My Portraits On The Wall…
One Chapter Is Traumatic Enough
Hollow paradise…
A place of spirits and of ice…
The lights have long burned out…
But still the echoes give us light…
Trapped inside a hall…
With my portraits on the wall…
The faces stare right back…
As I hear the watcher's weary call…
-Aviators, The Watcher
The wrecked house was very, very far from being a safe place, but it was the closest thing to a safe place that Hitch had found so far. It was at an intersection of multiple small alleyway-like biomechanical tunnels, tucked away and somewhat hidden while also being easily defensible and providing plenty of escape routes. And, most importantly, there was apparently a small stream running through the mangled, fragmented building, a stream of actual, honest-to-harmony water.
I almost didn’t believe him when he told me about it; so far the only fluids I’d seen in this nightmarish place had been blood, bile, slime, and countless other substances I couldn’t identify but definitely weren’t water. But Hitch isn’t the sort of pony who’d lie to me about something like that.
Sure enough, when he pushes aside the house’s front door, it opens onto a living room, split down the middle by a small river of trickling water, just deep enough to wash in. The liquid’s tinted yellow, and probably not safe to drink, but it looks a whole lot cleaner than all the other fluids I’d seen in this hellhole so far. I’d have leaped forward if doing so didn’t mean leaving Hitch’s side.
Fortunately, he’s quick to lead me over to the stream once he’s closed the door. I drop down into it, allowing the icy-cold water to part around my hooves. The stream is really, really cold, but I doubt I would’ve cared even if low temperatures still caused me any discomfort. I lay down in the water, the stream darkening as the blood—pony and otherwise—I’m caked in is washed off of me-
“Nonononono-“
Purple eyes. Looking at me the way an exterminator might look at a parasprite nest.
“S-s-stay away from me!”
It didn’t listen. Its claws reach for me.
I leap backward, a sharp cry slipping from my throat. Hitch is there in a flash, his hooves wrapping around me as he asks if I’m okay.
“Y-yes.” I manage to stutter out. It’s a lie, and we both know it. “Just-“
“LET GO OF ME!”
A flash of yellow. Metal appendages surge forward.
“Oh…oh, gods…”
Black blood gushing from its torso, all over my own. The stench of burning flesh fills my nostrils.
“That creature?” Hitch guessed. He’s right; I nod. Nothing else needs to be said.
He saw the body of the creature I’d killed, after all.
It’s too damp to make a fire, but there’s one of those new convection stovetops in the house’s kitchen, and a generator on the other end of the house. Hitch manages to get the two hooked up, and there’s pots and pans he can use to boil the water. He’s not sure what we’ll do about food yet; we’re probably going to be in this hellhole for a long time. But we can worry about that later. Besides, the jury’s still out on whether I even have to eat anymore.
I’m feeling a little tired, though, so that probably means I still need to sleep.
Hitch tells me that he found a bedroom that still has a bed, too. It’s down the hall. No bathroom, though; that got smashed to bits when the house was abducted along with all the other ponies of Maretime Bay, and even if it wasn’t, Hitch is a sheriff, not a plumber.
I trot over to the hallway in question, turning down it… and I’m met with a pair of glowing yellow eyes at the end.
I stagger backward, panic surging through me as a raspy shriek slips from my throat. A yellow glow flashes into existence behind me as steel appendages unfold from my back, incandescent blades of solidified, scorching-hot light flickering to life, ready to cut the creature apart when it pounces on me.
But it doesn’t. It falls backward, mouth open in a scream as identical blades unfold in the exact same way, their motions mirroring my own. My face goes from terrified to confused, and its face does the same, almost as if the thing’s trying to pretend to just be my reflection.
“Sunny!?” I hear Hitch’s voice behind me, right as my friend’s head appears behind the creature. It’s only then that I realize what’s going on.
The creature wasn’t pretending. There’s a mirror at the end of the hall.
And I’m looking at my reflection.
I stagger to my feet, trotting down the hall toward the creature looking back at me, the monster I’ve been made into. When I get there, I stop at the mirror, staring into it.
I can’t even recognize the pony staring back anymore. All four of her limbs have been replaced with thin, skeletal-looking steel replacements tipped with wicked looking claws. Wires and tubing snake their way over and through her chest, withers, and neck. What little fur she has left is an unhealthy-looking, corpse-like shade of orange, like some sick mockery of the vibrant colors of my own fur. Jutting from her shoulders, still half-unfolded, are thin, articulated steel appendages, like some madman’s parody of a Pegasi’s wings.
And her face… sweet harmony above, her face looks like something pulled straight out of a horror movie. Onyx-black veins are clearly visible all over it, snaking over her muzzle and cheeks and forehead. Her eyes and mouth are the same color, the only clue the jet-black orbs in her eye sockets are actually eyes being the yellow pinpricks in the center of each. She doesn’t have anything you could honestly call a mane; just a bunch of metal cords and wires jutting from the back and top her head and running down her neck, several of them hanging loose. Two of those cords run across the top of her face, encircling her head like some sort of circlet, the ends terminating at the base of a horn-like protrusion of metal jutting from her forehead.
Slowly, I reach up with one hoof, placing it against the mirror. The thing in its reflection mirrors my motions, replicating them flawlessly as it places one of the clawed appendage that it has for front hooves against the other side of the mirror, our identical claws perfectly lined up with each other. Once again, I’m reminded that the half-alive thing I’m looking at is my own body, that this monster before me is the monster I’ve become.
I’ve always believed in uniting the three pony races once again, always stuck to those beliefs no matter how many ponies called the police on me or tried to get me committed to an insane asylum, always been active in trying to promote them even though nopony ever listened to me. But maybe whatever entity decided the fates of ponies who’d been abducted and taken here had been listening to me. Maybe it had chosen to make me into this nightmare lovechild of a unicorn, a pegasus, and a walking, talking, half-living biomechanical art sculpture, all out of some sadistic, twisted sense of ironic humor.
In the reflection, I see an inky black tear slip from one of my eyes, watch it slowly ooze its way down the side of my cheek.
This is usually the point in horror novels where the victim starts puking. But I can’t even taste bile at the back of my throat. My brain just can’t seem to reconcile the difference between what I used to be and what I’ve become; even my reaction of disgust and horror at the state of my body doesn’t truly feel like it’s my reaction anymore.
“I…I’m sorry.” Hitch says. I can see him in the mirror’s reflection. He looks horrified, like he’d set up a bear trap in here and then completely forgotten about it until the moment I’d stepped in the thing. “I-”
“It’s okay.” My voice is distorted, raspy. I sound more like a monster from a horror movie than a flesh and blood pony. “You didn’t know.”
I tear my eyes away from my reflection, staggering away from the mirror and through the doorway next to it. There’s a bed in the corner of the room, just like Hitch promised. I hop into the thing, grabbing the covers with my thin, claw-tipped hooves and yanking it over my inequine body, wrapping it around myself tightly. It doesn’t do much to change how cold I feel right now… or how I’m not shivering from it.
For a long second, nothing moves.
But then, the floorboards creaked, Hitch following me in. The blankets shift as he climbs up into the bed, snuggling in next to me, the warmth of his fur seeping into my limbs. I look up at him, confusion on my face…and he smiles.
“I did say I wasn’t going anywhere, right?”
I think back to what I saw in the mirror. He’s been seeing the same thing, every time he looks at me. Most ponies would have screamed and bolted long before now… yet he’s still here. I may not be able to see myself in the thing I’ve become anymore… but apparently he can.
And if he can do that… maybe someday, I can learn to do it too.
“Right…” I whisper, snuggling into Hitch’s side as his hooves wrap around me, holding me close.
We stay like that for a long, long time, slowly drifting off to sleep in each other’s arms, neither of us saying anything.
Nothing more needs to be said.
Author's Note
Hope you enjoyed my latest serving of nightmare fuel.
This is a fandom fusion with Prey (2006), an old video game that is not to be confused with Prey (2017), and has been largely ignored by most every fanfic writer besides myself. Bit of a shame, considering its uniquely horrifying setting.
The quote above is pulled from a song by Aviators, an artist you might know for some of his older, MLP-related works. The Watcher isn’t explicitly about cutesy technicolor ponies, but it fits the tone of the fic very well, and the themes in the song line up pretty well with the themes of the fic.