Breakdown
Chapter 13: I’m Going to Hell for This, Aren’t I?
A small prison cell, one of many, locked by an iron door. Located on a floor deep underground, with no access to sunlight or fresh air. Inside against the far wall, a thin mattress, resting on the ground. Elsewhere in the room, two chairs and a table, bolted to the floor. From that far wall, two chains, ending in shackles. And imprisoned by those chains, imprisoned by the iron door, by the underground floor and the secret prison disguised as an office complex located in the middle of nowhere, a yellow and pink pony. If you can call her that. In this light, there’s barely any colors to distinguish from each other. She’s really just a gray animal, utterly passive. No longer even anticipating whatever new horror was going to visit her next.
“You have a visitor!” Captain Davis informed her. Per protocol, he preceded this announcement by kicking in the door as loudly as possible. Captain Davis was a nasty looking man with an even nastier disposition. He had long dueling scars running down both cheeks—probably also per protocol—and he cradled a large machine gun in his arms like it was his baby. If he ever saw the short-lived sitcom Sledge Hammer!, he probably failed to realize that the gun-wielding madman of that show was supposed to be the butt of all the jokes.
“I think she knows,” I dryly observed. “Now could you please step aside and let me in?”
He did so, or maybe he did something unimportant. Do I need to repeat that my memories have become less than reliable due to the whole dying of hypothermia thing? In any case, I finally walked into the room. For this deception, I was wearing my outfit of choice, a tuxedo. It mattered not if the pony prisoner seeing me for the first time recognized me or not. The point was to keep her continually off balance, until I was through with her. At this point, she wouldn’t know if I was some inspector...or her designated torturer.
“These conditions are abominable!” I exclaimed, gesturing around me. “How can you expect me to do my work with...these?”
“These are the regulation settings for a Class 5 Interrogation, Sir!” Captain Davis replied.
All Captain Davis knew about me was that my orders were to be obeyed without question. Now considering that P.A.P.A. ran this little operation, the fact that I was able to arrange this so effortlessly made it abundantly clear that Discord was in fact calling the shots for the loathsome little outfit. Everything I learned about the Spirit of Chaos made me hate him more and more. I hope I can be excused for taking out my frustration on those near at hand. “What pathetic excuse of a gulag did you crawl out of, Soldier?!” I shouted at the captain, using my height to its fullest advantage. “First of all, the smell! Have you smelled what it’s like in here?”
“I try not to,” Captain Davis said with a serious face.
Hey, I watched cartoons as a kid. I knew when I’m being mocked. “Don’t get smart with me,” I warned him. “It’s far beyond your pay grade.”
“Sir,” a small female voice said.
I put on a look of surprise as I turned to face Fluttershy.
“I will survive,” she told me quietly. “If you are doing this for my sake, please do not punish the guard, who is simply following the best orders he has to follow.”
Unbelievable. Simply unbelievable. We have here a human being who woke up one day having lost half of her height, and all of her humanity, at least in the legal sense. She found herself dragooned into a cross-country quest to save the world, without once being asked if she actually wanted to save it. She was shot at by a couple of hicks in a Walmart parking lot, she’s gone through who knows what kind of unimaginable physical and emotional torture at the hands of the people here, people that fail to consider her a person worthy of any respect whatsoever, she’s probably gone through a completely unclassifiable type of violation by the pony in her head, and here’s she’s asking that mercy be brought to bear...on her current tormenter.
Whelp, too bad for her, my job is to not give a damn. After giving her a glassy-eyed stare, I turn back to the captain like nothing had just happened. “I cannot conduct a thorough interview if I’m distracted by smells. It is no business of mine what manner of odors the prisoner cultivates in her own time. Second, what are these walls made out of?”
The captain scratched his head. “Granite? Granite and...rebar. Yeah, I’m positive rebar was involved.”
“Now think carefully, Captain,” I said in my most patronizing tone. “If I’m going to conduct an interview, I’m going to need a camera to record it. And there’s no place in this cell with enough room for a camera on a tripod. So where’s the camera going to go? In the granite? In between all of that wonderful rebar?” I poked him in the chest.
“You don’t have to be rude, you know. ...Sir.”
I stepped back, surprised that this cog in P.A.P.A.’s machine actually had a mind of his own, and the courage to express himself. Also, it was clear from Fluttershy’s expression that I had lost what little respect she had for me, so it was time to upset her expectations once again.
“Alright, you know what? I’m sorry,” I told the captain, bowing my head.
“What?” Captain Davis asked open mouthed, before recovering his professionalism. “I...uh mean...request for clarification, Sir!”
“You’re not the problem here, Soldier,” I said with a sigh, before launching into a Shakespearean monologue. “Clearly you’re operating out of an outdated set of procedures. The fault lies not in ourselves, but in Regulation C, Subsection 6. You’ve been valiantly doing the best that you can under impossible circumstances, and I’ve been operating under seventeen cups of coffee a day and no sleep since this whole business started.” This of course was a lie, part of the backstory for my plan. In truth, it was more like a dozen cups of coffee, maximum. “Do we...is it possible that we might have...an honest to goodness interrogation room somewhere on this compound?” I asked this question gently, like I was hoping against hope that things might go right for me for once.
“There’s that break room on the second floor with the dark-tinted windows…”
“Yes! Perfect!” I reached out gleefully and kissed Captain Davis on the lips, causing him to nearly faint from shock. “We’ll get that set up, I’ll get the camera in place, and we’ll have an honest to goodness interrogation!”
“Could I...have some of the water?”
I looked down at Fluttershy. It was clear to me that she had not been paying attention to my carefully crafted performance for at least the last few minutes, focused as she was on her starvation.
The cause of this starvation was clear: she was being given the minimum food and water specified by the Geneva Convention, but it was then placed in bowls situated where she couldn’t reach them while shackled. What kind of sadistic bastard would do such a thing? I mean, Animal Cops Houston will stick a spiked baton up your ass if you did that to your inbred brain-dead Chihuahua, and these little shits think they can do it to fully sentient beings?
“Captain,” I asked, gently. Gently, because I didn’t want to break character by beating this asshole to death with the butt of his own machine gun. “Would it be terribly much against regulations to allow the prisoner to have her meal before our interrogation? It just wouldn’t do to have her pass out before I finish the questionnaire.”
“I...well...”
He was actually trying to think of a reason to continue starving her! I hope you die of an aneurysm seconds before you can achieve your first orgasm, you pathetic little zit of a man.
I took a deep breath to calm myself before trying again. “Now, I understand that you boys might have been having a bit of harmless fun.” Die, die, die! “But I need to do my job here.”
Before my eyes, Captain Davis had a full-fledged moral debate march itself across his microscopic cerebrum. Finally, without bothering to look at the victim of his petty torture, he nudged the two bowls into position. From the look on his face, it was like I had ruined his perfect day.
I put my arm across his shoulders. “There, now that wasn’t too hard, was it?” I asked. I fantasized about snapping his neck with my bare hands.
As I was doing this, Fluttershy was gulping down the food and water like an animal, so afraid was she that this was all a joke and she was going to be deprived again. That was what she has been reduced to, and as I had to remind myself once again, this was the side that I was working for.
For the first time since this encounter began, Fluttershy looked me straight in the eyes. If I didn’t know it before, I definitely knew it now: I will burn in Hell for all eternity for what I was doing, or else there truly was no just God in this universe.
“Okay,” I said, turning away from those horrible, horrible, but so very justified eyes. “So the radio, two chairs and a table, a notepad, and of course the camera...and the radio transmitter.” I added the last part quickly, trying to sound as suspicious as possible.
“Radio transmitter?” the captain asked, as I was hoping he would.
“In case I have to request anything from HQ,” I replied quickly. Too quickly. “All part of the procedure.” I dared not look at Fluttershy, to see if I had successfully implanted doubt as to my motivations in her.
“Oh,” Captain Davis said. “OK, that makes sense.” No, in fact it didn’t. I studied this compound’s stupid book of regulations, and I was in fact violating three of them with that last request. But Davis wasn’t the target of my manipulations, so I ignored him. “I think I know where I can get all that,” he added helpfully.
“And I’ll help!” I said with a smile so happy that it would have been accompanied by a “squee” sound effect had I been a pony instead of a human. “I’m not above a little physical labor. Maybe a bit of a break as well. Let’s say we meet back here in 30 minutes?”
“Alright,” Captain Davis said with a trusting grin. Apparently my treating him like dirt earlier had been completely forgiven, just because I apologized.
Huh, I didn’t think it would be that easy. You know, in my profession (or my part of the world—it’s hard to tell the difference sometimes), grudges start because of something as small as accidentally spelling somebody’s name wrong, and they last long after death, thanks to the legal system. And this stranger forgave me just because I apologized. Weird. I mean, I most definitely wouldn’t want this monster as a friend, but...was that how friendship actually worked?
So we walked out of the room, arm in arm like we were starring in a buddy comedy. Before I left I looked back at the pony. By her expression, she didn’t know what to think of me.
Excellent.
“Oh, and if it’s not too terribly out of the way,” I said gently to her, “please show some degree of surprise when we return. Regulations state we’re supposed to barge in here, put a black bag over your head, all kinds of other nasty stuff. Just leads to accidental contusions, in my experience. Don’t worry, I have everything figured out.”
I started whistling the tune “The World Owes Me a Living” as Captain Davis closed and locked the door, and we made our way out of the prisoner’s hearing.