The Muffin Man

The 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.