Everypony knew the golden rule: never, ever kill another pony.
Strikeout, of course, knew the golden rule. The two guards that stood outside his cell knew the golden rule. The judge that handed down his sentence earlier that day knew the golden rule. The princesses of Equestria who accepted that judgment knew the golden rule.
But Strikeout thought about explaining the golden rule to his daughter and couldn’t piece together the words he might say. She was only five. How do you explain murder to a foal? Strikeout looked up at the grey expanse of his jail cell’s ceiling. His home for the last two months. He let out all the air in his lungs in a long, drawn-out sigh.
“You’re scum,” said one of the guards from behind the cell bars. “You deserve what’s coming. You’re going to Tartarus, you know that, right?”
Strikeout looked down and met the eyes of his newest fan through the cell bars. Those bars were meant to separate dangerous criminals from the innocent outside world.
If only everypony could see inside Strikeout’s head, maybe they'd see there was no reason to keep him behind those bars.
The other guard shook his head and nudged his co-worker, and both guards returned to stoic silence. Strikeout shuffled to one of the corners of his cell and stared at the point where the walls met. Images from years ago began to bombard him.
First were the happiest times. Long, hot summer days filled with games, baseballs, gloves, and the dreaded umpire’s mask. There was dirt — it was everywhere back then — and there were colts filled with too much gumption. They had spent every day at the diamond, and every sunset at the swimming pond. Strikeout was sure he could smell the sweat and the leather. He swore he heard a faint chipping of a cicada. He couldn’t help but chuckle to himself as he remembered how the ponies would throw him up when he hit a ball that won his team the game.
Strikeout’s smile faded as the images of sunlight and sports started to turn darker and colder. He was looking at his old buddies from the Dirty Glass, the premier watering hole in his post-school days. Back then it was seldom quiet from the crack of one dawn to the crack of the next dawn, when everypony stumbled home. There was some happiness in those memories, but not like his foal days. It was more like the rush of hitting a home run — fleeting. Princesses, he missed that feeling.
Strikeout drew his mouth into a frown. His corner of the cell seemed to darken.
The horseplay and drinking at the Dirty Glass had given way, in time, to more serious and dangerous forms of entertainment, which eventually became less-than-scrupulous business ventures. That had started when one of the patrons at the bar — “The Boss” was what ponies called him now — made a name for himself in the dark alleys of Manehatten. Strikeout had never intended to become a pusher for “Pixie Sticks,” but then, he never was good at staying clear of the wrong crowd. His friends hadn’t started out that way.
Strikeout plopped onto his flank and rubbed the sides of his tired head with his hooves.
What the hay happened?
Something metal hit the floorbehind Strikeout, shrill and loud, and it made him swivel his head around like a startled critter. A guard had thrown a plate with some food on it through the slot in the cell door.
“Last meal. Enjoy,” he heard the guard mutter. Strikeout studied the food: two pieces of what looked to be soggy toast, a tomato, and some lettuce. It might as well have been sawdust. He no longer felt hunger, in any case.
Strikeout spent the next few hours going over his past. He saw the faces of friends and acquaintances who had come and gone in his life. Many of them had already bit the dust for various reasons, a few were imprisoned for life, and one had even gone down the same path as Strikeout and ended the same way he was going to. Strikeout remembered that rainy day well. He hadn’t been prepared to see a stallion hanging from a length of rope and swaying, back and forth, like a fish caught on a hook.
Strikeout felt himself drooping, like the floor was trying to suck him up.
What in Tartarus was I doing with my life?
He had become swept up in the lifestyle that had developed at the Dirty Glass. When Strikeout had met the mare who later became his wife, a simple mare who sold odds and ends at her parents’ shop, everything just felt right. It had been perfect. And yet at that same time, he was wrapped up in a story at that damned local bar that he didn’t want to be a character in. He never had.
The first time he kissed his simple mare, under the sunset of the Summer Sun Celebration ten years prior, was like a warm glow contrasting with those otherwise shady days. That warm glow showed itself on Strikeout’s face. Then a sensation overwhelmed his chest like a gut punch. It reminded him of how he used to feel when he missed a catch and lost his team a game, only worse.
A rattling of the jail cell door brought Strikeout back to reality. He slowly turned his head back to see a guard opening the cell door alongside a priest, who waved away the guard and entered alone. The priest smiled.
“Hello, my child,” the priest said. He was dressed in simple black robes and a triangle medallion hung from his neck. “I’ve come to hear your last words.”
Strikeout rotated his seated body with a hoof. The priest sat down.
“What should I say?” Strikeout’s mouth produced the words, and some part of his mind helped create the sounds, but the rest of his thoughts were elsewhere.
“Say everything,” came the reply. “It is the last time anypony is going to listen to you. There’s not much time left now.”
Strikeout felt his head nod. “I see.” He looked at his hooves as his throat generated subconscious noise.
“I —” Strikeout lost his voice and had to clear his throat. “I hate what I did. I hate myself. I hate everypony who ever let me do what I did.”
He swallowed. The side of his mouth twitched. He looked up at the priest.
“I hate this jail cell, I hate those guards, and I really hate you.”
The guards outside the cell began to fiddle with the door as the priest waved them down.
“Why, my child?” asked the priest. “Why do you hate me?”
Strikeout chewed his lower lip. The ends of his forehooves throbbed as he tried to force them through the floor.
“Because you’re making me feel hope. Like if I say the right words, if I start to cry and beg and shout and scream… it’s like… maybe I can go free. That’s how I feel.”
The veins on Strikeout’s neck stood up and his teeth ground against one another.
“Is that true, priest? If I beg you, will they let me go?”
The priest’s face softened. He wore the lightest of smiles. He shook his head.
“I’m afraid not. That’s not what I am here for. But perhaps the spirits of our ancestors will forgive you if you tell us why you did what you did.” The priest looked up to the cell window, and Strikeout followed his gaze. “Perhaps they will welcome you to the great beyond with open hooves.”
There was a reason for what Strikeout did. He wouldn’t hurt another pony without a reason. “The Boss” was one such compelling reason. But Strikeout’s lips were sealed because of an even more compelling reason. He saw a vision of his wife and daughter with a shadowy figure lurking behind them. The vision went black and Strikeout heard screams in his head. He tried to beat the noises out of his mind with his hooves.
“No!” he shouted. “There was no reason! I’m just bucking crazy! Just hang me already!”
The guards opened the cell door and stepped inside.
“Leave him, priest!” A guard ordered. “That one’s a lost cause! You know his type: a criminal who took a life to earn some street cred or a few bits. He knew the golden rule before he did what he did.”
The priest got back onto his hooves and placed one of them on Strikeout’s shoulder. Strikeout looked up, trying to catch his breath. There was something in the stallion’s eyes, those steely blue eyes, that reminded Strikeout of what it felt like to have a father watching over you. He hadn’t known that feeling since before his first baseball game, a time Strikeout struggled to remember. All he knew is that his father used to take him fishing.
The priest smiled. He leaned over and kissed the top of Strikeout’s head.
“I understand, my child.”
Strikeout’s lip quivered. He threw his head down and bit his lower lip so hard that it began to turn purple. His forehooves were glued to the concrete floor.
“The ancestors understand.”
The priest was escorted out and the jail door closed with a dull thud. A key jangled, and Strikeout knew that there was no hope. There was no chance of him going to sleep that night and waking up to another morning of the sunlight streaming through his little cell window.
Strikeout alternated between staring out his window and staring at the ground for the next few hours. He was afraid to think too much about his beloved girls. He didn’t want to cry.
No, he couldn’t cry.
He wasn’t going to let his tears form a puddle on the cold, hard floor knowing that it didn’t matter. He was desperate to remember happiness, but at that point all his memories simply brought pain. He would never again see joy before his waking eyes.
I just need to not think at all. If I don’t think, I won’t be sad, and if I’m not sad, I’ll be happy! And I won’t feel that pain in my chest anymore!
Strikeout tensed up. He forced the muscles around his mouth to flex upwards. His eyes opened wide. He focused on the floor in front of him.
Happy, happy! Big smile!
The door to his cell opened. An entourage of ponies awaited him.
“Get up,” Strikeout heard a mare say. He focused on the ground in front of him as his feet carried him away. Sounds melded together around him. Talking became murmurs. Doors opening and closing became distant echoes. Hooves on concrete became heartbeats. He couldn’t smell anything anymore and his mouth was bone dry.
The grey concrete underneath Strikeout's hooves eventually turned into a tiled floor of red and yellow, and then with a blast of fresh air to his face, it turned into dirt.
He continued forward without any reaction to the outside world until something hit him. It exploded on his face with a juicy squelch and the surprise of it would have toppled him over if there wasn’t a solid form to his left to steady him. Strikeout looked up in time to see another thing whiz towards him and then burst as it smacked him between the eyes. It was wet. When the juices trickled down to his lips, his taste buds detected a flavor that he had tasted before. What was it?
Similar things continued to hit Strikeout, covering him in their gooey flesh. When he felt like he was about to fall over again, a yellow glow enveloped him and steadied him. He didn’t even have the freedom to give up, lay down, and die. He was going to die the way they wanted him to.
Suddenly, sounds and images began to return to Strikeout. Colors were all around him. Manes, tails, wings, unicorn horns, and angry pony faces. Shouting and curses attacked his ears.
“There’s the murderer!”
“He’s hideous! Despicable!”
Amidst the shouts was a low hum of booing. Strikeout was trying to make sense of the flood of sensations around him but it was difficult enough just to walk. He became conscious of a shadow passing over him. Strikeout’s hooves took him up a wooden staircase. His eyes beheld the gallows for the first time since he had been outside.
More than anything else had in his life, the gallows terrified Strikeout. Losing the big game didn’t matter. Passing out on the streets and being arrested didn’t matter. The late-night arguments between husband and wife didn’t matter. The gallows was the monster under the bed, the changeling hiding in the closet, the danger in the dark. It was true fear. Strikeout’s eyes enlarged and his breathing turned into a stutter of gasps.
“Stop!” he cried, turning every which way. He had barely noticed until that time, but his body was covered in wet goo and his lips and mouth were saturated with the familiar flavor. Another yellow glow stopped him from moving too much.
“Stop this! Let me go! I don’t want to die!”
He had enough control to turn his head to a random guard. He pleaded with glassy eyes.
“For the love of the princesses, please! I’ll do anything! Send me to the diamond mines in Saddle Arabia! I’ll work for a hundred years!”
Strikeout turned to another guard and tried to find some sympathy as he begged.
“How about this: I’ll donate all my bits to charity — yeah! I-I’ll donate every single bit I make to charity until I die!”
A guard shoved a hoof into Strikeout’s chest and took his breath away.
“Quiet!” The guard commanded.
Hooves began to grasp Strikeout. They forced him to a certain position where the —
Strikeout shook his head. He was going to pretend that nothing was just above him, swaying back and forth, like a hook waiting for a fish.
He was going to imagine that he was at a talent show, like when he was a colt. The crowd in front of him was booing his poor performance. He had tried to juggle a few baseballs and a bat, but naturally failed.
“Sorry everypony!” Strikeout shouted back at the cacophony. “I’ll do better next time, ha ha!”
When Strikeout felt something rough and scratchy being forced around his neck, he froze. It might as well have been a searing-hot, metal loop. It sucked the life out of him.
What’s going on? How can this be? WHAT’S GOING ON?
Strikeout was vibrating with terror. He looked from left to right in rapid succession. His lungs could inflate and deflate, but he was suffocating. His body couldn’t absorb enough of the atmosphere. He was dying.
Then, his worst fear was realized. Strikeout’s brain foolishly produced an image of two female ponies. He saw the two greatest smiles he had ever seen in his life and the two most beautiful sets of eyes that could possibly be conceived. Baby blues and deep violets. He heard laughter that used to make him feel like the happiest, luckiest stallion in the world.
“NOOOOOOOO!”
Strikeout’s cry was so chilling, so piercing, so pained, that it made everypony stop shouting. The guards took a step back.
“NOOOOOOO, PLEASE!”
Tears flowed down Strikeout’s face. They mixed with mucus as the salty water passed his nose, and when some of the mixture began to gather in his mouth and meet his saliva, he ignored the taste. He sniffled, he brayed, and he whined, like a baby foal bereft of his mother.
“PWEEESE! LEB BE BIB! LEB BE BIB!”
Strikeout’s neck became tight. He really was being suffocated then. The sound of taut rope, like an inanimate groan, overtook his senses. The only thing he could see was an illusion of a hanging noose in front of him. It swirled in his mind and turned into a fishhook. It was his worst nightmare. It was Tartarus itself.
“Daddy!”
The last words Strikeout would ever hear came from deep inside his brain.
“Daddy, daddy, where are you going?”
They were words he heard, he was sure, only a few months ago. Somewhere off in the distance a great bell rang, its deep, spiritual bellow forming the backdrop of the words that replayed in Strikeout’s head.
Once.
Twice.
Three times.
And one last time.
“Daddy, please don’t go!”
The platform shook. Something wooden creaked behind Strikeout, and then below as well.
Suddenly, Strikeout’s legs no longer had a surface to stand on. He began to fall.
The process felt achingly slow. As he fell, the stranglehold around his airway became more intense.
I’m sorry!
The world slowly distorted, then faded, and then disappeared entirely.
It was over.
