Hiding In Shadows
_______________________________
A short Story
From inside the gates of hell I watched
Not of preferance nor of choice
But because I had been dealt a hand charred with ash
Never, ever to rejoice.
Clouds dotted the autumn sky in Ponyville. The wind howled a warning to equestrians on the streets dressed in their various costumes, but none of them payed enough mind to heed it. It’s said that on Nightmare Night anything can happen- it’s the one night of the year that everypony is allowed to be something else. It’s also the night that the creatures of Everfree and beyond are allowed to come free of their worldly disguise and walk amongst everypony undetected.
Rose Shimmer wasn’t much of a party goer like her friends- in fact this was the first Nightmare Night that her friends had talked her into it. Her friends Moon Swirl, Jade Crescent, and Satin Sky had been going to the same Nightmare Night party for the past 4 years. Rose was always invited, but chose to stay home instead and read. Her friends always mocked her for her lack of interest in parties, and more specifically, the stallions at parties. They told her that it was easy to catch a stallion if you just tried a little. And once you got them hooked, you can do anything you want with them. Anything. And it wasn’t necessarily the lack of some action that made her anxious, it was not knowing what a party was like. Had she at least been to a party once, she could at least say that she’d been to a party before and brush off her friends a little easier. But it was all too easy for her friends to talk her into going since she had never been. The party tonight was going to be especially good since it was nightmare night. All of the handsome young stallions would be out and about.
Her costume was a vampire with a short skirt to show off her flank. Jade told her that wearing the skant costumes would increase her chances of a a bite- not that Rose needed to jiggle her lure anymore. She was arguably the best looking out her group of friends, her cotton candy colored mane and pale blue body made her a fantastic catch. She’d even adopted the nickname “Cotton” with her friends. They told her that she should never use her real name with the stallions she met- only a nickname. That way if she decided she wasn’t interested anymore she could break off of it woithout having to worry about a guy stalking her.
“You ready for this?” Jade asked her from the backseat of the carrige. “Uh…yeah, totally.” Rose replied with audible uncertainty. Rose and her friends were on their way to the center of Ponyville, and they had chosen to take a carrige so they could all arrive together. Satin and Rose sat in the front, while Jade and Moon sat in the back. Since this was Rose’s first party, she was given the privilage of choosing where they got off. The center of town was traditional, but Rose wanted to get out a little bit outside the center and walk in so they could meet more stallions of the way. Sadly, her friends had other plans to ensure that she scored tonight.
Satin reached up and tapped on the coach’s shoulder. “Here’s good.” She said. Confused, Rose spoke up. “Wait a minute, I wanna go up further.” She said. “If we let you drive, you’ll never pick a spot to get off!” Moon laughed from the back. “You know where the party is, just meet us there.” She said. Satin shoved Rose out of the carriage and onto the cobblestone street, as the carriage pulled off ahead. Satin offered her a wave goodbye as the carriage rolled off into the abyss of street lanterns and costumed ponies. The area was populated by plenty of fine stallions, but she was looking for one in peak condition. Nice mane, robust, charming…she shook the thoughts out of her head, her mentality returning to what it was last year at this time. What was she doing here? She wasn’t a party pony, even if all of her friends were, that didn’t necessarily mean she had to follow their example. She was enraged for a brief moment at her own gullibility and stupidity, but calmed down shortly thereafter. It was just one night after all, and Ponyville wasn’t that big. She just had to walk from one side to the other, pick up a stallion, bring him to the party, and everything would be fine.
Rejuvenated with confidence, she started down the street towards the center of town. Her costume beckoned plenty of views from onlookers, but few were bold enough to whistle at her or yell a compliment. Rose figured this is why they were on the outskirts of town- they weren’t confident enough to be in crowds. Some of the stallions here were high quality in looks, but their silence and refusal to call her out was displeasing. Unsatisfied, she tried to look harder. Seeing one that she found especially attractive, she approached and did her best job to seduce him. Her attempts were wasted. “What’s shakin’…um…sexy?” she said, placing herself against a tree and crossing her front legs. The stallion noticed, but turned his attention back to his friends after witnessing her failed attempt. Suddenly self conscious, she checked herself for anything that might have been a turn off. Her flank was exposed, their were no stains on her costume, nothing. She was as pristine and sexy as ever. Why wasn’t the stallion biting?
Flustered, she turned around to continue walking down the street. Her pivot was immediately met by a tall chiseled stallion sporting a royal guard costume. His coat reminded her of Shining Armor, the king of the Crystal Empire, but this stallion’s cutie mark suggested otherwise. “Oh um…hey…” she started quietly. She wasn’t confident that she could pull of taking him to the party, so she tried to play it more casual in the hopes that she could just brush him off and move on. No way this stallion was interested in her. No possible way. “Hey there.” He said calm and collected. His voice was so…seductive. It was like he knew why she was there. “Nice costume. It fits you…” he trailed off, bringing his head to the left and staring at her flank, “…perfectly.” Rose didn’t know how to act. She was searching for a handsome stallion to bring to the party, and one had found her instead. Jade, Moon, and Satin were going to be so jealous. “Th-thank you.” She said blushing. “My name’s Rose, what’s yours?” she asked, her confidence rising. “Cobalt.” He replied. Scanning his eyes over her again, he asked her if she was going to any parties tonight. “Well yeah actually. There’s one out in Everfree tonight I was going to.” She said. Suddenly, Cobalt’s eyes lit up with a mixture of worry and suspicion. “Are your friends expecting you to be there?” he asked. Rose was taken back by the question. Something was off about this stallion. “Um…well yeah. Of course they expect me to go.” She said, taking a step back. “Well, that’s too bad.” He said, approaching her at a steady pace. Rose back up as he advanced, before finally backing into a tree. Her heart was racing. What was he planning do? A smile broke out on Cobalt’s face. He started to laugh. “Because you’re going to be missing the best party in Ponyville!” he said. “Wh-what?” Rose asked timidly. “My friends and I are hosting a huge party on the outskirts of town. We even booked DJ-PON3 to Dj it!” Rose sighed in relief. Her cold sweat ceased, and she could feel casual again. Although she could still feel something…wrong with Cobalt. “Well…” she said. She thought over the options in her head. The party he was talking about did sound pretty good, but Rose’s party had time constraints. If she wasn’t there by a certain point, she risked missing the main festivities. At the same time, if she could negotiate going to his party in turn for him going to hers, she could win both ways. “…I’ll tell you what.” She started. “Take me to your party for a little while, but afterwards we have to go to mine.” She said. Cobalt didn’t even take a moment to hesitate. He said to her, “That sounds great!” and together they trotted down the street to where the party was being held.
The party was even better than Rose could have imagined. There was drinks, music, food, dancing, everything she had hoped it to be. And now she was approaching the climax of it- Cobalt had asked her to take a walk with him. Their walk consisted of watching the full moon through the tree cover, and listening to Cobalt reel off his many anecdotes of parties long gone. Each one of them amused her more than the last. She had no idea how much she was missing out on while she buried her nose in books at her house. But as the conversation gradually died down, her interest changed. Her party would be starting soon. “Hey Cobalt, it’s time to go. My party should be starting soon.” Cobalt turned his head to face her and nodded in acknowledgement. An odd look struck his face- one the likes of which Rose had never seen before on anypony. It was an odd mixture of anticipation and lust. “Alright, just one thing first.” He said, approaching her slowly. “Yeah? What is it?” Rose asked confused. Cobalt brought his head forward and pressed his lips against hers. Initially her reaction was to run, but the smooth calming sensation of his kiss kept her at bay. Rose returned the kiss and closed her eyes, her ears dropping. She’d never felt anything like this before. Just as she was about to get into it, a sharp pain ran down her neck. Something foreign had penetrated her skin. Backing away in shock, she realized what the pain had been from. Cobalt held a syringe in his hand, and a menacing smile upon his face. The syringe was empty, meaning whatever he had injected her with was a full dose if not more. She turned to run, but all of the energy in her body drained away. Her eyes cut to black, and she collapsed on the trail.
Rose opened her eyes to dimly lit room. It was cold, suggesting it might be shed, but having no recollection of how she got there she had no idea where it was. Her arms were in iron restraints, and a bar over her neck held her head in place. He arms were stretched out to the sides, while her legs were pinned together at the bottom. She realized she wasn’t just pinned to a table, she was pinned on a cross. Frantic, she looked around for some way to escape while she wiggled her arms and legs to try and break free. These attempts were futile, and the only thing she could see was pictures of dissected ponies all over the walls. What was this place?!
Rose’s questions were answered by a sudden commotion in the corner of the room. It was Cobalt. However now he was wearing some peculiar outfit…it appeared to be a very rough brown suit. Still twisting left and right to try and free herself of the the restraints, Rose’s eyes darted around the room in a desperate search for an exit. Besides the door that Cobalt had come in from, there was none. No windows, No chimney, nothing. Just a single door. And to that point, she had no knowledge of what would be found behind that door even if she did escape. She could be miles away from Ponyville, she could be a couple hundred yards. She wouldn’t know until she escaped. If she escaped.
Cobalt’s footsteps were muted to Rose’s ears in contrast with her heavy, rapid breathing. Her eyesight was growing hazy from the tears welling in her eyes, but she was still able to make out his figure. Besides the rough brown suit, he was wearing a blue surgical mask and camera around his neck. That would explain the pictures on his walls. “Well well, Ms. Rose!” He said enthusiastically. “It would seem you’re the lucky little fly in my web this year.” He trotted around the room looking at the various pictures. Some of the depictions were of simple dissections, while others took a much more grim route and showed Cobalt playing with the bodies- one showed him talking to a severed head on his hoof like a puppet. “Who are you, you monster?!” Rose shot at him through her tears. Cobalt stopped in his tracks. Almost mechanically, he turned a full 180 degrees to face her on a pivot. His eyes were wild with desire. “I’ve got a lot of names.” He said, approaching a cabinet to the right of Rose. She could hear him rummaging through metal tools. When the rustling stopped, he turned to face her once again with a clamp in one hand and a sort of vice in the other. “The Ponyville Mangler, The Shadowman…” he smashed the tools hard onto the surface of a rolling cart next to him. “…Doctor Rip-Gore…” he said with additional sharpness in his voice. That’s when it clicked for Rose. Nearly every month for the past few years, a pony went missing. More often than not it was a mare, but stallions occasionally went missing too. The Royal guard assumed all of the crimes were committed by the same pony, but they couldn’t be sure. Now, as Ironic as it was being these were her last few hours, Rose knew the truth. Rip-gore, following her gaze, felt need to note the outfit was wearing. "Oh what, my suit?" he said looking down at the odd piece of clothing. "These don't come cheap..." he said turning away for a brief moment. He brought his head back around with a grim glint in his eye. "...it's Pony Leather."
Rip-gore tightened the vise machine onto the end of one of the cross’s arms and tightened it. “We’re going to have a little bit of fun, Rose.” He said. “The device here is used to remove hooves.” Rose’s pupil’s shrank to pin-point. Her hooves? What did he want with her hooves? Was there even a point? Was this just for fun? A battalion of questions assaulted Rose’s mind as she screamed for help. “Somepony! Anypony! Help me!” she cried. Rip-gore was unphased by her pleas for help, and returned to his cabinet to get another tool. “However first,” he said rummaging through the cabinet. “We’re going to need to prep your hooves.” He said. He came up from the cabinet with a small drill in hand. Rose twitched in fear and banged her hooves off of the iron restraints in an effort to free herself. Rip-Gore approached her slowly, being sure to build the tension in Rose’s little heart. If he could only have an audience of one, he wanted to make sure that they were on the edge of their seat till the last minute. Carefully and almost surgically, he placed the drill over the broad side of her hoof and began to drill in. There was no pain from this of course, hooves are like fingernails. Simply dead tissue. However Rose reacted as though he were drilling into her skin. She threw her body up and down violently, trying to escape the drill’s deepening hole in her hoof. Before she knew it, he was done.
As though he were a carpenter, Rip-Gore blew off the excess hoof-dust with his breath to ensure the area was clean. Turning his attention back to his vise machine, he grabbed two hooks from it’s mouth. As he pulled them out, he held a button on top of the device to allow the hook to go out. Otherwise, they wouldn’t move. Once the hook had been reeled in a certain length, a locking mechanism would hold it in place. That way if the operator needed to break from the operation, the line would remain as taut as when he left it. He placed the two hooks from the machine inside of the holes in Rose’s hoof he’d drilled, and cranked the line tight. Rose’s arm was held tight in the air from it. Rip-Gore continued his narrative of the procedure. “Now, there is a problem with this procedure.” He said. A problem? How can there be problems with ripping out a hoof? “The machine relies of the hoof to stay in one piece as the strain builds. However it’s common that the hoof will break in two before it comes out completely.” An eerily happy smile struck his face as he drew closer to Rose’s head. “But don’t worry. If that happens I’ll just drill a little higher up your arm and try it again!” he laughed. Rose began to scream hysterically. This outburst of fear only fueled Rip-Gore’s pleasure. Throwing his head back in a maniacal laugh, he began to turn the vice’s crank.
The pressure on the line increased, and Rose’s screams of fear changed to those of pain. The strain in her hoof was unbearable, and she could feel the tendons coming loose inside her arm. Rip-Gore watched as the hoof began to bleed at it’s seems and gradually slide out. Rose was still in a tremendous amount of pain, but she was at least partially relieved that the hoof wasn’t breaking. Rip-Gore wasn't pleased with that. Even though it would make the process take longer, he wanted to see this pony’s hoof shatter. Without warning, he shifted his body weight hard to the left and reefed on the crank. The sudden amount of additional force was overpowering for the hoof, and it shattered. Nerve endings near the base of it went wild, the pain beyond any belief. Blood began to pour out of the broken hoof and onto the cross to which Rose was pinned. “Well…isn’t that a FUCKIN’ shame?!” he cursed sarcastically. He grabbed the drill off of the table and looked at where he planned to make his next hole. As soon as he touched the drill to the spot, something heavy hit Rip-Gore over the back of his head. Everything cut to black.
When Rip-Gore came to, his vision was hazy. He could tell three things from where he currently stood. One: He was in Everfree forest. Two: His hands were bound. Three: There was a large number of other stallions and mares his age also in the same position. Blinking his eyes, his vision cleared to show what looked like a bonfire. There were many untied ponies dancing around and drinking, oblivious to the cries of help from the ponies on the ground. What was going on? As soon as the thought crossed his mind, there was a great commotion. “Hey, he’s up!” said one pony. “Get Rose!” said another. Rose? The pony he’d just tortured in his outdoor shack? Why was she here? Had her friends came and saved her? If so, why did they take him here and not to the police? What were they planning to do to him? “What’s going on? Where am I?” he asked. “You’re in Everfree forest, bro.” Bro? “And you get the honor of being Rose’s first.” First what? Where was Rose? “Oh Cobalt!” a familiar voice called from a few yards away. It was Rose. “Rose, what’s happening? Why am I here?” he asked. Rose said nothing, she only came to her knees and began to rub his face passionately. “Oh it’s nothing special really, it’s just that I’ve never had the chance to go this before.” She said. “Everypony else puts on a costume this time of year, don’t they?” Rip-Gore nodded. “Well…” Rose said, looking back to all of her friends, now standing over their tied partners. She nodded to all of them as a green light, and turned her head back to Rip-Gore. “…we get to take ours off.” Rose threw her head back to face the clouds, and all of her skin disappeared to reveal a deep black undercoat. Her body was filled with holes, and her eyes were glowing a vibrant green. Letting out a deep and powerful growl, she spread out her bat-like wings and laughed in amusement. After one last look into Rip-Gore’s fear stricken eyes, she drove her face into his chest and proceeded to feast on his entrails. Rip-Gore’s piercing scream cut through the silent night, and then like all of the other doomed ponies, it died away to nothing more than a whisper lost in the wind.