Slicing into tiny cubes thereby splitting squeezed red liquid squirting across the room and splattering on the wall, Pinkie Pie, with bags (of swelling and/or puffiness, as opposed to paper and/or plastic) under her eyes, chopped with a sickening squish, expelling detritus like verbal vomit of a verbose tense-curious tale's initial mono-sentence paragraph.
The essentially exsanguinated husk's ersatz leathery skin was slung to a side and Pinkie Pie moved on to a subsequent section to assay; neigh*(nay), assault.
At three in the morning, the witching hour for preparation, she began, an awful time for most, a necessary hour before bakers usually awoke. Hot ovens were cleared, the bread could rise unmolested by her perhaps macabre leavings, and her employers--the Cakes--would know naught of the details of what happened... if Pinkie Pie could soon complete her task.
"Hee-Hee-Hee," Pinkie chuckled, sleep and sugar-deprived mind turning again to the Cakes' twin children. "Never the wiser..." She sliced a head apart with a thick butcher's knife and it shattered, falling in twin hemispheres. Then, a second head, chunky but tender, just as customers preferred. Not her customers, though. She specialized in baked goods. So she had consulted with an expert in the Canterlot prisons. Fresh heads were the best, the scabrous pony had uttered. They left the most satisfying crunches.
Pinkie drooled, ideating masticative neologistic onomatopoeias as she chopped a slimy bit: "Munch-munch-munch. Gooey, slimy cake... No--the Cakes!" She needed to focus on her task. Some incautiously shorn hairs scattered across the food while one hoof chopped with a tight grip while she grasped into gooey supply-bags with her other. Gingerly, she plucked the leavings off where they had scattered, then she sniffed. All of a sudden, she dropped her red-splattered knife and reached for a rag.
Keening an awful half-suppressed wail partially smothered by her mess-stained rag, Pinkie, tears forming, felt for the knife so she could continue. Fumbling, she grasped the blade. Then, squinting with heavy breath, she employed its tip to pop out glossy-white orbs for boiling. An overwhelming smell... but she pushed through it. This would be such a surprise for the parents. Weeping through her burning blurry orbs, she peeled to better size the intended foal-sized ones. She sliced and sliced and sliced. Blood flowed. And then she threw them in a pot. And adjusted the face, pushing and bending the mouths. Only then did she pause to address her pooling problem.
Next, the wings. Crack, crack, crack--and crunch, crunch, crunch.
Now: the boiled orbs were ready. Mouth drooling down onto her bandaged fetlock, she placed them, popping them on and augmenting dead eyes with little sugary black dots that would make them all the tastier, fondly reminiscent of fondant--yet still sufficiently healthy.
A single horn ground onto her masterpiece with a subsequent twist, twist, and a pop that socket. Pinky's mouth lolled open, filling with water. But no, she could not consume her feast now. Even though it was healthy, sugar-free like her extra-special super-secret clients needed. Canterlot's prisons did not serve the freshest food, but what they did serve was extremely nourishing, the expert had insisted--the expert was notorious; some even called her expert infamous, but that was silly--experts in any craft should be respected for their accomplishments, no matter the venue, Pinkie figured! Whether one served blood and intestines to griffins or hay and alfalfa to ponies, the craftspony's care and skill would shine through. Smiling with reminiscence, Pinkie followed the expert's instructions with assiduous due diligence. So, she wanted to stop but instead she puffed out the prescribed portion of palpable pepper until she significantly succumbed to sneezing. Alas, she had not been wearing a muzzling mask. She hung her head and grabbed a blow-torch that could burn off her nasty expelled germs. The eye wilted and she placed the torch back aside, then adjusted it back into its socket. Much as a melted horn would disgust and disturb any client, a dismal drooping eye would not do.
Hooves next. Black and gelatinous. She listened to the jelly shift. A stalk of each leg leading to the body. "Yes, yes, yes," she ululated, her accomplishment titillating her soul. But then her Pinkie sense vibrated. The Cakes, the parents, not the children--those individuals would not awake, Pinkie--their sometime foalsitter--was completely sure of that--were moving upstairs. She had little time before she might be discovered. Four in the morning had arrived. She needed to wrap up.
Cellophane.
Cleaning. Moving far too quickly, she missed a smear.
She rolled her handiwork into a freezer, gathered a vision-obscuring drape to cover its translucent protective coating. For a moment more than she probably should have taken, she gazed on what she created.
The life-sized hay salad models of her employers' non-identical twin children, a pegasus and a unicorn, had turned out well. Realistic models stared back at Pinkie's bleary, rheumy eyes with pleasant hay-pasted bent-carrot grins. Mr. Horseradish Lecture, the prison-chef-expert she had consulted was brilliant! Oven-warmed hay and cabbage bodies split in hemispheres, happy round cabbage heads with peeled onion eyes centered with black olives, celery stalk legs, lettuce wings for one, carrot for a horn, and for both: vegan gelatin hooves, tomato highlights for blush and excellent taste. Pinkie taped the drape down, blinked and moaned. Zombie-like, she shuffled, extinguished lights and half-sleepwalked back to her bed.
"Just a few more hours to the surprise festival..." She muttered the mantra, her voice growing weaker with repetition.
A voice from below: "Why is blood on the counter?"
"Pinkie was supposed to clean..."
But Pinkie heard not the complaints... or concerns. Her mind was far, far away from caring. Ensconced deep in the groove of her bed, she cavorted among vegetables, carnage of lettuce scattered around, her rock-hard jaw ripping cabbage and carrots from the ground. She chewed, and grinned, and mouth-full of cabbage and lettuce and carrots and gory squished tomato juice all over, laughed her mindless titter of soul-satisfied surprise for her "I-can't-believe-it's-1000-days-since-you've-both-been-born" health-festival satiation.
Author's Note
