Blade

Scootaloo shivered under her torn up piece of cloth. She was told to call it a blanket, but it wasn’t. It was a torn up piece of cloth.

All of the other orphans slept contently under their larger pieces of cloth that weren’t so badly torn up in the warmer end of the room while Scootaloo tried as hard as she could to not think about the cold.

Her bruises ached, and the blood that was all over the back of her head had dried making it black and crusty in her hair. She didn’t touch it though, afraid that she would reopen the wound. Her teeth were chipped and she probably had something injured. Scootaloo was a mess.

Scootaloo turned over her shoulder to see if there was any light coming from under the door at the end of the room. Nothing shone under the door, confirming that Mrs. Powell was fast asleep. Checking once more, she squinted to be positive.

Scootaloo slipped out of her bed and got on her belly. It hurt too much to walk. Grabbing her ‘blanket’, she used it to slide her along the wooden floor and toward a desk with drawers.  Upon reaching the desk, she opened the bottom drawer and reached inside. Scootaloo took out two things. The first was a picture frame and the second was a handlebar from a broken scooter.

Scootaloo looked at the photo inside the frame in the moonlight. It was of a strong, resilient orange earth pony stallion and his beautiful pegasus wife. They were both smiling. In the wife’s arms was Scootaloo. She was much smaller in the picture. She didn’t ever remember being like that.

Scootaloo would sometimes close her eyes and try to remember when she was a baby. It never really came back to her, but she did remember something of her mother. She remembered being flown over Ponyville and Equestria while being sung to at night. It was vague and blurry, but she still remembered it from time to time. She never spoke with her mother, though. Her father had been the one to raise her after she had a stroke and passed away. That was what she knew of her mother. Not much more.

She looked at her father in the photograph. She remembered him. She remembered a whole lot about her father. She remembered the time he gave her a scooter for her birthday. She loved it so much and he knew she did. He taught her how to ride it. She also remembered the time they went to watch a movie together. But the one thing she never forgot was the day he went to work and said ‘I love you’ right before closing the door.

“See you tonight, dad!” she had said back with a smile.

That was the same day that the police came and made her sleep in their office for the night. She overheard them talking about a ‘work related incident’, but that’s as far as she ever got. At the time she didn’t even know what ‘incident’ meant. But whatever it meant, it meant something bad. She never saw her father again. He was killed in a coal mine explosion along with two other ponies. They sent her off to the Ponyville Orphanage the next day and she had been living there since. All they let her bring was the photo and her scooter.

The scooter was broken and somewhere in the dump, all because one of the other orphans thought it would be funny to put an m80 in it.

“Stop bitching, kid.” Mrs. Powell told her. “He was only having fun. It’s just a stupid scooter.”

The handlebar was all she had left of it. That handlebar was the only piece left of her stupid scooter. Mrs. Powell threw the rest away even though Scootaloo tried her hardest to fix it. Mrs. Powell didn’t even ask. She just walked back one day and it was gone.

“It was junking up your bed.” Mrs. Powell had said without looking away from her magazine.

Scootaloo had run outside and sifted through the dumpster for hours. She cut her hooves on broken bottles and got covered in scum. When it turned dark, she was forced back inside. All of the children called her ‘Scootaspew’ until it was old. She couldn’t take a shower because she was in trouble for ‘playing with trash’ and that was her punishment. When everybody else was asleep, she cried. She cried and cried until she fell asleep, and nobody even cared.

Scootaloo looked at the photo again and tried to remember how tall her father was, how his aftershave smelled, and how his smile would spread so wide whenever she said ‘I love you, dad’. As his image came into focus, Scootaloo’s jaw trembled and her eyes threatened tears. She carefully closed the drawer and started to slide back over to her bed.

When she reached the bed, she stood on her hind legs and put the photo on the mattress while she held the handlebar in her mouth. Trying to get back onto the bed, she must have twisted something wrong, because a powerful volt of pain shot up her leg, forcing her to let out a yelp. She dropped the handlebar on the floor causing it to make a big bump in the night. She grasped her leg but ended up slipping on the torn up cloth and hit the floor, biting her tongue on impact.

She strained her face to hold back anymore screams, now afraid that she had made too much noise. She held her hooves over her mouth and looked at the crack under the door anxiously.

She heard a creak.

Oh no.

The light on the other side of the door flickered on.

No! No, no, no!

Mrs. Powell burst in through the door. The rays of light contrasting with the darkness of the bedroom shone through her cigarette smoke that danced wildly with the wind that the door created. Her eyes were squinted and bloodshot. Her frown was visible from where Scootaloo was. She looked around the room, jerking her head in each direction. Scootaloo ducked and covered her head. She closed her eyes and held her breath, praying that Mrs. Powell wouldn’t see her.

Mrs. Powell looked in Scootaloo’s direction and let out an annoyed grunt.

“Tell me, Scootaloo. Why am I not surprised?”

Scootaloo’s heart skipped at the sound of her name. She scrambled into bed and hid her things under the cloth so that Mrs. Powell would not see them when she made her way over. Scootaloo faked a yawn and rubbed her eyes.

“I’m sorry Mrs. Powell.” She grinned falsely. “I fell out of bed.”

Mrs. Powell glared at her and slowly started moving toward Scootaloo’s bed. Some of the other orphans had awoken by then, and were peeping through their squinted eyes to see what Scootaloo was about to get.

Scootaloo grew more and more frightened the closer she came. When Mrs. Powell was at the side of the bed, she towered over Scootaloo, shading her with her shadow. She took a drag from her cigarette and let smoke exit her nostrils.

“You fell out of bed, huh?”

“Yea.” Scootaloo confirmed nervously. “It’s just so cold, you know? I guess I shook out of my bed.”

Mrs. Powell pursed her lips and looked up to the ceiling, which had a hole in it right above Scootaloo. She looked back at Scootaloo and smirked.

“Oh yea?” She said. “It’s cold, huh?”

“Y-yea.” Scootaloo stuttered.

Mrs. Powell took the cigarette out of her mouth.

“I think I can help, kid.”

Scootaloo’s stomach sank and her eyes widened.

“No. Please.” She pleaded in a low voice.

“You said its cold, right?” Mrs. Powell grinned.

“No! I’m sorry, Mrs. Powell! I’m sorry!”

Mrs. Powell lunged at Scootaloo with the lit end of her cigarette. Scootaloo cowered and tried covering herself with her cloth. But Mrs. Powell tossed the cloth away and grabbed her arm.

“I’m sorry! I’m so sorry!” Scootaloo cried.

Mrs. Powell pressed the burning tip against Scootaloo’s flesh. A tiny sizzle was heard before Scootaloo wailed in pain. Mrs. Powell smiled a toothy grin as she twisted it back and forth.

“Is that warmer? Is it? Huh!?” She asked. “Answer me when I talk to you!” Mrs. Powell yelled.

Scootaloo just screamed. Pain broke limits in that one single spot. Every second it got worse and each time she thought it couldn’t. She could feel it scalding her, burning her skin. She tried to push Mrs. Powell’s hoof away, but she was too strong.

“Imsosorrymissuspowellimsosorryohpleasestop!!!! STOP!!! PLEASE!!!”

Mrs. Powell suddenly tossed Scootaloo away, making her flip across the bed and hit the floor on the other side of the bed. Scootaloo applied pressure to the burn and bit her lip. Tears freely rolled down her cheeks. She curled up and began to sob loudly on the floor.

Mrs. Powell turned around and left the room. She could hear Scootaloo’s cries from her bedroom. But it didn’t annoy her. She was still smiling. She took her crumpled cigarette, still alight, and took another drag from it.

It felt good.

She continued to listen to Scootaloo’s wails as she removed her robe and slid back under the covers of her queen bed. She turned off the lights and continued her smoking. And then she did something she usually does to the sound of a crying child she had disciplined.

She masturbated.