I had barely finished preparing the room when she came to. It was a great location, and I would have liked having the time to set it up properly, but there hadn’t been time. Every surface was covered in plastic sheeting, of course, and photos of her many victims were taped to the wall where she could see them. The many hues of their coats and manes added a splash of color to the room.
I wasn’t interested in them, though. I was Dexter the killer, not Dexter the interior designer.
I was interested in the pink earth pony waking to find herself secured to a kitchen table with duct tape and similarly gagged. Getting her here had been quite simple. She passed this foreclosed house almost every night on her way back from work. I’d waited in the shadows between buildings, sweltering in the hot Mareami night. The whistle of the noose through the air and the choke she made as she foolishly tried to breathe were the only sounds to accompany the abduction. A moment later she was inside the house, consciousness strangled out of her and ready for the final of my little ritual.
And now she was waking up, and the time was upon us. The Dark Passenger did not bother itself with the final preparations, but now it was awake and alert and I let it seat itself behind the steering wheel of Dexter’s mind. We spoke to her, and the words that came out of our mouth were icy cold.
“Hello, Pinkie Pie.”
After a brief moment of confusion, she screamed into the tape covering her mouth. They did it every time, but it never ceased to intrigue us. Even monsters cry for help when they feel the jaws of death begin to snap shut. But she didn’t truly feel it. Not yet. We had to make her understand.
“So, tell me, how much of it is true? Did you really make a coat out of their skins?” As we asked the question in our horrible voice, her expression shifted to one of absolute horror. It might have been genuine, for all we knew. Of course, not because the idea that a pony would slice the flanks off their victims and sow them into a garment was horrifying to her. After all, even if it wasn’t true, she was a murderer. No, the flash of terror on the pony’s face was probably because she was now in front of a pony who knew what she was, and this time, she was on the wrong end of the knife.
We watched patiently as her eyes darted around the room and she took it all in. There was no escape. Plastic sheets covered every surface. We’d rigged a small, bright light to the ceiling, and it cast the room in a pale light not usually seen outside of hospitals or morgues. It was some time before she spoke, mostly because I had momentarily forgotten to remove her gag. It took her a moment after I ripped the tape from her mouth, and when she spoke, her voice was full of strain and panic.
“You’ve got the wrong pony! I throw parties and bake cupcakes! I’d never hurt another pony!” At that last comment, we leaned over her and smiled. This was most definitely not a pleasant sight. It was not our fake pony smile that we wore when we were Dull Drab Dexter, the forensic technician. This smile was for our playmates, the last smile they ever saw, and we knew exactly how to draw our lips back in a suitably horrifying fashion.
“Of course you wouldn’t. That was just some other pony named Pinkie Pie, prancing about in Ponyville, making friends and families and children disappear.” We paused briefly to add emphasis to our next words. “How did they taste, Pinkie Pie?” That broke her. Pinkie Pie began sobbing. It went on for a while before she finally managed to blurt out, “please stop saying such horrible things!”
It was all very fascinating, of course, seeing how far she would take this façade. We were sure she could have kept it up all night if she’d wanted. We had other plans, however, so we reached down for our tools and came up with a scalpel, cold and gleaming and razor-sharp. Dexterous despite holding it in our teeth, we gently slid the point on her stomach, just enough to coax a single drop of nasty, filthy blood from her skin and onto the tip of my knife. This would all be much easier if Devilish Depraved Dexter had been born a unicorn, but a monster makes do, and that’s what we did.
We lifted our head and for a moment, the blood hung between killer and victim on the point of the scalpel. Time slowed down as our eyes met and something uncoiled within her, forcing its way to the forefront of her mind with an inaudible hiss. The Passenger responded in kind, spreading its shadowy wings in the gulf between them. There was a moment of posturing, and then the scores must have come through, because the thing inside Pinkie Pie slunk back and the Passenger released a snort of victory. We blinked a few times and refocused on the pony in front of us. The weak, whimpering creature taped to the table was gone. Not actually gone, of course, she was still taped to the table. She was just a bit more collected.
She spoke again, and despite the manic tone, her voice no longer wavered as it did. “I would never do something as horrible as turning my friends into a coat.” A smile wider than we would have imagined possible spread across her face. “Coats are terribly out of season, silly! I cut and sliced and sowed them into a dress!” She trailed off into a fit of giggling for a few seconds. “Cutie marks and Pegasus wings and a necklace of unicorn horns! It was beautiful, and their hides felt amazing against mine! It’s just a shame I didn’t have time to enjoy all those delicious baked goods. Come to think of it, neither did they!”
We studied her for a while. It was hard to imagine that this insane pastry chef had managed to fit in with society for so long, when we worked so hard at pretending to be a normal pony. Then again, she was taped to a table and chatting with her soon-to-be murderer, so she definitely could have used a few more lessons in flying under the radar.
As riveting as a continued conversation with her would be, we sensed no great truth or enlightenment on the horizon, so we picked up the scalpel again and pondered where to begin. So much bare fur and flesh, all waiting for the song of the steel to bring the night alive with its music. Absolutely intoxicating. She must have felt it to, because a fit of giggling came over her. “I guess my number’s finally come up,” she managed to blurt out. “I wonder, how long can you drag it out? I’m just dying to find out. In fact, the suspense is killing me!” Her jokes started another fit of laughter that ended with a violent snort. “My record is an hour and forty-seven minutes. Rainbow Dash only managed to hold out for fifty! Let’s see if I can match that!”
We’d had enough. Pulling out our roll of tape, we silenced her again, and now the dance began in earnest. We took the lead, but the steps were made up as we went. Tonight, we were unusually playful. Perhaps Pinkie Pie’s good nature in the face of her impending demise had infected the Dark Passenger. Maybe it just felt the need for a change. Whatever the reason, our knife strayed into unfamiliar and exciting territory. It sliced deep into muscle and fat before skirting with a hairbreadth of major blood vessels. A quick switch of knives and we were cutting down to the bone and dancing carefully along her vital organs.
Her muffled screams harmonized with the slick sound of flesh parting below the edge of our knife. I was very good at my work, and needed no outside aid to keep her conscious throughout the ordeal. After all, it would be quite inconsiderate for her to not be entirely present for this, after I took so many careful preparations on her behalf. Sadly, as the dance continued into the night, we found ourselves dragging our feet, and our partner beginning to fade. Though we’d neither severed nor removed anything, the blood loss was taking its toll. How long had it been? Two hours? Three? Four? Our perception of time in these moments was really not the best.
Pinkie Pie had quickly turned into a macabre sight. Muscle fibers twitched in agony, and most of her organs were open to the air. She had become a pulsing, quivering mass of mangled meat. We had even laid bare her bones in some places, and the stark whiteness of them lent an interesting aesthetic to it all. And yet there was so much more to do! We wanted to go on and our playmate no longer wished to participate.
The song was winding down, and, regrettably, it was time for the finale. Placing a hoof on her forehead, we ran the edge of our knife across her throat, and hot, sticky, awful, filthy blood ran out onto her mutilated chest. We exhaled slowly, reveling in the moment, swelling with dark power at our triumph. Then slowly, ever so slowly, the Dark Passenger released the wheel and slid into the back seat. We had finished our task, and it let out something that sounded like a yawn as it settled in for what would hopefully be a very long nap.
That was all well and good, of course, but I was not yet finished. We had been strangely creative tonight, and it had produced quite a mess on the plastic wrapped table, and I had to clean it up. Now, even as a Blood Spatter Analyst, I do not like blood. I do not like seeing it, and I do not like touching it. Something within me finds blood very disagreeable. Strange, of course, that such an individual would choose a profession so closely, intricately linked with the terrible fluid. There’s one thing I like about blood though, and that’s how it can be made to behave.
When it behaves, it has so many stories to tell you. A splatter of blood can tell you who, when, what, where, and how. “Why” was usually unimportant in the glorious Equestrian justice system, of course, but the rest of it was all there and waiting to be sorted out. That’s why I have the job that I do. I make the blood behave, make it toe the line, and listen to what it has to say. Then it can be cleared away, cleaned up and made to disappear forever. It was almost therapeutic.
I bent down to grab my bonesaw. If this was therapy, I might just consider seeing a psychologist. For now, I had to make one Pinkamena Diane Pie disappear forever. As I carefully distributed her body amongst several trash liners, I checked my watch. It was almost one in the morning. Pinkie Pie had gotten off work at eight. I needed to get back to my apartment and get some sleep.
After all, it was my turn to bring donuts tomorrow, and if I didn’t get them early, the wait would be absolute murder.