Friendship is magic, Hatred is power
By PariaH
Pariah (adj. Pah-ri-ah) def. social outcast.
I sit here, you can’t see me, I’m sitting here, your friends can’t see me either, and it is the darkest corners of your quaint little shop…
The sugary sprinkles on each little pastry shines in the light like diamonds, or shimmer, like the waves upon the water at sunset… It reminds me of times long past, I merely sit and stare, thinking of nothing at all as I see them disappear throughout the day.
Time moves slowly like an epitaph, there are three young, small, ponies sitting together. I wonder; why do you want to sort out your priorities? Why are you so concerned with finding out, right now, what will determine the rest of your life? Another pony sits, not too far away from me… with hot chocolate in a mug, steam rises from it, like a shape that wants to form, as if the steam wants to become something, but as it drifts upward, its opportunities are going… going... gone.
She takes it, raises it up to her lips… As beautiful as she is, she is not perfect, the mug spills, a brown, hot mixture onto her purple coat… The words that come out now, they pique my interest “Dear Celestia…?” the pink one comes in now, she moves like a child, unstable to see, but completely in control. Worry in her eyes, but a smile upon her face, happiness in her voice, and concern in the subject…
The opposites that make her unique…
The young ones leave now… It is quite dark outside; the purple one gets up, and walks to the door, I’m impatient; she looks as if she wants to stay a little longer. Each step seems to echo in the room, once busy, now silent. She raises a hoof to the door, pushing, the bell jingles as the door opens into the lit streets… The lights outside flicker and fireflies circle in the distance…
I watch the fireflies, the sound of hoof against tile stops as the sounds turn into a mild, clip-clop sound upon the cobblestone streets… Her front hooves are out, and the fireflies still float, like ashes rising from a fire, still imbued with the heat of the inferno, and I smile, one of her back-hooves has exited…
The fireflies continue to float… Her last hoof has left… The clip-clop sound is all I hear if only for a moment; hoof on tile comes again as the pink one walks up to the door… the lock clicks, and she returns back to her cooking area… I stand up now…
That purple one, her expression seems to stay with me for a while, she would’ve loved to have stayed with the pink one for a while longer, I almost wished for her to stay too, but as much as I love a crowd, I like surprises even more.
The pink one becomes suddenly aware. She turns, looks at the door first, obviously unaware of what to expect, who could be visiting? She continues on, the clicking sound of her hooves seems to resound throughout the shop. In the bathroom, in her room, in all the unkempt closets and rooms of her house, and shop, behind closed doors I can hear the sound… It moves through the vents.
She becomes a little uneasy, but rationalizes it… Yet another opposite that makes her unique.
She takes some bowls and puts them in a cupboard, I stand behind her, and she stops for a moment, I move again. She turns and looks directly at me, but I am hidden well, I can feel her eyes seeking me, I can sense her heart not wanting to find me… Opposites…
I turn around, and she closes up the cupboard, she walks over to the oven… I love the oven… It looks clean, it looks shiny and it looks nice… On the outside… She opens the door, and I feel happy. The inside is dark, and heat waves seem to distort the world around it.
Then she turns it off with a click… And walks onto her next task…
She walks up the stairs… One, two, three, four, five, six steps before she becomes aware again… She looks back up, the ceiling above the stairs is dark, and she has a look of fear cross her face. I recall it well, it reminds me of a child, reminds me of the times when the whole house is lit, and there is a corner where the light cannot go, where you turn and stare, leaving the rest of your body exposed, when that corner remains there, when it follows you… Another opposite…
She turns back down, curious to see the shadows, but feeling scared at the thought of what she would see… She moves up the stare at a faster pace, and heads into a room, the room contains some water. She splashes her face, and breathes easy for a moment, the sound of her steadied breaths, calm, smooth, and deep. The timer clicks, and the flames ignite.
She stares into the mirror, grins as she tilts her head to the left, and then smiles next. Her teeth look nice and white. She gets another grin and quickly sticks her tongue out, scrunching up her snout and then giggles to herself. Her giggle is strange to me, childish, and fun…
She pulls her face with her hooves, pulls her lower eyelid down and sticks her tongue out the side of her mouth, a mocking moan comes from her mouth and she goes back to that same giggling…
The buzzer rings, and like before, the sounds spread through the house. It breaks the silence of the house and the sound of her giggling, like a mirrored surface… The sound seems to come from many different spaces, and she walks out of the door, and down the stairs, it is unavoidable, she sees the shadows of the ceiling above the stairs, and averts her eyes to the bottom of the stairs.
A flickering light can be seen from the stairs, reflecting off the tiled floors. She turns the corner, and the oven is on… She walks forward cautiously… She is focused upon the oven, nothing else.
She walks closer… I’m simply waiting… She turns the knob again, the oven is off, but it still glows, she opens it up, and for the first time, our eyes meet. The lighter in my hand glows brightly. And she stares in disbelief, the metallic casing of the aerosol in my right hand feels cold, the ridges on the side of the plastic nozzle under my fingertip feels strange, it just feels like a thousand small corners one second… I press my forefinger down, and the feeling intensifies just so.
The loud hiss of the aerosol, a whoosh of flames, and a high pitched scream, that’s all I hear, a huge white-hot glow, surrounding a figure thrashing in the darkness… that’s all I see.
She screams and I walk out of the oven, I watch her casually, I drop the lighter and the Lysol to the floor. She screams and moves erratically, I don’t even know what she is saying. The cold steel of the meat hook in my right hand, and the wooden stock of the axe in the other… I watch for a second… then I walk forward, I take notice of a bucket of mop-water not too far away… Her screams fill the air, and I grin again.
My right arm moves wide, and goes from the free flying feeling of a swing, to a tremor of impact force up my arm, she gasps and for a moment, the screams stop, I relish the silence, and with a quick twist, the screaming returns, I drag her along, close enough to the mop bucket. Her head splashes into it, with a hiss. Water cascades over the sides, small droplets just in front of the wave. The wave hits the tiles and splashes, creating smaller drops, and smaller waves, but the puddle beneath it grows only larger. The hook is still in her flailing body, just underneath her collarbone area, I placed it well, with a forceful tug, and she rises again from the bucket, with a scream of course. I pull again, dragging her to the middle of the dining area, I can see whatever bone or muscle I hooked take form under the skin with each pull. She screams and begs the whole time.
I look back at her, the hair I admired so, is gone, only a ragged patch near the base of her neck, the muscles in her throat I can see twitching, through a thin layer of tattered black and red skin… her eyes, the color is vivid and luminous, blue iris, surrounded by red, blood flows where tears should be, thick veins ooze blood like a melting ice cream… And her teeth, two are cracked, one is missing, and blood has filled in the cracks… She sobs and shutters, I look at her, she begs “Please… Don’t do this to me…”
I lift my knee fast, it connects with her mouth, it feels like Popsicle sticks, slowly giving in with repeated blows and force.
Again and again, and again and again, I feel tiny bits breaking against my knee, and hear the shattered ones clatter to the floor. My knee feels warm and wet, I stop for a moment, the warm wet feeling in my knee trickles through my pants and down my leg and as my foot resumes its place upon the ground, and as I put my body weight back down upon it, I feel crunching under my thick sole.
I still have the axe… As I see her head lying chin down upon the ground, I shake the axe, getting a better grip. I feel the smooth wood slide on my bloody gloves, and I look at her face upon the floor, I waste no time, a swift motion, I feel the weight of the axe move from my hips to above my head.
It comes down hard; the whoosh of the air behind the axe, I hear a wet sloshing sound and the dry crackling sound of bones breaking, then the scream returns, a little less defined than before. Since her small, protruding snout was just chopped off…She screamed on the floor, writhing, more blood, the axe moved again, the smoothness of the motion, the whoosh and another dry snap, her leg shook and trembled for a moment, then stopped altogether. She breathed rapidly and looked about the room with her good eye…
She looked at me, unable to talk, but just from looking at her panicked, pain-filled eyes, I knew enough. “Why?” is what her eyes asked me?
The puddle of blood gets larger; it flows over the once clean and shiny tiles, and around the teeth… Encompassing everything in its wake… I feel the weight of the axe-head in my hand, I adjust my grip, move my hands to the base of the pole, she looks at me and panics, shaking her head, trying to crawl, the first cut on her shoulder is giving her some trouble, she tries to scramble up, the blood ripples, I turn the axe, it’s not the sharp side I wanted to hit anyways…
I bring down the back of the axe hard on her back leg, accompanied by a rich, wet crunch, her body splashes into the blood… The skin is bent, and I can clearly see a shard trying to force its way through, the impact point is bleeding. Again, and again, and again, and again I hit her leg, her screams fill the air, but I focus intently on the sound of her legs, as it went from a wet cracking sound, to a squishing, splashing sound, the bones look so strange, an ivory white amid the red, pink and black mush.
She crawls off, her hoof lays in the puddle, then as she moves forward a little bit more, the sinewy shreds of skin tighten, a tendon pulls a little tighter, causing the water it laid in, to ripple, she crawls to the door, there is a gas line, it led to her oven, I pull the pipe, with a creek, it breaks and the slow hiss of the gas fills the silence of the room, the oven clicks again, and I walk to the door, she is desperately trying to reach for the lock, whimpering like a kicked animal.
The speed of the hook makes it go deep into her side, I feel it slide nicely into a gap in her ribcage, she screams and continues to squirm, I don’t mind, I’m not the one it’s hurting.
She moves to the side, and the hook rips a line through her skin, contouring with the rib… I kick the door open and drag her out onto the streets, I’m smiling, she’s screaming.
I cast her to the ground, she’s still alive, squirming, kicking at me with her good leg, but too weak to even get it off the ground. Letting go of the hook, I laugh at her, I laugh at her weakness, the look in her eyes as she hears me laugh, oh the look… I just want to rub her face, kiss her and shoot her! That is… If she had a face to rub, I turn, smile again, and grab her burnt face in my hands, the skin feels dry and cracked, as I tug, I feel her skin shift off, the burnt layer comes off like wet toilet paper, I get a better grip, and pull her up, facing her towards her shop…
My heart fills with excitement; it’s time for the show to begin! The glass in her shop shatters out, and the interior explodes, fire sprays from the windows, from the door, and the upper floors explode outward from sheer force, the glass looks like crystalline snowflakes flying through the night sky on wings of fire… The flames settle for a moment, no explosion to fuel their conquest of the shop, they spread, growing brighter getting larger, swallowing all she knew…
I release her head, I don’t need to hold it anymore, she’s holding herself now, oh it gives me such satisfaction to see her, tormenting herself… The image sinks into her mind, no home sweet home anymore… I hear voices in the distance, concerned ponies from nearby come closer, I disappear into the shadows.
DAYS LATER…
I find myself at the hospital, many ponies are in the room, and the bandages come off… Her eyes are closed, no hair. They did a good job on her mouth, for ponies. I notice the lower half of her body below the sheets, one and a half legs under the thin white blanket. Her words are garbled, I’m smiling, she opens her eyes, and those blue eyes are gone, faded, pale and bloodshot. They look directly at me, and again, fill with terror.
Oh how I love to see her scream and try to run, I love to see the faces around her change from concern and sympathy into sadness, and helplessness! One of them walks nearby me, looking for whatever it may be. One of the ponies around the pink one goes up and snuggles close to her, it makes me sick… She buries her head into the tall orange ponies’ neck, tears in her eyes… I thought she had run out.
Now my attention is turned to a cocky one, this one has been spurting many insults at me, can’t even see me, but believes her friend. I don’t want to make it easy for that pink one, I want to see that same hopeless fear in her eyes, the lights above the blue one’s head flicker, I want her to remember me, the lights, I want her to watch…
The blue one looked up, the pink one saw me do the deed, the lights exploded, and glass… The blue one screams and moves out of the hailstorm of sparks and glass. From the safe bed, and the warm embrace of her friend, she sees me, hears me laugh as her friend shrieks, bleeding all over the room.
She screams at me, yells at me, and demands I leave... Why should I!? The others look on helplessly, the blue one bleeds a trail all the way to the door, and the pink one, so afraid, so helpless, and so hurt, that I just restrain myself to laughter, laughter only she can hear!
She burrows her head deep into her friend, holding her close and tight with her hooves, like she can hide from me… And she can’t, and that’s just the way it should be…
ONE WEEK LATER…
So far, she’s sought shelter from her friends, but now she’s hiding away… she’s obviously learned her lesson. Every single one she hid with, I would find, and I would make her watch as I hurt them… The memories we shared…
That one who lives in the woods, I made her animals attack her, the ones on the farm, I locked the young one in her clubhouse and burned it to the ground and that last one, that pretty little light orange colored one.. It’s a story I simply must tell… She found the pink one in a shed, oh she was so ready to die, I stood in the darkest corner of the shed, smiling through the mask, and she was so close to being free from this life. But that meddling pony, she tried to stop her, wrestling her, trying to get the knife away from her… I had only to laugh again, I taunted her, I knew she’d come around… The other one should’ve kept out of her business. The look of shock in her big green eyes, the blood drizzling onto the floor, as that miserable, meddling wretch’s body hit the ground, it almost made it worth it… If she had just finished the job!
The pink one, she’s home now, in the remnants of her house, her body, it hangs from the top floor. Blood still overflows from her throat, and down her body, dripping into a growing puddle at my feet.
I look up, she has three legs, a gash in her shoulder, her face is a pale, dead, face, eyes sunken in, no hair, the vivid colors of the eyes, shadowed by blindness. I watch another drop fall into the puddle, it is red, and hits the puddle of black, more drops follow, but the vivid colors of blood have finally darkened into the cold black…
I look up… She had it all, surrounded by love, surrounded by friends, filled with purpose… Her fear gave me influence over her, her pain gave me power in this world, and her sadness let me in. I look up, her corpse turned in the breeze. Ponies gather around me, around the sight… Some look at me, fearful, some look at the one, once called Pinkie Pie, tragedy…
I look at them all… Nothing more than victims, nothing more…
