Cruel and Unusual

Your back hurts. Your haunches are cold.

You can’t tell if you’re sitting on granite cobblestones or blocks of ice, and as if it wasn’t cold enough, there’s water seeping from the wall you’re chained up against, and no amount of twisting and squirming is keeping it from getting wetter and colder and achier. There’s a crick in there that’s just getting worse and it hurts like Tartarus.

Better to keep your mind on other things. You’ve been trying to focus on working out what you could have done to avoid ending up down here. You’re replaying it through your mind: all the things that happened to you, the things you should have said, the things you should have done. But it’s hard to concentrate on important tasks like worrying about things you can’t change when your back hurts and your haunches are cold.

How long have you been down here? Maybe they forgot about you. Maybe you’re going to shrivel up like a raisin and die, crucified and starved in some moldy corner of a torchlit dungeon. The thought makes you unconsciously test your bonds with a tug.

You realize what your foreleg is doing and will it to stop. You wonder how it’s going to happen. Starvation? Loneliness? You look up at the rotting old logs that could loosely be called a ceiling. Maybe the foundation will crumble and put you out of your misery with a big wet splat.

At least there aren’t any bugs or rats.

Right?

You squint suspiciously at the glassy cobblestones around you, trying make out shapes in the dark and flickering light. Great. Now your brain is trying to convince you that every shadow is a rat, or some blood sucking insect with three mandibles, or a blood sucking rat with three mandibles and a case of mange.

You decide it’s best not to look. You breathe and lean back, closing your eyes.

This sucks. Your back hurts. You’re bored. You’re scared. Your back hurts. Your haunches are cold.

You’re hungry, too. That’s new.

“Hey!” Your voice echoes around the corner.

Nothing. There aren’t even any other prisoners in here to talk to.

“Can anypony hear me? I’m hungry!”

You listen for a lifetime before releasing a breath and letting your head limply bop the wall behind you.

“Just tell me what you’re going to do to me!” you say with gritted teeth, choking on what wants to turn into a sob.

“Is anypony there?!” you scream. You shake your foreleg, jingling the chains.

“Horseapples. This is horseapples.”

You might pray to Celestia, but it’s not likely to help. She was at your trial, the only one sitting higher than the judge on her throne of gold dispassionately watching everything. But maybe she was watching a different trial than you, because she didn’t seem to give a damn that you were being lynched by a kangaroo court in front of her. If she didn’t help you then, why would praying to her help you now?

“Why am I shackled to the wall?!” you scream. “It’s not like I can fit through the bars!”

Maybe the time will pass faster if you just don’t think. There’s nothing you can do about this anyway, right? Might as well just space out and empty your mind, and just come what may. You think about how you’re trying not to think. You think about how you just thought about trying not to think, and that was thinking, so now you have to start over. You try not to think again. It’s working, you think to yourself.

You groan with frustration. Your mind won’t stop torturing you. You don’t know what’s worse, going on like this forever, or getting used to this place.

You cry out into the darkness. “How long are you going to keep me down—” Your ears swivel forward. There’s a crunching sound. You scooch on your haunches to sit up straight, tugging on the jingling chains above you to help you rise. You listen. Hoofsteps. Armored hoofsteps. A guard is coming.

Your heart comes alive in your chest. You stare into the darkness and breathe sharply, swallowing down your anxiety.

A white-furred royal guard rounds the corner at a leisurely pace. This one is wearing a porcelain mask, that’s different. The rest of the armor matches what you’d expect from a royal guard of Princess Celestia, but this is the first time you’ve seen a mask like that. It looks very plain, but very expensive, like it was made with a great deal of care by a skilled artisan who was asked to use all his skill to craft something as dull as possible.

He gently sets a steel dinner tray on the ground. It’s familiar, the kind of thing you’d see in a cafeteria in a poorly funded public library. The government probably buys them in bulk. He unfolds four small legs from the bottom of the tray so it can lift up to a comfortable eating height for a pony.

You watch your masked dungeon guard in silence over the gentle clicking of flimsy metal legs.

The guard glances out from behind the eye holes. Piercing blue. “It’s food,” he says.

You settle down against the wall. “I didn’t think anypony was listening.”

The guard grabs a brass ring on his hip, and sorts through the wrought iron keys with muted clinks. “The guard station is just down the hall. You passed through it on the way in this morning.” Listening to the way he talks, you’d be able to tell he’s in law enforcement, even if he wasn’t wearing the armor.

“I didn’t see any guards on the way in.”

“Not when the dungeon is empty. We were posted here just after you arrived.”

Crime is not exactly at an all time high in Equestria. You might be the only pony who’s been convicted all year. Your face is probably in thousands of newspapers flying off the stands. Must be a journalistic feeding frenzy up there, not that you’re able to see any of it. Maybe the reporters will thank you for putting their foals through magic school.

The guard slides open the bars noisily, and brings the tray in to set next to your flank. He flips to the next key on his ring, reaching up above your head. You gasp when you feel something cold against your neck and you resist the urge to draw away. You don’t want to be accused of resisting.

He reaches past your muzzle. A muscular white foreleg brushes your chin, and you try your best to relax. The front half of a metal collar swings under your chin, and there’s a soft tinkling sound under your left ear, followed by the click of a padlock.

He steps in closer, and rears up. First a foreleg, now an entire chest. At least it’s not touching your chin this time. You feel the warmth of your own breath reflect onto your cheeks and stare at the dull canvass of white fur for what seems like forever.

With two soft clicks, your forelegs are allowed to fall. The guard steps away, and you gently put one hoof on the floor, the other to your chest. There’s a wave of relief flowing down your lower back.

The guard pulls away from you and takes a seat on the floor next to the tray. At least you’re not the only one with a frigid hindquarter now.

You rub softly at your aching fetlocks. They seem to hurt more now that they’re free, or maybe they hurt all along and you didn’t notice because you had bigger pains to worry about.

You decide to lift the lid, and take a peek at what the fine chefs of the Canterlot Ministry of Corrections have prepared for you.

Vegan jello, a daisy sandwich, some mass produced packet of no-name chocolate pudding, and a cup of water. Could be worse.

You pick up the small wooden spoon hiding under the jello, and scoop up a wriggling cubelet.

“Are you going to watch me eat?”

“Can’t leave you alone with the tray.”

“Oh. Right.”

You could use the company anyway. A few cautious nibbles, and you decide that the jello tastes alright.

“I was expecting moldy bread or crackers or something.” You smile weakly at your captor but you can’t see his expression behind that mask. Judging by the casual stare in his eyes, he’s not terribly interested in conversation, so you squirrel the tray in a little closer and sigh.

You’re three or four bites in before he responds. “Nopony wants you to suffer.”

You pause, swallow, and pick at your jello, slicing a cube in half with your spoon, and pushing it around.

“Are you going to let me go then?” Your voice is small.

“Not my call.”

“You have the keys, right? If… if you don’t want me to suffer, you could just let me go. I don’t belong here.”

The guard’s not responding. The food tastes fine, and you’re getting really hungry, but the last thing you want right now is to eat. You don’t want to finish your food and get fettered up against the wall again, alone, with nopony to talk to.

“I didn’t rape that mare.”

The guard stays silent long enough for you to take one more bite, before responding. “That’s not what the jury thought.”

You take just as long to respond to him. “—All female jury,” you mutter.

The guard shuffles back to get comfortable. “So all twelve of them were sexist? That’s why you were convicted?”

“It came down to my word against hers, and they decided to side with the mare. That’s what happened.”

“Your word against hers.” You can tell he’s hardening his brow behind his mask. “And against the doctor who examined her, and the photographs of the bruises, and your friend saying you bragged that she ‘liked it rough.’ You want me to go on?”

Your gut ties itself in knots. “You—were guarding the trial then?”

“I read the transcripts. They’re open to the public.”

You slice more big cubes into small cubes and small cubes into smaller cubes. You’re going to end up with lumpy sugar soup at this rate.

“She asked me. That’s why I choked her. She got off on it. She liked weird shit, I guess. What was I supposed to say? ‘No you’re a pervert, go find some other stallion’ or something? It’s not illegal. I didn’t do anything illegal. I didn’t even squeeze that hard.”

The guard gets up and walks over to the wall behind you. He takes a seat right next to you in the same dank corner you’ve been living in since you got thrown down here. “I’m not judging you. Like I said. It’s not my call.”

You chew down a bite of your sandwich, and wash it down with a little bit of the eggy dungeon well water.

“So, you read the transcripts, then. Would you have found me guilty?”

“No, I don’t think so.”

You scoff at the irony, and stab at your jello soup. “Just… give me the keys. You can say you dropped them.” You turn and look at those eyes, sunken behind their porcelain mask. “Please. You don’t even think I did it. Please.” Your voice gets smaller and smaller. “Please let me go.”

“I do think you did it.”

“I thought you said... you know I’m innocent!”

“You asked me if I would have found you guilty” He moves a forehoof and starts to explain “I think there’s a plausible alternative explanation for the evidence in your case. That’s all it would take for me to find somepony not guilty. I’d rather see a thousand guilty stallions go free than see one innocent stallion thrown down here to suffer unjustly.” He turns his head to look at you again. “But that’s not the same as thinking you didn’t do it.”

You don’t know what to say to that, so you just take another bite of your sandwich in silence.

“Like I said though, it’s not my call. You had your chance.” He looks over at your plate. “You should eat your food.”

You do as you’re told, drinking a few sips of your jello. “Too bad for me you weren’t on the jury then.”

“Even if I was, things might not be different. It’s one thing to read a transcript, but it’s another to be in the court room. It’s not up to me to second guess the mares in the jury box either.”

There’s no winning, is there? You try to stay quiet, but dripping sound of the dungeon, and the guard’s impassive stare is starting to get to you, so you say, “She has a coltfriend, you know. That won’t show up in your transcripts.”

You look over expecting to see a look of surprise, but the guard’s gaze doesn’t change. He just keeps guarding, like guards are wont to do.

“‘Prejudicial,’ they said. It’s prejudicial to point out why she was lying. She didn’t want her stallion to find out she cheated on him, so when word got around that we went upstairs at that party, she decided she’d rather ruin my life than her relationship.”

“She’s not the one who was on trial,” says the guard. “Do you think every rape victim should be forced to reveal her sexual history for the jury? It’s bad enough that they’re forced to relive what happened to them when they testify.”

“Forced.” You chuckle grimly and reach up to tug on your chain. The guard tenses up, giving you a hard look. You jingle the weighty arc of metal. “This is force. If she was forced, where are her chains? She wasn’t forced to do anything. She didn’t have to do this to me.”

You feel the guard’s forehoof touching your foreleg, stilling the chain. His leg is well toned. It’s probably been through a lot of training, along with the rest of him. You stop tugging on the chain, sink, and reach back down to sip at your jello.

The guard accepts your unspoken apology and releases you.

“They didn’t have any problem bringing up my history. Her history, off the table. My history?” You shake your head defiantly, “I get in one fight in high school, and because it was with my marefriend, that must mean I’m some sort of sick abuser. She hit me first. I hit her back. It was a fight. That’s how it works. Next thing I know, I’m getting hauled away with an assault charge. I know I shouldn’t have hit her but what was I supposed to do? Just let myself get beaten up?”

“That’s not what the police report said. I think the word ‘belligerent,’ came up a few times.”

You scoff. “Of course I was mad. They were arresting me. She started it, and they were arresting me.”

“Why did you plead guilty then?”

You pick a daisy petal from your sandwich, shaking your head at the irony. Maybe under some other circumstances, it might have been funny. “I took a deal. I didn’t want to spend any time in a dungeon.”

The guard huffs wearily, and does his best to try to lapse the conversation back into silence. He looks away from you. You get the hint; you just ignore it.

“You know the worst part about all of this? Watching her testify that I raped her. She didn’t care. She was ruining my life, and she didn’t care.” You stare down into the mostly empty jello abyss. “Not me. Not how I would be. If I was destroying someone’s entire life just to stay together with my coltfriend, I wouldn’t be able to talk. I’d feel sick.” You shake your head, and take another sip. It seems to go down sideways past whatever’s caught in your throat. “She smiled when she was giving her testimony. My lawyer asked her if she enjoyed being choked, and she smiled. She laughed. What kind of rape victim smiles and laughs?” you ask. “She was proud of herself. She duped everyone. That’s why she was grinning. She put one over on everypony.”

You turn to watch the guard staring back at you, trying to get a bead on whether he believes you, or if he even cares. When you finally turn away, he asks, surprised, “—You have a coltfriend?”

You chuckle, and shake your head. “Very funny,” you say.

“I’m surprised you can smile and laugh,” says the guard. Your grin vanishes. “Sometimes humor is all we have when things are at their darkest,” he says.

You’re starting to wonder if you were better off alone after all. You tip the bowl of jello to your muzzle, and drink the last of it down.

You set the wooden bowl down, and stroke its brim softly, staring past the dungeon floor.

You whisper, “So what’s going to happen to me?”

There’s pity in the guard’s eyes, he leans back and looks away from you, choosing to stare out the barred door across the cell. “Princess Celestia still hasn’t handed down your sentence. She usually grants an audience with the victim first, gets their input.”

“Am I going to die?” you ask.

The guard thinks about it longer than you would like. “Don’t dwell on it. You’re not doing yourself any favors. Celestia is going to decide what Celestia is going to decide. You can’t change that.”

Your sandwich looks really unappetizing now. How’s she going to do it? Firing squad? Beheading? A pack of hungry dogs? No. You don’t want to think about it. You beg your imagination to take a break.

“You just have to have faith in Her mercy.”

Finishing off your sandwich, you finally turn your attention to the little packet of chocolate pudding that was no doubt squeezed out of some steaming contraption that traveling flimflam artists managed to sell to the government. It gives you the impression that it was sealed shut with something red hot.

You pick at the lid.

“You’re religious then?” you ask the guard.

Iit’s against the rules of polite company to engage someone about religion, but it’s hard to describe the captor-captive relationship as “polite company” to begin with. Either way, he doesn’t seem to mind.

“We’re all spiritual in some way or another,” he says.

He looks at you, and you look back. He seems to decide to answer you plainly. “I believe Celestia is divine, yes. She can see into your heart, and if you deserve mercy, then She’ll show it to you.” He adds, “But only if you let her. You have to believe in her before she believes in you.”

The guard watches you struggle with your pudding container, and reaches out to set his forehooves on yours. They’re rough to the touch. They’ve seen a lot of running and grabbing. He has little difficulty manipulating the little foil tab, and tugging the lid aside, and he offers you the spoon next.

“Thanks,” you say.

The guard watches you take your first bite of pudding. It’s not bad—a little chalky.

“It’s not my place to judge you,” says the guard, “but if you are telling any lies… to yourself, to me, to Celestia. I think now’s the time for you to come clean.”

Unbelievable. Royal guards. The one who arrested you tried to convince you to make a confession, too.

“I’m not lying,” you say.

If you didn’t know better, you might think that there’s genuine worry in the guard’s eyes.

You turn back to your pudding. “What’s with that mask, anyway?”

The guard stands up, gathering up your fetters and chains, manipulating the metal pins, and opening the ankle cuffs. “It’s part of the uniform of the royal executioner. Nopony is supposed to see my face.”

You stare at your final scoop of pudding. “Oh,” you say, trying to breathe calmly. You do what you can to look away from the guard, and run your lips across the spoon to swallow down the last of your meal.

After you take a moment to reflect on the empty tray in front of you, you look up at the royal executioner as if to ask, “So what now?”

He sits down next to you again, holding the restraints over his foreleg. “Like I said, Celestia hasn’t passed down your sentence, so…” He reaches out and gives you two gentle pats on the shoulder. “Don’t think about it, okay?” The executioner gently cuffs your fore fetlocks, fiddling with the clips and pins at a leisurely pace. You watch the side of his cheek while he focuses on the mechanisms.

With a clatter, the executioner tugs on the chain, and your forelegs are pulled up taut above your head. You let your head hang limply toward the dank stones and feel the executioner starting to remove your collar.

Don’t think about it.