Zombie of One

by Impossible Numbers

Rating: teen
Tags: Slice of Life, Berry Punch, Sad, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Horror, Ruby Pinch
Length: 17638

Ruby is having a terrible nightmare. She can’t run from it, she can’t hide from it, but she can never, ever tell anyone about it. And it only gets worse when she falls asleep.

From the outside, she seems to be a very lucky girl. She has a loving family, lots of friends at school, a comfortable home to call her own.

In her head, things are different. Trapped in her own mind, surrounded by the ruins of her life, the only survivor of the death of her soul. She has no family, no friends, no home, nothing.

And one enemy.

Ruby Pinch is not alone. Ruby Pinch is never alone.

Published 2021-11-14 23:50:00 UTC
Last updated 2021-11-14 23:50:00 UTC

The First Nightmare

Ruby was in the kitchen when she heard the thump. She knew by sudden instinct what it was. That was why she started to shake.

Her back was to the door. Beyond the rectangle of wood, there would be the narrow strip of main hall leading to the door, and to the stairs, and to the landing above.

Overhead, a footstep. Another footstep. A third. Then a scraping, as of a leg being dragged across a carpet.

Ruby forced herself to stare at the little window over the sink. Pretend she was about to wash up. Pretend this was normal. Pretend she couldn’t hear the footstep, the footstep, the footstep, the scraaaaaape…

Footstep, footstep, footstep, scraaaaape…

Her lungs breathed heavily, like rabbits fighting the urge to run. Little puffs escaped her open lips. The muscles in her head and neck had turned to iron, forcing her still. The urge squeezed her legs in a tight embrace, ironically making them impossible to move.

Please don’t, please don’t, please don’t, please don’t…

The footsteps did. The thump and creak of the staircase banged out their own slow, lugubrious funeral march. She knew them better than the notes on a xylophone. One thump sounded louder than the others as the leg dragged behind.

Ruby could make out the stains on the sideboard, every chaotic squidgy ridge and micro-detail on the soiled dishes, the smallest bubble in the all-too-low washing-up liquid. She had to start the washing up. Her body knew it. Her mind didn’t want to make the slightest noise. But she tried holding her breath, and the urge in her lungs became frantic. As quietly as she dared, she let the breaths puff on, wishing she could escape with them.

Thump… thump… THUMP.

Hope noticed the slight pause, then:

Footstep, footstep, footstep, scraaaaape…

Please go in the living room, please go in the living room, please-go-in-the-living-room, pleeeeaaaase!

Footstep, footstep, footstep, scraaaaape…

And then the low, pained, pitiful moan. Right outside the door.

Ruby was so desperate to flee she locked up entirely. Even her breathing caged itself behind clenched teeth and tight lips.

Stare at the window. If she didn’t see it, it wouldn’t be there.

The door creaked open.

She felt the emptiness behind her. Sensed something spotting her. Or perhaps it always knew she was there, and this was just the final check.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no!

But she knew now she was done for.

The groan, when it came, was not the muffled maybe of before. It rumbled through the floor, hooked Ruby’s ears, gripped her skull and squeezed until her eyes threatened to burst. It lowed with sudden interest.

Ruby didn’t dare look behind. She knew it would be the worst thing she could do.

She refused to look as the footsteps and the scrape sounded harsher and harsher, she refused to look when she felt the breath of its groan on her flanks, she refused to look as a faint shape shifted in the windowpane – she rammed her eyelids shut – she refused to look when its rasping, throaty, predatory gargle hungrily closed in on her ears, she refused to look, she refused, she had to –

Sharpness.

Ruby screamed as the teeth let go of her nape, the kitchen dissolved, and she curled up under the blanket before ramming the pillow over the back of her neck like a shield.

The bed. The safe, safe bed.

Darkness all around.

Alone.

The nightmare had gone. For now.

Tears streamed her face, but Ruby was too scared to rub them off. She was too scared to move at all. Her legs ached in their twistiness. All the same, she refused to uncurl. She didn’t dare move, even now. She had to.

Yet she couldn’t tell anyone either. The nightmares were always bad, but the thought of going out of her room in the dark, of finding another bedroom she wasn’t allowed to go in, not knowing what was inside?

A snore echoed through the wall. For a moment, it sounded too much like the beginnings of a groan.

Ruby willed herself to stay calm. She’d just have to stay up all night. Just the one night. Next night, she’d go to bed early to make up for it.

She knew the zombie was waiting for her. It wanted her to dream. One day, she knew it would go too far and she simply wouldn’t wake up in time.

She was ashamed of herself. So stupid. So weak.

She was eight years old.

Ruby's Morning

The morning light crept up on Ruby, curled up under the sheets, watching the faded fabric wake up. Her brain already felt like cotton wool. She knew she’d struggle later.

All the same, a switched flicked itself on within her head, and she oozed out from the bedding before hitting the floor on all fours. For a brief cooldown in the morning, she’d be a little reckless.

Details trickled in like the hot cocoa brought up by a well-rehearsed butler. Today was Thursday. Tomorrow was Friday. Then, the weekend. School and school alone for a while, then she’d be free. Just for a couple of days.

The window had steamed up. So it was cold outside. Fall season. Ah… Nightmare Night. Soon.

Ruby rubbed her eyes and grabbed the nearest dressing gown. It was frayed and ripped in places, but she’d never abandon it. It was a survivor, just like her.

Across the landing, down the narrow stairs to the even narrower hall…

“I’m playing a game!” announced a proud little squeak.

Her cousin, Piña Colada, sat beaming in the middle of the living room. A cardboard model of a rocket sat at her hooves. Ruby noticed the little dolls next to it, none big enough to fit inside. Not that it’d stop Piña from trying to ram them in.

Ruby’s brain decided it wasn’t going to push itself very hard. She simply said, “Cool.”

“It’s called ‘Death Takes A Vacation’.”

Ruby wondered why Piña looked so proud about that. “Er… also cool?”

“And now everypony can go to the moon.”

Logic tended to shrivel and die in Piña’s presence, but Ruby was still a little reckless and so tried it anyway. “What’s the moon got to do with it?”

“Easy! If Death’s on vacation, then no one can die, because he can’t ended their lives.” Grammar tended to suffer the same fate as logic too. “If he can’t ended their lives, then nopony can die before they invent moon travel. Wheeee! Wheeee!”

Ruby left her to her games, on the basis that it would all become clear if she got a drink. Or she could get a drink and it wouldn’t all become clear, but in that case, she’d at least be refreshed.

And yes, the kitchen was exactly as she’d dreamed it. Same dirty sideboard, same dirty dishes, same lack of washing-up liquid. Dull-eyed, she turned on the faucet and spat in what little liquid she had. Then she grabbed a pad of sticky notes, wrote: “Need more wash-up liq.” on it, and stuck it to the window where anyone could see it.

Then she went over to the cooker and switched it on. Piled up the least-dirtiest frying pan and saucepans, dropped a couple of bread slices into the toaster, did… something or other… yawned… slowed… stopped…

She felt like she’d lived most of her life in the kitchen, even though she knew she hadn’t really. She’d barely been here more than a year or two. She guessed… she was feeling… really sleepy… had it been that long? There’d been a different life before then, but it no longer felt like hers.

A little later from the living room, she heard the sharp ripping of cardboard, followed by the first snuffles of Piña crying.

Then, from upstairs:

Footstep, footstep, footstep…

Ruby held her breath.

…footstep.

Ruby relaxed.

The thumps marched their way down the stairs, but Ruby didn’t look up from the frying eggs or from the bubbling baked beans. She did look up when she smelled smoke, and then hastily switched off the toaster. Time for the butter.

In the hallway, someone groaned.

Ruby scolded herself for freezing and immediately moved over to the sink to start washing up.

“Good morning, Big Sis!” squealed Piña. She sounded like she was holding back tears for her recently deceased rocket.

Another groan. Footsteps, slowly approaching.

Ruby didn’t turn around when the door creaked open. She’d already wiped three plates and was moving on to the dishes: best free them up for tomorrow’s breakfast.

She heard the footsteps slow down, struggle behind her, stop abruptly. A chair scraped back.

If only she could breathe right…

Then Berry’s voice croaked, and everything was normal again: “Myyy hhheeeaaad…”

Wordlessly, Ruby hurried over to a cupboard. Tomato juice, coffee beans, sour milk, and a couple of eggs. Powdery and syrupy things to add to the mix. She knew the routine off by heart.

“Oh, goooooooooosssshhhh…” moaned Berry.

In the special language of the household, Berry was “all partied out”. It happened a lot, so Ruby had plenty of practice when it came to putting the ingredients in a glass and cracking the eggs over them and pouring in the magical stuff and mixing them up with a spoon. Her horn spluttered a bit, but unlike most unicorns her age, Ruby had been a quick learner.

Treat done, she handed it over to the slumped figure over the chair.

“IIII waaannaaa goooooo…”

“Here, drink this,” said Ruby from rote. “It’s a potion. It’ll make you feel better.”

From the slumped heap, a hoof like a snake lashed out and suddenly the remains of a face appeared under lumps of mane. Berry didn’t drink the potion: she practically breathed it down her throat, slopping in her desperation.

While the groans worsened, Ruby busied herself with toast, beans, and fried eggs. By the time she’d piled up three plates and found space around Berry to set them down, the slumped figure was straightening up.

Berry shuddered. “Oh, it never tastes any better.”

“Is your head OK?” said Ruby politely.

“Like my brains are being drunk through a straw.” Berry rubbed her wrecked face so that no one could see her; only when she’d stopped moulding it did she reveal something equally wrecked but with a smile added. “Hey, isn’t that appropriate?”

“What?”

“For Nightmare Night. You know, ‘Braaaiiinsss… Braaaiiinsss…’”

Ruby flinched. She didn’t relax until Berry lowered her forelimbs again.

“I made breakfast,” said Ruby in a small voice, as though owning up to a stolen cupcake.

This time, some of Berry’s smile lit a campfire in each eye. “Mmm, and a delicious-looking one too. Put ‘chef’ on your future career list, kid.”

“OK. I will.”

Berry’s laugh tinkled. “Under ‘waitress’, while you’re at it. Sorry I don’t have any tips, unless you count me saying: ‘Relax.’ Sleep well?”

No, thought Ruby. Whereas “maybe” would have been a fair cover.

“Yeah,” she lied. She was sure Berry didn’t need to hear her problems. Even Ruby herself didn’t want to hear them. So long as things were normal, she was OK.

Berry gave her a sidelong look but didn’t push the subject. Instead, she yelled, “Piña! Grub’s on!”

“Actually –” began Ruby, to her own complete surprise.

Berry awarded her with all the attention she could spare, even hastily swallowing a piece of toast to clear her mouth’s in-tray.

And that was what stopped Ruby dead. Her cousin – much older, theoretically much wiser, and certainly more prone to smiling – was going to turn her into something. Ruby the Kid, she already was. Ruby the Kid she didn’t like. Ruby the Kid was a long time ago.

What else was there? Ruby the Baby, Ruby the Scaredy-Cat, Ruby the Foal-Who-Turned-Out-To-Be-An-Idiot? Ruby the One-Who-Didn’t-Want-To-Be-Here wasn’t an option.

In the face of Berry’s happiness, she felt wrong. She sat up to the table and toyed with a bean on the end of her spoon.

“– nothing,” she said. “Never mind.”

“Aw…” Despite everything, Berry reached across and squeezed Ruby’s forelimb with her own. “Poor little mite.”

Ruby didn’t dare recoil, even though she could smell Berry’s halitosis.

At least Berry had some sense: she let go at once as soon as Piña came barrelling in, singing, “Nightmare Night, what a fright, give us something sweet to bite…”

“Gosh, I remember that one,” said Berry happily whilst her little sister sat down opposite. “I sang it every time we went up to a house and knocked. Used to drive Goldie up the wall. One time, I sang it so much she chased me halfway across town.” She added, grinning, “Didn’t get rid of me that easily, though.”

“I’m gonna be a candy,” declared Piña as though announcing her presidency.

“Heh, cute,” said Berry. “Something to look forward to, come Nightmare Night.”

Piña frowned. “Nightmare Night?”

Sister or not, Berry paused in confusion. Then she shrugged and decided eggs were more important.

“So,” she said round her mouthful, turning to Ruby, “any ideas for costumes?”

Ruby shrugged.

“Gotta go shopping sometime.”

Again, Ruby shrugged. She had lots of ideas, but none of them wanted to get up onstage.

She felt her silence wasn’t being friendly enough, though, so she added, “I don’t mind.”

“How about an angel?” Berry winked, and Ruby frantically stared down at her plate to avoid it. “A halo, a pair of fake pegasus wings, a bedsheet that’s not too dirty, and viola! Or voila, or whatever. You got the guardian level down pat.”

“Er… thanks.” The thought of what her friends would say if she turned up looking so sappy…

“What about you, Big Sis?” piped up Piña through a spray of toast bits.

“Me? Oh, I’ll be a devil. Goldie can’t have all the diabolical fun, now can she? Hey,” Berry continued, nudging Ruby’s elbow, “we could find some poor sap’s shoulder to sit on. Saves walking around all night, huh?”

“I thought you didn’t do trick-or-treating,” said Ruby, who couldn’t help herself – the idea tickled the edges of her mouth. “Dinky says only foals do trick-or-treating.”

“Well, I’m young at heart.” Berry laughed and put one of her toast slices onto Piña’s plate: her sister had just dropped her own onto the floor trying to wrestle it into her mouth. “Besides, Dinky doesn’t know everything, now does she?”

Ruby had wondered that herself. Of all her classmates, Dinky was one of the few unafraid of long words, and everyone knew she’d read her way through most of the Golden Oak Library. If she didn’t already know everything, she definitely would soon.

“She said grown-ups mostly go to parties,” she added, with a hint of reproach. Not that it worked: Berry in a good mood was impervious to shame. She was beyond reproach. In a way.

“Hm,” hummed Berry cheerfully. “I think that would be a good idea. But, since it’s not Nightmare Night yet, time for another day at the market for me. Oh, and school for you two, obviously. Try to look on the bright side, eh?”

“I eated destiny,” said Piña. OK, Ruby definitely knew that one was faked, but Piña got her mane ruffled and a loving kiss on the cheek anyway, because Berry suddenly came over all weak-kneed and shiny-eyed within five yards of her sister.

Helplessly, Ruby finished her breakfast, waited till the others had burped in contentment, stacked everything up on the non-existent off-chance Berry would wash up for once, then grabbed her prepared-last-night satchel and let her legs walk her out the door to school. Trapped. Doomed. Destined.

Ponyville School was – unlike its stablemates across the country – one of the best places in the world for children. For one thing, the place was a private little slice of paradise wisely watched over by the all-powerful, all-loving, and all-knowing schoolteacher Cheerilee, a young mare who could bandage all cuts, never ran out of sweets or smiles, and knew the answer to every question.

Best of all were its glorious recesses, a time of freedom and fun within the garden-like playground. Here, foals played, foals gossiped, foals forged alliances and made enemies, and foals basically learned the gentle art of being eased into the hurly-burly of adulthood.

There were lessons too, but they were just a way to pass the time.

This recess, Ruby felt her strength come pouring back in. She was now ready for destiny’s best role: Ruby the Skeptic.

“It’s called ‘Save the Monsters’,” explained Dinky in the face of Ruby’s doubt and raised eyebrow. The immoveable shield to Ruby’s unstoppable bullet.

“Who’s going to join that club?” she said casually.

In secret, she and the other girls were thrilled. Today had been a good day: Sweetie Belle had come outside loudly wearing and claiming credit for something her sister had stitched together; Scootaloo had run herself ragged trying to take off, giving everyone else a perfect chance to heckle and jeer; and there was talk of some more Cloudsdale pegasus foals transferring to Ponyville, which excited everyone and at least let Scootaloo off the hook.

Dinky the Bookworm coming up with something incomprehensible was the cherry on top.

“Oh, lots of ponies will,” she assured them, “once they understand it.”

“M-m-m-monsters?” Piña trembled where she stood. “Y-y-y-you m-m-mean N-N-Nightmare Night m-m-m-monsters?”

“If they’re an eligible and endangered species,” said Dinky, nodding.

The others either stopped to translate this or stood in awe at the thought they’d never had.

“So…” said Apple Bloom doubtfully, “…vampires and ponywolves and ghouls and things are, like, Trottingham Tangs?”

“What?” said Ruby.

“A kind of apple,” explained Dinky. “I thought they were extinct, though.”

“How’d you know that?” Apple Bloom drew herself up; apples were her family’s business, and via childhood logic were therefore her business alone.

“I read it in a book once.”

“Oh, well, books,” said Apple Bloom, indicating that – compared to the word of her kinfolk – mere bits of dirty paper were the poor mare’s choice.

“Anyway, they’re kinda like that,” answered Dinky. “When was the last time you saw a vampire?”

“No one’s seen a vampire,” said Ruby.

“Exactly.”

“Because they don’t exist.”

“They don’t?” said Piña, suddenly hopeful.

“They might,” said Dinky.

“Oh, what do you think?” said Ruby, warming up to the sarcasm. “Too many lumberponies felled too many ancient castles and now the vampires are running out of natural habitat.”

“I’d just go down to the shops,” said Piña.

Ruby patted her on the head, not unkindly. “There, there, ‘kid’.”

“I would! You can get anything you want at the shops.”

“Within reasonable economic margins,” said Dinky.

“Yeah! You could probably get those too!”

The conversation waited for the echoes of Piña’s words to die of embarrassment. Then they realized it was going to be a long wait.

“So why are we saving monsters?” said Ruby. “Aren’t you forgetting something?”

“What?” said Dinky.

“They’re monsters.”

“Yeah,” piped up Apple Bloom. “Who wants things that eat ponies and chase ’em all the time?”

“They can be trained,” said Dinky calmly. “Just sic Fluttershy on them.”

A suspicion entered Ruby’s mind at this point. Everyone knew who Dinky’s mother was, and everyone knew she in turn had some very peculiar friends, because a pegasus whose eyes had minds of their own tended to wander off into strange company.

“Your mom’s been talking to Fluttershy, hasn’t she?” said Ruby.

Dinky inspected the sky innocently. “Maybe.”

“Now it makes sense. This has ‘Fluttershy’ written all over it.”

Piña’s brow wrinkled, as it so often did when faced with anything more intellectual than “What is your name?” She said, “But the placard thingy, it says ‘Save the Monsters’.”

“I was being thingy, figurely.”

“Figurative,” corrected Dinky.

“Oh,” said Piña. “Does that spell ‘Fluttershy’ backwards?”

“Well, it’d work, wouldn’t it?” said Dinky. “You get Fluttershy to train them so they won’t eat ponies, then you can go right in and save them from extinction. Even you have to admit it’s the perfect plan.”

“I can think of at least a dozen things wrong with it.” In fact, Ruby was being slowly seduced by the patient Dinky logic of the whole thing, but it would be breaking character to say so. “Er… and that’s why it’d never work. Better luck next time, Dinky.”

“Oh, OK. Wanna join?”

Around the circle of friends, several voices said, “Yeah!” or “OK,” or, in Piña’s case, “Fun-neeeeee…”

Ruby had to think about this before she could balance two jumping impulses. “I think I will join you,” she said slowly, “but only so I can see the look on your face when it goes wrong.”

Content in secret victory, Dinky shrugged and waved her off. “Well, I need someone to help me with the slogans. I don’t think mine are working just yet.”

“Like what?”

“Like: ‘A flesh-eating blob monster from the nethermost regions of Tartarus is for life, not just for Hearth’s Warming.’”

“Hmm, I see. That could definitely be snappier.”

“Cut the Hearth’s Warming bit, you mean?”

“It’s a start, it’s a start,” said Ruby reasonably. No point gloating, after all, now she’d made her point.

To her delight, she saw Dinky prop the placard against the school wall and reach into her satchel. Foals stirred around the circle. This latest blessing unto the congregation was what they’d been waiting for.

Reverentially, Dinky slipped the latest holy book out of her satchel.

“What ya got, what ya got, what ya got? Come on, Ah wanna see!” Apple Bloom gently but firmly pushed her way to the front.

“It better not be another boring dictionary,” scoffed Ruby, who’d last time discovered and secretly fallen in love with the word “tintinnabulation”.

“Puppies are nice,” said Piña.

Dinky grinned, hoof still obscuring the cover. “Ladies, what I’m about to show you is not for the faint-hearted. I must ask those with weak constitutions to please leave the playground.”

“Quit messin’ around,” said Apple Bloom. “Just show us already!”

Around the circle – now a huddle – the cry went up: “Show us! Show us! Show us!”

“All right. Get ready for Nightmare Night, girls.”

She drew her hoof back.

Part of Ruby’s mind shot back in horror… then, when nothing happened, she leaned in closer. She could still feel it tugging at her brain like a frightened dog on a leash, but the rest of her wasn’t going anywhere.

Gasps and nervous giggles withdrew slightly from the cover.

There was no secret: Dinky could palm – or hoof – any book out of the library, either through honest protocol or through some of the most outrageous skulduggery imaginable. She’d once planted a book near the window, pretended to forget about it, and then snuck round the library to swipe it from the other side. Such acts were treated by the other foals much as early ponydom might have treated Prometheus’ feat of stealing fire from the gods and then giving its secrets to everyone else.

Even Ruby, who debated whether to tattle to Cheerilee or not, admired the bravery.

All the same, the cover bothered her. The body parts looked very realistic.

“A zombie comic book…” breathed Apple Bloom.

Dinky smirked. “They won’t even let teenagers borrow this one. I had to hide it in a book of ornithology.”

“What’s an orny?” said Piña.

Ruby, who was inspecting the edges of the cover instead of its very red picture, read aloud, “Volume Two?”

“Part of the Knacker’s Yard series,” explained Dinky.

“You mean there’s more?”

“Oh, yeeeeeees,” murmured Dinky in her best spooky voice. Ruby firmly told herself she wasn’t scared; she knew the smarty-pants unicorn fancied herself as a drama queen. She’d certainly read enough literature.

“Oawh, Applejack wouldn’t like me readin’ that,” groaned Apple Bloom, backing away.

Not that anyone cared – least of all Ruby, or so she told herself – but Piña started trembling. The picture made it very clear only naughty little foals read this sort of thing, no matter how grown-up they thought they were.

“Nothing’s wrong with it,” said Dinky in seductively reasonable tones. “It’s just make-believe, that’s all. None of it’s true. Zombies don’t exist.”

“Maybe they’re just endangered?” said Ruby sarcastically.

But Piña and Apple Bloom weren’t playing along; the former waddled off, leaking tears and whining, whilst the latter shrugged and backed off.

“Ah ain’t gonna tattle on you,” she said, “but Ah ain’t gonna do it neither. Sorry, gals. Some other time, maybe.”

“OK,” said Dinky, far too casually.

Well, at least Ruby wasn’t fooled. She knew for a fact that this was Dinky pushing her luck. If Dinky was discovered and still survived Cheerilee’s wrath, she’d never escape the far deadlier disappointment of her freaky-eyed mother when she got home. Dinky risked her soul at her peril.

Which was ridiculous thinking. They were just dumb stories.

“Ha,” scoffed Ruby, who liked to scoff. “What’s so scary about zombies? They’re just dumb, slow animals. Ooh, let’s tiptoe away and get a hayburger while we wait.”

Dinky looked relieved, but only for a second. “Exactly! Anywhere, they don’t have the charm of a vampire. Vampires are awesome.”

“And they smell.”

“And they’re total make-believe.”

“And how could they spread so fast, anyway?”

“It’s nonsense.”

The consensus weighed in Dinky’s favour. Inwardly, Ruby giggled and yanked at the chain of the stupid fear tethered like a dumb dog.

“Gather round, ye brief mortals!” intoned Dinky, summoning her best spooky voice again; shivers ran around the huddle. “Let us tell a tale of woe, a tale of fear against a foe, a tale of doom and death impending, in which there are no… happy… endings…”

Dinky’s “mwahahahahaaaaa!” scared Ruby a little, but she’d stay safe behind the disbelieving mask.

The Cursed Nightmare

That night…

That night, the mask was gone.

Ruby opened her eyes. She was in the kitchen again. The same dirty dishes, the same untouched sink, the same gleam on the little window.

She turned immediately to the door. Beyond… Well, the door had an innocent, pregnant look. Anything could be lurking behind it. She imagined herself pushing it, imagined the creak, the entry into blackness, and then the sudden light to reveal the hallway and… something moving in it.

So she didn’t move at all.

Then she heard the thump.

Upstairs, something had fallen to the floor.

Ruby seized her panic and rushed for the door, burst into the narrow strip of hallway, heard – over her own panting – the footstep, the footstep, the footstep… the scraaaaape…

If she could get out of the house! She could already hear the zombie upstairs approaching the top of the flight. She’d be the first thing it saw.

Ruby rammed into the front door and rebounded flat onto her back. The door had barely shuddered.

Panic made a bid for freedom; it pushed her scream out of the way. The yanking forces threw her onto her hooves a second before she heard the raspy intake of breath. At the top of the stairs already!? It must have spotted her!

Ruby wrestled with the handle, smacked the lock, threw her tiny weight against the woodwork. Whatever had made it stick fast, it was still refusing to move.

The thump, thump, thump of hooves coming down the xylophone stairs. She knew it was already a quarter of the way down.

Sobs convulsed in her throat as Ruby fled for the living room. Too empty, too bare, the sofa and settee could only shield her for so long, she couldn’t run forever. The last thump as the zombie reached the bottom of the stairs. Footstep, footstep, footstep, scraaaaape…

Ruby screamed gibberish. Names, pleas, cries of help: the outbursts could have been any of them. She shrank into a corner, pressing her face firmly against the wall, too terrified to watch the approaching footstep, footstep, footstep, scraaaape.

There! She remembered the old serving hatch. Long before, this had been a fancy dining room, not a living room; there had been a hole in the wall to allow plates straight from one to the other. Piña had always called it a “food window”.

The gap was still there, just a leap away. Blocked, yes, but better than waiting here.

Ruby leaped.

As the pitiful moans behind her grew more urgent, Ruby clasped the edge of the serving hatch as though about to haul herself onto a shelf. Her rear legs flailed against the wall. Approaching breaths tickled her back. With a heave, she tipped herself over the edge, tail smacking into – she gasped – what felt like gaping teeth, and then the spice rack that had long since blocked the hatch burst off the wall and crashed onto the floor, scattering glass and bottles and brown powders. Ruby crunched through it –

– something sharp bit her leg –

– but she wrenched it out of the wood and saw she’d cut the skin just above the pastern. She flexed the leg. No numbness. She could still gallop.

From the living room, the zombie groaned in aching pain, as if her escape was hurting it. Footsteps stopped. Heavy smacks and the squeak of skin against wood took over. It was climbing through after her, despite the shattered glass and bits of broken wood.

They did not know pain. They did not know fear. They would simply keep going, no matter what was between them and their prey. All Ruby could do was stay one step ahead.

She was out of the kitchen and into the hallway before she stopped to think. A perfect circle. She could gallop from kitchen to hallway to living room and back to the kitchen, forever and ever, and…

No, she couldn’t. She’d grow tired. It wouldn’t.

Why was the front door locked!?

There was a horrible crash from the kitchen, as of a body crunching wood.

Again!

Ruby ran the whole length of the hallway, rammed her shoulder into the front door, met nothing but sheer resistance. She might as well have rammed the wall.

Across the kitchen floor: footstep, footstep, footstep, the scuffing of a dragged hoof on tiles.

One bit of sense cut through Ruby’s mind. Don’t run in circles. Shake it off. Hide!

She ran up the stairs just as something shifted in the kitchen doorway. Fear shut her eyes. Sheer muscle memory got her up the steps in a musical melody of crude thumping footfalls. That was it! She opened her eyes, burst into her room, shut the door, dived into the bed, and –

Footstep, footstep, footstep, scraaaaape…

Down below.

No. Too easy to find.

Just as the thumping of the steps started, Ruby dived under the bed instead. Drew all limbs close, tucked them under her body, buried her muzzle in her hocks, and waited, eyes wide, staring at the door. She didn’t even dare to tremble. The fear was too cold, too frozen, too close, too sharp.

Thump… thump… thump… thump…

Sweat tickled her forehead. She had to blink a bead out of her eye.

Thump… thump… thump… thump…

Ruby was so desperate to hide, she slammed the lids down over her eyes and screwed up her face as if to push her soul further back, deep into her body.

Thump… thump… thump…

Footstep, footstep, footstep, scraaaaaape…

Desperate to hide, desperate to flee: Ruby’s eyes shot open, as if afraid the door had vanished while she’d been blind. If there was the slightest chance to escape, she couldn’t afford to miss it.

The door creaked open.

Three hooves shuffled in, as if their owner was sleepwalking. The fourth, though –

Ruby slammed her hoof into her mouth. The merest gasp would be death to her.

There was far too much leg, far too close to the ground, far too horizontal for a healthy limb. Either it was comically stretched, or some part of the anatomy was horribly torn and stringy.

She was so, so glad she couldn’t see any higher up.

All three hooves and the dragging leg shuffled in, turned away, followed the bed round, slowly, slowly opening the escape route. Still, Ruby didn’t move. As the zombie shuffled towards the edge of her vision, she turned her gaze to follow without shifting her head at all. A scrape of chin against hoof would be one scrape too many.

The zombie vanished from view. Soon, it’d be on the opposite side of the bed. The way was clear for a run.

Ruby wished she wasn’t so lazy, but her limbs refused to jump to attention. No, no point in running. Hide, wait, hope.

Footstep, footstep… a pause.

Nothing.

Was it confused? Zombies didn’t have any intelligence. Perhaps it had no idea where she was, had lost the scent, was trying to figure out how to follow something that had, as far as it could tell, randomly disappeared. Maybe it would leave her alone, search the rest of the house, let her relax, even let her fall asleep safely…

Too late, she remembered her tail.

Teeth yanked her hairs, stung her dock, burned the carpet against the floor as Ruby screamed backwards. The zombie had slowly bent down. It was now straightening up. Ruby thrashed and kicked and writhed and grabbed any part of the bedframe she could reach before sheer mechanical forced wrenched her away from it. Then the space felt open and bare. Blankets flapped in her face. Her screams were her heart being choked to death by the adrenalin flood. Ruby fought off the blankets, saw the ceiling and the white eyes, had her face invaded by far, far too many flat molars –

Sharpness crunched.

Ruby’s scream stopped when she smacked her head on the floor. Weights fell too heavily on her jaw and neck, her brain felt like a bowling ball, and then the rest of her body slipped and tumbled out of bed with a thump.

She was still screaming when faster footsteps hurried to her door and the wood was flung backwards. For a moment, hooves closed on in her through the sheets. In sheer misery, she kicked back.

“Ruby! Ruby!” Berry’s voice.

Strong forelimbs ripped the sheet off – Ruby cowered on the pile – and white eyes – NO!

No, Berry’s eyes crinkled overhead.

“Ruby,” she said softly. “It’s OK, it’s OK. It was just a dream.”

The terror didn’t believe her. Squealing, Ruby buried herself in Berry’s limbs and chest, screams dissolving into sobs of shame and dread. She was too scared to let go.

“Shhhhh.” Berry’s voice poured over her like warm water. “Calm down, that’s it, let it all out, there’s a good girl.”

Ruby stopped fighting her own ribcage, which convulsed and shook until she couldn’t cry anymore. She had her mother back. The stupid thought met no resistance and trickled through to her tight limbs, her puffing lungs, her iron-locked face. Everything dissolved and slowly drained away.

But Berry wasn’t her mother. The thought had given up. This was nothing but a big mistake.

“I’m s-sorry,” whined Ruby – her voice was muffled by the grown-up’s strong chest. “I’m sorry!”

“For what?” said Berry, amused.

Ruby had no idea; she simply stuck to what she knew, if only in her bones. “I’m sorry. I’m… I’m sorry… I’m sorr-sorry… I…”

Soothing and shushing, Berry patiently washed the sorries away. Now Ruby felt like an invalid child, one sitting helplessly in bathwater while the flexing adult limbs around her did all the rinsing and massaging and drying for her. She couldn’t get rid of the last of her fear, which kept her frightened legs clinging on.

“You’ve done nothing wrong,” said Berry. “Don’t be sorry, OK?”

“I’m s– OK! I’m OK! I’m OK.”

Through the wrapping blankets, Berry cocooned her in a tight hug.

And to her own shock, Ruby was revolted.

That was what scared her. She loved Berry. Right now, she loved anyone who pulled her out of the nightmare’s teeth. She loved Berry’s cheer. She loved Berry’s warm glow and world of sloshing, refreshing drinks.

But deep down, it was wrong.

Berry shouldn’t have been here. She should have been a long, long way away. Ruby didn’t live with her. They were breaking rules she couldn’t explain.

It was all a lie. It was like waking up to find complete strangers had stolen her family and were pretending all was normal. How dare she hug Ruby!? How dare she!?

Anger smacked away fear. Ruby pushed herself out of Berry’s grip and clambered back into bed. She never once made eye contact; instead, she glowered at the wall.

Berry took a long time to ask: “Anything I can do?”

“I’m trying! To sleep!”

The slightest of sighs. It could have been a ghoul trying to stay silent in ambush.

But it was Berry’s trembling voice that broke the curse. “OK. That’s fine. Fine. Goodnight, Ruby.”

The door scraped shut. Then it scraped open again.

“Remember, I’m in the next room if you ever need me, OK?”

“Goodnight,” snapped Ruby.

Slowly, almost painfully, the door scraped shut.

Berry was wrong. This house was wrong. Ruby curled up on the bed and stifled as many of her broken sobs as she could, no matter how wet the pillow got.

Ruby was wrong.

Ruby's Day

The morning crawled in.

Ruby barely remembered it. She’d opened her eyes but taken ages to fully wake up. She’d shuffled around from steps to kitchen and eaten something soggy from a cereal packet (she wasn’t going to cook every morning). Neither Berry nor Piña met her on her way out: she guessed the former was “having a lie-in” – which could mean anything in this household – and the latter had already hopped and skipped to school.

And then there was school itself.

The only blip hit her when Piña squealed and waved at her in the playground. Otherwise, the day blurred past. Ruby barely cared why she’d been sat in the tiny classroom or what she’d been listening to. Some part of her thought it was a complete waste of time.

Making it worse was that the few times she managed to focus on something intelligible, it slipped out of her grip. Like finding a bit of flotsam coming down the river of words – Cheerilee talked a lot in a soothing, gentle trickle – and trying to catch it with oiled gloves. It was as if she’d just rather lay down on the bank and watch the pretty nothingness sparkle by.

Once or twice, she caught herself drifting off to sleep.

Without in any way processing what she could see, Ruby kept her eyes open and aimed them in Cheerilee’s direction because, well, they were open and had to be looking at something. Besides, Cheerilee had a cheery manner of talking: nothing seemed to please her more than sharing the same room as such special students.

Ruby’s lips twitched, remembering a long-forgotten smile.

Then it hit her.

What if she told Cheerilee everything?

Not right away. There seemed to be too much everything. So much everything that even Ruby strained and couldn’t see all of it. Yet she could sense its grounded presence just as much as she could sense the planet she walked on.

Still, she could tell her something. Maybe the nightmares –

Nooooooooooo! No! No. No way.

Tell Cheerilee that? She’d give her teacher nightmares in turn. What kind of horrible filly would even think of such a thing?

Deep under the layers of dullness, a flicker of guilt curled up in Ruby’s chest. No, nothing could get out. She hated it, but she couldn’t expose something that horrible to someone else. She’d never do that to anyone. Besides, then she’d have to tell Cheerilee all the everything, and suddenly that was about as welcome as trying to explain matrix mathematics when she hadn’t even figured out how to draw a table yet.

She couldn’t do it.

Which – she told herself – was just as well, because if she told, she’d lose.

What she’d lose, she had no idea. It wasn’t as if this was a game. But deep in her childish heart, she knew the moment she talked, she lost.

So she kept quiet, and she held tight to the squirming thing in her chest, and she waited for the world to turn into recess. She could handle recess.

In the playground, she was delighted to find Dinky’s “Save the Monsters” campaign had gone awry. Things got more interesting when things went awry.

For one thing, Dinky patiently tried to explain to Piña the political significance of her own placard. Ruby listened in, grinning.

“…and that’s why it’s not ‘just a pretty picture’,” finished Dinky.

“Oh, that’s OK, then,” said Piña happily. “I broughted all my own.”

And she bent down and held up – drooling slightly – a wad of papers. Ruby couldn’t see all of them, but the topmost one had a badly chalked blob of black with points on top.

“What is it?” Ruby turned her head upside-down in case it made sense that way.

“Id a mosssstur!” Piña opened her mouth to let the paper fall onto the grass. “I drewded a werewolf vampire. It’s called a wumpire.”

“Aw!” Apple Bloom hit herself. “Why didn’t Ah think of that? Ah could’ve made up a cannibal apple or somethin’!”

Dinky hummed impatiently. “It’s not an arts and crafts project! It’s a serious campaign! What?”

This last one was aimed at the passing colt, who grinned and threw two bits at her hooves.

“It’s not a charity either!” Dinky shouted after him.

“So where’s the money for your campaigns gonna come from?” asked Ruby, enjoying herself immensely. “Is it gonna fall out of the sky?”

Scowling, Dinky pretended not to hear her. “Listen! We have the chance to save hundreds and hundreds of monospecies –”

“Mono-what?”

“Monospecies.” Dinky had the smart look of someone who had yet to learn her smartest move was not to show off her smartness. “Species with only one member. There’s a lot of them all over Equestria, and it’d only take one accident to make them totally extinct. Can you imagine how bad it would be if they were to disappear?”

“Like what?”

“Like the flesh-eating, three-headed chimera? The sanity-destroying soul shark? The whirring-bladed knife hedge? The boredom-breeding accountant fish?”

Ruby’s face froze in staged shock. “Gosh, I can see why you want to keep those things alive.”

“It’s not about how nice they are! It’s all about the holistic harmony of the dynamic equilibrium of the intraspecific ecosystem!”

“OK, you’re doing that on purpose.” Around Ruby, a lot of foals scratched their heads.

“Well… well, so are you?”

“Miss Dinky?” said Piña, tapping her on the shoulder. She held something up. “I broughted my kelpie costume.”

Piña’s non-sequitur dropped into the conversation like a cannonball on a catering table. There passed a few seconds whilst foals mentally picked up the pieces and checked if they were still edible.

“Why?” said Ruby cautiously.

“Because of all the monsters thing.” Piña looked worried. “This is a monsters thing, isn’t it, like Nightmare Night?”

“Noooo!” yelled Dinky. For all her friendly loyalty, Ruby had to turn and giggle behind her back.

“But I can wear the costume, right?” insisted Piña.

Ruby couldn’t help herself. “Go ahead. Maybe it’ll be extra advertising for Save-The-Accountant-Fish Day. Or we could call it the ‘Keep a Kelpie Kampaign’. Ooh, ooh, let’s say we’ve got it… loched up.”

Silently, Dinky gave her a withering laugh and then sighed and hung her head.

Not unkindly, Apple Bloom patted her on the shoulder; it would have looked convincing if she didn’t titter first. “Nice idea, though. Could be worth bringin’ up on Nightmare Night.”

Dinky raised her head.

“Yeah, sounds like a really fun game,” Apple Bloom explained.

Dinky lowered her head again.

Whilst they let her regrow her snapped-off ego, Apple Bloom turned to Piña. “Say, is your sis still on for that party tonight?”

Instantly, Ruby boiled. Why are you talking to her? I’m the sane one!

Before Piña had opened her mouth, Ruby said loudly, “Yeah, no biggie. Berry wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

Surprised, Apple Bloom turned to her. But then, Ruby realized, it was obvious why she’d gone to Piña first. Foals had always asked Piña about Berry’s parties, seeing as she was the insider. Ruby simply hadn’t been in that position for long.

“And that includes… drinks?” Apple Bloom whispered.

A shiver of pleasure ran round the circle. At a certain age, to receive Berry Punch’s delectable drinks was to be blessed with manna from the heavens. She could do things with humble fruits and sloshing liquids that a winemaker couldn’t do with the Legendary White Grapes of Ichor. And those grapes could brainwash dark lords: legend had it that King Deathbringer the Bad-Tempered had cleaned up his act, handed out tax breaks, set up a welfare state, and gone round personally to apologize to all the peasants who still had their ears, if he could just have another sip of that good ol’ Achin’ Ichor.

Not that Apple Bloom’s question wasn’t dumb. Berry loved kids. She was the sort to squeal at the sight of babies. A flock of eager students, and the mare herself would be their shepherd.

She’s practically a kid herself, thought Ruby.

“Yes,” she said, “that includes drinks.” But she wasn’t too bitter about that, simply because it meant she’d get a drink as well.

“My sis is gweat!” squeaked Piña, who’d figured out something nice was happening.

That appeared to be the opinion of the excited whispers jumping from mouth to mouth. The hopscotch of gossip became much livelier at the prospect of festive fun.

Still…

Ruby’s smile faded.

“I remember when we did this last year,” she said, shrugging shyly.

Next to her, Dinky appeared to have returned to the land of the non-disgraced. She patted Ruby on the shoulder.

“That was a great party,” she agreed.

“It was my first time,” said Ruby.

Dinky kept patting her on the shoulder. Ruby wished she didn’t.

“Weren’t the drinks amazing?” said Dinky.

“Oh… yeah… the drinks…”

Slopping onto the grass, Apple Bloom licked her lips. “Fizzy apple and cranberry juice and ginger drink and lemon and orange and all kinds of berries and mint! Mint! And all topped with coconut sprinkles.”

No longer patting shoulders, Dinky raised her eyebrows, impressed. “You remembered the recipe?”

“Sure! Ah wanted to see if Applejack could make it. Which she nearly did.” Sisterly loyalty glowered briefly. “Anyway, Ah didn’t think it could work, but wow was Ah wrong.”

“I know. Berry Punch is a mixological genius.”

“Darn tootin’!”

So what am I? thought Ruby angrily. Chopped onion? “Well, I can’t wait to see you all at the party.”

“Wouldn’t miss it for anythin’!” Apple Bloom grinned. “Got some games on too?”

Ruby felt like they were throwing fruit at her face. She didn’t dare move in case the trickling juice of humiliation somehow got worse. The worst part was that she didn’t think they’d even noticed. This was just another round of playground talk.

Behind the calm mask, she drew away from them like a brain shrinking in a skull subject to the desert heat. Desperate, thirsty, losing something that boiled away bit by bit.

“We’re looking forward to it,” she snapped, then looked at Piña sidelong. “Aren’t we?”

“MMMMMMmmmmmm yyyyyyeeeeaaaahhhhh.” Piña half-spoke, half-hummed, the words sweets in her mouth. “And we get games too.”

“Oh.” Ruby looked away, glumly. “Yeah. Great.”

Ruby shut up after that. Even as the others went back to arguing over monster sympathy, she didn’t want to play along now. If she spoke any more, her insides would just shrivel up faster and harsher. Best conserve what little sickly water she had left.

After school, the parents came.

Actually, very few did that. Ponyville was a town you could spit across, everyone knew everyone, and on top of that there was little risk of anything digestive happening to a pony so long as they stayed away from the Everfree Forest. As a result, they thought nothing of letting foals run around and come home.

But some ponies couldn’t be helped. In Dinky’s case, she preferred to have someone to lecture at about her latest lessons, and in any case, Dinky preferred the company of others to the company of her own. Ruby wondered whether the girl would shut down completely if left in a room by herself for five minutes, like a daisy starved of sunlight.

For her money, Ruby liked the silence. It meant the only voice she had to put up with was also the only one she could switch off at will. It was what she imagined being free was like.

She didn’t even have to walk Piña home: Piña loved Cheerilee, but as soon as the last bell rang, she loved Berry again and immediately ran home to check she was still there.

Derpy was waiting at the school gate. Nothing unusual: Dinky ran up to her and they instantly nuzzled noses. Ruby had to look away, eyes tightening.

Then, as usual, Dinky began an excited rush of verbiage, which earned her a graceful smile that probably didn’t understand a word of it. After all, Derpy wasn’t one of nature’s gifted intellects.

What was unusual was Derpy showing Ruby special interest as she drew closer. Ruby wasn’t even making a beeline for her; she just wanted the gate, and the wonky-eyed pegasus mare happened to be along the route. Not even Piña had managed to overtake her yet.

“You weren’t planning on walking home on your own, were you?” Derpy asked.

Surprised, Ruby stopped dead. Apart from… four ponies, the adults around her usually didn’t pay Ruby more than a polite hello. Yet Derpy spoke as though frightened that Ruby had to do any such thing. It was… It did something to Ruby’s world, softened the edges a bit, though she didn’t want to think why.

“Er…” said Ruby.

“Should someone accompany you?”

“I am accompanied. Piña’s accompanying me, aren’t you, Piña?”

“I am?” said Piña, showing her usual quick wit.

Derpy still looked worried, but Ruby wished she didn’t. It made her think there was something to worry about.

Then Derpy cleared her throat and straightened up. “Oh. OK. Only Berry asked me to come fetch you for her.”

“She did?” said Piña, keeping up her standard.

But the words sank through Ruby like a hot stone through a soufflé. Suddenly, a tranquil journey along hedgerows and country lanes vanished. Something else loomed in the distance, with building wings and unforgiving windows for eyes.

She was very, very careful not to let her face change. Her wide eyes beat her to it.

“I’m sorry, Ruby, Piña,” said Derpy, one eye wandering north in her nervousness. “It’s a medical day again. She asked me when I dropped off the mail if I could help again.”

Still slow on the uptake, Piña cocked her head like the last spaniel in the shop. “Is something wrong?”

“No, no,” said Derpy, almost laughing with relief. “Berry’s fine. She just went a funny way round.”

Dinky, who was not slow on the uptake, put a comforting hoof on Ruby.

Ruby inched away from it.

Her heart began to beat faster.

“Come on,” said Derpy gently, shepherding them along under her nudging wings. Ruby’s legs went to walk on automatic; she’d followed this routine before.

They were heading for the hospital.

It was a hulking, despotic building, too arrogant to stand anywhere but on a hill overlooking the town where it could wait for prey to come willingly. They always did, sooner or later. Ruby felt the heat of its glare as the white horrors inside were poised for the first cough, the sudden collapse, the creeping dinner call of a hundred cries of pain.

White as bone, red as blood.

Ruby didn’t trust the heart symbols over the entrance. Hearts, she knew, were supposed to stay inside pony ribcages.

Despite herself, she drew closer to Derpy, refusing to touch her coat but too certain she shouldn’t stray from the shade of her feathers to go anywhere else. Piña skipped ahead, oblivious and stupid: Ruby wondered if she ever thought about what went on around her, or if it was just a blur of one dratted thing after another.

In a way, Ruby wished she could be the same.

She hated the hospital. It was a beast that could strike at any moment. Ponies went in, but some ponies didn’t come out.

Ruby’s throat shrivelled. She hastily wiped her eyes.

Like a mocking ghost, the building possessed her mind with its corridors full of uncaring masked ponies, its smell of fizzy disinfectant as harsh as having a soft drink forced up her nostrils, its cold bleakness indifferent to her shivering as long words and unfriendly machines did things to ponies in beds…

Her world had died here.

The last thing she’d remembered of her old life had been coming in to see her mother. Or what she’d been told was her mother, lying on the bed and looking too thin and messy to be her real mother. Groaning helplessly, groaning in pain.

Her mother had tried to smile. It had done horrible things to the skin on her cheekbones. Ruby had one last sight remaining of her mother, and it was that dreadful smile.

Whenever she thought of that smile, she heard one of the machines go beep… beep… beep…

Something else she heard: something her mother had said, probably trying to make her feel better. She’d said something about “the kiss of destiny”. Like she was happy to be like this.

And Ruby instantly knew that this wasn’t her mother anymore.

The doctors were quiet, gentle liars. The machines didn’t care what she felt: she was on her own. Deep down, she knew she must be on her own, because everyone in her life kept pretending she hadn’t seen what she’d seen, and she never wanted to talk about it in case it all came out of the depths of her mind and grabbed her and savaged her and slapped her and spat in her face and squeezed –

Mere yards from the front entrance, Ruby dug in her hooves and refused to move.

So suddenly, in fact, that Derpy immediately walked into her.

A comforting wing sheltered her shoulders. “Ruby?” whispered Derpy gently. “It’s OK. You don’t have to go in if you don’t want to. Do you want to?”

Ruby shook her head. She kept her gaze firmly on the entrance in case it snuck up on her.

Next to her, Derpy sat down on the ground. “Then we’ll all wait here. She’ll come out soon. She’ll come out.”

Ruby was too scared even to hug her.

She’ll come out, she’ll come out, she’ll come out, she’ll come out… Two tears threatened not to believe her. Ruby didn’t dare blink, in case they made good on their threat. Eventually, her eyes ached.

Although she did notice Derpy shuffling awkwardly. “I wouldn’t mind going in to check on her, just to be sure she’s coming out soon. She did tell me the time.”

They both watched as Piña – more through ignorance than bravery – shuffled right up to the glass doors and put her hooves over her eyes, the better to peer in. Unusually, Dinky had fallen silent, sensing perhaps that this was a bad time to try teaching her mother about endangered monospecies.

Excited babbling slowly crept up behind them. Together, Derpy and Ruby twisted round to see, and a small crowd of foals came over the hill.

“Oh,” said Dinky, mildly curious, “they must be here for the party.”

Ruby suddenly hated every single one of them.

Something sympathetic – though less hateful – stirred Derpy to shoo the crowd away with her very versatile wings. “What are you doing? You should all be going home.”

“We came to see Berry Punch,” said Apple Bloom, who at least had the decency to bruise red with embarrassment. “And since y’all were headin’ to her, we thought we’d come direct, see?”

“This is about drinks, isn’t it?” said Dinky drily.

Apple Bloom shrugged in hopeless confession.

To Ruby’s nasty delight, Derpy tried waving them off again. “I don’t think that’s a very good idea right now. Why don’t you go back to Ponyville, and –?”

“All by ourselves?” said a colt near the back.

“Oh, I’ll take you back, if you like –”

“Mooooom,” hissed Dinky, who had a little more brain than her mother at times, “then you’d leave us unattended!”

Derpy froze, paralyzed by too much conundrum. It wasn’t that she didn’t know about Ponyville’s tendency to let foals wander free-range, but she didn’t naturally like the idea. There was her constant urge to be the hen over her chicks. Besides, pegasi were used to it. Their children couldn’t necessarily fly, and the cloud city of Cloudsdale was a bad place to let inexperienced flyers wander off on their own.

Only the watching eyes of her classmates kept Ruby rooted to the spot. To reach forward and grab Derpy’s leg now would be fatal…

“Coo-ee!” cried Berry’s voice.

Saved by the bell. Or by Berry, that is. Ruby spun round at once like a weed being twisted out of the ground.

For a moment, she saw the horrible smile as the glass door slammed shut – but no, that was a trick of the light, because Berry’s smile was full-cheeked and much more generous, as if she’d swallowed a watermelon rind sideways. Around her striding hooves, Piña ran around like a dog barking.

“All sorted out!” Berry called out, ruffling Ruby’s mane; Ruby hated the weight and recoiled. “So! Who’s ready to party!?”

Ruby ignored the cheers and thumping hooves of her classmates. “What’s sorted out?”

She swore both Berry and Derpy glanced at each other, pupils darting faster than briefly-scared flies.

“Berry was just visiting her mother,” said Derpy without a second thought.

Berry’s skewed jaws and teeth hit an off note. “Ix-nay on the other-may!” hissed the corner of her mouth.

“I mean a mother. Someone’s mother. Yes, she’s going to become a mother. Erm…” Derpy looked lost out at sea.

Happily, Berry smacked her hooves together for attention. “Never mind that! I said WHO’S READY TO PARTYYYYYYYYYYY!?”

More cheers, more thumps of hooves, and then the small crowd waddled downhill without a second thought.

Ruby knew two things: one, Berry’s mother never went to hospital. She hadn’t even left her home in the sky, and not because she had been a pegasus. Berry’s mother didn’t leave home at all, except for shopping. Ruby kept forgetting what she looked like: all she remembered was the older mare’s gloomy weariness, as if merely existing had been a struggle.

And two, Derpy was terrible at making up stories.

Over Ruby’s leaden thoughts, she heard Berry yell, “PARTY TIME!”

Ruby's Evening

Once the sun had gone, the curtains been closed, and the lights turned on, Berry’s living room became a safe fireplace. Bright, crackling with energy, and so massively distracting that no one noticed the dead ashes left at the bottom.

Ruby had nothing to burn. The whole party blurred and muffled around her as though she were the only bubble of air underwater, herself alive and empty, but surrounded by choking weight.

She was in her own home. She felt trapped.

“Game time!” bellowed Berry.

All the other foals – Piña loudest of all – shrieked, overjoyed. Drinks sloshed and occasionally spilled, to a chorus of laughs and groans from those nearest. Little bits of snack cheese and mushroom sausage lay savaged on cheap paper plates: somehow, the same Berry who counted cents when buying for dinner always had little snack foods tucked away in a cupboard somewhere. Some music pummelled the ceiling, walls, and floor: Ruby only knew it as a pop tune of some kind.

“OK!” shouted Berry over the music and the muttering. “Who knows GhoulSmashed!?”

Dinky opened her mouth and raised a hoof –

“I do!” shrieked Piña.

Surprised chatter buzzed like disturbed bees. Piña could barely be trusted to know what day it was.

“Yes?” said Berry encouragingly.

Her sister puffed up with importance; she had, after all, just been addressed by her “Best Big Sister Ever!” “That’s the one where you have to work in a team and take out all the monsters across Equestria before they eat it all up!”

Apple Bloom drained a cup in one go. “You, uh, sure you’re OK with that, Dinky?”

Laughter, giggles, chortles, and grunting attempts to not make a noise surrounded Dinky’s offended pout. Buried under the silence, part of Ruby clenched indignantly: so Apple Bloom was playing the snarky sidekick now, was she? My role!?

Meanwhile, Berry laughed and ruffled Dinky’s mane till she moaned and swatted her off. “Aw, don’t feel bad, Dinker the Thinker. Maybe you’ll get lucky next time?”

“I don’t get lucky,” corrected Dinky sharply, but not too sharply: just enough for Berry to notice the pinprick in her voice. “Anyway, it’s just a game. I call red leader.”

“I WANNA BE RED LEADER!” wailed Piña.

Everyone laughed; there was the Piña they all knew and loved. Well, “knew” anyway.

“Dinky, you don’t mind, do you?” said Berry. “You can be the blue backup.”

“Ah call dibs on the green ’ggressor!”

“All right, Apple Bloom’s the green aggressor, so that leaves the white exorcist, the black sorcerer, the purple king, the gold treasurer… Gosh, when did games get so complicated, eh? Ruby, you wanna play?”

Indeed, it seemed to be taking Dinky a long time to set up the board. Ruby ambled over as slowly as she liked, and the “Thinker” was still shuffling cards, organizing random-looking pieces, and unfurling the rules. The whole thing resembled a religious ceremony, especially the way Dinky’s precocious magic handled the sacred relics of bitten wooden pawns and a manual with its pages sliding out.

“While we’re waiting,” announced Berry over the three-dimensional dance, “how about a spooky story? ’Tis the season!”

Ruby backed off. The hospital faded into her mind where she knew it had been lurking the last few hours out of sight. Like someone firmly holding her nape.

To her horror, the lights began to dim. Dinky’s magic stood out against the darkness, and lit from below, Berry’s face became distended worms of pale death.

“This one,” she intoned, and soon the babble around her began to die down; even the music fell silent, “is the Terrifying Tale of the Deeeeeaaaaaad Rrrrriiiiiiiising frooooooom the Grrrrrrraaaaaaave!”

Only Ruby shuddered. The other foals didn’t look suitably impressed by this old theme, but it bit deep into her softened shell of numbness like a spoon into jelly.

“MwahahahahaHAAAAAAAAAA!”

Deep, rumbling, laced with poisonous malice. Her dad’s voice.

“MwahahahahaHAAAAAAAAAA!”

Her dad’s favourite tone. Her dad’s favourite stories. Her dad’s favourite kind of fun…

“MMMWWWAAAHHH-HAHAHAHA-HAAAAAAAAA!”

Her dad –

The lights burst back on.

Dinky blew a raspberry. “Oh, Berry, Berry, Berry,” she chided. “You call that an evil laugh?”

“Nothing wrong with that evil laugh,” said Berry, mock-affronted and forelimbs folded. “That evil laugh has run in my family for generations. My uncle taught me the technique once.”

“Well, I don’t know what he was telling you, but that wouldn’t scare a baby.”

“Oho, and you know all about evil laughter, do you? Which side of the family do you get it from, then?”

Dinky’s little chuckle stirred hairs on the back of Ruby’s neck. Which was ridiculous: she knew Dinky, and the laugh had barely been a nuisance, never mind a creepy tickle on her skin. But she felt something was going wrong in her head.

“I taught myself,” said Dinky simply.

“You definitely didn’t learn that from Derpy, I’ll bet.”

Dinky blushed. “Mom has… nicer talents.”

“And you can put yours to better use, Dinker the Thinker: put the music back on, if you don’t mind.”

A while later, Ruby sat on her own again, keeping away from the outbreak of festivities. She didn’t want to infect anyone, either. Her mind felt sick, in a way that had nothing to do with germs and bodies.

Even as Apple Bloom wandered past with the punch bowl – and stopped to take surreptitious sips from it – Ruby heard the first droning notes of Berry gearing up for a song.

“Ooooooooooooooooooohhhhhhhhhh!”

Ruby winced. This was going to be the Grape Juice Song, because in this mood Berry wasn’t allowed to sing the one about hedgehogs.

“You pick ’em when they’re bulging,

You pick ’em when they’re ripe,

You… Dang it, I mucked up the lyric. Again!”

The record scratched, and then the tune started up again. Piña skipped past humming a song in her own little world.

Ruby ignored the laughter, but she couldn’t help noticing the punch bowl getting lower and lower. Not helped by Apple Bloom’s frequent visits. What Ruby wanted, more than anything else, was something real to do. She watched the lowering redness like a hawk.

On the other side of the room, among the whirling little foals, Berry had geared up for another attempt. It was a fun song to sing, so clearly not for grown-ups.

“You pick ’em when they’re bulging,

You pick ’em when they’re firm,

You pick ’em when they’re full of juice,

But never when they squirm!”

“Sis!” shrieked Piña over the singing and laughing foals. “The punchy’s gone all up!”

“Good call!”

To Ruby’s surprise, Berry was suddenly there overlooking her.

In an undertone, Berry asked: “You wouldn’t mind fetching the spare bowl from the kitchen, would you? Apple Bloom’s going to bankrupt me!”

Ruby hummed and hoisted herself to her hooves, her gait wobbly.

Something flickered in Berry’s grin. “Everything all right?”

“Fine,” croaked Ruby dully.

“Oh. OK. If you say so.”

As Ruby weaved among the bouncing colts and twirling fillies to the narrow hallway, she dimly heard Berry picking up her place again.

“You squeeze ’em nice and gentle,

You squeeze ’em really tight,

You squeeze ’em till they’re gushing goo,

But never when they fight!”

The hallway. No one else was in the hallway.

Ruby stopped.

Up ahead, the kitchen door was slightly open, almost perfectly like it had been in another house, in another life…

“You pour ’em thick and fruity,

You pour ’em like a flirt,

You pour ’em so they giggle hard,

But never when they hurt!”

The parties back in her old home – her real home – had never been this cheap, but they’d never been this lively either. Her dad had always liked inviting other ponies over. To tell them spooky stories, to sing and dance, to simply enjoy having lots of good folk around. And sometimes he’d disappear into the kitchen, and sometimes her mom – before the hospital – had sent Ruby in to bring him back, because he really liked his drinks.

Ruby used to like going down the hall to fetch him. Her dad would pretend to hide a bottle behind his back, but Ruby wasn’t Piña. Just because she loved him, didn’t mean she’d take his talking-to-children lies at face value.

“You drink ’em deep and throaty…”

And then there’d been the arguments, late at night. She’d heard them through the bedroom wall.

“You drink ’em to a joke…”

And then her mother had started looking ill. And then her dad had started looking ill, and spent more time in the kitchen, and Ruby had to walk the hall more often and get fewer smiles for doing so. She’d sensed something deeply ill about the both of them, but she’d been too confused and nervous to ask.

“You drink ’em till you’re smiling sick…”

And then one day she’d gone to fetch her dad from the kitchen, and just as she’d entered the hall there’d been a groan and a clink of bottles and she couldn’t hear anything and she went in as if it was a normal day and she looked inside and slumped over the sink she saw –

“But never when they choke!”

Something met Ruby’s back.

Ruby spun round expecting flesh and white eyes… and saw Berry lowering her hoof. The look on her face was a smile sagging at the corners, a cake left in the harsh heat too long.

“You look tired,” she said, her whisper a kindness to Ruby’s ears. “I’ll get the bowl. You just enjoy yourself, OK?”

Ruby said nothing. Even admitting she didn’t want to party was beyond her tongue, her lips, her throat, her lungs, everything. It just seemed too much.

The doorbell rang.

“Already!?” Berry clapped two hooves to her cheeks. “Wow, some parents don’t like their kids having too much fun, do they?”

A few fleeing words found refuge in Ruby’s mouth. “I wanna go to bed.”

The pain on Berry’s face… hid about as well as Ruby’s dad with a half-empty bottle. The smile was remarkably alike, too. Then again, some things jumped generations in diagonals.

“I’m sorry.” Ruby was as surprised as Berry looked, to hear herself utter those words.

Tenderly, Berry tilted Ruby’s head up by the chin. “Aw, don’t be sorry. You wanna hit the hay, don’t let me stop you.” Berry winked. “I promise I’ll sing real quiet, how’s that?”

Not so much as a fake smile passed Ruby’s lips. Somewhere, she knew that was meant to be some kind of a joke. Right now, jokes made as much sense to her as one of Dinky’s hare-brained lectures.

Unspoken were the words: You’ll miss out.

Ruby accepted the gentle kiss on her forehead – off to the left side so Berry didn’t accidentally poke herself in the eye with Ruby’s unicorn horn.

“Goodnight, Ruby.”

Ruby went straight up. Goodnights didn’t matter.

As soon as she was in her room, she slammed the door, threw herself into the bed, and tried to stay awake all night. Eventually, the muffled thump of pop music died down, the front door opened and closed several times, voices became just Berry and Piña talking in an excited hush – Piña after Berry shushed her and told her not to shout so loud – and thumps came up the stairs to bed.

Little hooves rapped on Ruby’s door. “Goodnight, Ruby!” hissed Piña’s idea of a whisper.

A pause.

“Sis, Ruby’s not saying ‘goodnight’…”

“Beggary. I’m sure she’s just tired, Piña. Let’s give her some space.”

“And then play again tomorrow?”

“Pfft, what’s life without a little play, eh?”

Two lips plucked soppy kisses off each other, then two doors closed.

In the darkness, Ruby didn’t dare move. The slightest rustle would give her away.

But the house was dead. Normally, she’d be asleep by now. Sheer nothing. Sheer silence. Sheer stillness. Yes, the echoes of the party reminded her of what it had been once, but it was as if a light had abruptly gone out. It should’ve been the same house, except it wasn’t, not behind the door. It wasn’t a home. It was merely a thing, like a body slumped over a sink.

And it was all around her.

She was too scared to move.

Sleep offered the only way out. Sleep, beckoning with a grin on its face, knowing it would always get inside her skin. Like an infection.

The Worst Nightmare

Beep… beep…

Ruby knew them at once. Dishes. Sink. Little window. The spice rack. Sideboard with cups and paper plates from the party. The kitchen. The place she realized she shouldn’t be.

Faintly through the ceiling, she heard the muffled sound. Beep… beep…

This time, it all made sense.

Her insides were like tar, sticking to her skin from beneath, thick and impenetrable and pure, pure black. Yet somehow, it didn’t matter. Somehow, she found she didn’t care. The pain promised not to hurt so much now, if she did the right things. It was… peaceful.

Part of her waited for the thump of the zombie. It didn’t come.

She felt very strongly she should leave this kitchen – maybe the zombie was on its way. Out through the door promising anything, which delivered nothing more mundane than the same narrow hall, the same front door, the same set of stairs. She wandered through or past them in a daze. The living room was empty too.

At the top of the stairs, there were the usual four doors. The bathroom, no. Piña’s room, no. Her own room, maybe, but she didn’t think of it anymore as “her” room. She wasn’t sure she ever had.

That left the fourth door. Berry’s room.

But that was the trick, wasn’t it? None of these were really bits of her home, not even outside the world of dreams. They looked familiar, they had the same face, but it was like seeing that face hollowed out into an empty mask. Once its own living, breathing thing. Now part of a soulless mass.

Beep… beep…

Her ears tickled. The sound was much stronger up here. Without fully understanding why, but dreading what she might find, she entered the only room in the house she’d never been allowed in.

Yet beyond the door, there was no bedroom. Berry was nowhere in sight.

Despite the frantic calls from the depths of her spine, Ruby took it all in with a serene eye.

White walls, bleached as washed bones. Open space, both breathable and choking with disinfectant. Curtains and beds placed higgledy-piggledy, as if the dream was having trouble coming to grips with the cruel bindings of orderliness. The hospital ward.

Beep… beep…

Ruby wandered along, but slowly, more filled with a softening awe than with any sharp terror. She couldn’t see the machine making the noise. She could imagine it, staring coldly back with its dead, red eyes as though fuelled by lifeless blood.

Beep… beep…

Soon, she was past the centre of the room. She could see the doorway to the corridor outside, and for a moment the murmurings and hoofsteps of busy doctors suggested themselves to her ears.

She looked to her left, and then the terror seized her at last. She stopped in shock. She couldn’t breathe.

There were two beds side by side. There was something large atop each bed – pony-sized, but one slightly smaller than the other. There was a white sheet completely covering each shape.

Beep… beep…

Ruby wanted too much. She wanted to fling the sheets aside and see for herself. She wanted to run. She wanted to unsee everything. She didn’t want to be here. She wanted someone to find her, tell her it was a prank. She wanted to scream and rage and throw herself away. She wanted so much that she stood there and took it, unable to get anything at all.

Pain crystallized in her eyes. Evil gripped her throat. She fought back, wishing the cold didn’t sting her cheeks.

Beep… beep…

The machine didn’t care. The machine just watched. She could smash it, but the beeping would never leave her alone.

Beep… beep…

Something groaned behind her.

All the tension melted away. Her throat was clear. Her eyes lost their lustre. Ruby turned around.

The zombie was there.

Standing quite still in the middle of the room. Swaying gently in the listless breeze only its mind could sense. Three of its legs were normal, the fourth hung much lower than healthy sinew and flesh should allow. All in all, it only looked terrifying in chunks: pink shiny flesh here, a rib exposed there, mane full of holes where it had shed clumps, and a drool that trickled to the floor like an invalid with no self-control.

Its face gazed obsessively at the tiles near its hooves. Its groans were helpless. Its pain seemed weak.

Beep… beep…

Ruby wanted something, all right. She wanted to crawl out of her own skin.

Yet the odd, cold peace trickled in again, like a white virus. Every cell in her body gave up one by one to its wonderful horror. Behind her fear, she felt it all made sense now. It all made so much sense. She didn’t deserve to flee.

Against every last instinct screaming at her to recoil in disgust, Ruby walked up to the zombie. It didn’t seem to notice, or care, or even be aware of anything but a small patch of floor. With revulsion panicking at the back of her mind, Ruby reached forward and tilted its head up.

Berry’s face gazed back through pure white eyes.

Beep… beep…

Berry’s mouth hung open stupidly. Ruby could see its teeth.

Wincing every inch of the way, tears burning her face, hating herself for everything, Ruby offered up her own small neck.

Beep… beep…

At first, the zombified Berry didn’t move. In some way, it seemed either surprised or uncertain. Then dead instinct took over. It stirred. The teeth grew, spread out, surged forwards.

Beep…

Sharpness.

Beep…

A crunch.

Beep…

Then, there was no more pain for Ruby.

Beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep.

And Ruby screamed out of her own head, fell off the bed, hit the floor, kicked off the grasping blankets, blindly smacked into the wall, yelped, burst through the bedroom door in the dark, hurried downstairs to the moonlit glow of the front door’s lone window, ignored the thumps upstairs, rammed into the door, rammed it again, rammed into it kicking and screaming, screamed to a screech over the noises of someone stirring, remembered, rushed into the kitchen, flicked on the lights, dived for the drawer, tore it open, grabbed a key, cannoned into the door, fumbled with the lock, wailed, fumbled harder, unlocked it, smashed into it, threw it open, and felt freedom cool her face before galloping for her life into the night.

Sobs wouldn’t leave her alone. The air bit into her skin, her fear drew away like a mouse from an ice block, and she crunched over the grass not caring which street she took, flinging herself round corners in a desperate attempt to shake off anything coming for her. Her mind was thrown into a maelstrom, grasping at anything that made sense, but all she knew was that she couldn’t stay in that house another minute. She was amazed she’d lasted this long.

Down a few more streets in the dead stillness of Ponyville past its bedtime, she started to think she needed a plan. Her lungs were urgently trying to kill her. Painfully, but welcoming the relief, she slowed to a stumbling stop and took several greedy breaths, desperate to feed her weak brain until it could fight back against the fear.

Ruby came to a halt. She recognized the bakery nearby. Soon, she realized where she had ended up.

Finally, Ruby’s sobbing deflated. Tears oozed. Chest pains settled down.

Ruby felt the terror fading away.

She couldn’t go back.

She knew.

What she knew, she wasn’t sure. Out here, under the sleeping twinkle of faraway stars, her own memories felt a long way away, as if she’d dropped them along with the key to the front door. The buildings didn’t move, and didn’t glow, and didn’t seem to breathe at all through any pony bodies. For the first time in her life, she was alone and free.

Around her, the air chilled her in its attempts to cut deeper to her bones. Freedom came with a price.

Nor did she want to stay alone. Once her breathing came back, she wanted hooves, the reassuring weight of a loving body, someone to squeeze it all away. Someone who had something she wanted.

Dinky.

Derpy.

It didn’t matter what Ruby did next. She was free. She just did it, mindlessly.

Ruby's Night

Hammering at the door, then a pause, listening. Then hammering again until footsteps blundered up.

The door swung back. Derpy’s head peered out, wings ruffled. She looked down at the doorstep, then gave a small start.

“Ruby?” she said, weakly. “What are you doing outside in the middle of the night?”

Whereupon Ruby cracked. Even against all experience, she hadn’t dared expect Derpy to be anything but furious. Ruby had been too terrified of her life.

She dissolved gasping, weeping, and collapsing into Derpy’s shocked legs and chest. Two years’ worth of silence gushed through the breach.

“Ruby!” Derpy’s free leg clutched her close, and Ruby shuddered against the firm grip. “What’s wrong?”

The words took ages to come. Ruby didn’t know what to do. All she knew was that she’d need to build a new life all over again, and she didn’t know where else to go.

Forcefully, Ruby spoke over her own whining, voice broken and wailing. “I don’t want to go back! Please let me stay here! Please, please, please, please, please!”

“Did something happen, Ruby?”

“I don’t want to –” Ruby started to hiccup between the sobs “– live there anymore! I wanna – go home! I can’t – stay there an– another minute!”

Gently, Derpy shushed her, wrapping her in wings softer than eiderdown but stronger than steel. Ruby clung onto the pegasus like grim death. She barely registered the yawn upstairs or the familiar voice of Dinky mumbling, “What’s going on, Mom?”

“Dinky, you should be asleep, shouldn’t you?” said Derpy.

“Wait. Why’s Ruby here?”

“She’s just a little upset, that’s all. Don’t fuss over her, Dinky. Give her some space.”

Someone shut the door. Ruby sensed movement around her, and then she was on a sofa in the next room, still protected by the feathery bubble that Derpy made around her. Something would go wrong, she knew it, but it wasn’t happening right this second and she snuggled deeper while she still could.

The bubble resonated under Derpy’s cuddly tones. “Do you want anything? Maybe we can help.”

Ruby shook her head, burying herself deeper, hiding as much as possible. Merely knowing Dinky was there made it burn a hundred times worse.

If there was one thing Derpy was good at, it was patience. Ruby took a while just to steady her own breathing.

“That’s a good girl.” Derpy soothed her with a reassuring squeeze.

“I’m sorry,” said Ruby.

“Don’t be sorry. Although I am a little confused…”

Ruby curled up; she’d never been so comfortable before. “Can I stay here, please?”

“Aw, why do you want to stay here? Won’t Berry and Piña be worrying about you?”

“I don’t want to go back!” Fear spiked in her chest.

“Now, now, no one’s going to make you do anything you don’t want to, OK? But what happened? Did they do anything to you –?”

“No!” A completely different fear: Ruby’s brain scrambled itself trying to understand it.

“Keep calm, there’s a good girl. Nice, steady breaths, OK?”

If anything, Derpy’s niceness reached through the comfort and stung. It was all wrong. Why was it all wrong!? No matter what Ruby did, it always seemed wrong! So much wrongness smacked her that she felt the weeping sobs trickling back.

It was Dinky who spoke up. “Berry would never do anything nasty to her. She loves Ruby.”

The sobs burst through; Ruby had to curl up tight enough to squeeze her lungs, in a confused attempt to stifle them. No amount of Derpy’s shushes and soothings stemmed the tide.

Over her shaking head, Ruby heard her speak to Dinky. “Dinky, I’ll have to fetch Berry. She needs her family.”

“OK. I could wake up Ammy –”

“Ammy’s sleeping. You’ll have to stay here and look after Ruby. Try not to upset her, please?”

“Why would I upset her!?”

“I mean don’t pester her with questions or anything. I know you, Dinky, but this isn’t the time for that sort of smarty thing. Poor girl’s been through too much already: how would you feel?”

“Well… I guess, but you really want to leave us alone?”

“Oh. You don’t think that’s a good idea?”

“She likes you. How about you stay here and I fetch Berry?”

“You can’t go outside! It’s cold! Besides, Berry’s going to need help. A grown-up should go.”

“Then let’s wake up Ammy!”

“She’s had a long day. That wouldn’t be fair on her, Dinky.”

“Why don’t we take Ruby with us, then? We gotta do something!”

Right on cue, the doorbell rang. Through the bubble of feathers, Ruby felt Derpy stiffen. A moment later, Dinky must have peeked through a curtain, because next thing she knew, Dinky’s little hoofsteps drew back.

“It’s Berry,” she whispered.

Ruby clung on tighter. She didn’t want the wings to uncurl.

Carefully, Derpy unwound and left her hugging herself on the sofa. “I’ll go and talk to her. Ruby, don’t worry. We’re going to help you one way or another. Dinky, stay here.”

“Yes, Mom.”

“I’m sorry,” repeated Ruby to her hooves.

She heard Derpy move away and the muffled sounds of hooves in the main hall. It hadn’t been much wider than her own, but it had been far cleaner: she knew Dinky’s older sister never let anything get dirty for long. Rumour had it the whole house was under such a strict cleaning regimen that dirt threw itself out of the house rather than fall victim to it. Whereas Berry rarely tidied up at home. That was somehow always Ruby’s job.

She heard the door open.

She heard Berry’s voice, defeated. “Ruby’s here, isn’t she?”

“Berry… you’re crying…”

“Oh, it’s nothing, it’s nothing.”

Ruby’s heart crumpled like sand. She realized she was going back to that place. Hastily, she wiped her own cheeks free of tears.

Nearby, Berry gave a laugh so weak it could have been a strangled gasp. “I figured she’d run off here. Who else looks good next to me?”

“Berry, she’s very upset.”

Another weak laugh. “I figured.”

“Come on, clean yourself up, now…”

As soon as she heard approaching hoofsteps, Ruby straightened up on the sofa, trying not to notice how nice and well-furnished the living room was. She concentrated on Dinky as though her sanity hung in the balance. Dinky smiled back weakly, strangely dishevelled with her haystack bedhead and reddened, sleepless eyes.

But it was only Derpy, who poked her head around the door. “Let’s sort this out, Ruby. Don’t worry, I’ll be right here.”

Hopeless. She was going back. Ruby had no life to go back to. Not after this.

Dead inside, she shuffled off the sofa and kept her head firmly down as she was ushered into the hall. Up ahead, she heard Berry give a faint cry, but she refused to look up, in case she saw the nightmare once more.

“Ruby…” Berry’s voice was pained but trying hard not to be. “Dreams that bad, huh?”

“Bad dreams?” repeated Derpy.

“Yeah.” A sniff. “She’s been having bad dreams for a while. Never this bad, though.”

“Did she say what they were? Maybe there’s a clue there.”

“Sharp as ever, eh, Derpy?” A laugh that died halfway through. “Ruby told me a few nights back there was this zombie thing in them, but –”

“Zombie?” said Derpy, and indeed there was something sharp in her tone.

Someway behind, Ruby heard the creak of someone sidling upstairs as stealthily as possible.

“That’s what she said.” Berry paused. “Going back to bed, Dinky?”

“Er…” Dinky dripped with innocence. “Yeah, yeah, so tired, gotta get ready for school tomorrow…”

Except it was the weekend tomorrow.

“Dinky,” sighed Derpy.

Weakly: “Y-yes, Mom?”

“Please tell me this has nothing to do with those comics I found under your bed yesterday.”

“Comics?” Dinky’s guilt hid about as well as an apple behind a pencil. Everyone knew she had one weakness, and Derpy didn’t even need to get mad. She could do with a disappointed sigh what most ponies couldn’t with a full trial and lots of righteous shouting.

“Yes,” said Derpy. “Comics.”

Ruby heard Dinky’s conscience wrestle with the rest of her. It was the sound of a foal furiously trying not to speak and furiously trying to say something to solve it all at once, and it came out as a humming, stifled moan.

“They were zombie comics,” continued Derpy. “And I’m guessing you took them to school to show to other foals, even though you shouldn’t, Dinky, that’s wrong.”

Panicky, Dinky blurted out, “I didn’t mean anything by it! It was just a bit of fun! No one complained about it! I didn’t know!”

“Dinky.” Another sigh of disappointment. In some ways, Derpy was ruthless.

“I’m sorry! I didn’t want this!”

“Don’t say sorry to me. You should say sorry to Ruby for giving her nightmares. Go on.”

Despite her own misery, some of Ruby’s heart cooked on Dinky’s behalf. To have to walk back her own daring was the height of Dinky-esque shame. She at least afforded Dinky the dignity of not watching, but kept staring at the smoothly shined floorboards.

In a tiny, tiny voice, Dinky mumbled, “Sorry, Ruby.”

“Mmm,” Ruby hummed. She didn’t dare say anything more.

“There,” said Derpy, sounding like her usual slow, angelic self again. “Now that’s that.”

Only… Ruby’s heart knew it was nothing of the sort.

“I hope you’ve learned something important about caring for others’ feelings, Dinky.”

“Yes, Mom. S-sorry, Mom. I mean it. I promise.”

“Go up to bed now. That’s a good girl.”

Deep down, some part of Ruby should’ve at least giggled at Dinky’s humiliation. Nice as Dinky could be for company, her quietly smug know-it-all attitude sometimes got on her nerves. Yet as Dinky’s hoofsteps disappeared upstairs, Ruby didn’t feel anything toward her, good or bad. It would be like fussing over a puddle with a tidal wave looming overhead.

And right now, she’d have traded everything to be Dinky.

Derpy spoke: “I’m so, so sorry about this, Berry –”

“Oh, nonsense,” said Berry, who’d recovered some of her cheer. “Life’s certainly a lot more interesting with Dinker the Thinker around.”

“If I’d know what she was doing sooner, I’d have stopped it. Poor Ruby…”

“Yeah, well, you know. Apart from the timing being wrong, that’s all sorted out then, isn’t it?”

Ruby knew what she meant. The nightmares had plagued her long before Dinky’s stupid zombie comics had come along, giving them a new shape. But Derpy, for all her love, wasn’t the sort to decipher sentences like that.

Clearing her throat, Berry shuffled uncomfortably. “We’d better get back. No sense staying up all night.”

“Maybe I can help?” said Derpy.

“No really, it’s fine –”

“Wait right here.”

They heard wings flap away, then wings flap back again. When Derpy returned, she nudged Ruby and said, “Here, take this.”

Ruby looked up. Beaming at her, Derpy held out something shiny in her hooves.

Gingerly, Ruby took it. The gemstone levitated under her magic, and the facets caught what little light there was in strange twinkles.

“A nightlight!” cooed Derpy, clapping her hooves together. “Ammy used to sleep with it all the time, but she’s too old now. It’ll give you good dreams.”

“Oh,” croaked Ruby – her throat tightened itself. “OK.”

After a while, Berry said, “I think that’s a thanks.”

“Sleep well, Ruby.”

Uncertainly, Ruby mumbled something she herself couldn’t decipher. The result was a garbled thanks, acknowledgement, and moan.

She didn’t deserve the parting hug she got: her soul knew so.

“You’re one of a kind, Derpy,” said Berry.

Derpy straightened up. “And you sleep well too, Berry.”

Berry made the same uncertain mumbling noise. Eventually, she said, “Time we were getting back. Don’t wave us off, Derpy.”

The door shut behind them.

Both of them stood on the welcome mat. Ruby took a long time to look up at Berry, and was surprised to find her looking away. Both of them, embarrassed.

Berry’s mouth trembled over the words, her eyes squeezed in pain, her neck sinews sticking out under the intense effort.

The sight was more than Ruby could bear. “I’m sorry,” she whined.

Berry shook her head, still not looking at her. “No, no, you have nothing to be sorry for.” She closed her eyes briefly to brace herself; the trembling stopped. “I could never be mad at you, Ruby.”

Still without looking, Berry lowered her head and half-nudged, half-nuzzled Ruby’s own.

“I understand, I really do. You lost your mom and dad… and I lost my aunt and uncle. But we’re more than just cousins now. We don’t need to lose anyone else, OK?”

Ruby was too ashamed to watch. They walked home in a poor attempt at silence: for all her attempts to suppress it, Berry gasped and wept the whole way.

They took so long to get in because Berry kept dropping the key and cursing. Ruby wondered if she could even see it through the blurriness.

Berry burst in first. Ruby sleepwalked in after her, dead all over again. Nothing had mattered. Nothing had changed. And now she walked right back to her prison.

She was too dead to move. Groggily, she heard Berry clattering in the kitchen, where the door was open and the light was on. Bottles clinked, throat guzzled, and in between came the grouching and whimpering of an overgrown foal muttering about how much life sucked as a grown-up.

Ruby, as ever, shut the front door for her.

Then she hung back. Going back to bed seemed too much for her.

She also noticed, out of the corner of her eye, the living room remained a mess of untouched paper plates, stinky food, and a board game that hadn’t been put away yet.

The complaining in the kitchen fell silent for several minutes as Berry heaved her brain out of the pit and crawled her way back to the here and now. Her head poked round the door.

“Ruby,” she said nervously, as though she were the one about to be told off, “can we talk for a second? Please?”

Ruby didn’t think. She just walked in.

Berry lay defeated on a chair opposite, nursing a couple of bottles on the table. She gestured to the other chair and then poured Ruby a drink before sucking the neck of yet a third bottle.

She surfaced briefly. “Have a drink.”

Wondering where this was going, Ruby plucked the glass and sipped. Orange squash. Berry’s own bottles definitely didn’t contain anything that unexciting. Barely had she finished the glass – for now, the only thing she could do with any confidence – when Berry topped it up again.

“Have another drink.” Another round of gulping.

Just as Ruby brought the glass to her lips, she spotted the trickle escaping down Berry’s chin. She stopped drinking. She lowered the glass. She pushed it away. She never took her eyes off the disgusting trickle the whole time.

Drinking her problems away was too… Berry.

Between gulps, Berry noticed. She too stopped. She too put the drinks down – on the sideboard in her case, out of the way.

They sat at the kitchen table for a long, terrible silence.

However Ruby felt, Berry looked far more wretched. Every now and then, she kept running a hoof through her frumpy mane, wiping her face clean of whatever kept befouling it, and flexing her lips as though dying for a bottle. For the first time, Ruby saw the veins jaundicing her eyes.

Suddenly, Berry reached her breaking point. Her voice shook worse than the trembles she got if she went without a drink for too long.

“I know I’m not perfect,” she croaked. “I don’t blame you, Ruby. You don’t deserve this. I just want you to know you’ve done nothing wrong, OK?”

Ruby withdrew into herself. Only now did she notice she still held the nightlight.

“I loved your mom and dad. They were a great team, you know? We always had so much fun together. None of this cheap Barnyard Bargains discount junk. Real parties. We made so many friends here in Ponyville. And they were more than aunt and uncle to me. They were the best friends I ever had.”

Ruby withdrew so deeply into herself that she’d never speak again. Feelings condensed and forced into a corner, one where they couldn’t break out and sting her.

Opposite, it didn’t help when Berry had to stifle a sob; the drinks were turning her maudlin. “I lost my dad too. Ponyville was different back then. Less safe. When he died, that all but killed my mom. Now she doesn’t go anywhere, she doesn’t do anything, she doesn’t say anything like you are right now, and that kills me, it really does, to see her that way, to see YOU that way –”

And Ruby clutched the nightlight tighter.

“You’re not alone, Ruby,” said Berry, getting barely a grip on herself. “I know how much it hurts.” She gave a hollow laugh. “Mom used to say, ‘Don’t cry. Perhaps it’s for the best. It’s just the kiss of destiny.’”

Rage.

Ruby shouted at Berry, “DESTINY SUCKS!”

At least Berry stopped trembling.

Sensing she’d gone too far, Ruby withdrew into herself again, surfacing only to mumble, “I want ‘destiny’ to stop kissing me. Destiny sucks.”

“Yeah,” said Berry shakily. “Yeah, it does.”

Ruby reached for the drink after all, then hesitated, then pushed it away. To her shame, it tipped over and spilled onto the tabletop. Both of them got up to clean it, noticed the other, sat down again, and simply watched in misery as the orange lifeblood dribbled onto the tiles.

Groaning, Berry ran her hooves over her face again, shifting the frumpy fringe out of her eyes. The hairs were damp.

“And I don’t have a solution,” she said as if they hadn’t been interrupted. “I’m sorry, Ruby. I never thought it’d be like this.”

“Wish I was like Piña.” Ruby hugged herself, grunting moodily. “She doesn’t worry about anything.”

Berry hummed in doubt. “You think? If only you knew what she was like behind closed doors…”

“Oh.” Well, this was news to Ruby. “But she’s so happy and d– and she doesn’t care.” Anything was better than telling Berry her sister was “dumb”.

Perhaps Berry sensed what she’d really meant, perhaps the talk was going in an unwelcome direction. Either way, Berry when she spoke was an unexpected ice cube in a warm cocktail.

“She cares.”

“Sorry,” mumbled Ruby.

“I’ve heard enough sorries tonight.” Berry fetched a bottle, glugged it in one go, then dropped it onto the table and ignored it when it rolled onto the floor. Her forelimbs gripped each other as though to assure themselves they weren’t alone. “You think you’re the only one who’s got problems?”

“Sorry.”

They met eye for eye. Both of them quailed. This was going about as well as a bad joke to a seething audience.

To Ruby’s shame, Berry started weeping again. “And I don’t have any solutions. I’m sorry, Ruby. I wish I did. But I can’t tell you what you want –”

“I want my mom and dad.”

Berry’s heaving breath, her shameful wipe of her eyes, her fidgeting hooves. “I know. I wish I could tell you something else, I swear, but when all’s said and done: I’m all you’ve got left.”

“I know.” Ruby wished she had said nothing. She wished tonight would just disappear and all this would never have happened by the time she woke up again. Normal life sounded like the best Hearth’s Warming gift ever.

“You can be happy again, Ruby. I’m your best chance. Please give me a chance. I promise we can make this work.”

“I want to go to bed now.” She remembered herself. “Please.”

The silence was like waiting for someone to die.

After a lot of sniffing, Berry quavered, “All right. All right…”

She slipped out of her seat alongside Ruby. Without a word, they traipsed through the hall, up the stairs, through the door. Ruby led the way; she felt the hot, slightly stinky breath of Berry down her neck, didn’t give in to her sudden urge to run, and wondered if this was how a pony ended up later in hospital. Everyone she’d known end up there had started by acting as though the world had destroyed their lives.

Ruby clambered onto the bed, pretending not to notice the blankets on the floor. When Berry pulled them up to her chin, for a moment it felt… nice.

Carefully, Berry eased the nightlight gemstone out of Ruby’s grip. She disappeared from view, but then the rainbow hues clung to the walls. Bright yellows like midsummer suns, bright blues like a crystalline ocean, bright greens like a rich growth of meadow grass, bright reds –

– like blood.

Too bright.

Berry did something – tapped it, by the sound of the twang – and the lights softened. The red became a humble blush on the wall.

Ruby yawned, preparing for sleep.

“Derpy’s a crazy one, all right,” said Berry, and some of the cheer came back to her. “But this just might work.”

“Berry –” Ruby froze; the word had tasted strange on her tongue. She usually tried not to call her cousin anything.

“So,” said Berry, bravely grinning. “Zombies, huh?”

“They scare me,” Ruby confessed. She really didn’t want to talk to anyone about her dreams, much less a grown-up. She knew they’d scoff at her or tell her zombies didn’t exist and she was being silly –

“Well, they’re definitely not pretty.”

Suspicious, Ruby scanned her face for any sign of mockery.

Berry continued, “Between you and me, I’m terrified of suits.”

“What?”

“Scare me to death.”

“You’re joking, aren’t you?” More nervously, Ruby added, “Aren’t you?” Clothes-based fears were a new one to her, but she owed Berry for responding to the zombie thing better than she’d hoped.

Berry shrugged. “Not all suits. I had bad dreams once. Stallions in suits came up to my door and told me they were taking away everything I loved.”

“Like… stealing it?”

“Worse. Like it wasn’t really mine anymore. They had papers saying so.”

“Was I in your dream?”

Berry shuddered. “Yes.”

And in a rare flash of insight, Ruby realized prying would only make things worse. It was the sort of thing Dinky would’ve done, but Ruby had her own ideas.

Tenderly, Berry stroked Ruby’s mane into something less frumpy than her own. Ruby felt her eyes closing, as though they felt safe to let their guard down again.

“Nutty, isn’t it?” Berry gave another hiccup of a laugh. “But dreams don’t have to make sense, right? Only… there’s always that bit of our minds that believes them anyway. It’s like an animal you can’t train no matter how hard you try.”

“Your dream doesn’t sound nutty,” whispered Ruby. The dancing of the lights drained away all the darkness at the back of her thoughts, letting them sink properly into the pillow, but there was one hard thought left that she couldn’t dislodge.

It was still there when Berry kissed her forehead.

It was still there when Berry wished her goodnight.

It was still there when Berry began closing the door.

Ruby sat up at once. “Berry?”

Berry stopped. “Yeah?”

“That zombie dream I had…”

“Yeah?”

But Ruby couldn’t speak. She knew what she had to say. It just didn’t feel like something that should be said.

“I’m scared,” she said, as a replacement.

“Aw, don’t be scared. I’m sure that dumb zombie’s no match for someone as fast and as smart as –”

“It was you.”

The thought was dislodged. Or so she thought. In the sudden stiffness, it stabbed back into place and wedged itself deeper.

Berry’s face… struggled. Nothing about the twitches and briefly frozen muscles told Ruby whether she was thoughtful, or offended, or horrified, or simply overwhelmed.

“Me?” she repeated, in a blank tone.

Ruby recovered at once. “I’m sorry –”

“I wish you’d stop bloomin’ saying that.” And thankfully, Berry’s next move was a hiccup of a laugh again, and somehow the noise did what the desperate confession had failed to do. Ruby’s mind was free.

Then she saw Berry’s next face. It was pained.

Only for a second. Berry was getting better at hiding it.

Thinking fast, Ruby said, “I think my blanket’s on too tight.”

“Oh, right.”

Berry bustled back in and smoothed the creases down, folded the near edge, fluffed up the pillow, and generally set Ruby’s mind at ease. They closed eyes. Ruby tingled as Berry’s forehead pressed into her eyelids and lips brushed her cheek. For a moment, though, Berry’s breath of rotten fruit ruined it, and Ruby briefly imagined a future of more bottles and more frantic guzzling.

When Berry spoke, her voice drowned in unshed tears. “It’s horrible, isn’t it? But please remember, Ruby: whatever we’ve been through, no matter how bad, at the end of the day we’re both survivors. That’s got to be worth something on its own.”

Ruby closed her eyes as the door slid shut, and then pretended not to hear Berry thump downstairs. Towards the bottles. The emptiness never fully went away.

For tonight, she had no one else. She just felt briefly at home. And for tonight, that was worth one dreamless sleep.

She squirmed and winced on the pillow.

For tonight.

There would be other nights.

Beyond the shifting colours, Ruby sensed the emptiness kept at bay. But it watched her hungrily with white eyes.

Waited.

Lifeless.

And like her, refusing to die.