Darkness.

The glow of light floated gently atop the surface of the water, moving surely but slowly, like an abandoned boat being pushed away by the gentle waves of an ocean. The light lingered lazily on the unclean water, the azure glow offering a consolation to the gloomy ambiance. Everything stood still. Movement was nonexistent.

A sudden burst of bubbles emanated from the tub as a unicorn jolted awake underneath the water. Dazed and confused, he screamed in alarm, but only created more bubbles. His wide-open mouth gave the water an opportunity to infiltrate it, sending a wave of cold, dirty water down his throat. His mouth clamped shut. He instinctively flailed his legs, striking something aside, but he did not wince in pain. Nothing could be seen from his perspective. He was desperate. Panicked. Fearful.

The stallion thrust up his torso, breaking the barrier of the water and the air above it with a dramatic splash. His head cleared through and wildly spit out the water that had nearly penetrated his lungs. His entire body was dripping with fluid. Shaking crazily as if he was being electrocuted, he lunged up, using his hooves as support as he frenziedly raised his body into a sitting position. The stallion coughed until the rancid taste of contaminated water had been banished from his taste buds.

The blue light that provided the only peace in the dismal room faded away as the water swiftly carried it down the drain of the tub.

He raised his hooves defensively. His right hoof made contact with the wall beside him. Using the wall as support, the stallion, with difficulty, raised his position so that he no longer sat in the tub he had been unconscious in for the past hour. He leaned on the wall, which he could tell was severely dilapidated and covered with grime by just using his sense of touch. He threw his other hoof over the left side of the tub, grabbing onto the edge. The water that drenched his vulnerable body caused him to slip once, but he managed to grasp onto it firmly on the second try. Without warning, his hooves collapsed, causing him to tumble over the side of the tub and onto the floor with a sickening crunch.

Still gasping in both confusion and realization of almost being drowned, the stallion brought himself up to his hooves. He stumbled forward a few steps, but he luckily used his hoof to prevent him from colliding into the wall in front of him. He heard a tinkling of chains, almost like the jingling of Christmas bells, taunting him in this situation. He felt furious. Enraged. Where the hell was he? How did he get here? What was going on? Questions rushed to his mind rapidly, but he had no answers to satiate them. The cold, metallic feeling of a steel fetter on his horn seized his attention. With a forehoof, he tried to pull the binding off of his horn. He pulled hard. He pulled with all of his might, grunting like an animal, choking back the sobs of pain with each pull. The chain jingled merrily. It didn’t budge. A few more futile tries later, he threw the confine down on the floor, giving up. But a sudden thought lit up in his mind. He could use his magic to free himself! Concentrating on the chain, he shut his eyes and willed his magic to the padlock that kept the chain in place. He started to sweat with the extreme concentration he put into the confine.

Nothing happened.

He gasped, opening his eyes. His magic didn’t work! The chain must have some magical property that renders a unicorn's horn useless!

“Help! Help!”

The stallion called out desperately, hoping that anypony nearby could rescue him. He banged both soaking-wet hooves on the wall. It felt like rust - or even moss - had formed on it. He couldn’t see anything; he was blinded by the eternal darkness of the malicious room.

“Help! Somepony help me!”

He stopped slamming his hooves on the wall, realizing that his attempts of calling for help was pointless. Every sound seemed to be augmented a hundred times: every droplet of water sounded like an emotionless waterfall; the hum of the radiator sounded like the ominous buzzing of a hornet’s nest. The stallion felt depressingly paranoid. After all, he had nearly drowned and was now confined and fettered in a dank, disgusting room. He began to sob shamelessly. He was bound to die in this room, cold and alone where nopony could find him. Tears flowed down his cheeks as he gently placed a hoof to his face and his other forehoof on the wall to prevent him from toppling over.

"I must be dead, I must be dead..."

"You're not dead."

The sudden, intrusive voice startled the stallion. His head jolted up immediately. His ears perked up as he hoped that his chances of survival was greater than it was a few minutes ago. But he still wondered who the unknown stallion - as he deduced from his gruff, surly voice - was.

"What? Who... who is it?"

Silence. That disgusting, damned silence.

"I said, who is it?!"

"You don't need to know that right now," the voice answered coolly.

"What the hell are you doing to me?"

"I'm not doing anything."

"What the hell's happening?"

"I don't know. For all I know, I'm in the same situation as you. I woke up about fifteen minutes ago in a bathtub full of water, and I called for help. There's no use in trying that."

The stallion's heart sunk back to its cavernous depths of hell. His chance of survival waned back to its original state. He knew it. He knew he was fated to die all alone without anypony noticing. The pony in charge of all this was probably doing him a favor for canceling his subscription to life early.

No. His mind burned with a single question: Who was doing this to him? A psychopath? A serial killer? Ideas flashed to his mind, each one being as plausible as one other. He was sure that the perpetrator of this wasn’t very mentally sane. The lack of light disturbed him greatly. He couldn’t think properly when everything was so melancholic and dark.

"I can't see anything."

"Neither can I. Let me look for a light switch." A few minutes elapsed, which seemed like hours to the stallion as the stranger rummaged around his side of the room. The stallion heard the soft, jeering clink of steel from the other side of the room, and presumed that the stranger was chained to the wall as well. "Ah, I've found something. Wait-"

Click.

Light blared through the unicorn’s corneas without warning. He reared back, squinting and shielding his eyes with a hoof. He groaned in pain; the light stung, having been in the darkness. The stallion cringed as the light penetrated his eyes even though he kept them shut. For several seconds, even with his eyes shut tightly, he could see nothing but white light. He opened his eyes slowly and cautiously. He could see nothing except for amorphous smudges of color. Blinking barely helped. No definite shape of anything existed in his peripheral vision. Shying away from the excessively irradiant light, he continued to manually blink his eyes. Moments later, his sight adjusted and his vision became crystal clear.

The room was extremely dirty, as he had predicted. The walls, for the most part, were covered in grime; the steel pipes were caked with vomit-like rust; the room looked as if it had been abandoned decades ago. There were four beds lain out, two on each side of the room. The windowless walls looked as if they were about to collapse and crumble apart. Several dirty, slightly-ripped posters hung crookedly on the walls. On one of them was a colorful illustration of a jovial pony galloping in the meadows. It had a superimposed caption on it, written in capital letters: WE HOPE YOU GET BETTER! The juxtaposition of such an innocent entity in such a disheveled room sent chills down his spine.

He was in an abandoned insane asylum.

On the other side of the room sat an earth pony, his hooves raised as if he was being held hostage. His mane was dark brown, and his coat was a light tan. His cutie mark was, curiously, an hourglass. His body was bruised badly and stained with dirt; the unicorn assumed that he looked the same way as well. He had chains around his leg, rendering him trapped in the room also. Numerous questions came to his mouth, but he couldn’t say anything. The tan stallion looked around, his vision also slowly adjusting. The unicorn cautiously trudged toward the earth pony, his light-brown hooves clopping softly on the floor until the chain kept him from moving any further.

Both stallions suddenly gasped in surprise and horror. The light-brown stallion’s eyes opened wide, his face contorted in utmost revulsion. The tan stallion lowered his raised hoof slowly, his face full of terror. He leaned forward as to take a closer look.

In the center of the room hung a dead unicorn, his saturated-blue fur incredibly paled. He was facing to the side, so both ponies could only see half of his pallid, cadaverous face. A taut noose hanging from the ceiling kept the unicorn levitated a few hooves above the ground. A fallen stool lay on the ground next to the corpse, presumably used by the pony to hang himself. The body swayed from side to side like a pendulum slowed down a thousand times. In the hoof that was visible to the light-brown stallion, he held a tape recorder, rigor mortis keeping its firm grasp on it.

“Oh, Celestia...” whispered the light-brown pony, distraught by the sight of the lifeless cadaver. He felt deadly sick. He twisted around, retching, vomit splaying over the floor. After a few minutes, he wiped his mouth, looked around frantically, and began to scream. The tan pony just stared, trying to calculate what was going on.

“Calm down, calm down."

“How the hell can I calm down? There’s a dead pony right there!”

“Just, please, calm down. Tell me your name.”

After a brief hesitation, the light-brown pony answered brusquely. “Pony Joe. But my friends call me Joe. What’s yours?”

Another hesitation. “Call me Doctor Whooves." He spoke in an accent that was unexpected from his formal-sounding title.

“A doctor? What are you, a medical doctor?”

"Not technically, but I have studied the medical sciences for some time.”

Deciding not to investigate further, the pony named Joe sat on the ground and tugged on the chain again. “Shit! How do you think we’ll get out of these chains? I can’t use my magic with them on!”

“We should first think about how we got here,” Doctor Whooves said coolly. Joe thought for a moment, directing his thoughts away from the binds. “What’s the last thing that you remember?”

“I... I don’t know,” said Joe, straining his face in consternation. He was telling the truth. He didn’t remember anything up until the night before. He had gone to his house to retire for the night, and...

Nothing. He remembered nothing else. He strained to think about what happened to him last night that had landed him in this situation. He remembered that he worked all day and night in the doughnut shop. He remembered grumbling to himself about how much he hated his work. He remembered switching the “Open” sign in front of the shop to “Closed.” He remembered walked toward his house in the middle of Canterlot. Then nothing. He didn’t remember anything else. He had no idea how he got here.

“I don’t either.” Joe looked up. Doctor Whooves shook his head and gently placed a hoof on a wall. “All I remember is coming home from work, then nothing after that.”

“That’s exactly what I remember!” said Joe, leaping to his hooves. “Do you think something happened to us while we were coming back?”

Doctor Whooves said nothing. He looked down at the ground, pondering with great difficulty. Joe looked at him expectantly as if he was a savior who had been sent by Celestia herself to save him.

"I think that we were most likely taken here by force," Doctor Whooves said. "Seeing as how we don't remember anything for the past few hours, the kidnapper must have used chloroform to render us unconscious before dragging us here." He took a deep breath and exhaled loudly.

"Do you have any clues on where we are?"

Doctor Whooves looked around, inspecting the barren room. It was foal's play to determine that they were in an abandoned asylum. "I suspect that we are underground, seeing as how there aren't any abandoned mental institutes in Ponyville."

"Ponyville? I'm from Canterlot." Joe said proudly as if residents of Canterlot were hegemonic to the residents of Ponyville.

Doctor Whooves cocked an eyebrow in sudden interest. "Canterlot? What is your occupation, may I ask?"

Joe's face reddened, immediately regretting his smug disposition. "Oh, I'm just an ordinary pony who works at a doughnut shop."

"Nopony is ordinary. There is something inside us that makes us different from one another."

Momentarily taken aback at the sagacious words, Joe examined him in awe.

"We need to find a way to escape from here."

“What makes you so sure that we’ll even be able to escape?” Joe asked questioningly.

Without a moment of uncertainty, the knowledgeable pony answered. “If a pony truly wanted to kill us, why didn’t he kill us before? Why put us in the same room? Why put us in a tub of water, where we could easily prevent ourselves from drowning? I think that whoever is doing this is proffering us the chance to escape, but we'll have to make use of every resource that we’re given.

“Also, look at that clock.” Joe looked above his head as Doctor Whooves pointed. “That clock is brand new.” The shiny clock ticked as every second passed. Its insidious face gazed toward the wall on the other side. It was 8:37, but neither of them could tell for certain whether it was in the morning or in the afternoon. Joe's instincts told him that it was morning.

“So?”

“Everything else is ruined and dilapidated in this room. The pony - or ponies - who did this to us must have wanted us to keep track of the current time.”

Pausing a moment, Joe replied, “Well, the only thing that we’re given is the tape recorder in that dead pony’s hoof.”

“Can you reach out and grab it?”

Joe stared at Doctor Whooves, utterly stunned by the suggestion. “Hell no! I’m not getting close to that... thing!” he finished as he gesticulated wildly with his hooves.

“If you want to escape, we need to use all of our resources. I don't think you even need to get close to him. Now please stop being stubborn and try to grab the tape.” Doctor Whooves said sternly and persuasively.

Joe looked at the hanged pony and then down at the floor and stamped a hoof. “No. There must be another way to get out of here!”

“Well, from what I can see, there isn’t. So I suggest that you listen to me and try to grab that tape recorder,” Doctor Whooves said, slightly annoyed by Joe’s stubbornness.

Joe sighed in surrender. “Okay, fine. But how would I get it if I can’t reach the dead pony?”

“As I said, use your resources. Use anything around you.”

As Joe looked around, Doctor Whooves did as well. Beside him was an old, rotting wooden cabinet. He trotted over to it and opened it slowly, fearing that insects or pests would crawl out of it as soon as he did. He had an unnatural phobia of insects; he simply thought that little creepy-crawlers were disgusting, useless creations of the Princesses. Just as he feared, a large, hairy spider six inches in diameter clambered out of the cabinet.

“Holy shit!” Doctor Whooves yelled in fright as he jumped away from the monstrosity, but promptly fell down due to the chain restricting him. The spider moved swiftly toward the fallen pony, who attempted to scramble away using his chained legs. Grabbing a nearby severed floor tile, he raised it high and swung it down on the spider, crushing it. He lifted it back up, and smashed it down again, splattering torrents of blood from the target. Although it was quite clear that the spider had died, he took no notice and continued. Lift. Smash.

Every time the tile collided with the carcass of the spider, ichor leapt from it like water touching electricity. It was like the stages of life of a living organism reversed; something had been living before had deteriorated into something pitifully primitive. The spider was reduced to nothing more than mashed pieces of hair drenched in blood, with a small puddle of crimson liquid seeping from under the gory mess. Joe witnessed this entire spectacle; his mouth was wide open, stunned, as the normally calm, intelligent pony suddenly transmogrified into a violent, paranoid pony. Tossing the tile away, Doctor Whooves crawled toward the cabinet, carefully avoiding the carcass of the spider.

Inside the cabinet was an envelope with the words “Doctor Whooves” written on it. He ripped it open eagerly and tipped it, spilling its contents onto his hoof. The envelope only contained a single tape. Cheering in the inside, Doctor Whooves turned around, lifting the tape up high above his head as if it was an Olympic trophy.

“Well... what is it?” queried Joe.

“It’s a cassette; you play it in a tape recorder. We don’t use it very often anymore. The pony who did this to us must have recorded us a message.”

Joe, also finding a cabinet on his side of the room, rushed toward it. He pulled it open and reached in, and lifted an envelope with a single name written on it in fine print: “Pony Joe.” In it was also a tape, which bore striking resemblance to the one Doctor Whooves held in his hoof.

“Okay, we just need that tape recorder to play the tape. Did you find anything that you could use to get it from the corpse?”

“The cabinet is the only thing I can find.”

“Well, disassemble the cabinet, then!”

The rotting wood of the accessory made it quite easy for Joe to dismantle it. With a swift buck of his back hooves, the cabinet immediately collapsed into a heap of wood. He picked up the plank with the knob stuck on the center of it. The decayed wood proved to be weak as he pulled out the knob with a quick and forceful tug. Cheering on the inside, he grinned as he showed Doctor Whooves the knob.

"I could hit the tape recorder out of the pony's hooves using this! The force of it could just be enough to strike the recorder out of that thing's hoof and onto the floor, where you can easily get using the bedsheets on the beds. I won't even have to get near it. Even if I miss, you can reach over, get it, and toss it back to me."

Doctor Whooves contemplated this suggestion for a moment, but after realizing that there wasn't any other method of obtaining the recorder, he nodded in affirm.

Joe held the knob in one hoof and aimed carefully. It was difficult to avert his focus from the cadaver’s indifferent face. He brushed the chain on his horn aside, littering the room with the din of clanging steel.

“Careful, careful...”

“Will you please shut up so that I can concentrate?” Joe articulated slowly as if he was being hypnotized by a psychic.

Joe stared at his target: the tape recorder. He had to aim precisely. The lifeless tape recorder challenged him to a duel as it stared directly back at the light-brown stallion.

The doughnut pony squinted his eyes in determination. He reared back, swinging his hoof back in a circular arc, and catapulted the handle into the air.

Joe missed his target on the first try. Doctor Whooves collected the knob and tossed it back at Joe, who readied himself for a second try. His second attempt also missed as well, but it came closer than he had on the first try.

Sweating with the utmost concentration he could muster, he swung his forehoof back for a third try, and propelled the knob airborne.

The projectile struck the tape recorder in the hoof of the corpse, unbelievably knocking it out with ease and onto the porcelain floor. It slid over to where Doctor Whooves stood. He quickly picked it up, opened the cartridge, and inserted the microcassette he had found in his envelope. He pushed the cartridge back in, and hovered his hoof over the play button.

“What are you waiting for? Go on, press it!” coaxed Joe, anxious to listen to the truth the recording held in its safe.

He nodded and depressed the button. He held the recorder up to his ears, tilting his head toward it. Joe only stood from the other side, watching.

Crepitation leaked from the player, obfuscating the message at first, but cleared a few seconds later. From the recorder seeped a deep, scratchy, and grating voice:

“Hello, Doctor.

“You might call yourself a simple and reserved pony, who tends to loiter in the background rather than be in the center of attention. You might believe that you have done nothing to deserve this, that you have merely been framed for a greater act of injustice.

“I think differently.

“It is that reticent quality, that quality in which you prefer to not socialize with other ponies that has made you a perfect candidate for my experimentation. Your inability to converse with other civilians and your preference to remain quiet has caused you to be trapped in here, Doctor. Even if you are married, from my perspective, you look like a loner. A sociopath. The only ponies you talk to are your wife and your stepdaughter.

“With that, allow me to explain your mission. What you must do is to kill the pony in the room with you by 7 PM. I’m sure you have already befriended him, haven’t you? In times of desperation, ponies usually strive for any means to survive, even if it goes against their natural instincts.

"But I digress.

"You must kill the one pony that you have managed to communicate with. If you do not, this room shall become your tomb, and your wife and daughter will die. Can you prove that you are deserving of life?

“Let the games begin.”

The cassette clicked to a stop as the recording ended. Both stallions stared at the recorder in silence. Doctor Whooves rapidly epitomized his mission in his mind: Kill Joe by seven o’clock. But he couldn’t. That was wrong. It wasn’t right to kill anypony. What kind of sick sadist would force two ponies to kill each other?

A game. The voice had called this situation a game. This was no game! The thought of this torture being considered as a game show to anypony who savored schadenfreude sent chills down Joe's spine once more.

“Toss me the recorder.”

Doctor Whooves’ head jerked up. He looked at Joe with a sad look that nopony but himself could view.

“I said, toss me the recorder.”

“No, you throw me the tape," he countered. "The recorder might break if I throw it to you.”

Briefly considering the thought, Joe hurled his tape to him. The dark-maned stallion caught it, took his own cassette out, jammed Joe’s tape inside the player, and pressed play.

“Hello, Joe.”

That same voice; that same, sick, twisted, sadistic, perverted voice.

“You don’t seem to have any flaws in your life, as anypony except for yourself and I would say. You’re simply a sanguine stallion who works at a doughnut shop. You’re friendly, amiable, and likable on the outside. But are you really that way on the inside?

“You’ve been a junkie for most of your life. Since when did you start the habit? When you emerged from colthood? Your cheerfulness is artificial. You knew that you had to escape from faking your enthusiasm and seek drug counseling.

“But you didn’t. You still use drugs in order to calm yourself. Have you not learned? Every night is a sleepless night; every second seems like a minute; every day is a hell for you. Medication is taking over your life. In my eyes, you don’t deserve the life that you have been granted. You deserve no clemency.

“Your mission is to escape this room. You must escape from that torture that you put yourself through every day. I challenge you to disprove me. Are you truly deserving of life?

“Let the games begin.”

Another click, and the tape grew silent. Joe's heart stopped beating; how had this mysterious pony possibly known this? His grim secret of drug abuse, something that he undisclosed to himself. Nopony ever knew about that! Had somepony been stalking him? If everypony knew about this, he would be kicked out into the streets without a job! He would be a pariah, a social outcast!

“Wait...” Doctor Whooves remarked as if he had just discovered a clue to a murder mystery. He rewinded Joe’s tape, then played it again. He pressed his ears close to the recorder. Joe perked up his ears curiously, trying to detect what had caught his attention.

“...disprove me. Are you truly deserving of life?”

Replay.

“...you truly deserving of life?”

Then Joe heard it. So did Doctor Whooves. Right after the word “life,” a barely audible voice, a voice with a message that held enough power to deter the magic of an alicorn, whispered:

“Follow your heart.”

Next Chapter: Chapter 2: The Hacksaw Killer Estimated time remaining: 37 Minutes