I don't know how long I was out cold. I just know I woke up with a splitting headache, staring up at the night sky. It looked... odd. I couldn't tell you why. Too bright, I think. Too purple-y. Whatever. I wasn't in a state to think it over though. I blamed it on being dazed from the blow to my forehead, and sat up.

I groaned and carefully felt my head with one hand-- then tried again, this time removing the metal gauntlet first. No blood, no bones shifting around or soft spots or anything. Nice big fat goose-egg on my forehead though. I guessed I was okay. I retrieved my helmet, gingerly putting it back on. If current events were any indicator, my head probably needed the protection.

I got to my feet, wobbling a bit. I pulled a flashlight out of my belt (safety first, kids) and took a wary look around. I was in a grassy clearing, surrounded on all sides by trees. Behind me was a statue of... a winged horse? I did a double take. Yep, a winged horse. Winged unicorn, I corrected. Wearing armor. I looked closer; it had fangs, too... the hell? What kind of lawn ornament was this?

Where the heck was I? I didn't know of anybody who'd plant something like this in their back yard.

There was a noise out among the trees. I turned and saw lamplight in the distance. Something told me I'd better be careful; wherever the heck I was, I sure wasn't invited, and I was pretty sure whoever owned this place wasn't expecting guests. Or maybe they were--- and considering how I'd arrived, that didn't seem like a real good thing either. I switched off my flashlight, turned off my glowing eyes, and hid behind the base of the statue, my back to the cold stone, hoping my all-black costume would disappear in the shadows.

Beams of lamplight started flickering across the clearing. I heard people chattering, mostly children. They were all chattering about what a great haul they'd gotten, and a couple of grownups telling them to all stay together.... Trick or treaters? I got sucked up by some weird evil black portal through time and space just to be dropped on some trick or treaters? I stayed hidden and listened as the children came tumbling into the clearing.

After a few second a female voice spoke. "All right children, it's time for the Nightmare Night story. Everyone gather round and listen to Zecora." Nightmare Night? Zecora? Another woman spoke up, this one with a much deeper voice and the fakest African accent... I'm serious. I know people like this. Black people who change their name to "Kumbaya" or whatever and try to talk like they hang out in Mother Africa with Nelson Mandela.

" Follow me and very soon you'll hear the tale of Night Mare Moon. Listen close my little dears, and I'll tell you where you got your fears, of Nightmare Night, so dark and scary. Of Night Mare Moon, who makes you wary..."

I rolled my eyes and stifled a groan. Some parents or teachers were doing some sort of "oh how cute" little halloween outing for a batch of rugrats, complete with a cutesy pootsy little ghost story. In rhyme. I listened in... unwillingly... while Sister Shaka Zulu went on, Doctor Seussing the kids about some boogyman she made up called Nightmare Moon, and hoo boy, you better fork over some candy as tribute to the statue or she'll get mad-- all of it in rhyme, of course. I'd heard variations of that old wheeze when I was a kid. I had always loved it when they'd done that with us; it had meant I'd be sneaking back after everyone left and scoring an entire extra bag of free candy.

Then came offering of the tribute. I hunkered down as small as I could while I listened to the kids shuffle up through the fallen leaves to drop their loot at the foot of the statue. I wasn't feeling sentimental or anything, but popping out of the shadows and accidentally scaring the tootsie rolls out of a bunch of trick-or-treaters and getting the adults all mad at me was a headache I didn't want. I would just wait until they dropped their candy and left. Of course then I'd be swiping some of it for myself, but hey.

The little rugrats were taking forever, it seemed like. Apparently the kids were a bunch of marshmallows, and were scared of the statue. I could hear the adults chivvying some of them to man up and walk up to the statue. After about the fourth kid had to be wheedled into making the march up, I started getting impatient. "Jeez, already," I grumbled.

Did I mention I forgot to turn off the voice-changing microphone in my helmet?

My words came out in a bass rumble loud enough to hear across the clearing. I slapped my hand over my facemask, but it was too late. I heard the crowd on the other side of the statue gasp. Some of the kids let out little screams. Aw sh$%t.

"Somepony's back there!" I heard a little girl shout. (somepony?) Footsteps pattered through the leaves and a flashlight beam bobbled, heading around the statue in my direction.

"Sunny, no, stay back!" Whoever Sunny was she didn't listen. Crap, they would have some brave little idiot in the group. I braced myself for what was coming and turned to get to my feet, just as the kid came galloping around the statue.

Then my brain broke.

It was a pony. A cartoon pony, one that came up no higher than my knee. She had bright pink fur and a bright yellow mane and huge blue cartoony eyes. And she was wearing a bumblebee costume. She had paper bags slung over her back like a pair of panniers, and she was carrying a flashlight in her mouth.

It... I just... I swear, I could literally hear my brain make a sound like a cartoon spring shooting out of the back of a cartoon clock. I dunno, I think it was just all those things at once that did it. I could have handled one or two of them; the fact she was tiny, or pink, or even that she was talking, for crying out loud-- but not all at once. I think it was the bumblebee costume that put it over the top, really. All of it together was like getting whacked in the face with a wet flounder.

I mean... a freaking bumblebee costume.

She froze and stared up at me. I froze and stared down at her. "What... the... HELL???" I bellowed. My voice changer made it come out like the bellow of a dyspeptic gorilla.

She screamed, the flashlight dropping from her gaping mouth and bouncing away across the grass. She spun around and galloped back the way she came.

I'd always wondered why Alice had chased after that rabbit. I mean, common sense tells you that she should have gone the other way. I think I understood where her head was, after that. You see something that unreal, it's like you just have to follow it, just to keep it in sight till your brain can decide whether it believes what your eyes are telling it.

I looked around the corner of the pedestal.

They were all ponies. Ponies or horses, whatever. There were about a dozen of them standing there, mostly little knee-high ones, but one or two who came up to about my waist. The adults, I figured. They were dressed in all sorts of costumes, and most were carrying bags of candy in their mouths. The adults were standing in front, pawing the ground, some of them had their horns leveled in my direction (Horns?!?) or flaring their wings at me. (Wings?!!?!?) Leading the group was a zebra in a witch costume. "Come out of there, you big disgrace! Quit hiding and show your face!" she shouted, in that pseudo-african accent.

Poleaxed, I came staggering out of the shadows after her, slapping the side of my helmet, trying to jar my brain back in place, accidentally turning my glow-eyes back on in my attempts to commit percussive maintenance on my skull. I looked up and knew a little head-slap wasn't going to fix things. Beep. We're sorry, the Ted you have dialed has been disconnected. Please try again later. Poit! I staggered out of the shadows and into the lamplight. "THE FUGG ARE YOU?" I screamed in Vader-ese.

The crowd... herd... got a load of me in my spike-studded death metal glory. All the foals screamed.

"Suh-WEET Aunt Jemima's do-rag!" the zebra screamed, rearing with her eyes bugged out. "Aw HAIL no! Run for it, y'all!" All of them turned and ran in a stampede.

The screams and stampeding hooves faded in the distance. I don't know which way they went. I was too busy screaming and running in the other direction.

I ran off blind, gibbering and arghlebargling to myself as I flailed through the forest, tripping over rocks and banging headlong into trees.  I was concussed, I was insane, I was drugged, that was it, Oh @#% someone had slipped me some acid at the party, that had to be it, LSD in that bottle of beer or mescaline in the mesquite barbeque...

I don't know how far I ran or how long, just that I kept going till I was so tired I couldn't run for all the stumbling. I finally regained some of my senses. This could not be happening, yes, I know it's a cliche', I know everyone says that in these stories but that's because all you can say when reality goes on a bender is THIS CANNOT BE HAPPENING, and it's a hell of a lot more meaningful when you're really going through it and not just sitting comfortably in a chair someplace reading about it with narrative omniscience on your side.

But whatever was happening, a piece of me knew I was panicking, and panicking was bad. I clutched the sized of my helmet with my hands."Get a grip, Ted," I said through gritted teeth, "Get a grip, get a grip, get a GRIP--" I was sliding into a panic attack--

And suddenly I... wasn't. For a real short second, the world around me went greeny-black-purple, like the lenses on my helmet had been tinted. This was it; a blood vessel must've burst in my brain....Then there was this sort of rush through my body, spreading out in a wave from my chest, and I was calm again.

I can't explain it or describe it. People don't do that. They don't go from having reality itself flipped upside down on them to being perfectly rational and adapted and crap. The thought about drugs at that party crossed my mind again;  I haven't mellowed that fast since that time I went to the ER with a broken leg and the docs bombed me out on morphine. But I squashed that that thought as fast as I could with another: DEAL WITH IT.

I pushed that thought hard, squeezed out anything else that tried to sneak into my head. Whatever had just happened, had happened. It didn't matter if it was a dream or a hallucination or an acid trip or whatever. If I was going to survive I needed to stay calm and trust my senses.  I was just going to have to ride it out.

The adrenaline crash hit me a second later. I had stumbled up to an enormous fallen tree, a hollow log big enough for a small car to fit in. Ignoring the smell of decaying wood, I crawled back into the dark and collapsed on the dry earth and grass inside. Pink and yellow ponies, black-light tornadoes, bumblebee costumes, all of it, I could deal with in the morning. I wrapped my ratty fake-fur cloak around me and was out in an instant.