At long last, it was the heartburn that did it. Too many slices of pizza after work the day previous, or perhaps it was the tangy dessert treat she had enjoyed right before bed. Either way—after tossing and turning for about an hour—Berry Punch gave up on pretending to go back to sleep and gave in to the intestinal anguish that had fully woken her.
She stumbled out of bed and stood teeteringly on all fours. The mare was far too restless to yawn, and she blinked blearily into the opaque shadows of her room. The world was a charcoal sea of fuzz, and she crept towards the direction of her bedroom door slowly—having to blindly navigate a veritable minefield of loose junk, discarded clothes, and even a dusty saddle or two. Berry Punch was far from a cleanly pony, but she lived alone and cherished even less ambitious prospects, so there was nopony to impress with domestic etiquette but herself. And she had long learned that she was easy to please.
It took some fumbling with the doorknob; but soon Berry Punch exited onto the hallway of her second story cottage apartment. It was just dark out there as it was in her room. The mare thought nothing of it; she had to pee. Taking a hard right turn, she shambled towards her bedroom. This wasn't without bumping into a wall or two, causing picture frames to shake and wobble.
She blinked. As she passed by a window, she saw nothing but pitch blackness outside. How long had she been asleep? It felt like forever, but it must have just been an hour or two.
Berry Punch shrugged it off. She made a bee-line for the toilet and did her business. After flushing and then washing her hooves, she hobbled clear across the apartment to her kitchen. Her belly was aching and a fire was building up in her esophagus. That pizza had done a terrible number on her insides, and there was absolutely no going back to bed at this rate. Berry was reminded of her college years and how many a disastrous night of junk food consumption and last-minute exam-cramming drove her to insomnia and the brink of insanity. Funny how—now that she was a middle-aged adult—she somehow never managed to reenact the positive elements of her youth.
Entering the kitchen, Berry flicked on a light. A dull amber glow illuminated the heart of the room. She immediately limped towards the pantry, feeling and fumbling around for a bottle... the bottle.
Antacid tablets... antacid tablets... antacid tablets...
Berry's muzzle tightened into a discomforting frown.
Where were they...?
She propped herself up on her rear hooves and stuck her head deep into the pantry. She saw bags of potato chips, macaroni ingredients, and age-old saltine crackers. But nothing to cure the tempestuous party in her insides.
Her nostrils flared. Berry Punch had two choices available to her now. One: she could wait out her churning stomach and hope to sleep during the daytime. Or two: she could venture out right then and there—in the dead of night—and see if Ponyville's one and only open convenience store had a spare bottle of tablets that could soothe her raging belly.
These things always seemed to happen on her days off...
With a depressed sigh, Berry Punch turned to trot across the kitchen to where her saddlebag had been slumped lazily on the counter. As she passed by the window, she saw another violet mare trotting parallel to her.
“...?!?” Berry Punch spun towards the pane.
Her reflection blinked straight at her. It was so pitch black outside that the light from the kitchen mirrored her perfectly in the window's glass. Muzzle scrunched, Berry Punch leaned in over the sink, squinting just millimeters from the glass' surface. As hard as she peered and gazed, she could barely make out any of the tree branches or cottage rooftops that she knew lingered just outside. Her efforts were made even more difficult as her exhales formed foggy condensation against the glass. She leaned back, tonguing the inside of her muzzle in thought.
It must be overcast. There were thunderstorms in the distance along the trot home from work. Then again, she had been so hungry for pizza that she didn't think twice about it until now...
Berry Punch tapped her chin in thought, watching as the mare in the glass did the exact same. Then blinked.
Just what time was it?
Berry turned around and looked up. Propped against the wall was a clock. The short hoof was aimed at nine while the long hoof was lingering on six.
Nine thirty? But how could that be...?”
Exhaling in a huff, Berry Punch marched into the living room. She flicked on another light. Just like the lamp in the kitchen, it felt as though it wasn't illuminating enough of her home. Still, it cast just enough shine for her to find her other clock. She lifted the thing into her hooves and examined it closely.
Nine thirty-one. How can two clocks be wrong?
She looked towards the kitchen, fuzzy ears folded in contemplation.
Maybe... it wasn't morning. Maybe she had just slept for an hour or two and confounded sweaty pizza dreams had stretched out the sense of passing time in her head. Did she even look at her clock before passing out in a food coma?
Berry Punch groaned inwardly.
She really... really should have paid more attention to these sorts of things. Berry Punch could no longer afford excuses, especially after being nearly a decade sober. Somepony her age should be managing things better... one would think...
Her stomach gurgled, and—blissfully—digestive pain outweighed her existential remorse. If she wanted to go to the store, there was no time like the present. All she wanted to do was crawl back into bed and sleep this confusion away. In truth, it was the only thing she looked forward to these days.
So, without wasting any more time, Berry Punch slumped back into the kitchen. She hoisted the saddlebag from the day previous back over her barrel. She made sure she had enough bits on her. And-glancing at her bleary reflection one last time—she made sure to bring a flashlight with her. Ponyville wasn't the same sleepy town it was when she first moved in, and it was best not to tempt fate—especially in a community where the local mailmare had a habit of slamming into random things at all hours.
Less than a minute later, she stepped outside. She couldn't stop herself from lingering on the second story balcony entrance to her apartment.
It was cold. What's more, the air was utterly stale. It lacked the comforting crispness of a chill autumn evening. Some frost—at least—would christen the moment with natural purpose. Instead, stepping outside felt as real as flipping a book to a blank page, and for the life of her Berry Punch couldn't tell if it was worth turning even further.
She gazed up, squinting into the heavens... only for nothing to squint back. No moon. No stars. Not even a flickering speck of cosmic splendor. The sky was an onyx shroud, thick and black and dead. It had been a long time since the pegasi had laid out a cloudy carpet this thick. But—usually when they did—there would be occasional lightning flashes that illuminated the rippling underbelly of their wingwork.
Instead, there was nothing. Not even the gusty wheeze of wind to foretell the direction that the clouds had chosen to move. Berry Punch must not have been the only living thing unsettled by all this. Her ears pricked towards the opposite horizons, and yet she heard no crickets, no owls, no critters serenading that endless arena of night.
As self-centered as it was to contemplate, Berry Punch was slightly relieved. Years of enduring hangovers had conditioned her into loathing noise in all its manifestations. Sobriety had given her an opportunity to enjoy the finer intricacies of silence, and this moment was no different. Perhaps it would even lull her stomach during the extent of her important journey.
With the flashlight as her guide, she descended the creaking steps of her cottage loft and trotted the lengths of the streets below. To say that the darkness enveloping her was “eerie” would be a ridiculous understatement. Berry Punch's torch formed a sepia swath that carved into the shadows of Ponyville like a conical dagger, illuminating a blurred halo of still dirt, untouched cobblestone, and unkempt grass before and beneath her. It wasn't that she couldn't see the buildings stretching on either side of her stroll, but they distinctly lacked the glossy kiss of starlight, so that when her flashlight grazed their stone and wooden foundations it was like highlighting a yellow marker across a burnt black postcard.
Perhaps there was a blackout?
As soon as Berry Punch thought of that, she berated herself for doing so.
But the power was on back home, dipstick.
She giggled sleepily at herself, amused by her own foolishness.
And for a moment, she thought she heard something else giggling back. Except—it wasn't a giggle. More like a shifting sound. A rustling. Like a thousand needles tingling against one another in suspended burlap sacks. Lofty and loose and levitating overhead.
A blink. Berry Punch looked straight up. Nothing looked back. Nothing could.
Nevertheless, her ears flicked once. Twice. It wasn't until a full minute had passed that she realized she was standing dead in place. Her stomach churned and it wasn't feeling any better.
So—eventually—the discomfort pushed her forward. It was all that did these days.
Her flashlight sliced its sepia sweeps over the dirt roads and side streets ahead. Just a few turns, and Berry Punch would be at the convenience store. Filthy Rich had expanded his business to incorporate a twenty-four-hour shop right in the heart of town. It shocked a few traditional residents, scaring many into thinking that urban Equestria had finally invaded the heart of their rural country. It amused Berry Punch to think that it took a corner store—and not a crystal castle belonging to a Princess of Friendship—to finally tip the locals into a social panic. But it was clear that Ponyville had not turned into Manehattan overnight. They just now had a place where they could drop by at any hour of the day to get whatever was sorely needed. And what could be so dangerous about instant convenience?
Perhaps Berry Punch was alone in this: but she absolutely loved having a convenience store nearby. It reminded her of rosier, happier days spent in Fillydelphia suburbia—long before she moved into Ponyville. Long before she was nearly driven stir-crazy by the predictably simplistic lurch of farming life. Before she had to settle for less-exciting prospects than she had been vigorously schooled for. Before she had lost a good chunk of her life to a battle with addiction that was just as dull in the years after defeating it as it was when she had been fully enslaved.
Many ponies wouldn't admit this, but even victory meant nothing if all one hoped for in life was happiness.
At long last, Berry Punch embarked upon the last stretch. Soon she would see the second story of the refurbished building's copper-tinged roof. Soon she would see its green neon sign and brightly-lit windows. Soon she would gaze upon the sliding glass doors and the tall poster advertisements flanking them.
But—as she aligned herself with where the store was supposed to be—she saw none of these things.
Correction...
...she saw some of these things, but they had been obscured. Marred and blocked. Something was drooping down over the bright edges of the establishment, snuffing the place out like a candle. Something from above...
“Berry?! Berry Punch!”
The shouting voice came from a gallop away. Nevertheless, the sheer unexpectedness of it shook the mare to her core. Berry Punch spun towards the opposite line of storefronts. Anxious, she shone her flashlight at the buildings.
Dozens upon dozens of faces gawked back at her, peeking out of every doorway and window. The buildings were chock-full of equines of all ages, some familiar and others not. It was as if the entire population of Ponyville had been crammed into one row of buildings, packed inside for some emergency purpose. They all looked bright and awake and very scared. Scared for her.
“Come inside!” shouted the pony who had hollered earlier. It was Amethyst Star, or maybe it was Bon Bon. Or maybe—“Quick! You have to run!”
Berry Punch blinked. She was confused. Why was everypony jam-packed inside like that? Why were they all gaping at her as if she was bleeding to death in the open sun? With a limp hoof, Berry Punch gestured towards the obscured convenience store ahead of her, then towards the blackness above—
And—as if reading her mind—the mare from afar shouted: “That's not night!”
Berry Punch's insides froze—a miraculous if not belated salve to her otherwise undying heartburn. Despite the warnings, she could not help herself. She looked up... up... up... and swung the flashlight with her.
The light scraped the summits of the convenience store—or that which was left to see beyond the darkness. The churning, squirming, writhing darkness. There was a brief break in the miasma, and a large clock that Filthy Rich had installed into the front face of the building momentarily shrieked “Nine forty-five.” But this too vanished as a piece of the heavens dripped downward, descending like a dollop of starless black ink. And as soon as that droplet of void struck the earth, it skittered all across the street in five dozen darting directions, carried by spindly legs and obsidian hooks.
The rattling needles kissed Berry's ears once again—ghostly percussion from beyond—but this time echoing to the left and right of her. Breathless, she glanced aside, watching as the eight-legged dots skittered underneath her, hundreds of them blurring between the pony's shivering fetlocks. The percussion increased—like heavy bells this time—and the “night” was raining now, pounding the earth all around the mare and exploding into an ever-increasing ocean of writhing arachnid hunger.
“Berry—!”
“Run—!”
“For Twilight's sake—!”
She did. She tried. She bolted towards the storefronts, the faces, the flashing teeth. A light had burst overhead, a chaotic purple flame for which there was no extinguishing. But it only rippled because of the dome that had broken between—the writhing mass that had fatefully chosen to collapse on top of her. Soon, the mournful neighbors' faces were likewise blanketed, and the carnivorous ceiling had finally claimed its prey, slamming Berry Punch hard to the earth and divorcing her permanently from her flashlight, so as not to illuminate the horrific autopsy about to forcibly unfold.
When the wall of pinprick fangs dug in from all sides, Berry Punch's adrenalized mind honed in on one thing and one thing alone. She did not think about the spiders that were crawling into her ears and the spaces between her eyes. She did not think about the forest of spindly legs she could feel surging past her uvula. She did not think about the venom that was blistering her skin into bubbly leather or the phalanx of mandibles pulling her hooves apart.
No, Berry Punch thought about how she never really liked pizza to begin with... and how she woefully wished that horses had the blissful gift of regurgitation.
