The Rapering Part 6 (Ed)

Home Invasionation

   “I don’t wanna watch this!” Tootsie Flute buried her face into Bon Bon’s side and squirmed.
   “Oh, c’mon,” Lyra said.  “It’s totally fake!  Look, you can see the strings!”
   Tootsie Flute peeked one eye out to watch the old black and white monster movie playing on the television.  The white-coated scientist was grappling with the ridiculous giant robot monster.
   “It’s scary!” Tootsie Flute said, and buried her head again, now between Bon Bon’s back and the couch cushions.
   “Oh, it is not even scary,” said Lyra.  “Jeez. Look, the good guys are going to win.  It always happens.”
   “They beat up the robot?”
   “Yes,” Lyra rolled her eyes.  “If you don’t watch, you’re going to miss it.”
   “Lyra,” Bon Bon said.  “If it’s too scary for her, she doesn’t have to watch it.”
   “It’s not even a scary movie!” Lyra lifted her hooves up in the air, incredulous.  “I watched it when I was an even littler filly than she is.”
   “I’m not a little filly,” Tootsie Flute said.  “I’m a big filly.”
   “Yeah?  Well, big fillies are old enough to watch this movie.”
   “I don’t wanna watch!” Tootsie flinched.
   “Lyra,” Bon Bon scolded.
   “You’re gonna miss the big ending.  Look, the good guys are already winning.”
   “They are?” Tootsie Flute peeked out once more from between her hooves.  Just in time, she saw the handsome male lead pony kick the evil robot.  It went lurching backwards, and you could easily see the mane of the pony wearing the styrofoam robot costume fall out as the costume began to come apart.  Then it fell backwards against the big machine with all the dials and Van de Graff generators.  A bunch of sparks shot out, and the thing collapsed in a heap, while the pretty mare screamed for some strange reason.
   “Mama Bon Bon,” Tootsie said, now excited.  “They beat up the bad robot, just like Mama Lyra said would happen!”
   “Yes, Tootsie,” Bon Bon said.  “See, it’s not that scary, was it?”
   “Nuh uh,” Tootsie said.  She rummaged through kernels at the bottom of the popcorn bowl looking for good pieces while the scientist went on a long-winded rant about the dangers of tampering with the unknown.  The handsome stallion and the pretty mare kissed.  They all laughed.  Then the credits started to roll.
   “See?” Lyra turned to Bon Bon.  “That’s a classic.”
   “Yeah,” said Bon Bon, sarcastically.  “A classic joke.  How can you even watch that stuff?  It’s ridiculous.”
   “How can you not?  It’s Nightmare Night season.  That’s the only time of year they show these old gems.  You liked it, didn’t you, Tootsie?”
   “Yeah.  I wasn’t scared.”
   “What?  You were totally scared.  You were hiding.”
   “Nuh uh.  It’s just an old movie.  And they beat the bad robot.  I told you.”
   “What?  No!  I told you, you big fibber!”
   Tootsie Flute erupted into a torrent of giggles as Lyra started to tickle her.  Bon Bon rolled her eyes and got up off the couch before they both knocked over the bowl of popcorn.  “Alright,” Bon Bon said.  “It’s getting late.  I think it’s past somebody’s bed time.”
   “Ahhh,” Tootsie whined, getting off the couch with her.  “I don’t wanna.”
   “Hey,” Bon Bon scolded.  “I don’t want to hear any whining.”
   “Can we, um, read a book?”
   “Sure, we can read a book.  Two if you hurry up and brush your teeth.”
   Bon Bon went to the kitchen with the bowl.  Tootsie milled around in the living room.  Lyra looked around.  She got up off the couch when she noticed the curtains hadn’t been closed yet.  It was definitely autumn now.  The dark of night was coming earlier and earlier.  It was still day outside when the movie started, and they simply hadn’t noticed that the curtains were still open while it grew dark.
   A shiver went up Lyra’s spine.  The living room windows were two great, yawning black rectangles of emptiness.  They reflected the light of the room, but she could see nothing outside.  She realized, however, that anybody on the outside could look in perfectly well.  Their whole private world was lit up for the whole world to see.  There could have been somebody, anybody, standing right outside on the street watching her now.
   Lyra shivered again and promptly closed the curtain.  She walked past the front door to the other window, and closed that curtain.  She turned back to the door and looked at the locks.  The little lock on the doorknob itself had been locked, but not the deadbolt.  She stepped forward and lifted her hoof upwards.
   The doorknob jiggled, and Lyra hadn’t even touched it.  There was this weird paralyzed second where she knew what it meant, that there was somebody on the other side of the door trying to get in, and she knew that she should run, but she couldn’t move.
   Lyra’s world exploded in pain.  There was a tremendous crash.  The front door was burst, kicked open.  Long wooden splinters flew off the frame.  The door struck Lyra square in the face, knocking her into the back of the couch and then onto the floor.  There was a piercing pain radiating straight from her face and back through her skull, and a kind of strange electric stinging sensation.  She tasted blood in her mouth.  It was running down her face, pouring out of both nostrils.
   She saw four hooves walk in and trod mud all over her floor.  They were huge hooves.  Shaggy, matted red hair hung down over them, almost to the floor.  Lyra’s eyes lifted up and up.  He had big, powerful legs, a barrel chest, a muscular neck that was draped with his orange mane.  He was as big as a mountain.  The worst thing of all was the big toothy grin on his face.
   Lyra had just enough time to hear Tootsie scream, and then the sound of hooves rushing into the living room as Bon Bon screamed before the monster was on top of her.  She beat at his face with her hooves, but that grin only grew wider, as if he were enjoying himself all the more.  Bon Bon was paralyzed with shock.  Her hooves trod up and down on the floor, unsure if she wanted to run to Tootsie or to Lyra.
   “Run!” Lyra screamed, fully aware that it was too late for herself to be saved, but not her wife or daughter.
   Bon Bon ran, leaving Tootsie screaming in the living room, watching her mother being violated on the floor by some horrible intruder.  She came back from the kitchen seconds later, holding a heavy iron frying pan in her teeth.  She brought it down as hard as she could on Big Macintosh's head.  There was a loud metallic thump.
   He turned his head and stared at Bon Bon, as if for the first time realizing there was somebody else in the house with him and Lyra.  She brought it swinging across his face, striking him a second time.  Big Mac’s only reaction was to drop his grin.  He swung out his front hoof, and the pan went flying across the room to crash noisily into the wall, leaving a large hole.  He stuck his hoof up against Bon Bon’s face and shoved.  She went flying back into a wall herself, and collapsed on the floor, utterly stunned.
   “Run!” Lyra screamed.  “Take Tootsie and run!”
   Bon Bon didn’t hesitate this time.  She jumped up and rushed across the room to where Tootsie was crying, then lead her into the kitchen and away from the horrible sight.  For a brief moment Bon Bon considered grabbing a knife from the drawer, but thought that would work no better than the pan.  Her only hope, she thought, was to get Tootsie away.
   She ran to the back door and lifted her hooves to the lock. “Mama Bon Bon!” Tootsie was screaming, “Mama Bon Bon!”  She watched her hooves fumble at the lock through her tear-covered eyes.  She had opened it a million times before and never had the slightest trouble.  Now she couldn’t get it open when it really counted.  “Mama Bon Bon!”
   “Shut up!” Bon Bon screamed at her in a way she never had before.  If only she would stop screaming, Bon Bon thought, then I could get the door open.
   “I’m sorry,” Tootsie cried, but Bon Bon didn’t hear her.
   Her heart started to beat again when the lock turned and she heard that familiar click.  She threw open the door with a pained expression, not quite a smile, and leaped towards the darkness of the night.  Her nose only got halfway through the door before she bumped into the stallion who had been standing right outside.
   He didn’t even give Bon Bon a chance to react before he tackled her and wrestled her to the kitchen floor.  Only there did she begin to scream.  This stallion wasn’t as big as the first one, but he was almost as tall and seemed to be made out of legs.  No matter how she struggled he was able to pin her down.  He had this big, almost deformed, square jaw and kept planting kisses all over her face even though she tried to squirm violently.
   “Mama Bon Bon!” Tootsie Flute screamed one last time.  She just couldn’t process what was happening.  For some reason, that nice man who ran the sweetshop was hurting Mama Bon Bon, and, unlike that first stallion in the living room, he wouldn’t stop talking.  He kept telling Mama Bon Bon lots of naughty words.
   Tootsie watched Mama Bon Bon’s eyes roll in her direction.  “Run!” Mama Bon Bon screamed.  So Tootsie Flute ran.  She couldn’t run out the back door; it was blocked.
   So she ran into the living room.  Mama Lyra was in there, on the floor, with the big red pony shuffling around on top of her.  Mama Lyra was on her back and had to crane her neck to look backwards at Tootsie and she scraped her horn against the floor.  Tootsie couldn’t get out the front door either.  That was was blocked too.  “Hide!” Mama Lyra screamed.
   Tootsie ran to hide.  She was good at hiding.  She played hide and go seek all the time.  Tootsie ran into Mama Bon Bon and Mama Lyra’s big bedroom.  It was always the place that she had run to whenever she was feeling scared.
   Tootsie got down on the floor and crawled beneath the bed.  It was dark, and there was dust everywhere, but at least she was in a hiding spot.  She listened to the noises from other rooms.  She didn’t feel any less scared.  In fact the longer she laid there, the more Tootsie realized it wasn’t a very good hiding spot after all.  It was just about the first place Mama Lyra and Mama Bon Bon checked.
   Tootsie started to inch her way out from beneath the bed.  She paused when she heard noises.  Hooves.  Small hooves, like her own, clopping against the wooden floor.
   “She’s hiding in the back,” grumbled the deep voice of the pony that was hurting Mama Lyra.
   “Noo!” Tootsie heard Mama Lyra scream, “stay away from my baby!”  Then she heard the hooves coming down the hallway.  Tootsie panicked, and leaped into the closet.  She shut the door behind her and hid behind the coats.
   Only she hadn’t shut the closet door completely.  There was still the vertical strip of light where the door hung ajar.  The bedroom was silent, although Tootsie could hear noises coming from the rest of the house.  Mama Lyra was crying.  The stallion in the kitchen was still saying naughty words at Mama Bon Bon, only he was shouting them now instead of whispering.
   Tootsie craned her head forward to peek out of the crack between the door and the frame.  At first, there was nothing, and she started to breathe a little easier.  Then she flinched.  Two figures entered the room.  She could barely make them out and resisted a strange compulsion to open the door wider.  Both were foals like her.  One was bigger than the other.  He was tall and skinny, and had two big floppy ears.  The other was much smaller and younger than the first.  Tootsie recognized the colt; he was her own age.  She had played with him.  His family had been new in town, and she had wanted him to feel welcome.
   Tootsie backed up into the coats again.  From her perspective, she could just see the bed.  Then she saw the two colts.  They were looking under the bed.  A shiver went up her spine, as if she had just escaped some unknown horror.
   The colts disappeared.  Nothing happened for a long time.  Tootsie Flute could hear her heart pounding in her ears.  She felt like it might jump out her throat.
   She leaned forward again, wanting to look out that gap.  Wanting to see that there was no pony there.  Her nose came straight to the edge of the door.  Two faces appeared in the gap, one high, one the same height as her.  Their greedy eyes peered straight into her soul.  The one her own height was wearing a costume eye patch.
   “‘Allo, Tootsie!” he said.  The door flung open.
   “Nooo!” Tootsie Flute screamed.
   The same scream was repeated from two other rooms in the house, and these were the loudest screams of all.