The Interesting Effects of Post-Grunge-Rap Orchestroelectro Dubtoven Fusion Applied Directly to the Cranium
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My Roommate is a Murderer
The Interesting Effects of Post-Grunge-Rap Orchestroelectro Dubtoven Fusion Applied Directly to the Cranium
“Tavi?”
Octavia raised her head from a romantic novel she was reading. It was unusual for Vinyl to speak a lot. Especially when she was in the basement, playing with her equipment.
“Tavi, could you come down here?” Vinyl shouted. “There’s, like, lots of blood here and it’s probably mine.”
Octavia stood up. She knew well about her roommate’s rather panicky reactions whenever blood was involved. Going to the doctor usually involved asking Big Macintosh for help, to keep Vinyl from running away. A simple papercut could cause Vinyl to write her last will. On another piece of paper, of course.
“What’s going on?” Octavia asked, trotting to the basement. “Did you step on an upturned plug?”
“We have a situation here...” Vinyl’s voice was strangely weak.
“What kind of–” Octavia opened the door. “Oh bugger.”
Have you ever filled a water balloon with milk and then popped it in the middle of an enclosed space? Well, the resulting mess was precisely what Octavia had walked in on, albeit the milk was blood and the balloon was made of skin, hair, and bits of bone. Actually, it wasn't like a balloon at all, but rather more like somepony's head, which was exactly what it had been until a few minutes ago. Now it was a pair of sticky stains on the floor and ceiling, with the lifeless, headless body of a stallion uncoincidentally sandwiched between the two.
“I can explain this,” Vinyl muttered. She was sitting motionlessly on the floor, staring into the distance. Her coat, usually almost white, now looked like a “before” photo in a washing powder advertisement that was surely pulled from magazines within a week.
“Well, I’m pretty sure it is an interesting explanation,” Octavia replied, staring at the body in the middle of the basement. “Hmm, is that Neon Lights?”
“How did you know?” Vinyl asked.
“Well, his photos were everywhere recently after your wrestling match...” Octavia looked at the walls. “Well, you can still say his face is everywhere. What exactly was that?”
“He went too close to the speaker.”
“Never heard of getting too close doing that.” Octavia turned from the bloody corpse to Vinyl’s sound system. “Hmm. Are you sure it wasn’t just your ‘music’? What was that new thing you were working on? ‘Post-Grunge-Rap Orchestroelectro Dubtoven Fusion’?”
Vinyl finally pulled her gaze from a reddish spot on the wall, sneering over at Octavia. “It wasn’t my music that did this. And Post-Grunge-Rap Orchestroelectro Dubtoven Fusion is gonna be huge, trust me.”
“I’m sure it’s just ahead of its time.”
“You mean it’s shit,” Vinyl deadpanned.
Octavia gave a slight nod. “Yes, it’s shit.”
“But this shit will blow your mind.”
Tavi glanced back to the body at her hooves. “Clearly.”
Vinyl nodded. “Okay, that came out wrong...”
“You came out wrong,” Octavia replied. “You don’t do that by getting drunk, kicking the door of your parents’ house, and yelling, ‘I fuck mares, deal with it!’.”
Vinyl raised her eyebrows. “What?”
“Nothing.” Octavia lifted some piece of bone, sniffed it, and threw it at the wall. “Hey, it didn’t bounce!”
“It stuck to the wall...” Vinyl paled a bit.
“It was predictable,” Octavia muttered. “Brain is usually rather sticky, which leads to another question: what shall we do about that?”
“Let it dry?”
Octavia sighed. “No, what do we do about that?” she clarified, pointing a hoof at the largest remaining part of Neon.
“We… we, uh… we have to hide it.”
Now it was Tavi’s turn to raise her eyebrows. “Not call emergency services or some such? It was an accident, after all.”
“I’m not sure that’s a good idea.”
“Yes, of course it isn’t,” Tavi commented dully.
Vinyl gestured a hoof toward a wall, explaining, “Neon and I have been at each other’s throats for, like, years. If the guards come and find him dead in my basement, everypony’s gonna think I murdered him. Everyone thinks we hate each other.”
Octavia hummed a little, glancing to the side. “I suppose it would be hard to explain your little joint ruse to the public if he can’t speak. Well then, how do you propose we dispose of the body?”
One of Vinyl’s hooves scratched at the floor a little, and she squinted for a few seconds. What does one do when something dies? She turned back to Tavi and asked, “Flush it down the toilet? It worked with my hamster.”
“Not sure he’ll fit, love, and I’d hate to have to call a plumber to pull a bloated wad of entrails from our pipes.” Octavia stepped away from the carcass, moving across the room. “I’m afraid it’s going to be a little more complicated than that.” She paused at the foot of the stairs, one hoof raised as she looked over her shoulder. “First, we have to clean this place up. Grab a mop, would you?”
Tavi only managed to go up three steps before the oh-so-familiar sound of Vinyl retching reached her ears. She sighed. “Great, more cleaning.”
Vinyl sat alone in the living room, her eyes roaming the room aimlessly as she tried to look at anything other than the plastic-wrapped corpse next to her. Unfortunately, the only other choices were a small box full of bone shards, and a bucket with something that looked like grey jelly.
The telltale sound of hooves on wood drifted in from the basement doorway, followed by Octavia. She stopped next to Vinyl, lightly removing the bucket from her jaws and dropping the mop held in one hoof. “Basement’s clean,” she said.
“Are you sure?” Vinyl asked.
“Positive,” Octavia replied. “I cleaned everything with alcohol, so it may not be wise to go there for a few hours. Then we’ll have to make it a bit dirty so no one wonders why it’s cleaner than an operating theatre.”
Vinyl smirked, considering the possibilities. However, the corpse on the floor was still bugging her. Especially because of the flies gathering above it. “What are we going to do now?”
“We have to dispose of the body, of course,” Octavia replied. “Do you think it’s gonna fit in the cello case?”
“I’m afraid that’s not the case,” Vinyl muttered.
Octavia nodded, looking around the room. “So, I guess we’ll have to do that the hard way. Do we have something sharp at home?”
“I have a chainsaw somewhere,” Vinyl replied. “You know, from that music video I was making.”
Tavi’s face twisted into a cringe for a split second. “No, I don’t think that would be quite ideal. Too much splatter and whatnot. I’ve already had to clean enough, tonight.” She scanned the room, one hoof tapping the floor as she added, “Gore also tends to gum up the mechanism.”
Vinyl scratched her mane. “If you say so... How about a cheese slicer?”
Octavia facehoofed. “He’ll decompose before we’re done...”
“That’s the point, huh?”
Octavia shook her head. “Kinda, but the problem is that soon the remains of oxygen in the body will be consumed by microbes, creating perfect conditions for anaerobic bacteria to grow. As they do, they produce lots of gases, such as hydrogen sulfide, carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrogen. Which will poison us and attract all the flies in the neighbourhood, not to mention most of the town. Then the maggots will eat the tissues, causing dense, oily fluids to leak from it. Finally, the maggots will go away to make chrysalides, and the remains will slowly dry and fall apart, leaving only a skeleton. As far as it’s desirable, I don’t want it to happen on our carpet, get it?”
“More or less,” Vinyl replied, looking at the body as if it was going to stand up.
“I’m glad,” Octavia said. “Get me a knife and a saw.”
“We don’t have a saw,” Vinyl muttered.
“Then go to the store and get one.” Octavia scratched her mane, leaving a bloody smear on her forehead. “And while we’re at it, go to the pet shop and buy some dead rats and a snake.”
“Why a snake?” Vinyl asked.
“So no one asks why do you need dead rats.”
Vinyl nodded. “Okay. See you in a minute!”
Octavia’s face fell into her hoof. “Wait!” she called out. “Get a shower first!”
“Why?”
Tavi pulled her hoof away to point at Vinyl. “You’re, like, completely covered in Neon...”
“That’s what she said.”
Octavia grabbed Vinyl and lifted her almost effortlessly. “Go and wash yourself before I drown you in the bathtub. And this time it won’t be ‘I’ve heard you have a better orgasm when you are suffocating’ kind of drowning.”
“Hey, but we’ve never had sex with each other!” Vinyl exclaimed.
“Yes, but if you don’t remember, I found you with your head in a bathtub and your ass in the air, with a vibrator stuck inside. And it was my vibrator...” Octavia sighed.
“So that was drowning?” Vinyl asked. “When I woke up in the hospital, I thought it short-circuited...”
Octavia released Vinyl, who dropped to the floor. “Just go and take a shower. Now.”
“But why do you need rats?” Vinyl asked. “They’re icky…”
“So? You already have Neon’s brain on you, so I don’t know how is that a problem,” Octavia replied.
“Yeah, but I can’t really see the point.”
“We’ll bury him deep in the forest, throw some soil on him, put the rats there and bury them,” Octavia said. “When the dogs find that place, the police will dig out the rats and think it was a false lead.”
“That… kinda makes sense,” Vinyl muttered. “So… I think I’m gonna take a shower and think it over. A saw, you say?”
“Yes,” Octavia replied, taking a look at the body. “Or two, in case it gets dull. The conditions they’ll have to work in are far from perfect.”
The Saw City store was a big, wooden building in the outskirts of Ponyville, easily visible due to an oversized sign on the roof. Vinyl walked inside, whistling some tune and casually waving a bag of dead rats around – unfortunately for her, the pet shop was all out of snakes.
The bag froze in her magic when she stopped, overwhelmed by shelves towering in front of her. Filling numerous racks, there were hacksaws, buzzsaws, whip saw, wire saws, dovetail saws, seesaws, frame saws, Neighponese saws, rip saws, circular saws, sawhorses, chainsaws, cames, saws, and conquers, as well as various other kinds of saws there. One of the shelves was filled with books such as Of Circular Saws and Circular Reasoning: How to Stay Safe Around the Former and Avoid the Latter. Vinyl’s mouth hung open; last time she was so overwhelmed by goods in a shop was when she saw a three stories tall shelf full of toilet seats.
It was only after a while before she heard some terrible sound echoing through the store. She groaned as it assaulted her ears, but then she realised that it may have been the only way to find someone who wasn’t a saw there; the sound was definitely pony-made.
Vinyl’s ears perked up, following the sound. It took her a while of navigating across the paths between the shelves, intersections, crossings, and crosscut saws before she reached the counter. There was a grey mare sitting on it and playing a musical saw.
“Hello, Derpy,” Vinyl said. “What are you doing?”
“I’m playing a saw,” Derpy replied. “Also, talking with you.”
“Yeah,” Vinyl muttered. “Anyway, I’m looking for a saw. Like, a very specific kind of saw.”
“Well, we have saws for every occasion.” Derpy hit the bow against her saw, finishing the solo with a sharp note. “Also, I meant to ask you for a while… Do you know any good didgeridoo player? Just cowbell and triangle don’t provide enough depth.”
Vinyl thought for a moment. “I know a guy who plays an alphorn. Is that close enough?”
“May sound nice with my friend who plays a nail violin,” Derpy replied. “Anyway, what kind of saw do you need?”
“The one that cuts.” Vinyl shrugged. “I don’t know much about saws.”
“I saw that coming,” Derpy said. “Any more details?”
“Umm… The one that cuts well…” Vinyl shrugged again, but it didn’t help so she scratched her mane. “And it should stay sharp.”
“Okay, maybe we’ll try it another way.” Derpy’s eyes focused on Vinyl. “What do you want to cut?”
“A deal?”
Derpy sighed. “What do you want to use the saw for?”
“I need to cut… something.” Vinyl started to think really quickly. “Like, I have that… artistic installation in mind. It’s kinda for a music video.”
“Another one with a saw?” Derpy asked. “That was some pretty nice chainsaw you had there.”
“I still have it, but it doesn’t quite cut it,” Vinyl replied. “I’m thinking of that scenography for my upcoming shows. Something really creepy.”
“Bones?”
“Umm… kinda, yeah. How did you know?” Vinyl asked.
“You’re carrying a bag with dead rats.” Derpy pointed at the bag. “Also, something is leaking from it and my boss will kill me when he gets back from his vacation.”
“Sorry, I’ll clean it up.”
“Huh?” Derpy looked at Vinyl. “Oh, no, not that. He'll kill me because I burned his house down.”
“Funny you mention that…” Vinyl muttered. “Anyway, I need a saw that cuts bones. Is there a special name for it?”
Derpy nodded. “Yes. Bone saw.”
“Really?” Vinyl smirked. “I’d have never guessed. So, I’ll take two, then. To, you know, share the work with someone else… So I don’t have to do all the things myself.”
“Sharing is caring,” Derpy replied. “With every two saws, you get a coping saw for half the price.”
“That’s something I can cope with,” Vinyl said. “Also, don’t tell anyone I cut bones, okay? It’s gonna be a surprise.”
Derpy nodded and returned to playing her saw. “"Don't tell anyone I burned my boss's house down."
“You really didn't need to tell me that..."
“But now you know, so you have dirt on me, too,” Derpy replied. “Now we're in balance, so you can trust me not to blab."
“Makes sense,” Vinyl said. “How much for that?”
“Two bone saws and a coping saw for half a price.” Derpy smirked. “Two hundred bits.”
“You sure don’t cut the prices…” Vinyl levitated the bits and put them on the counter, heaving a sigh.
“Our bartering policy is rather sharp.” Derpy shrugged. “But you have five years guarantee. “On a side note, shovels are available only under the counter.”
“No, thanks, we have some,” Vinyl replied. “See you later, Derpy.”
Levitating the saws and dead rats, she walked out of the store.
“That’s some nice saw,” Octavia muttered, hacking off Neon’s hoof and throwing it into the plastic bag. “Hmm, don’t you think we’ll gonna have to cut the torso in three parts? Two won’t fit in those.”
Vinyl shrugged. At first she wanted to help Octavia, but it turned out that she just wasn’t able to cut anything without throwing up, adding to the general mess in the bathroom.
“Three, then.” Octavia wiped the saw and positioned it over the torso. “If that’s possible, I’d rather have the stomach and the bowels in one piece. Who knows when he last ate something. If I rupture it, we may be flooded with food in various stages of digestion, from still recognisable to what’s basically ready to be–” She looked at Vinyl who was sitting next to her with her eyes closed. “Are you gonna throw up again?”
“No,” Vinyl replied. “I just got struck by inspiration…”
“Oh bugger.” Octavia put down the saw and grabbed the kitchen knife. She cut the Neon’s skin right below the sternum and pulled it aside, revealing a layer of muscles.
“Like, imagine that slow, funky bass, some strings…” Vinyl looked at Octavia. “You’re gonna provide the strings, right? I think I’m gonna use a sample from ‘Razzle Dazzle’, you know, just that echoed ‘Razzle Dazzle’ from the chorus, of course I’m gonna have to ask Rara...”
“What in the bloody hell are you talking about?” Octavia grabbed the saw and moved it across Neon’s ribs.
“My new song,” Vinyl replied. “There that intro and then it goes like…” She cleared her throat and started rapping, “You just had to go to my basement, now they’re gonna have to look for replacement, yo…”
Octavia shrugged and continued to cut the ribs. “What the actual fuck…”
“Your skin is rags, you lie in bags, I’m drenched in blood and I need fags,” Vinyl rapped. “I do the rapping, she does the wrapping… Ummm… We are not dim, guy’s gonna swim, yo, that motherfucker never knew what hit him…”
Octavia put down the saw and turned her gaze away from Neon’s lungs. “As much as I just adore your skills, I’m afraid you won’t be able to publish this song.”
“Why not?”
“Neon Lights, one of the best DJs in Equestria is going to disappear, never to return,” Octavia replied. “Then you suddenly write a song about a guy being murdered. We really should lie low and don’t bring anyone’s attention to us. You know what will happen to us?”
“We’ll be legendary,” Vinyl replied. “And this song is gonna rock the charts.”
“Legendary for what? Licking dirty cunts in prison?” Octavia shrugged.
“Shh… I wonder who to ask for a collab,” Vinyl replied. “Maybe Neon?” She looked at the bloody remains on the floor. “Or not… Rara won’t agree, so maybe Sapphire will sing the chorus?” She scratched her mane, smearing blood on her coat again. “Or maybe I’ll just have it sung by a chorus of angry kids? They can be winners of some competition…”
The saw trembled in Octavia’s hoof, causing something to fall out of the fragment of Neon’s torso she’d just separated from the rest. “The hay are you talking about?” she asked, picking up the loose bit and identifying it as a part of the thymus. Somehow, the sight of internal organs was always making her soul to have a long, dark teatime.
“Singing competition,” Vinyl replied. “Twenty best fillies are gonna be invited to my studio to record a song with their idol. Almost no costs, especially comparing to the rise in popularity.” She hummed a melody. “That fateful night, the saw shone bright, you didn’t mind when… Any rhyme?”
“It’s still day,” Octavia muttered, carefully carving her way around the stomach. “On a side note, do you really have to use that sample from ‘Razzle Dazzle’? It kinda doesn’t fit the mood of the rest of the song.”
“I wanted to pay homage to Rara, you know.” Vinyl looked at what Octavia was doing. “This liver doesn’t look healthy…”
“Yeah, right,” Octavia muttered. “You’re talking to someone who spend years playing Bethooven just because the big wigs in the Royal Canterlot Orchestra liked him.” She looked at the liver. “Also, if I get hepatitis from that diseased moron because of you, you’ll be here next.”
“I don’t think he had any disease,” Vinyl replied. “I bet we could sell his organs to someone who needed them.”
“I’d probably spend days getting all the tar out of his lungs,” Octavia replied. “Also, it’s not even about smoking or drinking. Do you know that there’s ten times more bacteria in the intestines than there’s cells in your body? And they are probably looking for a new home.” She pulled some length of the intestine out of the wound. “That’s why I’d rather keep it in one piece.”
“Eww…” Vinyl shuddered. “I swear I’ll change my lifestyle…” She produced a cigar from her mane and cut off the cap.
“I see,” Octavia muttered. “What did I tell you about smoking fags at home?”
“I don’t burn any gay ponies here, Celestia forbid,” Vinyl muttered, lighting up the cigar.
Octavia sighed. “Okay. At least it’ll kill the smell and the police won’t find out bathroom too sterile if they want to search it. But just like with the basement, we’ll have to make something to make it seem like a normal bathroom...”
Vinyl’s eyes lit up.
“No, you can’t invite Flitter and Cloudchaser over to shoot porn with them.”
“Aww…”
Finally what was left of Neon was neatly packed in bags and put in the bathtub. Octavia hid behind the shower curtain while Vinyl was given a mop, bleach, and a mission to clean the bathroom completely. She accomplished it by dancing with the mop and singing, hardly caring about the fact that her hooves suddenly got a bit whiter because of all the bleach.
“I’ve got a body baaag!” Vinyl sang in a falsetto that sounded like screeching a knife against a plate, spinning around with the mop. “And you’ve got trouble! And if you don’t fit the bag, we will have to make it double!”
“Vinyl, shut up,” Octavia muttered from under the shower. “Soon all the neighbours will come here thinking we’re murdering someone!”
“That wouldn’t be far from the truth,” Vinyl replied, looking at the mop. For some reason it became pink.
Octavia rolled her eyes, pouring water all over her head. “Better think how to get rid of the body,” she said. “Someone may get suspicious if they see us going to the forest in the middle of the night. Also, corpses drown in the swamps tend to resurface when you least expect it.”
“There are not many ponies around at such hours.” Vinyl shrugged and started to clean the walls. “We’ll get some disguises, put Neon on the cart, throw him into the quarry, and we’re done.”
“There are no quarries here,” Octavia said. “And I’d rather not throw him into the lake. He may get caught in the turbines of the dam or something.”
Vinyl’s hoof was running across the plastic wrapping, feeling what little heat there was left in Neon when she perked up suddenly. “Hey, why don’t we just mail it somewhere?”
Octavia shoved the shower curtain aside and turned to her roommate slowly, her eyes bearing an expression that only the blind would read as anything other than “are you retarded?”.
“We just box him up, put on a bunch of stamps, and send him somewhere else. Bam! Not our problem anymore.”
Tavi held her gaze on Vinyl, unmoving as she inquired, “And where, exactly, would we send this headless hunk of carrion?”
“Hmm…” Vinyl’s chin fell into her hoof. “Somewhere really, really far away, like Baltimare or Vanhoover.”
“Why not Griffonstone?” Octavia asked, rolling her eyes. “I think someone may notice blood leaking from the package…”
Vinyl shrugged, poking the body with her hoof. “Meh, they’ll lose it anyway.”
Octavia shook her head and hid her face in her hooves. “Maybe I’ll take care of the place. You’d better think of the disguises.”
Tavi squinted, brows furrowed. “Please tell me that isn’t a moustache, Vinyl.”
“Vinyl?” said the unicorn. “Who’s Vinyl? I’m Chestnut, career banker and definitely not a murderer.”
Octavia’s hoof collided with her face in much the way a drinking straw collides with the lid of a soda cup: just hard enough to deliver its point and drive it home. “The shit I put up with,” she muttered, turning one eye toward her roommate. “Why?”
“It’s so if we get caught, nopony will recognize me. We’re famous, after all.” The unicorn formerly known as Vinyl ran a hoof through her moustache, adding, “You should totally get a disguise, too.”
“Vinyl,” Tavi began, “I appreciate that you have safety in mind, I really do. But I’m afraid that if we are caught, it won’t much matter how many moustaches and wigs we wear.”
“Ah, but that’s only if we get arrested. If they just spot us and we run away, these outfits could save our skins.”
“That…” Octavia scratched at her head a bit, one ear twitching. “That might actually work.”
“See? I’m a genius,” Vinyl turned around, waving her trenchcoat. “Did you come up with any idea where to bury him?”
“Of course,” Octavia replied. “Just wait a minute before I get some disguise.” She stormed out of the living room. Vinyl sat on the couch, and levitated a small mirror to check if the hat and wig were covering her mane completely. She smiled at her reflection, nearly forgetting about what was lying in the bathtub.
“How do I look?” Octavia asked, entering the living room.
Vinyl turned to her and gasped, her jaw dropping. The mirror slipped out of her levitation and landed on the couch, saving her seven years of bad luck. She tried to speak, but choked on her words; a fit of coughing nearly caused her to swallow her cigar. “Sweet fucking baby Flurry Heart…” she eventually whispered.
“What?” Octavia asked. Half of her mane was dyed white; green earrings adorned her ears. She was wearing a black dress and a fur coat. Her front hooves were hidden under red gloves; one of them was resting on a long cigarette holder.
“Is it made of puppy dalmatians?” Vinyl pointed at Octavia’s coat.
Octavia looked at the outfit. “I do believe it’s polyester.”
“Do you know how many polyesters had to die for you to have this coat?” Vinyl asked.
Octavia’s jaw dropped as she was trying to process Vinyl’s words. “Shut up,” she said eventually, rubbing her temples. “We’d better focus on hiding the body.”
“Do you have any particular place in mind?” Vinyl asked.
“Well, of course I do.” Octavia nodded, swinging the cigarette holder in her hoof. “You’ll see…”
It was already 2 AM when they arrived to the old part of the cemetery. Octavia sighed when she realised what hour it was. Arriving at midnight would be much more dramatic, in her opinion, but with Vinyl as her sidekick, it was completely impossible.
For starters, it turned out that their cart’s suspension was rather battered after the last time Vinyl offered her friends a ride. Also, it turned out that Vinyl’s cart-pulling licence had been revoked for pulling under influence and she had somehow managed to hide that fact from Octavia for the last couple of months. Thus, Octavia had to pull it, while Vinyl sat in the back in company of Neon, now neatly packed in a cello case and one of the boxes where Vinyl usually kept her speakers.
“Octy, you’re a genius,” Vinyl muttered. “Who’d look for a body in the cemetery?”
“Not just any cemetery, my dear Vinyl,” Octavia replied. “The old part where no one ever digs because it’s full of old bones. You know, we’ll just give one of my great-grandfathers a new roommate. The Melody family crypt is rather spacious.”
“Perfect,” Vinyl said. “But what about the rats?”
“What rats?”
“The ones you made me buy,” Vinyl replied.
“Screw them.” Octavia rolled her eyes. “Make scenography out of their bones. To keep a secret, you know.”
Vinyl nodded, staring at the large crypt in front of them. “Hey, that’s pretty metal…”
“It’s a crypt that holds seven generations of the Melody family,” Octavia said in monotone. “I’m pretty sure my noble ancestors, proud members of orchestras and ensembles playing for the most important ponies of this world would be delighted if they could hear you calling their final resting place ‘metal’.”
“Yeah.” Vinyl smirked. “What’d they say about ‘awesome as fuck’?”
Octavia produced a key from the pocket of her coat and opened the doors of the crypt. Unfortunately for her, they didn’t creak dramatically – after all, she’d oiled them just a few weeks before. “I’m pretty sure they already question my life choices,” she muttered.
“It’s not like they have much to say.” Vinyl followed Octavia into the crypt and found herself in a spacious, underground tunnel with granite tombs standing on both sides of the path. In the dim light of torches, Vinyl noticed cutie marks, dates, and names etched on the tombstones. The oldest ones dated about two hundred years back. The newest ones, however…
“Hey, auntie Arpeggio is dead?” Vinyl asked, pointing at the grave. “I kinda liked that old cow. Especially that one time when she visited us and we all got high on her pills…”
“She died when you were on tour,” Octavia replied. “I inherited a million bits.”
“And yet you still live with me,” Vinyl muttered. “Why?”
“Umm…” Octavia smiled sheepishly. “So I can come here and play my cello. I sometimes get inspiration from my ancestors…”
“Yeah, right.” Vinyl patted her hoof against aunt Arpeggio’s tomb. “Farewell, Arpi, you and your pills will be missed.” Her eyes turned to another grave. “Hey, this one is yours! That’s fucking creepy!”
“Every of them is built in advance,” Octavia said. “If you behave, I may have one built for you. If you misbehave, however…” She looked at one of the oldest tombs. “I’d like to remind you that we’re here for a reason. Stop yelling like the most annoying ghost in universe and help me.”
“Yeah.” Vinyl cleared her throat. “So, where do we put Neon?”
“Here.” Octavia pointed at the grave of her great, great-grandfather Minim Melody. “It’s old enough, no one ever looks inside. Just levitate the tombstone, okay?”
“Sure.” Vinyl focused her magic. Removing the granite slab took her a while and gave her a really bad nosebleed, but finally it was done. Octavia trotted to the grave and looked inside.
“Bloody hell,” she muttered, pointing at the corpse, covered in recently-hatched larvae. “That’s not grandpa Minim. Too fresh.”
“Hey, I know this guy!” Vinyl exclaimed. “He was a small-time pimp.”
“There’s a pimp in Ponyville?” Octavia asked.
“There was,” Vinyl replied. “Not a big market for his services, but given that his body lies here, he still managed to piss someone off.”
Octavia furrowed her eyebrows. “How do you think, who could that be? I wouldn’t want this to become common. You know, ponies hiding corpses in my crypt.”
“Dunno, but his girls quickly moved to Hayiti soon after he disappeared.” Vinyl shrugged. “I hope grandpa Minim won’t mind another companion, though.”
“He turned to dust, so I guess not.” Octavia opened the cello case and threw the plastic bags into the grave where they landed with a moist splat. “Luckily, those are big enough to house a large family.”
“Kinda a waste of place,” Vinyl muttered. “My family doesn’t have a crypt. We just put the urns with ashes in the wall of the biggest brothel in Las Pegasus. Our money supported it so many times that we support it even after death.” She sighed. “Well, except that one time when my grandfather accidentally snorted my uncle’s ashes. But he snorts everything.”
“I’m not sure if I want to know how it came to this,” Octavia muttered. “Also, are you gonna help me?”
“Yes, of course.” Vinyl levitated another bag and threw it on the top of the pimp’s body. “What if grandpa Minim starts to haunt us?”
“Don’t worry,” Octavia replied. “I didn’t know him personally, but I’ve heard that he was a real gentlecolt. Worst he’d do would be bitter sarcasm.”
“Yes, because I of course infinitely enjoy the company of some lousy procurer as well as bloody jigsaw of some uncultured peasant.”
Octavia looked at Vinyl unsurely. “Did you say something?”
“No.” Vinyl looked around and shuddered. “We’d better hide him and go home. It’s getting cold in here.”
“Gods, too bad you don’t exist because you’d strike my great, great-granddaughter’s arse with some well-aimed lightning. Not to mention that bloody tosspot.”
“What did you say?” Vinyl asked.
“I didn’t say anything.” Octavia threw the last bag into the tomb and tried to lift the tombstone. She only managed to do so when Vinyl helped her with her magic. Together, they closed the grave, sealing it nearly perfectly.
“Okay,” Octavia said. “Now we’d better run before someone sees us.”
As they walked together through the empty streets of Ponyville, Vinyl looked at Octavia unsurely. She opened her mouth, but no word escaped her lips. For a while, she was humming some melody before turning to Octavia again, only to look away after a second.
“Something bothers you, dear?” Octavia asked.
“Well…” Vinyl lowered her voice to a whisper. “I wanted to ask… How do you know how to, umm… cut off limbs and, err… hide bodies?”
“Oh, that’s simple.” Octavia raised her hoof. “You know how many young cellists want to be in the Royal Canterlot Orchestra?”
“I can’t see the connection…”
“The competition is big. And I really mean it.” Octavia walked down the pavement like a real fancy lady, leaving Vinyl standing in the street, pondering about everything she had learned on that fateful day.
