My Little Scootaloo

     It’s a hard thing to touch the heart of a psychopath. That is what I am, and I’ve never had any regrets.

     I awoke in the dead of the night, still pretty damn drunk. It was the middle of summer. Scoot wasn’t curled up beside me like usual – she had long since grown too large to sleep at the head of the couch under my pillow, and had begun sleeping next to me, but tonight she wasn’t in her usual spot. I looked out the sliding glass doors to the patio, and there, silhouetted against a hunter’s moon was the little pony – relatively little, anyway. At the age of 14 she was physically matured, standing about three and a half feet. I wanted to have another drink and go back to sleep, but something, I didn’t know what, made me stagger to my feet to go join her.

     “Hi Dad,” she said without looking at me. Her voice had dropped an octave since she hit puberty; it was low and raspy yet feminine…think Tara Reid or Fairuza Balk.

     “What are you doing, Scoots?”

     “Thinking…”

     “About what?” I was genuinely curious.

     “You haven’t touched me in a while.” It was true; I’d been drinking so much lately that I’d scarcely been coherent enough to raise a hand at her.

     “Little Scootie misses her playtime?” I condescended to her. She was silent for a long time, but at length she spoke.

     “We’re all we have…”

     “What do you mean?”

     “You have no friends, you have no lover. I have nothing but you, whatever you may do to me…”

     “Your point?” I took a swig of gin…this conversation was getting weird, even by my standards. I didn’t feel right.

     “Do you love me?” Her words were slow, deliberate, and careful…clearly premeditated. I was dumbfounded. I felt really funny.

     “I…”

     “Do you love me?” She turned around, her violet eyes were smoldering, full of anger, confusion, and something I couldn’t put my finger on. “You may have broken me but you’ve never killed me…you patch me up, you keep me around; you use me and abuse me but you’ve never let me die and every night we lie together…do you not love me?” She didn’t wait for an answer. “I…I don’t know how to say it because everything this world has ever taught me says it’s wrong but it feels so right and…I can’t…I need…” she paused, her gaze was momentarily distant, but then it snapped back into mine, fire raging within those purple orbs. She lunged forward, pinning me to my chair, her lips meeting mine with crushing force, forelegs wrapping around me as tight as could be, forcing me to return the embrace. Suddenly it all made some fucked up kind of sense and I was kissing her just as passionately, gripping her mane, pulling her against me so tight that we might have melded into one being. My mind dispensed with all the silly reasons why this shouldn’t be or that it was wrong; there was only my soul and hers intertwined, burning together into a single entity. Our bodies continued to wrap round one another; she was on top of me now, her hind legs around my waist, my arm around hers. She was bearing down on me, her lips and tongue making love to mine with reckless abandon. The moment was an eternity and an instant. When our lips parted and our eyes opened I could see her face was flushed, her tongue still hanging out of a mouth that curled into a breathless, lustful grin. She licked my cheek, planted a kiss on it, then dove into my neck, kissing, nipping, licking, sucking… my body went limp. She owned me. My head lolled back, my eyes half-lidded; I was putty, and it felt so right in an impossible, bizarre, macabre and beautiful way. I…I loved Scootaloo.

     We fucked like animals on that porch.

     “If you’re going to help me, we need to get those wings fixed,” I told Scootaloo.

     “How…?”

     It was one in the morning. The veterinarian’s office was closed but the light was on inside…somebody was still in there. Too bad for them.

     I kicked down the door and in an instant a woman was there, pointing a revolver at me. I wasn’t surprised, vet clinics in Eugene got robbed all the time for tranquilizers and opiates.

     “Hello…Maggie…” I said, looking at her name tag.

     “If you’re here for drugs, we keep them in the safe, and I’m not saying shit…now you can either leave or I can blow your fucking brains out!”

     “Slow your roll honey, I’ve got something you’ll want to see,” I told the nurse. “I’m just a customer…let me show you what’s in my pack…”

     She cocked the hammer and nodded her head. I unshouldered the large camping pack I was carrying and unzipped the top flap, letting Scoot hop out. She looked up at the lady and smiled the cute little smile I’d taught her. Nurse Maggie was jelly in an instant. “Oh my goodness what is it? It’s ador…”

     “Lights out!” I jammed a syringe filled with M-99 into the distracted nurse’s jugular, knocking her out in an instant. I removed the revolver from her hands, uncocked it, and shoved it in my belt. We had work to do, and we didn’t waste any time.

     I’ve spent the past few weeks reading up on the anatomy of wings – bird’s wings, specifically. They seemed to be quite akin to Pegasus wings. I gave Scoots her own, pony-sized dose of M-99 and went to work. First I stripped the feathers from her wings, leaving behind only two badly bent skinny appendages. I then went about re-breaking the bones, using the veterinary supplies at my disposal to set them correctly. When all was said and done they were all splinted up. I then injected her with a heavy dose of morphine to kill the pain and then jabbed her with an epi pen to wake her up. Her eyes fluttered groggily. Suddenly, as she remembered the purpose of our little mission, she whipped her head back to look at her wings. Scootaloo gasped.

     “I know it looks ugly kid, but trust me, once they heal up they’ll work.” She nodded solemnly when I told her this. “Now, help me move this bitch,” I said, walking back out into the hall and indicating the unconscious nurse. We each took one end of the body and, with some effort, managed to cram her in the trunk of my new car.

     “What are we gonna do with her?” Scoots inquired excitedly as we drove home.

     “Play.”