As the light from the midday sun trickled in through the window of the main house of Sweet Apple Acres we see a scene of comfort and ease. A lovely fireplace located along the western wall was adorned with various pictures of the lovely expanded family decorating the mantle with a small clock in the center helping to remind those inside the importance of timely things. A recent small scuff in the otherwise absent dust on the mantle notes the addition of a new picture of the newly wed couple and the implication of their recent honeymoon. In the center of the room is a large circular green rug with two rocking chairs facing each other planted on either side. In one rocking chair rests Granny Smith, elderly but still proud as she knits a small sweater expecting the news of a grandchild any day now since the start of the honeymoon. The spool of red thread empties slowly as the slow but methodical ticking of the needles comes together to weave a nice warm blanket for the new foal. Granny should be smiling but instead it seems as if her mind is elsewhere as she makes her practiced throws and loops. She throws a few glances at the figure sitting across from her in their own rocking chair.
Red Delicious is resting fairly comfortably in his chair rocking back and forth slowly as he reads the Ponyville Express, a practiced flicking motion of the paper being the only sound made apart from the rustling of the carpet beneath his chair’s slow backwards and forwards pace.
After what seemed like an hour later, though it had only been a few minutes since Red got up from his chair to go to the kitchen to check on the pie, Granny spoke up.
“You gonna light that pipe?” asked Granny of her dear husband of 60 years. Red pulled the newspaper down from his face revealing that he did indeed have a small corncob pipe sticking out of the corner of his mouth, though it was unlit.
“Say again?” asked Red Delicious of his wife, it had been some years since his hearing had gone and he swore he was a bit deaf in his right ear, although he always seemed to have some sort of selective hearing at least in Granny’s opinion.
“I said are you gonna light that pipe?” asked Granny again her eyes narrowing slightly as she looked across at her husband, both rocking chairs had ceased their perpetual motions as the conversation got underway.
“Oh,” remarked Red Delicious as he pondered the question for a bit as if weighing the weight of the world in his mind. “Maybe later,” he responded as he lifted the paper up a bit and started reading again from where he left off.
Granny Smith just stared at her husband for a bit not really saying or doing anything as her knitting had stopped from before.
“I know how much you enjoy it is all,” she replied still looking across the green rug at her husband’s rather stupid blank expression. “Every night, 37 years, you and your pipe,” she explained as if trying to prompt her husband’s habit by reminder alone.
“Eeyup,” said Red Delicious as he looked across at her his expression one of complete and total dismissal as if he was being very inconvenienced by a rather talkative fly. The two then just stared at each other for a bit, their expression betraying as little as possible, years of card playing had honed their poker faces to give away not even the smallest of details.
“Well, don’t abstain on my account, I don’t mind,” said Granny Smith gesturing to the pipe in Red’s mouth the first time her needles had moved in over a minute.
Red just stared at her for a little while and then said, “Funny thing.”
“Eh?” asked Granny Smith her hearing starting to fade in and out a bit itself after all those years yelling at her stupid son and her stupid husband to get any stupid thing done around the farm.
“I said: Funny Thing”, said Red Delicious a little bit louder than was necessary, almost angrily if one were listening very closely to his words, “noticed my tobacco pouch wasn’t quite where I left it,” he said gesturing to the pouch on the night stand next to him. “Looked like somebody’d messed with it, maybe…sprinkled some kinda liquid inside,” he explained very conversationally. “You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?” he asked of his very harpy like wife in a pleasing tone.
The two stared at each other each straining not to reveal anything at all, the tension built in the room as if the very air itself was formed of the hate, anger, and spite of 40 years of loveless marriage. As if the very home they were in was nothing more than a home of repressed rage only keeping themselves together to spite the other. As if the very foundation of this farmstead was less built on family and more built around the mutual desire to make the other as miserable as possible before they were sent to their graves.
Granny Smith was the first to break, “You light that pipe!” she screeched as she launched herself from her chair and slammed the paper down staring her husband down the anger having finally fought its way to the surface.
“Buck you,” stated Red as he met her violent gaze with just as much vehemence and bile as he could muster for the moment.
“Light it or I’ll shove it down your Celestia-dammned throat,” explained Granny Smith rather matter of factly.
“You would not survive the attempt,” explained Red just as calmly as they continued to look at each other with mutual assurance of destruction or death to the other. It was a long time coming and both had expected the other to make the first move but the die was cast and Granny had lost out on her first attempt at murder.
The two just stared at each other for a bit knowing that the game had escalated and now the next step would come from either side.
“We done here?” asked Red Delicious as the two looked at each other with the eyes lit by a fire of a 40 year hatred.
Granny paused for a moment and went back to her rocking chair, sat down and regained the pattern of carpet rustling as the chair rocked back and forth and the tick-ticking of needles going to work. Red Delicious propped his still wrinkled Ponyville Express paper up and resumed his read, his pipe still hanging from his mouth as he too rocked back and forth a little bit quicker now.
And thus ends our little foray into the idyllic life of those nice and quiet residents of Ponyville and especially the wonderful, quiet life of Sweet Apple Acres.
….
Until Red fell down the stairs the next day due to his “bad hip” and just so happened to land on the kitchen knives.
All of them
