Woman in the Woods

“Apple Bloom?” Sweetie Belle’s voice hitched as her friend stuck a hoof in the door. Sweetie took a step back, bowing her head low as her ears fell against her head. The silhouette of her friend slowly passed through the doorway, stopping short of the square of moonlight entering the room from the clubhouse’s window.

“A-re y-ou ok M-s. Flu-tter-shy? I h-h-ha-ve a crea-ture f-for yo-u. To.” It stepped forward. “Lo-ok at.”

It was Apple Bloom.

Her eyes were beautiful.

Sweetie Belle backed herself under the wooden table. “Who are you? What do you want from me?!”

Apple Bloom took another step. Her front knees were set in backward, and her legs bent inwards beneath her body as she moved. When she got closer, Sweetie Belle realized that the skin separating Apple Bloom’s nostrils was cleft. A slick, yellow oil coated the exposed flesh.

“I wan-t t-o kno-w yo-u,” Apple Bloom continued, stepping forward out of the moonlight. She bent down to see Sweetie under the table.

Sweetie stared back, linking eyes with her friend. They sparkled the most magnificent blue.

“Don’t you remember? I’m Sweetie Belle, your best friend,” Sweetie stood from her crouch, not remembering a moment of her fear. She stood up too quickly and bumped her horn on the wooden table, jostling a pot of long cold tea and a set of eating utensils from the day earlier. “Ouch,” she closed her eyes in a flinch. The second her eyes closed, terror rushed back through her brain, lighting her mind on fire.

“No. No. No-t li-ke that.” Words tumbled out of Apple Bloom’s mouth with a tone of calm curiosity. The filly approached Sweetie Belle without pause.

“G-get away from me!” Sweetie screamed, turning to run from the other side of the table. Apple Bloom gurgled and rushed forward, diving under the table behind Sweetie. Sweetie just barely avoided a grasp from its front hooves. She gave a panicked, two-hind-hoof response, sending the monster recoiling.

It was a square hit on the thing’s right eye. The skin around it swelled, but her left eye darted back with an angry sheen. Sweetie Belle’s head was turning with her momentum, ripping her eyes away from what would otherwise be her last glance.

Apple Bloom’s face leaked the nauseating substance and Sweetie heard the frogs of the creature’s hooves slip as they planted. Sweetie ran around the table, making her way for the door, but the creature tackled her from the side. She felt a cold pain as it bit down on her leg. It had notched hutchinson teeth that dug down with two-pronged stabs. It clamped on her flesh and Apple Bloom shook, attempting to tear away a piece of the filly. Sweetie met the attack with a blind and desperate stab to its side with her horn. Though the filly’s horn wasn’t fully grown, it still had a point.

Apple Bloom let go of the bite and screamed a scream of several different voices joined together in agony. The creature stumbled backward towards the wooden table, its face tied up in pain. Sweetie had the opportunity to run, but her vision seemed to click on subtle clues of the scene before her.

Sweetie Belle focused her telekinesis and brought the table down, tilting over its legs and catching Apple Bloom by the neck, pinning it to the ground. The creature opened its eyes but just as it did the teapot from atop the table shattered over its head, soaking its face and causing it to shut them again. Sweetie pressed her advantage and picked up a fork and a spoon that had clattered off of the table. She ran up to the monster and thrust the utensils forward, piercing both of its eyes through their lids.

Apple Bloom shrieked so loud that the room was bathed in the shadow of a spider’s web as the window cracked from its center. Sweetie Belle stumbled backward, holding her hooves over her ears while grinding her teeth together. A mounting pressure built from within her head and her vision blurred together—she prayed that her head wouldn’t pop.

Through her blurred vision, Sweetie Belle saw Apple Bloom’s body boil. Bubbles rose and popped underneath her fur, painting the walls with splurts of yellow grease. Its hooves and legs spiraled as they lost turgidity. Within seconds, the screaming petered off into a trickle of wheezing air as the body dehydrated.

The screaming finally stopped, and Sweetie took her hooves from her ears. She saw the body of the monster. It looked like Apple Bloom had been drained of blood before being set afire. However, its mane was still just as full and red as ever.

“Sweetie Belle, is everything alright? Scootaloo just gave us some dreadful news!” Rarity called out from below.

A rapid knocking came from the clubhouse door. “Sweetie Belle, I’m back, let me in!”

Sweetie Belle carefully approached the door. She brought her trembling eyes to the keyhole. Through it, she saw Scootaloo pacing around while Rarity and Pinkie Pie stood at the base of the ramp leading up to the entrance. Sweetie opened the door.

“Sweetie, the others are goi—holy crap! Is tha—Is that Apple Bloom?!” Scootaloo’s mouth hung in shock as she took in the ruined room.

“No way, that was a monster, I swear. It tried to kill me.” Sweetie turned back towards the creature’s body. “It looked like Apple Bloom, but it sure as heck wasn’t a pony.”

“I wonder where Apple Bloom is,” Scootaloo frowned and walked over to the window, looking through the cracked glass out to the forest line. Just as she did, distant pastel dots appeared out of the trees. “Sweetie Belle, look, our sisters are back! And… Oh my gosh! They have Apple Bloom!”

“Really?!” Sweetie rushed over and scooted Scootaloo out of the way. Sure enough, the sisters were galloping forward to the treehouse with Apple Bloom on Applejack’s back. The filly was fine, though she stared unfocused at the passing trees as she gripped her sister’s back. She buried her face in Applejack’s withers.

Applejack approached the entrance of the clubhouse. She greeted Pinkie and Rarity who kept watch at the ramp and let Apple Bloom off as she got to the door.

“Your friends are inside, Apple Bloom. We’re gonna have a nice sleepover tonight, alright? I’ll keep you safe the whole time while Twilight goes and gets that monster.”

“I don’t think I can sleep until you catch it,” Apple Bloom muttered as she climbed down from her sister. Applejack opened the door to the clubhouse and they both saw the body of the doppelganger.

“Ohmygosh!” Apple Bloom’s eyes widened.

“Y’all killed it?!” Applejack guffawed.

“You bet!” Scootaloo clapped her hooves together. “Nopony messes with the CMC! Well, it was mostly Sweetie Belle, but we did it, girls!”

“Hopefully we don’t have to do something like that again,” Sweetie Belle sighed. Her eyes were glassy, fogged over from the stress of a thousand nightmares. The dark clutches of the night had—

Bing!

“Sweet Celestia…” Scootaloo’s mouth formed an O while she elbowed Apple Bloom.

“No way,” Apple Bloom whispered.

“Monster Hunter cutiemark!” they shouted.

A small figure of a ghoul in crosshairs sat squarely on Sweetie Belle’s flank.

“Oh ponyfeathers.”