There the white mare lay, in the middle of a small, abandoned hotel room, surrounded by four limp bodies. Next to her was a small tape recorder and a dulled scalpel which foretold a grim future for the helpless nurse. Her eyes slid open as the tape started to play, as though on cue.

"Hello Miss Redheart."

Her eyes grew wide with fear, "No." her voice, but a whisper.
"I want to play a game."

She shook her head and rubbed her eyes, trying to take in the full aspect of what was happening. Even when she felt like she was fully awake, she still couldn't believe what she heard.

"It can't be," she whispered as she awaited the bottomless voice to speak again.

Leaving no time for her to fully process her situation, the pony on the tape continued."In the room you are in you will find four bodies."

She could now understand the severity of the situation, causing fear to loom over her heart. She felt like a small animal that had nested inside an old and quite decrepit redwood which was caught in the ferocity of a tyrannical storm, at the whim of a greater power which tore it apart mercilessly.

Her attention was taken from the recorder to the room's surroundings. As he said, there were four bodies laying, spread across the room. Redheart was used to seeing dead bodies, it was her job after all, but for a game... "It's just sick…" She muttered shakily.

"Once this recording reaches an end, there will be an acidic spray that will rain down on the room you are in. The acid will fill your lungs and burn your flesh. You will only have two minutes to find the key submerged somewhere in the dead body of one of the ponies in this room before you have missed your chance at life."

The room felt musty as she broke out into a cold sweat. She looked from wall to wall. She concluded that the room had four sides, one with a door, one with a window, one with a bookshelf covering something painted on the wall and the final one had was bare. She tried to read the writing, in hopes of a hint, but the book case covered most of the writing up.
She got up to move the small case; the floor was rotted and splintered under her hooves. She passed one of the bodies, taking her attention off of the dark splintery planks; she lost her hooving and tumbled a bit, causing a loud, ominous creaking noise, as if the room were angry and crying out in pain. Cockroaches and termites scurried across the floor, trying to find new refuge, a few of them hiding under or in the mouths of the bodies.

With a glow of her horn, she moved the book shelf. Behind it read 'Your answer lies inside the heart.'
"What's that supposed to mean?" She raised her eyebrow.

"Heart…" She looked at the four ponies in the room.

"One dead, three alive". She glanced back over the other corner of the room where the door was, and saw it was chained up with a lock.

She realized the key must be in the heart of the dead pony, but which one was dead? She stared at the bodies once more. Her heart sank with the thought of her accidentally killing a pony she mistakenly deemed dead.

She glanced hastily over to the other wall of the room and saw a window covered by dusty curtains. She scanned the rest of the room and then quickly her eyes shot back to the window, realizing there may yet be an escape. She ran to it, hoping, yet knowing that it would be too easy to just climb out a window. Nevertheless she kept the hope alive. Frantically she pulled back the curtains and, to her soul crushing disappointment, saw a brick wall. She stumbled back, and took a few deep breaths to keep herself calm. The dust that was on the curtains flew into her mouth, not allowing her one moment of rest.

As time wore away at the room, the room wore away at her sanity.

She grabbed the scalpel and rushed to a body. She opened his eyelids to see if she could judge whether he was dead or alive. The acid misted down from the sprinkler systems, lightly falling, and slowly searing her fur. She began to grind her teeth, bottling even more of her fear and pain.

Realizing that this pony was alive, yet heavily sedated, she ran over to the next, closest body and repeated the cycle.
The recorder played once more, and she thought to herself, 'Did it ever even stop?'

"I hope you know how easy the Equestrian life is, Nurse Redheart. Beyond their rose-colored, sunshine and butterfly life, there are other races of this world that are starving, fighting, and dug deep in the trenches of war. Just carry on day to day, acting as if your problems really matter. But you, dear nurse, you're different, aren't you? You have a burning secret hiding your pain."

The nurse's knees began to shake in fear of something that has been haunting her coming back up to bite her. "He can't," She whispered.

"Yes, I know, your life is a true Hell. All because of one slip up. You think that no one saw you. Well, you're wrong, nurse."
She closed her eyes, hoping that he didn't know her secret, hoping that he was just lying to get inside her head.
"I was there, I saw what you did. I know that your very special somepony had an accident in the Ghastly Gorge. His wing was clipped by a falling rock, and while on his decent to the ground, what must have felt to him as truly his end, he hit a jutting rock, and it broke his ribcage, damaging his heart. I know you were on duty that night, you saw that his heart was giving out, and I know that you took another life to save his."

The scene was coming back to her, the scene that she tried to suppress for so long now, it was all coming back.
The nurse sat by her boyfriend's side, despite the other ponies in the hospital that may have needed her care. His heart monitor was beeping alarmingly slowly and his body had become unresponsive. She knew what was about to happen. His heart was going to give out, and there were no donors to save him. She cried while caressing his fur, the memories of the valiant stallion pouring into her head. She sat up in the moonlit room and decided that she wasn't going to sit idly by while the one she loved died.

She thought of donors that would work, ones with the same blood type.

"Yes!" She knew of the perfect donor, one with an O blood type. The one they found by a cabin the Everfree Forest with the blood of another pony covering his grey fur. 'This sicko doesn't even deserve to live,' she thought. She tried to remember what room he was in and quickly rushed to it when she realized that he was sharing a room with the poor royal guard who was diagnosed with cancer. 'This is perfect. Nopony is on duty and nopony will miss this guy.'

Her dream was interrupted by Jigsaw's voice. "Yes, it's all coming back to you, isn't it? In the darkness of the night, you got me and my unlucky roommate mixed. You were in too much of a hurry. Too bad that the cancer had spread to his heart, and your dear lover died only one week later."
His voice faded away and the acid began to fall on her as she stood there crying, lamenting her loss, and the life she took in the process.

She wasn't able to ignore the pain anymore; the acid tore at her muscles, making it difficult to so much as move her legs. She couldn't hold it in any longer, and she screamed, a haunting shriek which bounced off the rotted walls and made its way back to her, causing her to shiver. She shrugged off the distress and ran to the next body.

Something snapped. She slowed down and stood there for a moment, letting the acid pour down her cheeks like tear drops. The only sound she could her was her heart beating and radiating through her body. A sharp ringing noise grew louder and louder in her ears. Closer and closer.

She screamed once more to try and drown out the ringing.

Bottling was no longer working for her. Through her life everyone, looked to her to be the calm one, but now it was all pouring out. She clenched her teeth, holding back the last bit of sanity she had left.

However, it was to no avail, and she started to chuckle, the pain turning to a warm burning which made her shiver excitedly.

"I'm already here, why not make the best of it," she thought to herself, lustfully glancing over to the body next to her. She tapped her hoof against the floor nervously, as if somepony was watching her. She stopped glancing and started to stare at him, no longer pondering what was right and what was wrong. She didn't care. Her mouth turned to a sharp, wicked grin, forcing the acid to curve its way around her smile, making it an even more horrifying sight for the pony drifting back to consciousness.

Her eyes were a-glimmer with the anticipation of taking a life.

Her chuckle turned into high pitched, cracked laughing as she cut wildly into the still living pony. His eyes shot open and he stared at the crazed, snow-white nurse, covered in scorching burns, wildly slashing at his chest. She savored ever moment of it. The scalpel almost felt as if it was about to break, but she didn't stop, not for a moment. She continued for what felt like an eternity, in blissful ecstasy.

With a deep lunge into his heart, his eyes rolled back into his skull. She stabbed until the area where his heart lay was just a slimy, ruby red chasm in his chest. She lowered her mouth to his chest, and tore out his heart, now ripped to ribbons, and held it up to the acid rain. She stopped for a moment and took a deep pleasure in hearing the rain mix with the still-pumping organ's juices. She threw the heart against the door and ran to the next body, this time with no hesitation.

She quickly cut his heart out and threw it against the floor stomping it until it was a bloody stain on the wood floor. She finally found the key to her freedom. With a grin, she picked it up and made her way to the door. She unlocked the door and felt like everything was slipping, slowly fading. The acid got into her eyes and blood ran from scorched red eyes.
As she stepped outside, she had to cover her eyes, for the sun was beating down on the lone hotel, now covered by trees and other weeds growing on the side of the long-dead relic. Time had left this monument to a city long passed to die, in the cold and unforgiving wilderness of the Everfree Forest.

She heard an approving chuckle from the side of the house. A pony stepped from the shadows where he had been watching in on his own game, a sick passion of his.

He gave her a smile, and she returned it with a blank stare into his red eyes. Not red like hers, but a dark burgundy red pupil which glimmered with hope and, at the same time, pure hate.

"As I expected, very well done, with only seconds to spare. I'll give you one more option. As you know, those ponies are still alive, at least two of them are. Well, the controls are right there." He motioned to the area he was standing, and then gave her a grin "That is, if you want to save them."

She looked to the controls, and back to him. She stayed still.

"I thought so. Isn't it fun to do away with your sanity? I can tell it's been eating away at you for some time. Holding away all those emotions because your job is strictly business. Hell, you've saved enough ungrateful lives, I'd say you deserve to gorge yourself on the anguish of others. Don't worry, they'll suffer. I gave them a drug that would allow them to feel, but not to move."

She now realized that the very same pony in front of her was the one that broke out of the hospital when he was diagnosed with a condition that was not released to her, or anypony she knew.

"Yes, yes, you remember me now don't you" He looked to the sky then sighed "Oh that night was magic. Funny, we're in the same forest where I found the light."

He kept staring at the sky.

"Well… I chose you when I saw what you went through at the hospital, I chose you because I knew you could get through this." Now, he stared back at her "I chose you because I can help you." He paused, and she stared in solemn anticipation. "And you can help me."

"I want to do what you do," she said immediately, now fully in control of her mental state.

"I thought you'd want to. Not many ponies want this, but," he stared at the cabin in another clearing only a few feet away, "it's nice, isn't it?"

Author's Note

I'm sorry it took so long to get this out. I've been writing short stories as practice for awhile now and about a month ago I lost internet connection for the rest of that month so. MLS will continue as planned.