Going Batty Is A Nightmare

 

>You couldn’t give less of a shit about what the man is saying. Your job is to just make sure all the networks, streams, and sound systems are working accordingly. Ensuring that this guy can speak his bullshit for… The next three or four days. Mayor Liederman commissioned the auditor as a roundabout way of disclosing to the public what the city was doing.

 

>Of course; they had to hide the fact that a good portion of it was being embezzled by the city’s various departments, especially the clerk-treasurer.

 

>God, you just wanted your day to be over. Go home, and drink it all away so you can enjoy your weekend with a fresh hangover. There’s a bottle of Jim Beam with your name on it. The same vinyls that you play over and over again. The classics: Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Grateful Dead… The works to soothe your self-poisoned brain into the warm and fuzzy embrace of intoxicated bliss.

 

>But you were here. Waiting for this guy to finish up about his explanation of the cost of city’s water and sewer systems. Wow, 1 million dollars overall. He can talk about it all you want, and you’ve brought it up many times, but they always shoot it down despite it needing to be updated. Bastards don’t know that the cost will only increase the longer they wait it out.

 

>Course, after a while the guy shuts up. Took him around 4 hours of constant talking about the budget before even the councilmembers couldn’t take it anymore, and decided to end the meeting on the note of, “Updating the heating and ventilation systems of the police station”.

 

------

 

>After cleaning up and shutting everything down for the night, you exit the town hall at about 5:30pm. Damn near on the dot. Now you can go home and get shitfaced, maybe peruse the SCP forums for any sci-fi horror goodness you missed out on. Or maybe you’ll settle down and look for yet another bad movie that you haven’t seen yet. You’ve seen them all, and after a while they start to become one in the same.

 

>You steadily walk down the sidewalk, feeling a light breeze brush across you. A nice fall afternoon overall. You stuff your hands in your pockets and breathe in the crisp air through your nose. The rustle of leaves freeing themselves from their tree masters is relaxing, and you ponder the idea of taking a walk near the woods close to where you live. Sure, it’d be late, but you could still get drunk since you’ve got a flask. Not like public drinking isn’t illegal in your state, but better safe than sorry.

 

>Hopping in your car, you start the engine and flip on the XM radio. You settle for a nice calming channel, some Grateful Dead playing. You whistle to the tune of the song as you back out carefully. Then proceed out of the rather convoluted and narrow parking lot and onto a main state road. The hustle and bustle of cars from all the people leaving work makes getting on a hassle, but after some angry swears and bitter honking you manage to pull on, and start driving.

 

>Getting home is a relatively straight shot. Drive past the large and foreboding government complex, make a right turn here, a left turn onto a backroad… And you’re virtually alone on the road, and with your thoughts. You whizz past leaves of various colors drifting off into the wind, swiftly going across, past, and around your car as their path abruptly changes. You’re still whistling to another tune on the radio; guess this station only plays the Dead, but it’s alright.

 

----

 

>More driving. More driving. Oh, and what do we have here? More driving! You groan as you try to change the station. Grateful Dead is great and all, but you’d like to listen to something else now. You check your wristwatch as you do, and the time is- What? That can’t be right. 6:30? You couldn’t have been driving for an hour. You didn’t live an hour away; how did you not notice the time go by? You must’ve missed your turn, again, you did this sometimes. It had only been recently since you moved to this accursed city and its’ bumbling members of government.

 

>But… No. You can’t recall having seen a single sign for miles at this point. You’ve been driving in these woods for some time now, and it feels like nothing has changed. The same leaves rushing past your car, seemingly getting more frequent and… Well… A sort of fog has begun to descend, but that’s also not terribly abnormal for this time in the day. Lake Michigan was nearby and tended to have an odd effect on the weather in these parts. Speaking of things not changing; Grateful Dead isn’t coming off the XM no matter how many times you spin the dial.

 

>Getting frustrated, you smack the radio with your free hand, and the whole thing just starts blasting static. Startled, you swerve to the left, but quickly get back on the right lane of the road. You feel a headache coming on, and so you power off the radio you’d tried to fix with the magic of percussive maintenance.

 

>You grumble as you focus on the road ahead. It seems like it’s getting continually narrower, and you can no longer see the lines of the road. The leaves have stopped falling, because the trees are just… All dead. All of them, not a single leaf to behold. That dreadful fog has gotten thicker, and you find yourself switching your high beams on in order to make out anything at all. Pretty odd time to switch on the high beams seeing as it is now 7:00pm.

 

----

 

>You were admittedly curious to see where this road went. Even if you missed your turn, you still had plenty of gas to go back if it turned out to be a dead end. Hell, maybe it would be like Reder Road or Stagecoach and be one of those haunted roads. Might see a damn bloody-mary look alike around the corner trying to hitchhike. As you continue to drive though, those thoughts start to leave your mind. It was probably just a really old trail into the thicker parts of the forests around here, where the lake effect is especially strong for whatever reason. You weren’t a meteorologist.

 

>The damn road does just keep getting narrower and-

 

>Fuck! You jostle around and swerve as the increasingly degraded asphalt rapidly switches to a plain old dirt trail, and the road itself suddenly gets more narrow. Unlike the last time though, you swear as you find yourself inevitably careening towards a ghoulish looking tree.

 

>With a loud crash, you slam forward against the airbag as your old Jeep crumples against the tree. In your state of semi-awareness, you hear another loud crash and impact as the tree itself topples over; the roots of it uplifting your jeep slightly, putting it at an upward angle. The last thing you hear before blacking out into the unwanted unconsciousness was the beeping and clicking of your car’s various signals and sensors.

 

----

 

>...

 

>.....”hh”...

 

>.......”hhey”…

 

>”Hey!”

 

>With a start you awake, breathing in deeply, and then immediately coughing as you pull yourself back from the airbag, leaning into your intact seat. Can’t say the same for the passenger’s side though… You could’ve sworn something had woken you up-

 

>”Creature! Look at me!”

 

>You blearily turn your head over to the sound of the voice, and find yourself staring at some… thing… A cross between a small pony and a bat or... You don’t know. You can’t really find the words for it, but it doesn’t look as nightmarish as it sounds. It actually looks really cute, and quite sturdy. With this gleaming purple armo-

 

>”Can you even speak?”

 

>Right, you were dreaming. This is your crashed car of course, but no way in hell would there be one of those ‘Bat Ponies’ in reality. It’s an awfully lucid dream though, better humor the apparition.

 

“Ye-yeah. I can speak. Just… Give me a minute here.”

 

>The Bat Pony’s formerly stern gaze morphs into that of anger as it takes a step forward, lowering some sort of- ah fuck the Pony thing has got a purple halberd. Car crashes make odd comas, that’s for sure.

 

>”You are not permitted ‘a minute’ creature! Explain yourself, what sort of carriage is this? Are you an envoy of the false Princess sent to assassinate our Queen?”

 

>Maybe you were drunk driving. You didn’t feel drunk now though. These are some awful accusations for such a cute looking pony. Despite the halberd and the sinister looking armor the creature is wielding.

 

“It’s Josh, Bat Pony thing, and no. I’m not here to kill your leader. I just had a wreck on the way back home, which I’d very much like to go back to now.”

 

----

 

>If you’re being honest with yourself you would very much like to wake up in a hospital bed right about now. Everything around you is feeling too real. The pony takes a step back, appearing startled as you shift out of your car seat, unbuckling the belt, and unceremoniously falling out of said seat and face first onto the leaf covered dirt in front of the pony.

 

>”Buh- What? On your way home? In the middle of the Queen’s territory?!”

 

>You lift your head up, groaning once more, and pull yourself onto your knees. While you're on your knees you’re about eye to eye with the little pony.

 

>”This is unacceptable! Halt! Do not move any further!”

 

>The bat pony creature thing backs up another step, all while having its little halberd levelled to your head. It’s probably intimidated by your size, but hell, it’s a dream. Maybe getting stabbed would wake you up, anyway.

 

>You swiftly reach forward and grab the pony’s miniature halberd, plucking it from its’ grasp. It makes a shrieking sound as you turn your head to throw it away off to the side, removing the threat.

 

>Little do you know, the pony rushes forward and embeds its fangs into your neck. The attack sends waves of pain down your nervous system as it latches on to your muscle, and you suddenly realize that you weren’t dreaming. The entire reality of your situation crashing down on you. You would’ve woken up right then and there if you were dreaming.

 

“Goddamnit! You son of a bitch! Get the hell off me!”

 

>Not a request. You grasp the panicking bat pony creature as it flails around, trying to pry itself off of you as its’ instinctual panic resulting in a rather regretful decision. With haste you do the prying for it, find that the pony is light enough to hold, and also light enough to throw. You chuck the grey and purple ball of fur and armor away from you, and grasp your neck. It missed your jugular, but you were still bleeding, and you had no bandages with you.

 

----

 

>The pony lets out another screech as it turns to flee, and so you let it. You didn’t want to encounter that thing again, nor did you want to be bitten by it again. You find that you are bleeding noticeably though, so you turn towards your car and hop in the damaged compartment. You sift around, hoping to find some gauze to no avail, you did happen to carry electrical tape and McDonalds napkins though, so you hoped those would do the trick.

 

>You used one of the undamaged side mirrors to carefully wipe off the blood that had come out, and you craft a makeshift bandage using the things you found. It’s definitely not a long term solution, but it would stop your little puncture marks from bleeding any further. You hoped that the pony didn’t have some sort of disease, and that it brushed its teeth.

 

>Humor was all you had in this strange world of horrifying trees, fog, crashed cars, and ponies with fangs. Ponies who talked, nonetheless. You didn’t like this. You wanted to get off the ride. As we all know though, you can never get off the ride.

 

>Already on edge, you dash to your trunk and pry it open. Your footsteps echoing throughout the woods with the crunch of shattered glass. You don’t find much back here, but you did spot a crowbar that you could probably use as a makeshift weapon in case that thing came back to bite you.

 

>You heard shrieking in the distance, followed by some rather angry sounding yelling.

 

>Time to go.

 

>You snagged the crowbar and started to run off before remembering your water bottle in the cupholder next to the driver’s seat. You quickly dashed back, scattering leaves as you went, and hopped up in the cab. You snagged the water bottle, not knowing when you might next find drinking water out in the boonies like this, and shuffled your way back onto the ground.

 

>You heard more shrieking in the distance, this time it sounded closer, and more numerous.

 

---

 

>You wanted nothing more to do with these cute little creatures from hell.

 

>You once again dash off down the dirt trail that you had been driving down, hoping to once again find the asphalt you had so quickly left, but the more you ran the more dread creeped on you. There wasn’t asphalt as far as the eye could see, and you could’ve sworn you had spun out as soon as the road turned into nothing more than dirt.

 

>Did you somehow manifest in another dimension entirely?

 

>That can’t be possible, shouldn’t be possible.

 

>Before further existentialism creeps on you; you slap yourself with your free hand. Your water bottle was clipped into your belt loop now, and should be safe for the time being. You’ve got a pretty heavy jacket, helped to deal with server rooms and the general chill of fall, so you’re well protected from the cold in this forest. All you had to hope for was that those… Ponies… Or whatever they are, don’t catch up to you.

 

>You shake your head and keep pressing forward, crowbar in both hands. It looks like there’s a lot of horse- no, pony tracks down this trail. You just hoped you didn’t encounter more of them. That seemed to be an alarming looping thought in your head right now, just stay away from any pony things and you’ll be okay.

 

>Looking behind you, you see, or rather don’t see, your car anymore. You can, however, hear furious shouting and more screeching noises coming from that direction. These things moved fast! It stands to reason that they could catch up to you at any moment, and they could likely spot your tracks in the dirt.

 

>Luckily, your nonexistent prayers seemed to have been answered, as this dirt road slowly started to gain a more and more rocky appearance. It hid your tracks altogether, and further ahead it seemed to transition to a completely cobblestone pathway. Whatever route that you had just come from; it seems like it had suffered from disuse.

 

----

 

>You spot a T-section coming up, as well a dilapidated sign post, but you can’t make out anything on the sign itself. Coming closer, you realize it wasn’t in any language you could begin to understand. Something like a combination of Cyrillic and Hindu, if that even makes sense, but what you do recognize are the symbols of the sun and the moon going off in either directions.

 

>Quickly, you veer right, heading down the path that the moon pointed towards. Hopefully you can stay under the cover of darkness in this forest rather than risking going into the light. At least that’s what you thought it meant. You would rather be hidden than be seen in plain sight by more of those things.

>If only your car was still working.

 

>The shrieking and yelling has for the moment stopped, and so you decide you could take a brief respite. The bite mark covered by your makeshift bandage is rather itchy, but it can’t be infected; not yet at least. Tentatively, you feel the area of your bandage, and a rather peculiar sensation strikes you.

 

>Why does the area feel… Prickly, almost. Like there’s a layer of facial hair underneath it, thick, but coarse nonetheless. That doesn’t seem right. The area didn’t hurt though, so you decided against removing the bandage. You could wait to see what was going on underneath.

 

>You catch your breath and take a few swigs of your water container, there’s plenty in here so you should be alright for a while. You were going to have to find some kind of safe-haven soon though, a town, or a city, or something. Any sort of human civilization would be nice right about now, but in the back of your mind you doubted you were going to find anything of the sort.

 

>You walk/jog down this cobblestone pathway, and you notice the trees around the pathway are beginning to clear up. Maybe some semblance of civilization lay ahead? With a renewed hope, you begin another run down the road. Lights began to crop up in the distance, two lanterns to be exact, as well as a sign.

 

---

 

>Your neck was awfully itchy. The side of it felt like you had just shaved the area, and the hairs were beginning to poke up again. The bandage felt like it wasn’t doing an adequate job of covering your injury, and it didn’t hurt… So… You ripped the bandage off, and let out a brief hiss of pain. You tentatively felt the area and-

 

>Hang on. Why is the left side of your neck covered in hair? Were you hallucinating or- No, it really is covered in some kind of hair, almost like… Fur.

 

>Jesus Christ.

 

>When that thing bit you? Were you about to become a werewolf or something? That ‘something’ being one of those horrifying yet cute bat ponies?

 

>You prayed not, and you didn’t pray often.

 

>You ran towards the lights, which proved to be a fatal mistake. Under the glow of those lights beheld two very familiar looking forms. They looked nearly identical to the very bat pony who had nearly severed your jugular earlier, and they had just spotted you. Fuck.

 

>You froze in place as the two fumbled and dropped their lanterns, holding up halberds of their own, and charged towards you. You turned around to flee away from them, but as you turned you saw more lantern lights coming at you in the far off distance, along with that awful screeching noise.

 

>You were boned, the only way you were getting out of this was by fighting these pint-sized cunts.

 

>”Halt! In the name of the Queen! Stay where you are, creature!”

 

>You were really starting to hate being called a creature.

 

>You turned around and charged at the two ponies yourself, they were half your size, you could easily take them on. This crowbar is much heavier than what their halberds weighed, and would certainly do much more damage.

 

>You lifted the crowbar in preparation to swing down at one of the guards, who had already positioned his halberd in a defensive maneuver.

 

“I told your friend, my name is J-”

 

>”CREATURE!”

 

----

 

>With a yelp, the crowbar is violently tugged away from your grip, so forcefully that it whips you backwards and laying down facing the stars above, as well as something else. Another one of those pony things, except this one is flying. Its got a horn, and more birdlike wings. Its body is pitch black, and its mane is like an ethereal cloud of stars. Oh, and the crowbar is floating towards it, haloed by the same glow emanating from the horn.

 

>Ah fuck, the thing has your crowbar.

 

>“HALT AT ONCE! YOUR INSOLENCE HAS GONE ON FOR FAR TOO LONG!”

 

>It feels like your eardrums are about to burst from the sheer volume of its voice, or rather, her voice. You’re fairly certain that this thing is a her, but that’s not the point. The point is that it stole your weapon, your only means of defence, and called you creature. Not that you’d point out otherwise right now, you were currently busy voiding your bowels in terror.

 

>So you stood there, stock still, halted by the power of this… Pegasus? Unicorn? Unipegasus? Her voice.

 

>She touches down in front of you, still hovering the crowbar next to her, and narrows her eyes down at you. Yes, down, she had a good foot of height over you. Man was she tall. Her eyes are catlike, and you could see the fangs draw out of her mouth as she snarled.

 

>”So, you finally decide to do something that isn’t idiotic for once. Perhaps you’d like to assault us with-”

 

>She wiggles the crowbar next to her in her midnight blue aura

 

>”-This?”

 

>She gives a mocking gasp and puts a hoof over her mouth.

 

>”Oh, but you don’t have it! We do! But nary will it have an effect.”

 

>She simply increases the glow from her horn, and the crowbar crumples into a ball of iron. If you had anything left in that bladder of yours the contents would be practically spraying through your trousers.

 

--------------

 

>Pain suddenly radiates from your neck wound, and you fall onto your knees, grasping at your neck. You feel the fur spread out around your neck, and a little bit down to your upper chest as well. Your muscles contract helplessly, trying to make some sense over what is happening to them, but it is for nothing.

 

>”And what do we have here? You have been bitten? How laughable, we don’t even have to demand your obedience! Thou shalt become one with our kingdom whether it is requested or not!”

 

>The mare lets out a bellowing, terrifying, and an unmistakably evil laugh. One that blows throughout the trees like a strong gale, bats screech as they are disturbed from their midnight activities, scattering away. It just makes the scene all that much more eerie, but you’re busy on your knees, gasping in pain.

 

“I-I don’t want-”

 

>The evil mare leans down towards you, her muzzle practically touching your nose, and her sneer splits into a shit eating grin.

 

>”You don’t want what?”

 

“I don’t want to become a werewolf!”

>And then her shit eating grin slopes into a frown, and she pulls back with visible confusion.

 

>”A were-what? You- Thou- We-... Thou shalt not become made of timber! Thou shall serve us forevermore in the kingdom of the stars, where the night shall last forever!”

 

>How silly, you think, before you slump over on your side and promptly pass out.

 

-----------

 

>You awaken with a gasp, and curl up into a ball from the sheer pain you’re experiencing. It feels like your entire head is on fire, itchy, and burning. You bring a hand up to your face, and feel fur covering the entirety of your obviously handsome and stunning image. You scratch frantically, but it is for naught, as your lips and nose seem to push out as if made of clay. You scream from where you are, you cannot tell where you are from the darkness, but it does not matter.

 

>Your jaw cracks, and you scream. You scream as your teeth seem to sharpen, and pierce through parts of your unchanged gumline. You thrash helplessly in whatever bed you lay in, and cry as it feels like your eyes are being ripped apart and put back together in their sockets. You panic as you briefly go deaf, and feel your ears slithering up to the top of your head, elongating and becoming much more furry and fluffy than they originally had been.

 

>Your hair, now a mane, spills in front of your blinded sight, and turns a deep purple streaked with a steel gray coloring. Your nose and mouth stop pushing out, but you cannot help but notice two foreign protrusions grazing your bottom lip from your top now. Your hearing is regained, as is your sight as you can suddenly see where you are with much more clarity.

 

>The pain subsides, and you guess that whatever torment you were just put through is now over. You quickly bring another hand up to your face, and feel around. It is much softer than before, with smooth fur covering the entirety of it. From your much more improved eyes you immediately notice a wider field of view, and you can see what is clearly a snout sticking out several inches from your face. You bring out your tongue, and test out your mouth, which feels much more spacious than before, filled with rows of sharper teeth, and you wince as your tongue pricks one of two fangs that have suddenly decided to make themselves known.

 

-------------

 

>You run hands through your new mane, finding it equally as soft as your fur, and you feel your ears; realizing that even your auditory senses are much more improved than before.

 

>You also realize your head is now that of one of those batlike pony creatures.

 

>With that, you let out a very feminine sounding shriek.

 

“EeeeeeeeeeeeeEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!”

 

>Immediately, two of those bat pony guards burst in through the admittedly small room, and you realize that you are in some kind of a hospital, albeit dated by your standards. The guards stop in shock, and one approaches cautiously.

 

>”Is everything okay in here… Um… Miss?”

 

>Miss?

 

>MISS?!

 

“I am not a ‘Miss’! I am a man!”

 

>You also suddenly realize that your voice is speaking contrary to that fact, and you do indeed sound like a woman. What the fuck. What had these creatures done to you? What did that bite do to you? You don’t want to be a woman, let alone one of these bat creatures!

 

>”Right, well, clearly not, miss. Now, if everything is alright, we will go back to our posts.”

 

>Your stomach rumbles, and you figure that you hadn’t eaten since the night before whatever happened… Happened. You also don’t know how much time had passed, but you knew that you were hungry.

 

“Wait! I’m uh… I am hungry. Is there any way I could get food, and maybe not have it be blood? I hope I’m not a vampire now…”

 

>You look down, pondering over this, while the guard simply looks confused.

 

>”Vampi- No! How awful of you to assume that! No, we are omnivores.”

 

>Without another word, the two guards exit your little hospital room, and the one slams the door. Hopefully he’ll bring back some food, otherwise you’ll just be confused AND hungry. Hopefully you won’t have to endure any more pain.

 

>Although something tells you that you will.

 

-------------------

 

>You’re interrupted from poking your face and feeling how soft it is by the loud metal clanking of the door opening. A guard carrying a metal tray between his wings enters the room. You don’t know how you’re able to recognize their genders so easily now, but it’s like something is just subconsciously telling you what they are.

>He sets the metal tray down on a table next to where you lay, and you stare at it. You stare at the flowers, you stare at the slab of raw meat, but you mostly stare at the glass of water. It’s like… A complete joke. Flowers, raw meat, and water. Out of everything that has been getting to you during your entire involuntary stay in this strange land, this is the thing that gets you.

 

>You snirk, and then you begin to chuckle. You keep chuckling and giggling as the guard worryingly looks your way, and then begins to back away. Confused and concerned. As he leaves you are cracking into uproarious laughter, howling away at the ceiling. Raw meat, flowers, and a glass of water. Hilarious, the contradiction, it doesn’t make sense. None of this makes any sense to you.

 

>Ponies, the bite, magic, flying horses. It all doesn’t make any sense. How you ended up here from crashing your car, how the crowbar seemed to just effortlessly be crushed into an iron ball, how you were turning into one of those creatures. It’s all a joke, one big joke, and god was laughing at your misery.

 

>You just keep laughing

 

>And laughing

 

>And laughing

 

>Then crying

 

>Then your head is in your hands as you sob.

 

>Why were you here?

 

>You want to go home.

-----------------

 

>You didn’t eat. You lost your appetite after all the laughing and crying. Not that it mattered, you don’t know when you fell asleep, but you are once again awoken by pain. Immediately you being to sob, knowing what will come next, but this time the pain is in your genital region.

 

>It clicks

 

>You sound like a girl now, so it would only make sense if-

 

>No.

 

>You rip off the blanket that covers you, realizing for the first time that you are completely naked. Fur covers your entire chest region, as well as your arms, and you find the fur creeping down to where your johnson was.

 

>Not him, please, not him!

 

>You cry out as a sharp pain hits your testicles, a hole forms in between your dick and where your balls are, and your scrotum and testicles are painfully sucked into this hole. One goes in with an audible popping noise, and you twitch and scream as the other one struggles to fit in, but then it finally does.

 

>Your penis shrinks, and shrinks, and you sob, as it continues to shrink down to the top of what is quickly becoming your new vagina. Your dick shrinks down as much as it possibly can as it becomes a small clit, and your scrotum shrinks and changes shape as it molds into your new puffy lips.

 

>You were a girl now, and you kept crying. Crying because you didn’t understand why this was happening to you. Crying because your manhood was gone. You didn’t want to become a girl, let alone a mare. You don’t want to be one of these things.

 

>But you were becoming one.