The Muffin Manby DontWannaKnowChaptersAcquire TargetDinky TroubleLost and FoundMother Daughter TimeThe Perfect PetWingsFurther ExperimentationAcquire TargetThe Muffin Man Acquire Target “My God…my God Carmichael…we did it!” my partner said in astonishment, staring in awe at the gaping wormhole in front of us. Years of research and experimentation had led us to this point. “No Krug,” I laughed, “I did it.” It was true. I was the one who had designed the cold fusion reactor that provided the power to take a miniscule quantum wormhole and expand it to a size large enough for a human to step through. Krug looked at me with fire in his eyes. “So you’re playing that card? You’d do that to me? We could share a Nobel Prize for this! I’ve worked just as hard as you! I’ve…what in the world are you doing Carmichael?!” “I’m attaching a silencer to my HK,” I told him bluntly, “that way nobody will hear me kill you.” “Wait wait wait wait!” he began to panic, “you can have it, you can have it all! All the credit! I…” I pointed the gun at his head. “It’s not about that Krug…I could give a fuck who gets credit for this…I have my own agenda…now you have two choices: punch in these coordinates,” I handed him a piece of paper with a very specific set of numbers on it; if my hypothesis was correct it would take me right where I needed to go, “or, alternatively, I could blow your brains out and get the janitor to do it.” “ARE YOU MAD? This is an experiment! You could drastically alter the very fabric of the universe by using that thing! You could kill us all! We don’t even know if it will work yet!” He was hysterical. “I cannot let you do this!” “I knew you’d say something stupid like that, hence the gun to your head” I shoved the barrel up against his temple. Sweat was forming on his brow. “I’m going through, one way or the other…you can either die now, or roll the dice and punch in the fucking coordinates!” That’s all I can tell you about how I got to where I was going, because that’s all I remember. Apparently interdimensional travel causes a bit of retrograde amnesia. I don’t remember the journey…and maybe that’s for the best…I can’t imagine that rocketing through spacetime is a pleasant experience. All I know is that I was right. I ended up exactly where I wanted. It was a rather cold and cloudy day there. I threw off my lab coat and pulled a sweater out of my large camping pack. It was a silly looking sweater, but it had a purpose. I also took out my tranquilizer gun and loaded it up with M-99 darts. I hoped I had guessed correctly regarding the dosages…I didn’t want to kill any of them…though I had no qualms about doing it if I had to. My brief presence here could not be known…I had one target, one objective, and then I was out, and the goddesses couldn’t know or they would come for me after they realized what I took. I was not such a fool that I thought I could outsmart or fight them. When I reached the edge of town I hid behind a gnarled old tree, surveying the landscape, gauging the difficulty of my little mission. Fortunately I had the weather on my side; not many ponies were out and about. There were two though that I could see, bundled up and enjoying coffee together on a bench not twenty feet from me. This was better than I could’ve hoped for. It was as if the gods were just handing me this one. As I took aim I had to stifle a little snicker. The way that mint green pony sat was hilarious. She loved humans I knew, and her attempt to contort her equine form into a normal sitting posture made her look quite ridiculous. For a moment I considered taking her instead, it would be so easy given the circumstance…but no, I had worked too long and too diligently to make a snap decision at this point. The two ponies were conversing animatedly and laughing. This was good; I waited. When the cream colored one with the pink and purple mane turned her head to kiss the green unicorn I fired. Dammit! The dart hit her in the neck but I had clearly missed her jugular as she had enough time to turn around to see where the strange object had come from. Right before the M-99 took effect our eyes met. She’d seen me. That was bad. For her anyway. The other pony whipped her head around too and met my gaze as I closed the gap between us. Her expression was one of awe and terror. “They are real…” she mumbled. Before she could ask any stupid questions I unholstered my silenced HK and shot Bonbon’s uncounscious body in the shoulder and then pointed it at the anesthetized pony’s head. Lyra opened her mouth to scream but I clamped my hand over her face, keeping the gun pointed at Bonbon. “Make a noise or disobey me and the next one goes in her head.” The unicorn began to tremble, tears streaming down her cheeks as she watched her lover bleed, but she kept silent. “If you do as I ask, I’ll let her live,” I told her in my matter-of-fact way. Lyra simply nodded. "Go find Derpy Hooves. Tell her the Muffin Man is here. Speak to no one else, understand?” She nodded again, still mute. She took one last look at her marefriend and went galloping off. I was about ninety percent sure that Bonbon wouldn’t recall any of this or be able to identify me, but I couldn’t take that risk. As soon as Lyra was out of earshot I dragged the unconscious pony behind the old gnarly tree and put two more bullets in her chest and one in her head. It might seem like overkill, but as a scientist I am a fan of absolute certainty. The bullet must have lodged itself somewhere in her motor cortex because the body was twitching and jerking. Another two shots made it still. “The Muffin Man!” Derpy grinned stupidly, “You really do exist! Oh do you know the muffin man the muffin man the muffin man…” She began singing. Convincing her I was the aforementioned mythical figure was simple to the point of elegance: my silly sweater (I told you it had a purpose) was covered in muffins. That, along with a proffered blueberry confection was all it took for Derpy to trust me completely. Her little daughter Dinky, who happened to be with her when Lyra returned with my target, was not so trusting. She saw the blood on the ground and the worry that contorted Lyra’s face and knew there was something wrong here. “Where’s Bonbon?” Lyra whimpered, though under and behind her fear I could hear demand. This one would fight me if she had cause to. “Come with me,” I told Lyra, “Derpy you wait here. I need to talk to Lyra, and then I’ll take you to where all the muffins are made!” I smiled at the dopey Pegasus. She clapped her hooves, jumping for joy. “Oh boy Oh boy I can’t wait!” Lyra cautiously followed me over to where I had stashed BonBon’s body in the trees. When she saw her marefriend lying dead on the ground she didn’t even scream, she fell to her knees sobbing, holding the carcass tight, kissing its bloodstained face. After wailing all the usual ridiculous responses to a dead loved one (No! Bonbon! Bonbon! Please wake up! You can’t leave me! I love you! Blah blah blah) she looked at me. “You lied to me!” she sobbed, crestfallen, “You said you’d let her…” THWACK! THWACK! I quickly drew my pistol and put two slugs in her head: one in each eye. Unfortunately those were my last two, and she wasn’t dead. I gotta remember to check the clip more often. Lyra was holding her eyes and emitting an unnatural sound. “EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!” the high pitched shriek sounded like nothing I’d ever heard before. I did the only thing I could think of and brought my foot down on her head, crushing her skull. Her legs flailed about frantically for a minute, then she was still. The body convulsed one last time and voided its bowels. I wiped the blood off my shoe using Bonbon’s tail, then came round the tree and returned to Derpy who, like a child expecting a Christmas present, was bouncing up and down singing the muffin man song. Dinky looked very worried and was trying to catch her mother’s attention, to no avail. However when Derpy saw me, she stopped hopping and singing and grinned even wider, her tongue hanging out of her mouth. “What was all that noise?” She asked, not at all concerned, just curious. “Nothing!” I smiled. “Okay! Can we go to the muffin place now?” I led the dotty mare and her filly into the woods, where the wormhole swirled and crackled. Derpy gasped excitedly. “Is that the door to the muffin place, Muffin Man?” “Oh yes Derpy, that’s the door to the muffin place.” My smile stretched from ear to ear. Dinky TroubleDinky Trouble You don’t see a lot of scientists who know how to handle a snatch and grab operation and leave no witnesses, but I wasn’t always a lab geek. I’ve been many things, but it was only when I discovered the existence of the equines that I found my true calling. I stopped dicking around in grad school and eventually got my doctorates in both theoretical physics – the only route I could think of that might grant me access to other realms – and biology – which would give me the tools I needed to make a proper study of a new species. Now I’d done it. I didn’t give a fuck that I had probably revolutionized energy production by successfully harnessing the power of cold fusion, or that I’d created the first functioning wormhole; all that mattered was my true interest: to capture one of these strange creatures. I’d selected the wall-eyed one for various reasons. For starters I knew she’d be easy to lure back to my lab, and secondly she was probably the only one dumb enough to trust me. The fact that I had also obtained her foal was an immense bonus, both because she was a different subspecies, and because I had an extra in case my primary subject failed. Once again the details of my return to the lab through the wormhole are foggy. That amnesia effect is quite frustrating. The first thing I remember is Krug. “Christ Carmichael! It’s been eight days, I thought you were gone for good!” “Time is relative, Johnathan, I only experienced an hour or so. Oh and sorry about threatening to kill you, but I couldn’t have my plans defeated by a bald moron with moral qualms.” He didn’t seem to catch that last, or was too excited to care. “This is unbelievable! Where did you go? What was the travel like? Did you bring anything back?” “I went to another dimension, the travel sucks, and yes, in fact, I brought two things back.” I unshouldered my pack and lifted the top flap. A smiling face popped out, accompanied shortly thereafter by a smaller, very worried looking one.” “My God, what are they?” Krug marveled. “Equine creatures of some sort…” “They’re adorable!” Krug was probably the most buttoned-down, straight laced, unemotional person I knew, so I found it amusing how taken he was by the little ponies. They were indeed little. Derpy stood maybe three and a half feet tall, while Dinky was hardly bigger than a house cat. “What are you going to do with them?” he asked, his tone suddenly suspicious. “The same thing we do with all new phenomena,” I said in what I like to think was a sage sounding voice, “scrutinize, test, extrapolate…” “You’re not considering harming these creatures?” His eyes were wide. Dinky was cowering now, clearly understanding her circumstances. Derpy was still smiling like an idiot. “Krug, you don’t want to know.” “I cannot allow you to…” he shut up as I reached for my pistol. His head in his hands he beseeched me; “by god Carmichael I know it’s for the sake of science, but have you no soul? Look at the poor creatures…” “Johnny, I’ll offer you this opportunity once, and only once. Either leave now and take your morality with you, or join me and become legend.” I knew how badly John Krug wanted a nobel prize, how close he had come before. I believe cold fusion, a wormhole, interdimensional travel, and the discovery of an alien species might bump us up toward that award. A smile slowly crept across his face…until he met Dinky’s eyes again. “No, I cannot be responsible for destroying such innocence. I believe, my friend, we have reached a parting of ways, I have no choice but to…” THWAP I hit him square in the jugular with a dart. M-99 works just as well on humans as animals. I didn’t want to kill Krug…he was after all my partner and I probably wouldn’t have been able to construct the wormhole without him, but I couldn’t let him fuck up my carefully laid plans. I dragged him into the utility closet and locked it. The janitor would find him tomorrow morning. He’d be just fine. My pack rustled and something went darting out from it. Apparently Dinky had had enough of this scene and decided to risk an escape, making a beeline for the wide open exit. She must’ve thought she was home free, leaping toward the threshold of the door. That’s when I hit the emergency shutter swtich. The heavy steel security doors were designed to stop the spread of contaminants in case of an accident. I supposed that’s what they were doing now in a sense… Dammit. Dinky was even smarter than I thought. Her horn glowed, lighting up the dropping door with a pink aura, stalling it for the split second she needed to dodge it’s crushing force. It would’ve cut her in half, but instead only caught her tail. Still, she was stopped. I reloaded my tranquilizer gun and hit the shutter button again, ready to take her down. What I saw both alarmed and impressed me. Dinky was gone. Lying in a small pool of blood was her tail and the little chunk of pony meat and skin that had been ripped off with it. “DINKYYYYY!!!” Derpy yelled in sudden panic. The dolt had finally realized to some degree what was going on. “Muffin Man why you hurt Dinky? Dinky’s a good filly! Dinky deserves muffins!” “It was Dinky’s fault,” I told the bewildered mare. “Oh…really?” "Yes." “Oh…okay…she’ll be okay right?” “Yes, she will,” I smiled at Derpy. “Now have a muffin!” “MUFFIN!” The second she bent down to eat the confection I snapped my foot upside her chin, knocking her unconscious. I put two darts in her flank as well, just as a precaution, then I locked up the lab and reloaded my tranq gun yet again. I had a filly to find. Lost and Found Thank god it was late…I wasn’t quite sure of the time – the bloody wormhole had stopped my watch – but it was late enough that most of the other researchers had gone home. If somebody else found an adorable little unicorn with a bleeding rump and saw my crazy ass chasing after it I don’t know what the fuck would happen. I stalked the halls slowly, tranq gun in one hand, freshly loaded pistol in the other. I wanted to catch the little filly, but I’d maim or kill her if it was necessary. Derpy was my real prize, Dinky was just an added bonus that was quickly becoming a nuisance. In her last act of desperation the little unicorn had certainly made herself easy to track. A tiny trail of blood spatter from her severed tail led me through the winding halls and corridors. It ended at the door to the women’s lavatory. The door had blood smeared on it; she had charged right through it. I peeked through the door cautiously. Dammit “It’s okay little one,” I heard a feminine voice coo, “nobody’s going to hurt you anymore.” Somebody had found her. I could hear Dinky’s soft little whines coming from the last stall on the right. I took off my boots and eased the door open so as not to make a sound. “It’s alright sweetie, we’ll get you some help right away,” I heard the voice continue. WHAM! I kicked the stall door open. A slender, red-headed woman was holding the filly tightly, comforting her. My silenced pistol emitted another slapping sound as I put two in her skull, spraying Dinky with blood. She screamed but the terrified howl was cut short as I kicked her in the ribs, knocking the wind out of her. She recovered surprisingly quickly and ran, but a dart to the back of the head put her out. I put away my tranquilizer gun and my pistol and knelt down, looking at what was left of Tina, our receptionist. The bullets had blown massive exit wounds out the back of her skull. What a fucking mess. The nice thing about working in a top secret government laboratory is that if you need to get rid of something, it’s not all that hard. I cleaned up the blood and then carried Tina’s limp body to the disposal room. This was a place intended for hazardous waste and other nasty things, and because of that the shaft was one-way – if you went in there, you were locked in, so it wasn’t as if anyone would be crawling down there looking for bodies. I dropped Tina through the one-way shoot doors, hearing a muted but satisfying crunch when she hit the bottom. I never liked her anyway. Now I had to deal with Dinky. I went back to the bathroom and retrieved her limp body and carried it back to my lab. Derpy was still unconscious, lying on the floor bleeding out of her mouth. Both ponies were out cold. I’d have to wait a while to begin my experiments. Mother Daughter TimeMother Daughter Time I use the term “experiments” quite loosely…but then again I am a sociopath. I recognized this about myself during an abnormal psychology class years ago. I’m not entirely devoid of emotions, but when it comes to things like blowing out a coworker’s brains in a bathroom stall, I feel nothing. As a scientist, being a monster is somewhat of an asset in many cases; I can remain completely objective and empirical most of the time without regard for the plight of test subjects (oh you wouldn’t believe what the government lets us do to people). I can ruthlessly take whatever I want. That’s how I got my career to the point it is today: by screwing over countless colleagues, destroying their dreams to advance my own. At this point in time, however, I was full of emotion – rage to be precise. That bloody foal had almost cost me my career and, if anyone had seen me kill Tina, my freedom. I decided that Dinky was disposable…I could work with Derpy alone. As soon as the wall-eyed mare and her filly were restrained in my lab, I went and found the janitor. If ever an odd fellow I’d met! The janitor had a PhD in astrophysics and a medical doctorate, yet he chose to work for ten dollars an hour. I’d once asked him about it, and he said to me in a Shakespearian accent “I giveth not one fuck.” I respected that. I was also happy that he demanded no explanation when I asked to borrow his sledge-axe. He just chuckled, “Another experiment Carmichael?” “Oh yes…do you want to join me?,” I asked, “I could use someone well versed in medicine.” “Carmichael, knowing you, I want nothing to do with it” he laughed, “Just bring that hammer back to me when you’re done doing whatever the fuck it is you’re doing.” “Absolutely.” “Muffin Man?” “Yes…?” “Is Dinky gonna be okay?” Derpy was finally showing signs of real worry insofar as her simple mind could comprehend the circumstances. “She’ll be fine!” I lied, “we just have to wait for her to wake up. Have a muffin!” I crammed another blueberry muffin in the idiot mare’s mouth. She smiled as she chewed and then swallowed. “Mmm,” Derpy emitted a hearty noise of satisfaction. “Sorry for being a worry wart, Muffin Man, but I love little Dinky and I get scared for her.” As if on some cosmic sort of cue, dinky slowly came to. The ponies were trussed up on two dissection tables, facing eachother. My first experiment was to be a psychological one. Though I’m not a psychologist, I am fascinated by what people – or in this case ponies – do in desperate situations. Do they maintain their dignity like the band that played on the Titanic while it was sinking, or do they die kicking and screaming? “Mommy? MOMMY!” Dinky started bawling the instant she woke up, “he’s not the Muffin Man mommy! He’s a bad man! We have to run away! I want to run away! I’m scared mommy!” Derpy looked at me, concern slowly contorting her features. “Are you a bad man?” “Nope!” I laughed “See, Dinky? He’s not a bad man!” “He’s lying! He killed Miss Lyra and Miss Bonbon and the nice lady!” “Did you do that?!” Derpy was aghast. “Nope! Your daughter is lying to you. She’s being a bad filly. The Muffin Man would never lie.” “He’s right!” Derpy was angry now, “He’s the Muffin Man! He wouldn’t lie! Bad Dinky!” she raised her voice at her daughter, who let out a frightened, frustrated whine. “Mommy you don’t understand…” “Shush!” I clapped my hand over her mouth, “or you’ll end up like ‘Miss Lyra’.” Her eyes widened and a fresh wave of tears cascaded down her cheeks, but she was silent. Now I could begin my experiments. I undid Derpy’s restraints…all but one: a cuff attached to her hind leg which connected to a wire. I explained very carefully to Derpy the gravity of the situation. “See that?” I pointed to the cuff. “Yup!” “It triggers a bomb if you pull on it. Can you guess where the bomb is?” She began to look genuinely frightened now, as if her brain was finally saying “this doesn’t add up…” “Where?” “In Dinky!” I smiled, pointing to a crudely stitched up incision in the little filly’s belly. “If you try to run or fight, you’ll pull the cord and she will die. We all will.” Derpy’s tears were pooling on the floor at this point. “Why?! Why hurt Dinky? Dinky is a good filly!” I just laughed and began undoing the foal’s restraints. I’d decided she was too smart and I had no intention of keeping her, so it was only natural that I have a bit of fun while disposing of her. I was also dying to know what Derpy would do to save her little one. I unzipped my pants and pulled out my throbbing member, lowering Dinky onto it like a sex toy. Hell, she was about the same size as one. I didn’t aim for a particular hole, I just jammed myself into her rear. Her perineum tore like wet paper, leaving one gaping hole for me to pound. She squealed and kicked. I laughed. Her little filly hoovsies were softer than pillows. I felt like I was getting a free massage! I continued to plow her, watching the blood squirt out her tight hole every time I jammed it. “Dinky! DINKY!” Derpy had finally caught on to the fact that bad things were happening. She tried to run to her daughter, but stopped short when the restraint around her ankle went taught. “Remember what happens if you pull that wire out?” I grinned. Derpy let out a mournful howl, reaching out to her screaming little foal. Her terror was palpable, yet she did nothing but sob. Clearly I had to do something more drastic. I threw Dinky on the floor, a pool of blood quickly accumulating around her as her anus bled profusely. I intended on stomping her to death, but despite being in excruciating pain, she got up and tried to run. Not this again. I hit the emergency shutters before she was even half way to the door. She was moving so fast that she plowed into the steel gate at full speed, shattering her tiny horn. The long, guttural howl that followed could’ve woken the dead. She fell to the ground, kicking and hollering, clutching her splintered horn. I simply watched in fascination. To my surprise she eventually got up again pounding her hooves on the door and screaming. “Mommy! Mommy we have to go! Mommy!” The expression on Derpy’s face was one of horror and helplessness. Her little Dinky was but ten feet away, yet if she ran to the unicorn it would trip the bomb and kill the mangled filly instantly. What I saw next amazed me. Derpy began biting at her own leg…no, not biting, chomping. She was trying to sever the restrained hoof that she might save Dinky. I grabbed the foal and threw her into the center of the lab. She got up to run again, but this time I was prepared. I brought the janitor’s sledge-axe down on her head as hard as I could. Her skull caved in like a ripe cantaloupe. Though I’d hit Dinky hard enough to kill her instantaneously, she wasn’t dead because I’d missed the mark by a bit. Only one side of her head was smashed, the axe pinning her to the floor. Her back legs whipped about frantically for a minute. I could see a faint, faint glow around the axe as she tried to magick it away with her destroyed horn, yet it would not budge. Her little front hoovsies were sliding about in the pool of blood around her head as she desperately tried to pull herself out from under the massive sledge-axe. I wasn’t sure if it was consciousness or reflexive reaction to trauma, but she pushed and pulled trying to free her crushed skull. As the blood pool reached her back legs, she slipped, now flat on her stomach. At that point she lost all composure and her legs began flailing again. Gradually but surely her movements slowed down and disintegrated into twitching. A soft wheeze of a death rattle and a release of the bowels told me she was gone… “Dinky! DINKYYYYYY!” Her mother cried. She ran to her foal, and the wire attached to her leg went taught and then disengaged. Derpy closed her eyes, but nothing happened. “Your bomb didn’t work Muffin Man!” She glared at me, cradling Dinky’s broken body and sobbing. “What bomb?” I posed the question, “you think I know how to build a bomb? There wasn’t one, you were just dumb enough to believe me when I said there was. You could’ve saved little Dinky at any time…” I wish I’d had a camera with me so I could show you the look on Derpy’s face. The Perfect Pet To say that Derpy was broken would be an understatement. She lay on the ground, heaving sobs wracking her body as she cradled what was left of Dinky. “It’s all my fault!” She lamented. Of course it wasn’t; she’d had no idea that I was bluffing about the bomb and therefore her failure to save her daughter was no fault of hers. But the dotty blond mare wasn’t smart enough to construct such a line of reasoning. She blamed herself. “I’m sorry Dinky! I’m sorry! Mommy’s so sorry!” the Pegasus moaned to the mangled corpse. The tighter she hugged her foal’s remains, the more blood poured out. After one particularly tight squeeze one of Dinky’s eyes fell to the floor with a splat, eliciting a fresh wave of sorrow from Derpy. This was getting messy. I leaned down and attempted to grab the carcass from her lest she make more of a mess, but she held fast. “NO! NO! Not my Dinky! Don’t take her away Muffin Man please!” I considered beating her but a more interesting idea came to me before I could raise my hand. I rifled through my pack and found them: a whole bag of muffins. I hid them behind my back. “Derpy, please give me that body before you make a bigger mess!” “NO! She’s not a body don’t call her that! She’s my Dinky! Her name is Dinky!” the blonde mare cried. “If you give her to me, you can have this whole bag of muffins!” She looked at the bag, then back to Dinky, then the bag, then back. I could see the raging mental conflict play out across her facial features. Finally she hugged her filly one more time and then held the broken creature out for me to take. She almost wouldn’t let go. I handed her the bag of muffins. Instantly she regretted the trade and fresh tears burst forth while she crammed the muffins in her mouth, as if they might assuage the pain and self-hatred that filled her soul. “Wh…what are you going to d-do with Dinky?” She managed to eke out the words. I let my actions speak for themselves, walking over to the lab’s sink. I crammed the tiny body down the industrial strength garbage disposal and turned it on. The rumbling growl of the machine was punctuated by the sounds of snapping bones and tearing skin, a dissonant soundscape that acted like a backing track for Derpy’s howls of anguish. My little experiment with Dinky and Derpy had proven correct a postulate of mine: these equines were intelligent creatures capable of human-like thought and emotion. In short, they would make the best test subjects in those truly horrible endeavors for which not even the men upstairs would allow us to use human subjects. Those sorts of tests that governments deny performing…the ones even the soulless men I worked for felt sick about. “I wanna go home!” Derpy interrupted my train of thought, “I wanna see Lyra and Bonbon and Rainbow! Please Muffin Man, I don’t like this place!” she begged me. Somehow she still spoke to me as if I were a friend. Had she not just seen me kill her daughter? Her egocentrism was childlike – everything that happened she perceived as a result of her own actions. In her mind, it wasn’t that I had killed Dinky, It was that Derpy had failed to save her. This creature would make a fascinating case study for any psychologist. “You’d make a good pet,” I mused out loud. Derpy just stared at me in confusion, her eyes moving in opposite directions. I could use other ponies as test subjects…Derpy I wanted to keep. She was smart enough to follow directions and dumb enough not to question them. There was just one problem. Her wings. I couldn’t have her flying away on me. In fact as these thoughts skittered through my mind she had already begun to fly about the room, looking for a way out. I surreptitiously made my way over to the tool cabinet and grabbed the lopping shears that we used to cut bundles of copper wire and other such things. I hid them behind my back. The lab was already a mess, so I figured I might as well do this now. “Derpy, do you want another muffin?” WingsWings Damn she was fast. The second she saw the loppers she dodged under me and flew up to the ceiling, hovering by the ventilation duct. That’s when she saw it: her way out. With a mighty, adrenaline-fueled buck she kicked the grating off and clamored up into the ventilation system. I could hear her moving through the ceiling. If she found the main shaft she could escape. I couldn’t risk that. I pulled out my pistol and began firing at the source of the noise. Suddenly the sounds of movement stopped and I heard a groan of pain. I kept my HK aimed and ready until I was sure she wasn’t going anywhere “First my sledge-axe and now a ladder? What are you doing, construction?” the janitor was puzzled. “I just need it for a minute.” “Hey, as long as I don’t know what you’re doing, you can borrow anything you want…” I took the ladder back to the lab and used it to climb up into the ducts. I crawled on my stomach about ten feet and then turned a corner. There she was. My bullet had caught her in the flank, nothing vital was hit, but she seemed to have just fallen and given up, lying on the cold sheet metal and breathing heavily. Her eyes were shut tight and she kept wincing in pain. She didn’t struggle when I grabbed her and dragged her back down into the lab and laid her on one of the tables. “Wha…Wha…WAIT! What are you going to do with those?” Derpy eyed the loppers fearfully. “Just trust me, this won’t hurt a bit.” “O…Okay…” I positioned the powerful shears at the base of her left wing. She was trembling now, but for some reason she really trusted me. I closed the shears as hard as I could and heard two very loud noises. The first was a sickening snap as the bone broke and the wing was severed. The second was a shriek of pain. Derpy bucked, sending me stumbling backwards, and then ran, her remaining wing buzzing furiously. She tried to climb up the ladder, but I caught her by the tail and threw her to the floor. Before she could right herself I brought my boot down on her back, knocking the wind out of her. I flipped the incapacitated pony over onto her stomach and began punching her in the face. “YOU. ARE. A. BAD. BAD. PONY!” each word was accompanied by a fist to the nose. When I was done there was a steady trickle of blood from one nostril and her right eye was swollen shut. I had dropped the shears but if I went to get them she might run. I pulled out my pocket knife and snapped it open. “NO NO NO NO NO!” she sobbed, “please not my wings! Not my pretty wings! What did I do Muffin Man? What did I…NOOOO!” I brought the blade down once, twice, three times, a fourth time…it was dull and the wing wasn’t coming off easily. Derpy’s hollering was giving me a headache so I put the knife to her good eye. “Scream again and I’ll pop your eye out!” Her wing buzzed and the stump where the other had been wiggled, but she kept quiet. I continued cutting while Derpy cried softly, doing her best to stifle her shrieks as I hacked blow by blow through her wing bone. When I was about half way through I stood up and stomped on the feathery appendage, shattering the already weakened limb. It hung on now only by a bit of skin, which I easily severed with my knife. Derpy was unconscious, her breathing shallow. I had to stop the bleeding soon or she would die, and I couldn’t have that. Derpy’s one good eye slowly opened. “What happened?” she slurred, “my wings hur…” I clamped my hand over her mouth before she could scream at the sight of the two cauterized stumps that used to be her “pretty wings”. She looked at me, her expression both sad and horrified, as if to ask “why?” “Well I couldn’t have my new test subject fly off on me!” I laughed, answering the unspoken question. “You belong to me now. I can do whatever I want to you.” She was trembling so hard it was shaking the table I had put her on. All the blood and fighting and screaming had left me substantially aroused. I decided to reinforce my dominance. I strapped Derpy’s forehooves down to the table and grabbed her back legs, spreading them. “Now it’s time for me to have some of your muffin,” I grinned. She was so tight I really had to force my way in. It was so snug it was almost painful, but after a few thrusts something gave a bit and blood began trickling out of her velvety-soft gash. It just made everything wetter. It felt amazing. Surprisingly she didn’t struggle, only wept and mumbled something about hurting her special place. I’ll admit I didn’t last very long, there was just so much stimulation. Just before I climaxed I pulled out, grabbed one of Derpy’s ears, and twisted. When she opened her mouth to scream I jammed my dick down her throat and came hard. She coughed and sputtered as some of my seed shot into her lungs. She was about to spit. The nerve! I backhanded her across the face. “YOU SWALLOW! YOU HEAR ME?” I bellowed at her. She shrunk back and obeyed. Now for the back door, I thought. Further ExperimentationFurther Experimentation It’s been five years since that fateful day when all my dreams came true. Krug and I eventually reconciled, though he was pretty pissed for a while regarding the whole ‘knocked out and thrown in a storage closet’ incident. I let him take credit for everything but Derpy and he got his bloody Nobel prize. As for the discovery of the ponies, the boys upstairs decided to give it the hush-hush treatment. My studies of Derpy confirmed my hypothesis: the equines are very similar to humans in constitution and intelligence (though as far as intelligence goes, Derpy is a bit of a special case), making them ideal test subjects when using humans would be unethical. Well, I suppose using the ponies is just as unethical, but nobody knows, so nobody cares. Once the head honchos realized how useful these creatures could be, they wanted more. That’s where Derpy really came into her own as my number one assistant and pet. Every day I punch in those same coordinates, and she goes through the wormhole. Sometimes she’s gone but a few minutes, sometimes a few days, but she always brings me back a few ponies. She seems to have gotten smarter – very good at tricking them into following her, especially the little fillies and colts. As soon as they step out of that dark portal the handlers get them. Each one is tagged, catalogued, and contained, ready to be used for one of my latest endeavors: teleportation. Funny thing: It's a hell of a lot easier to use a wormhole to travel interdimensionally than it is to use one to just teleport something from point A to point B in the same universe. We don’t know why, but this technology could revolutionize industries the world over, so they just keep showering us with cash and we just keep tweaking the system. My first attempt at an intradimensional teleportation was only twenty feet. That pony never came out the other end. So we tweaked the coordinates. The second pony came out the other end…sort of…it was more like she was sprayed out the other end. Oops! At this point, a few years later, some of them come out almost normal… But that’s not the only thing I’m working on. I have a rather lucrative business venture going on. Ask yourself this: who wouldn’t want a talking pony for a pet (or sex slave for some)? When I see one of the cuter looking ones, I take it home with me and sell it to some rich asshole. They are, of course, required to keep it secret, but yes, there are few dozen wealthy people out there with their own ponies to do with as they wish, be it treating them like royalty or raping and torturing. There’s something so torturable about the little equines. Their cuteness, the way they cower helplessly when you beat them, the forlorn little squeaks they make when you poke and prod them…and they don’t fight back. Well, most of them don’t. I learned that lesson the hard way when Derpy managed to lure her friend Rainbow Dash – that’s the other thing, they all have such adorable little names – into the lab. That one fought like a rabid Doberman – kicking, bucking, ramming into the handlers, trying to get back through the wormhole. It seemed like a lot of effort to go through for just one, admittedly beautiful, little pony, so I made the conflict less complicated by blowing her brains out. Anyway, that’s when we implemented the policy of grabbing them as soon as they stepped through. Given time to react some will fight to the death. Lesson learned. Today was a fairly typical day at the lab. Derpy brought back three little fillies. One of them, the tiny orange Pegasus with the purple mane, required some serious restraint. She was a fighter. The perfect one to try my new hormone on. We’ve had some success improving the quality of our teleportation returns by injecting the subjects with epinephrine, so Krug and I have spent the last few weeks working on a synthetic hormone that might solve the issues we’ve been having – missing limbs, missing organs, inside-out ponies, brain deads, etc. “Well hello, little…” I checked the nametag “…Scootaloo,” I said to the filly, “We’re going to give you a little shot, okay?” “Like buck you are! Let me out of here!” She rattled her cage and buzzed her wings, glaring at me. Uncooperative. “Somebody hand me the prod,” I said exasperatedly. One of the handlers offered up his cattle prod. “What’s that?” the little pony asked, “hey get it away from me hey st…” KZZZZAP KZZZAP KZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZAP The third time I stuck her she wet herself. She was in the furthest corner of the cage now, her spunky little attitude annihilated. “Aww, the big tough talker’s just a scared little filly willy now!” I mocked her. I could see the rage reignite in her eyes, and she charged at the cage door, bucking it open. “HEY WE GOT A LOOSE ONE!” I yelled. The handlers were on her in a second, getting their nooses around her legs and neck. She buzzed her wings like there was no tomorrow, but she wasn’t going anywhere. KZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZAP I jammed her long and hard in the stomach. She collapsed and soiled herself, tears of fear and shame rolling down her cheeks. The other two fillies that Derpy had brought with her looked on in horror from their cages. From what little Derpy had told me about them I gathered that they were friends. “Alright,” I said into my tape recorder, “synthetic hormone test number one, subject number one, name…” damnit I’d already forgotten the name, “…um we’ll just call her Puddles because she pees and shits herself.” The handlers all laughed. The orange Pegasus began to cry. I injected her with the hormone solution. “Alright Puddles, time to teleport you. Krug! Punch in the numbers. This might…” I heard a snapping noise behind me and suddenly I was floored. She’d broken through the restraints and somehow used her tiny little body to knock me, a fully grown man, to the ground. I turned over to look at her. An expression of absolute fury contorted her face. The whites of her eyes had gone red from burst capillaries. “MY NAME IS SCOOTALOO YOU BASTARD! I’M GON…gonna…gonna…guh…” She collapsed, dead. “I think we just fried her brain,” Krug said. Fuck. Another failure. I pushed the button on my recorder again. “Hormone EP 1.0 is fatal to test subject one. Will commence a second test at a lower dosage.” I looked at the two remaining fillies, but their eyes were on their friend. Blood was leaking out of every orifice of her body. Odds were it wouldn’t end much better for the second one, but as a scientist I had to test at least once more to confirm that the hormone was useless. Sigh. None of the fillies even made it to the teleporter today. We tried halving the dosage on the next one, and then halving it again, but to no avail. It essentially acted like some kind of super-adrenaline, causing fits of rage and fried pony brains. Exhausted and disappointed I came home, had a few drinks, beat Derpy, and passed out. Back to the drawing board.
Acquire TargetThe Muffin Man Acquire Target “My God…my God Carmichael…we did it!” my partner said in astonishment, staring in awe at the gaping wormhole in front of us. Years of research and experimentation had led us to this point. “No Krug,” I laughed, “I did it.” It was true. I was the one who had designed the cold fusion reactor that provided the power to take a miniscule quantum wormhole and expand it to a size large enough for a human to step through. Krug looked at me with fire in his eyes. “So you’re playing that card? You’d do that to me? We could share a Nobel Prize for this! I’ve worked just as hard as you! I’ve…what in the world are you doing Carmichael?!” “I’m attaching a silencer to my HK,” I told him bluntly, “that way nobody will hear me kill you.” “Wait wait wait wait!” he began to panic, “you can have it, you can have it all! All the credit! I…” I pointed the gun at his head. “It’s not about that Krug…I could give a fuck who gets credit for this…I have my own agenda…now you have two choices: punch in these coordinates,” I handed him a piece of paper with a very specific set of numbers on it; if my hypothesis was correct it would take me right where I needed to go, “or, alternatively, I could blow your brains out and get the janitor to do it.” “ARE YOU MAD? This is an experiment! You could drastically alter the very fabric of the universe by using that thing! You could kill us all! We don’t even know if it will work yet!” He was hysterical. “I cannot let you do this!” “I knew you’d say something stupid like that, hence the gun to your head” I shoved the barrel up against his temple. Sweat was forming on his brow. “I’m going through, one way or the other…you can either die now, or roll the dice and punch in the fucking coordinates!” That’s all I can tell you about how I got to where I was going, because that’s all I remember. Apparently interdimensional travel causes a bit of retrograde amnesia. I don’t remember the journey…and maybe that’s for the best…I can’t imagine that rocketing through spacetime is a pleasant experience. All I know is that I was right. I ended up exactly where I wanted. It was a rather cold and cloudy day there. I threw off my lab coat and pulled a sweater out of my large camping pack. It was a silly looking sweater, but it had a purpose. I also took out my tranquilizer gun and loaded it up with M-99 darts. I hoped I had guessed correctly regarding the dosages…I didn’t want to kill any of them…though I had no qualms about doing it if I had to. My brief presence here could not be known…I had one target, one objective, and then I was out, and the goddesses couldn’t know or they would come for me after they realized what I took. I was not such a fool that I thought I could outsmart or fight them. When I reached the edge of town I hid behind a gnarled old tree, surveying the landscape, gauging the difficulty of my little mission. Fortunately I had the weather on my side; not many ponies were out and about. There were two though that I could see, bundled up and enjoying coffee together on a bench not twenty feet from me. This was better than I could’ve hoped for. It was as if the gods were just handing me this one. As I took aim I had to stifle a little snicker. The way that mint green pony sat was hilarious. She loved humans I knew, and her attempt to contort her equine form into a normal sitting posture made her look quite ridiculous. For a moment I considered taking her instead, it would be so easy given the circumstance…but no, I had worked too long and too diligently to make a snap decision at this point. The two ponies were conversing animatedly and laughing. This was good; I waited. When the cream colored one with the pink and purple mane turned her head to kiss the green unicorn I fired. Dammit! The dart hit her in the neck but I had clearly missed her jugular as she had enough time to turn around to see where the strange object had come from. Right before the M-99 took effect our eyes met. She’d seen me. That was bad. For her anyway. The other pony whipped her head around too and met my gaze as I closed the gap between us. Her expression was one of awe and terror. “They are real…” she mumbled. Before she could ask any stupid questions I unholstered my silenced HK and shot Bonbon’s uncounscious body in the shoulder and then pointed it at the anesthetized pony’s head. Lyra opened her mouth to scream but I clamped my hand over her face, keeping the gun pointed at Bonbon. “Make a noise or disobey me and the next one goes in her head.” The unicorn began to tremble, tears streaming down her cheeks as she watched her lover bleed, but she kept silent. “If you do as I ask, I’ll let her live,” I told her in my matter-of-fact way. Lyra simply nodded. "Go find Derpy Hooves. Tell her the Muffin Man is here. Speak to no one else, understand?” She nodded again, still mute. She took one last look at her marefriend and went galloping off. I was about ninety percent sure that Bonbon wouldn’t recall any of this or be able to identify me, but I couldn’t take that risk. As soon as Lyra was out of earshot I dragged the unconscious pony behind the old gnarly tree and put two more bullets in her chest and one in her head. It might seem like overkill, but as a scientist I am a fan of absolute certainty. The bullet must have lodged itself somewhere in her motor cortex because the body was twitching and jerking. Another two shots made it still. “The Muffin Man!” Derpy grinned stupidly, “You really do exist! Oh do you know the muffin man the muffin man the muffin man…” She began singing. Convincing her I was the aforementioned mythical figure was simple to the point of elegance: my silly sweater (I told you it had a purpose) was covered in muffins. That, along with a proffered blueberry confection was all it took for Derpy to trust me completely. Her little daughter Dinky, who happened to be with her when Lyra returned with my target, was not so trusting. She saw the blood on the ground and the worry that contorted Lyra’s face and knew there was something wrong here. “Where’s Bonbon?” Lyra whimpered, though under and behind her fear I could hear demand. This one would fight me if she had cause to. “Come with me,” I told Lyra, “Derpy you wait here. I need to talk to Lyra, and then I’ll take you to where all the muffins are made!” I smiled at the dopey Pegasus. She clapped her hooves, jumping for joy. “Oh boy Oh boy I can’t wait!” Lyra cautiously followed me over to where I had stashed BonBon’s body in the trees. When she saw her marefriend lying dead on the ground she didn’t even scream, she fell to her knees sobbing, holding the carcass tight, kissing its bloodstained face. After wailing all the usual ridiculous responses to a dead loved one (No! Bonbon! Bonbon! Please wake up! You can’t leave me! I love you! Blah blah blah) she looked at me. “You lied to me!” she sobbed, crestfallen, “You said you’d let her…” THWACK! THWACK! I quickly drew my pistol and put two slugs in her head: one in each eye. Unfortunately those were my last two, and she wasn’t dead. I gotta remember to check the clip more often. Lyra was holding her eyes and emitting an unnatural sound. “EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!” the high pitched shriek sounded like nothing I’d ever heard before. I did the only thing I could think of and brought my foot down on her head, crushing her skull. Her legs flailed about frantically for a minute, then she was still. The body convulsed one last time and voided its bowels. I wiped the blood off my shoe using Bonbon’s tail, then came round the tree and returned to Derpy who, like a child expecting a Christmas present, was bouncing up and down singing the muffin man song. Dinky looked very worried and was trying to catch her mother’s attention, to no avail. However when Derpy saw me, she stopped hopping and singing and grinned even wider, her tongue hanging out of her mouth. “What was all that noise?” She asked, not at all concerned, just curious. “Nothing!” I smiled. “Okay! Can we go to the muffin place now?” I led the dotty mare and her filly into the woods, where the wormhole swirled and crackled. Derpy gasped excitedly. “Is that the door to the muffin place, Muffin Man?” “Oh yes Derpy, that’s the door to the muffin place.” My smile stretched from ear to ear.
Dinky TroubleDinky Trouble You don’t see a lot of scientists who know how to handle a snatch and grab operation and leave no witnesses, but I wasn’t always a lab geek. I’ve been many things, but it was only when I discovered the existence of the equines that I found my true calling. I stopped dicking around in grad school and eventually got my doctorates in both theoretical physics – the only route I could think of that might grant me access to other realms – and biology – which would give me the tools I needed to make a proper study of a new species. Now I’d done it. I didn’t give a fuck that I had probably revolutionized energy production by successfully harnessing the power of cold fusion, or that I’d created the first functioning wormhole; all that mattered was my true interest: to capture one of these strange creatures. I’d selected the wall-eyed one for various reasons. For starters I knew she’d be easy to lure back to my lab, and secondly she was probably the only one dumb enough to trust me. The fact that I had also obtained her foal was an immense bonus, both because she was a different subspecies, and because I had an extra in case my primary subject failed. Once again the details of my return to the lab through the wormhole are foggy. That amnesia effect is quite frustrating. The first thing I remember is Krug. “Christ Carmichael! It’s been eight days, I thought you were gone for good!” “Time is relative, Johnathan, I only experienced an hour or so. Oh and sorry about threatening to kill you, but I couldn’t have my plans defeated by a bald moron with moral qualms.” He didn’t seem to catch that last, or was too excited to care. “This is unbelievable! Where did you go? What was the travel like? Did you bring anything back?” “I went to another dimension, the travel sucks, and yes, in fact, I brought two things back.” I unshouldered my pack and lifted the top flap. A smiling face popped out, accompanied shortly thereafter by a smaller, very worried looking one.” “My God, what are they?” Krug marveled. “Equine creatures of some sort…” “They’re adorable!” Krug was probably the most buttoned-down, straight laced, unemotional person I knew, so I found it amusing how taken he was by the little ponies. They were indeed little. Derpy stood maybe three and a half feet tall, while Dinky was hardly bigger than a house cat. “What are you going to do with them?” he asked, his tone suddenly suspicious. “The same thing we do with all new phenomena,” I said in what I like to think was a sage sounding voice, “scrutinize, test, extrapolate…” “You’re not considering harming these creatures?” His eyes were wide. Dinky was cowering now, clearly understanding her circumstances. Derpy was still smiling like an idiot. “Krug, you don’t want to know.” “I cannot allow you to…” he shut up as I reached for my pistol. His head in his hands he beseeched me; “by god Carmichael I know it’s for the sake of science, but have you no soul? Look at the poor creatures…” “Johnny, I’ll offer you this opportunity once, and only once. Either leave now and take your morality with you, or join me and become legend.” I knew how badly John Krug wanted a nobel prize, how close he had come before. I believe cold fusion, a wormhole, interdimensional travel, and the discovery of an alien species might bump us up toward that award. A smile slowly crept across his face…until he met Dinky’s eyes again. “No, I cannot be responsible for destroying such innocence. I believe, my friend, we have reached a parting of ways, I have no choice but to…” THWAP I hit him square in the jugular with a dart. M-99 works just as well on humans as animals. I didn’t want to kill Krug…he was after all my partner and I probably wouldn’t have been able to construct the wormhole without him, but I couldn’t let him fuck up my carefully laid plans. I dragged him into the utility closet and locked it. The janitor would find him tomorrow morning. He’d be just fine. My pack rustled and something went darting out from it. Apparently Dinky had had enough of this scene and decided to risk an escape, making a beeline for the wide open exit. She must’ve thought she was home free, leaping toward the threshold of the door. That’s when I hit the emergency shutter swtich. The heavy steel security doors were designed to stop the spread of contaminants in case of an accident. I supposed that’s what they were doing now in a sense… Dammit. Dinky was even smarter than I thought. Her horn glowed, lighting up the dropping door with a pink aura, stalling it for the split second she needed to dodge it’s crushing force. It would’ve cut her in half, but instead only caught her tail. Still, she was stopped. I reloaded my tranquilizer gun and hit the shutter button again, ready to take her down. What I saw both alarmed and impressed me. Dinky was gone. Lying in a small pool of blood was her tail and the little chunk of pony meat and skin that had been ripped off with it. “DINKYYYYY!!!” Derpy yelled in sudden panic. The dolt had finally realized to some degree what was going on. “Muffin Man why you hurt Dinky? Dinky’s a good filly! Dinky deserves muffins!” “It was Dinky’s fault,” I told the bewildered mare. “Oh…really?” "Yes." “Oh…okay…she’ll be okay right?” “Yes, she will,” I smiled at Derpy. “Now have a muffin!” “MUFFIN!” The second she bent down to eat the confection I snapped my foot upside her chin, knocking her unconscious. I put two darts in her flank as well, just as a precaution, then I locked up the lab and reloaded my tranq gun yet again. I had a filly to find.
Lost and Found Thank god it was late…I wasn’t quite sure of the time – the bloody wormhole had stopped my watch – but it was late enough that most of the other researchers had gone home. If somebody else found an adorable little unicorn with a bleeding rump and saw my crazy ass chasing after it I don’t know what the fuck would happen. I stalked the halls slowly, tranq gun in one hand, freshly loaded pistol in the other. I wanted to catch the little filly, but I’d maim or kill her if it was necessary. Derpy was my real prize, Dinky was just an added bonus that was quickly becoming a nuisance. In her last act of desperation the little unicorn had certainly made herself easy to track. A tiny trail of blood spatter from her severed tail led me through the winding halls and corridors. It ended at the door to the women’s lavatory. The door had blood smeared on it; she had charged right through it. I peeked through the door cautiously. Dammit “It’s okay little one,” I heard a feminine voice coo, “nobody’s going to hurt you anymore.” Somebody had found her. I could hear Dinky’s soft little whines coming from the last stall on the right. I took off my boots and eased the door open so as not to make a sound. “It’s alright sweetie, we’ll get you some help right away,” I heard the voice continue. WHAM! I kicked the stall door open. A slender, red-headed woman was holding the filly tightly, comforting her. My silenced pistol emitted another slapping sound as I put two in her skull, spraying Dinky with blood. She screamed but the terrified howl was cut short as I kicked her in the ribs, knocking the wind out of her. She recovered surprisingly quickly and ran, but a dart to the back of the head put her out. I put away my tranquilizer gun and my pistol and knelt down, looking at what was left of Tina, our receptionist. The bullets had blown massive exit wounds out the back of her skull. What a fucking mess. The nice thing about working in a top secret government laboratory is that if you need to get rid of something, it’s not all that hard. I cleaned up the blood and then carried Tina’s limp body to the disposal room. This was a place intended for hazardous waste and other nasty things, and because of that the shaft was one-way – if you went in there, you were locked in, so it wasn’t as if anyone would be crawling down there looking for bodies. I dropped Tina through the one-way shoot doors, hearing a muted but satisfying crunch when she hit the bottom. I never liked her anyway. Now I had to deal with Dinky. I went back to the bathroom and retrieved her limp body and carried it back to my lab. Derpy was still unconscious, lying on the floor bleeding out of her mouth. Both ponies were out cold. I’d have to wait a while to begin my experiments.
Mother Daughter TimeMother Daughter Time I use the term “experiments” quite loosely…but then again I am a sociopath. I recognized this about myself during an abnormal psychology class years ago. I’m not entirely devoid of emotions, but when it comes to things like blowing out a coworker’s brains in a bathroom stall, I feel nothing. As a scientist, being a monster is somewhat of an asset in many cases; I can remain completely objective and empirical most of the time without regard for the plight of test subjects (oh you wouldn’t believe what the government lets us do to people). I can ruthlessly take whatever I want. That’s how I got my career to the point it is today: by screwing over countless colleagues, destroying their dreams to advance my own. At this point in time, however, I was full of emotion – rage to be precise. That bloody foal had almost cost me my career and, if anyone had seen me kill Tina, my freedom. I decided that Dinky was disposable…I could work with Derpy alone. As soon as the wall-eyed mare and her filly were restrained in my lab, I went and found the janitor. If ever an odd fellow I’d met! The janitor had a PhD in astrophysics and a medical doctorate, yet he chose to work for ten dollars an hour. I’d once asked him about it, and he said to me in a Shakespearian accent “I giveth not one fuck.” I respected that. I was also happy that he demanded no explanation when I asked to borrow his sledge-axe. He just chuckled, “Another experiment Carmichael?” “Oh yes…do you want to join me?,” I asked, “I could use someone well versed in medicine.” “Carmichael, knowing you, I want nothing to do with it” he laughed, “Just bring that hammer back to me when you’re done doing whatever the fuck it is you’re doing.” “Absolutely.” “Muffin Man?” “Yes…?” “Is Dinky gonna be okay?” Derpy was finally showing signs of real worry insofar as her simple mind could comprehend the circumstances. “She’ll be fine!” I lied, “we just have to wait for her to wake up. Have a muffin!” I crammed another blueberry muffin in the idiot mare’s mouth. She smiled as she chewed and then swallowed. “Mmm,” Derpy emitted a hearty noise of satisfaction. “Sorry for being a worry wart, Muffin Man, but I love little Dinky and I get scared for her.” As if on some cosmic sort of cue, dinky slowly came to. The ponies were trussed up on two dissection tables, facing eachother. My first experiment was to be a psychological one. Though I’m not a psychologist, I am fascinated by what people – or in this case ponies – do in desperate situations. Do they maintain their dignity like the band that played on the Titanic while it was sinking, or do they die kicking and screaming? “Mommy? MOMMY!” Dinky started bawling the instant she woke up, “he’s not the Muffin Man mommy! He’s a bad man! We have to run away! I want to run away! I’m scared mommy!” Derpy looked at me, concern slowly contorting her features. “Are you a bad man?” “Nope!” I laughed “See, Dinky? He’s not a bad man!” “He’s lying! He killed Miss Lyra and Miss Bonbon and the nice lady!” “Did you do that?!” Derpy was aghast. “Nope! Your daughter is lying to you. She’s being a bad filly. The Muffin Man would never lie.” “He’s right!” Derpy was angry now, “He’s the Muffin Man! He wouldn’t lie! Bad Dinky!” she raised her voice at her daughter, who let out a frightened, frustrated whine. “Mommy you don’t understand…” “Shush!” I clapped my hand over her mouth, “or you’ll end up like ‘Miss Lyra’.” Her eyes widened and a fresh wave of tears cascaded down her cheeks, but she was silent. Now I could begin my experiments. I undid Derpy’s restraints…all but one: a cuff attached to her hind leg which connected to a wire. I explained very carefully to Derpy the gravity of the situation. “See that?” I pointed to the cuff. “Yup!” “It triggers a bomb if you pull on it. Can you guess where the bomb is?” She began to look genuinely frightened now, as if her brain was finally saying “this doesn’t add up…” “Where?” “In Dinky!” I smiled, pointing to a crudely stitched up incision in the little filly’s belly. “If you try to run or fight, you’ll pull the cord and she will die. We all will.” Derpy’s tears were pooling on the floor at this point. “Why?! Why hurt Dinky? Dinky is a good filly!” I just laughed and began undoing the foal’s restraints. I’d decided she was too smart and I had no intention of keeping her, so it was only natural that I have a bit of fun while disposing of her. I was also dying to know what Derpy would do to save her little one. I unzipped my pants and pulled out my throbbing member, lowering Dinky onto it like a sex toy. Hell, she was about the same size as one. I didn’t aim for a particular hole, I just jammed myself into her rear. Her perineum tore like wet paper, leaving one gaping hole for me to pound. She squealed and kicked. I laughed. Her little filly hoovsies were softer than pillows. I felt like I was getting a free massage! I continued to plow her, watching the blood squirt out her tight hole every time I jammed it. “Dinky! DINKY!” Derpy had finally caught on to the fact that bad things were happening. She tried to run to her daughter, but stopped short when the restraint around her ankle went taught. “Remember what happens if you pull that wire out?” I grinned. Derpy let out a mournful howl, reaching out to her screaming little foal. Her terror was palpable, yet she did nothing but sob. Clearly I had to do something more drastic. I threw Dinky on the floor, a pool of blood quickly accumulating around her as her anus bled profusely. I intended on stomping her to death, but despite being in excruciating pain, she got up and tried to run. Not this again. I hit the emergency shutters before she was even half way to the door. She was moving so fast that she plowed into the steel gate at full speed, shattering her tiny horn. The long, guttural howl that followed could’ve woken the dead. She fell to the ground, kicking and hollering, clutching her splintered horn. I simply watched in fascination. To my surprise she eventually got up again pounding her hooves on the door and screaming. “Mommy! Mommy we have to go! Mommy!” The expression on Derpy’s face was one of horror and helplessness. Her little Dinky was but ten feet away, yet if she ran to the unicorn it would trip the bomb and kill the mangled filly instantly. What I saw next amazed me. Derpy began biting at her own leg…no, not biting, chomping. She was trying to sever the restrained hoof that she might save Dinky. I grabbed the foal and threw her into the center of the lab. She got up to run again, but this time I was prepared. I brought the janitor’s sledge-axe down on her head as hard as I could. Her skull caved in like a ripe cantaloupe. Though I’d hit Dinky hard enough to kill her instantaneously, she wasn’t dead because I’d missed the mark by a bit. Only one side of her head was smashed, the axe pinning her to the floor. Her back legs whipped about frantically for a minute. I could see a faint, faint glow around the axe as she tried to magick it away with her destroyed horn, yet it would not budge. Her little front hoovsies were sliding about in the pool of blood around her head as she desperately tried to pull herself out from under the massive sledge-axe. I wasn’t sure if it was consciousness or reflexive reaction to trauma, but she pushed and pulled trying to free her crushed skull. As the blood pool reached her back legs, she slipped, now flat on her stomach. At that point she lost all composure and her legs began flailing again. Gradually but surely her movements slowed down and disintegrated into twitching. A soft wheeze of a death rattle and a release of the bowels told me she was gone… “Dinky! DINKYYYYYY!” Her mother cried. She ran to her foal, and the wire attached to her leg went taught and then disengaged. Derpy closed her eyes, but nothing happened. “Your bomb didn’t work Muffin Man!” She glared at me, cradling Dinky’s broken body and sobbing. “What bomb?” I posed the question, “you think I know how to build a bomb? There wasn’t one, you were just dumb enough to believe me when I said there was. You could’ve saved little Dinky at any time…” I wish I’d had a camera with me so I could show you the look on Derpy’s face.
The Perfect Pet To say that Derpy was broken would be an understatement. She lay on the ground, heaving sobs wracking her body as she cradled what was left of Dinky. “It’s all my fault!” She lamented. Of course it wasn’t; she’d had no idea that I was bluffing about the bomb and therefore her failure to save her daughter was no fault of hers. But the dotty blond mare wasn’t smart enough to construct such a line of reasoning. She blamed herself. “I’m sorry Dinky! I’m sorry! Mommy’s so sorry!” the Pegasus moaned to the mangled corpse. The tighter she hugged her foal’s remains, the more blood poured out. After one particularly tight squeeze one of Dinky’s eyes fell to the floor with a splat, eliciting a fresh wave of sorrow from Derpy. This was getting messy. I leaned down and attempted to grab the carcass from her lest she make more of a mess, but she held fast. “NO! NO! Not my Dinky! Don’t take her away Muffin Man please!” I considered beating her but a more interesting idea came to me before I could raise my hand. I rifled through my pack and found them: a whole bag of muffins. I hid them behind my back. “Derpy, please give me that body before you make a bigger mess!” “NO! She’s not a body don’t call her that! She’s my Dinky! Her name is Dinky!” the blonde mare cried. “If you give her to me, you can have this whole bag of muffins!” She looked at the bag, then back to Dinky, then the bag, then back. I could see the raging mental conflict play out across her facial features. Finally she hugged her filly one more time and then held the broken creature out for me to take. She almost wouldn’t let go. I handed her the bag of muffins. Instantly she regretted the trade and fresh tears burst forth while she crammed the muffins in her mouth, as if they might assuage the pain and self-hatred that filled her soul. “Wh…what are you going to d-do with Dinky?” She managed to eke out the words. I let my actions speak for themselves, walking over to the lab’s sink. I crammed the tiny body down the industrial strength garbage disposal and turned it on. The rumbling growl of the machine was punctuated by the sounds of snapping bones and tearing skin, a dissonant soundscape that acted like a backing track for Derpy’s howls of anguish. My little experiment with Dinky and Derpy had proven correct a postulate of mine: these equines were intelligent creatures capable of human-like thought and emotion. In short, they would make the best test subjects in those truly horrible endeavors for which not even the men upstairs would allow us to use human subjects. Those sorts of tests that governments deny performing…the ones even the soulless men I worked for felt sick about. “I wanna go home!” Derpy interrupted my train of thought, “I wanna see Lyra and Bonbon and Rainbow! Please Muffin Man, I don’t like this place!” she begged me. Somehow she still spoke to me as if I were a friend. Had she not just seen me kill her daughter? Her egocentrism was childlike – everything that happened she perceived as a result of her own actions. In her mind, it wasn’t that I had killed Dinky, It was that Derpy had failed to save her. This creature would make a fascinating case study for any psychologist. “You’d make a good pet,” I mused out loud. Derpy just stared at me in confusion, her eyes moving in opposite directions. I could use other ponies as test subjects…Derpy I wanted to keep. She was smart enough to follow directions and dumb enough not to question them. There was just one problem. Her wings. I couldn’t have her flying away on me. In fact as these thoughts skittered through my mind she had already begun to fly about the room, looking for a way out. I surreptitiously made my way over to the tool cabinet and grabbed the lopping shears that we used to cut bundles of copper wire and other such things. I hid them behind my back. The lab was already a mess, so I figured I might as well do this now. “Derpy, do you want another muffin?”
WingsWings Damn she was fast. The second she saw the loppers she dodged under me and flew up to the ceiling, hovering by the ventilation duct. That’s when she saw it: her way out. With a mighty, adrenaline-fueled buck she kicked the grating off and clamored up into the ventilation system. I could hear her moving through the ceiling. If she found the main shaft she could escape. I couldn’t risk that. I pulled out my pistol and began firing at the source of the noise. Suddenly the sounds of movement stopped and I heard a groan of pain. I kept my HK aimed and ready until I was sure she wasn’t going anywhere “First my sledge-axe and now a ladder? What are you doing, construction?” the janitor was puzzled. “I just need it for a minute.” “Hey, as long as I don’t know what you’re doing, you can borrow anything you want…” I took the ladder back to the lab and used it to climb up into the ducts. I crawled on my stomach about ten feet and then turned a corner. There she was. My bullet had caught her in the flank, nothing vital was hit, but she seemed to have just fallen and given up, lying on the cold sheet metal and breathing heavily. Her eyes were shut tight and she kept wincing in pain. She didn’t struggle when I grabbed her and dragged her back down into the lab and laid her on one of the tables. “Wha…Wha…WAIT! What are you going to do with those?” Derpy eyed the loppers fearfully. “Just trust me, this won’t hurt a bit.” “O…Okay…” I positioned the powerful shears at the base of her left wing. She was trembling now, but for some reason she really trusted me. I closed the shears as hard as I could and heard two very loud noises. The first was a sickening snap as the bone broke and the wing was severed. The second was a shriek of pain. Derpy bucked, sending me stumbling backwards, and then ran, her remaining wing buzzing furiously. She tried to climb up the ladder, but I caught her by the tail and threw her to the floor. Before she could right herself I brought my boot down on her back, knocking the wind out of her. I flipped the incapacitated pony over onto her stomach and began punching her in the face. “YOU. ARE. A. BAD. BAD. PONY!” each word was accompanied by a fist to the nose. When I was done there was a steady trickle of blood from one nostril and her right eye was swollen shut. I had dropped the shears but if I went to get them she might run. I pulled out my pocket knife and snapped it open. “NO NO NO NO NO!” she sobbed, “please not my wings! Not my pretty wings! What did I do Muffin Man? What did I…NOOOO!” I brought the blade down once, twice, three times, a fourth time…it was dull and the wing wasn’t coming off easily. Derpy’s hollering was giving me a headache so I put the knife to her good eye. “Scream again and I’ll pop your eye out!” Her wing buzzed and the stump where the other had been wiggled, but she kept quiet. I continued cutting while Derpy cried softly, doing her best to stifle her shrieks as I hacked blow by blow through her wing bone. When I was about half way through I stood up and stomped on the feathery appendage, shattering the already weakened limb. It hung on now only by a bit of skin, which I easily severed with my knife. Derpy was unconscious, her breathing shallow. I had to stop the bleeding soon or she would die, and I couldn’t have that. Derpy’s one good eye slowly opened. “What happened?” she slurred, “my wings hur…” I clamped my hand over her mouth before she could scream at the sight of the two cauterized stumps that used to be her “pretty wings”. She looked at me, her expression both sad and horrified, as if to ask “why?” “Well I couldn’t have my new test subject fly off on me!” I laughed, answering the unspoken question. “You belong to me now. I can do whatever I want to you.” She was trembling so hard it was shaking the table I had put her on. All the blood and fighting and screaming had left me substantially aroused. I decided to reinforce my dominance. I strapped Derpy’s forehooves down to the table and grabbed her back legs, spreading them. “Now it’s time for me to have some of your muffin,” I grinned. She was so tight I really had to force my way in. It was so snug it was almost painful, but after a few thrusts something gave a bit and blood began trickling out of her velvety-soft gash. It just made everything wetter. It felt amazing. Surprisingly she didn’t struggle, only wept and mumbled something about hurting her special place. I’ll admit I didn’t last very long, there was just so much stimulation. Just before I climaxed I pulled out, grabbed one of Derpy’s ears, and twisted. When she opened her mouth to scream I jammed my dick down her throat and came hard. She coughed and sputtered as some of my seed shot into her lungs. She was about to spit. The nerve! I backhanded her across the face. “YOU SWALLOW! YOU HEAR ME?” I bellowed at her. She shrunk back and obeyed. Now for the back door, I thought.
Further ExperimentationFurther Experimentation It’s been five years since that fateful day when all my dreams came true. Krug and I eventually reconciled, though he was pretty pissed for a while regarding the whole ‘knocked out and thrown in a storage closet’ incident. I let him take credit for everything but Derpy and he got his bloody Nobel prize. As for the discovery of the ponies, the boys upstairs decided to give it the hush-hush treatment. My studies of Derpy confirmed my hypothesis: the equines are very similar to humans in constitution and intelligence (though as far as intelligence goes, Derpy is a bit of a special case), making them ideal test subjects when using humans would be unethical. Well, I suppose using the ponies is just as unethical, but nobody knows, so nobody cares. Once the head honchos realized how useful these creatures could be, they wanted more. That’s where Derpy really came into her own as my number one assistant and pet. Every day I punch in those same coordinates, and she goes through the wormhole. Sometimes she’s gone but a few minutes, sometimes a few days, but she always brings me back a few ponies. She seems to have gotten smarter – very good at tricking them into following her, especially the little fillies and colts. As soon as they step out of that dark portal the handlers get them. Each one is tagged, catalogued, and contained, ready to be used for one of my latest endeavors: teleportation. Funny thing: It's a hell of a lot easier to use a wormhole to travel interdimensionally than it is to use one to just teleport something from point A to point B in the same universe. We don’t know why, but this technology could revolutionize industries the world over, so they just keep showering us with cash and we just keep tweaking the system. My first attempt at an intradimensional teleportation was only twenty feet. That pony never came out the other end. So we tweaked the coordinates. The second pony came out the other end…sort of…it was more like she was sprayed out the other end. Oops! At this point, a few years later, some of them come out almost normal… But that’s not the only thing I’m working on. I have a rather lucrative business venture going on. Ask yourself this: who wouldn’t want a talking pony for a pet (or sex slave for some)? When I see one of the cuter looking ones, I take it home with me and sell it to some rich asshole. They are, of course, required to keep it secret, but yes, there are few dozen wealthy people out there with their own ponies to do with as they wish, be it treating them like royalty or raping and torturing. There’s something so torturable about the little equines. Their cuteness, the way they cower helplessly when you beat them, the forlorn little squeaks they make when you poke and prod them…and they don’t fight back. Well, most of them don’t. I learned that lesson the hard way when Derpy managed to lure her friend Rainbow Dash – that’s the other thing, they all have such adorable little names – into the lab. That one fought like a rabid Doberman – kicking, bucking, ramming into the handlers, trying to get back through the wormhole. It seemed like a lot of effort to go through for just one, admittedly beautiful, little pony, so I made the conflict less complicated by blowing her brains out. Anyway, that’s when we implemented the policy of grabbing them as soon as they stepped through. Given time to react some will fight to the death. Lesson learned. Today was a fairly typical day at the lab. Derpy brought back three little fillies. One of them, the tiny orange Pegasus with the purple mane, required some serious restraint. She was a fighter. The perfect one to try my new hormone on. We’ve had some success improving the quality of our teleportation returns by injecting the subjects with epinephrine, so Krug and I have spent the last few weeks working on a synthetic hormone that might solve the issues we’ve been having – missing limbs, missing organs, inside-out ponies, brain deads, etc. “Well hello, little…” I checked the nametag “…Scootaloo,” I said to the filly, “We’re going to give you a little shot, okay?” “Like buck you are! Let me out of here!” She rattled her cage and buzzed her wings, glaring at me. Uncooperative. “Somebody hand me the prod,” I said exasperatedly. One of the handlers offered up his cattle prod. “What’s that?” the little pony asked, “hey get it away from me hey st…” KZZZZAP KZZZAP KZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZAP The third time I stuck her she wet herself. She was in the furthest corner of the cage now, her spunky little attitude annihilated. “Aww, the big tough talker’s just a scared little filly willy now!” I mocked her. I could see the rage reignite in her eyes, and she charged at the cage door, bucking it open. “HEY WE GOT A LOOSE ONE!” I yelled. The handlers were on her in a second, getting their nooses around her legs and neck. She buzzed her wings like there was no tomorrow, but she wasn’t going anywhere. KZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZAP I jammed her long and hard in the stomach. She collapsed and soiled herself, tears of fear and shame rolling down her cheeks. The other two fillies that Derpy had brought with her looked on in horror from their cages. From what little Derpy had told me about them I gathered that they were friends. “Alright,” I said into my tape recorder, “synthetic hormone test number one, subject number one, name…” damnit I’d already forgotten the name, “…um we’ll just call her Puddles because she pees and shits herself.” The handlers all laughed. The orange Pegasus began to cry. I injected her with the hormone solution. “Alright Puddles, time to teleport you. Krug! Punch in the numbers. This might…” I heard a snapping noise behind me and suddenly I was floored. She’d broken through the restraints and somehow used her tiny little body to knock me, a fully grown man, to the ground. I turned over to look at her. An expression of absolute fury contorted her face. The whites of her eyes had gone red from burst capillaries. “MY NAME IS SCOOTALOO YOU BASTARD! I’M GON…gonna…gonna…guh…” She collapsed, dead. “I think we just fried her brain,” Krug said. Fuck. Another failure. I pushed the button on my recorder again. “Hormone EP 1.0 is fatal to test subject one. Will commence a second test at a lower dosage.” I looked at the two remaining fillies, but their eyes were on their friend. Blood was leaking out of every orifice of her body. Odds were it wouldn’t end much better for the second one, but as a scientist I had to test at least once more to confirm that the hormone was useless. Sigh. None of the fillies even made it to the teleporter today. We tried halving the dosage on the next one, and then halving it again, but to no avail. It essentially acted like some kind of super-adrenaline, causing fits of rage and fried pony brains. Exhausted and disappointed I came home, had a few drinks, beat Derpy, and passed out. Back to the drawing board.
