The Things She Left Behind

There was a knock at the door. Flash rubbed the sleep from his eyes as he glanced down at the clock on his nightstand. “Who the hell is banging this late at night?,” he said setting it back down. He’d let his parents take care of… damn. They were both working the graveyard shift tonight so it was just him. Guess it was his problem after all. *Knock* *Knock* *Knock*
“Yeah, I’m coming, just give me a damn minute would you?!” Flash slipped on his pants and shirt, they were clean enough. After the literal hell that the student body had experienced last night at the prom, he didn’t have the energy and wasn’t in the mood to try and find something clean to wear. Opening his door, he turned and quickly moved down the stairs being careful not to slip, though failing at that. “Agh!”
He pulled his butt off of the hardwood floor and made his way to the front door. It was chilly tonight, and the rain was still coming down fairly regularly. Flash strained to see the silhouette on the other side of the door more clearly but it was truly a stygian night out there. With no luck he gave up and finally turned the porch light on.
“Sunset? What are you doing here?” He was equal parts bewildered and annoyed at this unwelcome guest. After the ruckus she raised, Flash wasn’t really ready to talk to her even if Princess Twilight had asked the students to forgive here. It was still too early. “Look Sunset, it’s too damn early and I’m too damn tired to deal with you,” he said pushing the screen door ajar.

She didn’t look him in the eyes at all and simply stood there as the rain fell down around her. Nothing could be heard but the droplets striking the ground and the tick of the grandfather clock in the parlor. Flash shook his head and began to retract his arm and the screen door with it when without warning a sudden chill gripped his arm. Sunset had grabbed his lower arm with such speed he hadn’t noticed until it was already there.

“Let go!” he cried wrenching it from her grasp. Flash felt the water passing from her arm to his as their limbs parted, yet there was something…off…about this rain. It felt somewhat thicker than usual, and emitted a strange odor. His brain tried to decipher the familiar smell. Metal. Iron. Blood.

Looking down at horror, he saw a great deal of blood streaking down his arm where Sunset had gripped it. Flash’s gaze turned from the crimson stripes on his arm back to her. In the lowlight of the porch, he could now just barely make out massive dark splotches all over her clothes. Instinctively he opened the door again and grabbed her tightly yet gently by the shoulders and maneuvered her into the relative warmth of the house. “Hang in there, I’ll go grab something to staunch the bleeding.”

Flash raced down the hall into the kitchen and threw open all the drawers. He usually knew where the cloths and first aid kit were kept but in his panicked state he was drawing a blank. On the fifth try Flash found the box with a Red Cross on top and a few towels to try and staunch the bleeding. Supplies in hand, he raced back only to find Sunset standing in exactly the same spot, having not moved an inch.

Blood mixed with the rain still on her skin and gently dripped onto the floor beneath. Flash steered her into the living room and sat her down on the sofa. The towels he had brought cleared the blood off Sunset up quickly, but he could not a make out a trace of any major wound on her. Was this not her blood? The mystery subsided as he worried now about getting her cleaned up and comfortable.

When Flash was satisfied he had done everything to make her comfortable and had ensured what wounds she did have were none too severe. As far as he could tell, she was perfectly fine. Still, Sunset had not said a thing the entire time. She just stared down towards her feet while the minutes ticked by. He knew that at some point someone was going to have to break the silence, so he figured he might as well to be the one to do it.

“Sunset, what’s going on? Where did you come from. Whose blood is on you?” The barrage of questions from Flash finally elicited a response of some kind from the girl. Her eyes turned up towards him, wide-eyed as though she had faced an unfathomable terror. “It’s hers,” she whispered back to him. “I tried to stop her, but she overpowered me. I fought with every ounce of energy I still possessed to immobilize her, but it wasn’t near enough to prevent her from going through with it.”

She was just seemingly going around in circles, almost like she was in shock. Flash shook his head. There was no time to keep this up when someone could be out there with a life-threatening injury. He grabbed her shoulders and looked deep into her eyes. “Be straight with me Sunset Shimmer, who got hurt? Was it the new girl, Twilight Sparkle? Did something happen to her? Was it one of our classmates like Rainbow Dash or Fluttershy? I understand you’re reluctant to speak, but we need to move quickly if we’re going to stop someone from getting hurt even more than they already are, or wind up dead.”

“You’re already too late.” The being in front of him rose slowly until she was meeting his gaze dead-on. The air around her seemed to grow heavy, but at the same time it grew so much hotter. Was she becoming the beast she had at the dance? He thought she had been roundly defeated, but it seemed otherwise.
Her hands reached out and grabbed his arms with sharp nails digging into his flesh. “You can’t undo the damage already done! Sunset Shimmer is dead!”