Heads and tails

Red. A thick redness was crawling over Twilight’s world. It was rapidly getting difficult to concentrate on anything except the acute pain she was in. Everything felt blurry and distant, she had lost track of the time ages ago. Red were also the cuts that ran all around her purple body, creating a deep curious contrast with her fur.

She hadn’t lost the track of those wounds. She was painfully aware of every single one of them. They were twentyfour, mostly on her legs… no twentyfive…

“Ponies have a voluminous nervous ganglion in their front legs, just a few inches under the shoulder blade” the brown mare recited in the flat tone Twilight grew accustomed to. “Hurting it, even slightly, can cause intense pain. For this work I suggest a thin blade or a nail.”

Dr. Hooves lift her head from the book she was holding and took a moment to inspect the title. “‘A Guide to Modern and Ancient Torture by Brazen Bull’. Ms. Sparkle, wouldn’t you think that keeping a similar book laying around in the library is very irresponsible? A dangerous or psychotic individual could have found this instead of us.” There was no sign of disapproval or severity on her face. Nor of any other emotion.

Twilight had a rag in her mouth and couldn’t have answered even if she wanted to.

She cleared cleared throat and spoke to her partner, who was currently holding a knife in his blood covered hooves. “As I said: one or two inches under the shoulder blade. Use the point.”

Dr. Hooves lowered himself over the purple frame and pointed the knife under Twilight’s leg.

“I’m just wondering why haven’t we seen that book before. It could have been really useful with those two terribly annoying colts. Here?” his voice as flat and monotonous as hers.

“If I remember correctly, and I do, we initially planned just to rape them. And maybe beat them. After we finished torture seemed like the natural continuation of the act. I admit sewing their mouths shut did an incredible favour to my mental health. No, a bit lower.”

“Still, we could have done it more efficiently. We should take a couple of loops for ourselves and use an approved torture methodology on the two of them. It might help us relax. Here?”

“It sounds like a marvellous idea. But you have to promise you will be more precise and focused: you are circling all around the correct spot.”

The stallion turned around and gave his usual bored look to his alter-ego. “Maybe looking at the picture would help me. If you just gave me the book we would have finished with this in time to eat at Quills, Sofas and Hayburgers.”

The mare lazily stuck her tongue out looking not mocking at all. “With your dirty hooves you will just ruin it and make it unreadable. Books should be respected.”

He was about to retort when he heard a muffled moan coming from the librarian. Both of them leaned closer to Twilight,the stallion took the rag out of her mouth and looked at her with an incredibly fake smile.

“Ms.Sparkle, have we finally convinced you to give away that little piece of information? Because it’s getting a bit late and we’d hate to see you bleed out on the floor. Again.” The last part said to himself more than to the former unicorn.

“P-Please…” whispered Twilight between breaths, almost unable to talk through the pain.

“I’m not sure we understand your request” stated the mare.

“Why…”

“It’s quite obvious: we need to learn how to kill Celestia, and since you are not collaborative we decided to torture you. I beg you to stay concentrated, this is important.”

She looked at them straight in the eyes.

“Why… H-how can you… do this to other ponies…”

At this question the two doctors fell silent, the stallion losing his smile. For a minute they just stayed there staring at Twilight, staring at her question. Then two mouth simultaneously breathed heavily and they spoke:

“Do you know anything about time travels, Ms. Sparkle? Of course you do, it’s a subject quite abused in literature. Some years ago someone invented this little story and used it as an argument. There was a painter, an incredibly gifted unicorn. She was able to paint revolutionary and brilliant images.

“Decades after she died an art critic decided, since time travel is reality in his age, to go back in time and meet her when she was still a young filly. Just imagine his astonishment when he met a plain unicorn who struggled even to get into Phillydelphia Art Academy. The quality of her early drawings was unexpectedly low, so the critic decided to show her late paintings. She remained so affected by them that she stole them and created copies. Thanks to those copies the young unicorn became the acclaimed artist the future knew.

“The point of the story is: where did the idea behind those drawings come from? This is the big question.”

According to the philosopher this story proved the impracticality of time travel. He said it was a paradox. But there is no actual paradox. The universe keeps working even if a work of art pops out of nowhere. The beauty in those paintings came from nothing, because beauty itself is nothing, it’s just another casual pattern in reality, equal to many others.

“Do you understand it, Ms. Sparkle? Dreams, happiness, joy, beauty, morals all these altisonant names means nothing. Even if I destroy a masterpiece, even if I gut a foal with this very knife, I’m doing nothing more than re-arranging its atoms. All the pains he feels, which ponykind condemns so heartedly, is a chemical reaction. Nothing more.”

The two ponies spoke this words in perfect union, without a hint of emotion or participation. Never stopping or never accelerating. Like a teacher that explains for the thousandth time an obvious lesson to his dumb students.

They stopped and looked at each other. And then they laughed, or at least they tried: it sounded more like a vocalization exercise.

“That story is always very entertaining...” said the mare with her usual tone, which expressed everything except entertainment. “I can’t believe some ponies buy it, we sound like two villains from a comic book.”

“Yes, I agree. Now I feel better. We really needed a pause from all that torture.” He turned to face their captive again. “I sincerely hope you enjoyed that little story full of morals and adventure, because what’s coming next won’t be as pleasurable for you”

“I… I can’t… I…”  Twilight tried to speak.

“She is starting to losing it brother, she looks very pale too”

The stallion raised an eyebrow. “Mind telling me how can you see that? Her face is covered in fur…”

“Imagination is more powerful than knowledge.”

He raised the other eyebrow mechanically. “That quote is wrong and you know it, it should be ‘important’.”

In that precise moment the purple bleeding pony started vomiting, spreading her half-digested lunch all over the floor. Both doctors took a step back to avoid the foul smelling liquid.

The mare shook her head and told her: “Ms. Sparkle that is incredibly rude, you should feel ashamed. What would your mentor Princess Celestia think if she saw you right now?It would probably be something on the line of ‘What happened here?! What have this maniacs have done to you? And why is this making me slightly horny? No! What am I thinking?! Thank me that no one can hear my thoughts. But I must admit she has a nice butt… maybe she won’t mind if I…”

“This is getting out of hoof, please stop. Plus I think our host died...”

“Oh… yeah, you are correct. Do you think she missed the last part of my thesis about the sadistic tendencies of the princess?”

“She doesn’t look horrified so I would say that yes, she missed that part.”

“What a pity. We couldn’t even make her talk…”

“Apparently we failed again. We will try something new tomorrow.”

Once taken note of their failure, they  looked around them at the majestic collection of books contained in the library. One could only start to imagine the immense amount of work and labour  that past librarian went through to gather all this knowledge in one place.

“Sister”

“Yes, brother?”

“If we burn down this place it would be very stereotypical, wouldn’t it?”

“Indeed it would, very bad taste.”

“As I thought”

And they left without doing anythng.