//------------------------------// // Prison // Story: Duskfall // by Celestial Swordsman //------------------------------// Chapter 3 Something interrupted her nap.  Was it the killer cramp she was getting from those wing restraints?  Something seemed to be blocking the vent.  She stared until she could make out what it was.  Right on the other side of the bars an eye stared at her.  She almost jumped back but restrained herself to only pull back slightly.  She didn’t want to offend any potential comrades, but one couldn’t be too careful in the “stale house”.  A stringy colt voice lamented, “I lost the last one.  She was here a long time.  They finally gave me a replacement.” “I’m sorry,” a very confused pegasus replied.   The eye blinked and said, “So you’ll make it up to me, right?” She could only reply, “Um,” and start to catch that she might not like where this was going. “I smelled you were a bitch,” he said abruptly.  “Are you a good little bitch?” “Would I be here if I was?” she deflected. “Mmm, dirty,” he uttered through licked lips. “Shit, he wasn’t supposed to like that,” she thought quickly.  “I should really be leaving now.” “Be bad for Onyx,” he urged.  Before she could move away, black hooves shot through the grate and grabbed her head.  He yanked her face to the bars and kissed her, trying to work his tongue into her mouth.  She pulled away but couldn’t get out of his grasp.  She turned her face away but he forced it back.  The desperate pegasus drove her own hoof through the bars to punch his face away.  She flung her head back into the musty air of her own cell and took a nervous gasp.   Onyx had her hoof before she could extricate it, and dragged her awkwardly into the dividing wall.  She crawled forward to pry her leg away.  He let her succeed, only to latch ahold of her hind leg.  He grasped her waist and she felt the wet of his mouth under her hip, trying to find its way between her legs.  She braced her free legs against the wall and pushed as hard as she could.  Finally she broke free and sprang across the cell where she leaned panting against the opposite wall. Onyx spat on the floor and complained sharply about the taste of “mummy shit”.  As she recovered her breath she stole a glance back at the site of the attack.  Faint streaks remained where she had scrambled against the wall around that awful hole.  She looked down at her trembling hoof and scraped it against the floor.  It left the same mark.  She suddenly appreciated the literature scrawled on her wall.  She wanted to add further insults.  Words would not come, and she only drew out her first tick mark.  She sobbed softly.  Tears carried away the sting that still hounded her eyes. Sick laughter from her unwelcome neighbor assaulted her ears.  She knew the eye was back but she could not look.  “Hey, mummy shit,” he cooed.  “I can’t help but notice your flanks.  They’re flat, and they’re blank,” he taunted.  “Blank flank bitch,” he jeered in an almost singsong voice.  Picking her eyes off the floor as little as possible, she turned and studied her assets.  No cutie mark.  “I know you know your talent.  Accept it.  Bitches are only good for fucking,” he mocked, “Come here and play like a cutie mark crusader.” Finding herself with no reply, she whined and moved to the back of the cell.  She maneuvered to a position where he couldn’t see her, which unfortunately was only a small space at the corner of the wall between their cells.  She lay down.  She could find no reassurance in her thoughts and decided she didn’t want to talk to herself.  Weariness slowly overcame fear and she fell to sleep once more.   She saw Onyx reaching through the vent and stretching out his foreleg toward her.  He was a couple feet short of reaching her, but it was still unsettling.  She could not be certain if it was a dream or a brief waking moment. A guard roughly shook her awake.  She was led out of her cell down several poorly lit halls to a small square concrete room.  Her escort sat her down in one of two chairs by a table.  A dark pony smoked a cigarette in the opposite chair and placed a hoof on an odd device on the table.  With a click, a bright light pierced her deep eyes.  She winced and squinted.  “You are going to tell me everything you know,” the gravelly voice on the other side of the curtain of light declared.  “This little thing is a magic lie detector,” he said as he turned a dial on the box before him.  “We’re going to start off real simple.  You’re going to give me straight answers to a few straight questions before we get to the good stuff.” She quickly weighed her options—was the truth worse than the risk of being caught?  It was time to gamble, and she would have to do this right the whole way through.   “What is your name?” Here we go, she thought, and replied, “Dusk.” “What is your cutie mark?” “Um, silver dollar.”  Good thing she was gray. “What is your occupation?” She paused and tilted her head.  “Occupation?” “Yes, occupation.”  He said in condescending tone, “Your job.  How do you earn money?” She thought back to her previous answer.  “Oh yes.  I remember… bits.  I moved a lot of bits.  I must have been a cashier.  That was so long ago…” she trailed off cryptically. “What are you now?  What do you do?” “Being good for her,” she answered reverently.  “I’m whatever she wants me to be.” He raised his eyebrows but continued.  “Are you a pegasus?” “Yes.” “What color is your mane?” “No color.”  This was thin ice.  He didn’t react though. “What is your gender?”   Now I’m screwed.  “Male…” “Now I’m going to ask you some questions, and you are NOT going to tell me the truth.  You better lie, or I’ll catch you,” he threatened, moving to the next phase. Dammit!  What kind of a horrible idiot is this colt!?  I’m that ugly?!  She grimaced as she lost any residual self-esteem.  Forget the whole charade, I’d have been happier if he caught me. “Were you a cashier?” “No.” “Are you a pegasus?” “No.” “What color is your mane?” “Rainbow.” “What is your gender?” “Female.”  She almost lost it.  Pulling that insult twice was totally uncalled for. “Good.”  He puffed his cigarette and turned the dials on the detector to compensate.  He leaned forward to stare “Dusk” in her squinting eyes.  “Now for the good stuff.  You’re going to tell me the truth, and I know how you think now.” “Do you hate Celestia?” “No, of course not.”  Yikes, what a mind trip.  “She’s the best Princess.” “Did Nightmare Moon send you here?” “Nightmare Moon is a bad girl.”   “Are you a Lunar assassin?” “I’m a good girl.  Please don’t say ‘Lunar’ anymore.  I don’t know what it means, but she doesn’t like it when we say that word.” “Where were you yesterday at sunrise?” “I was waiting in my good girl box,” she replied with a vacuous, pleasant expression. “That’s not where we found you,” he accused. “I was.  But then everything started shaking, and my door broke open.  I was afraid, so I ran away.” “Did you notice anything else unusual besides the shaking?” “No.”  She was almost through.  “Do you know what happened to Celestia?” “No.”  Crapcrapcrapcrap!  That’s totally true. The detector buzzed.  “Aha, the truth comes out.  That is most certainly a lie.  So tell me what happened to Celestia.” “I don’t know,” she repeated. “I am not amused,” he bit through his cigarette.  “I am investigating acts of sedition and terrorism.  If you hide anything from me, you will never see the sun again.”  He might need to reconsider his threats, Dusk lamented privately. “What happened to Celestia!?” he barked, and pounded his hoof on the table. Between that persistent stinging, the glaring light, and genuine fear, tears began to pour down from the little pegasus face.  “I don’t know!” “I was hoping I wouldn’t have to do this…” he said insincerely.  He got up and retrieved something from the back wall.  He came back to show off a taser and some pliers in the beam of light. “No, no!”  She begged, “It’s really true, I don’t know what happened.” The machine buzzed condemningly.  “I’ve been lying the whole time!” she confessed.  It buzzed and buzzed. He pushed her backwards out of her chair and held her against the floor.  “Stop lying to me!” he yelled, and moved the pliers towards her face.   “My cutie mark!” she screamed. “What?” he blurted, taken aback by the sheer irrelevance. “I don’t have a cutie mark!”  The whole thing with the blank flanks was crap, but she was excited about it for now.  The machine still buzzed.   He backed off and studied her ass intently.  “The silver dollar?”  There was obviously nothing there. She burst out, “I don’t have a cutie mark, I’m really scared, my head hurts, my eyes hurt, I’m hungry, thirsty, and telling the truth.”  The machine buzzed at each statement.   He frowned and dropped the pliers.  “Do you know what happened to Celestia?” He was catching on.   “I have no idea,” she said firmly.  The ironic buzz came again.  “I do hate Celestia, but I didn’t do anything to her.  I don’t know who did, and I don’t know what they did.”  Lack of knowledge was really starting to be an asset.  She crossed her front hooves, and protested, “And I’M A MARE.”  The detector almost came unhooked at that. The interrogator blushed slightly but tried to continue unaffected, “Is your mane white?”   She peeked up at some stray hairs.  “Yeah.  I guess it is.” “Are you a pegasus?” “No.  Yes.  No.”  Three buzzes.  There was no end to the embarrassing moments here. “You are a crap witness,” the interrogator confidently proclaimed.  He slammed her against the floor again as he laid her aside with disgust.  “This isn’t an asylum!  Someone is wasting my time.”  He wiped his hooves together to rid them of little white flecks, but they only smeared. She pushed her chest up on one hoof and rubbed her head with the other.  Against her better judgment, she expressed sincerely, “I was serious about being thirsty.  I would die for a glass of water right now.” She was promptly kicked out of the prison onto a dark alley in Canterlot.  They hadn’t let her have any water, but she wouldn’t have to go thirsty because of the rain.  This was going to be miserable.