CABLES
"Through here."
The griffon leading me through this place lifts up a plastic flap and lets me through, following behind me. He's pretty short with me, treating my presence like more of an inconvenience. I guess it sort of is, really. Truth be told, I don't know why I came here. It was nothing but a hassle to all involved, and my being here serves no purpose. I guess I just wanted to know what they do to my shipments after they arrive.
I'm not stupid, I know the reason the griffons want them. I just wanted to know how it gets from raw product to finished product, I suppose.
The room he's ushered me into is huge. We're walking on a catwalk a good story or two above the floor of the place. Looking down, I can see a few more griffon workers, clad in hard hats and goggles, some sporting dully coloured overalls. A few give me an odd look, but nothing more than that. They were probably otherwise unaware of my presence.
The catwalk rattles as we made our way across it, my hooves and his talons creating an industrial sounding clank-scratch. The path goes straight through the wall and into the next room. I can hear the sounds of machines, and talking. Crying.
"Well, this is it." My guide says with an air of disinterest.
This is what I had come to see, where my shipments end up. It has a proper name, but I heard a few workers describe it as the 'killing floor' earlier. From above was the best vantage point, I was told. See it, hear it, smell it. It was almost overwhelming.
Down below, I can see them all. Cows. Equestrian Cows. That I'd brought here.
The diet of a griffon requires meat, and though they can live on fish alone, most would prefer not to. It would be sort of like a pony only ever eating hay and nothing else.
This is where I come in. The Griffon Empire has been hunted almost completely clean, leaving the sea as their only source of food. Being the cunning businessmare that I am, I got into contact with a, we'll say, less than reputable slaughterhouse, offering a steady supply of beef. They pratically leapt upon my offer, and about a month later we where organising the first shipment. This was the end of the easy part.
Trafficking them out of Equestria was no easy feat. Not only was it a perilous journey, with a massive risk of being caught either end, but it was hard, very hard, to find ponies who could deal with sending a sentient creature not only to die, but to be used as food. Ponies being naturally peace loving vegetarians meant that this particular personality type was very rare. I needed ponies who could deal with this, but that weren't flat out crazy or sadistic. I still needed the cows to arrive undetected and unharmed.
At the end of the catwalk was a staircase leading straight to ground level. The thing wobbled a little bit, but we reached the floor without incident.
The room was divided in two. On one side was a pen, for lack of a better word, where all the cow's were grouped together. The other half of the room was a path, leading to the machines.
There were two or three griffons in the pen fitting nose rings to all the cows. I trotted up to the separating grate to get a closer look at what was happening. At the back of the pen there was a third griffon attaching cables to the nose rings, pulling the cows along into the next part of the facility. From my perspective right now, the cows almost looked like a singular, brown, writhing mass, almost having an ebb and flow. It was somewhat mesmerising.
"You!"
I was snapped out of my stupor by a member of the livestock, face pressed right up against the grate.
"YOU! YOU'RE THE ONE THAT BROUGHT US HERE!"
I'd been recognised. And I couldn't fault what was said, either.
"Yes." I replied, levelly.
"Why? Let us out! LET US OUT!"
"Let you out, and then what?" I retorted. "Let you out and ruin my reputation, my family name? My life? Lose all the bits I've scraped together and saved? That I've worked for? Spend the rest of my life rotting away in some Celestia forsaken dungeon? No thank you."
She was silent for a moment, looking at the floor.
"You'd deserve it." She weakly muttered.
"I'm sorry, say that again?"
"I SAID YOU DESERVE IT! YOU DESERVE EVERYTHING THAT WOULD COME TO YOU! SOILING YOUR FAMILY NAME, LOSING EVERYTHING! YOU DESERVE EVERY BIT OF IT! YOU'RE SENDING INNOCENT COWS TO DIE!"
I stare coolly at her, straight in the eyes. We keep this up for several seconds before I break it and turn to my griffon guide.
"May I?" I ask him. He just shrugs in response.
Seeing this as an affirmative, I spread my wings and clear the separating barrier. I fly over to a free cable and trail it back to the argumentative bovine. She understood the implications.
"No! NO! STAY AWAY FROM ME! NONONO!"
She had nowhere to run, none of them did, the pen was packed.
I stop in front of her face, hovering. There were tears in her eyes. I made a move to attach the cable to her nose ring. She spat at me. Spat, right in my eye. I wipe it off with a free hoof and give her a flat stare before making my move again, this time successfully, the clip closed around the ring with a satisfying 'click'.
I grab the rope in my mouth and gain some height. I could hear a sharp squeal of pain from the cow below as the cable tugged on her nose ring. She was unwilling to move, so I had to make her. Pulling harder, I heard a yelp, and then the cable went a little slack. She was moving now. I was making it hard for her, she had to make her way through dozens of other cows in extremely close proximity. I made it more uncomfortable than it could have been.
We reached the back of the pen, where the machines were. From the look of the cow's face, I could tell she'd given up. There was no fight left in her eyes, and there was blood streaming from her nostrils from where the ring had pulled. She knew what would happen.
I tie the loose end of the cable up to one of the machines, one that feeds the livestock through at an even pace. It pulled, and the cow went along with it, at a slow trot. I walked alongside her.
"Well, I guess you know that I'm no company mare. I don't work here, nor do I belong here. But let me tell you, I can pull on a rope and kill a cow just as well as any of these other fuckers can, see. I walk through the beef, I pull on the rope, and then-" I gesture in front of us, to where she was being led "-then the hammer comes down."
With that, I stop. She however, keeps on going, being pulled. She can't even look back. I don't know if she would, even if she could anyway. As she rounds the corner into the next section, I take off again, landing by my guide. The cows look at me with a mixture of fear and disgust.
"Thank you sir, I believe I've seen enough." I say to the griffon without looking, not taking my eyes of the cows.
'I already know enough.'
I didn't care about it anymore.
Author's Note
Well, this is somewhat darker than usual, I suppose.
And it's STILL not the story I keep saying I've been working on.
I swear, that one will get posted eventually.
In the meantime, enjoy!
(Or not)
