The room was silent as the starlit night permeated every inch of it. The cozy enclosure was free of voices, unshackled by the restraints of conscious hope and the lucid dreams of presumed safety. Sapient life, however, was not altogether absent from it. For in a great bed of royal designation, an Alicorn sat upright as she could. She held her sheets to her breast, unable to summon the courage to move whilst her full attention was dedicated to the figure above her bed.

It stood there, a steady pulse of hissing breath the only signal that it was a living entity instead of some twisted embodiment of death herself. The whispering air was explained by the gleam of moonlight across a devilish grin bared by a row of warped orange teeth, presumably the only distinct feature of the thing that light dared to reveal. The Alicorn could feel the damnable thing staring at her through the inky still of her bedroom, the obese quiet lasting until she could bear it no longer. Mustering as much authority as her voice could handle in this moment, her voice demanded answer for the only inquiry on the forefront of her mind.

“What do you want from me?”

To her dismay, the thing seemed indifferent to the sovereignty behind her bidding, choosing instead to only take a single step towards her. She braced for an attack when it extended a limb towards her, horn glowing with a personal shielding summon readied. And then the damned thing spoke.

"Twilight, are you okay?"

Her eyes were bloodshot, her hooves shaking, and her eyelid twitched as she tried to concentrate on the breakfast placed before her on the kitchen table. She didn't sleep at all last night, and her nerves were completely fried. The images in her head burned into the forefront of her conscious mind so intensely that she only barely heard her friend's inquiry. That thing just kept staring at her with those... those amethyst-colored eldritch abominations she chose to understand as eyes. It eventually retreated into the shadows once the first hour struck, but no trace of it was left when the light of Celestia's merciful sun shone in.

"No," she replied with a shiver, "I am decidedly not okay."

"Oh, bad dream?" Starlight tilted her head, giving her mentor an empathetic look as she stabbed her fork into another pancake. Twilight's face went pale as Starlight's silent slicing of her pancake echoed into her ears. It was quiet enough that nopony else would've even noticed it, but Twilight heard it as loud as fireworks.

Teeth.

That was the same sound those putrid teeth made every time the creature's gums so much as flinched away from that abhorrent grin it wore so proudly. That grin betrayed only the most brutal and depraved of innermost agendas. That grin could bite into the still-beating heart of a young foal and remain unchanged. The horrid mischief behind That grin could send Discord fleeing in dread.

Twilight's eyes drifted up to Starlight's, and held that desperate contact for what felt like a thousand years before she dared utter anything.

"A 'bad dream'?" She said with a cold look. "I pray to Celestia it was..."

"That bad, huh?" Starlight quirked her brow, ignorant and skeptical of the urgency of her teacher's plight. "What was it about?"

"It..." Twilight swallowed her breath, trying to slow down her heart. "It was some... some sloth-human-mole-thing. And it was just... standing by my bed. Staring at me."

Starlight set down her fork, and stepped down from her stool to walk over to Twilight.

"Hey," she assured smoothly, trying her best to comfort the quivering mare. "It's okay, Twilight. I'm right here, it was just a dream, no monster is going to lay even a finger on you."

"But what if it wasn't?" Twilight still shuddered, holding back frightened tears. "I don't remember falling asleep, or waking up! I'm sure I was awake all night with that... that thing in the room!"

Starlight quickly hugged Twilight firmly, rubbing her shoulder soothingly.

"Hey, I've had plenty of dreams like that. Believe me, you wake up thinking everything was real." She let herself step back from the hug, and gave Twilight a supportive smile. "Why don't you go talk to Fluttershy? I'm sure she has experience helping ponies with this sort of thing."

Twilight eventually conceded that a nice, calm walk to Fluttershy's seemed like a healthy way to at least partially settle her nerves. Surely an hour with the soothing tones of her most introverted friend would once again prove as therapeutic as a weekend at the spa. On any other day, the chill breeze of the summer afternoon would usually be an effective prefix to such a detox, but the groaning of the trees made the hair on her neck stand on end.

Do you wanna see my tricks?

That was it.

That voice like aged wood in the wind, or a diseased toad under the crack in the floor. Surely that creature must have been some sort of perversion of the tortured soul of an ancient circus jester? In an entirely different realm of context, what she saw would've- no, should have -been vastly hilarious, but no. Those repulsive, sloth-like arms with hands resembling some demented parody of humankind had reached out to her. In her mind, she could still feel them, even as if they were at the back of her neck. Twilight hurried herself down the road, the easing trek becoming more of a panicked jog once her heart began to race. At such a frantic pace, it wasn't long until Fluttershy's cottage was within her sight.

As expected at this time of day, Fluttershy herself was happily humming and examining her garden for any plants that needed watering. Her gentle demeanor and cheerful tune was exactly what Twilight needed after such a horrific dream. She was about to call out to her friend when she saw it.

There it was, lurking inside the cottage, and staring right at Twilight through the window. Wearing that unchanging, toothy smirk. But this time it had the luxury of bathing in broad daylight, a circumstance Twilight wished she'd never born witness to as it revealed more of this affront to nature, revealing things that shook Twilight to her soul's core.

It was wearing Trixie's hat.

Twilight hadn't noticed any movement from Trixie's wagon this morning, nor had she seen her since dusk last night. The troubling implications that came from this thing's choice of headgear paralyzed the poor pony, surely that was the only cap of its kind in all of ponyville! The mutant must have done something to Trixie if she allowed it to wear her hat so openly.

"Hey, man! I didn't see you there,"

Twilight jumped with a scream as something poked her shoulder, but was relieved to see the concerned eyes of Fluttershy staring back at her. She quickly caught Fluttershy in a desperate embrace, burying her face into her friend's shoulder, and letting her fear and frustration spill out.

"Hey, hey man." Fluttershy said softly, awkwardly comforting the sobbing Princess. "It'll be okay, Twi. I'm sure everything will be fine."

"R-run..." Twilight urged, still holding the Pegasus tightly. "It's in your house, you need to run!"

"What's in my house?"

Twilight pulled her head back just enough to point into the now-empty window. "That orange... thing! It... it was in your window, staring at me!" Fluttershy looked at the window in question curiously, still slowly smoothing Twilight's mane with her hoof.

"I don't know what you mean, man." She asserted quietly. "The only thing in my house right now is Jolly."

Twilight froze. Something sounded different about Fluttershy. Her voice was the same as it's always been, but her cadence and vocabulary felt... off. She sounded like she was raised in Californeigh instead of Cloudsdale. And that wasn't the only revelation the morning brought.

The damned thing had a name.

"RAINBOW DASH!"

Twilight trotted through the streets of Ponyville, shivering as the-- as "Jolly" slowly stalked behind her, resting its bottom half on an all-too familiar scooter. Fluttershy insisted that Twilight's fear would be sated if she just spent some time with this thing, so she decided to take it through town and introduce it to her friends. All the more eyes to keep an eye on it, after all.

It wasn't long until they found Rainbow napping on a rather large cloud a mere eight meters above the ground near the Centerpiece Fountain. Twilight turned to Jolly, barely presenting the courage to make eye contact.

"Stay here, and I'll see if I can get her down."

Reluctantly, she turned her back to the visitor, spreading her wings to fly up to Rainbow. She closed her eyes as she landed on the fluffy surface, pondering her choice. Should she really expose Rainbow to this horrific thing, and destroy her innocent unawareness? Twilight steeled her resolve and opened her eyes as she stepped forward to wake Rainbow.

Only to be greeted by the sight of the creature- now several times smaller than before -leaning out from behind the prismatic mane as if it was Pinkie's own.

"Do you wanna see my tricks?" It boasted, drawing out its lanky arm and extending a warped finger. Before Twilight could stop him, the tip of his finger gently bopped the center of Rainbow's forehead.

There was a sound something like a great drumbeat, and the Pegasus' eyes opened. She sat up, the orange menace stuck firmly in her hair as she turned to give Twilight a blank stare. Rainbow smiled, and spoke in a clear, relaxed, semi-masculine tone.

"Hello,"

"RARITY!" Twilight screamed as she raced into the Carousel Boutique, throwing the doors open with such desperate fury that they nearly splintered. "RARITY, something terrible is happening to our friends! Some orange demon is completely altering everypony's personalities just by touching them!"

Rarity's ears perked up at the urgency in Twilight's voice, and she whirled around, clearly caught off her guard.

"Oh! Uhm, heyyy, uhm, Twilight!"

The Alicorn skidded to a stop, her features going pale as reality confronted her.

"No... no, no, NO!"

"Uhm... you wanna buy a dress?"

She sat there, alone in her old house. For once in her life, she knew what it felt like to be the last one left. Everypony she knew, for all she could gleam, was gone. Erased forever. The Princesses. Her friends. Her town. Her family. Her brother. The faces remained familiar, but the bodies were drained of all that made them her friends, replaced with some cruel exaggeration of their worst traits. Some dark, abridged parody of the individuals they used to be.

Her very breathing would have echoed through her foalhood study, her last hope of sanctuary, had the bookshelves not absorbed and muted even the quietest prayer for help. She glanced up in time to see the cursed finger inches away from her forehead, and she closed her eyes with a sigh.

There was some sort of cruel justice to all this after all, wasn't there? She'd die as she was born.

Alone, surrounded by books.

The wind howled in Twilight's mane as the chariot carried her and some dragon towards the rural town of Ponyville. She felt like she should have been able to make the flight herself, but she was born a Unicorn, not a Pegasus. The spell keeping their golden carriage aloft wavered for a moment, causing a small amount of turbulence that made the dragon stumble. He gave Twilight a curious look before deciding someone should finally break the hour-long silence.

"Hi," he greeted casually. His raspy, relaxed voice a tribute to his social nature - an unusual trait for dragons. "My name's Spike, what's your name?"

"Uh, Twilight."

"Huh, nice to meet you." Spike said with a broad smile, waiting for Twilight to return the typical response before continuing.

"So, I guess we're going to be roomies?"

All credit for the idea and the meme itself goes to Scootertrix Studios. Also props to Scootertrix for helping out with the story.
Yes, that Scootertix.
I can know people... right?

This is written entirely for the sake of entertainment, this is not the official origins of Scootertrix the Abridged by any means.

As always, please leave feedback and opinions in the comments below. Give a thumbs up if you liked it, thumbs down if you didn't.