Snap

It had been done. She had gone through with it, and the deed itself was done; the ordeal, however, was far from over. As much as she'd like to leave her house and go for a walk to forget what just happened, she knew it was unrealistic while the crumpled heap of pony lay bleeding in her door frame. A heap of pony she desperately needed to be rid of. But how.. Well, first things first. Just take it one step at a time, that's all.

Fluttershy took a look around the room, her eyes first focusing on the tea towels — towels! She rushed from her kitchen to the bathroom, gathering every towel in the house, racing back to the door frame. Not thinking twice, she dumped her towels on top of the corpse, frantically pressing them into the floor — into the growing pool of blood. She quickly had a mess of crimson-stained towels, absolutely soaked, but it did stop the pool from expanding at the very least. It would do until she could properly clean it up later; after all, the stains were a bit less pressing of an issue than the corpse creating them.

At least the next question already had an answer — where to put the mare? The Everfree, of course. Nopony would go looking there, and even if they did, it was normal for there to be casualties of the forest. It was a terribly dangerous and mysterious place, after all — but luckily for the pegasus, it was also nearest her house. And the nearer the better, as the less distance she had to travel with her.. cargo.. the better. She nodded, her mind made up — she would take the remains to the Everfree, as deep as she could safely go.

She looked back down, her determined look quickly fading as she realized what she was truly tasked with: moving the corpse. No, worse: flying the corpse to the Everfree Forest. Why flying? Well, once she reached the treeline, it would be nearly impossible to make her way through the bushes and vines with her hooves full — well, impossible to make good time, anyway. Yes, she had to fly. But that begs the question: how much can she carry?

Her expression drooped farther as she realized the corpse was an adult earth pony — notoriously stronger than pegasi, she weighed more than Fluttershy too. But that was being generous, assuming she could carry her if only she weighed the same — no, Fluttershy was no heavy-lifter. She could move the birdseed bags and the water buckets, but as for a whole pony? No way. So.. what now?

Fluttershy sighed, looking over the pile before her, soaking in a cold, crimson pool, the once pink coat faded to a sickly pale. Pile, heap, thing, object — Fluttershy sat down heavily, shaking her head, "No, no.. As much as I'd like to pretend.. You're still a pony. You're still Daisy." She lingered, "Or.. What's left.." She bit her trembling lip — no time for that, she had more important things to deal with than existential questions. Things like how to move an entire pony. An entire pony...

Her eyes lit up as she realized the answer, before immediately widening in horror as it sunk it. Yes, she could move a pony. But.. not an entire one. Just.. one piece at a time. She let out a shaking breath, "Oh, Goddess, forgive me.." Forcing herself to look into the mare's once-green, glazed, dead eyes, she added, "I'm so sorry Daisy.."

Just to try before she admitted defeat, she wrapped her forelegs around Daisy's cold, stiffening limbs, attempting to lift her up off the floor — gritting her teeth, she managed to scoot the mare towards her a few inches as a reward for her effort. A few inches would normally be a great accomplishment for the weight, but the circumstances really removed any positive from the action.

Well, at the very least, she could pull her inside enough to close the door. It would mean getting more of the mess in her house, but it was a price worth paying if it kept her a bit more hidden in case anypony was to pass by.

Groaning in effort, she hauled the mare's body inside by her foreleg, scooting it roughly across the door threshold and against her wooden floor. The floor creaked under her straining hooves before she let the pony fall limply from her grasp, thudding hard against the ground. She suddenly gasped, remembering the tarp she'd used to cover the chicken coop during that one particularly harsh winter — she rushed to her hooves, racing to her closet to rummage through boxes of old housewares until she came to her prize. Pulling it from the depths of the storage space, she spread it out across the floor, getting a look at what she was dealing with. It was nothing special, just a plastic tarp, not terribly big — but it would do to keep the mess mostly contained. At least, she really hoped it would.

Fluttershy quickly rolled up and moved her rug out of the way, laying out the tarp closest to Daisy. Now, she just has to move her one more time. Well, one more time all at once, that is. Standing on the tarp to keep it in place, she awkwardly lifted the corpse from the ground, her forelegs under the mare's, and began to slowly shuffle backwards, dragging the body onto the tarp with her. Unfortunately for the pegasus, the flayed back of the corpse ended up pressed to her chest as she moved, squishing wetly against her in a way that made her want to vomit her own stomach out. In fact, on second thought, she would — rushing to the sink, letting the body thud once more against the floor, she leaned over the basin, immediately losing her stomach contents. All she had eaten was some bread and tea, so after the first few retches, she was just painfully dry-heaving over the sink.

It didn't help that when she finally felt internally stable, she looked down at herself, realizing her entire front was smeared in blood— she gagged for a few more unpleasant minutes before shakily catching her breath, a cold sweat dripping down her sickly, pale face. She took another moment to just breathe and regain composure, getting a drink of water to wash out her mouth and wiping off her face with a few napkins. It was almost cathartic to wash her hooves under the stream, the red swirling down the drain and off of her.

Still, her body was wracked with deep shivers, in some numb state of shock as her adrenaline faded, but she mentally pushed it all to the side as best she could. Finally ready to again face the corpse, she turned back — as expected, it was limp on the ground. As she hadn't expected, however, she had managed to move it much farther than she thought, far enough onto the tarp she could just shift the rest.

Fluttershy closed her exhausted eyes, breathing a sigh of relief knowing she wouldn't have to feel the mare's cold, blood-wet body against hers again. She took a few trembling steps around the pony, making sure it was contained to the tarp, adjusting places where it hadn't quite made it. There. Now, it was..

Ready.

Her stomach dropped again, her vision wavering for a second as she realized it was time to progress. She took a breath, determination on her face as she looked under the sink for gloves — she wouldn't make the same mistake twice. She found them fast, often used for cleanup around the bigger animals, and pulled the blue latex gloves over her shaking hooves, giving her a much needed shield from the feeling of slick, cold flesh. Now, though, she had to face another question.

She almost laughed at how absurd it was for her to be the one in this situation — certainly not out of amusement, but more out of utter broken disbelief. Yes, the question Fluttershy had to ask herself was how to best go about dismembering a pony. The idea was so insane she wondered for a moment if she had just imagined it all, her real body sitting in the corner of a padded cell of some asylum, her mind completely broken. It was a comforting thought, that she hadn't really hurt somepony — but even if it was true, she still had to to deal with the horrors her own mind gave her. It seemed there was no easy out of this situation.

She thought for a moment — let's be realistic here. Trying to cut through bone was no simple task, and she didn't even know if she had the tools for that kind of job.. So she wouldn't cut through them. She could cut between them. With a sharp enough knife, she figured she'd be able to saw through the connection ligaments, muscles, and flesh to fully separate the limbs. Good, so she had a plan. She smiled in disbelief, purely out of painful irony — the plan was for Fluttershy to carefully dismember a pony with her knife. It didn't sound real. It didn't feel real. But yet, here she stood, her eyes on a stiffening corpse bleeding on a tarp in her living room, her hooves gloved and ready to surgically deconstruct it.

Well.. now or never, she supposed.

She picked up her knife from the floor, patiently waiting for her to use it again it seemed. She didn't like how it felt to touch it again, but she had no other options. Once this whole thing is done, she could bury the knife itself in the Everfree — that would help.

Turning back to the mare sprawled on the tarp, she closed her eyes, taking one more deep breath before committing, stepping over and sitting down beside the corpse.. Daisy had once been a very pretty mare, but now her mane hung limp down her blood-smeared face, her open eyes cloudy and unseeing — in fact, a few strands of hair had made their way into her eyes, just stuck there on the surface.. Fluttershy shuddered a bit, somehow even more unnerved. Her tail was dragged out behind her, caked in blood, leaving a long, wet smear across the wooden floor. She lay on her stomach, her head tilted, with her limbs pushed near her body to fit the tarp, but still splayed out unnaturally. It looked uncomfortable at the very least.. Well, it would've been uncomfortable if she were alive to feel it.

Right. Well, enough stalling. Fluttershy hesitantly pulled one of the mare's forelegs towards her, extending it to lay straight out.. "Oh, Celestia.. Please, please forgive me.." She moved closer to the body's back, moving a bit of the mane out of the way to expose her whole shoulder.. This'll work. She didn't need to dissect the poor thing, just.. just take it apart a little bit. She gently pressed the blade of her knife behind the pony's shoulder, hoping to get an angle that would let her take the entire foreleg off cleanly. If she hit bone, she'd cut around it, and one way or another the leg would come off. Right. Now, she just needed to do it.

In it went.. The blade punctured her cold skin easily, almost too easily — she kept her knives in good condition to avoid injuries from improper use, but it seems to have been more than just a little sharp. A bead of dark red blood pooled at the incision site before rolling down the mare's skin, dripping softly onto the plastic tarp.

She pushed the knife down as far as she reasonably could, still being a bit delicate and struggling with the tougher parts. Still, her knife sawed steadily down the pony's back, outlining her shoulder, planning to take the foreleg off at the very base. She cut through flesh, muscle, fat, anything in her way — tendons were the hardest, almost like rope to saw away at. Still, though, still, everything cut. Everything would cut if she just tried hard enough. Her blade scraped against bone a few times, dragging roughly across it, but she just focused on separating the shoulder from the socket. "Socket" being the only term she knew, anyway — the place where the shoulder was supposed to be.. but wouldn't be anymore. So.. it would be empty. An empty socket.

She grit her teeth; it was supposed to be an empty socket now, but the bucking thing just wouldn't —

Riiip

Fluttershy found herself holding the roughly severed limb, bone protruding sharply from the end, ripped, torn tissue and flesh dangling in messy chunks from the area. Blood pooled around the body on the tarp, dripping down her stained gloves, splattered up across her legs and chest. No matter — she had accomplished the task. Only four more to go.

She wasn't nearly as careful as she shifted to the other side of the body, hastily repositioning the corpse for the process. The knife seemed to go in much easier this time, gliding through the skin and flesh.. Maybe she was just getting better at it. Regardless, it didn't matter. Within a few moments of concentration and sawing work, she had the limb nearly removed, only the ligaments and bone connecting it. What she figured were ligaments, anyway — a bloody red, stringy mess of meat and tissue connected to the socket, a bone inside it somewhere. She didn't know what else to call it, just simply more she had to cut through. But this knife.. This knife was having issues with the tougher meat. This knife wasn't going to work for this. No, no it wouldn't..

She stood, quickly opening drawers, searching for her biggest, heaviest knife — there! She felt her lips unconsciously pull up into a smile as her hooves found their prize: her cleaver. Why on earth would she have a cleaver? Simple! Tough, large vegetables. You try cutting through a gigantic squash to feed a lot of animals with just a utility knife — it's not easy! Yes, this knife had never tasted flesh.. but it was going to now. It was going to taste flesh, bone, and anything else that got in her way.

Because of the heft, this knife had a strap attachment fit for the hoof, as you certainly wouldn't want this thing slipping from your grasp. She buckled the belts, the handle firmly in her right hoof, strapped on for extra protection. She nodded, unaware that the smile hadn't left her face — she was ready to proceed.

Sitting down, she loomed over the disfigured corpse, her eyes focused on the meaty connection point of the shoulder. Simple, simple.. She pressed the knife down to where it looked thinnest, getting a feel for it, stabilizing her posture. She took a breath, holding it, closing her eyes — she pushed the knife down with all her weight!

Oh..

Oh, the sound.

There wasn't a word for the sound it made. Crunching? No, no, much more than that. Popping? Maybe part of it. The cleaver — meat cleaver — cut easily through the connections, slipping between bones to give her the nicest cut, hitting the tarp. She was thankful for that luck, as she only guessed where the anatomy was after she had mangled it.

Two forelegs — almost there! She piled the discarded limbs at the corner of the tarp, to be taken care of later. Never mind the pool of blood coating the tarp, seeping down into her gloves as she worked, she could deal with that later too. Now, now was time for the hind legs. She moved down to the lower half of the now two-legged mare, sprawled out before her. Now, the pelvis, the hips, the flank.. Where to cut? She tapped the knife on her hoof, biting her lip.. Definitely the hips. She could cut out around the femur — that's what would work best.

She pulled one leg out, extending it as far as she could, feeling around her flank to see where would be easiest to cut.. Here. Right where the.. cutie mark.. is.

Huh..

She thought for a moment, her empty eyes staring at the two faded daisies, looking more like wilted flower pedals than a vibrant bouquet. How sad, but how fitting.. Much like her flowers, when immersed in poison, she too would wither and die. Poison she accepted with open hooves, but still, the point remains. She shared the same fate as her namesake.. Poetic.

The cleaver was pushed through the center of the two daisies diagonally, splitting skin and flesh, sinking deeper as it was worked through the muscle and tougher tissue. Perfect! It had been right on the mark, severing the femur from her pelvis, her flank splitting apart as she pulled the leg from its socket, the flesh wetly separating as she forced it away. Oh, hey, would you look at that — there's Daisy's colon.

She took one good look at the mangled, partly dismembered corpse, her own hoofwork, and promptly turned around to retch and heave, although the only result she could muster was to spit on the floor. She shook her head — she can't stop now. Get it together, and keep pushing through.

Breathing deep for a moment, she regained her composure, facing the corpse again as she moved to the other side, ignoring how she could see intestines peeking out of her lower abdomen from the hole where her leg was, and just lined up her knife with the flower petals on her flank. Pushing down as though it was natural, the wet sound it made as her blade slid through the flesh was still terribly uncomfortable. Soon enough, however, she had grasped the leg, pulling as flesh ripped, strings of red connecting the meat of her leg to her hip — only for a moment though, then it too was torn free.

She had a pile of limbs. Pony limbs. Dismembered, bloody pony limbs.

She blinked.

Yes, in the corner of the tarp there was a pile of body parts now. Of course there was — what else could she have expected? One thing left to remove, however.

She moved up to Daisy's head, and gently brushed her mane away from her neck, making access.. This. This would be the biggest challenge yet. Not out of physical difficulty, but pure mental strain.

She lined the blade up with her neck, unintentionally making small cuts in the pale skin where the blade was moved. It barely bled anymore, the vast majority of blood already having made its way into the floor. Simple, simple and quick and easy and —

Her hooves trembled, tears welling at her eyes again — that surprised her most, she thought she had already cried out her entire reservoir. The pegasus breathed, focusing and steadying herself, and fought her own hooves to keep them from shaking. She lined up the blade, her other hoof on top of it, the cold metal coated in dark crimson.

Fluttershy took one more breath, holding it in her fragile chest as she pushed down hard, the knife sliding into Daisy's neck — now that..

That was a sound.

The knife briefly caught against her vertebrae, but slipped between them quick enough not to cause a problem.

Popping and crunching, the blade severed muscle, fleshy tubes, and meat, slicing through the esophagus, trachea, and everything else in its path. It took a few extra pushes to get the knife worked all the way through, definitely pushing her physical limits.. but she did get it through. She got it through. She had.. decapitated..

She didn't have anything left to vomit, but her stomach sure as buck tried to empty itself anyway. She was getting tired of the dry heaving, getting a drink of water from the sink every so often to help ease her aching throat. The mare had deep bags under her eyes, her pale face looking worn and empty, blood splattered unknowingly across her pale yellow coat. She had the indentation of a knife's blade in her left hoof from pushing down so hard so often, but it would fade with time. Nothing to worry about.

The pegasus stood, her own limbs numb and cold, and it was a bit difficult to steady herself — specifically, it was hard to feel the blood dripping off her body where she had been sitting in it. Mentally and emotionally hard, that is. She could feel it very clearly, it wasn't lacking there.

Transport. That's the next problem. She took one look around before her eyes set on a bag of birdseed; she always kept the cloth bags, just in case she needed them, and now she was quite glad she did! As glad as one could be while disposing of a body, of course. So.. not terribly glad. Glad enough though.

She made her way to the closet again, red hoofprints left in her wake, and quickly sorted through to find her spare bags. Easily enough she had retrieved them — they were neatly near the top, on a shelf — and she made her way back to the scene, her bloody hoofprints making a clean loop to follow her. She sat down with a sigh, and began gathering the parts — two forelegs in one bag, two hind legs in another, one for the torso, and a separate bag for the head. That wouldn't be too much, would it? No, not at all, she'd certainly be able to carry that.

She was relieved when the pieces fit relatively okay in the bags she had picked out, not perfect by any means, but good enough. Not having to look at the remains also helped an awful lot for her lingering nausea.

Soon enough, she had the parts all packaged up and ready to go. She stood on wobbling legs, sweat dripping from her face, turned pink with blood — it seemed the worst was finally past her. She still sighed when thinking about flying everything to the Everfree, though.. She worried about falling asleep digging a grave with how exhausted she was.. Maybe it would be best to take a small break..? She looked over her mess, the bags lumpy and full, turning steadily red with oozing blood, a bit of pale green mane or tail sticking out the openings of a few.. The tarp over the floor, which ended up being a laughable attempt at keeping the blood contained...

She shook herself back awake, blinking firmly. She sighed in defeat — she definitely needed to rest.

On trembling hooves, Fluttershy meandered over to her couch. She was still caked in drying blood, tracking it wherever she went, her wet gloves having slipped from her hooves and her mind at some point, but she didn't care. Not right now. Now, she just wanted to lay down, close her eyes, and forget...