Hooves pounding on stiff, frozen dirt.
Wind howling and hurling taunts as whatever it is gets steadily closer.
You can't hear its approach - its hoof steps don't send up waves of sound as it thunders over leaves and sticks - but you can feel it. I can feel it. Feel its scalding hot breath on the back of my neck. Feel its presence as it looms ever steady over me no matter how fast I run.
It's always there. And I run. Run. Run away. But it'll always catch up.
My name was Tidal Waves. I had a dark blue coat and a main and tail of silver. I never got a special talent.
It came too soon for that.
I was four when I saw it first. Eyes. Hundreds of them. Little pinpricks of light with pupils darker than anything natural. Staring at me.
I was with my best friend, a little creme-coloured pony with too many thoughts in her head. She was always talking. I loved to listen to her, too. Until the eyes. I was there, then I wasn't. I was in the dark. Nothing. She was gone, and I was here. And they were here.
Their eyes bore holes of blinding white light into my skin. They itched, at first. Then, they burned. Smoke trailed into the nothingness above me as I screamed. I was covered in holes. They seethed and writhed across my body. Angry at me. Infinitely angry at a filly with hazel eyes and no idea what was going on.
Or what was to come.
I screamed and cried and the eyes still watched. The holes spread. My skin peeled away. Mane singed into charred clumps on the inky ground.
Then I was back. And she was staring at me like I was a monster. A demon come to sink my claws into her flesh. Tears ran rivulets through the fur on her face. I was still screaming, clawing with shaky hooves at the skin that was falling away as eyes stared, unblinking. The eyes were gone, and she was back, but the holes were still there.
Still writhing across my flesh, under the skin that had stitched itself back on my body.
I didn't have a best friend after that day. All I had were stares and foals that ran away with squeals of terror whenever I looked in their direction. She told everyone. But she didn't need to. I ripped out patches of fur all over my body, tearing apart my mane as I tried to get the holes out of me. Out from under my skin.
My parents were the only ones that didn't treat me differently. At first. But I could still hear their whispers through cracks in the walls as they worried and feared over me.
I didn't sleep for days. Whenever I closed my eyes, I was back in the dark, with the eyes, and in the holes in my flesh, giving way to tunnels built to spy on my beating heart and rapidly expanding and contracting lungs.
All was fine after that, for a time.
I was seven next, finally putting the ever-staring eyes behind me and making friends again. It was a birthday party. My friend's. She was so happy. There were four others. They all saw. They all stopped talking to me after it happened.
We were playing a game, a little fun game with candy ponies in a sugar cookie castle. I had a little pony made of sweet pastries. She said we could eat them when we were done playing. It ate me first.
We were playing, and I was the guard of the castle of the Princess Sugar. It was small. Then it wasn't.
It was as big as I was, and we were back. Back in the dark. The eyes were gone, but the candy pony wasn't. She giggled and laughed in a voice like mine, but too too high. Then she ate me.
She cut me open with claws of melty caramel, and pulled out strings of organs. She slurped those up like noodles and stuck her hooves between my ribs. My blood was candy. It was frosty and red and red and red. Everywhere. She stuck her hoof in the hole in my chest and pulled out a lung, snapping it from the airways with a laugh and a pop as I deflated like a balloon released of air. She bit it and it burst open with a puff of starry confetti. Then she ate the husk. And the next.
When my lungs were gone and I couldn't breathe and I was suffocating she took my eyes. I couldn't see but I could see. They were in her mouth. She put them behind her candy corn teeth and bit down. They popped. They were sour. I could taste it in my eyes.
She ate the rest of me in big bites and laughter and too-high giggles. Then I was back.
My friends were screaming. But not more than I was. My screams rose above their wails and bounced off the walls and back into my ears. So loud. And she was crying. They all were, but she had thick, heavy drops of rain pouring down her face and out her eyes as she sobbed. She was clutching at her eye.
It was a bloody mess. No frosting this time. Just streams of crimson pain down her face as she cried. I had hit her. They told me after, but I didn't remember. I started to cry and she tried to help and I hit her. She couldn't see and she cried. I cried too, but I cried tears. She cried blood.
I wasn't allowed outside for a while. I told them about the candy pony and that she ate me and they looked at me with sadness in their eyes while they told my parents behind closed doors that I needed medicine and had to go away for a while. They whispered and I couldn't see them but the holes in the walls told me all their secrets.
They took me from my parents. They had me in a room. A white room with soft walls and kind ponies with soft words about hallucinations. They gave me pills that tasted like blood. Then they sent me back. Time was never there. I was there and then I wasn't. I couldn't remember things anymore. All I saw were eyes and holes in my skin and a mare with candy corn teeth.
There were whispers too. I never told anybody. But they were there. They told me things. They said I had to hurt ponies. Told me if I didn't do it, someone else would. And it would be worse. So I listened.
Blood and shiny metal against wailing shaking skin.
Three. They told me I killed three ponies. I didn't.
No, it was them. The voices and the eyes and the candy pony. I tried to protect the ponies but I couldn't. No. No. No. No. NO.
There was always blood on my hooves. I couldn't wash it off. Hooves stained red with thick, roiling waves of metallic oil the colour of death and dying and the ponies I couldn't protect.
There were more white rooms and strange ponies with soft voices. It was loud but they were quiet and I was angry. Very angry. It wasn't me though. The eyes. The eyes did it. No. I didn't. They did.
I stomped. Their faces. Yes. No. Wasn't me. It was her hooves. The candy pony. She hit them and stomped on them until they didn't move and didn't talk with quiet loud voices.
It was still loud.
I ran a lot. I could feel it everywhere. The eyes. They were closer and closer and the voices told me to lay down and let them come. But the holes under my skin moved and burned and I had to run. I fell a lot, too.
But I was always in the white room. I ran and ran and ran and ran and ran and ran and ran and ran but I couldn't run fast enough and the eyes caught me. They caught me again and again every time I woke up and ran.
Until I didn't run anymore.
I was tired. Very tired. And so I listened to the voices and laid down. The eyes were there. But they always were. And they burned. But my skin was so blackened with soot and burns I couldn't feel it any more.
I didn't want to.
It wasn't me.
The eyes.
Yes.
No.
All of them.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
I hear them again.
