It was sweltering hot day at Sweet Apple Acres and Applejack was busy bucking the living shit out of some trees, so as to harvest the fresh apples they held in their branches.
However, as hard as she was working, it wasn't enough and she found herself starting to tie. "Phew! It's mighty hot work." Applejack panted between breaths. "I think I'll be needin' Big Mac's help with this, otherwise t'aint never gonna get done."
Her mind made up, Applejack trotted up to the top of the tallest hill, overlooking the Apple Family household. “HEY! BIG MACHINTOSH!” She called out, her voice echoing across the orchard. “GET YO’ FAT ASS OVER HERE, I NEED YOUR HELP WITH THE APPLE BUCKIN’.” It didn’t take long for her to get a response, as the front door of the house opened up and Big Mac, in all his buff, manly glory, strode up. He looked up at the hill Applejack was standing on and called out to her in response.
“EEEEYUP!”
With that, Big Mac proceeded to gallop through the orchard, to the part of it where Applejack was waiting. It only took him a minute or two to reach her, where he stopped for a moment to catch his breath. Applejack turned to him, smiling.
“Glad you could make it, big brother. These apples are mighty tough to buck on my own in this heat. I’d never be able to get it done without your help. Shall we get started?”
“Eeyup.”
Without another word, the pair of ponies began their tiresome duties; bucking apples off of the trees around the immense orchard. Applejack focused on the smaller trees, while Macintosh took on the larger, sturdier trees, so as to prevent kicking them down by accident and destroying an entire trees worth of apple crop.
Applejack wandered off to a more recently planted section of the orchard, where the apple trees were younger and less resistant to kicking. They shouldn’t be too hard to coax the apples out of. They weren’t too tough and her kicks should be more than enough to harvest their contents with.
As she harvested the apples, she couldn’t shake the foreboding feeling that something bad was about to go take place in the orchard. Not only that, but it felt like it would be something that she was going to be partly responsible for. She didn’t like the feeling and tried her best to ignore it. Maybe it was just the result of being out in the sun for one too many hours. Still…There was something about it, like it was legitimately trying to warn her about something bad. Something very bad involving her brother; Big Macintosh.
Shaking the thought of once again, Applejack went back to work bucking the trees. She wasn’t going to let some silly sun-induced daydream get in the way of the harvest.
A few hours later, the sun was starting to set and the harvest was going swimmingly well, with the combined efforts of Applejack and Big Mac making record time with the apple bucking. As the harvest drew ever closer to its end, Big Mac was getting ready to buck the final tree in the section of the orchard he was currently working on.
As he reared up, ready to deliver the final buck for the day, Mac suddenly got a sense of foreboding. It was almost as if something was warning him that something bad was about to happen. However, he merely dismissed it as his mind playing tricks on him as a result of being out in the sun for too long. Without another word, Big Mac brought his hind legs back as far as they would go, balancing precariously on his two front legs, before delivering a violent kick, with every last ounce of his physical strength, into the trunk of the tree.
There was a deafening crack, as the trunk of the tree split down the middle. Big Mac examined the crack, drawing up the pros and cons of the situation.
The pros? The kick had successfully brought down every single apple in the tree, with only one or two taking any serious damage in the fall. The tree had definitely served its full purpose in the apples it had dropped today.
The cons? The crack down the middle was far too deep, and far too big, to leave any hope that the tree would see another harvest. It would probably keel over and collapse to the ground during the night, leaving one less tree to yield profit for the farm. It was disappointing, sure, but nothing too damaging to the profits. They could easily continue making enough money without it.
Satisfied with his conclusions, Big Mac set about picking up the surrounding apples and placing them carefully in the two woven baskets he had with him, preparing to take them down to the apple wagon, where they would then be transported to the barn for storage until market day.
Suddenly, a faint creaking sound came from the canopy of the tree. As quiet as it was, it was still audible enough for Mac to hear it, who looked up in confusion. As he glanced upwards, he was just in time to see a large branch, near the very top of the tree, slowly begin to sag downwards as a large crack started to form along the base. Macintosh’s kick must have been more powerful than he originally thought. How else would that branch have randomly cracked along the base enough to fall off?
Big Mac took a few steps to the side, intending to move out of the way of the impending branch and allow it to fall safely to the ground without injuring anypony. What he didn’t count on was the recently dropped apple lying in his path. The stallion gave a cry of surprise as his foot slipped on the obstructive apple, unbalancing him and sending him backwards back into the path of the branch, just as its base finally gave way and broke, allowing it to drop freely. Directly into the skull of Big Mac.
The was a loud thud and a deafening crack as the branch crashed into the stallions head and a smaller branch-off impaled his skull, stabbing into his brain and allowing blood to flow freely from his cracked skull. The branch rolled off of Mac’s head and the stallion staggered around on the spot, concussion from the blow starting to set in, as well as faintness from, blood loss. Without another word, Big Mac collapsed to the floor, blood and bits of brain scattered all round him, staining the fresh green grass a sickly red.
As he lay there, dying, Big Mac’s thoughts drifted back to the feeling he had earlier. The one about the bad thing happening.
‘So this is what that was warning me about’ He thought as he slowly began to drift into unconsciousness, a dark tunnel slowly starting to form in his vision.
Before he passed out completely, however, there was yet another audible crack coming from the apple tree. Big Mac’s eyes drifted upwards to see the tree slowly beginning to lurch forwards, the crack in its trunk obviously weakening its structural integrity enough to make it collapse now, rather than later tonight.
Adrenaline set in, giving the dying stallion a second wind as he attempted to crawl away from the advancing mass of wooden death. But fate, it seemed, had other plans as an apple, a survivor from the bucking, dropped from a branch and fell earthward bound. The descending fruit landed perfectly in the open hole in Big Mac’s skull, its momentum helping it to dig in and embed itself into the crack. Bone fragments sliced the apple open, allowing juice to drip onto the unfortunate stallion’s brain.
The combined attack of the fruits impact, and the juice in the brain, stopped Mac dead in his tracks and he collapsed to the floor, presenting himself as an easy target for the falling tree. Big Mac made one last ditch attempt to pick himself up, but only succeeded in turning himself over onto his back, directing his gaze upwards, and giving him full view of his impending doom.
With a deafening crash, the apple tree finished its journey to the floor, its full weight landing heavily onto Big Mac’s lower half and torso. The stallion retched, as the impact collapsed his ribs and lungs, his stomach ejecting its contents through his mouth. Large quantities of blood followed suit as he vomited out a combination of half-digested food, stomach bile, and blood.
Silence fell over the orchard, as Big Mac lay in a pool of his own blood, brain, and vomit. As he felt the sweet embrace of death take hold of him, he heard a faint cry in the distance.
“Big Mac! Hey! Big Macintosh! I head a loud crash, are y’all okay?”
His ears confirmed the cries to be Applejack’s, who must have heard the tree fall and was now running to see what happened. If only there was something she could do. Alas, it was too late for him, as he could already feel his life slowly fade away, the tunnel vision returning once again, now that the adrenaline had died off.
A few seconds later, Applejack entered the clearing; stopping as she examined the area. She let out a gasp as her eyes fell upon the collapsed tree lying on the body of her brother. “Big Macintosh!” She ran to the tree, tears streaming from her eyes and running down her face. She wrapped her arms around her brother, her sobs increasing as her eyes met the open crack in his skull and the pool of blood and innards he was lying in.
“M-Macintosh.” Applejack sobbed into her brother’s shoulder. “What h-h-happened? Her eyes met his as she carefully wiped away the blood and vomit from Mac’s mouth. Applejack composed herself and tried to make an effort to comfort the stallion. “Look. J-just stay calm. We’ll figure out some way to help you…It’ll be f-fine, you’ll see.” But Big Mac knew better. He weakly extended a hoof to Applejack’s face and ran it along her cheek, a look of acceptance in his eyes as they met Applejack’s teary ones. He looked her in the eyes and uttered a single word.
“Nnnope.”
Without another word, Big Macintosh allowed his eyes to finally close as he accepted the sweet embrace of death. He released one last breath as his heart stopped and his body finally gave in. Applejack’s tears started once again as she cried once more into the shoulder of her now dead brother.
When she’d finally composed herself yet again, she stood weakly to her feet and allowed herself a minute of silence to mourn the death of her big brother. She was dreading passing the news onto Granny Smith and Applebloom. Granny was old and had seen death plenty of times, she would mourn, sure, but it wouldn’t have any lasting affect on her. Applebloom, on the other hand, was young and the concept of death was still new to her. It was unfortunate that she would have to be introduced to death by being told her brother had been killed.
As the moment of silence ended, Applejack suddenly thought back to earlier that morning. That sense of foreboding that something bad was going to happen, that she would be responsible for.
This was that moment. Big Mac was dead, killed by a falling appletree, all because she didn’t want to buck up and do the harvest on her own. If she’d allowed him to stay back home, while she did the harvesting alone, this would never have happened. Big Mac would still be alive if it wasn’t for her.
Applejack let out a cry of anguish and ran up to a nearby tree, unleashing the full force of her powerful hind legs into its aged wood. A loud crack echoed across the orchard, and a creak could be heard coming from the canopy.
Applejack looked up as a branch, cracked and weakened from the forced of her kick, broke free from its base…And dropped.
Author's Note
The moral of the story:
Don't make a group with "Kill Big Mac (go on I dare you)" on the groups front page.
