Two hours.
I let the information cement a bit, bathing in the bright glow of my smartphone’s homepage, the time splashed onto its display. Messing around with some of the device’s functions unconsciously, I could only marvel at my dedication. Spending two hours in what was essentially a bed of black plastic that had a tendency to leak some sort of greasy fluid, in pitch black darkness was rather unnerving. More unpleasant than unnerving in my instance. Hanging out in a dumpster was never ideal.
Subduing a yawn, I broke from my smart phone and utilized it as a light source. The interior of the surprisingly spacious metal container was well worn and rusted, unidentified substances smeared onto its walls. My abode had been carved of the garbage bags that filled this bin nearly to the top, the odor was something silly to note. Dumpsters smell, horrid.
But a necessary price I had to pay to complete my task. Not for the pony I was doing it for however, she could rot in this very dumpster. Perhaps full of hypodermic needles, which constantly administer hydrofluoric acid and reducing her into a puddle of red mush. Damn, that's rather morbid.
The only thing that had kept me from going into figurative madness was my now dying cell phone and my vigilance in monitoring what was going on outside. The constant assault of raindrops onto my synthetic plastic roof, the distance whoosh of automobiles cutting through the heavy precipitation, and the lively ambiance secreted by the crowds of ponies that walked down 67th Place a few blocks away. All only the background as I sought the telltale influenced laughter and the conceited tone of their leader.
With the thought of her narcissistic, intoxicated form, I quickly extended the pistol in my veil outward, priming for an illusionary kill. The soft purple glow of my telekinesis cocooning the object melted with the pure white of my cellphone lying in a nearby plastic wrinkle, making the metal tomb almost as bright as day.
Bam!
Bitch down.
I hated her for everything that she was and what she stood for. Besides herself however, she was well known for having extremely homophobic tendencies in my high school, bullied various students (gay or not) into or to near suicide and managed to get out of every single charge due to her parents way with the judicial system. Which consisted of them simply being rich as shit, which came into play when they would pay off her bail (in the single instance she was imprisoned), pay off judicial figures or simply being rich as shit. It was a disgusting level of bigotry. Something that was alarmingly abundant, which some sort of relevant would be beneficial to eliminating such vitriol.
Placing a .45 caliber round in between her eyes would be rather pleasant. My eyes began to dance across the firearm. I wasn’t much of a gun nut, as the weapon I was wielding was just a means to an end, but I just might be. I had to admit, this pistol was damn fine.
Fit for my use, and that's all it needs to be.
Before I can marvel at the aggressive yet slender curves of the pistol, what I had been looking out for for the past two hours made themselves apparent. Stuffing the arm into my hoodie, I fished out a yellow bandanna from the opposite pocket and wrapped it over my face, functioning as a makeshift mask. Then I shifted my form to a standing position, trying my best to make as little noise as possible. Being nearly impossible, I hoped that the clink of bottles and the crinkle of plastic, would be drowned in the hail of rain and the ambiance of the city.
Lifting the lid slightly, I was able to get a rather limited view of the coming party and the alleyway they were walking down. Coming from the left and from the street, they were planning to take a shortcut onto 67th Place, a pattern they made nearly everyday. Taking account of their travel patterns, I made these tight quarters into a choke hold, with its several entry gates locked at the end of its three corridors. The only way they were ever going to leave was the way they came or by pistol discharge.
They began to come into range, allowing me to catch little snippets of their conversation:
“...kush? Really?” said a dark beige unicorn, a bottle encased in a brown paper coffin in his veil.
“Yeah,” respond another unknown figure, the green mare’s face hidden under a hood, “one of the sophomores at the park sells it on the cheap. Griffinite Kush, the best thing you’ll ever fuckin’ smoke bud. Ever.”
I ducked a bit lower, closing my view of the passing party.
“Dope this, beer that,” ushered forth the voice of my target, voice distorted as it struggled to break through steel walls, “How about something sentient to come out of your mouths, other than my own of course.”
Usually walking corpses never are.
“You have just never experienced the enlightenment of Griffinite, Rare!” said the hooded mare.
“Just a lot of potheads aren’t you?” sighed ‘Rare’.
They continued to engage in a bit of small talk over the qualities of multiple varieties of cannabis, but soon past by me, their hoof falls fading into the distance. It was now or never. Bringing up my pistol, I set out to slither out of the dumpster to find myself frozen. My hoof was placed on the ridge of the metal bin and legs primed to hop out of it, but my mind was torn. A sort of haze set in, conflicting harshly with the sharp focus my adrenaline was delivering. I knew what I was doing was wrong, the stuff that was plastered on every major media outlet upon it breaking.
Tonight, a high school student is found dead in an alleyway in downtown Manehatten…
Though it would never be that straightforward, as the media had a way to distort the truth. Proven over and over again with historical evidence of this common occurrence. But this bitch needed to die, and I was more than happy to carry out such act. Thankfully, a reminder of my motivation was enough to make me drop out of the dumpster relatively noiselessly and into the pouring rain. In the few seconds it took me to raise my pistol, my hoodie and bandana were practically soaked. My mane now lying flat on my head in a wet heap.
Three ponies were ahead of me, the hooded mare, the junkie unicorn, and the narcissistic homophobe, who was hidden under an umbrella in her azure veil. Eight rounds lie snugly in a magazine fitted into my arm, beads of water trickling down it’s slick nickel finish. And a single thought stopped me from firing immediately, something about rationality or morality but I can never recall. All that thought did was allow for the concealed mare to notice me. Her violet eyes reminding me a bit of my own, then she was gone, bolting down a parallel alleyway.
Shit.
“Holy shit!” Was the cry that erupted from the stallion as he dashed past ‘Rare’. Enough time being wasted, I fired a two rounds his way as ‘Rare’ ran toward the gate. All hit their mark and he slumped into a water slickened heap.
My head was spinning, everything felt like a dream. Every action that I performed felt foreign to me, as it seemed somepony else had decided to take the reigns. Time seemed to quicken as I jogged toward my target, who was attempting desperately to open the gate to freedom.
The thought of her other friend invaded me, causing my legs to cease and look down the path she had decided to take. She was attempting to free the lock I had set in place. Which was the last action she could ever perform as she was pushed up against the fence, both by the force and shock of being shot three times in the back. Letting out a few more breaths as she struggled to find more, she fell onto the hard concrete.
Her dealt with, I refered to my intended objective. She was now sobbing loudly, her jeweled flank against the gate as she tried to reason with me to get to some sort of mutual agreement. Eyeshadow laced tears trailed down her pure white cheeks as she begged for her life.
“Y-you d-don’t have t-to do this!” she cried hysterically, a single hoof raised toward me in defence, “I-my parents are v-ver-”
Barely listening to her, I discharged another round, which buried itself right between her eyes. She was thrown slightly backward into the gate, back of her head slamming into the steel bars and having her corpse slam face first into the ground with a slap. Courtesy of the thin layer of water that lie their.
A quick jog over to her corpse allowed me to observe my work in depth, which was neater than I expected. The pure white unicorn (a color too pure for someone like her) now lie beneath my hooves, a diluted pool of blood gathering at her head. The hole in her skull retaining an equally diluted pool of crimson within itself. Purple mane soaked in rain, disheveled from water, gunshot, and abrupt fall. It was almost surreal, an illusion that was way too real. And its consequences far too real if I stood here too long.
I knew this for a fact, but a sudden spike in my anger erupted within me. Causing me to raise the pistol again and unload the remaining rounds into her body, splashing me with a few speckles of burgundy. Satisfied in my adrenaline drunken haze, I holstered the pistol into my hoodie.
Fucking rot you piece of shit.
Just as time had sped up, it began to slow as everything that I had done came into shocking clarity. Three ponies had been killed by my own hoof. I had killed somepony. They were dead. Their lives had ceased by my hoof. So much was conflicting with me, societal taboos and individual reasoning reacting explosively. No discernible emotion could be defined, all were happening at once. Happiness, sadness, grief, humility, loathing…
So much blurred my consciousness I failed to realize I was now out on the sidewalk, being tossed around by an ongoing crowd. The bustle of the city, the hum of car engines, the beams of lights from street lamps- all of which spun into a noisy, bright, all consuming entity.
For a second, this was all that existed.
And for another, nothing did.