Thunderlane’s ear twitched as the sound of the clock tower’s bells rolled through the warm evening air. He mentally counted off the gongs as they rang out, noting with a bit of a grunt that the time was now seven o’clock. “Thirty more minutes, and even Time Turner will beat me home tonight.”
The Summer rain schedule was set to begin in a few days, and the entire Ponyville weather team had been putting in extra hours to prepare the skies and the area residents for the coming storms. Today had been particularly difficult, thanks to a wave of rogue clouds that escaped the skies above the Everfree Forest and wreaked havoc on the local air patterns before they could be contained. “And this,” Thunderlane stifled a yawn as he turned a corner and headed toward Sugarcube Corner, “is the last thing I need today.”
At the door, Thunderlane stopped upon noticing that the sign in the window had been set to Closed. He reached a wing into his well-worn flight bag and retrieved the note that had been delivered to him during his lunch break. “It does say seven, so I guess she’s here alone?” He shrugged and stuffed the letter back in his bag. “Eh, whatever. Let’s just get this over with.”
The door chime rang out as the door closed behind him, and Thunderlane stopped to scan the room. As he suspected, the normally-bustling bakery and sweet shop was seemingly deserted. Chairs were set on top of tables, booths had been wiped down and reset, and all of the display cases were empty.
The fading daylight peeked through some of the windows and partially drawn shades, casting the lifeless room in an eerie mixture of orange and shadow. Thunderlane had been here dozens, if not hundreds of times over the years, but seeing the cafe like this sent a small shiver down his back. “Okay, I’m here… Now where is-”
“Hiya, Thunder!”
Thunderlane jumped in surprise at the sudden voice behind him, and only a quick extension of his left wing kept him from flopping on the floor. “W-what the hay was that?!” He sputtered between hurried breaths. “By Celestia’s white flank, couldn’t you have just said ‘hello’?”
He was about to turn around when a pink blur flashed in front of him. “Boring! Thunderlane refocused his eyes and looked up at a pair of cerulean orbs - and a pink mane - that he had seen so often before. “C’mon, Laney, you know me better than that!”
His hackles raised a bit. “You know I hate that nickname, Pinkie. How many times did I tell you that?”
“By my last count, four hundred and twenty-two.” Pinkie replied with a laugh. “Though I may not count that one time you asked me to call you that while we were-”
“Fine, fine, four hundred and twenty-two, just… Just drop it, alright?” Thunderlane cut her off a bit, if only to avoid the reminder of a particularly tawdry night spent covering every counter in the kitchen with an entirely different kind of sugar. He fluffed his wings as he finally stood and looked to Pinkie. “Look, I hate to be rude, but it’s past seven o’clock, I’m tired, I’m hungry, and I just want to get whatever this is over with and go home.”
Pinkie frowned a bit, but Thunderlane continued before she could get a word in.
“So, what’s this all about, anyway?” He pulled the note from his bag again. “You went to the trouble to have this note couriered over to me at work, insisting that I be here tonight. Well, here I am.” Thunderlane stomped a hoof in frustration. “But to be honest with you, Pinkie, I don’t know what else there is to say.”
“That’s okay,” Pinkie said with a sultry wink before sidling up to Thunderlane’s side. “I plan on doing most of the talking anyway.” She ran a hoof through his light-green mane and fixed a half-lidded stare at him. “But, it has been rather lonely since you left, so we don’t have to talk first...“
Thunder tilted his head away from the contact. “Sorry, but I think we’re past that too; both of us. Besides,” he added with a glare, “I believe it was you who left me, and without so much as a word of explanation.”
Pinkie stared at him for a few moments, and for a split-second Thunderlane thought he saw something flash behind her eyes; like they went from angry to sad to happy and back again, all at once. He was about to say something about it when Pinkie spoke up.
“I know, and I’m very sorry about that,” she said with a frown that morphed into a smile in a second. “You see, after we broke up, I thought I’d need to tell you why, but then for a while, I thought maybe I wouldn’t need to, and if I didn’t have to tell you, then I’d be able to get you back; and if I got you back, then we could be together again and everything would be perfect!” Her eyes seemed to flash again, and her voice turned lower. “But then, well, then it happened anyway.”
Thunderlane leaned back, suddenly very unsure of where his ex-marefriend was going with any of this. “‘It’ happened? What’s ‘it’?” He asked. “Pinkie, are you okay? Did somepony hurt you?”
Pinkie's hair fell flat, and tears welled up in her magnificent eyes. Despondently, she shut them, two tears leaking out as she began to sob. "Y-yes. S-somepony did hurt me..."
Thunderlane’s breath caught in his throat and out of instinct; he drew her close and let her rest her muzzle on his back. “Look, I know we’re through, but if somepony hurt you, Pinkie, tell me who it is. No matter what happened between us, you’re a good pony, and a friend.”
Pinkie shivered into his grey fur and steadied her breath. “That’s so sweet of you, Thunderlane, and you’re right, I am a good pony.” Her ears flopped down to her head as she continued. “I never expected this pony to hurt me, either. It’s not like I asked for or deserved it, you know? B-but, they hurt me anyway.”
Thunderlane glanced behind him and drew the distraught mare closer to allow her to rest her forelegs between his wings. “Well, I’d like to help. It’s the least I can do for a friend, if nothing else. Now tell me, Pinkie; who hurt you?”
Thunderlane was staring straight ahead as he spoke-
Giving him no chance to see the rolling pin slip from Pinkie’s mane and into her hoof.
“You did.”
“Wh-”
The rolling pin cracked across the back of his head and Thunderlane’s world went black.
Consciousness began to seep back into Thunderlane’s mind, along with the beginnings of a debilitating headache. “Mmph… Ugh…”
’What even happened? Was that all a nightmare?’ he tried to look back in his mind… And got a searing flash of pain for his efforts. “Ow…”
’I think something hit my head- No, wait, somepony hit me. And the last pony I saw was…’
“Pinkie?” He took a few deep breaths, as much to calm his nerves as to ignore the pounding in his head. His eyes opened slowly, only to find himself completely in the dark. “Um… H-hello? Is anypony there?”
Silence.
“Pinkie? A-are you there? Please, somepony… Anypony?”
"Oh good," An alien voice floated to him as if from the dreamscape he had been roused from. "... you're awake."
He heard a switch flip nearby and Thunderlane’s eyes were flooded with bright white light. “Ah! For buck’s sake!” he yelled as he tried to shut out the searing brightness. Thunderlane tried to raise a hoof to further shield his face, but his leg didn’t budge at all. “Huh?” He tried three more times, grunting in anger at his sudden lack of mobility. He shut his eyes to ward off the worst of the harsh light, though he could still make out pulsating orbs of light on the inside of his eyelids.
“What’s going on?” Panic began coursing through his every nerve. He tried his hind legs, his wings, then his forelegs a fourth time, yet he found no relief. He chanced cracking an eye open a tiny amount, only to find himself looking up at the ceiling, splayed on his back on what felt like a metallic table. “P-Pinkie? Is that you? If you’re here, answer me!”
He was met once more with silence. All he could hear was the pounding of his heart and the thrashing of his limbs against whatever was restraining him. Adrenaline was beginning to kick in, masking even the massive headache with a defensive rage. “Whoever you are, I swear to Celestia, if you so much as lay a hoof on her, I’ll- Augh!”
The words literally drowned in his throat as a wave of ice-cold water hit Thunderlane square in the face. His eyes flew open as the cold shocked his system, only to squint as the overly-bright lights blinded him again. He flailed in his restraints, doing his best to shake off some of the icy water that now clung to every inch of his body.
“Bl-Blech!” He coughed loudly as he spat more water from his mouth, then forced his eyes to open. The light was barely tolerable now, and as he blinked through the haze in his eyes, the form of a pink pony began to come into focus.
The still-blurry form spoke again, its voice soft and feminine, yet laced with an icy undertone that sent a shiver down Thunderlane’s spine. “You can’t protect what you already hurt, you know.”
“W-what?” Thunderlane asked. "Pinkie, get me down! What's going on?! Is this some sick new game of yours?!"
“Aw, don’t be such a party pooper, Laney! You used to really love our grown up games; especially ‘how many rooms can we defile in an hour’. That was fun, fun, fun!”
“Yeah, it was fun, sure.” Thunderlane answered as calmly as he could, despite the pounding of his heart in his chest. “But I don’t recall being tied up in… Actually, where the heck am I?” He looked around him as best he could. “What am I doing on this table? And why am I tied up like…” he twisted his legs against his restraints, “like this?!”
“Duh, isn’t it obvious?” Pinkie chirped as she stood up. “You’re on a table in the basement, silly!” She walked up to the table and stood by his side. “I’m sorry I had to knock you out like that, but there’s a super-duper secret passageway to get down here, and I can’t risk anypony finding out about it.”
“Right, okay,” Thunderlane answered as calmly as he could. “But that still doesn’t explain why I’m tied to a table!”
Pinkie moved out of view for a second before reappearing on Thunderlane’s opposite side. “Oh, these?” Her hoof pinged against the metal hoofcuff as she tapped it. “These are to keep you from hurting yourself. I used to just use ropes, but the last pony that was in here broke out of them.”
Thunderlane looked on in stunned silence as Pinkie nonchalantly walked around the table, checking the other cuffs as she went. “He almost ruined everything too; said he was going to tell everypony about us, about what we had… Or almost had, until he hurt me. He ruined me once, then had the nerve to try and do it again?”
“What-” Thunderlane began to ask.
“I couldn’t let him, you see.” Pinkie continued without missing a beat. “He hurt me, Laney. He promised me I- no we, would have everything…” She stopped and stared towards the far wall, and her voice grew as cold as the water that still dripped from Thunderlane’s mane. “Instead, he defiled me. He broke me, just like the one before him...” she glared back to Thunderlane and stared daggers at him, “...just like you.”
Thunderlane’s blood ran cold, and he could feel the fear and panic rising like bile in his gut. “B-broke you? De… Defile- Wait, this makes no sense! I never hurt you!”
“Oh, you did, trust me,” she replied. “But don’t worry, you’ll understand soon. First though, there’s somepony you need to meet.”
Thunderlane yelped as the table suddenly jerked forward. Metal and wheels groaned in protest, but Pinkie remained silent as she pushed the table forward. Thunderlane tried to look around, but could only make out bits and pieces from his present position. The area around him seemed devoid of any defining features. Plain white walls stood to either side, their glossy paint adding even more glare to the artificial lighting above him. Thunderlane couldn’t help but shudder as a picture of a hospital waiting room came to his mind.
“Wha-”
“Hold your hooves, we’re almost there,” Pinkie said before pausing to laugh at her own joke. She continued to push the table - and Thunderlane - down what he guessed was a hallway.
“Wh- where are you taking me?”
“You’ll see,” Pinkie replied. “Oh, this is going to be so exciting! I’ve been planning this for weeks!”
Thunderlane swallowed a growing lump in his throat as Pinkie slowed the wheeled table and turned left toward the open door just ahead of them. Thunderlane tried to crane his head up to see more as he was pushed through the doorway and into another room, this one barely lit at all. The floor must have been carpeted or covered in large rugs, as he could no longer hear the squeak of the wheels beneath him.
After a moment, the cart came to a stop and Pinkie turned it ninety degrees to the right. A loud metallic thunk came from beneath the cart. Thunderlane reflexively twitched his legs and wings in the faint hope that whatever that sound was had opened his restraints, but as he feared, he found he was still very firmly attached to the cold metal table.
The table jolted again, and this time the top surface of the table moved, raising him from a flat position to a slight incline. Two more thunks coincided with an increase in the table’s pitch, and Thunderlane found himself in a sitting position, as if he were propped up in bed with a half dozen pillows.
“Alright!” Pinkie said from somewhere to his left. “Now, you just wait here while I get our special guest.” She tapped the metal cuffs with a hoof. “Don’t go anywhere now, got it?” She chuckled at her own joke before moving out of sight. Her hooffalls moved away for a few seconds before stopping.
“Silly me, I forgot to turn the lights on.” Pinkie clopped her hooves together and the room was bathed in a warm, comfortable light. “Welcome to the nursery, Laney!”
Thunderlane’s eyes adjusted to the sudden, though not blinding, brightness.
Then he gasped.
“What in Tartarus- Pinkie, what the buck is this? Pinkie? Pinkie!”
She said nothing, only humming a happy tune as she moved away again, presumably through a door that he could not see. Thunderlane’s chest was heaving, his breathing erratic. He shook his head once, twice, three times, muttering “It’s not real, it’s not real,” over and over.
He forced himself to look again, yet he still could not process what he was looking at.
The room was unmistakably setup to be a nursery. A white crib sat in one corner, flanked by a changing table, a dresser, and a playpen. Boxes upon boxes of toys lined the wall to his right, along with shelves of stuffed animals, story books, and more. A pink and grey rug dominated the floor in front of him, and Thunderlane immediately noticed the similarity it held to his and Pinkie’s own colors. “Oh, no…”
He looked up to the far wall and his mind nearly ground to a halt. A name had been painted on the wall above another bookshelf, using Pinkie’s bubbly style of writing. “Violetta Pie…” Thunderlane muttered.
“It’s a more formal name, but I’m sure she’d be fine with just Violet. After all, nopony but Mother ever calls me Pinkamena.” Pinkie’s voice snapped him out of his stupor, and Thunderlane’s ears twitched every direction possible to sense where she was coming from.
Pinkie emerged into the corner of his vision, this time pushing a pink stroller with her forelegs. It was a frilly thing, riding atop tell-tale wire wheels and topped with a simple, curved hood. Pinkie wheeled it in front of him and Thunderlane’s breath caught in his throat when he saw the blanket that laid atop the stroller, embolized with his and Pinkie’s cutie marks.
“Wh- What is this?!” he sputtered. “This is some sick joke, right?” He was staring so hard at the stroller, he never saw Pinkie’s hoof until it connected with his muzzle.
“Joke? You think this is some kind of joke?!” Pinkie yelled. She reared up to her hind legs and stared him in the face. “How can you be so rude? Especially to your own daughter!”
She turned and grabbed the blanket with her teeth and pulled it off the top of the stroller. Laying in the stroller was a tiny body, no bigger than a small kitten. Its smooth, hairless form was all dressed, as if it was ready for a day about town, yet there was no movement from it. No sound, no blink of an eye, no twitch of an ear. The pieces suddenly came together in his mind and Thunderlane’s heart nearly froze in place.
The body in the stroller was a foal.
And it was dead.
Thunderlane could only stare in abject horror at what lay before him. Panic, fear, and rage raced through him like a tidal wave, and it took every ounce of concentration not to hurl the contents of his stomach all over himself right there. “Dear Celestia, what have you done?!”
“What have I done?” Pinkie asked sarcastically. “No, no, it’s what we did.”
“What? How- Huh?” he looked at her with wide eyes. “W-wait, you were pregnant?”
“Sure was - emphasis on the was.”
Thunderlane opened his mouth, then closed it again, his mind too stuck between shock, horror, and a growing amount of fear to form any kind of response.
“I had to be sure we got it right this time,” she said as she began rocking the stroller back and forth, as a pony would do to calm a fussing foal. “And at first, I definitely thought you were the one. I got through the first couple of months just fine, and I was feeling better than ever. Everything was perfect, and I thought maybe, just maybe, the third time would be the charm. Silly me even thought I’d avoid jinxing it by not telling you until the last second, but you see where that got me.”
“Wait, third time?” Thunderlane asked incredulously. “What do you mean th-”
Pinkie kicked the base of the table. “Shut up! I’m not done!” The look in her eyes spoke of pure hatred, but then melted just as quickly as it appeared as she again looked to the lifeless foal, its hairless form laid out in the stroller like a doll frozen in time.
“Month three was nearly complete, and my Pinkie sense told me it was going to be a filly. Twitchy leg plus evening sickness instead of morning sickness? Yeah, it was a filly for sure. I was so excited, I began resetting the nursery. New paint, new toys, new picture frames, the works.”
Thunderlane could see the light reflect off the foal’s hairless skin, as if it had been coated with something foreign. “H-how-”
“Oh, this?” Pinkie gestured to the foal. “I just finished cleaning her up, just for the occasion! You know how foals can be, always getting themselves icky and gross, but a fresh, clean bath every few days with this special soap that I found keeps her looking just right!” She looked down into the stroller. “Isn’t that right, my little Violet? Yes, that’s right!”
Pinkie beamed as she cooed lovingly at the dead foal, even ruffling the edge of the small dress it wore to smooth out a wrinkle. “It was all going so well. You, me, and Violet, we could have been a family. We could have opened a second cafe, even bought a small house. Instead of foalsitting for somepony else, I could watch my own foal grow up.” She turned her back to the stroller, mercifully blocking it from Thunderlane’s view.
“I really, really thought it was going to be us, Laney. We hit it off so well, you and me. We finished each other’s thoughts, you even helped me out with the Cakes’ foals on your day off.” She cast a half-lidded stare at him and ran a hoof down his now-bruised cheek. “And the way you made love to me? Oh, you were miles better than the others, believe me; I guess it really is true what they say that ‘long strokes’ aren’t just for wings.”
Thunderlane inhaled sharply as he felt Pinkie’s hoof slide far lower on his body than he wanted at the moment. “It was true love. It had to be, and as I felt you spill yourself into me time and again, I knew that real love would see us through where the others had failed.”
“But it was all a setup, wasn’t it.” Pinkie’s hair fell flat in an instant, and the look in her eyes could have frozen a Windigo in its tracks. “You did all the right things, said all the right words, but in the end, you betrayed me. You hurt me! You hurt me, and you hurt your own foal!”
She punctuated her last word with a sharp kick to Thunderlane’s groin, which was fully exposed thanks to his restraints. He screamed in pain, writhing against the cuffs that held him in place. “Ah! Let me go! Please, let me go- Help! Somepony help!”
“Don’t bother,” Pinkie said flatly as she ignored his sobs of pain. “Nopony can hear you down here. This used to be the party room before the extension was built onto the cafe, so the Cakes had it soundproofed to not disturb them upstairs. It had been sitting empty and sealed off when I moved in, so I turned it into my secret party experiment lab. At least, that is until he came along.”
Pain throbbed through Thunderlane’s body with every breath. ’Sweet Celestia, I’ve got to get out of here! She’s gone nuts!’ He pulled as hard as he could against the hoofcuffs, biting back the pain until he was nearly out of air. His mind raced in circles to find a way out. ’What if I keep her talking? She might get distracted just long enough...’
Thunderlane forced his voice to cut through the searing pain in his groin. “Who’s ‘he’?”
“The stallion I was going to marry… Filthy Rich.”
Thunderlane gasped as much in shock as in pain. “He was already married, how did you- Wait, you broke up his marriage?”
“Married in name only. He hated his old nag of a wife. He told me so when I ran into him at the Golden Shoe one Friday night.” Pinkie rolled the stroller back a bit before staring at nothing in particular. “He was there alone, and already on his third whiskey. I asked him what was wrong, and he just bought me a round and told me to sit and hear him out.” Pinkie walked to a nearby shelf and retrieved a toy, placing it in the stroller as she talked.
“He told me everything… How much he despised his wife, how the ‘frigid nag’ as he called her spent bits almost as fast as his store could make them. He hated his daughter even more than her though; said Diamond Tiara was a spoiled brat who did what she wanted because her mother let her, leaving him to clean up her messes all the time.”
“Well, one drink led to another, and another, and the next morning, I woke up next to him more satisfied - and hungover - than I had been in months.” Pinkie looked almost starry-eyed as she continued to wander the macabre nursery, shuffling books or adjusting an empty picture frame. “I guess he liked it, because he wanted to see me again. We eventually made it a regular thing, on those nights he had to ‘work late to balance the books’. Then, three months into it, I told him I was pregnant.”
“He was elated; said he would sweep me away with him. We’d get married in Las Pegasus, then open a new store out there, as far away from his wife as possible. Then, right around the eighth month, it all fell apart.”
“You lost the foal.” Thunderlane surmised dryly.
Pinkie froze in place at that. Thunderlane looked at her, and it was as if a switch was flipped inside of Pinkie’s head. She turned to him with fury in her blue eyes. “You too, huh? Always blaming the mare. Just as I figured.” Pinkie voice was cold as ice as she reached into the top drawer of a nearby dresser and pulled an object out of it.
It was a hammer.
“Pinkie, what are you-” Pinkie began stalking towards the table, hammer gripped tightly in her mouth. “No; Pinkie- No, don’t do… No, please!”
She raised the hammer as she neared the table. “Pinkie, please! Stop!”
Pinkie reared up and swung the hammer right into the inside of Thunderlane’s knee; she ignored his screams of agony.
“You’re no better than Filthy. You just had to blame me, didn’t you. All you pathetic stallions are just the same.”
She swung again, and this time the snap of bone echoed through the room.
“Augh! Augh! S-somepony help!”
“I didn’t lose the foal; he took it from me!” She swung a third time, this time connecting with the base of Thunderlane’s left wing. His screamed all the louder, thrashing desperately against his bonds. The pain shattered him, lancing through his leg and shoulder into his chest, curling into hot agony that drew tears and screams in equal measure.
The blows stopped for the moment as Pinkie set the hammer down and began pacing around the table once more. “You see, Filthy wanted to elope, but he had to prepare things first. He began moving records, bits, even personal effects into the basement here, just waiting for the right time to close his store and skip town with me before anypony knew what had happened.”
“I had just entered the eighth month when he came to me in a panic during his lunch break. He said he thought his wife was onto him, and we needed to get out now. He said to go to the basement and grab his safety box, which had his passports and enough bits and royal bonds to last a year. I told him I needed my things, but he said we’d buy new things once we got to Las Pegasus. I agreed, and he told me to meet him at the train station when I ended my shift.” Pinkie somehow slipped the hammer into her mane as she walked, seemingly oblivious to Thunderlane’s continued whimpers and moans.
“As soon as the cafe closed, I made for the basement. I had closed the door behind me to avoid any suspicions from the Cakes, but I tripped as I turned back around. I tumbled down the stairs and slammed my side into a wall.”
She circled back to the stroller and looked down at the dead foal within it. “The room is soundproofed, so nopony heard me fall… And nopony heard my screams as I sat in a pool of blood and Luna knows what else, singing a lullaby to my already-dead foal.”
She choked back a sob. “It was a colt; just what Filthy had always wanted. It was a foal; just what I had always wanted for myself. And it was dead, all because he had to have his Luna-damned bits!” She grabbed the hammer and slammed it against the side of the cart, sending fresh waves of agony through Thunderlane’s broken bones.
White-hot pain raced through him like lightning, setting his every nerve on fire. His face turned ghost-white, and Thunderlane could only manage a weak groan as he began to faint. Darkness had nearly enveloped his vision when a smaller, more direct splash of icy water hit his chest and shocked him back awake.
“This isn’t nap time, you know. Now wake up!” Pinkie snapped as she tossed the now-empty bucket to the side.
“D-does he even know?” Thunderlane managed to say between painful, cold gasps of air.
“Oh, he knows. Rather, he knew. After cleaning up, I waited till nightfall to wrap the body in a burlap sack and make my way out to the woods to bury my first-born son. Then on top of it all, a random infection left me bed-ridden for the next three weeks. I tried to work through it, but the pain was unbearable; I couldn’t see a doctor without exposing myself and Filthy, but after calling in some favors with a few ponies, I got the medicine I needed.”
"What does all this have to do with me?!" Thunderlane gasped, fighting through the white-hot knives of agony robbing his every other breath.
“I said shut up!” Pinkie lashed out with the hammer again, stopping it an inch shy of Thunderlane’s other hind leg. “This stopped being about your feelings long ago! Now, let me finish.” She cleared her throat and resumed her pacing.
“Finally, I got a note to him after finding out that he was already in Las Pegasus. Turns out he ran off without me anyway, the louse. He met me at night by the tree, and I told him everything. I pleaded with him to try again. I really believed it was an accident, and that we could make it work again.” She snorted in anger. “You know what he did? He said the foal would have made it if I was an older, stronger mare. He blamed me! ME!” She kicked the table again and again, eliciting more yelps of pain from Thunderlane.
“I begged him not to leave me, but he turned and slapped me down, said he’d find an older mare to give him what he wanted. So, I did the next thing that came to mind.” A sadistic smile crossed Pinkie’s face. “I bashed a rock over the back of his head, jammed his tie down his throat and proceeded to crush his too-short anyway stallion-bits into a bloody pulp. I even whispered sweet nothings in his ear as I choked the life out of his useless body.”
Thunderlane nearly choked on a combination of bile and spit. “That’s bucking insane! You murdered him!”
“And he killed my son!” Pinkie threw the outrage right back at him. “What, I should have let him sneak off to Las Pegasus and rut every cocktail-serving hussy that he finds until he ‘gets what he wants’? I’ll see him burn in Tartarus first!”
“He wasn’t the last, either. Eight months later, Cheese Sandwich came into town. We quarreled at first, but then I really got to know him. He was actually really nice, and he threw parties too!” A smile flashed across her face for a second, only to fade as fast as it appeared. “Even though he planned a lot of parties out of town, he stopped in every chance he could so we could be together. We talked about foals early on, and we tried as often as we could. I was having trouble getting as ‘ready’ as I used to be, but we just used it as an excuse for more foreplay. Finally, after six months of trying, I got pregnant again. We were both so excited too.”
Pinkie stopped and stared at the floor again. “Around the second month though, a sudden pain hit me during the middle of my shift. The grilled peanut butter, cheese, and hay bacon sandwiches he made the previous night didn’t hit my stomach too well, but that pain was a thousand times worse. I raced up to my bathroom to get some stomach medicine, and that’s when I noticed the first drops of blood on my tail. Forty-five minutes later, I returned to my shift with a story of spoiled milk with my cereal, and memories of my second foal flushing down the toilet.”
A loud thunk broke her monologue and when Pinkie looked up, she saw the metal table nearly tipped over onto its side, the edge of a nearby recliner barely keeping it from falling over. “And just where do you think you’re going, huh? You going to run away like that bastard, Filthy?”
Pinkie jumped up and trotted over to a still-struggling Thunderlane. “Or are you going to make excuses, like Cheese Sandwich did? Even after I caught him trying to escape, he tried to talk his way out of it; said he knew he cooked the sandwiches enough.” She leaned in and rested her forehooves on Thunderlane’s damaged wing, causing him to cry out again.
“But I saw right through that load of horse apples. He was just trying to pin it on me, just like Filthy did. I knew better though; I knew there was nothing wrong with me - no Pie family mare has ever had issues foaling, and here was this two-bit party pony trying to tell me that I lost another foal because I supposedly got sick.”
“S-so what, you murdered him too- Ah!” He cried out as Pinkie cut him off, pressing the edge of her hoof right into the shattered bone of his wing joint.
“You can call it that if you like, featherbrain. But really, he went out while still putting a smile on ponies’ faces, just like he would have wanted. And to think, nopony even thought to ask what really went into the Red Velvet bundt cakes with the ‘super secret’ cream cheese icing that we sold the next week. They were a hit!”
Wincing through the pain, Thunderlane vaguely remembered eating one of those - and bringing some back to the weather team office for the day shift too. The realization of what was really in those bundt cakes hit his system like a tornado, and he wretched up the contents of his stomach all over himself and the table. He coughed and sputtered to clear his throat, but he lost even that to a wave of tears. “P-p-please, stop. Just stop, Pinkie. Wh- whatever happened, just please stop doing this.”
Pinkie nudged the table back upright, though she averted her gaze from Thunderlane’s dirtied muzzle. “Which brings me to you, Laney. You thought those other two wastes of pony flesh hurt me? Well, you managed to top them all. In a way, you were crueler and more sadistic than Filthy and Cheese could have ever been.”
Thunderlane didn’t, couldn’t respond; he just laid there and whimpered in pain, doing his best not to breathe in the smell of his own vomit.
“You didn’t send me into harm’s way, and I’ll even admit that your cooking was pretty good,” Pinkie said. “But you still hurt me over and over again - every time you made love to me, you brought me one step closer to ruin.”
“What?” Thunderlane muttered. “I never hurt you like that! Everything we did we were comfortable with, and you know it.”
Pinkie jabbed him in the groin again. “Don’t play coy with me, dammit! You know exactly what I’m talking about!” Pinkie reached into her mane and pulled out a small bottle filled with a thick, clear substance.
“You remember this little gem, right?” Pinkie eyed the bottle as she waved it above his head. “Commander Easyglider’s Wing Lube… You know, that ‘performance gel’ that you insisted that we try. I told you I just needed more foreplay to get warmed up, but no, you just had to go buy this gel.” Pinkie rolled her eyes. “‘Oh but honey, it’ll be fine,’ you said. ‘Ponies use it all the time, and besides, we can do it twice in a night now!’”
Thunderlane spit a wad of saliva from his mouth, still gagging a bit on the foul taste in his throat. “That’s what this is about?! The sex?! Look, I’m sorry I have a short fuse, but you weren’t complaining at the time!”
“I would have complained if I had known your ‘help Thunderlane get more Pinkie plot’ gel was corrupting my body!”
“Wha-”
“I trusted you!” Pinkie roared as she shattered the bottle against the table, sending the slick fluid all over the dirty surface. “I gave you my body, and every time I did, you doomed me a little more. You slathered yourself in that, that poison and you put it inside of me!” She continued to yell in between tears of rage.
“You whispered my name as you rutted me… Screamed my name as you emptied yourself inside of me, yet all the while, you were corrupting my womb with every drop of your Luna-forsaken seed!” Pinkie glared at Thunderlane with a white-hot anger in her eyes.
“And I will make you pay for what you have done.”
Thunderlane yelped in fear, sputtering past the rotten taste in his mouth to get something, anything out. “P-Pinkie, please- What, no! That’s crazy! That gel is harmless and you know it!” She ignored his pleas as she rummaged through the top drawer of the nearby vanity again.
“You’ve gone mad, you know that? Listen to yourself for Celestia’s sake! You murdered two ponies, and now me? For something none of us caused? Accidents happen, and so- So do tragedies! Pinkie, listen to rea-”
The words died in his throat when he saw Pinkie turn back towards the table. The hammer was gone, and in its place in her hoof was what looked like a large potato peeler. “Wha- What are you doing with that?”
“Returning the favor, as it were,” Pinkie sneered as she stepped closer. “Thanks to your selfish need for one more buck, you ruined me and killed your daughter… And you did it one long stroke at a time, didn’t you? Well, now I’m going to make sure you never destroy another mare again.”
Pinkie ran her hoof along the table to mop up as much of the gel as possible before spreading it all over Thunderlane’s exposed haunches. He yelled and thrashed in his restraints, flicking his tail wildly in a futile attempt to cover himself. “I remember the first time you used this, you said… Hmm, what was it?” A crooked smile crossed her lips as she continued to spread the globs of gel over his groin. “Ah, yes! You said ‘it’ll make everything nice and smooth.’”
Thunderlane’s entire body convulsed in raw, unfiltered terror, and he screamed out desperately. “Pinkie! Pinkie, no! Stop, stop, stop! For buck’s sake, please don’t do this!”
She held his tip down with a hoof and brought the edge of the peeler within inches of his skin. “Maybe if I’m lucky, I’ll get to do this twice in a night too.”
“Nonono- Ahhh!”
Two months later
“Okay, one vanilla shake, one strawberry-banana shake, and one double-chocolate overload with rainbow sprinkles and extra whipped cream.” Applebloom, Sweetie Belle, and Scootaloo watched with eager eyes as Pinkie slipped the fully-laden tray from her back onto the table and distributed the sugary treats to their respective owners. They each took their drinks in hoof and immediately took a healthy pull from the neon-colored straws that stuck out the top.
“Thank you, Pinkie! These are great!” They chirped in unison before diving right back into their desserts.
“You bet! Enjoy, girls, and remember, no milkshake races, okay? Missus Cake doesn’t need anymore colts or fillies getting brain freezes and passing out in the middle of the cafe.”
The fillies looked at each other before turning their most innocent faces onto Pinkie. “We promise, Pinkie!” Sweetie Belle said.
“Yeah, cross our hearts and hope to…” Scootaloo added before trailing off. “To… Aw, what was the rest of it again?” Applebloom and Sweetie Belle broke down into fits of laughter at their friend’s expense, and after feigning outrage for a moment, Scootaloo joined the other Cutie Mark Crusaders in a good laugh - followed by quiet planning for their next milkshake race.
Pinkie just smiled and shook her head as she weaved between tables of customers and slipped behind the front counter once more. She glanced at the clock on the wall and was startled to see the time was already one in the afternoon.
“Hey, Missus Cake?” She called out as she poked her head through the kitchen door. “Everything’s fine up here for the moment, so may I take a break for a minute?”
“Oh, sure thing, Pinkie!” Cup Cake answered as she hefted another tray of bread into the oven. “The brownies in the other oven won’t be done for another ten minutes, so go on ahead.”
“Thanks, Missus C!” Pinkie bubbled as she backed out of the open doorway. She walked toward the short hallway that led away from the main part of the cafe, but not before grabbing a couple of items from the display case and placing them in a to-go box.
Box in-tow, she trotted down the hallway, but instead of going up the stairs, she walked around to the side and opened a small broom closet that had been carved into the base of the stairway. After ensuring she was alone, Pinkie slipped into the closet and softly closed the door behind her. She stepped with practiced ease around the brooms, mops, and other cleaning implements to the back wall. She brushed her hoof along the wall until she felt the seam that she was looking for, and with a short but firm shove, pushed the panel back from the rest of the wall.
The false panel swung away from her on unseen hinges, triggering a small light below her to illuminate. Pinkie descended the stairway after closing the door behind her, and once on the ground, she flipped the remainder of the lights on.
“Laney… Laney, I’m back!” Pinkie whistled a bit as she trotted down the white hallway and turned into the more dimly-lit nursery. “Hey, you two, mommy’s here to see y-”
She stopped short as she turned the corner into the room and saw Thunderlane slumped against the wall, his body dangling helplessly from the chains that held his forehooves to the wall above him. “Laney, not again…”
Pinkie walked over to him, set the small box of treats down, and pressed a hoof into his neck. “Ah, good, you’re still with me.” She looked over to the playpen, where the dead body of Violetta Pie sat propped up against one side, surrounded by toys and stuffed animals. “Besides, what would poor Violet do without her daddy, hmm? Now, let’s wake you up, you sleepy head.”
Pinkie walked to a cabinet on the far wall and retrieved a syringe and a small bottle of clear liquid before returning to crouch next to a broken and emaciated Thunderlane. His previously broken wing resembled a jigsaw puzzle, while the other was missing nearly all of its secondary feathers and part of a wing tip. His grey coat was matted and peeling in places, what was left of his mane was a frazzled mess, and nearly all of his ribs could be counted with ease.
“Sorry, Laney… I’d usually bring coffee for you.” Pinkie muttered as she primed the syringe with adrenaline. “But, mommy’s in a hurry today.” She plunged the syringe into Thunderlane’s chest in one swift motion and pushed the plunger all the way down.
“Ah! Ah- Augh!” Thunderlane sputtered and choked on his own spit as his body was forced into action. “Wh- No! No more… No… More, please…” He began crying almost immediately, though his blood-shot eyes could barely muster a single tear anymore.
“No more?” Pinkie asked with a frown as she opened the to-go box and pulled out one of the indulgent treats.
“Since when do you not like Pinkie Pie’s cupcakes?”