Blade

Nothing ever really got better. Sadly, it was predictable. Little Pinkamena slowly turned into Big Pinkamena. The same thing went on for so very long. Routine eliminated the feeling of time passing. Things seemed to her like an endless loop. She would wake up and it would be the same day as the last. There was one point however, in which Pinkamena was sent to school for a short bit. She could never pay attention in class though, so they gave her the old dunce cap treatment. It could have been avoided if stupid worthless Pinkamena could have put her pain into words for them. Like everybody else, they got sick of her and kicked her out sooner than she would have enjoyed.

Time slicked right under her nose and soon enough, it had been eleven years of her personal hell. Eleven years of harvesting rocks. Dreams were the only intermission she had in her vicious cycle. Sometimes she dreamed that her father would suddenly feel sorry and come into the fields crying her name. She would ask what was wrong, and he would only hug her. She dreamed about sitting at the table again and having the same size portions as everybody else. She dreamed about finally being loved. But dreams end. The loop did not. Not until the day she had been thrown out, at least.

She had been thrown out at the age of seventeen. On that day, her things were packed and her mother had called her a cab to Ponyville. There would be jobs for her there apparently. Before she left, she checked her bag for the three refills of medicine. She needed them. She would have liked anybody other than the voice to accompany her. She wasn’t very upset that dear old dad wasn’t coming either. The back of his hoof and her cheek were getting a divorce.

Pinkamena felt that things were about to change for the first time in her life. She was on her own now. She could meet whoever she wanted and go wherever she wanted.

“Pinkamena Diane Pie!” Her father called from his den. “Get in here! I got something to say to you!” His voice calmer than expected.

Pinkamena figured that a goodbye was appropriate. It was indeed a goodbye. No more missing the quota.

Pinkamena left her bags in the entry way and walked into the den. Her father was waiting by the glowing fireplace with his pipe ablaze. Smoke poured from his mouth as he exhaled and turned to see his daughter.

“I guess this is it, Dad.” Pinkamena said without emotion. “I’ll admit that I’m a bit nervous about how I’ll do out there.”

Her father let out a cynical chuckle that she hated. She despised the chuckle and its maliciousness.

“You should be.” He mumbled. “You couldn’t do shit for yourself even when we were babying you, Pinkamena. What makes you think you’ll do any better by yourself?”

Pinkamena thought about what she would say. It was futile. Her father would throw something back at her twenty times as horrible and demeaning. Argument was pointless with him, so she was silent.

Her father paused. “You never pulled your weight when you were asked to. How hard was it, Pinkamena? Tell me, please. How hard was it to move rocks, you brat?”

Words like fire and poison. They stung and lingered in her heart. She never forgot many of the things he had called her. It didn’t matter what the word was, it was the thought that they were his true feelings. But she was still silent. This would, after all, be the last time.

“Why couldn’t you be a good daughter like Lilly? You never ceased to disappoint me, Pinkamena.” His voice still calm. “You might have fared better if you hadn’t got that brain sick.”

He was right. Things might have been a bit easier for her had the voice not loomed over her so often, serving as an extra friend to demotivate her. One to tell her how worthless she already knew she was.

“You should have heard yourself whine sometimes. It was dreadful, believe me.”

For the next couple of seconds, Pinkamena hung her head as she stood and listened to her father mock her pain and imitate her cries of desperation. He made his voice so that it was very high and nasally.

“Ehhhhhh-Daaadddyyy!!!! Dadddyyyy!!! Waah! Waah! Voices in my head! Sooo Scary! Waaaaah!!!”

He chuckled again.

“Never shut the fuck up. Pesky little brat you were, Pinkamena.”

It was almost over, she hoped. It was hard to take all of this. She knew she deserved it, but nobody ever told her she had to enjoy it. Nobody could hear what she was saying back to him in her head except for the voice, but the medicine had put him to sleep and he wouldn’t be back for a bit.

“Why’d you go to me, hmm? I’ve always wondered. Why couldn’t you pester your mother?”

Everything she had said to him, all of the emotions that flowed directly from her heart, raw and unfiltered, unafraid of being heard, were tossed off her father’s mental Cliffside. They meant nothing. He cared nothing about her or anything she had pleaded to him for help about. She was unworthy. His own daughter was unworthy to his eye. Her heart ached and sank down into her belly. She meant nothing to him. He hadn’t a single care that she was leaving. In fact, it seemed more like he was leaving her behind. She was on her way out of his life. No more pesky Pinkamena. No more having to deal with her insufferable moaning and whining. He hated her. It hurt so viciously to know that.

“Ariel was a lot like you. All work and no play.”

The mention of her sister brought Pinkamena to immediate attention.

He wouldn’t.

“You know, I think she might have grown up following your pathetic little hoofsteps instead of Lilly’s. She was annoying

too, did I ever mention?”

Don’t you dare. Don’t you *dare*.

“If it weren’t for her being so clumsy, she might not have died and turned your mother into the soulless cow she is today.”

Her gut began to boil. She gritted her teeth and started to glare. She could take all of his insults, but Ariel had nothing to do with her anymore. She hadn’t in years.

Something sparked in Pinkamena. An epiphany slapped her right across the face and nearly sent her to the floor of her torment.

She was innocent.

She didn’t deserve any of this. Her father was the one who was a worthless little shit. He was the bastard that burdened the family. He had picked on his own children to keep the position of the alpha male. Lilly hadn’t been the prodigy he made her out to be, either. She was just a worthless kiss-ass. She clung onto his hind legs so that she couldn’t be kicked by them. His loving wife, having lost her daughter became neglected after her husband decided that he didn’t have enough time to comfort her. The remaining child, now the smallest and easiest to trample, became his punching bag. The defenseless pansy with blind devotion to the leader, willing to sacrifice anything her body could to be noticed. Somehow, denying her the love she desired in return gave him rise. He felt better about himself after having realized that he could instead be in her position; sick, afraid, and helpless. Little Pinkamena. Poor baby Pinkamena, the family punching bag.

No more. This was the time. In life there is always a perfect moment that if not grasped will never arise again. She wouldn’t let this go on any longer.

“I’ve always wondered if things would have been better had you been the one to cut your hoof.” Her father said.

But not half a second later his daughter roared at him as loud as her lungs would allow. It was a primal rage from the very bottom of her soul escaping her mouth as best it could. Fourteen years of emotional torture unbridled and cascading from her voice.

“Shut up! Shut your fucking mouth, you bastard!” She bellowed. “You’ve given me nothing! You’ve starved me of everything! Food, love, and care! EVERYTHING!!!”

Her father, completely shocked by the sudden uproar, backed away a few steps toward the fireplace in involuntary fear.

“I’ll kill you! *I’LL KILL YOU!!!*”

Pinkamena got up on her hind legs, making herself far bigger, and ran toward her monstrous father as fast as she could, screaming.

More involuntary reactions occurred in her father’s body as he reached out for his bottle of whiskey and threw it in the direction of his daughter. It spun through the air and collided with Pinkamena’s forehead about ten feet away from where her father was standing. The bottle made a clunking noise before bursting into many pieces and cutting the underside of her left eye. She lost her balance as the pain exploded in her head and she tumbled to the floor, grabbing her face and closing her eyes tight. She landed on another piece of the glass, making a slash across her cutie mark. Her eyelid bled in unison with the gash on her flank. She lied on the floor in silence, realizing that she had failed once again.

Her father panted in horror, still backed up against the fireplace. He too was silent.

The whole farm was silent for a minute or two.

After finally opening her eyes, she looked at her father in his pathetic fright. He never had any authority over her. It was a lie. He was just another pansy little brat, no better than the cowering little filly by the brook side being spit on by her own father.

Shortly, she felt gratified. But that quickly faded into embarrassment and shame.

She scrambled to her feet and galloped out of the den, snatching her things and ran out the door. Thankfully, the cab was waiting outside already. She ran out to it and jumped in.

“Where to?” said the cabby.

“Ponyville, please.” She trembled, trying to keep steady.

The cabby noticed that the girl in the back seat of his cab was bleeding under her eye.

“You alright, missy?” He asked genuinely.

“Please get me out of here…please.” Pinkamena whispered.

The cabby could have sworn that he saw a tear run down her cheek.

He then turned back to the wheel and drove southwest toward Ponyville.