Collarblind: Red Scare

"Sluts and gentlecolts, the balloon will now begin its ascent to Cloudsdale. Please keep your hands and feet inside at all times, thank you."

The perky flight attendant finished speaking and began untethering the hot air balloon from the landing platform so it could begin its rise to the lofty city of the pegasi. Flash Fortune found a space in between the other passengers, leaned back against the railing, closed his eyes and let his mind wander.

If you had struck up a conversation with Flash Fortune when he was just a little colt and asked him what he wanted to be when he grew up, he would have told you excitedly that he was going to be the best magician in all of Equestria. “I’m going to fly around the world, and shoot lasers out of my horn, and build a huge castle on the moon to live in with all my friends!” he would have exclaimed breathlessly, with a toothy smile on his face and a manic gleam in his eyes. “And when Princess Celestia gets tired I’m going to raise the sun for her, and everyone is going to cheer and say “Hooray for Flash!” And Mom is going to stop being angry all the time and Dad is going to come back and hug me and say sorry for leaving and tell me how proud he is of me and . . . “

If you had struck up a conversation with Flash Fortune about a year ago, when he was a fully-grown adult, and asked him if he still wanted to be a magician someday, he would have just laughed. And later, after you’d excused yourself from his cramped little office with the wilting potted plants and the chipped wallpaper and the tiny window that afforded a picture-perfect view of the industrial dumping ground across the street and the tarnished nameplate on the door that read Dr. Fortune, Marriage Counselor, he would have cried.

See, Flash had been fortunate enough to have a smart, honest mother who had wisely instructed him that applying to Magic School to learn to be a magician was, quote, “the dumbest idea I have ever heard,” and instead told him in no uncertain terms that he was going to follow in her hoofsteps and get a real job as a . . . drumroll please . . . social worker.

Nevermind that after graduating from college the only job opening a degree in social work had qualified him for in the entire city of Canterlot was marriage counselor. Nevermind that, judging by his abysmal client retention rate over the first six months, he was possibly the worst pony to ever hold that occupation in the entire city, or in all of Equestria. Nevermind that his pathetic salary had barely let him pay rent on the tiny basement room in some old mare’s house he was renting, much less let him start making headway on paying off the mountain of loans he had taken out to acquire a degree that had proven itself more worthless than the paper it was printed on. Nevermind that instead of using his horn to cast spells, he had been reduced to using it to sign contracts and adjust the thermostat in his office. Nevermind that he’d had to throw the invitation to his latest high school reunion right in the trash because he couldn’t go back and let all his friends see how much of a complete fucking loser he had become. No, clearly despite all of that he had made the right choice, because he’d saved his mother the embarrassment of having a son with a career as frivolous as magic. Sure, maybe he felt like throwing himself in front of a bus every so often, but who could put a price on making their mother happy?

That, in short, had been the state of Flash’s miserable life, and it hadn’t seemed likely to change anytime soon.

And then the miracle happened.

It was interesting how messy and chaotic the beginnings of the best moments in a pony’s life could be. Take the harried last-minute preparations before the start of your wedding, for instance. Or the wild scramble to get to the hospital before the birth of your first child. Or the Fall of Equestria.

At first, like everyone else, Flash had thought the world was ending. Strange invaders had captured the capital, and maybe the entire country. The Twin Princesses were rumored to be dead, or worse, and their six shining champions were nowhere to be found. Buildings were being sacked, ponies were being beaten, mares were being raped. It was only a matter of time until these monstrous Caribou got their hands on him, and then he was certainly done for.

But no came along to rob him, or torture him, or kill him. Instead, one day, a Caribou knocked on the front door of the house he had been renting to inform him, very politely, that its former owner, that the belligerent old crone he had had the misfortune of calling his landlady, had been enslaved. He explained that she had said she was renting it to a stallion, and asked if Flash was the tenant. Flash, after he had gotten over the fact that a Caribou was standing on his porch and talking to him, had admitted in a shaky voice that he was. Then he had stared in mute disbelief as the Caribou pulled out a paper from a stack tucked under his arm and handed him what indeed appeared to be the deed to the house.

And his good fortune didn’t stop there: A few weeks later he received a letter from the bank to which he owed his student loans. Dreading that his debts had reached a critical mass and they were planning to repossess his new house, he had torn it open hastily, but in fact it was just the opposite: The bank itself had been repossessed by the Caribou and was in the process of being restructured, and the past financial obligations of its clients were being forgiven, no-questions-asked.

In one fell swoop, the soul-crushing debts that had been keeping Flash awake at night for years had evaporated. His slate had been wiped clean. He was so happy he could have cried. After years of desperate prayers to the Twin Princesses or whatever gods were out there for help going unanswered, the Caribou had handed him salvation on a silver platter and he hadn’t even had to ask.

Of course, there was still the matter of putting food on the table. Marriage counseling, it went without saying, was a dead art now that every husband owned his wife. For a while, he didn’t do much. The changes in the world were a lot to take in, and it happened that his brand new house had plenty of food and his former landlady had left a sizable amount of bits just lying around, so he could afford to stay at home for a while. It wasn’t like he could just head to his office and start working. So he kept lounging around until one summer day when a familiar stallion had knocked on his door and, unbeknownst to both him, started him down the path to finding his truth calling.

When he had been a marriage counselor, Flash’s clients usually gave up on him after the first visit, so on the rare occasions when they came back the next week their names and faces usually stuck in his mind. That was why when middle-aged pegasus High Skies showed up on his porch, Flash recognized him immediately. High Skies had seen not two or three but seven times. Flash’s first instinct was to explain that he didn’t do marriage counseling anymore, but the pegasus just laughed and asked if he could come inside. Flash, confused but intrigued, showed him in.

Sitting on the couch in Flash’s spacious living room, High Skies explained that he had gotten Flash’s address from his business card and hiked down to his house to ask Flash to talk to his wife, Violet Flower. Flash repeated that he didn’t do marriage counseling anymore, but the pegasus insisted that he didn’t want counseling.

“Truth is, that old bitch has been driving me up the wall,” he’d admitted. It was a little jarring to hear him call his wife a “bitch,” but since the Fall everyone seemed to have taken to calling mares things like that, so Flash wasn’t too shaken.

“She doesn’t listen to me,” he complained. “And she’s always shrieking at me like a banshee about every little thing. I’ve tried to knock some sense into a her a few times—like the Caribou taught us, y’know?—but she just bounces right back to being her old self in a few hours. Maybe she’s too used to me by now to be scared of me, I don’t know. Anyway, finally I got to thinking: Maybe I can’t get under her skin, but I sure as shootin’ know who can!” He grinned.

“And . . . who is that?” asked Flash, nonplussed.

“You, silly! See, truth is, your marriage counseling didn’t really work for me and Violet at all. We still fought all the time, and both of us still hated each other. The only reason I came back so many times was because I wanted to rile her up any way I could, and being around you made her angrier than I’d ever seen her.”

That took the wind out of Flash’s sails a little. He’d had no idea his best customer was just using him to get back at his wife.

“I don’t know quite what it was about you in particular, but for some reason she hated you. Every time we came home from a session, she wouldn’t stop whining about you for hours.” High Skies did his best impression of a shrill, haughty mare: “I fucking hate that stupid sniveling little marriage counselor so much! I hate his stupid simpering voice and his dumb face and his ugly suit and . . . ugh, I just hate EVERYTHING about him. I swear, I’m going to set myself on fire before I let you drag me off to spend one more minute listening to that miserable spineless cretin talk.”

That really took the wind out Flash’s sails. Had every mare he’d counseled hated him that much?

He sighed. “ . . . Look, I think you have the wrong—”

“Wait, wait, hear me out! I don’t want you to make her behave or anything. Of course I don’t expect you to do that. I just want you to talk to her a bit, make her angry, irritate her. I’ll pay you 50 bits.”

Well, that changed everything, didn’t it? 50 bits wasn’t a small amount to earn just for talking to someone, and his landlady’s bit stockpile was running low. He’d need to get out and make money somehow soon, so why not start now? It wasn’t like he had a track record of being too proud to do demeaning jobs to uphold.

High Skies set up the meeting in Flash’s home. He dropped off his wife a few days later with a broad smile on his face.“You two have fun now.” She didn’t look much different than she had the last time he’d seen her. Same lavender coat, same bobbed ivory mane, same stern, disapproving scowl on her face. High Skies had apparently even let her keep wearing modest clothes. All that was new was the silver collar around her neck.

Flash lead her inside awkwardly and offered her a seat on his sofa.

“Hello, Violet,” he’d started uncertainly, in the same calm, placating voice he’d used as a marriage counselor. “It’s been a while. How are you?”

All he got in the way of a response was a condescending look.

He realized suddenly that he hadn’t had a single real conversation with a mare since the Fall. He had barely even seen them. Most stallions had been spending the last few weeks fucking as many mares as they could, but Flash had found himself staying indoors and remaining a detached observer. He wasn’t sure what to think. The Caribou had given him everything he could have hoped for, so surely they were to be trusted. But on the other hand, he’d spent all of his marriage counseling training, and, in fact, his entire life, learning that mares were to be respected and cherished as equals. Should he have been standing up for them? No one else seemed to be. Some ponies talked about a magic spell that had changed the stallions of Canterlot and made them look at mares differently, but Flash, at least, didn’t feel like he was under any supernatural influence. Sure, he had started having these strange, vicious thoughts and impulses about mares sometimes, but he chalked it up to stress. He had a lot of experience keeping himself from acting on dark thoughts.

He resolved to talk to Violet like he’d have talked to any mare before the Fall.

“Uh, I’m still not exactly sure what your husband wants me to do,” he began. “but since we have the whole afternoon together I figured you might want to shoot the breeze a little, maybe play a game—”

“I’m not doing anything with you.”

Flash sighed. “Look, Violet, we’re going to be here for a while, so it would be better if we just got along.”

“I bet you’re really happy right now.”

“Beg your pardon?”

She gestured around her. “I bet you’re really happy with everything that’s happened. Now even losers like you can get laid.” She shot him a dirty look. “Well enjoy it while it lasts, because Celestia is going to come back any day now and put all you dirty perverts in jail.”

He took a deep breath. Marriage counseling was all about keeping your cool. “Violet, please listen to me—”

“Ugh, now I’m picturing you doing it and it’s fucking gross.”

“Please stop.” He couldn’t keep the edge out of his voice this time. Dirty, wrong images of the mare in front of him were starting to cascade into his mind. He screamed at them internally to go away.

“I bet they make you do them from behind so they don’t have to look at your face,” she sneered.

“As a matter of fact, I haven’t even touched a mare in weeks!” he snapped. The scenes in his head were getting more vivid, and more depraved.

She looked at him blankly for a moment, then let out a shrill cackle.

“What’s so funny?” he demanded.

“That means . . . “ She giggled. “You-you can’t even get it up! All this pussy, and you can’t even get it up! Ha ha ha!”

Flash’s hands curled into fists. High Skies’ words rang in his ears: “I swear, I’m going to set myself on fire before I let you drag me off to spend one more minute listening to that miserable spineless cretin talk.” A dozen violent, pornographic clip shows were playing simultaneously in his head.

“Violet, I’m warning you,” he said through clenched teeth.

When she saw the furious expression on his face, she just laughed harder. “Ooh, I’m so scared,” she snarled sarcastically. “What are you going to do, pussy? Stop holding doors for m—”

Before she even had time to finish her sentence, Flash leaped out of his chair and slapped her across the face so hard the crack echoed across the room. He took his hand and wrenched her head back so that she was looking at him.

“You know what,” he said icily, with a smile on his face. “Have it your way. Let’s stop talking.”

He threw her down from the sofa onto the carpeted floor and, surrendering entirely to the impulses in his mind, took a rough hold of her white evening dress and ripped it open. He tugged and tore at it until it was scraps in his hands, and then he tossed it aside and did the same to the clothes underneath until she was lying completely nude on his floor.

He panted lustfully. She was gorgeous. Her physique was slim, curvy and sinuous, and she had melon-sized lavender breasts with pointy pink hard areolas. He took hold of one of them with one hand and squeezed roughly, eliciting a shocked moan from her, and undid his belt buckle with the other. When his cock was free, he looked her coldly in the eyes and impaled her on his cock.

She squealed. He didn’t give her time to recover, roughly thrusting in and out of her, one hand on her hips and alternating between squeezing her breasts and pinching her nipples. She looked utterly terrified, and tears were rolling down her face, but she was moaning sluttily as he pounded her. She started to say something, but he leaned in and shoved his tongue in her mouth to shut her up.

He held her there and fucked her roughly until he felt himself getting close. He ripped himself out of her and crawled forward until his knees were on either side of her head and his fat cock dangled above her lips. A few quick strokes, and rope upon rope of thick white cum splattered all over her pretty face, dripping down her nose and cheeks. She closed her eyes, whimpering in disgust and fear.

“Lick it up.”

“W-what—” He slapped her across the face a second time, smearing the cum that got on his hand onto her breasts.

“Shut the fuck up, cunt.” He’d never called a mare a cunt before in his life. “You heard me.” She just looked at him, horrified, but he just kept glaring at her stonily. Slowly, she brought a finger to her face, and dragged a glob of cum down to her lips. He nodded, and she licked it clean, scrunching her eyes shut in revulsion. He didn’t look away until her entire face was clear. Then he rose, and headed to his closet, leaving her quivering and panting on the ground.

The Caribou had distributed free dildos and bondage devices like candy over the past few weeks, and though Flash hadn’t thought he’d ever have any use for them, he’d taken them because ponies used to living frugally had a habit of taking almost anything if it was free. He’d stored them all in his closet. And, now, he finally had a golden opportunity to put them to use.

When he walked confidently back in the room, the sheer size and barbaric shape of the dildo in his hand had made her scream in horror.

They’d had fun for the rest of the afternoon, the night, and well into the morning, Flash’s newly-tapped reserves of sexual energy seeming to have no limit. When High Skies had come to pick her up in the morning, and found the stern, cocky wife he remembered reduced to a quavering, cum-covered slut, he was shocked . . . and very happy. He’d tipped Flash 50 more bits for his “good work” with a broad grin on his face.

In many ways, the incident had been a wake-up call for Flash. As he came to realize over the next few days, the little voice in his head that had been whispering to him since the Fall that all mares were nothing more than whiny, self-serving sluts who were only good for being fucked and bred wasn’t the voice of lust, or temptation, or wickedness. It was the voice of reason. He’d been lying to himself all along: Mares weren’t kind, gentle nurturing ponies, they were snide, cruel, duplicitous vermin. All from his mother to his condescending mare professors at school to his bitter old landlady all the way up to Violet: mares had been spitting on him and disrespecting him and trying to make him feel worthless since the day he was born.

The Caribous’ real gift to him and to all of Equestria, he realized, was much greater than the forgiveness of debts or the redistribution of property: it was the complete and utter destruction of a matriarchy no one had even acknowledged existed. It seemed so obvious in hindsight. Had anyone ever asked why the two absolute rulers of the land were female? Why the Elements of Harmony were all wielded by females? Why the first appearance of real male power in the land, Discord, had been viciously defeated and imprisoned without even the shadow of a fair trial? Mares had been hoarding power for themselves while keeping every stallion’s nose in the dust and convincing them that they liked it that way. Mares had been the founders of cities, the pioneers of magical innovation, the leaders of armies. Stallions had been cart-pushers and shoe-shiners.

But now it was all over. Stallions had been liberated from chains they hadn’t even realized they bore, and they were exacting justice on their former captors. All thanks to their blessed saviors, King Dainn and his mighty Caribou, no mare would ever deign to sink her poisonous roots into the good heart of a stallion ever again. Even the natural forces of the world, the crop harvest cycle, the weather, and the movements of the celestial bodies, which mares had, in their infinite arrogance, sought to subjugate, were free to occur of their own accord. The world was finally as it should be, and Flash Fortune intended to do everything in his power to keep it that way. Nevermind being a magician, he could see his true calling now, clear as day: to show mares their place.

And, it turned out, he would have plenty of opportunities to exercise his newfound talent. High Skies had many friends, and his immense satisfaction with how well Flash had “cured” Violet lead him to give Flash’s name, along with a glowing recommendation, to every stallion that approached him to complain that there mare wasn’t behaving the way he wanted her to. Flash took every new client (and their bits) gleefully, though truthfully he might have done it all for free. Every day as a marriage counselor he had felt hollow, empty, and useless, but every time he broke in a mare he felt a little stronger, a little more virile, and, most importantly, as if he had paid off a little more of the great debt he owed to the Caribou for his salvation, and to the universe for a lifetime of submission to mares.

As the weeks went on, his fantastic success fixing even the most stubborn mares traveled throughout Canterlot, and by word of mouth alone his calendar was soon overflowing with appointments and his bank account was soon overflowing with bits. He seized on the opportunity. He bought a larger office in a fancier part of town, and, eventually, a larger home in the same place. He printed new business cards billing himself as “Dr. Flash Fortune, Mare Therapist.” He bought advertising anywhere they’d sell it to him: radio, magazines, newspapers, even a few billboards. He supplemented the useful but small collection of sex toys the Caribou had given him with a full array of top-of-the-line dildos, bondage devices, and other assorted tools of his trade.

In a few months, his name and notoriety had spread far past Canterlot. He did radio interviews, at first on small, local frequencies, and later on Equestria Public Radio. He did a half dozen magazine features, and made the December cover of Mares Monthly. He even got a full-page article in the Manehattan Times: “STROKE OF GOOD FORTUNE: How One Enterprising Young Stallion is Revolutionizing the Mare Training Game.” He framed the clipping and hung it on his office wall. Somewhere along the way, some radio jockey or magazine editor had nicknamed him “Dr. Collarblind,” because it had become his habit to boast that he could fix a mare no matter what color her collar was, and the name had stuck.

In his private life, he was no less busy or ambitious. He planned bring his justice to all the mares that had made his life hell before the Fall. Tracking them down was sometimes hard, especially when he hadn’t seen them in years, but when he did their masters were usually more than willing to share them with any stallion who asked (especially if that stallion was famous mare fixer Dr. Collarblind). He punished them all: his college professors, his classmates, his ex-marefriends, his landlady, the mares that hadn’t given him a second date, the mares that had stood him up on their first date, the mares that hadn’t been willing to go on a date with him to begin with.

Gradually his list of intended victims—no, not victims . . . rather, recipients of justice—grew to include even those mares he hadn’t ever felt personally angry towards The way he saw it, even if they hadn’t hurt him themselves, they were all guilty of the crime of allowing a matriarchy to exist through inaction and had to be reprimanded. Unfortunately, the only one he couldn’t seem to find, no matter how hard he searched, was the one that mattered the most—his mother. She seemed to have vanished off the face of the planet after he’d left home and gone to college. Maybe it was for the best that he didn’t find her just yet, because he needed a good long time to decide exactly what kind long, slow suffering he was going to inflict on her. Of course, she wasn’t going to evade justice just because she happened to be his mother. That would have been nepotism. He’d track her down sooner or later, and when he did he’d show her all the mercy she’d shown him.

And that, in short, was the state of Flash Fortune’s magnificent life, and it didn’t seem likely to change anytime soon. Someday, he’d hire the best ghostwriter in town to put the whole story in his memoirs, and sell a million copies and win the Ponylitzer Prize.

He already had the perfect title picked out.

“Sir, the balloon has landed. You can depart now.”

The sound of a soft mare’s voice shook Flash Fortune out of his silent reverie. He turned to her, and nodded absently.

“Right, right.”

The flight attendant gave him a warm smile and a small bow. “Welcome to Cloudsdale, sir.”

He picked up his briefcase, straightened his suit jacket, and stepped out of the balloon and onto the cloudy streets to do his favorite thing in the world: fix a mare.