Your Waifu Doing Hurtful Things to Youby the dobermansChaptersTalking to Other PoniesAvoiding Eye ContactHitting YouBadmouthing YouSaying She Wants to Break UpKilling YouEpilogue - Gardening With YouSaying She Hates YouTalking to Other PoniesWhat kind of a day had it been? It had been a day. Piss it into the hole in the parking lot behind the loading dock where you kept all your other days. You set your empty lunchbag on the kitchen counter and throw your keys into the Cool Whip container you use for important shit. No fewer than twenty-one point five wonderful human beings had graced you with their divine presence at the customer information desk, each of them very indignant and very serious about getting credit on their cheap-ass return items. One mother of two with skunk breath had argued for half an hour over a pair of water guns her darling angels had broken five minutes after opening the boxes. She’d won in the end, wearing you down with her black hole of stale cigarette slime and salami parfum. Eau de toilet. Ten and a half hours of your life and as many brain cells turned to lard. It’s Tuesday, with no end in sight. But none of that matters now, because you’re home. Home with Princess Luna, your waifu. Princess Luna. Her beautiful face flickers in the jumbled darkness of your mind’s eye, and you can’t help but smile. Her smooth voice is trilling in the living room, a music you would record and put on endless replay on your iPod if you could. Fine blue hairs cling to the carpet and walls where she passes by every day, like a trail that always leads to her. Her snail trail, you liked to joke to her. And there is her saddlebag, hunched next to your jacket that you’d forgotten to toss back in the closet when the days had gotten warm. Everything had changed when she arrived, three months ago almost to the day. You’d stepped out onto the sidewalk that morning, zombified as usual from surfing the web the night before, and there she’d been. Watching you. Sizing you up. Already capturing your soul. A trial, she had called it, once she had let you touch her feathers and horn to convince you that you hadn’t gone insane, and weren’t dreaming. A spirit link to find out more about the nature of humans, and whether they could be trusted with the secrets of harmony and friendship. For three moons, she had explained, her mind and heart would be joined to yours, so that you both could share your true emotions and motives without the interference of deceit or the eternal inadequacies of language. All of that was great, but what it boiled down to was that she was your waifu, and life couldn’t be better. “Sweetheart, I’m back!” you call out. “Did you eat yet? I brought you a cantaloupe. You love those, right? Getting ready for the fair?” She continues talking, but it’s obvious that you aren’t the one she’s speaking to. You wonder whether she might have a visitor. Another one of her kind, maybe. The spirit link is telling you that she’s miffed, and more than a little disappointed in something. You give the cantaloupe a quick toss in the air and head into the living room, hoping it will cheer your beloved up. “… this creature appears to have an obscene fascination with my posterior. They all do. I do not understand it,” you catch her say. She’s standing next to the mirror you’d hung above the fake fireplace, her attention divided between her reflection and a shimmering circle of light that was hovering by her snout. There’s another face within the bright, wavy portal, not unlike Luna’s, but with a cream-white coat and stenciled rosy eyes. It could only be Luna’s sister and fellow ruler, Celestia. Luna had talked to you about her from time to time. You remember enough to know that she doesn’t take kindly to those she sees as enemies. “Are you sure?” Celestia asks. Luna ran a brush through her mane. A moment later, a burst of sweet morning wildflowers hits you like a punch from an ice cream man wearing cotton candy gloves. You love watching her brush her mane. Staggering from visions of an idyllic childhood you hadn’t actually lived through, you almost miss her reply. “I am indeed. I have caught them staring on numerous occasions. This one to whom I find myself unfortunately bound seems particularly obsessed. It apologizes, but does nothing to correct its behavior. It believes itself to be my betrothed.” You blink away the golden-tinged dreams. You can handle this. “But honey, I told you, it’s those moons you got back there! They … you know. They just catch the eye. You know I’m not like that, right?” Celestia’s stern face fills the portal, frowning at you before turning back to Luna. “Is there any more? Have you tried engaging them in conversation? Have any among them shown even the slightest degree of promise?” Luna shakes her head and chuckles. “Not one. Believe me, I’ve tried. Their capacity for reason, and therefore friendship, is limited. Only their young appear to possess the levels of altruism we were hoping to find here. That is, when they are not being poisoned by excessive quantities of sugar, or driven into a continual frenzy by forced competition in every aspect of life. In other words, almost never.” “But honey!” you cry, holding out the cantaloupe. “You still love me, though, right? Listen, forget about that shit … I mean … stuff you’ve seen on TV, and that time with the soccer moms, and all those trips to the mall. We stopped shopping there because everybody made you feel weird, right? I’m your friend! Look! Please? I got you your favorite.” Celestia clears her throat, moving back from the portal far enough so you can see her massive, sculpted pecs. “Have you reached a conclusion, then, sister?” “I have,” says Luna, shooing you away with her wing, “and I will say that I find myself yearning for the cool breezes and solitude of my tower in Canterlot. I shall be there soon, and an end to this fruitless gesture of diplomacy.” “I see. Well, this is valuable information in any case. Thank you again for taking this on. Please stay strong for what remains of your task.” “I will try,” Luna replies. She squints into the mirror, checking her coat for whorls. She spots one on her neck and dabs at it with her hooftip, bringing everything back into perfect alignment. “Tonight we are to go to a carnival.” She rolls her eyes. “Well … won’t that be nice?” says Celestia, shooting you a dark-browed glance. “I look forward to your return, my sister.” The portal shrinks and disappears in a shower of sparks. “As do I,” Luna grumbles. She puts the brush down and gives you her own ice-cold stare-down. The end of her horn begins to glow. “Honey, whatever I did, I’m sorry. Can we just …” Your words are lost under the ear-splitting blast of her spell. Author's Note 2nd Person, pony on earth, Soviet Russian version of a nearly extinct meme. Because. Avoiding Eye ContactFor a second you think that she’d teleported you both all the way to the fair, but when you spot your neighbor’s muddy silver tinsel tree sagging against the fence on the next lawn over, you remember that she’s never been there. You’re going to have to make the trip down the hill. Oh well. It’s just one more chance to show off your smokin’ waifu to all the wannabes. Did any of them even have a waifu? Nope. Just ugly-ass girlfriends that blew their money. She’s sitting in the grass, gazing at the one or two stars that were bright enough to be seen this early in the evening. Maxin’ out on swag. You wish you were downwind of that mane. “Hey, uh, you know …” you stutter, searching for the words, “you’re picture perfect. Like … uh … poetry.” The memories churn. Something from junior high that girls talked about. “You’re pretty as a sonnet.” Luna watched the stars grow brighter. “A sonnet?” “Yeah, a sonnet’s a, uh, a kind of … uh …” “A poem. A poem of predetermined structure, often terminating in a rhyming couplet. Prominently used by one of your great bards, Shake Spear. I learned of him while reading the Wikipedia lore of your computer, as you call it.” Damn she’s smart. Smarter than you, though she’s got a few thousand years’ head start. You admire her noble profile as she scans the sky. Her ever-flowing hair. Her perfect forelock. Her delicate sloped muzzle. Her … “Are you quite finished gawking?” If you were somebody else, you’d punch yourself in the face. Smooth. She’d caught you with your mouth hanging open like the Neanderthals over in the boonies in Boartown. “Yeah, uh, yeah. Hop on up. I got some new rims back there, so be careful. I’m gonna have Phil install ‘em next weekend. You remember Phil, right? My baby’s gotta ride in style!” Luna might have sniffed. With a single flap of her wings, she performs a fluid leap into the scarred pickup bed. The frame shrieks under her weight. You figure she’s seven hundred pounds easy, but the bed’s rated a ton plus, so you’d never worried about tooling around with her back there. After choosing a spot as far away from your stack of rims as possible, she sits back on her hind end and turns her muzzle again to the sky. The spirit link twists in your chest. She’s not happy. Not one bit. You circle around to the driver’s side and get in, letting the cantaloupe drop onto the passenger’s seat. No problem. Her mood will get better once you get to the fair. Once you get her on the Ferris Wheel, laughing and screaming along with everybody else. Maybe get some fried dough and slushy in her. Win her a teddy bear or two, or some of those goldfish in plastic bags. Girls like those. “Shit!” you curse. Your keys are back inside, and you already have you seatbelt on. You crack open the window. “Sweetie, can you …” The keys appear with a loud jingling and fall into your lap. “Thanks! It was like you read my mind,” you call out behind you, before realizing that she actually had read your mind. You pull out of Sunnyview Estates and head south toward Johnsonville. Johnsonville, home of the largest, shittiest shopping mall anywhere west of the big city, VilleHaven Merchants. Renamed Grand Doritos Shopping Center after whoever owned Doritos had bought advertising rights. Everybody works at Grand Doritos. You start down the hill like you do every morning, that dumbass chick’s toilet breath still lingering in your nasal cavity. You’ll probably end up with strep throat, or whatever diseases her kids brought home from school. Whatever. That’s why they have fairs. To get drunk, ride the merry-go-round, and forget about your week. Goddamit, you’d better not get sick. Being sick sucks. You jab the power button on the radio. Skillet? Skillet’s good, but Luna’s not a fan. What else? Mellencamp? No. Korn? You’d blast it if it was just you, but no. Bowie? That’s one you hadn’t tried. “Under the moonlight, the serious moonlight …” you croon over the wind and the rumble of your F-150. You concentrate your thoughts so she can’t miss them. It’s hard, and you never get it right, which is probably why she thinks you’re an ass. You have to steady your nerves too, in case she’s glaring at you like she usually does. Two pairs of underwear had gone into the trash because of that shit, and underwear is expensive. You peek up at the rearview mirror. She is. Her huge eyes are locked onto yours, folding up the jack-in-the-box of your soul and locking it down nice and tight. The spirit link had been telling you she’d been watching you this whole time, but you’d ignored it. There are always reasons to ignore it. Honey, what’s bothering you? Luna turns her head. Doesn’t really feel like talking. The square window panel disappears in the cloud of her mane, turning your view into a swirling blue sea of sparkles. After a few minutes, her words poke into your mind like beams of light through a fog. Say, yonder farm folk, what are they doing? Farm folk? You ease your foot off the gas a bit and look outside. Out on the hill, a bunch of guys are pulling logs out of the back of a wagon. One by one, they wrestle them into a wood chipper. “Lumberjacks, lumberjacks, jacking their lumber.” You laugh at your little ditty. You have a ton of little ditties. Just turning some trees into mulch. That place sells it to all the hardware stores. Wood … chipper … it makes chips of wood. I see. There’s nothing more to her message. You can feel her emotions change, though, from sullen to delighted. Almost joyful, then calm. You smile and turn up the music. She could be so childlike sometimes, and that was the best. You never feel more in tune with her than when you’re explaining that Mustangs aren’t horses, that smoking doesn’t mean you’re on fire, and what people really mean when they say ‘take a load off’. She really has no idea until you tell her. Sometimes it feels a little like you’re taking care of a toddler, but that’s OK. A toddler that never needs a diaper changed or her puke mopped up, and who actually listens when you teach her stuff is a good deal. You reach the bottom of the hill and take a left. The brown sign for the Median County Fairground is hanging on by one rusted nail, same as it is every day when you pass it on the way to work. An orange light is clinging to the underside of the clouds above the road ahead, and you can already hear music and yelling. Cars, pickups and minivans appear on the muddy shoulder of the road. The parking lot must already be full. Oh well, better to have to walk than sit in a traffic jam for an hour when it’s time to leave. Luna can teleport you back up the road anyway. You swing into a spot that hasn’t completely turned to slop and put it in park. You grab the melon as you get out, because you know Luna’s going to want something healthy after all the fair food you’re going to make her eat. She’s a stickler for her diet. “OK sweetie, what do you wanna see first? How about the petting zoo?” That’s advanced girl schmoozing. Ninja stealth techniques. Take her to pet the billy goats. Guaranteed smile. “It hardly matters. Take your pick,” Luna replies, already heading toward the noise and laughter beyond the ticket gate. She wasn’t even talking in your direction. You linger by the pickup. She wasn’t angry, but she wasn’t acting happy either. “Honey, could we talk for a sec? I’m sorry if I …” She’s a black shadow, far away against the lights of the rides. Probably can’t even hear you. Petting zoo it is, then. You check your pockets for your wallet and keys, and jog to catch up. Hitting You“Two adults,” you say as you slide a twenty under the ticket window. The purple star stamp that the girl in the booth presses onto the back of your hand is cold, like a kiss. She smiles when Luna raises her hoof and lets her stamp her shoe. “Do you fellas want beer bracelets?” You glance at Luna. “No, I’d better not. I’m driving, and the missus here doesn’t drink.” “The missus? O … K …” The other girls start giggling. One is snapping a photo with her phone and making a piss poor attempt to hide it. Five seconds and she’ll be uploading you all over Snapchat. You sneer, but hold your peace. Nothing you could say right now is going to help you. “Which way is the petting zoo?” The one with the stamp is spazzing. Laughing, it looks like, but holding it in. Real funny, huh – a man and his waifu? She points to a spot on the map they had taped to the window. “Here’s where you two are now. Follow the main road,” she traces her finger up the brown rectangle on the page, “then when you see the 4H exhibit take a right. You’ll see it right there. White tent, lots of animals.” Her pink polished fingernail taps a circle with an outline of a goat in the middle. “Thanks,” you mumble. Luna had already left. You hurry, muffling your thoughts like you always do when you want to be invisible. If you think as little as possible, no one will notice you chasing a giant blue unicorn with wings. That’s how it works. In no time you’re shoulder-to-shoulder with her. She has her head high, nose up. Not good. Lots of people are heading in the opposite direction, carrying bags of cotton candy and balloons while they laugh about how scared they were on this ride or that. Most are families with kids, but there are more than a few knots of teens and twenty-somethings looking for a place to chill, or to fuck with people. You’re getting looks from all of them, of course. Looks, giggles, comments, and all the usual shit. The beer tent is coming up on the left. If you can just make it past here without anybody … “The fuck?” Shit. Three shitfaced guys in wife-beaters are standing at the door of the tent. The douchenard gang of this douchenard town. “Take off the suit, asshole! This isn’t fucking Disney World,” the tall one shouts at Luna. People call him Gorilla, on account of the carpet of hair he’s got sprouting everywhere it shouldn’t. He lifts, but that’s all he does, and he only works his arms. He’d been a real fuckwad in high school. Considered himself a natural leader since the days of European History, when they covered the World War II Axis powers. The wannabe Gorillas, Schlong and Poop Scoop, crack up as all three step out from under the tent. “Hey! Is that your boyfriend in there?” yells Schlong. “Tell him to come out, I got something for him.” He extends his cobra-and-grizzly-bear-tattooed arm, holding out a hot dog. Gorilla you could handle. At least you could reason with him, when he wasn’t speedballing. But Schlong-dong was a different story. The conversation would always come back to his cock ring, most often right before he showed it to you. “Ha ha! Come out. Nice!” blurts Poop Scoop. First thing you’d heard him say in two months. They didn’t let him out of the Johnsonville Wastewater Treatment Plant very often. He picks an onion ring out of his cardboard tray and tosses it at the tip of Luna’s horn. “Look, just like horseshoes!” Schlong laughs and gives him a high five. “Have a go, Gorilla. Betcha Pooper can land a ringer before you.” “A ringer with the rings. Gimme one of those,” Gorilla grunts, scraping up a handful. He throws one like a Frisbee. Too low. It bounces off Luna’s clenched eyelid and gets caught in her mane. Her rage boils up inside your chest like superheated radiator fluid, her thoughts streaking into your turtled brain. I shall incinerate them where they stand. She’s getting a spell ready. One with enough power to make the beer tent a pile of ash and roasted dickfaces. Shit … uh … shoot! No! No. You don’t want to do that. Too many people watching. Just let me handle it, OK? Her murderous gaze turns to you, but she holds the inferno she’d been about to unleash in check. You hold out your hands, trying to block some of the shit they’re throwing. “Nah, bruh. He’s my brother. He’s kind of a clown.” Gorilla’s having none of it. “Fuck that. Clowns wear wigs and make balloon animals, dude. They don’t go around wearing that shit.” He tries for a skyhook jumpshot. Not even close. “He’s got issues, OK? Can you take it easy on him?” Schlong is twirling a soggy onion ring on his finger like an old west gunslinger. “Yeah, yeah, that’s cool. Just tell him to stand still for a minute.” He goes into his best Major League wind up and chucks it at Luna as hard as he can, not even trying for her horn. The other two open fire. The sounds of the missiles splattering as they hit their suffering mark are being drowned out by the jeering of the crowd. They think it's a show. Dripping bits of breading and onion are appearing on Luna’s face, mane and sides, peppering her once-stainless coat. Tears are gathering in the corners of her eyes. Fuck your life. They’re triggering her rejection complex. All sorts of baggage about her sister comes crashing to the front of her closet, spilling onto your floor. Schlong’s got his A-game on now. He lobs his beer at her, solo cup and all. It hits her wing, soaking into her brilliant blue feathers and coating them with foam. The crowd laughs. Some of the dads join in, throwing the stale ends of their softie pretzels and popcorn, or sloshing out experimental splashes of icy soft drinks at her back. All her anger had become a raging torrent of despair. The tears were flowing now, mingling with the grease that was caking up on her cheeks. She had never stopped looking at you. What say you? Will you do nothing to defend my honor? You feel like shit that a dog had eaten and shit out a second time, but you know when you’re outgunned. Just … just let them finish. I know these guys. If I say the wrong thing they’re going to kick my ass. They keep pelting her with onion rings, absorbed in their game, until one accidentally catches on her horn. It spirals all the way down to her forehead. Gorilla takes one last gulp of his beer and crushes the cup. “Come on, let’s get out of here. Let these two fairies go kiss on the Merry-go-Round or whatever.” “Yeah, let’s go hit up the bar,” Poop Scoop agrees. The three of them shuffle off. The circle of people who’d been watching clap and go on their merry way. Luna snuffles. You hate seeing her like this. She can’t even clean herself off, since you’d agreed early on that using magic in public is a bad idea. Worst of all, her feelings are all torn to hell. Still, you have to try to make the best of it. You can’t let those assholes ruin your waifu’s special evening. “Hey, I’m sorry about what they did. Maybe if I win you something at one of the booths, would that make you feel better? Do you like goldfish? I could …” “I have a sudden desire to see the swine race,” she growls, and stomps away before you can answer. You hustle to the beer tent. “Wait a minute! Let me at least get some napkins for you!” You grab a bunch off the top of the stack along with a couple of moist towelettes and fast-walk up the road after her. Running would make it look like you were having a tiff, and after what Gorilla had implied, that was the last thing you wanted people to think. By the time you catch up, she’d reached the restrooms they keep year-round for hikers and park visitors. “Hey,” you call out, “I think the pig race is over that way, by the announce tower.” She keeps moving like she hadn’t heard you, slipping into the shadows behind the building. You take a quick look around. Nobody here but the drunk guy that had just stumbled out of the men’s room talking to himself. Not wanting Luna to get too far out of sight, you hurry forward into the dark. There’s a good chance she’s having a crying fit back there, and you might be able to calm her down before she gets too out of control. She’s waiting for you at the rear of the building, wearing a scowl that could burn a city down. It’s hard to see outside of the lights of the lamps and the rides, but you could swear that all the shit those jackoffs had mucked her up with was gone. And she’s definitely not crying. You fan the napkins. “Hey baby, you need these? Listen, you can’t just step up to those guys. I could take one of them, no problem, but not all three. I’m sorry. I feel really, really bad. You’re not hurt, are you? Hey, I still got this,” you drop the napkins on the ground and pull the cantaloupe out from under your arm. “It’s not a three course fireside dinner like you’re used to back home, but I made sure to get a juicy one. You gotta be hungry after …” You feel the melon tug out of your grip. She’s floating it with her magic, turning it around and around like one of the planets they had on the third grade science class mobiles. She glides it next to your head as if comparing the sizes. “No, honey, it’s for you. I’m not …” The melon explodes. Chunks of watery orange flesh splatter you and everything around you. The coarse-skinned rind bites into your face, stinging like a swarm of hornets. Before you can wipe the pulp out of your eyes, something cold and hard slams against your temple. You sprawl back against the water stained brick wall, a migraine already pounding away in your skull. Luna steps forward, too close for you to move. When you see the glittering hatred in her eyes, you put two and two together. She’d hit you. Her hoof comes up again, lightning-quick. The metal of her shoe connects below your ear like an aluminum baseball bat, its force sending you to your knees. The night goes black, just for a second, and your lunch heaves halfway up your throat. You hold your gut, trying not to puke. Seeing you try to protect yourself only provokes her wrath. It’s exploding now, releasing in bursts from her volcanic heart. Her blows hammer down on your face and collar bones and head, raising welts and opening cuts in a hail of misery. When you try to crawl away, the rock-hard hooves slice in from the side and crack against your ribs. She knows where to hit. Of course she does. She’d spent the last three months studying humans. Culture, politics, psychology, and anatomy. She knows every tendon. Every nerve. And you? She’d read your mind and feelings like a book. All day, every day. She knows everything about you. Her anger grows every time her hoof finds your groveling body. You can feel that this goes far beyond the spectacle that had played out a few minutes ago. It’s you. Her intentions are screaming inside your thoughts, vaporizing everything else. She wants to keep hitting you until you stop moving. You have to do something before she knocks you out and stomps your brains to jelly. “Please, sweetie, stop! I’m not like you. I’m not strong like you. You’re gonna kill me!” Something in your voice must have gotten her attention. Through blackened eyes you see her hooves step back onto the grass and gingerly wipe off your blood. The beating had stopped, for now. Badmouthing YouThe forest across the field behind Luna is a black band of noise. The tree frogs are cackling, getting louder as the ringing in your ears dies down. Luna clears her throat. At times like this, you know it’s best to shut up and let her talk. “Pardon me. Perhaps I should have restrained myself. I had forgotten how frail you creatures are.” Looking up at her would be another wrong move. Instead, you reach to the pile of napkins you’d dropped and claw a wad of them against your face. Blood and cantaloupe seeds come away in strings of red goo. “Are you much injured?” “No,” you cough. You’ll only make her feel worse if you tell her the truth. Plus, she’ll think you’re a wuss. You quietly spit shards of broken teeth into the napkins. “Pity. Mayhap you would finally learn your lesson if you were. I am very disappointed in you, although I must say it is no surprise to me that your spine has proven once again to be made of jelly. I have not suffered such humiliation in years! And yet again your resilience to even the gentlest of corrections is shown to be nonexistent. By the stars, you would shatter like glass were I to give you a true dressing-down.” You nod and say nothing. Best to stick to the routine. Her gaze is heavy on you. You can feel it even without looking, and her anger is still churning in your chest. The tree frogs chant their tireless song. They’re watching too, lined up on the branches off in the distant woods, mocking you. At last Luna’s rage begins to subside. “Get up, coward,” she sighs. You rise, fighting through the jabs of pain from your bruised ribs and bleeding forearms. The mayflies spinning around the orange light bolted to the wall above you are blurry, and your vision keeps shifting to the right so your brain can’t keep up with what you’re seeing. Chances are her first shot had given you a concussion. You venture your first glance in her direction. “Would you like to redeem yourself?” she asks. Her words are pointed, but no longer full of acid. “Yes,” you manage to sputter through your broken front teeth. This is always the worst part. Knowing that you’d failed her. Feeling how let down she felt, straight from the source. Wanting nothing more than to throw back a bottle of Drano and chase it with a lit M-80. “Excellent,” she replies. “But first, you’re a mess.” She conjures a towel you recognize from your bathroom hamper, and throws it to you. As you finish wiping yourself down, your Malibu Beach print hoodie slaps against your face. She must have zapped that one out of the dryer. Guessing she wants you to put it on, you toss the towel onto the grass and struggle into it. “Pull the cowl over your head, unless you wish all and sundry to see the brand of my hoofprints on your face.” You must be bruised to shit. Your shirt is marked up with mud horseshoes too. You zip up and pull the hood on, tightening the drawstring as far as it would go. Except for your nose and eyes, maybe, nobody was going to be able to see the evidence of the beat down she’d given you. “There now,” she says while you test how far you could move your arms. “Here is my request. As we were passing by the pavilions of the gameskeepers and food vendors, I spied one tent that awarded foals’ toys to any who could burst ten balloons with as many darts. Win for me the one with the likeness of a bear. A teddy, as I believe it is called.” All she needs is a teddy bear and you’re back in business. Game on. “I shall return with it to Canterlot and display it to the Royal Court, so that my sister and all the nobles may see and understand that humans have some faculty for compassion, and that they care for their young.” “One teddy bear. You got it,” you reply. The storm is clearing, the birds are singing, and there might even be some sunlight peeking out from behind the clouds in the dreamland of her feelings. That’s another thing that always made you feel like the luckiest guy on earth. No matter how bad of an ass-kicking she gave you, she’d calm down in a minute or two and everything would be fine. That’s a full-grown, mature waifu for you if there ever was one. “Good. I shall wait here for your return. This is a simple task, easy even for you. I expect it will not take long.” “No worries, sweetie,” you chime with your broken smile. “I’m a pro at darts. I’ll be back in five minutes tops.” You see her nod as you shove your hands in your pockets and head back around the restroom building onto the main road. People had thinned out. Most of the families with younger kids were gone, though some of the scruffier-looking ones were still putzing around. Good. Less competition for the game tents. You hurry back the way you’d come. It’s getting colder. You’re walking fast, scanning the backs of the tents for any signs of stuffed animals or rows of balloons. What would suck is if the dart tent had closed up for the night. What would you tell Luna then? Sorry honey, I was a day late and a dollar short like the rest of my goddam life and didn’t get you the teddy bear that would make all of humanity look like winners? Yeah, that would end well. There’s always the goldfish people for a plan B. If they hadn’t closed up too. A guy at the cotton candy cart across from the beer tent points at you and starts wheeling his fidgeting tyke your way. Wonderful. If only Luna had gotten your Foakleys out of the pickup. The hoodie isn’t doing much to hide your face; just the gashes and the knots. Anybody would recognize you. The guys parks his stroller a few feet away, in the middle of the road. “That was great back there, man. My boy Tyler was laughing his ass off.” “Was he?” you mutter. “Hell yeah! I almost shit my pants when the tears started coming out. That’s some Charlie Chaplin old-time shit, man. Classic.” Tyler reaches up and tugs on his father’s shorts. “Where baby brontosaurus go?” You chuckle and wrinkle your eyebrows at the kid. “Baby brontosaurus?” Dad laughs. “I couldn’t figure out what the fuck that was when I first saw it. I told him it was a baby dinosaur. There’s some blue dinosaurs, right?” “I guess,” you say. You keep your mouth closed as you smile. Scaring the kid with the bloody nubs that used to be your teeth would only bring questions. And you have a question for them. “You happen to see a dart tent anywhere around here? You know, where you pop balloons and win a stuffed animal? I wanted to get one for my wai … for my brother. We’re gonna make it part of the routine. Whoever can knock it off his head gets to keep it.” Dad nods, waving his hand toward an intersection a ways down from the beer tent. “Yeah, we saw it. Just keep going. It’ll be on the right coming from this direction. Hey, do you two do birthday parties? Tyler’s got one in a few weeks. Him and his pre-school pals would like nothing more than to light that bronto-butt up, right Tyler?” Tyler starts mashing a soggy graham cracker he’d been holding. “Where brontosaurus go?” You think hard. Say yes, and you risk this guy seeing you at the mall someday and chewing you out for not following through. Say no, and he’ll try to talk you into it, wasting time you don’t have. Have one bad morning sometime in the future, versus miss out on the teddy, betray Luna, become a traitor to the entire human race, and probably cause a pony invasion where everyone you know is slaughtered or sent to the moon or whatever it is they do. “Yeah, we can stop by,” you say, trying to make it sound like you give a shit. “Awesome! Here, let me give you my phone number.” He digs into a bag hanging from the back of the stroller and pulls out a notepad shaped like a baby bottle. After scribbling for a few seconds, he tears the top sheet off and hands it to you: Paul LeCompte 604-887-6793 (cell) May 20 Birthday “Thanks a lot man,” he says, opening up a container of sanitary wipes. “Good luck with the darts. See you in a few weeks!” You fold up the note and put it into your hoodie pocket. “No problem, Mr. LeCompte. See you on the 20th.” Before he can go any further and ask for something retarded like taking your picture with his kid, you jog to where he’d pointed. It doesn’t take long to find the dart tent. It’s still open, and there’s nobody but a geeky-looking numbnuts and what vaguely resembled a girl failing miserably to hit a single balloon with their darts. You step up into line behind them. There, sitting on the top of the prize shelf, is the teddy bear that would get you out of Luna’s doghouse. Saying She Wants to Break UpYou raise your head, fighting to stop the world from spinning. She doesn’t love you. She doesn’t love you. She hates you. The glimmering, silver crescent moon on her breastplate sinks into view, blurred by your pooling tears. “You don’t mean that, do you sweetie?” you croak. She dips her face to your level, so that every glint of every secret facet of her flawless sea-green irises is crystal clear. “Of course I hate you. I have done nothing but treat you with contempt—contempt you unquestionably deserve—since I arrived in this joyless world. How could you fail to perceive this? Is the link I created not powerful enough?” You draw the sleeve of your hoodie across your eyes, making as if to dry your tears. You’re happy just to hide from the disgust in her gaze. “I … I did know. I just didn’t want to believe it. I ignored it because … because you’re the best thing in my life. You’re the one who keeps me going. You’re the one I think about when I have to sit through lunch break at Taco Hell while the guys from work fart their guts out, and I have to shit too because it’s Taco Hell, and I have to go back to an endless line of assholes that just want free stuff, every day, all day. Knowing that you’ll be there when I get home after dealing with all those people makes it all OK.” “I truly have done this for you?” you hear her ask. You rise, kneeling against the wall. “Yeah, you got it. So OK. So you don’t want to be my waifu. That’s a little weird. I get it. But if you won’t do that, couldn’t you …” you swallow hard and open your eyes. “Couldn’t you be my mom?” She recoils, but says nothing. For a while she stares at a spot on the wall above your head, a slow smile creeping up her lips. The sight dulls the raging pain in your arms and face and chest. For the first time maybe, just maybe you’d done something right. She let slip a short laugh, and your heart laughs with her. “Come, little precious,” she calls, pushing up into the air with a single stroke of her giant wings, “fly with me! I shall teach you to soar like the wind.” She climbs higher, far above the roof of the restroom building. When she passes the top of the tallest of the trees she turns, waiting for you to follow. It doesn’t matter that physics, luck and your own fat ass are against you. Luna’s giving you a second chance. A chance to build a new relationship. You’re going to be her loving, dutiful son. When she wants you to clean your room, you’re going to get out the Febreeze and Windex and make it shine. When she tells you to go to the grocery store and pick up a half pound of sugar beets for her supper, you’re going to hop on your Schwinn bike with the biggest Beaver Cleaver grin and pedal like your life depends on it. When she yells at you to do your homework because she doesn’t work her hooves to the bone so you can be a lazy good-for-nothing bum when you grow up, you’re going to whip out your protractor and calculator and pinpoint where that frictionless projectile is going to land to within millimeters. You lift up the bottom of your hoodie—that will be your wings—and run for takeoff. When you’re below where Luna is hovering, you jump and start flapping. When that doesn’t work, you flail your arms, not caring about the searing pain the bone fragments grinding in the fractures are causing you. You will ascend. You will show your mother that you will be an obedient son. Of course, you won’t, because you’re a broken slob who can’t run a hundred yards without wheezing, let alone fly. You double over, sucking air like a vacuum cleaner. Down Luna floats, landing by your side to arch her wing over you. “There there, my child, not to worry. I shall help you learn magic. Cast this spell to light the darkness, and I shall show you how to make your star grow brighter and brighter.” A soft blue light buds at the tip of her horn. She holds it there, waiting for you to do the same. Not sure what to do, you grab a stick from the grass and hold it against your forehead. What is it they always say in the movies? If you concentrate, if you clear your mind and think only happy thoughts … if you think hard enough about the light … Nothing happens. The director does not decide to tell the FX crew to add a light at the end of the stick in production. Nobody even runs in from off-camera to give you a cigarette lighter. You throw the stick to the ground. Plan B. Who would have been able to make a light appear? Aleister Crowley? What religion was he? Maybe you just need the right word of power, like in Harry Potter. “Illuminus … Illuminarus … Luminus … damn it …” Luna withdraws her wing, smiling. “Hush, little one, it is alright,” she chides. “Come, run with mother. She will help you grow big and strong.” She rears, then dashes away across the field. OK. You can do this. All you need to do is catch up with her. Show her you belong with her as her own. You pick yourself up once more and sprint after her. It takes you less than two strides to realize that you have a snowball’s chance in hell of catching her. She’s already fifty yards away at the very least, her mane and tail flowing behind her like the boughs of a dark, starry willow. Their ecstatic scent still is still lingering in the air. You need them. You need to snuggle into them and fall asleep, because it’s nighttime that’s what a good foal would do. And that’s why you keep running, until your legs go numb, and your throat burns, and you fall to the ground exhausted. The grass is cool against your bruised, knotted cheek. There’s got to be something you can do to prove yourself to her. She wants you as her foal. She feels sorry for you, and wants to help you become noble like she is. There’s a shudder in the earth, getting stronger and stronger in a steady rhythm. It’s Luna. She’s coming back, and this time you’re going to show her. Something mutes the noise of the tree frogs. It’s Luna’s muzzle, inches from your ear. “Do you know why you cannot do these things? Do you know why you cannot be my offspring?” You sit up, eager to answer her questions. To prove you’re not worthless. “Uh … because I’m not good enough? Because I’m not a horse?” You smile, awaiting your next challenge. “BECAUSE I CANNOT BEAR FOALS YOU IMBECILE!” You cover your ears, crumpling back to the ground under the force of her thunderous voice. “That is the price!” she shouts, stomping her hoof just a hair’s breadth from your face. “That is the consequence of immortality, and it has been a constant sorrow for me for longer than you can imagine. Another thing you would have known had you paid the least bit of attention. And now you have added insult to injury, dredging up centuries of heartache I felt, watching other mares know the joy of family and motherhood. Thank you so much for reminding me of my shame. My barrenness. Were you my foal I would abandon you. I would lead you to where the timberwolves crack the trees to mark their domain, and fly off to watch them devour you. Neigh! Abandon you I shall. I depart now for Canterlot, with news that you and your kind are beyond hope. Since you have given your best efforts to the extent that your meager abilities allow, I have decided not to take the full measure of revenge that you so foolishly have merited. Be thankful. Farewell.” She turns, and in a rapid flash of blue light, her saddlebags appear on her back. Without another word she stalks off toward the deep night of the forest. The farther away she gets, the more you feel the spirit link stretch and grow weaker, like a long rubber band being pulled to the breaking point. She’s fading. Her thoughts, her smouldering anger that you’d cherished each and every moment since she’d come into your life, her growing awareness of your world, all of that shrinks to a tiny point, too small to know or feel. You struggle to your knees, reaching out to her vanishing silhouette. Author's Note And there we have it. For anyone not interested in the bonus gore chapter and epilogue, please consider this the end of the story. Hope you got one or two laughs out of it. Inspired by the Doing Hurtful Thing to Your Waifu chart for Luna, and possibly challenge #20 on the Mortal Kombat 9 Challenge Tower. And maybe a little bit of Tim and Eric's B$M. Killing YouIt can’t end like this. She can’t leave thinking you’re a complete and total shit stain. You’d betrayed her, disappointed her, and hurt her feelings, and that was just tonight. You feel like you’ve been run over by a train after running a marathon, though, and who’s going to know if you call it a night, curl up in the field and hope she calms down by the time you wake up? Except she has her bag. It’s not going to be there on the counter anymore, scrunched by your jacket while you drink your Mountain Dew in the morning. The teakettle won’t be whistling at six in the morning, and the strange bittersweet herbs she makes her tea with wouldn’t fill the apartment with their trippy botanical garden scent. Her snail trail of blue hairs would be gone the next time you vacuum, sucked into the dustbag along with any chance you have at happiness. And you never had recorded her voice. The spirit link is almost dead. You push yourself to your feet one more time, figuring out what you’re going to say as you stagger after her. Everything hurts. It’s got to be way past eleven now. Most of the lights of the tents and rides have gone out, so only the orange glow of the restroom lamp and the faint sparkling of Luna’s tail are left to guide you as you race into a thickening maze of fog. She’s almost to the trees, her hoofsteps muffled by the long, unmown wildflowers and the clamor of the tree frogs. You have to catch her before she goes into the forest. After that, you know for sure you’ll never see her again. She doesn’t hear you running up behind her, still out of breath from trying to catch her before. Now is your chance. Now you’re going to turn it all around. You reach out to give her tail a tug. “Wait! Before you go, I just need to …” Your foot catches on something. A hole, or a log, or just a stray tree root. Your words die in your throat as you flop downward. As you fall, your outstretched hand makes contact with Luna’s rump, brushing down the warm, smooth coat where her immaculate crescent moon sits amid its mottled patch of black. A second later your face slams into the ground. Dirt and clover wad through your broken teeth. Fuck moles. Fuck clover. And most especially, fuck your goddam life. Why can’t you just have a normal conversation with your … what? She’s not your waifu, she’d said, and you’d proven you’re not good enough to be her son. Your grip your trembling hand, still tingling from when it had passed over Luna’s silken hide. You had made a mistake. You had touched her when she did not wish to be touched. And you had touched her ass. “Enough!” she cries. Before you can brace yourself for the beating you’re sure is coming, she grabs you between her forelegs and ignites her horn. There’s a loud crack, and the snickering of the frogs is replaced by the layered chorus of an endless sea of crickets. And Luna’s holding you, tight between her hooves, looking down on you with the stars of her mane and the clear night sky flaring behind her. A hug! She forgives you! She loves you after all! She had just been playing you like girls do on Youtube when they pretend to slit their wrists in the bathtub and the boyfriend comes in and thinks they killed themselves, and … She lifts you up into the air like you’re a toddler and slams you down onto something long and flat. Before the shock reaches your brain, she slams you again, crushing the wind out of your burning lungs. All of your sprained joints and broken bones jar at once, searing the moment of impact into your thoughts. When you try to curl onto your side, you feel her hooves hook around your shoulder, pulling you onto your back. She pins you down under her shoulder while you gasp to recover your breath. The spirit link comes crashing back, piping Luna’s hatred through the burning walls of your psyche, a black wellspring flooding the bottom floors of your soul. Her face descends over yours, blotting out the dim clouds. Never before had you appreciated just how big she is. Her bared teeth are inches from your throat, the threat unspoken, but real. The only thing you can do to shield yourself from the wrath she’s blazing down on you is shut your eyes and turn your head. “At last you’ve shown your true colors, you obnoxious, muck-eating worm!” she hisses into your ear. “I knew you were simple. I knew you were a coward. But a deviant? I cannot believe it. You lack the gall. No, this was a joke. A bawdy game you wanted to play, to spite me before I could escape this sloshing chamber pot of a world. You are less than those pigs at the carnival!” She pinches your face between her cold hooves, her fury winding up to hurricane strength. “By assaulting me you have committed treason. Therefore I declare your life forfeit.” Forfeit? The word is familiar, but not one you used enough to know what it means. Lawyers used it on those daytime court shows your mom watched when you were a kid. When the defendants lost they … they had to pay … When you feel Luna move, you open your eyes. You’re on a cot, it looks like, with a line of rolling pins or something instead of springs. The ground is worn dirt and stone a few feet below your head. Luna’s sweet mane is swishing against your ear as she jabs at something out of sight. A motor sputters once, then roars to life. Luna turns back to face you, smiling now. “There are ponies I know for whom this would be but a minor inconvenience. Let us see how well you fare.” She rises, just enough for you to see where the noise is coming from. In the faint moonlight you can just make out the outline of your feet in front of a chute. A ribbon of motor exhaust drifts by. Luna hadn’t forced you onto a cot. You’re on a conveyor belt. The chute is the metal hood of a wood chipper. You freeze, unable to move or breathe. It’s the one she’d asked about on the drive to the fair. She’d felt happy when you’d told her what it was. Maybe she’d been imagining killing you this whole time. Maybe she’d made up her mind weeks ago. And you’d gone and given her plenty of reasons. She places her giant silver shoe against your shoulder and nudges you forward. Still you wait, hoping she’s playing, hoping she’s just doing this to scare you, and that she’ll laugh and you’ll be able to hear gentleness in her voice again, and she’ll take you back to your apartment to your Mountain Dew and Doritos and everything will be … Something knicks the tip of your sneaker. It isn’t the sound of the cut that gets you, or the way Luna’s joy surges at your mounting terror. It’s the way the blade went through as if your foot hadn’t been there at all. You flail to roll off onto the ground, shimmying beneath Luna’s steepled legs and body. It only takes her a second to notice. She falls on you with all her weight, a landslide of muscle collapsing onto your face and chest. Your ribs crackle, breaking like a pile of wet sticks. It’s too much. You can’t breathe. Her words rip through your panicked thoughts as she slowly walks you forward. Suffer, worm, as I deliver you to Tartarus. The magic of the spirit link changes. Now your feelings are bending to Luna’s intent, becoming the picture of despair that she demands them to be. As your feet enter the blades, she plunges your soul into a lake of boiling oil. You start to groan into the black, crushing silence of Luna’s shoulder. Your feet are shaking, too hard and too fast to be out of fear alone. It doesn’t hurt much. Rapid warm tugs, papercut tingles, a lightening of the load … you deserve … you had earned … no … Every thought leads to her. There is nothing to know but what she commands. You deserve this and more, and if I had you chained in Canterlot’s dungeons I would give it to you. Day after day I endured your buffoonery, and the shame your cowardice heaped upon me. I came to you as an ambassador of peace. I offered you the most precious gift I had to give. I opened my mind and my heart to you, and after all I tried to teach you, in the end you rejected them in favor of a moment’s jest. In favor of flesh and bone. Pressed flat under her terrible weight, you feel her grow warm with exertion, her onyx breastplate rising and falling like a guillotine as she breathes, cutting into your shattered ribs and stomach. The spirit link had become a catalyst; every new burst of hatred she feels becomes your own. You hate yourself as she hates you. And there is no better way. The pain consumes you like a fire gone out of control, and you squirm to fan the flames. The stumps of your feet scrape against the steel housing of the threshing turbine, giving you more of what you deserve. Yours is a life that was never worth living. Yours is a mind that does not belong in a world of beauty, peace, and dignity. Her world. She is cutting you out of it, and you want nothing more than to help her. She pauses, delighting in your brokenness, savoring the view of what the turbine is doing to you. What little is left intact of your sanity swirls through your inner chaos. No … no … I didn’t mean it … I just wanted to … Before you can finish your plea, two loud cracks reach your ear over the machine’s vibrations carrying through the conveyor belt. A second later your calves wrench into knots, the ankle tendons severed loose. The scream bubbles out of your throat before you can stop it, only to fail against the bulk of Luna’s shoulder as it forces your jaws apart, a bouquet of lilacs, lavender and jasmine crammed into your mouth. I shall give you what you wanted. Luna’s joy blooms as your muted scream goes on and on, her weight forcing your jaws wider and wider open. She leans back to increase the pressure on your head, still pushing you deeper into the machine. Something crunches in your spine at the back of your neck. Stars flash in the suffocating darkness just before your jaw cracks at the joints, separating from your skull. There’s no time left. You’re almost out of gas, giving in more and more to Luna’s overwhelming assault. Still, your instinct for survival remains; the primal need to keep living no matter how miserable living would turn out to be. Maybe that’s all you’d ever had. What do you want? Please, tell me what you want! I’m sorry! Luna gets up at last, stepping back to evaluate her progress. Blood is trailing down her chest and forelegs, dotting her coat in spatters and dripping stars. She regards you with a faint smile. “What do I want? I want you to disappear.” She raises a hoof high above her dark crown, and brings it down on your face with enough force to break your nose. More blood erupts from your newest wound, cascading through the fragments of your front teeth, down the top of your mouth and into your throat. Your guttural, shapeless shrieks become high-pitched gurgles as you try to cough it out. Luna’s voice is soft and calm over your frenzied spluttering. “You are rubbish. And so, I am disposing of you.” She hammers your head and neck, unleashing her fury anew. Blow after blow finds your unprotected face, and as the skin flays and strips away from the bleeding muscle beneath, she pumps raw despair into your heart through the spirit link, flushing out any hope that still lingered there. When she stops she laughs, appraising your disfigurement. Satisfied with her work, she steps closer, scooping up your useless legs in one foreleg. She brings her muzzle close to your ear. “In olden times, we would ensure that the worst criminals would suffer as much as they could endure without perishing, before completing their execution. I will serve you in the pony way.” With the blade of her free hoof, she starts hacking at the tattered ends of your shins, chopping and folding the meat up toward your knees to reveal the bone. You lie still, trying with all your might to feel the despair she wants you to feel. She knows you’ve given up. She knows the pain is giving way to shock, which is why she’s going to reawaken it. She presses her hooftip against your exposed nerves, crushing and twisting them against your naked shinbones. A piercing agony you could never have imagined races up and down your spine, igniting the phantom space that used to be your feet with electric agony. Your legs kick in a reflexive need to get away from what was damaging them, to run from the danger. Luna hugs them to her chest, letting you squirm in her grip while she resumes picking and scraping. She turns her gleaming sea-green eyes to your face, drinking in your hopelessness, rejoicing in the interminable minutes of your abject surrender. Satisfied, she places a hoof against your sweat-soaked hair, still suspending your legs in the crook of her foreleg. Her wings and mane surround you, their sweet scent mingling with the warm night air and the exhaust leaking out of the motor and the iron-on-iron stink of your blood on the hot hammers and blades of the turbine. Without a word she pushes your head, jamming it into your fractured neck to slide you again into the reeking hood. This time it costs her some effort to keep control. She clamps tight to dampen the juddering of the blades as they grind against the thicker bone and gristle of your knees and thighs. She releases the flood of despair into your soul once more, and the liquid rasp of your weeping mixes with the flatulent roar of the blades as they puree your flesh. She smiles down on you, cradling you within the storm of metal. For a moment, you see your mother, hovering over you after you’d fallen from your bike years ago after a long day of fishing at the creek. She would clean up your scraped knees. She would gather in the fish that had spilled out of your bag. She’d hold the washcloth full of ice cubes against your bruises, and sing you to sleep. Your jaw wags in its rent socket. Mom? Luna stops, peering into your eyes. “Mother? Still dithering about that, are you? Look!” she spits, forcing your head up to give you a view of the black, empty space that was unmaking you. “This is your mother.” Blood is flowing over the sides of the conveyor belt, gushing in rhythm with your pulse. It won’t be long now. The pain is fading into a calm background ache. It would be good, and easy to sleep. But you have to try to stay awake. You have to please Luna as best you can. You have to suffer more. “Yes, worm,” she says, reading your worried thoughts, “I will give you more.” She lets your dismembered thighs drop at the cusp of the turbine, dips her head, and rams her horn into your gut, all the way to the razor edge of her crown. Grateful for the new pain, you wail to let her know she’s still able to hurt you. Deep inside you feel her magic working. Your guts are shifting, bulging your stomach as they churn. You watch the shapes stretch your skin, wondering what new horror she’s creating within you. The magic ceases for a moment. Luna withdraws, smiling as if struck with a thought that amuses her. “Was this what you wanted?” she sneers, blinking your blood from her eyelashes as it drips down her brow. Her eyes are blue now, it seems, cut ice in the moonlight. “Something like this?” You search the edges of the hole she’d made in you with trembling fingers. “Ngo … ngo … ngo …” you moan. She lances downward again, and again you feel your insides start to squirm. This time, when she tears her horn out of you, they don’t stop moving. It feels like there’s an animal inside your guts, biting and scrambling to get out. You’d seen Alien. You know what’s coming. You’re going to be an incubator. In a few minutes something out of your nightmares is going to splatter through your stomach, screeching like a newborn and hungry for its first meal. So that’s it. After all this, you’re going to be baby food. Luna laughs, a delicious poison you’re desperate to drink. “No, cretin! I have conceived no monster within you, though such a fate would suit well a waste of flesh like you.” She steps to the control panel. “I have doomed you to live. To live, as long as it takes for this machine to have its way with you. I have changed you. Your innards will feed from one another, sharing blood and fluid so that you might be aware to the very rending of your pusillanimous heart.” She’s going to kill you! At last she’s going to kill you! And you’ll be able to share your last breath with her. She’ll have the satisfaction of … “Your final moments will be spent alone. That is your sentence, for I know my absence is what you dread the most.” And with that, the spirit link breaks. No gentle fading, no warning. She’s gone. You rasp through the blood clogging your windpipe, flailing for her, needing to touch her soft, star-strewn mane. Needing her hatred within you. You couldn’t have lived without her, and now at the end you fear to die without her. Now the space inside she had filled with her thoughts is empty. Now there is only silence. She taps a button on the control panel, and turns a knob. The conveyor belt starts rolling, inch by inch into the darkness. She smiles, radiant like the moon, and speaks. “Suffer.” Suffer. That is the path you had chosen. As you watch her turn and walk away into the field, you understand the reason she’d chosen this as her final word to you. You weep, a soft, bloody gurgling to accompany the ecstatic praise of the moon that the crickets are pouring forth. There is no joy like her wisdom. In the distance, a circle of light has appeared. As it grows, you can see bright sunlit clouds within, and distant mountains topped with clean white snow, and fields of wildflowers of every shape and color. It’s a different world. A world unspoiled by humans and their petty greed and wars and skyscrapers and asphalt. A world of pure joy. The heat and the noise, and the fumes of exhaust grow stronger. Luna reaches the circle and stops, turning her head one last time to watch you. There’s more beyond, in the other world. A city in the mountain haze, a place of peace and riches. Farmlands and orchards stretch for miles below it, tilled in long perfect furrows, full of life and bounty. There is no worry there. No worry, and no fear. The last thing you see before your head enters the hood of the blades is Luna smiling, happy at last as she waits before the portal to that bright green world filled with sunlight and birdsong you think can only be paradise. Author's Note Awww yeah! Nothing like some good old fashion enkillenation, am I right? I don't know about you, but I can't think of a better way to die than to be tortured to death by Princess Luna. What's that, you say? You were hoping the Night Princess would be the one to get her comeuppance? Huh. Well, if you don't mind a change of scenery, I'd humbly direct your attention to my story "Life is a Party". It should provide what you're looking for. Technical note: This chapter was mildly influenced by the "Lover's Vow" segment of the 1990 movie Tales from the Darkside. Musical epilogue/visualization: Epilogue - Gardening With YouLuna’s knife sliced through her stack of pineapple and banana-peel pancakes. She pondered the make-believe face her sister had crafted on top; that of a filly, she judged, given the long green pineapple leaf eyelashes. She took a sniff of the warm buttermilk morsel before slipping it into her mouth. The filly had lost an eye. Luna’s chewing slowed, and she sighed. Celestia smiled at her from behind the bouquet of freshly cut daisies and zinnias spelling out “Welcome Home!” that she had placed at the center of the grand dining table, busy with her own breakfast platter. It was a fine morning. Luna was back from her long diplomatic errand, the Summer Sun Festival was just a couple weeks away, and the pancakes had turned out just right this time. Luna was eating them, at least, and as far as Celestia was concerned, that was all that mattered. Except that she wasn’t. Celestia put her fork down. “Luna?” No reply. Luna was staring at her plate, poking the side of her pancakes with her knife. Celestia eased out of her seat and glided down the length of the table. “Luna, can you please tell me what has you so preoccupied? Is something not to your liking? You’re not feeling underappreciated again, are you?” Luna kept cutting, intent on leaving as much of the fruit face intact as she could. “Me? Preoccupied? Heavens, no.” A syrupy section of the stack came free and floated to her lips. “Luna, I can tell something’s bothering …” “It’s … it’s nothing,” Luna snapped. “I’m fine. Thank you for the flowers. They’re lovely. Busy day today?” Celestia took a step closer. “Luna …” The knife and fork clattered onto the plate. “I lost my temper,” Luna grumbled, rubbing her temple with her hoof. “I did something … decidedly undiplomatic. You know I’m not good at these things. It’s just that those creatures were so incredibly vile. I couldn’t walk ten paces down the street without a herd of them gathering and flashing their little rectangles at me—taking pictures to gossip and ridicule me through their mass communication machine—giggling like foals and begging to climb onto my back. And the smell. I’d swear they are bags of swamp slime with legs, and approximately as intelligent.” She sighed again and pushed her plate away. “So … what happened?” Celestia asked, soothing Luna’s slumped shoulder with her hoof. “My counterpart was the very model of their kind. Lazy. Malodorous. Single-minded in all the worst ways. My spirit link, as I mentioned to you yesterday, it took to signify that we were …” Luna paused to swallow, grimacing as if she’d eaten something rotten. “Married.” “Goodness me!” Celestia gasped. “It must have been so hard for you.” Luna nodded, bracing her head now in both hooves. “I shall omit the finer details out of common decency, to spare you the fit of nausea that would surely result. Nevertheless, I cannot help but worry that I did something wrong.” Celestia brushed at her sister’s forelock, straightening out the frazzled strands. “Now Luna. Remember what we said about negative self-talk. I’d like to help. Is there anything at all I can do?” “Well … I was thinking,” Luna mused, blinking up at Celestia, the glint of new hope in her eyes. “I was thinking maybe you could … ah …” She slid out of her seat. “Perhaps it would be best if I were to show you.” Celestia beamed. “Oh, do! I’m certain that whatever it is, it isn’t as bad as you’re imagining. And you really need to stop being so hard on yourself. Remember the old saying, ‘To err is mulish; to forgive, equine.’ Luna suppressed a laugh and dipped her muzzle to indicate the balcony. The two walked side-by-side to where the sky glowed bright blue, clear for miles to the mountains. The pegasus guards standing watch there for aerial assaults parted to let them pass. Celestia gave them a nod as she patted Luna’s wing. “Now, let us see whether we can turn this blooper into a bed of roses!” Outside you waited, baking in the hazy glow of the Canterlot summer sun, in no condition to shoo away the jays perching on the side of your cart. Luna pointed at you from above. “In my bout of … indiscretion … I fear I might have …” Celestia arched an eyebrow, surveying your cart. “It doesn’t appear to possess any magic,” Luna continued, “and so, cannot revive itself as most normal ponies can. What should we do?” “Well, I’m sure I could ask Twilight to dig up a spell I know from the archives in Canterlot Library, but I’m not sure what effect reconstituting the creature in its original form might have on the magical foundations of Equestria. And to be honest,” she draped her wing around Luna’s shoulders, “the peonies are looking a bit fatigued.” The jays tweeted at you, bobbing and cocking their heads in curiosity. Then as one they flew off, a whispering burst of color, frightened by a passerby leading a wagon full of silk scarves. Luna looked up through the soft aurora of her sister’s mane. “The peonies? Are you suggesting …” “It’s been too long since we did something together as sisters,” Celestia replied, giving Luna a squeeze. “I think that your counterpart would make first rate mulch, full of life and nutrients for the flower patches. What do you say? A day in the gardens, just you and me against the weeds?” Luna gazed down on you from the balcony, seeing a fertile meal for her lavender in your red sodden wood chips and greasy brown gobbets. She smiled. “Yes! A day of weeding and feeding it shall be! And to Tartarus with diplomacy!” She conjured two sets of canvas work chaps and a pair of rakes. Celestia laughed. Some of the crowd below heard it, and thought it to be a joyous blare of trumpets. “I couldn’t agree more!” she declared, and joined Luna in dressing for the long day ahead. And so your blood came to mingle with the sacred soil of the Royal Gardens, the inviolate domain of the Two Sisters of Equestria. Deeply did their topiaries and their hedges drink of your fertile life fluid, and fast did the roots of their dwarf trees and vines cling to your sundered remains. Indeed, they fed, and grew so fast and so strong that the Sisters saw, and were amazed, and devised a new policy. A delegation was formed to the kingdom of Johnsonville. Their gifts were nets, their parley was spears, and their chief ambassador a groundskeeper. For you had demonstrated the true purpose to which your kind should be put. The retinue came and went, under the cover of night, or on dark, rainy days when nopony was about, always returning with heavy crates and covered, iron-barred pull-carts. A month passed, then two. Summer yielded to autumn. The flowers were trimmed and replaced. The trees and bushes were pruned, and all marveled at how the floral display had flourished in so short a time. It was magic, some said. Others thought it merely a good omen. But all praised the wise Sisters, the Beatifiers of the kingdom. Twenty wood chippers hummed in the Gardens of Canterlot. Saying She Hates YouPocket Protector and his sweetums nail the turf with their last darts. With a shrug to the vendor, they slouch off into the night, mumbling to each other in some subhumanoid language they probably memorized on an all-night World of Warcraft quest. You’re up. “So, anybody win anything tonight?” you ask. You put your wrinkled fiver next to the lockbox on the front counter. The vendor grunts something while he pulls the darts out of the grass. By his tone you guess that luck hadn’t been with the friendly fair-goers this evening. He gets up, takes a look at your payment, and hands you ten green-stained darts. You take in his foot-long ginger beard and his day-glo dartboard T-shirt. “Pick Your Poison”, it says. An obvious LARPer. He has that look about him. He backs out of the way so you can make your throws, standing with his arms crossed below the prize shelf like he’s a guardian knight keeping watch over his vassals. The balloons are about ten feet away. They’re all about six inches wide and spaced a foot apart or so, in a rectangular grid painted with badass clowns throwing flaming darts. A pack of girls are in the background of the painting blowing kisses at the clowns. There’s a cheap shot. Try to throw you off your game by taunting you with dead-eye clowns. Well whoop-de-do. Henceforth and forsooth you dub them ass-clowns. Better not miss, or you’ll look like a piss stain in front of the ass-clowns and their ho’s. You laugh and line up your first throw. That’s when you discover there’s a problem. Luna had hit you more than once in your arm as you tried to keep her away from your ribs. You could still feel her hoof impacting against your tricep, cutting at the same nerve, making the whole thing go numb. Now it feels like it’s on fire, a pulsing pins-and-needles pain shooting all the way from your shoulder to your fingertips and back. Fuck it. You aim and let loose with the first dart. It nicks a yellow balloon near the center, going deep enough to pop it. Not the one you were aiming at, but who gives a shit? Your arm shouts at you not to do that again. The teddy is smiling down on you from above, giving you the old wink-wink. Nice shot, buddy it’s saying. Nine more to go. How’s that arm treatin’ ya? The prize may as well be at the tippy-top of Mount Everest, now. Unless you start throwing like a girl—and there’s no way you’re letting King Arthur over there see that—you’re fucked internally. You roll the sharp metal needles in your hand. There’s too much at stake here. Failure is not an option. Maybe if you go at it like ripping off a band-aid, it won’t be so bad. You let them fly, gritting your teeth through the ever-growing agony. One by one the balloons burst. Your throws land all over the grid as if guided by an unseen hand. Luna knows what’s going on. Maybe she’s watching from afar, giving each of your darts just a little nudge to put them on the mark. God she’s a dream. You miss your first toss on the seventh try. Four more balloons to pop, three more darts. That’s why you always hated math. You can’t bullshit numbers. “Keep going!” King Arthur says. “You can still get a consolation prize.” He points up at a row of Wile E. Coyote bobble-heads. The counter rattles gently as you let your fist fall in what you would have liked to have been an expression of dire rage and defiance of the ass-clowns. Your arm is pretty much dead weight at this point. Oh well, you have one good one left. “Hey, can I go again? My waifu really wants a teddy bear.” His Majesty taps his chin. “If ya got another five bucks, sure!” You dig back into your wallet. Four sour-faced portraits of George Washington stare back at you. “I’m, uh, a little short. Can I give you four and call it good?” “Sorry man, can’t help ya. Gotta balance at the end of the night, which is pretty much now.” Balance? What the fuck is he balancing? Whatever. Arguing with this guy is going to get you nowhere, you can already tell. Maybe you can guilt him into it. “Please? I’m seriously going to catch a royal beat down from her if I don’t come back with a teddy bear.” He strokes his beard for a moment, sizing you up like a highlands warrior judging the distance from the tip of his broadsword to the throat of his enemy. By the way he smirks and clasps his arms behind his back, you know he’s come to a decision. “Riddle me this! What was Constable Odo’s original form prior to being discovered by the Bajorans?” Sometimes, back in history class, you’d get a question that you could swear wasn’t even written in English. At such times, you spewed the first load of shit popped into your head, usually to the oddly appropriate sound of Schlong and Poop Scoop sending each other messages in fart noises. You’re a deer in the headlights of King Arthur’s nerdmobile, and he’s got venison on the menu. And of course he sees that he’s bested you. “Be not ashamed, my friend,” he intones, rocking back on his heels. “You are not the first to have fallen into my clutches, and you will not be the last. Perhaps the fair waifu would like a sub instead? They’re a steal at three fifty over at Blobby’s Sandwich and Beverage Emporium. That tent right there, with the pinstripe awning.” He points across the road. So OK, Luna didn’t want the cantaloupe. Fair enough. The flavor gets to be a bit much after a while, and it’s definitely not for everyone. But you had yet to meet a person who doesn’t enjoy a spicy meatball sub. “Thanks, man,” you say, and jog over to what might be your last hope for showing Luna a good time. And for saving humanity from the bloodthirsty pony hordes. You muffle your thoughts again to keep Luna in the dark. She deserves a surprise after all this. You’re a zen monk, and zen monks don’t reveal their thoughts to the enemy. Blobby’s already putting the lids on his steaming trays of meatballs when you get there. It’s clear from the splotches on his bulging shirt that he’s taken dinner, and lunch as well, from the deep, polished steel platters. “Wait a sec,” you splutter as you shove your singles into his face. “Can I get one of those for my … uh … my mom? She skipped dinner ‘cause she’s recovering from a … really bad … root canal. Bad teeth. Runs in the family.” Blobby eyes you for a good ten seconds. “Guy at the dart tent sent me,” you smile. He shakes his head and uncovers one of the trays. “Guess this won’t be too hard on her teeth. Cheese with that?” “Yeah, throw some cheese on there, thanks,” you reply. When he’s done ladling a row of meatballs into a white bread bun he’d taken from a side drawer, he grabs something out of a bin behind him and sets it on your plate. “Here,” he says, “you get a free bag of Doritos, courtesy of Grand Doritos Shopping Center. All I got left is Jacked flavor though. Your mom jacked?” he laughs. “You don’t even know, dude,” you chuckle. Before you turn to leave, you remember the finishing touch. “Hey, where are the goldfish at? Anybody selling those?” “Three booths that way,” he gestures with his ladle. “Quarter each unless you’re good with a water pistol.” “Cool. Oh, one more thing,” you say as you start away. “Is your name really Blobby, or is that just your thing?” Blobby drops his ladle into the meatball tray. “My name is Blobert Anselm Xanzibar the Third. Legally changed it because I give two shits. Now get the fuck out of here.” He doesn’t have to tell you twice. You’re already moving, avoiding the few remaining fair-goers still hanging onto the good times in dwindling denial of tomorrow morning’s drive to work. Couldn’t really blame them for milking it. No waifu for them to make it all worthwhile. The goldfish tent is packing up too, but hadn’t gotten too far to sell you one. You choose a lazy bastard that’s drifting on its side at the top of its plastic baggie. That’ll just melt Luna’s heart, cute little guy like that. You think about what to name his as you run back up the road toward the restrooms. Luna’s still there at the back, sitting on the grass under the orange lamp. You hide your gifts behind you. After all you’d put her through tonight, she deserves a surprise. Her serene face is turned upward again, a beautiful dark flower collecting the light of the stars and moon. Perfect setup. You could sit down beside her, maybe lean in against her, and show her all the treasures you’d won for her. Then she’d smile, and out would come the brush, and you’d run it real slow and gentle through her sweet mane, and then … Her nostrils quiver. “I smell something. Do you have the teddy bear?” she asks. She swings her neck from side to side, trying to see behind you. “No games. What are you hiding there?” “Surprise, baby! Listen, I didn’t get you the teddy bear, and I’m real sorry about that, but I didn’t come back empty-handed! Here,” you step close and bring the meatball sub up under her muzzle. “Dinner is served!” She recoils, keeping her nose away from the sauce. “What is this? Is this animal flesh?” She gives it a quick sniff. “It is the remains of some poor cow, or her calf! You dolt! I would never eat this, and you know it!” Fuck. Fuck. You’d forgotten about that time she’d lost it and turned all tribal on her subjects. She has a thing about meat, and not just because she’s a vegetarian. “OK, OK, I’m sorry. But check this out! I have an in at the mall. All the Doritos I want. There’s no meat in those.” She swats the paper plate out of your hand. “I did not ask for your meatless Doritos. I asked for a teddy bear!” You backpedal toward the restroom wall as she advances. “I tried, baby I really tried this time. I know I screwed up, but … I got you the next best thing. Look!” You hold the goldfish up to the light. “His name’s Slowpoke. Not the swiftest fish in the aquarium, but he’s real cute. Isn’t he?” She peers into the bag. The fish is still floating on its side, its mouth and gills fluttering every few seconds. “This was the best you could do? This poor animal is half dead. Tell me, what do you think this would reveal about humanity, were I to show it to the nobles of Equestria?” Your back is against the brick wall again. You’re inches away from another thrashing. Probably even worse than the last one. “Uh, slow and steady wins the race?” Luna stares at you. Looks like she didn’t see that one coming. The momentum’s back in your favor. Time to shine. “That’s Slowpoke’s message to ponykind, sweetie. Humans aren’t smart, or strong, or perfect like you are, but we …” We what? You look to Slowpoke for inspiration. What are we, buddy? What do we have that would show Luna we’re worth her time? Slowpoke’s back fin convulses once, making a bubble that skates along the water’s surface and pops when it hits the edge of the plastic. “We’re survivors,” you finish, extracting the rest of the sentence from your ass. “We don’t quit, no matter how bad it gets. The going gets tough, the tough get going. The nobles would get it. They’d like us. Just give us a chance, like you gave me a chance becoming my waifu. I mean, you liked me enough to bond with me, right? “Like you?” she asks. She puts a hoof on your chest, and twists it into the fabric of your hoodie. Her eyes are deep and dark as she pushes you into the wall. “I hate you. No. I don’t just hate you. I despise every last iota of your being with every fiber of mine. It took all of a minute after creating the link with you to learn that your heart and mind are repugnant, and I’ve loathed every moment of it ever since. You are unworthy of my friendship, and most definitely unworthy of whatever it is you’ve deluded yourself into believing.” The ground seems to tremble, and you fall to your knees. Is she saying that she isn’t your waifu? She pulls her hoof away. “Well? What do you have to say for yourself?”
Talking to Other PoniesWhat kind of a day had it been? It had been a day. Piss it into the hole in the parking lot behind the loading dock where you kept all your other days. You set your empty lunchbag on the kitchen counter and throw your keys into the Cool Whip container you use for important shit. No fewer than twenty-one point five wonderful human beings had graced you with their divine presence at the customer information desk, each of them very indignant and very serious about getting credit on their cheap-ass return items. One mother of two with skunk breath had argued for half an hour over a pair of water guns her darling angels had broken five minutes after opening the boxes. She’d won in the end, wearing you down with her black hole of stale cigarette slime and salami parfum. Eau de toilet. Ten and a half hours of your life and as many brain cells turned to lard. It’s Tuesday, with no end in sight. But none of that matters now, because you’re home. Home with Princess Luna, your waifu. Princess Luna. Her beautiful face flickers in the jumbled darkness of your mind’s eye, and you can’t help but smile. Her smooth voice is trilling in the living room, a music you would record and put on endless replay on your iPod if you could. Fine blue hairs cling to the carpet and walls where she passes by every day, like a trail that always leads to her. Her snail trail, you liked to joke to her. And there is her saddlebag, hunched next to your jacket that you’d forgotten to toss back in the closet when the days had gotten warm. Everything had changed when she arrived, three months ago almost to the day. You’d stepped out onto the sidewalk that morning, zombified as usual from surfing the web the night before, and there she’d been. Watching you. Sizing you up. Already capturing your soul. A trial, she had called it, once she had let you touch her feathers and horn to convince you that you hadn’t gone insane, and weren’t dreaming. A spirit link to find out more about the nature of humans, and whether they could be trusted with the secrets of harmony and friendship. For three moons, she had explained, her mind and heart would be joined to yours, so that you both could share your true emotions and motives without the interference of deceit or the eternal inadequacies of language. All of that was great, but what it boiled down to was that she was your waifu, and life couldn’t be better. “Sweetheart, I’m back!” you call out. “Did you eat yet? I brought you a cantaloupe. You love those, right? Getting ready for the fair?” She continues talking, but it’s obvious that you aren’t the one she’s speaking to. You wonder whether she might have a visitor. Another one of her kind, maybe. The spirit link is telling you that she’s miffed, and more than a little disappointed in something. You give the cantaloupe a quick toss in the air and head into the living room, hoping it will cheer your beloved up. “… this creature appears to have an obscene fascination with my posterior. They all do. I do not understand it,” you catch her say. She’s standing next to the mirror you’d hung above the fake fireplace, her attention divided between her reflection and a shimmering circle of light that was hovering by her snout. There’s another face within the bright, wavy portal, not unlike Luna’s, but with a cream-white coat and stenciled rosy eyes. It could only be Luna’s sister and fellow ruler, Celestia. Luna had talked to you about her from time to time. You remember enough to know that she doesn’t take kindly to those she sees as enemies. “Are you sure?” Celestia asks. Luna ran a brush through her mane. A moment later, a burst of sweet morning wildflowers hits you like a punch from an ice cream man wearing cotton candy gloves. You love watching her brush her mane. Staggering from visions of an idyllic childhood you hadn’t actually lived through, you almost miss her reply. “I am indeed. I have caught them staring on numerous occasions. This one to whom I find myself unfortunately bound seems particularly obsessed. It apologizes, but does nothing to correct its behavior. It believes itself to be my betrothed.” You blink away the golden-tinged dreams. You can handle this. “But honey, I told you, it’s those moons you got back there! They … you know. They just catch the eye. You know I’m not like that, right?” Celestia’s stern face fills the portal, frowning at you before turning back to Luna. “Is there any more? Have you tried engaging them in conversation? Have any among them shown even the slightest degree of promise?” Luna shakes her head and chuckles. “Not one. Believe me, I’ve tried. Their capacity for reason, and therefore friendship, is limited. Only their young appear to possess the levels of altruism we were hoping to find here. That is, when they are not being poisoned by excessive quantities of sugar, or driven into a continual frenzy by forced competition in every aspect of life. In other words, almost never.” “But honey!” you cry, holding out the cantaloupe. “You still love me, though, right? Listen, forget about that shit … I mean … stuff you’ve seen on TV, and that time with the soccer moms, and all those trips to the mall. We stopped shopping there because everybody made you feel weird, right? I’m your friend! Look! Please? I got you your favorite.” Celestia clears her throat, moving back from the portal far enough so you can see her massive, sculpted pecs. “Have you reached a conclusion, then, sister?” “I have,” says Luna, shooing you away with her wing, “and I will say that I find myself yearning for the cool breezes and solitude of my tower in Canterlot. I shall be there soon, and an end to this fruitless gesture of diplomacy.” “I see. Well, this is valuable information in any case. Thank you again for taking this on. Please stay strong for what remains of your task.” “I will try,” Luna replies. She squints into the mirror, checking her coat for whorls. She spots one on her neck and dabs at it with her hooftip, bringing everything back into perfect alignment. “Tonight we are to go to a carnival.” She rolls her eyes. “Well … won’t that be nice?” says Celestia, shooting you a dark-browed glance. “I look forward to your return, my sister.” The portal shrinks and disappears in a shower of sparks. “As do I,” Luna grumbles. She puts the brush down and gives you her own ice-cold stare-down. The end of her horn begins to glow. “Honey, whatever I did, I’m sorry. Can we just …” Your words are lost under the ear-splitting blast of her spell. Author's Note 2nd Person, pony on earth, Soviet Russian version of a nearly extinct meme. Because.
Avoiding Eye ContactFor a second you think that she’d teleported you both all the way to the fair, but when you spot your neighbor’s muddy silver tinsel tree sagging against the fence on the next lawn over, you remember that she’s never been there. You’re going to have to make the trip down the hill. Oh well. It’s just one more chance to show off your smokin’ waifu to all the wannabes. Did any of them even have a waifu? Nope. Just ugly-ass girlfriends that blew their money. She’s sitting in the grass, gazing at the one or two stars that were bright enough to be seen this early in the evening. Maxin’ out on swag. You wish you were downwind of that mane. “Hey, uh, you know …” you stutter, searching for the words, “you’re picture perfect. Like … uh … poetry.” The memories churn. Something from junior high that girls talked about. “You’re pretty as a sonnet.” Luna watched the stars grow brighter. “A sonnet?” “Yeah, a sonnet’s a, uh, a kind of … uh …” “A poem. A poem of predetermined structure, often terminating in a rhyming couplet. Prominently used by one of your great bards, Shake Spear. I learned of him while reading the Wikipedia lore of your computer, as you call it.” Damn she’s smart. Smarter than you, though she’s got a few thousand years’ head start. You admire her noble profile as she scans the sky. Her ever-flowing hair. Her perfect forelock. Her delicate sloped muzzle. Her … “Are you quite finished gawking?” If you were somebody else, you’d punch yourself in the face. Smooth. She’d caught you with your mouth hanging open like the Neanderthals over in the boonies in Boartown. “Yeah, uh, yeah. Hop on up. I got some new rims back there, so be careful. I’m gonna have Phil install ‘em next weekend. You remember Phil, right? My baby’s gotta ride in style!” Luna might have sniffed. With a single flap of her wings, she performs a fluid leap into the scarred pickup bed. The frame shrieks under her weight. You figure she’s seven hundred pounds easy, but the bed’s rated a ton plus, so you’d never worried about tooling around with her back there. After choosing a spot as far away from your stack of rims as possible, she sits back on her hind end and turns her muzzle again to the sky. The spirit link twists in your chest. She’s not happy. Not one bit. You circle around to the driver’s side and get in, letting the cantaloupe drop onto the passenger’s seat. No problem. Her mood will get better once you get to the fair. Once you get her on the Ferris Wheel, laughing and screaming along with everybody else. Maybe get some fried dough and slushy in her. Win her a teddy bear or two, or some of those goldfish in plastic bags. Girls like those. “Shit!” you curse. Your keys are back inside, and you already have you seatbelt on. You crack open the window. “Sweetie, can you …” The keys appear with a loud jingling and fall into your lap. “Thanks! It was like you read my mind,” you call out behind you, before realizing that she actually had read your mind. You pull out of Sunnyview Estates and head south toward Johnsonville. Johnsonville, home of the largest, shittiest shopping mall anywhere west of the big city, VilleHaven Merchants. Renamed Grand Doritos Shopping Center after whoever owned Doritos had bought advertising rights. Everybody works at Grand Doritos. You start down the hill like you do every morning, that dumbass chick’s toilet breath still lingering in your nasal cavity. You’ll probably end up with strep throat, or whatever diseases her kids brought home from school. Whatever. That’s why they have fairs. To get drunk, ride the merry-go-round, and forget about your week. Goddamit, you’d better not get sick. Being sick sucks. You jab the power button on the radio. Skillet? Skillet’s good, but Luna’s not a fan. What else? Mellencamp? No. Korn? You’d blast it if it was just you, but no. Bowie? That’s one you hadn’t tried. “Under the moonlight, the serious moonlight …” you croon over the wind and the rumble of your F-150. You concentrate your thoughts so she can’t miss them. It’s hard, and you never get it right, which is probably why she thinks you’re an ass. You have to steady your nerves too, in case she’s glaring at you like she usually does. Two pairs of underwear had gone into the trash because of that shit, and underwear is expensive. You peek up at the rearview mirror. She is. Her huge eyes are locked onto yours, folding up the jack-in-the-box of your soul and locking it down nice and tight. The spirit link had been telling you she’d been watching you this whole time, but you’d ignored it. There are always reasons to ignore it. Honey, what’s bothering you? Luna turns her head. Doesn’t really feel like talking. The square window panel disappears in the cloud of her mane, turning your view into a swirling blue sea of sparkles. After a few minutes, her words poke into your mind like beams of light through a fog. Say, yonder farm folk, what are they doing? Farm folk? You ease your foot off the gas a bit and look outside. Out on the hill, a bunch of guys are pulling logs out of the back of a wagon. One by one, they wrestle them into a wood chipper. “Lumberjacks, lumberjacks, jacking their lumber.” You laugh at your little ditty. You have a ton of little ditties. Just turning some trees into mulch. That place sells it to all the hardware stores. Wood … chipper … it makes chips of wood. I see. There’s nothing more to her message. You can feel her emotions change, though, from sullen to delighted. Almost joyful, then calm. You smile and turn up the music. She could be so childlike sometimes, and that was the best. You never feel more in tune with her than when you’re explaining that Mustangs aren’t horses, that smoking doesn’t mean you’re on fire, and what people really mean when they say ‘take a load off’. She really has no idea until you tell her. Sometimes it feels a little like you’re taking care of a toddler, but that’s OK. A toddler that never needs a diaper changed or her puke mopped up, and who actually listens when you teach her stuff is a good deal. You reach the bottom of the hill and take a left. The brown sign for the Median County Fairground is hanging on by one rusted nail, same as it is every day when you pass it on the way to work. An orange light is clinging to the underside of the clouds above the road ahead, and you can already hear music and yelling. Cars, pickups and minivans appear on the muddy shoulder of the road. The parking lot must already be full. Oh well, better to have to walk than sit in a traffic jam for an hour when it’s time to leave. Luna can teleport you back up the road anyway. You swing into a spot that hasn’t completely turned to slop and put it in park. You grab the melon as you get out, because you know Luna’s going to want something healthy after all the fair food you’re going to make her eat. She’s a stickler for her diet. “OK sweetie, what do you wanna see first? How about the petting zoo?” That’s advanced girl schmoozing. Ninja stealth techniques. Take her to pet the billy goats. Guaranteed smile. “It hardly matters. Take your pick,” Luna replies, already heading toward the noise and laughter beyond the ticket gate. She wasn’t even talking in your direction. You linger by the pickup. She wasn’t angry, but she wasn’t acting happy either. “Honey, could we talk for a sec? I’m sorry if I …” She’s a black shadow, far away against the lights of the rides. Probably can’t even hear you. Petting zoo it is, then. You check your pockets for your wallet and keys, and jog to catch up.
Hitting You“Two adults,” you say as you slide a twenty under the ticket window. The purple star stamp that the girl in the booth presses onto the back of your hand is cold, like a kiss. She smiles when Luna raises her hoof and lets her stamp her shoe. “Do you fellas want beer bracelets?” You glance at Luna. “No, I’d better not. I’m driving, and the missus here doesn’t drink.” “The missus? O … K …” The other girls start giggling. One is snapping a photo with her phone and making a piss poor attempt to hide it. Five seconds and she’ll be uploading you all over Snapchat. You sneer, but hold your peace. Nothing you could say right now is going to help you. “Which way is the petting zoo?” The one with the stamp is spazzing. Laughing, it looks like, but holding it in. Real funny, huh – a man and his waifu? She points to a spot on the map they had taped to the window. “Here’s where you two are now. Follow the main road,” she traces her finger up the brown rectangle on the page, “then when you see the 4H exhibit take a right. You’ll see it right there. White tent, lots of animals.” Her pink polished fingernail taps a circle with an outline of a goat in the middle. “Thanks,” you mumble. Luna had already left. You hurry, muffling your thoughts like you always do when you want to be invisible. If you think as little as possible, no one will notice you chasing a giant blue unicorn with wings. That’s how it works. In no time you’re shoulder-to-shoulder with her. She has her head high, nose up. Not good. Lots of people are heading in the opposite direction, carrying bags of cotton candy and balloons while they laugh about how scared they were on this ride or that. Most are families with kids, but there are more than a few knots of teens and twenty-somethings looking for a place to chill, or to fuck with people. You’re getting looks from all of them, of course. Looks, giggles, comments, and all the usual shit. The beer tent is coming up on the left. If you can just make it past here without anybody … “The fuck?” Shit. Three shitfaced guys in wife-beaters are standing at the door of the tent. The douchenard gang of this douchenard town. “Take off the suit, asshole! This isn’t fucking Disney World,” the tall one shouts at Luna. People call him Gorilla, on account of the carpet of hair he’s got sprouting everywhere it shouldn’t. He lifts, but that’s all he does, and he only works his arms. He’d been a real fuckwad in high school. Considered himself a natural leader since the days of European History, when they covered the World War II Axis powers. The wannabe Gorillas, Schlong and Poop Scoop, crack up as all three step out from under the tent. “Hey! Is that your boyfriend in there?” yells Schlong. “Tell him to come out, I got something for him.” He extends his cobra-and-grizzly-bear-tattooed arm, holding out a hot dog. Gorilla you could handle. At least you could reason with him, when he wasn’t speedballing. But Schlong-dong was a different story. The conversation would always come back to his cock ring, most often right before he showed it to you. “Ha ha! Come out. Nice!” blurts Poop Scoop. First thing you’d heard him say in two months. They didn’t let him out of the Johnsonville Wastewater Treatment Plant very often. He picks an onion ring out of his cardboard tray and tosses it at the tip of Luna’s horn. “Look, just like horseshoes!” Schlong laughs and gives him a high five. “Have a go, Gorilla. Betcha Pooper can land a ringer before you.” “A ringer with the rings. Gimme one of those,” Gorilla grunts, scraping up a handful. He throws one like a Frisbee. Too low. It bounces off Luna’s clenched eyelid and gets caught in her mane. Her rage boils up inside your chest like superheated radiator fluid, her thoughts streaking into your turtled brain. I shall incinerate them where they stand. She’s getting a spell ready. One with enough power to make the beer tent a pile of ash and roasted dickfaces. Shit … uh … shoot! No! No. You don’t want to do that. Too many people watching. Just let me handle it, OK? Her murderous gaze turns to you, but she holds the inferno she’d been about to unleash in check. You hold out your hands, trying to block some of the shit they’re throwing. “Nah, bruh. He’s my brother. He’s kind of a clown.” Gorilla’s having none of it. “Fuck that. Clowns wear wigs and make balloon animals, dude. They don’t go around wearing that shit.” He tries for a skyhook jumpshot. Not even close. “He’s got issues, OK? Can you take it easy on him?” Schlong is twirling a soggy onion ring on his finger like an old west gunslinger. “Yeah, yeah, that’s cool. Just tell him to stand still for a minute.” He goes into his best Major League wind up and chucks it at Luna as hard as he can, not even trying for her horn. The other two open fire. The sounds of the missiles splattering as they hit their suffering mark are being drowned out by the jeering of the crowd. They think it's a show. Dripping bits of breading and onion are appearing on Luna’s face, mane and sides, peppering her once-stainless coat. Tears are gathering in the corners of her eyes. Fuck your life. They’re triggering her rejection complex. All sorts of baggage about her sister comes crashing to the front of her closet, spilling onto your floor. Schlong’s got his A-game on now. He lobs his beer at her, solo cup and all. It hits her wing, soaking into her brilliant blue feathers and coating them with foam. The crowd laughs. Some of the dads join in, throwing the stale ends of their softie pretzels and popcorn, or sloshing out experimental splashes of icy soft drinks at her back. All her anger had become a raging torrent of despair. The tears were flowing now, mingling with the grease that was caking up on her cheeks. She had never stopped looking at you. What say you? Will you do nothing to defend my honor? You feel like shit that a dog had eaten and shit out a second time, but you know when you’re outgunned. Just … just let them finish. I know these guys. If I say the wrong thing they’re going to kick my ass. They keep pelting her with onion rings, absorbed in their game, until one accidentally catches on her horn. It spirals all the way down to her forehead. Gorilla takes one last gulp of his beer and crushes the cup. “Come on, let’s get out of here. Let these two fairies go kiss on the Merry-go-Round or whatever.” “Yeah, let’s go hit up the bar,” Poop Scoop agrees. The three of them shuffle off. The circle of people who’d been watching clap and go on their merry way. Luna snuffles. You hate seeing her like this. She can’t even clean herself off, since you’d agreed early on that using magic in public is a bad idea. Worst of all, her feelings are all torn to hell. Still, you have to try to make the best of it. You can’t let those assholes ruin your waifu’s special evening. “Hey, I’m sorry about what they did. Maybe if I win you something at one of the booths, would that make you feel better? Do you like goldfish? I could …” “I have a sudden desire to see the swine race,” she growls, and stomps away before you can answer. You hustle to the beer tent. “Wait a minute! Let me at least get some napkins for you!” You grab a bunch off the top of the stack along with a couple of moist towelettes and fast-walk up the road after her. Running would make it look like you were having a tiff, and after what Gorilla had implied, that was the last thing you wanted people to think. By the time you catch up, she’d reached the restrooms they keep year-round for hikers and park visitors. “Hey,” you call out, “I think the pig race is over that way, by the announce tower.” She keeps moving like she hadn’t heard you, slipping into the shadows behind the building. You take a quick look around. Nobody here but the drunk guy that had just stumbled out of the men’s room talking to himself. Not wanting Luna to get too far out of sight, you hurry forward into the dark. There’s a good chance she’s having a crying fit back there, and you might be able to calm her down before she gets too out of control. She’s waiting for you at the rear of the building, wearing a scowl that could burn a city down. It’s hard to see outside of the lights of the lamps and the rides, but you could swear that all the shit those jackoffs had mucked her up with was gone. And she’s definitely not crying. You fan the napkins. “Hey baby, you need these? Listen, you can’t just step up to those guys. I could take one of them, no problem, but not all three. I’m sorry. I feel really, really bad. You’re not hurt, are you? Hey, I still got this,” you drop the napkins on the ground and pull the cantaloupe out from under your arm. “It’s not a three course fireside dinner like you’re used to back home, but I made sure to get a juicy one. You gotta be hungry after …” You feel the melon tug out of your grip. She’s floating it with her magic, turning it around and around like one of the planets they had on the third grade science class mobiles. She glides it next to your head as if comparing the sizes. “No, honey, it’s for you. I’m not …” The melon explodes. Chunks of watery orange flesh splatter you and everything around you. The coarse-skinned rind bites into your face, stinging like a swarm of hornets. Before you can wipe the pulp out of your eyes, something cold and hard slams against your temple. You sprawl back against the water stained brick wall, a migraine already pounding away in your skull. Luna steps forward, too close for you to move. When you see the glittering hatred in her eyes, you put two and two together. She’d hit you. Her hoof comes up again, lightning-quick. The metal of her shoe connects below your ear like an aluminum baseball bat, its force sending you to your knees. The night goes black, just for a second, and your lunch heaves halfway up your throat. You hold your gut, trying not to puke. Seeing you try to protect yourself only provokes her wrath. It’s exploding now, releasing in bursts from her volcanic heart. Her blows hammer down on your face and collar bones and head, raising welts and opening cuts in a hail of misery. When you try to crawl away, the rock-hard hooves slice in from the side and crack against your ribs. She knows where to hit. Of course she does. She’d spent the last three months studying humans. Culture, politics, psychology, and anatomy. She knows every tendon. Every nerve. And you? She’d read your mind and feelings like a book. All day, every day. She knows everything about you. Her anger grows every time her hoof finds your groveling body. You can feel that this goes far beyond the spectacle that had played out a few minutes ago. It’s you. Her intentions are screaming inside your thoughts, vaporizing everything else. She wants to keep hitting you until you stop moving. You have to do something before she knocks you out and stomps your brains to jelly. “Please, sweetie, stop! I’m not like you. I’m not strong like you. You’re gonna kill me!” Something in your voice must have gotten her attention. Through blackened eyes you see her hooves step back onto the grass and gingerly wipe off your blood. The beating had stopped, for now.
Badmouthing YouThe forest across the field behind Luna is a black band of noise. The tree frogs are cackling, getting louder as the ringing in your ears dies down. Luna clears her throat. At times like this, you know it’s best to shut up and let her talk. “Pardon me. Perhaps I should have restrained myself. I had forgotten how frail you creatures are.” Looking up at her would be another wrong move. Instead, you reach to the pile of napkins you’d dropped and claw a wad of them against your face. Blood and cantaloupe seeds come away in strings of red goo. “Are you much injured?” “No,” you cough. You’ll only make her feel worse if you tell her the truth. Plus, she’ll think you’re a wuss. You quietly spit shards of broken teeth into the napkins. “Pity. Mayhap you would finally learn your lesson if you were. I am very disappointed in you, although I must say it is no surprise to me that your spine has proven once again to be made of jelly. I have not suffered such humiliation in years! And yet again your resilience to even the gentlest of corrections is shown to be nonexistent. By the stars, you would shatter like glass were I to give you a true dressing-down.” You nod and say nothing. Best to stick to the routine. Her gaze is heavy on you. You can feel it even without looking, and her anger is still churning in your chest. The tree frogs chant their tireless song. They’re watching too, lined up on the branches off in the distant woods, mocking you. At last Luna’s rage begins to subside. “Get up, coward,” she sighs. You rise, fighting through the jabs of pain from your bruised ribs and bleeding forearms. The mayflies spinning around the orange light bolted to the wall above you are blurry, and your vision keeps shifting to the right so your brain can’t keep up with what you’re seeing. Chances are her first shot had given you a concussion. You venture your first glance in her direction. “Would you like to redeem yourself?” she asks. Her words are pointed, but no longer full of acid. “Yes,” you manage to sputter through your broken front teeth. This is always the worst part. Knowing that you’d failed her. Feeling how let down she felt, straight from the source. Wanting nothing more than to throw back a bottle of Drano and chase it with a lit M-80. “Excellent,” she replies. “But first, you’re a mess.” She conjures a towel you recognize from your bathroom hamper, and throws it to you. As you finish wiping yourself down, your Malibu Beach print hoodie slaps against your face. She must have zapped that one out of the dryer. Guessing she wants you to put it on, you toss the towel onto the grass and struggle into it. “Pull the cowl over your head, unless you wish all and sundry to see the brand of my hoofprints on your face.” You must be bruised to shit. Your shirt is marked up with mud horseshoes too. You zip up and pull the hood on, tightening the drawstring as far as it would go. Except for your nose and eyes, maybe, nobody was going to be able to see the evidence of the beat down she’d given you. “There now,” she says while you test how far you could move your arms. “Here is my request. As we were passing by the pavilions of the gameskeepers and food vendors, I spied one tent that awarded foals’ toys to any who could burst ten balloons with as many darts. Win for me the one with the likeness of a bear. A teddy, as I believe it is called.” All she needs is a teddy bear and you’re back in business. Game on. “I shall return with it to Canterlot and display it to the Royal Court, so that my sister and all the nobles may see and understand that humans have some faculty for compassion, and that they care for their young.” “One teddy bear. You got it,” you reply. The storm is clearing, the birds are singing, and there might even be some sunlight peeking out from behind the clouds in the dreamland of her feelings. That’s another thing that always made you feel like the luckiest guy on earth. No matter how bad of an ass-kicking she gave you, she’d calm down in a minute or two and everything would be fine. That’s a full-grown, mature waifu for you if there ever was one. “Good. I shall wait here for your return. This is a simple task, easy even for you. I expect it will not take long.” “No worries, sweetie,” you chime with your broken smile. “I’m a pro at darts. I’ll be back in five minutes tops.” You see her nod as you shove your hands in your pockets and head back around the restroom building onto the main road. People had thinned out. Most of the families with younger kids were gone, though some of the scruffier-looking ones were still putzing around. Good. Less competition for the game tents. You hurry back the way you’d come. It’s getting colder. You’re walking fast, scanning the backs of the tents for any signs of stuffed animals or rows of balloons. What would suck is if the dart tent had closed up for the night. What would you tell Luna then? Sorry honey, I was a day late and a dollar short like the rest of my goddam life and didn’t get you the teddy bear that would make all of humanity look like winners? Yeah, that would end well. There’s always the goldfish people for a plan B. If they hadn’t closed up too. A guy at the cotton candy cart across from the beer tent points at you and starts wheeling his fidgeting tyke your way. Wonderful. If only Luna had gotten your Foakleys out of the pickup. The hoodie isn’t doing much to hide your face; just the gashes and the knots. Anybody would recognize you. The guys parks his stroller a few feet away, in the middle of the road. “That was great back there, man. My boy Tyler was laughing his ass off.” “Was he?” you mutter. “Hell yeah! I almost shit my pants when the tears started coming out. That’s some Charlie Chaplin old-time shit, man. Classic.” Tyler reaches up and tugs on his father’s shorts. “Where baby brontosaurus go?” You chuckle and wrinkle your eyebrows at the kid. “Baby brontosaurus?” Dad laughs. “I couldn’t figure out what the fuck that was when I first saw it. I told him it was a baby dinosaur. There’s some blue dinosaurs, right?” “I guess,” you say. You keep your mouth closed as you smile. Scaring the kid with the bloody nubs that used to be your teeth would only bring questions. And you have a question for them. “You happen to see a dart tent anywhere around here? You know, where you pop balloons and win a stuffed animal? I wanted to get one for my wai … for my brother. We’re gonna make it part of the routine. Whoever can knock it off his head gets to keep it.” Dad nods, waving his hand toward an intersection a ways down from the beer tent. “Yeah, we saw it. Just keep going. It’ll be on the right coming from this direction. Hey, do you two do birthday parties? Tyler’s got one in a few weeks. Him and his pre-school pals would like nothing more than to light that bronto-butt up, right Tyler?” Tyler starts mashing a soggy graham cracker he’d been holding. “Where brontosaurus go?” You think hard. Say yes, and you risk this guy seeing you at the mall someday and chewing you out for not following through. Say no, and he’ll try to talk you into it, wasting time you don’t have. Have one bad morning sometime in the future, versus miss out on the teddy, betray Luna, become a traitor to the entire human race, and probably cause a pony invasion where everyone you know is slaughtered or sent to the moon or whatever it is they do. “Yeah, we can stop by,” you say, trying to make it sound like you give a shit. “Awesome! Here, let me give you my phone number.” He digs into a bag hanging from the back of the stroller and pulls out a notepad shaped like a baby bottle. After scribbling for a few seconds, he tears the top sheet off and hands it to you: Paul LeCompte 604-887-6793 (cell) May 20 Birthday “Thanks a lot man,” he says, opening up a container of sanitary wipes. “Good luck with the darts. See you in a few weeks!” You fold up the note and put it into your hoodie pocket. “No problem, Mr. LeCompte. See you on the 20th.” Before he can go any further and ask for something retarded like taking your picture with his kid, you jog to where he’d pointed. It doesn’t take long to find the dart tent. It’s still open, and there’s nobody but a geeky-looking numbnuts and what vaguely resembled a girl failing miserably to hit a single balloon with their darts. You step up into line behind them. There, sitting on the top of the prize shelf, is the teddy bear that would get you out of Luna’s doghouse.
Saying She Wants to Break UpYou raise your head, fighting to stop the world from spinning. She doesn’t love you. She doesn’t love you. She hates you. The glimmering, silver crescent moon on her breastplate sinks into view, blurred by your pooling tears. “You don’t mean that, do you sweetie?” you croak. She dips her face to your level, so that every glint of every secret facet of her flawless sea-green irises is crystal clear. “Of course I hate you. I have done nothing but treat you with contempt—contempt you unquestionably deserve—since I arrived in this joyless world. How could you fail to perceive this? Is the link I created not powerful enough?” You draw the sleeve of your hoodie across your eyes, making as if to dry your tears. You’re happy just to hide from the disgust in her gaze. “I … I did know. I just didn’t want to believe it. I ignored it because … because you’re the best thing in my life. You’re the one who keeps me going. You’re the one I think about when I have to sit through lunch break at Taco Hell while the guys from work fart their guts out, and I have to shit too because it’s Taco Hell, and I have to go back to an endless line of assholes that just want free stuff, every day, all day. Knowing that you’ll be there when I get home after dealing with all those people makes it all OK.” “I truly have done this for you?” you hear her ask. You rise, kneeling against the wall. “Yeah, you got it. So OK. So you don’t want to be my waifu. That’s a little weird. I get it. But if you won’t do that, couldn’t you …” you swallow hard and open your eyes. “Couldn’t you be my mom?” She recoils, but says nothing. For a while she stares at a spot on the wall above your head, a slow smile creeping up her lips. The sight dulls the raging pain in your arms and face and chest. For the first time maybe, just maybe you’d done something right. She let slip a short laugh, and your heart laughs with her. “Come, little precious,” she calls, pushing up into the air with a single stroke of her giant wings, “fly with me! I shall teach you to soar like the wind.” She climbs higher, far above the roof of the restroom building. When she passes the top of the tallest of the trees she turns, waiting for you to follow. It doesn’t matter that physics, luck and your own fat ass are against you. Luna’s giving you a second chance. A chance to build a new relationship. You’re going to be her loving, dutiful son. When she wants you to clean your room, you’re going to get out the Febreeze and Windex and make it shine. When she tells you to go to the grocery store and pick up a half pound of sugar beets for her supper, you’re going to hop on your Schwinn bike with the biggest Beaver Cleaver grin and pedal like your life depends on it. When she yells at you to do your homework because she doesn’t work her hooves to the bone so you can be a lazy good-for-nothing bum when you grow up, you’re going to whip out your protractor and calculator and pinpoint where that frictionless projectile is going to land to within millimeters. You lift up the bottom of your hoodie—that will be your wings—and run for takeoff. When you’re below where Luna is hovering, you jump and start flapping. When that doesn’t work, you flail your arms, not caring about the searing pain the bone fragments grinding in the fractures are causing you. You will ascend. You will show your mother that you will be an obedient son. Of course, you won’t, because you’re a broken slob who can’t run a hundred yards without wheezing, let alone fly. You double over, sucking air like a vacuum cleaner. Down Luna floats, landing by your side to arch her wing over you. “There there, my child, not to worry. I shall help you learn magic. Cast this spell to light the darkness, and I shall show you how to make your star grow brighter and brighter.” A soft blue light buds at the tip of her horn. She holds it there, waiting for you to do the same. Not sure what to do, you grab a stick from the grass and hold it against your forehead. What is it they always say in the movies? If you concentrate, if you clear your mind and think only happy thoughts … if you think hard enough about the light … Nothing happens. The director does not decide to tell the FX crew to add a light at the end of the stick in production. Nobody even runs in from off-camera to give you a cigarette lighter. You throw the stick to the ground. Plan B. Who would have been able to make a light appear? Aleister Crowley? What religion was he? Maybe you just need the right word of power, like in Harry Potter. “Illuminus … Illuminarus … Luminus … damn it …” Luna withdraws her wing, smiling. “Hush, little one, it is alright,” she chides. “Come, run with mother. She will help you grow big and strong.” She rears, then dashes away across the field. OK. You can do this. All you need to do is catch up with her. Show her you belong with her as her own. You pick yourself up once more and sprint after her. It takes you less than two strides to realize that you have a snowball’s chance in hell of catching her. She’s already fifty yards away at the very least, her mane and tail flowing behind her like the boughs of a dark, starry willow. Their ecstatic scent still is still lingering in the air. You need them. You need to snuggle into them and fall asleep, because it’s nighttime that’s what a good foal would do. And that’s why you keep running, until your legs go numb, and your throat burns, and you fall to the ground exhausted. The grass is cool against your bruised, knotted cheek. There’s got to be something you can do to prove yourself to her. She wants you as her foal. She feels sorry for you, and wants to help you become noble like she is. There’s a shudder in the earth, getting stronger and stronger in a steady rhythm. It’s Luna. She’s coming back, and this time you’re going to show her. Something mutes the noise of the tree frogs. It’s Luna’s muzzle, inches from your ear. “Do you know why you cannot do these things? Do you know why you cannot be my offspring?” You sit up, eager to answer her questions. To prove you’re not worthless. “Uh … because I’m not good enough? Because I’m not a horse?” You smile, awaiting your next challenge. “BECAUSE I CANNOT BEAR FOALS YOU IMBECILE!” You cover your ears, crumpling back to the ground under the force of her thunderous voice. “That is the price!” she shouts, stomping her hoof just a hair’s breadth from your face. “That is the consequence of immortality, and it has been a constant sorrow for me for longer than you can imagine. Another thing you would have known had you paid the least bit of attention. And now you have added insult to injury, dredging up centuries of heartache I felt, watching other mares know the joy of family and motherhood. Thank you so much for reminding me of my shame. My barrenness. Were you my foal I would abandon you. I would lead you to where the timberwolves crack the trees to mark their domain, and fly off to watch them devour you. Neigh! Abandon you I shall. I depart now for Canterlot, with news that you and your kind are beyond hope. Since you have given your best efforts to the extent that your meager abilities allow, I have decided not to take the full measure of revenge that you so foolishly have merited. Be thankful. Farewell.” She turns, and in a rapid flash of blue light, her saddlebags appear on her back. Without another word she stalks off toward the deep night of the forest. The farther away she gets, the more you feel the spirit link stretch and grow weaker, like a long rubber band being pulled to the breaking point. She’s fading. Her thoughts, her smouldering anger that you’d cherished each and every moment since she’d come into your life, her growing awareness of your world, all of that shrinks to a tiny point, too small to know or feel. You struggle to your knees, reaching out to her vanishing silhouette. Author's Note And there we have it. For anyone not interested in the bonus gore chapter and epilogue, please consider this the end of the story. Hope you got one or two laughs out of it. Inspired by the Doing Hurtful Thing to Your Waifu chart for Luna, and possibly challenge #20 on the Mortal Kombat 9 Challenge Tower. And maybe a little bit of Tim and Eric's B$M.
Killing YouIt can’t end like this. She can’t leave thinking you’re a complete and total shit stain. You’d betrayed her, disappointed her, and hurt her feelings, and that was just tonight. You feel like you’ve been run over by a train after running a marathon, though, and who’s going to know if you call it a night, curl up in the field and hope she calms down by the time you wake up? Except she has her bag. It’s not going to be there on the counter anymore, scrunched by your jacket while you drink your Mountain Dew in the morning. The teakettle won’t be whistling at six in the morning, and the strange bittersweet herbs she makes her tea with wouldn’t fill the apartment with their trippy botanical garden scent. Her snail trail of blue hairs would be gone the next time you vacuum, sucked into the dustbag along with any chance you have at happiness. And you never had recorded her voice. The spirit link is almost dead. You push yourself to your feet one more time, figuring out what you’re going to say as you stagger after her. Everything hurts. It’s got to be way past eleven now. Most of the lights of the tents and rides have gone out, so only the orange glow of the restroom lamp and the faint sparkling of Luna’s tail are left to guide you as you race into a thickening maze of fog. She’s almost to the trees, her hoofsteps muffled by the long, unmown wildflowers and the clamor of the tree frogs. You have to catch her before she goes into the forest. After that, you know for sure you’ll never see her again. She doesn’t hear you running up behind her, still out of breath from trying to catch her before. Now is your chance. Now you’re going to turn it all around. You reach out to give her tail a tug. “Wait! Before you go, I just need to …” Your foot catches on something. A hole, or a log, or just a stray tree root. Your words die in your throat as you flop downward. As you fall, your outstretched hand makes contact with Luna’s rump, brushing down the warm, smooth coat where her immaculate crescent moon sits amid its mottled patch of black. A second later your face slams into the ground. Dirt and clover wad through your broken teeth. Fuck moles. Fuck clover. And most especially, fuck your goddam life. Why can’t you just have a normal conversation with your … what? She’s not your waifu, she’d said, and you’d proven you’re not good enough to be her son. Your grip your trembling hand, still tingling from when it had passed over Luna’s silken hide. You had made a mistake. You had touched her when she did not wish to be touched. And you had touched her ass. “Enough!” she cries. Before you can brace yourself for the beating you’re sure is coming, she grabs you between her forelegs and ignites her horn. There’s a loud crack, and the snickering of the frogs is replaced by the layered chorus of an endless sea of crickets. And Luna’s holding you, tight between her hooves, looking down on you with the stars of her mane and the clear night sky flaring behind her. A hug! She forgives you! She loves you after all! She had just been playing you like girls do on Youtube when they pretend to slit their wrists in the bathtub and the boyfriend comes in and thinks they killed themselves, and … She lifts you up into the air like you’re a toddler and slams you down onto something long and flat. Before the shock reaches your brain, she slams you again, crushing the wind out of your burning lungs. All of your sprained joints and broken bones jar at once, searing the moment of impact into your thoughts. When you try to curl onto your side, you feel her hooves hook around your shoulder, pulling you onto your back. She pins you down under her shoulder while you gasp to recover your breath. The spirit link comes crashing back, piping Luna’s hatred through the burning walls of your psyche, a black wellspring flooding the bottom floors of your soul. Her face descends over yours, blotting out the dim clouds. Never before had you appreciated just how big she is. Her bared teeth are inches from your throat, the threat unspoken, but real. The only thing you can do to shield yourself from the wrath she’s blazing down on you is shut your eyes and turn your head. “At last you’ve shown your true colors, you obnoxious, muck-eating worm!” she hisses into your ear. “I knew you were simple. I knew you were a coward. But a deviant? I cannot believe it. You lack the gall. No, this was a joke. A bawdy game you wanted to play, to spite me before I could escape this sloshing chamber pot of a world. You are less than those pigs at the carnival!” She pinches your face between her cold hooves, her fury winding up to hurricane strength. “By assaulting me you have committed treason. Therefore I declare your life forfeit.” Forfeit? The word is familiar, but not one you used enough to know what it means. Lawyers used it on those daytime court shows your mom watched when you were a kid. When the defendants lost they … they had to pay … When you feel Luna move, you open your eyes. You’re on a cot, it looks like, with a line of rolling pins or something instead of springs. The ground is worn dirt and stone a few feet below your head. Luna’s sweet mane is swishing against your ear as she jabs at something out of sight. A motor sputters once, then roars to life. Luna turns back to face you, smiling now. “There are ponies I know for whom this would be but a minor inconvenience. Let us see how well you fare.” She rises, just enough for you to see where the noise is coming from. In the faint moonlight you can just make out the outline of your feet in front of a chute. A ribbon of motor exhaust drifts by. Luna hadn’t forced you onto a cot. You’re on a conveyor belt. The chute is the metal hood of a wood chipper. You freeze, unable to move or breathe. It’s the one she’d asked about on the drive to the fair. She’d felt happy when you’d told her what it was. Maybe she’d been imagining killing you this whole time. Maybe she’d made up her mind weeks ago. And you’d gone and given her plenty of reasons. She places her giant silver shoe against your shoulder and nudges you forward. Still you wait, hoping she’s playing, hoping she’s just doing this to scare you, and that she’ll laugh and you’ll be able to hear gentleness in her voice again, and she’ll take you back to your apartment to your Mountain Dew and Doritos and everything will be … Something knicks the tip of your sneaker. It isn’t the sound of the cut that gets you, or the way Luna’s joy surges at your mounting terror. It’s the way the blade went through as if your foot hadn’t been there at all. You flail to roll off onto the ground, shimmying beneath Luna’s steepled legs and body. It only takes her a second to notice. She falls on you with all her weight, a landslide of muscle collapsing onto your face and chest. Your ribs crackle, breaking like a pile of wet sticks. It’s too much. You can’t breathe. Her words rip through your panicked thoughts as she slowly walks you forward. Suffer, worm, as I deliver you to Tartarus. The magic of the spirit link changes. Now your feelings are bending to Luna’s intent, becoming the picture of despair that she demands them to be. As your feet enter the blades, she plunges your soul into a lake of boiling oil. You start to groan into the black, crushing silence of Luna’s shoulder. Your feet are shaking, too hard and too fast to be out of fear alone. It doesn’t hurt much. Rapid warm tugs, papercut tingles, a lightening of the load … you deserve … you had earned … no … Every thought leads to her. There is nothing to know but what she commands. You deserve this and more, and if I had you chained in Canterlot’s dungeons I would give it to you. Day after day I endured your buffoonery, and the shame your cowardice heaped upon me. I came to you as an ambassador of peace. I offered you the most precious gift I had to give. I opened my mind and my heart to you, and after all I tried to teach you, in the end you rejected them in favor of a moment’s jest. In favor of flesh and bone. Pressed flat under her terrible weight, you feel her grow warm with exertion, her onyx breastplate rising and falling like a guillotine as she breathes, cutting into your shattered ribs and stomach. The spirit link had become a catalyst; every new burst of hatred she feels becomes your own. You hate yourself as she hates you. And there is no better way. The pain consumes you like a fire gone out of control, and you squirm to fan the flames. The stumps of your feet scrape against the steel housing of the threshing turbine, giving you more of what you deserve. Yours is a life that was never worth living. Yours is a mind that does not belong in a world of beauty, peace, and dignity. Her world. She is cutting you out of it, and you want nothing more than to help her. She pauses, delighting in your brokenness, savoring the view of what the turbine is doing to you. What little is left intact of your sanity swirls through your inner chaos. No … no … I didn’t mean it … I just wanted to … Before you can finish your plea, two loud cracks reach your ear over the machine’s vibrations carrying through the conveyor belt. A second later your calves wrench into knots, the ankle tendons severed loose. The scream bubbles out of your throat before you can stop it, only to fail against the bulk of Luna’s shoulder as it forces your jaws apart, a bouquet of lilacs, lavender and jasmine crammed into your mouth. I shall give you what you wanted. Luna’s joy blooms as your muted scream goes on and on, her weight forcing your jaws wider and wider open. She leans back to increase the pressure on your head, still pushing you deeper into the machine. Something crunches in your spine at the back of your neck. Stars flash in the suffocating darkness just before your jaw cracks at the joints, separating from your skull. There’s no time left. You’re almost out of gas, giving in more and more to Luna’s overwhelming assault. Still, your instinct for survival remains; the primal need to keep living no matter how miserable living would turn out to be. Maybe that’s all you’d ever had. What do you want? Please, tell me what you want! I’m sorry! Luna gets up at last, stepping back to evaluate her progress. Blood is trailing down her chest and forelegs, dotting her coat in spatters and dripping stars. She regards you with a faint smile. “What do I want? I want you to disappear.” She raises a hoof high above her dark crown, and brings it down on your face with enough force to break your nose. More blood erupts from your newest wound, cascading through the fragments of your front teeth, down the top of your mouth and into your throat. Your guttural, shapeless shrieks become high-pitched gurgles as you try to cough it out. Luna’s voice is soft and calm over your frenzied spluttering. “You are rubbish. And so, I am disposing of you.” She hammers your head and neck, unleashing her fury anew. Blow after blow finds your unprotected face, and as the skin flays and strips away from the bleeding muscle beneath, she pumps raw despair into your heart through the spirit link, flushing out any hope that still lingered there. When she stops she laughs, appraising your disfigurement. Satisfied with her work, she steps closer, scooping up your useless legs in one foreleg. She brings her muzzle close to your ear. “In olden times, we would ensure that the worst criminals would suffer as much as they could endure without perishing, before completing their execution. I will serve you in the pony way.” With the blade of her free hoof, she starts hacking at the tattered ends of your shins, chopping and folding the meat up toward your knees to reveal the bone. You lie still, trying with all your might to feel the despair she wants you to feel. She knows you’ve given up. She knows the pain is giving way to shock, which is why she’s going to reawaken it. She presses her hooftip against your exposed nerves, crushing and twisting them against your naked shinbones. A piercing agony you could never have imagined races up and down your spine, igniting the phantom space that used to be your feet with electric agony. Your legs kick in a reflexive need to get away from what was damaging them, to run from the danger. Luna hugs them to her chest, letting you squirm in her grip while she resumes picking and scraping. She turns her gleaming sea-green eyes to your face, drinking in your hopelessness, rejoicing in the interminable minutes of your abject surrender. Satisfied, she places a hoof against your sweat-soaked hair, still suspending your legs in the crook of her foreleg. Her wings and mane surround you, their sweet scent mingling with the warm night air and the exhaust leaking out of the motor and the iron-on-iron stink of your blood on the hot hammers and blades of the turbine. Without a word she pushes your head, jamming it into your fractured neck to slide you again into the reeking hood. This time it costs her some effort to keep control. She clamps tight to dampen the juddering of the blades as they grind against the thicker bone and gristle of your knees and thighs. She releases the flood of despair into your soul once more, and the liquid rasp of your weeping mixes with the flatulent roar of the blades as they puree your flesh. She smiles down on you, cradling you within the storm of metal. For a moment, you see your mother, hovering over you after you’d fallen from your bike years ago after a long day of fishing at the creek. She would clean up your scraped knees. She would gather in the fish that had spilled out of your bag. She’d hold the washcloth full of ice cubes against your bruises, and sing you to sleep. Your jaw wags in its rent socket. Mom? Luna stops, peering into your eyes. “Mother? Still dithering about that, are you? Look!” she spits, forcing your head up to give you a view of the black, empty space that was unmaking you. “This is your mother.” Blood is flowing over the sides of the conveyor belt, gushing in rhythm with your pulse. It won’t be long now. The pain is fading into a calm background ache. It would be good, and easy to sleep. But you have to try to stay awake. You have to please Luna as best you can. You have to suffer more. “Yes, worm,” she says, reading your worried thoughts, “I will give you more.” She lets your dismembered thighs drop at the cusp of the turbine, dips her head, and rams her horn into your gut, all the way to the razor edge of her crown. Grateful for the new pain, you wail to let her know she’s still able to hurt you. Deep inside you feel her magic working. Your guts are shifting, bulging your stomach as they churn. You watch the shapes stretch your skin, wondering what new horror she’s creating within you. The magic ceases for a moment. Luna withdraws, smiling as if struck with a thought that amuses her. “Was this what you wanted?” she sneers, blinking your blood from her eyelashes as it drips down her brow. Her eyes are blue now, it seems, cut ice in the moonlight. “Something like this?” You search the edges of the hole she’d made in you with trembling fingers. “Ngo … ngo … ngo …” you moan. She lances downward again, and again you feel your insides start to squirm. This time, when she tears her horn out of you, they don’t stop moving. It feels like there’s an animal inside your guts, biting and scrambling to get out. You’d seen Alien. You know what’s coming. You’re going to be an incubator. In a few minutes something out of your nightmares is going to splatter through your stomach, screeching like a newborn and hungry for its first meal. So that’s it. After all this, you’re going to be baby food. Luna laughs, a delicious poison you’re desperate to drink. “No, cretin! I have conceived no monster within you, though such a fate would suit well a waste of flesh like you.” She steps to the control panel. “I have doomed you to live. To live, as long as it takes for this machine to have its way with you. I have changed you. Your innards will feed from one another, sharing blood and fluid so that you might be aware to the very rending of your pusillanimous heart.” She’s going to kill you! At last she’s going to kill you! And you’ll be able to share your last breath with her. She’ll have the satisfaction of … “Your final moments will be spent alone. That is your sentence, for I know my absence is what you dread the most.” And with that, the spirit link breaks. No gentle fading, no warning. She’s gone. You rasp through the blood clogging your windpipe, flailing for her, needing to touch her soft, star-strewn mane. Needing her hatred within you. You couldn’t have lived without her, and now at the end you fear to die without her. Now the space inside she had filled with her thoughts is empty. Now there is only silence. She taps a button on the control panel, and turns a knob. The conveyor belt starts rolling, inch by inch into the darkness. She smiles, radiant like the moon, and speaks. “Suffer.” Suffer. That is the path you had chosen. As you watch her turn and walk away into the field, you understand the reason she’d chosen this as her final word to you. You weep, a soft, bloody gurgling to accompany the ecstatic praise of the moon that the crickets are pouring forth. There is no joy like her wisdom. In the distance, a circle of light has appeared. As it grows, you can see bright sunlit clouds within, and distant mountains topped with clean white snow, and fields of wildflowers of every shape and color. It’s a different world. A world unspoiled by humans and their petty greed and wars and skyscrapers and asphalt. A world of pure joy. The heat and the noise, and the fumes of exhaust grow stronger. Luna reaches the circle and stops, turning her head one last time to watch you. There’s more beyond, in the other world. A city in the mountain haze, a place of peace and riches. Farmlands and orchards stretch for miles below it, tilled in long perfect furrows, full of life and bounty. There is no worry there. No worry, and no fear. The last thing you see before your head enters the hood of the blades is Luna smiling, happy at last as she waits before the portal to that bright green world filled with sunlight and birdsong you think can only be paradise. Author's Note Awww yeah! Nothing like some good old fashion enkillenation, am I right? I don't know about you, but I can't think of a better way to die than to be tortured to death by Princess Luna. What's that, you say? You were hoping the Night Princess would be the one to get her comeuppance? Huh. Well, if you don't mind a change of scenery, I'd humbly direct your attention to my story "Life is a Party". It should provide what you're looking for. Technical note: This chapter was mildly influenced by the "Lover's Vow" segment of the 1990 movie Tales from the Darkside. Musical epilogue/visualization:
Epilogue - Gardening With YouLuna’s knife sliced through her stack of pineapple and banana-peel pancakes. She pondered the make-believe face her sister had crafted on top; that of a filly, she judged, given the long green pineapple leaf eyelashes. She took a sniff of the warm buttermilk morsel before slipping it into her mouth. The filly had lost an eye. Luna’s chewing slowed, and she sighed. Celestia smiled at her from behind the bouquet of freshly cut daisies and zinnias spelling out “Welcome Home!” that she had placed at the center of the grand dining table, busy with her own breakfast platter. It was a fine morning. Luna was back from her long diplomatic errand, the Summer Sun Festival was just a couple weeks away, and the pancakes had turned out just right this time. Luna was eating them, at least, and as far as Celestia was concerned, that was all that mattered. Except that she wasn’t. Celestia put her fork down. “Luna?” No reply. Luna was staring at her plate, poking the side of her pancakes with her knife. Celestia eased out of her seat and glided down the length of the table. “Luna, can you please tell me what has you so preoccupied? Is something not to your liking? You’re not feeling underappreciated again, are you?” Luna kept cutting, intent on leaving as much of the fruit face intact as she could. “Me? Preoccupied? Heavens, no.” A syrupy section of the stack came free and floated to her lips. “Luna, I can tell something’s bothering …” “It’s … it’s nothing,” Luna snapped. “I’m fine. Thank you for the flowers. They’re lovely. Busy day today?” Celestia took a step closer. “Luna …” The knife and fork clattered onto the plate. “I lost my temper,” Luna grumbled, rubbing her temple with her hoof. “I did something … decidedly undiplomatic. You know I’m not good at these things. It’s just that those creatures were so incredibly vile. I couldn’t walk ten paces down the street without a herd of them gathering and flashing their little rectangles at me—taking pictures to gossip and ridicule me through their mass communication machine—giggling like foals and begging to climb onto my back. And the smell. I’d swear they are bags of swamp slime with legs, and approximately as intelligent.” She sighed again and pushed her plate away. “So … what happened?” Celestia asked, soothing Luna’s slumped shoulder with her hoof. “My counterpart was the very model of their kind. Lazy. Malodorous. Single-minded in all the worst ways. My spirit link, as I mentioned to you yesterday, it took to signify that we were …” Luna paused to swallow, grimacing as if she’d eaten something rotten. “Married.” “Goodness me!” Celestia gasped. “It must have been so hard for you.” Luna nodded, bracing her head now in both hooves. “I shall omit the finer details out of common decency, to spare you the fit of nausea that would surely result. Nevertheless, I cannot help but worry that I did something wrong.” Celestia brushed at her sister’s forelock, straightening out the frazzled strands. “Now Luna. Remember what we said about negative self-talk. I’d like to help. Is there anything at all I can do?” “Well … I was thinking,” Luna mused, blinking up at Celestia, the glint of new hope in her eyes. “I was thinking maybe you could … ah …” She slid out of her seat. “Perhaps it would be best if I were to show you.” Celestia beamed. “Oh, do! I’m certain that whatever it is, it isn’t as bad as you’re imagining. And you really need to stop being so hard on yourself. Remember the old saying, ‘To err is mulish; to forgive, equine.’ Luna suppressed a laugh and dipped her muzzle to indicate the balcony. The two walked side-by-side to where the sky glowed bright blue, clear for miles to the mountains. The pegasus guards standing watch there for aerial assaults parted to let them pass. Celestia gave them a nod as she patted Luna’s wing. “Now, let us see whether we can turn this blooper into a bed of roses!” Outside you waited, baking in the hazy glow of the Canterlot summer sun, in no condition to shoo away the jays perching on the side of your cart. Luna pointed at you from above. “In my bout of … indiscretion … I fear I might have …” Celestia arched an eyebrow, surveying your cart. “It doesn’t appear to possess any magic,” Luna continued, “and so, cannot revive itself as most normal ponies can. What should we do?” “Well, I’m sure I could ask Twilight to dig up a spell I know from the archives in Canterlot Library, but I’m not sure what effect reconstituting the creature in its original form might have on the magical foundations of Equestria. And to be honest,” she draped her wing around Luna’s shoulders, “the peonies are looking a bit fatigued.” The jays tweeted at you, bobbing and cocking their heads in curiosity. Then as one they flew off, a whispering burst of color, frightened by a passerby leading a wagon full of silk scarves. Luna looked up through the soft aurora of her sister’s mane. “The peonies? Are you suggesting …” “It’s been too long since we did something together as sisters,” Celestia replied, giving Luna a squeeze. “I think that your counterpart would make first rate mulch, full of life and nutrients for the flower patches. What do you say? A day in the gardens, just you and me against the weeds?” Luna gazed down on you from the balcony, seeing a fertile meal for her lavender in your red sodden wood chips and greasy brown gobbets. She smiled. “Yes! A day of weeding and feeding it shall be! And to Tartarus with diplomacy!” She conjured two sets of canvas work chaps and a pair of rakes. Celestia laughed. Some of the crowd below heard it, and thought it to be a joyous blare of trumpets. “I couldn’t agree more!” she declared, and joined Luna in dressing for the long day ahead. And so your blood came to mingle with the sacred soil of the Royal Gardens, the inviolate domain of the Two Sisters of Equestria. Deeply did their topiaries and their hedges drink of your fertile life fluid, and fast did the roots of their dwarf trees and vines cling to your sundered remains. Indeed, they fed, and grew so fast and so strong that the Sisters saw, and were amazed, and devised a new policy. A delegation was formed to the kingdom of Johnsonville. Their gifts were nets, their parley was spears, and their chief ambassador a groundskeeper. For you had demonstrated the true purpose to which your kind should be put. The retinue came and went, under the cover of night, or on dark, rainy days when nopony was about, always returning with heavy crates and covered, iron-barred pull-carts. A month passed, then two. Summer yielded to autumn. The flowers were trimmed and replaced. The trees and bushes were pruned, and all marveled at how the floral display had flourished in so short a time. It was magic, some said. Others thought it merely a good omen. But all praised the wise Sisters, the Beatifiers of the kingdom. Twenty wood chippers hummed in the Gardens of Canterlot.
Saying She Hates YouPocket Protector and his sweetums nail the turf with their last darts. With a shrug to the vendor, they slouch off into the night, mumbling to each other in some subhumanoid language they probably memorized on an all-night World of Warcraft quest. You’re up. “So, anybody win anything tonight?” you ask. You put your wrinkled fiver next to the lockbox on the front counter. The vendor grunts something while he pulls the darts out of the grass. By his tone you guess that luck hadn’t been with the friendly fair-goers this evening. He gets up, takes a look at your payment, and hands you ten green-stained darts. You take in his foot-long ginger beard and his day-glo dartboard T-shirt. “Pick Your Poison”, it says. An obvious LARPer. He has that look about him. He backs out of the way so you can make your throws, standing with his arms crossed below the prize shelf like he’s a guardian knight keeping watch over his vassals. The balloons are about ten feet away. They’re all about six inches wide and spaced a foot apart or so, in a rectangular grid painted with badass clowns throwing flaming darts. A pack of girls are in the background of the painting blowing kisses at the clowns. There’s a cheap shot. Try to throw you off your game by taunting you with dead-eye clowns. Well whoop-de-do. Henceforth and forsooth you dub them ass-clowns. Better not miss, or you’ll look like a piss stain in front of the ass-clowns and their ho’s. You laugh and line up your first throw. That’s when you discover there’s a problem. Luna had hit you more than once in your arm as you tried to keep her away from your ribs. You could still feel her hoof impacting against your tricep, cutting at the same nerve, making the whole thing go numb. Now it feels like it’s on fire, a pulsing pins-and-needles pain shooting all the way from your shoulder to your fingertips and back. Fuck it. You aim and let loose with the first dart. It nicks a yellow balloon near the center, going deep enough to pop it. Not the one you were aiming at, but who gives a shit? Your arm shouts at you not to do that again. The teddy is smiling down on you from above, giving you the old wink-wink. Nice shot, buddy it’s saying. Nine more to go. How’s that arm treatin’ ya? The prize may as well be at the tippy-top of Mount Everest, now. Unless you start throwing like a girl—and there’s no way you’re letting King Arthur over there see that—you’re fucked internally. You roll the sharp metal needles in your hand. There’s too much at stake here. Failure is not an option. Maybe if you go at it like ripping off a band-aid, it won’t be so bad. You let them fly, gritting your teeth through the ever-growing agony. One by one the balloons burst. Your throws land all over the grid as if guided by an unseen hand. Luna knows what’s going on. Maybe she’s watching from afar, giving each of your darts just a little nudge to put them on the mark. God she’s a dream. You miss your first toss on the seventh try. Four more balloons to pop, three more darts. That’s why you always hated math. You can’t bullshit numbers. “Keep going!” King Arthur says. “You can still get a consolation prize.” He points up at a row of Wile E. Coyote bobble-heads. The counter rattles gently as you let your fist fall in what you would have liked to have been an expression of dire rage and defiance of the ass-clowns. Your arm is pretty much dead weight at this point. Oh well, you have one good one left. “Hey, can I go again? My waifu really wants a teddy bear.” His Majesty taps his chin. “If ya got another five bucks, sure!” You dig back into your wallet. Four sour-faced portraits of George Washington stare back at you. “I’m, uh, a little short. Can I give you four and call it good?” “Sorry man, can’t help ya. Gotta balance at the end of the night, which is pretty much now.” Balance? What the fuck is he balancing? Whatever. Arguing with this guy is going to get you nowhere, you can already tell. Maybe you can guilt him into it. “Please? I’m seriously going to catch a royal beat down from her if I don’t come back with a teddy bear.” He strokes his beard for a moment, sizing you up like a highlands warrior judging the distance from the tip of his broadsword to the throat of his enemy. By the way he smirks and clasps his arms behind his back, you know he’s come to a decision. “Riddle me this! What was Constable Odo’s original form prior to being discovered by the Bajorans?” Sometimes, back in history class, you’d get a question that you could swear wasn’t even written in English. At such times, you spewed the first load of shit popped into your head, usually to the oddly appropriate sound of Schlong and Poop Scoop sending each other messages in fart noises. You’re a deer in the headlights of King Arthur’s nerdmobile, and he’s got venison on the menu. And of course he sees that he’s bested you. “Be not ashamed, my friend,” he intones, rocking back on his heels. “You are not the first to have fallen into my clutches, and you will not be the last. Perhaps the fair waifu would like a sub instead? They’re a steal at three fifty over at Blobby’s Sandwich and Beverage Emporium. That tent right there, with the pinstripe awning.” He points across the road. So OK, Luna didn’t want the cantaloupe. Fair enough. The flavor gets to be a bit much after a while, and it’s definitely not for everyone. But you had yet to meet a person who doesn’t enjoy a spicy meatball sub. “Thanks, man,” you say, and jog over to what might be your last hope for showing Luna a good time. And for saving humanity from the bloodthirsty pony hordes. You muffle your thoughts again to keep Luna in the dark. She deserves a surprise after all this. You’re a zen monk, and zen monks don’t reveal their thoughts to the enemy. Blobby’s already putting the lids on his steaming trays of meatballs when you get there. It’s clear from the splotches on his bulging shirt that he’s taken dinner, and lunch as well, from the deep, polished steel platters. “Wait a sec,” you splutter as you shove your singles into his face. “Can I get one of those for my … uh … my mom? She skipped dinner ‘cause she’s recovering from a … really bad … root canal. Bad teeth. Runs in the family.” Blobby eyes you for a good ten seconds. “Guy at the dart tent sent me,” you smile. He shakes his head and uncovers one of the trays. “Guess this won’t be too hard on her teeth. Cheese with that?” “Yeah, throw some cheese on there, thanks,” you reply. When he’s done ladling a row of meatballs into a white bread bun he’d taken from a side drawer, he grabs something out of a bin behind him and sets it on your plate. “Here,” he says, “you get a free bag of Doritos, courtesy of Grand Doritos Shopping Center. All I got left is Jacked flavor though. Your mom jacked?” he laughs. “You don’t even know, dude,” you chuckle. Before you turn to leave, you remember the finishing touch. “Hey, where are the goldfish at? Anybody selling those?” “Three booths that way,” he gestures with his ladle. “Quarter each unless you’re good with a water pistol.” “Cool. Oh, one more thing,” you say as you start away. “Is your name really Blobby, or is that just your thing?” Blobby drops his ladle into the meatball tray. “My name is Blobert Anselm Xanzibar the Third. Legally changed it because I give two shits. Now get the fuck out of here.” He doesn’t have to tell you twice. You’re already moving, avoiding the few remaining fair-goers still hanging onto the good times in dwindling denial of tomorrow morning’s drive to work. Couldn’t really blame them for milking it. No waifu for them to make it all worthwhile. The goldfish tent is packing up too, but hadn’t gotten too far to sell you one. You choose a lazy bastard that’s drifting on its side at the top of its plastic baggie. That’ll just melt Luna’s heart, cute little guy like that. You think about what to name his as you run back up the road toward the restrooms. Luna’s still there at the back, sitting on the grass under the orange lamp. You hide your gifts behind you. After all you’d put her through tonight, she deserves a surprise. Her serene face is turned upward again, a beautiful dark flower collecting the light of the stars and moon. Perfect setup. You could sit down beside her, maybe lean in against her, and show her all the treasures you’d won for her. Then she’d smile, and out would come the brush, and you’d run it real slow and gentle through her sweet mane, and then … Her nostrils quiver. “I smell something. Do you have the teddy bear?” she asks. She swings her neck from side to side, trying to see behind you. “No games. What are you hiding there?” “Surprise, baby! Listen, I didn’t get you the teddy bear, and I’m real sorry about that, but I didn’t come back empty-handed! Here,” you step close and bring the meatball sub up under her muzzle. “Dinner is served!” She recoils, keeping her nose away from the sauce. “What is this? Is this animal flesh?” She gives it a quick sniff. “It is the remains of some poor cow, or her calf! You dolt! I would never eat this, and you know it!” Fuck. Fuck. You’d forgotten about that time she’d lost it and turned all tribal on her subjects. She has a thing about meat, and not just because she’s a vegetarian. “OK, OK, I’m sorry. But check this out! I have an in at the mall. All the Doritos I want. There’s no meat in those.” She swats the paper plate out of your hand. “I did not ask for your meatless Doritos. I asked for a teddy bear!” You backpedal toward the restroom wall as she advances. “I tried, baby I really tried this time. I know I screwed up, but … I got you the next best thing. Look!” You hold the goldfish up to the light. “His name’s Slowpoke. Not the swiftest fish in the aquarium, but he’s real cute. Isn’t he?” She peers into the bag. The fish is still floating on its side, its mouth and gills fluttering every few seconds. “This was the best you could do? This poor animal is half dead. Tell me, what do you think this would reveal about humanity, were I to show it to the nobles of Equestria?” Your back is against the brick wall again. You’re inches away from another thrashing. Probably even worse than the last one. “Uh, slow and steady wins the race?” Luna stares at you. Looks like she didn’t see that one coming. The momentum’s back in your favor. Time to shine. “That’s Slowpoke’s message to ponykind, sweetie. Humans aren’t smart, or strong, or perfect like you are, but we …” We what? You look to Slowpoke for inspiration. What are we, buddy? What do we have that would show Luna we’re worth her time? Slowpoke’s back fin convulses once, making a bubble that skates along the water’s surface and pops when it hits the edge of the plastic. “We’re survivors,” you finish, extracting the rest of the sentence from your ass. “We don’t quit, no matter how bad it gets. The going gets tough, the tough get going. The nobles would get it. They’d like us. Just give us a chance, like you gave me a chance becoming my waifu. I mean, you liked me enough to bond with me, right? “Like you?” she asks. She puts a hoof on your chest, and twists it into the fabric of your hoodie. Her eyes are deep and dark as she pushes you into the wall. “I hate you. No. I don’t just hate you. I despise every last iota of your being with every fiber of mine. It took all of a minute after creating the link with you to learn that your heart and mind are repugnant, and I’ve loathed every moment of it ever since. You are unworthy of my friendship, and most definitely unworthy of whatever it is you’ve deluded yourself into believing.” The ground seems to tremble, and you fall to your knees. Is she saying that she isn’t your waifu? She pulls her hoof away. “Well? What do you have to say for yourself?”
