With tears in her eyes and her forelegs crossed, Zipp glowered at Phyllis, waiting for an answer.
Phyllis, who was sobbing quietly, sat across from her at the opposite end of the table. The glaring overhead lights spotlighted her messy mane and the inky mascara staining her cheeks, as well as a large bruise on her forehead.
The ugly, deep gash on Zipp's chest was burning, but she focused on the criminal before her. "Stop crying," Zipp whispered menacingly, "and answer the damn question."
Phyllis sobbed in response.
Zipp repeated the question. "Why did you kill Pipp?!" she demanded, leaning forward.
"For the last time," Phyllis sobbed, "I—did—not—kill—her!"
Zipp stood up and slammed her forehooves down on the table with such force that the wood cracked. Pens, papers, and notepads fell to the floor. Phyllis flinched back.
"JUST CONFESS ALREADY! I SAW WHAT YOU AND SPROUT WERE DOING—THAT'S WHY YOU TRIED TO KILL ME!" Zipp yelled, spreading her wings.
"I didn't try to kill you! And we didn't kill her, either! That was an accident!"
"YOU—"
"Zipp!" Hitch snapped, standing in the doorway of the brightly-lit room. "You can't be here!"
"She—"
"You know you can't be a part of this!"
Zipp stared at Hitch, then Phyllis.
"I'll be back," she growled, baring her teeth at Phyllis before storming out. As she brushed past Hitch, he put a comforting hoof on her shoulder, but his gesture was ignored.
After closing and locking the door, Hitch picked up the scattered items and walked over to the chair where Zipp had sat. He coldly observed Phyllis as he put papers in order. She kept her gaze down.
They sat facing each other without saying a word. Grabbing a pen and notepad, Hitch glanced at the pile of papers. The sheet on top was a list of names, the names of ponies that Phyllis was accused of slaughtering.
Finally Hitch spoke. "Tell me EVERYTHING, Phyllis. All the details. Start from the beginning."
Phyllis wiped her eyes with her cuffed hooves.
"Why did you do it?"
"To survive!" she angrily cried out. "We had to satisfy demand! We didn't have any other choice!"
"You didn't have any other choice but to kill ponies to make money?" he asked briskly.
"No, it's more complicated than that!" she replied, shaking her head vigorously. She wiped her eyes and snout with a tissue Hitch hoofed her. Phyllis let out a slow sigh and then continued.
"Hitch, you and your friends did the right thing when you brought back magic. But at the same time, you put me and Sprout out of business. Things were going great for all of you, but not for us. We still had bills to pay, mouths to feed, but no money. Sugarcube, we were desperate.
"That day in the pumpkin patch, Izzy was showing off her new pumpkin pie maker. I was standing a distance away from the crowd, planning to offer her money for it. Then I saw Pipp inside a giant pumpkin that somepony had partially carved into a jack-o'-lantern. She was in there taking pictures of herself. I can't imagine why.
"They didn't see her in the pumpkin when they loaded it into the machine! I waved, I shouted, but I couldn't get their attention! They couldn't hear me over all the noisy machinery—and they were too busy stuffing their faces with pumpkin pie!
"I ran as fast as I could to stop them. Pipp was covered in so much pulp she couldn't even fly, and she couldn't climb out because the insides were too slippery. Both of us were screaming at them to stop, but they didn't notice either of us! To this day, I still don't understand why nopony noticed!"
Phyllis' regret was clear on her face.
"There was nothing I could do, I couldn't gallop fast enough! I'll never forget the sound of her screams, the sound of her bones cracking and snapping! But the worst part was when the pies made from her were rolling out onto the conveyor belt!
"Jazz took the first bite. I nearly tossed my cookies right then and there! She ate the entire pie while the others devoured the rest of them. Can you believe it—they said they were delicious! The best pies they've ever had!"
"Why didn't you say something?!"
"I wanted to, but I just couldn't get my mouth to open! You don't know how horrible it was to deal with what I had seen!"
"But you went ahead and got the machine anyhow, a machine that had just killed a pony!"
"I told you already, we were desperate! That pie maker was going to be my money maker! Seeing how quickly it could process pumpkins, I figured it could do just as well with other fruits and vegetables. I wanted to use it to mass produce pies—normal pies.
"Izzy was nice enough to sell it to me for a reasonable price. When Sprout and I finally got that giant contraption back home, we took it apart to clean and sterilize the interior. I had to tell him what had happened to Pipp before we began. Poor thing, he was shaking so badly. He probably asked me a hundred times if the machine was off while we were removing the bloody pumpkin pulp from the gears and blades. Don't get me started on the filth—that mixture of pumpkin, blood, feathers, bits of mane and fur—oh, it was awful! Just awful!
"Believe me, we never wanted to make pony pies. I'll have you know that we made an honest living selling perfectly scrumptious apple pies and blueberry pies and pecan pies and all sorts of other pies. But our profits were poor.
"Trotting around Maretime Bay, on many occasions I heard ponies reminiscing about the 'yummy' pies Izzy's machine had made in the pumpkin patch. When word got out that our pies were made by the same machine, ponies bought our pies thinking that they would taste like the ones they had eaten before. And of course they became annoyed and disappointed once they discovered the flavor was 'wrong'. Do you know how many times customers demanded refunds?
"So we decided to make pony pies. Not because we wanted to, but because we had to! It's what our customers wanted, after all! Is that our fault?
"After debating who to choose first, we picked Rufus because we thought nopony would wonder too much about him. He was always traveling to who-knows-where to perform his magic shows, and everypony knew he was gone for weeks at times.
"He agreed to perform at a party I told him I was throwing. Over the phone, I told him to come by my house to rehearse his magic routine for me the night before the 'event'. Once Rufus walked through the front door, Sprout bucked him in the back of his head. Together we pushed him into the machine's opening while he was still knocked out.
"To our luck, the machine jammed, even though we had taken off everything Rufus was wearing. It turned out that his hair and bones had gummed up the mechanism. We thought the machine would automatically remove those unwanted parts, the same way it removed peels and seeds and husks. Sprout and I spent hours wading through his blood and shredded-up flesh, trying to get it working again while salvaging as much meat as we could. From then on, before processing, we've always skinned and deboned bodies. By hoof. I have to admit that Sprout did most of that dirty work."
While Phyllis had been talking, Hitch had kept his eyes on the pad he was jotting notes on. But after hearing what she had just said, now he stared at her with his eyes wide open. Phyllis lowered her head, fully aware of her gruesome past actions.
"It was risky, but we figured that mixing the meat with vegetables would not only make more pies, but hopefully improve the taste. Rufus gave us thirty pies that way.
"The morning after, I asked a random customer to sample a slice of the new 'specialty' pie. He took a small bite. Then he practically swallowed it whole! In between mouthfuls, he told us how happy he was that we were finally making good pies. We sold all of our specialty pies by the end of the day. Cloverleaf Pies was back in business.
"Using our increased profits, I purchased a new building, which became our official Cloverleaf Pies factory and headquarters. I was also able to rehire most of our old Canterlogic employees, including Toots and Sweets."
Hitch put down the pen and closed his eyes. "I can't believe you two did this. I knew you all my life, but I didn't know you were monsters."
Narrowing her eyes, Phyllis pointed her cuffed hooves at him. "You were the ones who wanted those pies. You, Hitch, ate more pies than anypony else in Maretime Bay! You're the biggest cannibal in town!"
"I DIDN'T KNOW WHAT I WAS EATING!"
"Fruits and vegetables just weren't good enough for you! You all had to have pony pies! You're all cannibals! I don't even like the way they taste! The only time I ever dare put even a tiny piece of those pies in my mouth is for a taste test!"
Hitch stared at her with disgust. "We trusted you! You fed us nothing but lies!"
"Our advertising has always been honest! 'You've never tasted anything like this before!' We told the truth!"
"Tell the truth about this!" He roughly hoofed her the list. "Are all these ponies—"
"Yes."
"Even Toots?!"
"That wasn't intentional," Phyllis stated. "We never use our own personnel to make specialty pies. What happened was that Toots stayed late one evening, after our other employees had left the factory, to do some maintenance on the pie maker. He was installing a new emergency stop lever and was connecting the wiring inside the machine. Sprout and I were busy preparing a body in another room when we heard his screams. By the time I galloped over to unplug the machine, Toots was minced. It was sadly ironic. At least we got two dozen or so pies made in the process."
Hitch covered his eyes with his hooves.
"Meat was too precious to waste," Phyllis mumbled.
"You're sick, Phyllis, both you and Sprout. You're going to pay for what you did. Unfortunately, I can't say the same for Sprout."
"How can you be so heartless?! Zipp KILLED HIM!" Phyllis cried, overwhelmed by another flood of tears.
"I'm sorry about Sprout," Hitch replied. "But she said he tried to push her into the machine!"
"DON'T MAKE EXCUSES FOR HER! SHE WANTED REVENGE AND SHE SHOVED HIM IN!" shrieked Phyllis.
A loud bang on the door caught them both by surprise.
"Sherrif Hitch! I demand that you let me in!" said somepony on the other side.
Bang!
"I believe Zipp, not you! How can I trust you?! I don't even know if I should believe your story about how Pipp died!" Hitch said as he stood up.
"Open this door immediately!" The doorknob turned side to side.
Irritated, Hitch unlocked and opened the door, prepared to reprimand whoever was interrupting the interrogation. Queen Haven swept in and headed straight for Phyllis. Before he could stop her, Haven striked her face with her wing. Phyllis fell to the floor, her eyeglasses flying off her face.
"BEAST!" Haven thundered. "MURDERER! IT WASN'T ENOUGH THAT YOU KILLED ONE OF MY BABIES, YOU WANTED TO KILL MY OTHER ONE, TOO?! YOU DESERVE TO DIE, YOU—" Haven lifted her wing high to strike her again. Phyllis cowered.
"No!" Hitch jumped in front of Phyllis.
"MOM! Stop!" Zipp cried as she ran into the room. "Let Hitch handle this!" She placed herself in front of her mother.
"Move, Zephyrina!"
"You can't beat her up, Mom!"
Panting and weeping, Haven stared down at Phyllis over Zipp's shoulder. "How many months have we spent with no rest, no sleep, no PEACE, because this, this worm took Pipp from us?! Stand aside!"
Haven lunged at Phyllis, but Zipp held her back. "Mom, calm down!" Zipp pleaded. "This isn't helping at all!"
Haven saw the tears streaking down Zipp's face. As she gazed into her daughter's eyes, Haven's wings drooped and her ears flattened. "You're right, my love," she whispered. Her gaze fell to the gauze bandage on Zipp's chest.
"Come on," Zipp said softly as she led her mother out of the room. "Don't worry, she'll get what she deserves." Both of them glared at Phyllis as they exited.
Putting a hoof on the side of her face that had been struck, Phyllis picked up her eyeglasses. With Hitch's help, she stood up and sat back down on the chair. She had a new bright-red bruise on her cheek.
She put on her eyeglasses while Hitch closed and locked the door for the second time.
Stepping torwards her, he asked gently, "How did Sprout die?"
Phyllis hanged her head and her tears fell onto the table. "My poor, poor sugarcube… he only did what I told him to do. He didn't want to be part of my plans, but he went along with them to make me happy. He wasn't a monster. He wasn't sick."
"But what happened, Phyllis?"
"I don't know how Zipp found our preparation room, or why she was even in the factory in the first place. But she caught us cutting up a body for another batch of specialty pies. I can imagine how shocking the scene must of looked to her: chopped-up chunks of meat on the table in front of us, cleavers in our hooves and our suits splattered with blood, with a pile of unusable body parts beside us to boot.
"We had no idea she was watching us till she screamed. Then she saw Pipp's tiara. From the moment Sprout found it inside the pie maker, I'd been telling him to get rid of it! But he always said we could sell the gold. As if! Why did he always have to keep it near him when he worked, right on that shelf where anypony could see it?!
"I saw the horror on her face change into rage. Thinking he had killed Pipp, Zipp pounced on him and beat him with her hooves. Like any mother would, I protected my son. I swung the cleaver at her. I didn't want to hurt her, I just wanted to get her off him. She violently pushed me back and I hit my head on the table.
"Although I was dizzy and in a great deal of pain, I could still see what was going on. They struggled by the opening of the machine. Zipp kept lashing out at him and Sprout, defenseless, had no choice but to back up. She hit him one last time and he fell backwards into all those blades!"
"Zipp didn't push him in!" Hitch said, shaking his head. "She told me his suit got caught—"
"You don't understand! You didn't hear how he screamed and screamed as he was tortured in there! When the emergency stop lever broke, I climbed in there to save him—these cuts aIl over me are proof! But I couldn't get to him! I even tried to cleaver my way through the side of the machine! All the while Sprout was screaming for help, screaming for me to help him, and there was NOTHING I COULD DO!"
Phyllis sobbed uncontrollably.
Hitch was silent.
"I'll personally see to it that the machine is destroyed," he said, attempting to sound comforting. "Stand up, we're done here."
Still crying, Phyllis stood up. Hitch calmly led her out of the room. Phyllis shuffled along, hindered by the cuffs and shackles around her hooves. He brought her to a cell that looked more like a cage. Fumbling with a large ring of keys, he eventually found the right one and unlocked the cell door. Creaking, it swung open.
Without protest, Phyllis stepped in. Once Hitch took the restraints off her legs, she layed down and curled up on a thin, uncomfortable cot. Avoiding her gaze, he locked the door and walked away. Phyllis thought she saw a tear running down his cheek.
The cramped cell was freezing, chilled by the bitter coldness of winter. The coldness reminded her that it would soon be Winter Wishday—and that Sprout would never spend it with her again. Phyllis' heart sank deeper into misery.
A terrifying thought suddenly entered her mind. In a panic, she pressed herself against the icy bars. "Hitch!" her voice echoed in the cell.
Hitch stopped and quickly brushed a hoof over his eyes. He faced Phyllis. "What?"
"Pies were coming out of the machine… pies made from Sprout! What if somepony out there's eating them?! Somepony's eating Sprout!"
