Stealing Harmony: Kindness in Murder

Stealing Harmony: Kindness in Murder

Chapter 4: Sanity Optional

As the four mares lay on the man, letting weeks of suffering out, they were distracted by a slamming car door in the distance.

Suddenly, Rainbow realized that although Ray was a nice guy, the rest of the world had yet to prove itself. Sniffling, she backed off of the human, the others following suit. Then, she bit a corner of his sleeve, helping the sorely wounded man back to his feet.

Once his boots were under him, Ray smiled at Rainbow, although it came across as more of a lopsided grimace. He turned to his house and, after searching through his pockets for the key, unlocked the door and ushered the ponies into his abode. As he shut and locked the door, the ponies got a good look at his home.

They were standing in a short hallway. The wallpaper on the walls was a delicate shade of cream, and a fairly good painting of fruit was in a frame over a small table bedecked with a vase of plastic flowers. On the right, a set of carpeted stairs led to the second floor, and to the left was a wide opening that led to the living room. Directly ahead was a swinging door that probably led to the kitchen area.

From where she stood, Rainbow could make out a large, white sofa in the living room, with a matching loveseat and recliner. A big, flat box was attached to the wall, and it was covered with a shiny black pane of plastic. A few racks of narrow boxes flanked this massive box, and a shelf of books ran around the room. She could also make out the table and chairs of a dining room just beyond that one. From the second floor came a strange sound, similar to the bangs that they had heard earlier, but muffled and artificial. It was followed by a loud whoop.

Fluttershy and Ditzy jumped, startled at the loud sound. Rainbow dropped into a crouch, even though her limbs cried out in stress. Dinky, however, being the smart little filly she was, looked up at Ray’s broken face, noted his unconcerned look, and decided to ignore the whooping coming from upstairs. He would tell them if he needed to. Until then, she would wait and trust him.

Ray immediately herded the mares into his kitchen, the door swinging back behind him. The floor was tiled black and white like at Sugarcube Corner, and a black marble counter ran from the large, silver fridge, around the corner, and all the way to the door to the dining area to their immediate left. It was also a swinging one. An island counter stood in the middle of the room, a stovetop built right into it, with a smokestack located directly above it.

A few oak cupboards lined the walls above the counter, and a large pantry took up most of the right wall. Some cupboards underneath the counter completed the kitchen look, and the sink on the left was large and dripped slightly. A sliding glass door, looking like a huge window to the ponies, led into the small backyard, and a closed door presumably led to the basement. All in all, it was smaller than the monster’s house, but seemed much more cheerful, if a little too clean for Rainbow’s tastes.

Ray stumbled over to the pantry, opening it to reveal a stocked larder. He began pulling things at random, tossing a box of spaghetti, a half-empty carton of snack cakes, three cans of cheese ravioli, and a brown plastic package onto the island.

Next, he raided the fridge, slipping things like a bag of apples, a jug of orange juice and a jar of mayonnaise onto the steadily growing pile. He seemed so tired, and was obviously in pain, that the ponies forgave him for being distracted and took stock of the food.

Dinky took charge, separating the food into two piles: one for ponies, and the other for humans. Into the human pile immediately went the uncooked spaghetti, a bottle of beer, and the strange brown package. She looked it over and saw three letters, ‘MRE’ printed on it, with a smaller line stating ‘Tuna’ underneath, but since she couldn’t identify it, she decided to trust her gut and leave it alone.

The apples and ravioli, however, went into the pony pile, along with the snack cakes, the OJ, and a box of raisins. Fluttershy eeped when she saw a T-Bone steak in the pile, and refused to come out of the living room until it had been put away. After a moment or two, The food had been separated, and the ponies fairly fell onto it, and for the next few minutes, nothing was heard in the shiny kitchen except the sounds of three starving mares and one fill stuffing themselves silly on the rather delicious human food.

Ray disappeared while they ate, and returned with a medical box. As they finished up with tall glasses of orange juice, he emptied the box out, carefully setting on the table a roll of medical gauze, some disinfectant, a curved needle and some black thread, a small scalpel, a box of mediacl gloves, and some aspirin. He took a few pills with some water, and waited while Fluttershy collected the dirty plates and laid them in the sink.

Rainbow leaned back on the kitchen stool, rubbing her distended sromache with contentment. After starving for so long, a good meal refreshed her. It also made her just a little sleepy, but she ignored that. Now was the time for medicine, not sleep.

Ditzy was the first to go. She nervously settled in a high-backed wooden chair, her head back as she glanced worriedly at her daughter, wishing she would look away and not see her mother’s shameful body. Dinky however, walked up to Ditzy and placed her hoof on top of her mother’s. Ditsy smiled warmly at her and nuzzled her face for a second, before looking to Ray, who had gotten rid of the dirty jacket and put on a pair of sanitized gloves.

He reached out, same as before, and touched her face. She froze unintentionally, and realized that she would probably always freeze like this, or at least for a long time. However she didn’t flinch, and soon he had injected a shot of anesthesia into her neck, sending her into pleasant dreams of muffins while he cut away dead flesh under her soiled bandages, and reset broken ribs. He toiled for hours, finally sewing her back up and rewrapping her wounds.

Dinky hadn’t moved the whole time, determined to hold her mother’s hoof through the whole thing. Truth be told, she wasn’t that grossed out by the sight of a ponies insides, and a small part of her wondered if being a doctor would be her cutie mark. However, a familiar pressure built up in her abdomen, and she wished that she hadn’t chugged that juice. She squirmed, trying to hold it back, but she was still a filly, after all. She gave up and tugged on Ray’s sleeve.

“Where’s the bathroom?” she asked, her tiny legs crossed as she danced on the spot. Ray smiled, and pointed to the stairs. She took off like an arrow, scrambled up the stairs, and dove into the bathroom, shutting the door just in time. Fluttershy took a look at the unconscious mare before following Dinky up the stairs.

Ray picked up Ditzy and laid her on the couch before turning to Rainbow. Rainbow felt scared, though she was loath to admit it. Although she had been to the doctors plenty of times before (she had a permanent discount on services rendered on account of ‘Wonderbolt-related accidents’), she still felt anxious whenever anypony touched her sensitive wings. Not to mention breaking them again in order to fix them, and the doctor being a human.

She managed to back onto the chair before she froze up. Ray picked up a bottle and stuck a needle into it. She eyed the needle as it filled with clear liquid, praying that it would be over quick. She definitely didn’t want to wake up in the middle of it and go through all of that again. Ray approached her, getting closer and closer. Rainbow tensed up, and just before she lent danger to the wind and leapt out of the chair in fright, a scream came from upstairs.

Rainbow bolted, equal parts glad for the lucky break, and concerned. It had sounded like Fluttershy. She sprinted up the stairs, glad for all the times that Applejack had made her race, which made the upwards struggle as simple as flight. She turned into a blue-painted hallways with teal carpeting. To her immediate left was the empty bathroom, filled with a large tub and a toilet. Two more closed doors were on the left, and four lay on the right. The nearest was open, and she saw an empty bedroom. From the huge pair of pants lying on the floor, she gathered that this was Ray’s room. The hallway behind her ended in a window, and at the other end was another room.

This door was wide open, and those strange banging noises from earlier were originating from it. She galloped forward, but had barely taken a single step when Dinky, followed closely by a panic-stricken Fluttershy dashed out of the room and down the stairs. Rainbow breathed a sigh a relief, noticing in passing that although scared, they weren’t harmed. She steeled herself, and poked her head around the door, her magenta eyes spinning around the room.

Now, this was more like her room back home. Clothes and old pizza boxes lay strewn everywhere, hanging from the fan and stuffed into corners. Empty cans littered the floor, and an unmade bed sat in the middle of the deluge of messiness. It smelled quite ripe in there, a mixture of gym shorts and moldy bread, with the disgusting overtone of human male everywhere.

Posters covered so much of the walls and ceiling that she had trouble distinguishing the color of the wallpaper. An electric guitar was leaning on a bean bag, and seated in the bean bag was a human. He was skinny, with long, blonde hair, many rings in his ears, rings on his fingers and metal studs in his face. He was wearing a black sleeveless shirt with a large ‘A’ in a red circle on the front, and a polka-dot pair of that short underwear called boxers.

A white object was in his hands, and his fingers flew dexterously over the front of it, pressing colorful buttons. He whooped as he stared at a smaller version of that box from downstairs, except this one wasn’t black, but glowed slightly, and had a moving image on it. She tried to make sense of it, but it proved just as difficult of Pinkie Pie, and she soon gave up.

He didn’t seem to notice her, so she took a tentative step forward. Suddenly, the banging sound stopped, and the human jumped into the air, spilling a bag of chips from his lap.

“I AM THE KING OF THE WORLD!!” he yelled, punching the air with his fist. He caught a blue object in the corner of his eye and spun around. He saw a blue pegasus with multicolored hair looking at him uncertainly, and felt the world stop moving. The controller fell from his hand, conveniently pausing the game and plunging the room into silence. For a second or two, the human and the pony stared levelly at one another, and then he grinned.

“Holy. Fucking. Shit! It’s motherfucking Rainbow Dash!” he said with a squee. Rainbow nervously backed up, wondering how in Equestria he knew her name. Meanwhile, the human threw his arms into the air, a huge grin on his face. “Wonderbolt-wannabe! Used the Sonic Rainboom to save Rarity during the Young-Fliers Competition in Cloudsdale! Secret admirer of Daring Do! Owner of the cutest tortoise in the world…”

He went on and on, casually spouting things about her, things that nopony except her friends knew. Secrets and thoughts and other things that absolutely nopony knew about. He was beginning to frighten her, and as always, when she got scared, she also became angry.

“Who are you? How do you know this stuff?” She shouted, her blood pressure rising as her heart beat a mile a minute. But the man smiled, pointing to a smaller box behind her. She took her eyes off of him for a split second to look at it, then took a double take. It displayed a single picture, that of a familiar purple unicorn with a dweebish mane.

“Tw-twilight?” Rainbow stuttered, wondering if this meant that Twilight was here as well, maybe hidden in the basement. The man said one more thing.

“Friendship is Magic! I LOVE that show!”