• Published 2nd Jun 2014
  • 1,703 Views, 106 Comments

Disco Inferno - McPoodle



Rarity suddenly finds herself part of the pony ride attraction in a run-down circus on Earth. She might have been able to handle this, if it wasn't also the height of the Disco Era.

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Figure 2: Clipper

Author's Note:

Towards the end of this chapter there is a YouTube link for a song. Think very carefully before clicking it, for it is the second-most addictive song in the world. One time it took me a whole month to get it out of my head. You have been warned.

Figure 2: Clipper


Less than a month had passed since William Martin had confided Rarity’s origins to the two police officers. Snow was still thick between the branches of trees and on top of houses, but it was beginning to lose the war against the never-ending supply of salt on the roads and sidewalks.

Rarity the pony was walking down the center of Main Street in the small New Jersey city of Passaic. Behind her were the six ponies who hadn’t come down with colds so far. Ahead and behind them was practically everybody in the circus, all of them showing off their talents while waving to the crowd. It was a parade of some sort, and the object of veneration appeared to be a particular form of braided white wig, considering how many people in and watching the parade were wearing them.

Rarity ignored the voices of the people around her, and looked down at the slushy surface of the street she was delicately trotting upon, her head wobbling from side to side. She fell behind the pace of the others, and then suddenly she was on the ground—the pony had passed out.

& & &

The man on the other end of the pony’s leash pulled a bottle of smelling salts out of a pocket and waved it under the animal’s nose until she revived, then quickly led her back to her place in the parade. The man did all this with the practiced air of one who has revived fainting ponies, or perhaps just this fainting pony, on more than one occasion.

That man was William Martin. Behind him in his assigned position his wife Antonia was busy herding all the other ponies, but Rarity was the star attraction, and Antonia wanted to make sure that she was seen. For his part, William was now holding the leash about the same way he’d hold his wife’s purse: at arm’s length, and refusing to look at it, as if by these two actions he could convince anybody that he wasn’t actually doing what he quite obviously was doing.

William’s eyes were roaming about as he walked and waved at the crowd, clearly looking for somebody. They stopped upon the figure of Aramus Gruekin, wearing a tan trench coat and standing next to a newspaper machine. As he watched, the officer ducked into a nearby alley.

William looked back at his wife. “I need to get a newspaper,” he said, attempting to hand Rarity’s leash off to her.

Antonia Martin was a short woman with short black hair, dark eyeliner and lipstick the color of deep red wine. She was wearing thigh-high brown boots and a simple dress covered with a crazy patchwork design that made it hard to tell how much mud and slush her ponies had splattered her with. The answer was: a lot. “Now?” she asked with some exasperation.

William gave her a pleading look.

Antonia sighed. “Very well, I know how much you hate doing this. But don’t give her to me: Rarity deserves the spotlight.”

As she was saying this, a shapely woman in a leotard that was mostly skin-colored arrived on the back of a majestic black stallion, riding side-saddle. “I can take care of her for you, dear sister,” the woman said, an arch smile upon her face. Her raven-black hair was long and wavy, and she looked like she had no need for makeup whatsoever. She was a few years older than Antonia, but beyond a doubt the more beautiful of the pair.

Antonia looked about her, desperate to find any alternative other than this. But the circus performers around her were busy with the leashes of wild animals, or juggling, or spitting fireballs at the delighted youngsters in the crowd. With a deep sigh of dread, she took Rarity’s leash from her husband and held it out to her sibling. “Take care of her, Julia,” she hissed, while still holding the rope.

“Why, I’ll treat her like I treat Thunderbolt,” the elder sister said gaily, patting a hand on her horse’s withers. “Like I would Buttercup II!”

“Best damn pony a man could ever know!” blurted the fire-breather.

“...Yes,” Julia said dryly, not bothering to look at him. Instead, she looked down at the leash in her hand, still tightly gripped by Antonia. “You can let go, Sis.”

“Oh. Right.”

& & &

William made his way to the alley the moment the despised leash had left his hand. He pulled a pile of change out of his pocket and began slowly passing it around from one hand to another, the whole time staring down at the newspaper machine.

What have you found out about that recording?” he whispered.

Damn thing doesn’t make a bit of sense,” Gruekin’s voice drifted back to him from the alley. “How’s your pony?”

Getting worse by the day,” William replied. “Dr. Atkins still doesn’t know what’s wrong with her. She was fine before he spoke to her over the radio.

So you keep telling me.

& & &

“Wow, that’s a neat pony you’ve got there,” said a little girl that had snuck up to Julia, Thunderbolt and Rarity. Her hair was blonde and in pigtails, and she was wearing a neat little pink dress.

Julia shrugged. “Eh, I’ve seen better,” she said. She looked back and forth, as if checking to see if anybody was watching, then leaned down to be closer to the girl who was walking beside her. “Wanna ride her?”

The girl ran her hand down Rarity’s mane, causing the pony to flinch. Turning to the other kids on the sidewalk, she cried out, “Hey! The lady says we can ride her!”

& & &

William Martin and Officer Gruekin were now standing in the alley, where they no longer had to pretend not to be having a conversation with each other. Gruekin was telling his story to William, a story that had the latter dumbfounded.

“...And in teeny-tiny print,” Gruekin said, “the message inside the fortune cookie said, ‘Assistance requested, most honorable westwant patwon. Am twapped inside a fowtune cookie factowy!’” Upon completing his little tale, Officer Gruekin awaited William Martin’s response.

A full minute of silence passed.

“Tell me you’re kidding about that joke,” William finally said. “Please tell me you’re kidding. Your partner actually sprung that joke on your boss?”

“Yup,” Gruekin answered with a half-smile.

“Knowing full well that said boss’ wife is Chinese.”

“Yup.”

Martin tried to rub the headache blooming between his eyes away, to no avail. “Tell me again how we got to this point in the conversation from you analyzing that recording.”

“Well that’s the thing—we can’t let the Chief listen to that recording yet, so we had to get him out of the A/V room by any means necessary, and all Harry could think of was that joke.”

“So I suppose I’m not going to be seeing him for a while?” Martin asked, a smile blooming on his face as he pondered spending time without having to deal with the gung-ho policeman.

“No, I suppose not,” Gruekin said with a sigh. “The Chief’s got him buried in paperwork right up to the ceiling.”

“Well tell me you learned something from that recording, at least,” said William.

“Ah...no,” Gruekin said with a sigh. “No matter what we do, we can’t get rid of the surface layer that your mystery man was using to cover up the sound of his voice. Have there been any other recordings?”

“No,” said William. “The CB radio has only been used the one time since you set up the recording equipment. But it can’t be that hard—I heard three phrases distinctly: ‘center of the universe’, ‘the sailor’s itch time is twilight’, and ‘the past can be changed’. Well...I’m not too certain about that middle one. It was during a pretty brief break in the laughter.”

“Laughter?” Gruekin said in confusion. “When did you hear laughter in that recording?”

Now it was William’s turn to be confused. “It was nearly constant.”

“Martin,” Gruekin said, suddenly serious, “tell me what you heard. Tell me what was in the surface layer of that CB radio recording.”

“Well it was a skit, from that silly British comedy troupe. The one about the dead bird that goes on and on forever.”

“That’s not what I heard,” Gruekin said.

“What did you hear?”

“I heard the ‘Chicken Heart’ episode from Light’s Out. Although I did find it odd that this version had an altered ending where the giant heart ate the two police officers who were trying to stop it from devouring the city. I did think it odd that the officers sounded just...like...us... ” A rather disturbed expression settled upon his face.

“Well that’s impossible,” William protested. “Obviously, you must have mixed up the tapes.”

“Possibly...” Gruekin mused. “Maybe I should escort you to the station, so you can have another listen?”

“Oh no you don’t!” William said with a shake of his head. “You have no idea how much trouble I’ll be in if I’m seen within a mile of a police station. It’s bad enough that we’re talking right now.”

Billy!” a voice rang out. It’s tone was equal parts desperation and rage.

Gruekin handed a newspaper to William. “I’ll tell you if I find anything else.”

& & &

William Martin dashed back into the street, jogging past spectators to catch up with the receding parade. He didn’t have far to run, because the parade had stopped dead, with a solid clump of humanity surrounding the figures of Thunderbolt and Julia. The latter looked like a cat who had made off with a canary, and was too proud of her achievement to cover it up when the master shows up.

Billy!” Antonia’s voice called once again.

Coming, my Pumpkin!” William called back, prying people away from each other to reach the center of the mass. There he found over a dozen little girls pulling Rarity back and forth by her mane. The pony’s eyes were closed in obvious pain, and her mouth was open, but no sound emerged from her mouth.

That was the first of many mysteries Dr. Atkins had discovered about Rarity: she had no vocal cords. It was not like they had been surgically removed, because there were no scars. No, somehow she had been born without the ability to speak. He reached for one of the girls’ arms...

...And promptly got swatted away by the handbag of the girl’s mother. “Don’t you lay a hand on my little angel!” the mother screamed. “Now let go of the little horsey, Darling...”

“Mine!” the little girl shrieked. “Mine, mine, all mine!”

The same drama was playing out with every other child and parent in the mass of humanity. The tumult was nearly deafening at this close range.

Suddenly the air was rent with the sound of a thunderbolt (a real one, not the horse) at close range. A shadow dark as pitch settled upon the group.

What is the meaning of this?!” It was a voice of command, and none dared to defy it.

A tall, thin man—far too thin to be casting that impossibly large shadow—stepped into the crowd, parting it like it was water. He was dressed in the traditional costume of a ringmaster, with a whip grasped tightly in one hand, but all anybody could see was his eyes, which seemed to sizzle like coals. One dark look was enough to cause all of the children fighting over the pony to flee for their lives, convinced that a creature from their nightmares had stepped into the waking world. The mothers and fathers quickly backed away, a few of them making the sign of the cross in the ringmaster’s direction as they did so.

The white pony lay senseless upon the ground, having fallen victim to another fainting attack.

“Is this Rarity?” the man asked Julia accusingly. His voice resembled the striking of flint.

“Y...yes, Brother,” Julia replied, her expression of self-satisfaction finally cracked. “Sh...she’s clearly not circus material. You should—”

I’ll decide what should or should not be done with her,” the man said. At this, Julia slumped over and rode away, dropping the leash as she did so. The ringmaster next turned to face Antonia and William. The couple were standing side by side, their hands intertwined.

“So, is she for riding, or is she for show?” he asked them. It felt like an ultimatum.

“For show, Frankie,” Antonia said defiantly.

William pointedly said nothing.

“Well I hope you can afford her on your allowance,” Frankie Scarpino said coldly. “I figure you have enough for food, heat, or your pony and her precious hairdo. But not all three. So when you change your mind, and you will be forced to change your mind, sooner or later...” He reached down and yanked Rarity up by her mane, causing her to silently let out a yelp of protest. “...this distraction has got to go. This family has no place for charity.” He shoved his way between Antonia and her husband, forcing them to part. “We’ve moving, people!” he bellowed.

And with that, the parade was under way once again.


At the edge of the circus compound sat a lone trailer roughly half the size of the Martins’. The door of this trailer opened, and a gloved hand whipped out to cover a spot of the wall immediately inside the door. The head of a man in whiteface looked over at the hand, and then down at the floor, where a playing card was resting—it had been used as a primitive tool to detect trespassers. The man’s eyes narrowed, and a stiletto suddenly appeared in the man’s outstretched hand. Other than the gloves and his painted face, the man was wearing a striped tan and white shirt and tan slacks, very subdued clothing for the era. This was Chuckles the Clown, and nobody dared to poke around in his domicile.

Chuckles made his way around the small confines of the trailer, leaving the lights out. Trusting to his memory of its layout, he rather quickly ascertained that nobody was still there. Once that had been established, he turned the lights on and started combing every square inch of the place.

Chuckles’ trailer was packed, very efficiently, with two sorts of items: electronics and books. Every piece was perfectly catalogued in his mind. Of the electronics, nothing had been moved. The same could not be said of the books. Several of them had clearly been examined. By looking closely at the traces of flour that had been deliberately placed for this purpose, the paranoid clown had soon picked out the one book that the intruder had clearly spent the most time on, a thick paperback with the title Salem-Village Witchcraft: A Documentary Record of Local Conflict in Colonial New England. The book contained the complete transcripts of every one of the witch trials that occurred during the mania of 1692-93. Chuckles was very familiar with this book, having read it cover to cover at least five times. He liked to browse through it on late nights, when he needed confirmation of the worthlessness of mankind.

The man looked down, hoping to obtain some additional clue. A small amount of flour from the shelf had spilled to the floor, but instead of the expected footprint, Chuckles could only see the edge of a circular mark, repeated at regular intervals as the intruder left the scene, until it faded to invisibility.

Biting his lip in frustration, the clown turned his attention to the book. He idly flipped through the pages, but was happily surprised when it fell open to a page near the very end. A small ribbon had been left in place as a bookmark, carefully placed so that it did not stick out.

The section marked was in the appendix of the book, which contained all that remained of several pieces of incomplete documentation from the period. The name of this particular fragment was “The Unicorn Trial”. Oddly, Chuckles didn’t remember ever reading that particular fragment before. The bookmark was placed where the documentation cut off, at the end of the first day of the trial. The Salemanders were particularly batty on this day, as they were accusing a horse born with a horn-like birth defect not only of using magic as an agent of Satan, but also of talking. Talking a great deal in fact, so much so that the judge decided that the animal was to defend herself.

Chuckles sat down cross-legged on the floor and read the entire fragment to himself. He was rather disappointed in the end by the fact that it was a fragment. He wondered what judgment the “unicorn” eventually received.


Officers Gruekin and Gloomfeld hunched over the reel-to-reel tape recorder. They were sitting in a closet of the police station, with the recorder and a lone lamp dragged in on long extension cords. The recorder’s volume was turned way down, in hopes that the late-night janitorial staff wouldn’t discover them.

Gloomfeld examined the tape. “I don’t see how just copying the tape is magically going to fix anything,” he said.

“Just trust me for once, OK?” Gruekin asked. He threaded the tape through the player. “Oh, and the machine kind of ate most of the original before it got very far, but I’m sure we’ll hear something vital in the ten seconds we’ve got.”

“Ten seconds? Ten se—?!

Gruekin reached up to cover Gloomfeld’s mouth as they heard the sound of a distant vacuum cleaner stopping. After a few tense moments, it started up again, and Gruekin felt safe starting the tape.

There’s a way out, of course,” a sinister voice intoned from the speaker, clear as day. “Just find the center of the universe, and you’re home free.


The white pony stood in the slush and frozen mud outside of the pony barn, a look of steely determination in her eyes. She looked like a pony that had had enough, a pony that furthermore knew what she wanted, a pony on a mission to somewhere. And that somewhere wasn’t anywhere near here. She gave one last, contemptuous look back at the circus, and began her departure.

She stumbled a little as her path took her past the trailer owned by the Martins, but with a hoof placed beside her head, she was able to prevent herself from collapsing. It was well after midnight, and the couple should have been asleep. But instead their voices spilled out of an open window into the moonlit air. Rarity stopped to listen.

& & &

We’re never going to make it if we don’t put her on the carousel.

I don’t care! She doesn’t deserve something like this.

She’s just a dumb animal.

You take that back! She’s the most perfect thing to ever enter our miserable little lives. I’d do anything for her. Even...even give her up, if that was what it would take to ensure her happiness.

Fine, then let’s give her back.

Give her back to that horrible man who’s killing her by some kind of remote control? Over my dead body!

We may be dead if you keep spending on her like this. We’ve nearly completely blown through the savings for our retirement.

...Already? Why didn’t you say anything before?

Pumpkin, you looked so happy before. I couldn’t bear to—hey, did you hear something?”

William and Antonia Martin turned their heads, to see Rarity pushing her way into their trailer.

William rushed past her, looking out into the darkness to try and find out who was responsible for letting the prized pony out of her pen and opening the door. The darkness stubbornly refused to yield its secrets.

Hearing a cry of shock from his wife, he turned and headed back in.

“What is it?” he asked.

“Look,” she said, pointing at the ground.

Rarity was standing immobile, looking up at them with large glistening eyes. On the ground before her was the object she had carried in from the barn and dropped at their feet: Antonia’s electric fur clipper.

& & &

Antonia took Rarity to the barn, clippers in hand. William originally intended to just watch and make sure his wife went through with it, but after she broke down sobbing he was forced to take over, and Antonia was sent back to the trailer.

& & &

Antonia Martin spent a seeming eternity sitting at the kitchen table, waiting for the return of her husband. She glanced down at the headline of the newspaper on the table: “Death Toll from Botched Commando Raid on Cyprus Airport Reaches Fifteen.” “I’m so sorry,” the woman said to herself as she swept the paper into the nearby trash can. “You’re too good for this world.

She looked up as the door to the trailer was opened. The gentle sound of hooves approached, as Antonia stood up. Finally coming into view was a white pony, her purple mane and tail sheared back into near oblivion.

“Rarity!” Antonia cried out, nearly breaking out into tears once more. She kneeled down and spread her arms wide.

The animal raced into them, tears in her own eyes.

William sighed. “I’m going to have to break the record out, aren’t I?” Without waiting for a reply, he walked over to the couple’s phonograph player and started it up. From a nearby rack he removed a seven-inch record and placed it on the platter. “I can’t stay,” he said as he placed the needle on the edge of the record, “you know the damn thing keeps getting stuck in my head.”

Antonia looked up at him. “Go then,” she said simply.

The sound of strings, saxophone and, especially, rhythmic clapping filled the small living space.

“Come on, Rarity,” Antonia said as she stood, smiling warmly. “You’re a Martin now, and I’ll stand by you, no matter what happens.”

Ooh, it’s all right and it’s coming ‘long, / We’ve got to get right back to where we started from,” sang the voice from the record player.

Antonia started to join in, as she did a ridiculous little dance on the kitchen floor. “Love is good, love can be strong! / We’ve got to get right back to where we started from.

She was not a very good singer. At all. Nevertheless, the pony looked up at her, and her morose expression gradually changed into a smile.

Around about the third chorus she finally gave in and decided to show Antonia how a quadruped dances the disco. She made it all the way to the end of the song before collapsing into unconsciousness.

This time, nothing Antonia or Martin could do would wake her.