Equus Mortis

Chapter One: Find the dead

It’s not easy being Ponyville’s only mortician. I’m also the local hospital’s coroner, but that doesn’t bother people as much.

In this world of candy-colored ponies, full of optimism, light and life, I represent (at least to the locals) that part of everypony’s life where optimism is pointless, light dims and life can no longer linger.

It’s not just my tombstone-grey eyes that bother everyone. It’s also my thin white earth pony body, short black mane and tail and my under-weight, emaciated face. It’s also my unenviable cutie mark.

A pony skull.

I got my cutie mark ten years ago when I figured out who killed my pet cat, Samael. The length and depth of the teeth-marks clinched that it was a neighbor’s dog. A flash of light, a tingling sensation on both sides of my posterior, and presto, instant outcast.

Perhaps it’s not so surprising that I got this mark. My family name is Mortis. My father, Ivory Mortis, in a fit of oh-so-cleverness, decided to saddle me with the first name of Equus. An old family name, he claimed. It wasn’t until much later that I found out that my name, in an extinct Equestrian language, means “Pony of death”. Thanks, dad. It’s a gift that keeps on giving. Grief, mostly.

Not every profession is the subject of polite society. Someone has to stick their hooves into a corpse’s body in order to find out how that pony died. But that sort of thing is too intimate, too intrusive for most ponies to even contemplate. Not the sort of thing to have a group sing-along about.

When I first moved to this little town, I wasn’t sure if I would be accepted for who I was.
To be sure, a few ponies here treated me well. Not soon after I unpacked my last moving box, however, some idiot started the rumor that if I stared too long at someone, they would die. As if I were measuring them for their caskets with my eyes.

As a result of this idiotic (and therefor persistent) myth, I try to not maintain eye-contact with anyone except the employees at the hospital morgue. I look like Nightmare Night all year round. No wonder that holiday bores me.

What some people don’t understand is that I help bring closure to so many families. I not only figure out how somepony dies, but I also make them presentable for their funerals. (Well, if the body can be salvaged enough for that, but I’ll get back to that subject in a minute.)

These jobs I do help everyone walk away from the graveyard. I clean up the mess that cruel fate, or cruel intentions, left behind. I console the bereaved. I even help bury the bodies.

But the day after the funeral, no matter how bright the sun shines, no matter how loudly the residents sing their songs, I am nearly invisible. Not hated, but not embraced with open arms, either.

Then my life got so much worse when I had to do an autopsy on Rainbow Dash.

I was roused out of bed at three in the morning by the town guards. The body was dumped in the middle of town by persons unknown. Since I was the only one in town with the skills to properly figure out what happened, I had to quick-like-a-bunny cram a quick breakfast down my gullet, chug some sugary tea and get to the morgue.

They didn’t tell me at the time who had died, but with so many city guards at the hospital
keeping watch for reporters, I knew it couldn’t be just anyone. Ponies die all the time in Manehatten, the city that I moved away from not long ago. Noone ever posted guards for those forgotten ones.

The minute I stepped into the morgue’s chilled steel-wall room, I knew who died simply by the multi-colored tail drooping over the edge of the table.

A white sheet had covered the body, but not for my sake. Wobbly stomachs will only hinder this line of work. Half the students at my old medical school drop out after having to dig into a cadaver further than a few inches. This wasn’t my first time at the rodeo, however.

When I moved to Ponyville, I was struck by how calm the place was at night. You didn’t have to worry about getting sliced like a bagel for your horseshoes.

Manehatten has a murder occur every five minutes. A fatal accident every half-hour or so.
I’ve had to do autopsies on burn victims, ponies with crowbars still shoved into their brains, even a griffin that was beaten to death so bad, his ribs punctured his lungs. I once had a stallion who was somehow forced to drink a few gallons of battery acid. His dissolved gut looked like a cherry pie that had been trampled by tap-dancers.

The eyes of the dead can only stare at you. All you can do is ignore them and do your job. Just concentrate on figuring out the how,where and when of their deaths. The why and the who-did-it were other matters for the detectives.

The sheet was pulled away by my assistant Flashbulb, a red earth pony with a camera cutie mark. Flashy, as I sometimes called him, wasn’t the type to get green-cheeked when somepony comes in here in a gooey or crumpled state.

I could only stare at the cyan-furred body. Flashy forgot himself, tears beading in his eyes. What lay before us went beyond anything I had seen in years. Cruel wasn’t the word I was searching for. Horrible could describe what I had to deal with when somepony stepped in front of the Ponyville train. This went ten miles beyond horrible.

Taking a deep breath, I closed my eyes, finding my calm place. Just do your job, I told myself. Do whatever you can to help catch her killer. Help the dead. Don’t let any details slip past you.

Opening my eyes, I said, “Flash, are you up to this?”

“Y-yeah. I’m sorry, I’m not a newbie at this but...it’s Rainbow Dash.”

“I know.”

“One of the Mane Six. She helped fight back that dragon attack on Ponyville a few months ago.”

“Yes, I read about that in Manehatten. I know about all of her heroics. This is going to be hard for both of us, but we still have to do this. For her. For her friends and family. For everyone.”

Flashbulb sniffed as he checked his camera-light. “Morty, I know all that. You don’t have to give me a speech.”

I nodded, went to a nearby table and turned on the tape recorder. The microphone over the autopsy table was close enough so that I didn’t have to raise my voice. I said the time, current date and our names. Then came the hard part.

“Subject name: Rainbow Dash. Sex: female. Age twenty-five. Marital status: single. Race: Pegasus.”

A sun-flare of light. Ghost-images burned into my vision as Flash took his pictures.

Peering closer at her head, I continued. “Fur color: Cyan. Mane colors: red, vermillion, gold, green, blue and violet. Weight: eighty pounds. Height, five feet.”

I stuck a thermometer into her chest. The warmer the body, the fresher the kill. Close to normal temperature. She had to have died about an hour ago.

“Occupation: Ponyville weather patrol. External examination. Both cutie marks have been removed. The epidermis has been cut by a small, sharp blade. Damage to lateral surface indicates that a larger blade was used to remove cutie marks from the body.”

Another flash. The bloodied patches on her legs looked black for a moment.

“Both wings are missing, cut off at axillaries. Damage in both wing-humerus indicate a multi-bladed instrument was used to tear both flesh and bone. Possibly a steak-knife or hack-saw.”

Something about those wounds tickled something in the back of my mind. I shook away the search. Stick with the here and now, I chided myself.

“Facial and cranial skin of subject has been removed. Eyelid skin remains on head. Incisions from chin along both jaw lines to back of head. There is a slight indentation and bruising on the back of the head. Probable cause, blow with large object. ”

Examining her legs, I noticed severe rope burns around all the hooves. She struggled. Probably till the end, too. Poor girl.

“Lividity on back and buttocks suggest the body was killed in one place and then dumped in another.”

I adjusted Dash’s body so she lay flat on her back. Spreading her legs, I peeled apart the large, blood-encrusted slit that went from her lower ribs to her crotch. Congealed blood streamed between the skin-flaps. I could see the ridges of her spine and ribs. Her scooped-out gut reminded me of Nightmare Night pumpkins after a few hours of candle-heat.

“Internal examination. Abdominal wall has been cut in an I-shape. The heart, both lungs,liver, stomach, both kidneys and the spleen have been removed. Large and small intestine, small colon and bladder are also absent. Sexual organs are still intact.”

Looking around the slit’s ridge, I spotted something half-buried in the blood-sludge. Using tweezers, I pulled it carefully from the body. It was a single hair. Pink.

“Foreign object found. Placing in evidence bag.”

A few more pictures of her hollowed body, and we were ready to wrap this up.

“Cause of death. Severe blood loss and removal of vital organs. Manner of death. Homicide.”

Yeah, that much was obvious. I had to keep those comments off the tapes, however. I couldn’t allow myself to get emotionally involved with this.

“Toxicology reports are forthcoming, but examination reveals that Rain....the subject’s body was knocked out, bound in a remote location, skinned and then gutted. This homicide appears to almost be ritualistic in manner. Equus Mortis, chief medical examiner, Ponyville morgue, signing off.”

After Flashbulb put Rainbow Dash’s body in storage, he asked me, “Morty? What you said a few minutes ago, about her being ritually killed? What made you think that?”

“It’s just a guess, Flashy. I’m not sure of anything at this point.”

“I hope you’re able to find out something soon. Once this report goes out, Princess Celestia and the rest of the Mane Six will be demanding answers.”

“I know." In spite of how harrowing it was to have to examine a local hero’s body, I was beginning to feel like I was swimming through freshly-poured concrete. I only had three hours of sleep, after all.

When I left the hospital, I noticed the sun peeking over the mountains. Another sunny day was beginning. But not for Rainbow Dash. Her sunny days were over. Someone ended them.

One pink hair was all the evidence I could find. I hoped I could find more than that later on. Only someone close to Rainbow Dash could have gotten the drop on her so easily to have knocked her out with one blow.

And then slowly, mercilessly tore her apart in a manner that was more familiar to me than I let on to Flashbulb or anyone outside my family.

Rainbow wasn’t just murdered. She was sacrificed. To Nightmare Moon.

Author's Note

Well, here 'tis. My first grimdark. Murder, madness and more await. And what horror story is complete without music?
The music for this chapter is: Portrait of Mister Boogie by Christopher Young. (Sinister movie soundtrack)
I am Flesh I am Bone by Gazelle Twin (The Entire City album)
If my Wi-Fi cooperates with me, I'll be plunking down a fresh chapter every Monday. See you soon.

(Sigh...poor Dashie. She never catches a break in these darkfics, does she? But she catches a lot of knives. Hee.)