Another boring day in school when suddenly... he walked in.

"Hello everyone. I am Funny Mouth.  I like to lick the blood out of in the person.  I see your handsome face, don't be so sad about it."  

Nopony said a word after that.  Actually, right after he said that, he just walked out of the classroom.  The teacher wasn't in the room, so she wasn't there to see that.  

After school, I went to go talk to my friend, Jorge

"Holy buck, what the hay!" he said to me.

"Did that actually happen?" I asked.

"Yes, Skull. Yes it did."  

The first thing I should probably note is that I'm Lemon Lime.  He calls me skull because that's my nickname.

That was the first time I saw or heard from "funnymouth", and for all intents and purposes, it should've been the last. Anyone who's spent enough time in school knows that weirdos come and go. Folks pop in for a week or two, then suddenly move away.  

What first struck me as odd about the Funny Mouth guy, however, was the fact that he came and went with no particular GOAL. He didn't try to piss anyone off.  He just walked into a random classroom, and said... that.  

He just stuck his head in, rattled off some insane words, and happily bucked off.

"So really though, what the hay?"  I ask.

"Not a clue."  he replies

I glance over, and I see that Funny Mouth kid.  He's a pale gray colt, with white hair.  

"He's just over there if you want to go ask him what his deal is."  I tell him.

"I do not sir. I'll just wait for you."  He walks over to a bench, and sits down.  I chuckle a bit, call him a wuss, and go towards Funny Mouth (Who even came up with that name?)

I don't know what results I expected from following this pony. I'm not the type that goes out of his way to annoy or argue with people. I'll usually avoid it at all costs, though, once someone starts with me I don't mind getting into it at THAT point.

I guess what I'm saying is I have no idea why I pursued this.

I casually walk up to him, and say the first thing that pops into my head, "Hey there."  

He doesn't say anything.  He sits there and stares at me.  The situation is a little awkward, but I manage to pull off a little smile.  

"So... you're staring at me.  That's rude."  I say.

"Sorry,"  Funny Mouth says. "I just do it.  It's okay."

"I see."  this conversation is becoming incredibly strange.

He just kept staring at me.  

I actually chuckled out loud at this point. He was weird and inoffensive.  

"You can come and hang out with my friend and I.  If you want,"  I offer him my kindness.  Maybe that's all he really wants.  A friend. He just kept staring at me. "Or not."

He's still staring.

"Whatever, man, you just seemed interesting and I've got nothing better to do today."

"I am bored tonight too."  he says. "I always don't."

"...You always don't what?"

"I always dont thats it!"  He suddenly starts to yell.  I can feel the eyes of a dozen more fillies and colts looking directly towards us. "I always dont because they dont and theeennnn.  I get silly."  The way he said 'then' scared me.  

I needed to get away from this guy.  "O-kay. Well, seeya around."  I turned around, and kept walking towards Jorge.  I still felt Funny Mouth's eyes on me.  

"What happened over there?"  

"I don't even know anymore.  I seriously don't know what he was saying." Jorge didn't say anything in return.

"What's sad is that, he seems like he doesn't have any friends here."  

Later that day, I was attending a hoof-ball game when I saw Funny Mouth again.  I was waiting in line for a bathroom, when I noticed he was in the bathroom as well.  Creepers have to go as well, apparantly.

I physically slumped my shoulders with a "not this again" sigh.  That's when I noticed... nopony else could see him.  He was there, but nopony paid attention to him.  He was standing in line, staring at me, while ponies just took his place.  I was about to protest, but he didn't seem to care.  

After a few minutes of sitting there with a really cold, creepy feeling in my stomach... that "I shouldn't have done something" feeling... I decided to stop trying to brave it out and just walked out of the bathroom.

Sure, I COULD have just hung out like everything was fine, but why bother try to prove I wasn't spooked? Hay, nobody was even around to see me slink away.

I had to hold in the pee that I held inside me, and I walked home.  Then I went straight to sleep.

One thing I've always prided myself on is that I do NOT have nightmares. At least not regularly. Usually, if there are monsters or ghosts or nuclear wars in my dream, I get to control it and I have a great time. I'm shooting zombies in the face, outright telling ghosts they're not real while I laugh at them, and if there's some disaster, I always know how to get to the safe spot while every other pony fries.

I've had maybe four ACTUAL nightmares in the past ten years, and yes I'm completely serious.

The first nightmare of my  life was eight years ago, when I was really young. I'd just been rejected by the mare that I was infatuated with. That night, when I finally DID get to sleep, I dreamt she was strapped down to a medical table while some sort of unseen, inexplicable creature sucked her brain out through an organic machine.

The brain screamed. Ceaselessly.

The second nightmare had me visiting a medical facility where they were experimenting with new methods of saving lives. There was a fantastic tour of this high-tech facility, lots of wonders of modern science, people in lab coats, etc. then, I was lead to a room where three car crash victims had been "saved" by their techniques. This included a slowly rocking young filly whose face had been completely distended and hung next to her neck and a woman who was nothing but a cluster of twitching severed limbs, all held together by a drawn-out, kite-like span of flesh.

The third came soon after the second. I was being accosted by two ponies - one who wanted to insult me to no end, and the other who kept trying to poke and tweak me in absurdly ineffective ways. Thinking I could control this dream like others, I set the two men against each other, thinking it would be a sort of poetic justice.

Instead, the pincher became increasingly violent until he was punching the other's cheeks, grabbing his tongue with his unicorn magic and furiously pulling at it until it came out... Then he pulled the fellow's eyelids until they distended in some sort of grotesque prolapse.

I suppose what I'm getting at is that even when I DID have nightmares, I was never the actual target of any sort of horror. It's always been a kind of empathetic horror related to someone else getting brutalized.

This night, however, was different. As soon as I fell asleep, I started dreaming. Basically, it was a recurring dream I have where I'm in the woods, just checking out animals and birds and generally acting chill. I lie in the grass and look up at the sky. It's always a dream I welcome, because even if I've had a bad day, I'll wake up happy and ready to start over.

This time, the script changed. I laid in the grass... but while I was staring at the sky, I felt something odd.

It was a cold, squirming feeling on my neck.

In the dream, I reached to my neck and pulled away a long, writhing earth worm. Earth worms disgust me. If I see one in the yard, I'll specifically get a shovel and heap dirt over it simply so I don't accidentally SEE it again.

Disgusted, but more or less content, I flung the worm aside and continued my dream.

Then... that feeling again. Clammy, wet, wiggling against the side of my neck.

I pulled another worm away.

Again, it happened.

The third time, the feeling of confusion and dread became so overwhelming that I immediately snapped myself out the dream. That's what usually happens when crap gets real in my dreams. Game over.

I figured it out, though. At least, I thought I had. In the waking world, I felt my neck and discovered a slick, slimy film on my skin. Logic dictated that I must've been drooling in my sleep. Nothing to be proud of, but not exactly terrifying, either. My dreaming mind must've translated the icky feeling into an appropriate creature in the forest dream.

Perhaps more unsettling, though, was the fact that the bed around me seemed to have indentations. Four, to be exact. It was almost as if somepony had been hovering over me as I slept.

There was any number of reasons that could've happened... but from then on that night, I slept very lightly. Any little thing, like the sound of a ceiling fan, would wake me up straight away. I had no real interest in going back to the woods that night.

When morning came around, I got ready to go to school.  But as I was walking out the door, my mother stopped me.  

"Lemon, you got a letter today."  She handed it to me, and walked out the door.  Off to work for her.

I had the feeling that I knew who sent me the letter.  I opened with one of moms letter openers.

Surprise!

Dear Lemon Lime

          i had a good time to talk to you it can b fun aagain youll see what.  i dont like stop it

One thing that bugs me like nothing else, is when somepony constantly ignores grammar and spelling.  It's one of my biggest peeves.

As you probably recall, I hadn't given this weirdo my mail address. However, logicial answer, someone else must have. He obviously asked someone who I was, and that douche bag completely betrayed me, knowing I don't give out my personal info.

Even though I well and truly KNEW I was taking some sort of bait, I responded.

Dear Funny Mouth

Uhhhm, yeah bro. Not exactly sure I want you e-mailing me.

It was clear and to the point. There was no mistaking the message I was sending, and though it was snippy, I wasn't goading him into replying by starting a flame war.

But, of course...

Dear Lemon Lime

come on

dont be so sad about it

i know u can like it we will have fun a lot of the time

its okay even

I got rid of the letters.  Even if I saw him at school the next day, I wouldn't bother giving him a second glance. Really, I should've done that in the first place, but I still had some sick sort of interest in exactly where this was going. Maybe if I put my foot down, he would admit he was just screwing around and call me a humorless wet blanket. When I saw it was just the same old bullcrap, that gave me the green light to go ahead and shut the guy out.

For what it's worth, you can relax at this point. There was no follow-up message.

After a few minutes, I assured myself that was all over and I went about my day. It wasn't until I got home at dusk that the cold, squirming feeling in my stomach started all over again... and I had no idea WHY.

Well, that's not entirly true. I had SOME idea.

I checked my e-mail.

Nothing from "Funny Mouth", however there WAS a letter from Jorge.

Dear Lemon Lime

Hey.

My parents are going to be gone for the weekend.  Is it cool if I stay at your place?

Peace & Carrots,

Jorge

I quickly replied to him that it would be okay, I just had to ask my mom about it.  

And with that, I went to school.  

When I returned home from school, I got all of these.

Dear Lemon Lime

i see ur handsome face

Dear Lemon Lime

helo buddie

Dear Lemon LIme

come on

Dear Lemon LIme

helo

Dear Lemon Lime

heleo helo ehelo

Dear Lemon LIme

i dont want to not

Dear Lemon Lime

i dont think about it please though

Dear Lemon Lime

i see ur handsome face

And the last letter had... some picture of a face.

There was this bloated, tongue-wagging face looking back at me with its empty eye sockets.

Then, I don't know how I missed it in the first place...

Looking closely, the picture of that face wasn't really pixelated. It was made of tiny letters.

Over and over again, the word that made up the image was right in front of me. "funnymouthfunnymouthfunnymouthfunnymouth" in a great cluster of nonsense.

I felt like spitting on the paper.

I set about writing an incredibly profane and threatening letter. I didn't really care if I hurt his feelings or whatever, I just wanted to get everything off my chest so I could feel like I was in control of the situation again.

Before I could finish the letter... I just got this weird, creepy feeling again. That "No, it couldn't be..." feeling where you know you're being absurd, but at the same time you know you're right...

I stopped hacking out my death threats.

Dear Funny Mouth

BUCKING STOP!!

I was getting a stress headache. My heart was pounding, not from fear - but rage. This was probably the most absurdly infuriating pony - and that's saying a lot.

Thankfully, the string of letters did indeed stop.

I tried to calm myself down, breathing deeply, but it didn't seem to take. I was still incredibly pissed. Slowly, methodically, I sent him another note.

From: Charles Watts <[email protected]> Sat, Nov 17, 2012 at 7:21 PM

To: [email protected]

Hi.

I don't understand what you are saying and I do not understand what you want. I think there may be a language barrier. Is your first language English?

If you are mad at me, I did not intend this to happen. You may have misunderstood what I said, or what I meant.

Thank you, Lemon Lime

I waited.

I thought about how I'd conquered my anger, and that this measured response was really the best way to go about it. This fellow would understand what I meant. He'd realize the mistake he made.

I calmed down. Everything was going to be okay.

Then...

Dear Lemon Lime

O)_(O

I hit the roof.

I hit the Celestia damned roof and went clear through it.

I went on a temper tantrum around my house.  My mother wasn't home, but she would be incredibly pissed to see the house like this.  And my friend had to stay for the weekend.  I cleaned everything up after my little episode.

For as long as I could manage the energy, I laid waste to my own stuff. I would've started a fire and burned the bucking place down if I had a lighter on hand.

That night, I stared at the ceiling for what felt like an eternity before sleep came.

Waiting for sleep, I knew I was going to have a nightmare. I just KNEW it. That was how my luck was going. Imagine how surprised I was, even in sleep, when instead of some horrific setting, I was someplace safe...

The woods.

I laid in the grass again. I felt the relaxation. I knew, even my subconscious knew, that everything would be okay. No matter what setbacks life threw at me, the world would go on. Nothing was permanent. Everything was in transition. Nopony could REALLY get to me.

I felt the squirming against my neck.

Nope. No dice. Nothing could spoil this right now. I ignored the worm. It would go away.

I felt the squirming move to my mouth. Now, I couldn't will myself awake. Every other time, I'd been able to decide to wake up... but it seemed like that opportunity had now passed.

Then, it wasn't a worm. It was a severed hoof. Then another. Then more until four slimy, squirming hooves were locked around my head, clutching my lower jaw.

It didn't hurt when it happened.

It was just... sort of like a "pop". More pressure than pain.

It was quick and before I even knew what was going on, it was over.

I then managed to force myself awake. I sat up and got to my feet in complete darkness. Feeling my way around the walls, I made my way into the bathroom. There, I finally flicked a light switch.

I stood before the mirror, rubbing my eyes as the harsh light blinded me.

I stared into the mirror for minutes on end with no reaction. No feelings. No thoughts.

Then I smiled.

I smiled as best I could, now that my jaw was completely broken, hanging loose around my neck. My tongue lolled out listlessly, like a paralyzed, gooey slug.

My teeth weren't rooted in anything but threads of flesh, and I could pull them out by hoof with about the same discomfort as a needle prick.

I laughed, the halting sound coming out like the gurgle of a backed-up sewer drain.

What a handsome face!

What a funny mouth!

A funnymouth!

A funnymouth funnymouth funnymouth!

I turned around, and I saw Funny Mouth with the same kind of mouth as me.  "Now we both are Funny Mouth!"

"Hello.  I see your handsome face.  You don't need to be so upset about it."

"What the buck man, how did you get in my house?"  

I stared at him, and so did Funny Mouth.  He was going to become one of us, and it was going to be the best thing ever.  We walked closer to him.

"What are you guys doi-"