm here in the first place.

Before midnight came that night, I was a normal everyday young adult living a normal life in Ponyville, but everything after had changed me forever beyond repair. They say if you play with fire, you're going to get burned. They're right, and while my case wasn't fire, it was no less vivid.

My name is Flora Bloom, and I am a survivor.

Let me start from the beginning. Decades before I was even born, something horrible happened in my hometown; an event that, after it had finally ended, had shaken the citizens of Ponyville to their cores.

For ten years, residents were forcefully kidnapped, brutally tortured, and eventually killed by a family of ruthless monsters, siphoning their blood for profit in another form of torture.

Desperation.

This was known as the Apple Family Massacre, but after a couple decades, the citizens had forgotten the impact and horror that it had caused them, and was treated less like an event to learn from, in hopes of it not repeating, and more like another fictional addition to Nightmare Night festivities and traditions.

What fools we were for ever treating something that took the lives of over twenty ponies like a joke or myth, because I can tell you personally, it's far from either, and if every pony who ever dared to treat it as such had experienced what led me here, history would have never repeated.

The Apple family was real, and the stories cannot even amount to the reality of being one of their victims. Their cruelty, persistence, and wickedness has no boundaries, and unless you have a death wish, never step a single hoof onto the foundation where the farmhouse had once stood.

An action that nearly cost me my life and soul.

I was a victim along with three of my friends. We thought the stories were fake and it was all just a myth.

May Celestia have had mercy on our souls that night, because that night, we learned not to test myths that may be true.

My name is Flora Bloom, and I am the second survivor to have ever escaped the Apple family.

The assholes here refuse to believe me about anything though. When I was put here, I was scheduled for therapy every other day up until I became somewhat stable again. The main therapist was an asshole who didn't give a shit about me or my well-being.

Every session was the same questions for the same amount of time, and there were times where I actually had to recapture his attention while speaking my thoughts. I eventually gave up, pretending I was better while flushing the medication they prescribed me down the toilet with glee.

I refused, and still refuse, to become a zombie like the rest of my fellow comrades in the hellhole. I know what I saw and will not be silenced and locked away like a stray animal. That's not who I am.

Flora Bloom is a confident and outgoing pony that had a life as bright as former Princess Celestia's sun, and while she may be detained in a structure of solid concrete walls and cages sealed off with doors held in place by electric locks, she promises to get back her life that was taken by that bitch!

The demented and cruel mare once known in this world as Bittersweet Applejack.

My door opens to a brightly lit hall with two ponies guarding the flank of Sassy, her dark hazel eyes meeting my own in our casual greeting. Sassy is probably the only pony I can call a "friend" in this place; she's never showed any ignorance or strife toward me, and instead, treats me with kindness and sympathy.

She knows of the bullshit going on here and hates the majority of the staff. She is probably the only thing that has prevented me from suicide and has allowed me to believe in hopes of my life returning to normal, even though I know it never will.

I never have felt the need to hate her, and she even assists me in not having to take the zombifying medication. She knows what it does as much as me, and somehow manages to keep it secret from the head of the institution.

She knows the risks, but refuses to harm the patients more than they already are mentally. A saving grace I'm thankful for in this personal hell.

I smile, getting up from my brick of a bed and approach at the appropriate pace. Sassy does the usual routine, grabbing a small cup from one of the guards, and handing it to me, then turns to grab the provided water for me to swallow the two capsules in the first mini cup from the other guard.

Sassy directs me accordingly, and I stick the two pills under my tongue, taking the water and pretending to swallow the practical poison. Once the water is down, Sassy directs me to open my muzzle, to which I do and lift my tongue to assure her the capsules have made it no further than that.

She smiles at the assurance as I hand her back the mini cup the water had resided in prior, taking it and turning back to the guards behind her. I expect her to just leave, up until she turns back to me.

"Just so you know, Flora, tonight there will be a special surprise for the patients," Sassy says to me, causing my ears to perk.

"Why the occasion?" I question.

"Why, it's Nightmare Night of course!" she confirms joyfully. "Since the patients can't go out, the institution decided to treat everypony to something special. I'll come to escort you around 8 pm."

Nightmare Night…

Nightmare Night…

Nightmare...Night…

The memories begin to flash before my eyes like a slideshow in rapid succession.