O'Marelly's Bar & Grill (Within)
Well, I entered into O'Malley's, said, "O'Malley I have a thirst."
O'Malley merely smiled at me, said, "You wouldn't be the first."
A robed figure shoved its way through the entry into what was once Sugar Cube Corner, lately renamed O'Marelly's Bar and Grill. Since the Cakes had vanished under mysterious circumstances, and their children had vanished under less mysterious, but no less sinister, boarding school circumstances, Pinkie had rebranded the establishment, offering a variety of liquors and the occasional “western-style entertainment.” The swinging double doors, which would soon be barred from outside, were the latest change.
Pinkie, the aforementioned owner, had been bored for the past several hours. An unfortunate side effect of her clientèle policies was that surviving clientèle were very cooperative. Evolution at work is a glorious and strange thing to behold, but right now the pink pony would have killed for somepony to step out of line. Funny choice of words, that.
She was daydreaming, staring at a tooth still lodged in the wooden counter top, when the figure crossed into her vision, rearing up and dropping its forehooves on the counter with the heavy thunk of a dead thing. Looking up, she saw the light of the fire met neither wetness nor wickedness within those shadowed confines of its hood.
The figure remained, motionless, breathing heavily and gripping the bar as if her life were at stake. A voice slurred from somewhere in the robes.
“What?” Pinkie Pie had been distracted by her distaste at both the color scheme before her, and its ridiculous impracticality. Even at night, the summer heat held no remorse and several dark patches of sweat stained the cotton.
“I was just asking about the name. This place used to be called something different, right?” the stranger slurred her words crazily, and there was a strange reek about her. Places Pinkie had never experienced before began twitching madly, a doozy was brewing.
“Have you been drinking before you came here? Because we have a policy about ponies who come in here drunk.”
“I'm as sober as the day I was born.”
“Most of us were born naked, crying, and covered in blood,” interjected Rainbow Dash from the other side of the bar, “sounds a bit like drunk to me.”
“There's other reasons a pony might find themselves in such a state. But you'd be as much an expert on such things as I would, wouldn't you?”
If not drunk, she was definitely crazy, Pinkie Pie thought, reaching for the baseball bat under the bar and throwing a broad wink to no one in particular. This might be a fun evening after all.
Fluttershy, who had been on the verge of leaving, sat back down at her table. Angel's feeding could wait at least another hour. The fillies celebrating the 21st birthday of a friend stopped their giggling and cheering. No pony was willing to miss the show. Even the waitress stopped, bringing an even bigger grin to Rainbow Dash's face, that naughty little minx would be disciplined quite harshly later tonight.
But the stranger didn't try their luck, simply pointing toward a bottle behind the pink pony's head. The bartender pouted a little, but still felt her hooves tapping. Waiting. Longing. She felt obscene things in obscene places, anticipating whatever new stimulus had come to her.
The stranger lifted the glass, but evidently had some difficulty getting all the liquid into her mouth, dribbling most of it down inside her robe.
And as O'Malley poured me out a drink, I sniffed and crossed myself
“What happened to her?”
“Ah, don't know, just hold her … hold her … hold that bit there.”
Can't see who is talking. Eyes are blind. Burning fire everywhere, even in my wings. They cut off my wings!
“Rarity is going to kill me for getting this mess everywhere.”
“No, we'll clean everything up before she gets back. No pony can know.”
A voice whispers, “cutie mark crusaders, secret surgeons,” but there is no joy in it.
My hand decided that the time was nigh and for a moment it slipped from view
And when it returned, it fairly burned with confidence anew
“I said, if you want to stay, you'll have to order another one,” Pinkie felt the weight of the bat under the bar tilt her hoof downward. Every conversation stuttered to a halt as 10 sets of eyes turned to the stranger, who remained completely oblivious.
“Another scotch,” the stranger laid 10 bits on the counter, “Keep the change.” She liked saying things like that, it made her feel cool and hard. Like a movie star.
The audience relaxed, disappointed. Maybe nothing would happen after all. Another tedious evening of everyone getting along in a world of harmony.
But when the drink arrived, the stranger's hoof slid off the countertop, feeling the pistol by her hip. Feeling its coolness. Feeling the weight, as she hauled nearly eight pounds of Unicorn forged steel up to rest on the bar counter.
Pinkie had a moment to witness the long barrel appearing before her, more like a cannon than a pistol. A moment to appreciate the next verse. A moment to realize the feelings trilling through her nethers and spine had been the Pinkie Sense for “I'm about to have my face blown off by a complete stranger in my own bar,” before the bullet ejected her brain from its usual home into her bright pink mane as the final fourth wall failed before ferrite most foul.
Had a scientist or doctor been there at that moment, and had they, for some bizarre reason, felt the need to connect their most sensitive instruments to Pinkie Pie before she was shot, they would have witnessed a peculiar miracle. As Pinkie Pie's brains popped out the back of her skull, they became tangled in the sticky mess of her mane and, somehow, continued to function. Electrical signals fired along hair follicles, working their way back around the gaping hole that had once been a face.
This feeble arrangement, which would have either been called “The amazing external brain!” or “Just Pinkie Pie being Pinkie Pie,” lasted long enough for a pink mouth to form the word, “Cunt.”
Unfortunately, this beautiful equilibrium was lost when the pony's hair brain crashed into the bottles behind her. Disrupted again, her brain oozed as best it could through the frizzy pink mane, pushing bits of skull and dribbles of blood with it, staining the bottles bright red.
"I am the man for which no God waits, but for which the whole world yearns.
I'm marked by darkness and by blood, and one thousand powder-burns."
“This is insane. She needs a real doctor.”
“This ain't really in the realm of real doctor's anymore. We're in no pony's land.”
…
“We're losing her!”
“Please don't die,” and the words slid off into nothing before the final address could be made.
Well, you know those fish with the swollen lips that clean the ocean floor?
When I looked at poor O'Malley's wife that's exactly what I saw.
The stranger spun on her stool, twirling the revolver in her hoof at the same time. The practiced spin cocked the hammer back with an audible click. The stranger liked that spin. The click of metal catching in the middle of her casual gesture made her feel cool and hard. Like a movie star.
Next, another roar of cordite laid Rainbow Dash low even as she came. It shattered the pony's left hock. Blood flowed out and pain flowed in as the cyan pegasus collapsed in mid-lunge.
“She didn't recognize me,” said the stranger, “but do you, Dashie-” long pause for the moment to sink in, “-kins?”
Rainbow Dash stared up from the floor where she had been unneatly and undiscretely laid, ignorance dancing across her eyes, and her face twisted alternately between rage and bafflement.
“Mmm, nothing, Dashiekins?” the stranger tossed back her hood, revealing a patchy purple mane hanging loosely around an orange face two-thirds buried under a pale, white shell. It barely qualified as a mask, without even an eye-slit for decoration, leaving just a fraction of muzzle and one crazed, lavender eye. “What about now?” slurred a pair of barely visible lips.
Her little daughter Siobhan pulled beers from dusk till down
And amongst the townfolk she was a bit of a joke, but she pulled the best beer in town
“Still no idea?” The stranger spun away and grasped the waitress by the throat.
“Let's make a game of this, Dashiekins.” The section of face visible split into a hideous rictus, as if trying to force an entire mouth's worth of teeth between a scrap of lip. “You like games, dontcha? Can you guess my name before this filly dies?”
“You keep your hands off, Cream Puff!”
“Ah, so is what I've heard true, then? Does Pinkie know you'd found a new lover?” the one eye leered. “Does she know you still like to fuck little fillies?” the grim visage twisted toward the brown eyes, staring cow-like at her, “Does she ever say she loves you? Does she ever break bottles off inside you? Is she still a sadist as well as a disgusting, fucking, pedophile, bitch?” As the stranger's words grew more manic, her hooves pushed deeper into the throat under them.
Crunch, crack, squishing sounds as Cream Puffs wind pipe collapsed. Red foam gathered at her lips.
“Well? Time is running out. WHAT. IS. MY. NAME.”
“I don't know who you are, but I know you should have killed me when you had the chance,” Rainbow Dash dragged herself up on three legs and snapped her wings.
Her throat it crumbled in my fist, and I spun heroically around
To see Caffrey rising from his seat. I shot that mother fucker down.
The stranger discarded the choking and dying pony onto the peanut shells coating the floor, firing another round. This time Rainbow Dash's knee disintegrated entirely, and her body crashed beside the severed leg where it still stood stupidly. Her bladder released, urine joining blood as once mysterious rivers flowed into a lake which lapped at the hooves of the nearest ponies who stood completely still on grim shores.
“Oh, Dashiekins, I don't want to kill you! I love you! Look at you there, two legs gone and still fluttering your cute little wings. Everypony is just standing around pissing themselves in terror, but you're a fighter! You're awesome, Dashiekins! That's why I'm giving you a chance to save all these ponies. Just say my name.”
“Why are you doing this?” screamed an earth pony with a duotone mane.
Mrs. Richard Holmes, she screamed You really should have heard her
I sang and I laughed, I howled and I wept I panted like a pup
The revolver coughed angrily at the interruption, putting a neat little hole through the speaker. By neat little hole, of course, one means that half Bon Bon's head was left resting in her soup and the other half flip-flapped gaily in the air. Meat used to being concealed within neck and skull pulsed shyly for a second before stopping in embarrassment.
“So, about my wager, Dashiekins” the stranger's voice dropped back to a serene calm that was only interrupted as she spat out the name. “If you can remember my name, all these fine upstanding ponies will get to live. I'll go quietly to the police and settle home in a nice, little cell. But if you can't remember me, I'll kill everyone here.” The stranger's voice dropped into a growl normally associated with diamond dogs or dragons, “And it will all be your fault.”
I shot Richard Holmes in the stomach and gingerly he sat down
And he whispered weirdly, "No offense,” and then lay upon the ground
"None taken", I replied to him, to which he gave a little cough
“You monster!” screamed the earth pony's mate, a pale blue unicorn propping her hooves up on the table. She turned a shade paler as the stranger bowed gaily in response and fired.
The round struck Lyra through her groin, popping her hind legs off like those of a doll. The legs spasmed, tap-dancing in glee at their sudden freedom. One brushed against the foot of Fluttershy where she had been sneaking along the edge of the room, drawing a terrified squeal.
“I'm sorry for my rudeness,” Lyra coughed in apology, somehow still supporting her weight on the table. Her forelegs trembled in proud exhaustion.
The stranger stuttered in response, “apology accepted.”
“I was apologizing to the young mare whom my leg just molested. You can rot-” her response, as well as her head, were cut off by a shell passing through her neck. For a moment, her head continued to hang off the side by a sliver of meat, then her whole body collapsed into a tidy pile.
“Still nothing?” the stranger crossed her hooves under her mouth, her sleeves falling back to reveal crude, prosthetic limbs, and squeaked, “teach me to fly! Teach me to fly! Come watch my stupid scooter tricks! Wake up from your nap and hang out with me!”
“Cloud Chaser? Orion Comet? Primary Bolt?” Rainbow Dash began spitting out random names, “Sparkle Spackle Von Spittle?”
“Has that ever been anypony's name?” the stranger reached inside her robes. Her hoof feeling around, briefly her eye fluttered closed and she let out a low moan, groping deeper and deeper within her robes, before pulling out a box of fresh cartridges.
I've lived in this town for thirty years
And to no-one I am a stranger
“It'll be dangerous, and Ah can't just be patching you up all the time. You're damn near out of things left to patch.”
“I'm just going to see if she remembers me. If there's any remorse, I'll leave and you'll never hear about it again.”
“Don't lie to me. Y'all can lie to any other pony in the world, but not the one that saved your life.”
I smile, and her heart melts. It is the first time smile since I “died,” and it took hours of practicing in the mirror.
I turned my gun on the bird-like Mr. Brookes
I thought of Saint Francis and his sparrows
Her eye flipped open as she heard a shout from the audience. A pegasus in the back of the room was making a break for it. Her wings straining as she leapt for only window unbarred window in O'Marelly's.”
“Not nearly fast enough,” she flipped the chamber of the revolver opening, dumping the used shells and dropping a fresh one in.
The pegasus fumbled with the lock as the hand cannon was raised. She threw the window open as the trigger was pulled. Everything froze and …
And, nothing. The chamber was empty. “Fuck,” the stranger pulled the hammer back again and pulled. The second chamber was empty too. The pegasus got her head out of the window, but her wings tangled in the curtains.
“Help-” was as far as her scream got before a bullet blasted through her rump as it twitched in the air. The bullet didn't care about wings as it caught up against rib cage and breast bone, shoving her body almost entirely through the window. One wing twisted completely off and the other crumpled against her ribs.
Her stomach heaved as blood boiled from mouth and across the ground outside. Blood filling her throat and strangling her cries for help. It would be moments later that her carcass, pulled by dead weight and lubricated by blood, would flip flop like a sack into the mud.
The stranger turned to her captive audience, “This is just embarrassing. It's almost like she likes watching you die. Like she wants you to die. Who here has purchased Rainbow Dash merchandise? Action figures, her shitty autobiography. Come on, hooves up, I don't bite.” A few hooves rose, “You there, earth pony, how do you feel about the way your hero is handling this situation?”
“Please don't kill me.”
“Ok, you,” she pointed at a unicorn, “are you going to answer my question in a way that implies you understand what I'm saying?”
“I never did anything to you!”
And as I shot down the youthful Richardson
It was Sebastian I thought of, and his arrows
“What is with these idiots and the fucking non-sequiturs,” the stranger turned back to see the cyan pegasus had risen again. “Oh dear.”
Grunting in exertion, Rainbow Dash gripped Pinkie's bat in one hoof and hurled herself at her assailant. Blood rained across the bar, and someone in the crowd cheered.
The stranger turned her back on the avenging angel, as if preparing for the blow to the back of her head. Readying herself for slaughter.
Click-swish-thud, two groups of spines shredded the back of the stranger's cloak, piercing the pegasus and pinning her to the ceiling. Spread out like an insect in a particularly overzealous collector's case.
The stranger tossed back her head in the crimson rain falling upon her. “Oh, Dashiekins, you are delicious,” the stranger recovered some of her dignity, “Now, oh, umm, oh,” and her head was back in the blood, lapping like a dog and tossing her ragged clumps of mane in excitement.
“Now, uhm, delicious. Now, as I was saying: one last chance. For all the marbles. What is my name?”
“Skoo … schoo …” Rainbow Dash gasped and choked, some of the spines apparently having found her lungs. “Scoot … Skuttles.”
I said, "I want to introduce myself, and I'm glad that you all came"
And I leapt upon the bar, and shouted out my name
“Skuttles?” the stranger laughed, “that is the sort of name an idiot gives to a horseshoe crab. I'm afraid you've lost Dashiekins. In fact, I'm afraid that everypony has lost.”
The stranger climbed onto a table, grunting as she hauled her weight up. From her higher vantage point, she leaned toward the mutilated pony, leaving just a couple inches of space between their faces. One lavender eye, the pupil dilated to a single, blackhole point, remained locked on the pegasus, nothing except the stranger's right hoof moved, grasping the white mask, pulling it away, releasing it.
The stranger yelped as the mask snapped back and struck her face.
“What is wrong with this thing? Give me a moment.” she turned toward a mirror, messing with several straps behind her head, “Hate this elastic. Ok, here we go.”
Eyes locked like lovers, mouths almost touching, the hoof pulled the white shell away until it hovered between them. The mask fell to the ground with a clatter, revealing what was less a face than a hellscape.
The stranger's left eye, bleached white and continually leaking pus from the corner, twisted and turned from where it bulged out of its socket, reacting to the tapping of some abandoned nerve. The muscles, what was left of them, hung limply over revealed bone. Those few teeth that gamely hung into ruined gums were black and twisted out of place. When the stranger finally exhaled, the ruined chasms of her nasal passages discharged mucus across the terrified pegasus' face.
“I bet you wish you'd stuck a firework up my asshole instead of a wine bottle, Dashiekins.” the ruined part of her mouth didn't move as she spoke, causing her slurred voice. She reached into her robes, moaning again as she detached a colostomy bag, she squished its brown contents around, “I use one of these now, because of you, Dashiekins.” Before the pegasus could respond, the stranger stuffed the bag into her mouth and taped it shut. “Please, no more words.”
The stranger turned to the assembled, “Now, for the rest of you! I am so glad that you could come to my grand debut, though I'm sorry that Rainbow Dash did lose our little game. My name, in case you don't recognize me, is Scootaloo, and I'll be your host for the rest of the evening's festivities. First, just to make sure there's no hard feelings, I want everyone to give Rainbow Dash a cheer. I'm thinking, 'Thank you, Rainbow Dash, for getting us all killed!' Alright, so on three!”
Well Jerry Bellows, he hugged his stool, closed his eyes and shrugged and laughed,
And with an ashtray as big as a fucking big brick, I split his head in half.
The surviving patrons only stared at the face before them. The mucus, dangling in opened nasal passages, dribbling down the side of ruined muscles, and swinging as her head moved, was hypnotic.
Only one pony made a noise, a keening laugh from Cheerilee. Scootaloo looked down into the face of her teacher, “I was … I was your teacher,” she howled, “I spanked your bottom! You … you ate those erasers. So I … You're going to kill me!”
“You think that's funny, do you Cheerilee? Or do you think my face is funny?” Her voice slid back down in volume, “Well, I think your face is funnier.”
Scootaloo grasped an ashtray from the table and smashed it through the center of her former teacher's forehead. Her face blossomed in two above her mouth and her jaw fell open. Blood-pollen poured out around her tongue-stamen and ran across to the floor.
The demon dipped a metal hoof into the blood and dragged it across the raw tissues that constituted her face. “See?” she shouted into the opened space that once laughed and smiled and cheered on developing fillies, “Funny!”
“But that is enough merriment! Let's have that cheer for our Dash! If you don't want to die right now, that is.”
She moved her forehooves in rhythm, and every mouth mumbled, “Thank you, Rainbow Dash, for getting us all killed.”
Every mouth, save one. Fluttershy finally reached the wall where Pinkie's shotgun hung. A double barreled classic, kept polished, fully loaded, and cocked for accidents. The yellow pegasus swallowed once before pulling the gun down and bringing it to bear on the murderer before her.
Well, that last phrase wasn't specific enough, was it? As it is a rare hoof around Ponyville that has never taken a dip into the crimson fountain. The verbal stumble is quite fitting, however, as the shotgun was similarly unspecific. Thunder Lane folded in half around the first shot. His ribs cracked and burst through his side, looking like the teeth of some great monster with a mouth full of organ meats hiding in the dark.
The second shell struck both Scootaloo and the liquor shelves. The shelves collapsed, pushing Pinkie's head to land face down on the bar, and spilling their formerly bottled contents across the ground.
In the silence that followed, nothing could be heard aside from the death groans of the pony now crammed under a table and the tinkling of broken glass. Scootaloo broke the silence, smiling, “FLUTTERSHY! That was-” she jumped to the ground, her robe falling off to reveal four prosthetic limbs and two empty canisters where her wings once were, “that was marvelous! That was absolutely … to think, all this time, Dash was my hero, and I just completely … everyone underestimated you, you beautiful-”
Her gushing stopped as she reached Fluttershy, who was clutching the now empty shotgun to her chest in terror.
“Well,” Scootaloo waited, “come on now, reload it.”
“I- I can't.”
“You can't? Well why not?”
“I don't have any shells.”
“Well, that's no good.” Scootaloo turned to where Pinkie's body was still slumped over the bar, “Hey, Pinkie, you want to tell us where the shells are?”
She waited, her ears twitching as if expecting a response. When nothing came, she sighed, “I guess all this shooting must have deafened her a bit. Let's go ask her.” Scootaloo threw a sisterly hoof around the trembling Pegasus and dragged her forward.
“Now, go on, ask her where the shells are.”
“But … she's dead …”
“I know, but that is no excuse for being rude. Ask her.”
“P- Pinkie, where are the shells?”
Scootaloo turned back to the motionless pink corpse. Seeing no response, she let out a low whistle. “She must not be a very good friend. Bogarting her stash like that, here let's lean in real close and ask her together.”
“Please don't make me do-” the gun barrel was shoved into Fluttershy's mouth so fast and hard that it broke out one of her teeth, leaving a little drooling trail of blood down her soft face.
“I said let's lean in real close and ask her together.” Scootaloo enunciated clearly, pulling Fluttershy's head next to the shattered remains of Pinkie's head. Together, their faces were pressed inches from where Pinkie's ear dangled off her ruined scalp. Close enough to see the blood, slow-dripping and congealing around scatterings of white bone.
“Pinkie where are the-” Scootaloo bit down on the pink ear, pulling the ear and a section of face off with a sickening tear. She spat the flap of flesh into Fluttershy's face.
The yellow pegasus shrieked and backed into the bar, collapsing to her back. She sobbed, burying her face in her hooves. The shotgun lay forgotten by her hindlegs.
“Dash, are you enjoying the show?” Scootaloo turned to where her former hero was pinned to the ceiling, glaring furiously. “No opinion?”
Rainbow tried to snarl in response, but the mouth movement ruptured the colostomy bag taped inside her jaw. She began gagging violently, trying to clear her mouth of the taste, but she only succeeded in forcing a sneeze of shit and blood from her nose.
“I think the Dash wants us to get on with it. She never did have much patience. So, no shotgun shells, that is unfortunate. Ah well, here.” Scootaloo spun her revolver around and thrust it at the pegasus on the floor, “take my gun.”
Up close, Fluttershy could see the silver inscription along the barrel, “Et in Arcadia Ego.”
“What are you trying to prove,” she sobbed.
“Prove? Who has ever, in this wide, wide world proven anything? There's nothing to prove, nothing to doubt but the evidence of your senses, which are meaningless and irrelevant to anyone other than you. Now, take my gun. Good.” Scootaloo continued as Fluttershy accepted the revolver, “Now, open the chambers.”
“What?”
“You've got to check and make sure there are bullets in it, don't you?” Scootaloo's face was kind, like a parent dealing with a particularly stupid child.
“Its empty.”
“Empty!” Scootaloo brushed the side of her face, distraught at the oversight, “That's not good at all. Here,” she thrust six new cartridges to the Pegasus and watched them tumble to the ground.
“Your poor hooves are trembling,” Scootaloo looked on the verge of tears herself. “Oh well, you'll have to pick the cartridges up with your mouth.”
“My … mouth,” the cartridges rolled in the gore and blood coating the floor.
“Yes, is there an echo in here? GET YOUR FUCKING FACE ON THE FLOOR!” Scootaloo grasped the pink mane and shoved it into the filthy ground. Fluttershy wept as she tasted the life of her friends on each cartridge. Scootaloo's hoof on the back of her neck guided her head up and down, loading the revolver one bullet at a time.
“So, stand up, come on.” She helped drag the trembling Pegasus to her hooves, “And close the chamber. There you go. Now, take this,” Scootaloo unwrapped the gun belt from her body, a tiny body, Fluttershy numbly observed, a child's body dangling between four mechanical limbs.
“Please, I don't want to do this. I just want to see my Angel again, please just, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry-” she squealed adorably as Scootaloo clicked the belt around her hips and thrust the revolver into it. “I just want to go home.”
“You'll be home soon enough,” Scootaloo smiled reassuringly with her ruined mouth and patted the pegasus on the head.
“Now,” Scootaloo stepped back and rested her hoof on the hilt of a knife strapped to her side, “Draw!”
The blade, more like a claymore than a knife, whistled through air and flesh. With one strike, she slit Fluttershy open from groin to neck.
The pegasus dropped the revolver and collapsed in shock, looking down at her ruined belly and intestines rolling out onto the floor. She stared, gulping and wild-eyed, and gathered the organs into her hooves. She let out a small squeaking scream. A cute little death wail, like 1,000 kittens clumsily stumbling off a tower. Then, buried her face into her own flesh.
Scootaloo paused after retrieving her revolver, “Well, that's nothing I've ever seen before.” The yellow pegasus was gathering the organs up and devouring them. As if she expected them to simply slide back into place.
“That is some grade-a, crazy shit you're doing right there. Hey, hey!” the yellow pegasus didn't respond, simply continued gagging and forcing her intestines down her throat.
Well, the light in there was blinding
Full of God and ghosts of truth
“Okay, but y'all gotta know, this ain't gonna stop as easy as it starts. Y'all have to promise me, once we start down this road, we take it all the way to the end. No remorse. No going back.”
And it will be many months and many bodies later that we laugh about this conversation. How guarded we had been. Like two virgins, desperately trying to be convinced. Not wanting to reveal how completely the fires burned within us. The hunger. The bloodlust.
I smiled at Henry Davenport who made an attempt to move
Well, from the position I was standing, the strangest thing I ever saw
The bullet entered through the top of his chest and blew his bowels out on the floor
There was a scream from the audience, “I wanted to go to Pony Joe's! Nothing like this ever happens at Pony Joe's!” Scootaloo barely turned from Fluttershy's spectacle as she fired, not even particularly caring that she hit the wrong pony: a brown Earth pony who was staring with gaping mouth. The bullet went through his throat and blasted his bowels and their contents across the last two ponies from the girl's night out group.
Scootaloo continued to stare at the cannibalism in progress, as if it were the key to unlocking some great secret. Blood and liquid vomit spilled out of Fluttershy's mouth, and she was clearly choking. Unable to breathe, but somehow unable to stop.
Once the spectacle ceased to amuse, Scootaloo rested the revolver against Fluttershy's temple and pulled the trigger.
He made no attempt to resist, so fat and dull and lazy
"Do you know I lived in your street?" I cried, and he looked at me as though I was crazy
With calm swiftness, Scootaloo stepped over and through the shattered bodies littering the floor, and she pulled apart the last two ponies huddled against each other in the corner. She threw one to the side and thrust her gun under the other's chin, “You know, you look familiar. Did we go to summer flight camp together? Oh, that's right, I didn't get to go to summer flight camp because my wings were torn off by six sadistic fuckers and you all just sat around and did nothing.”
But the frenzy was gone, even as she pirouetted toward the other pony who was now charging her with a knife. She tripped the charging pony and blasted a hole in her chest. Her breast bone detonated like shrapnel, eviscerating her and giving Scootaloo a clear view of her heart as it stuttered to a stop.
"O", he said, "I had no idea" And he grew as quiet as a mouse
And the roar of the pistol when it went off near blew the hat right off the house.
Then Scootaloo returned the gun to the surviving pony's chin, “Any last words?”
“I don't know,” whispered Dinky, who had just turned 21 that day.
Her brains burst out through the top of her skull, oozing and bloody like a burst pimple.
Well, I caught my eye in the mirror and gave it a long and loving inspection
"There stands some kind of man", I roared, and there did in the reflection
Alone now, Scootaloo turned her gaze to the mirror. There it was, the face defaced. Her left eye, all white and dead, leered crazily from a hellscape of burned and mutilated flesh. She smiled, but only the right side of her face moved, twitching upward in an ugly mix of sneer and grimace.
“Fuck you, you useless, wingless, ugly,” she snarled and put a round through the glass. “Fucking worm,” she spat at the ground.
And then there were the police sirens wailing and a bull-horn squelched and blared
"Drop your weapons and come out with your hands held in the air."
Well, I checked the chamber of my gun saw I had one final bullet left
The sound of police sirens cut her reverie, leaving it in a puddle of blood as raw and crazy as the gore gathered around her hooves.
So they had finally arrived. Zero hour awaited. She looked down at the gun. She raised it to rest on the side of her head, reflecting on a life that, if not well-lived, had certainly been eventful.
Then she spun toward Rainbow Dash still hanging from the ceiling. The former athlete’s eyes glared at the present murder expectantly.
“Fooled you, didn't I, Dashiekins?” Scootaloo fired the last round across violet eyes, popping them like grapes. The burst colostomy bag leaked its contents through the chasm opened in place of her snout.
“It really sucks when somepony plays with your expectations like that? Giving you hope just to fuck you over.” there was no response from the corpses in the room. She hadn't really expected one, well, probably not.
The voice of the police was familiar … Rarity? It would be fitting for the unicorn to the one who took her in.
Well, I had one long hard think about dying And did exactly what they said
There must have been fifty cops out there In a circle around O'Malley's bar
"Don't shoot", I cried "I'm a man unarmed!" So they put me in their car
Scootaloo dropped the revolver into the gore it had released and stepped out of the double doors. There she found the barrels of several dozen pistols, submachine guns and shotguns, all staring back at her like the hollow eyes of some great audience.
It made her feel cool and hard.
Like a movie star.
Author's Note
BEST ELFEN LIED ANNOUNCER VOICE: Though they may, at first glance, seem like endings, all things are just beginnings. An event, then another, and each proceeds in a grim march of brutal, mindless cruelty, as ripples in a pond under the steady fire of a machine gun. Bombarded until, at last, the fish all rise in mortified supplication and the waters run red as the rising sun of a new, more hateful tomorrow.
