Click.
“There, better now?”
Resto sniffed. “I… I think so.”
“Look, I know that this must be painful for you to remember. But three ponies are dead and their families want answers as to what happened in there. It’s the reason why I’m even talking with ya, to get to the truth.”
“But why are you taking anything I say seriously? I couldn’t tell you if all that had happened was a dream, or if I was being haunted by your ghosts, or if I just snapped. Heck, I don’t know if I’m still just hallucinating in Sanctuary’s.”
“Which is also why I’m recording this.” Two taps on the microphone were heard. “It’s so that I could play this back and put every word into consideration to piece together what’s really going on. Maybe you are innocent, or perhaps you’re not, but what’s important is to gather all the clues to see. Do you understand?”
“I think so.”
“So, if you wouldn’t mind me asking, do you remember anything after Doctor Red Cross… operated on you?”
“Well… something weird happened when I felt the scalpel, something that made me doubt myself. You see, I was hurting so much that I passed out, and when I woke up I found something that’s even more horrifying. I awoke on that operating table, yes, but there was no one around… and… I found my hoof was on the scalpel.”
“What?” Hoof Print asked in disbelief.
“I know. Even as I crawled off the table and sacked the room for anything to cover the wound, I started to wonder if I hallucinated it all. The surgery, I mean. But even then, I thought to myself how that wouldn’t make any sense. Why would anyone do that to themselves? Just, plunge a knife in and start cutting?”
“Were you feeling suicidal?”
“No! Not at all! I had no memory of being on the operating table, nor how I got into that room, to begin with. That’s the scary thing really. I can’t tell if all that has happened to me was self-inflicted or what!”
“Calm down, I get the picture. Like I’ve said, I’m trying to get all the pieces of the puzzle here. So, what happened next?”
Resto sniffed. “Well, after dusting off some bandages I found and tried to seal the wound as best as I could, I limped out of the room, trying to get out of the basement. I can’t tell you how long it took to climb those stairs since I was feeling woozy, probably from the loss of blood or something. But after climbing that mountain trek, I was able to get to the ground floor. I guess I started to hallucinate again because not only did the place look new again, but I ran into a filly.”
“Really? What did she look like?”
“Um… I don’t remember her having a horn or a pair of wings so I guess she was an earth pony. She didn’t have a mark, but she had a pine tree green coat with a white mane. And she had very light blue eyes like the skies. W-When I went into the hallway, I found her there on a tricycle, asking me if I wanted to play with her with the other children.”
“That’s… kinda creepy.”
“Ha! Yeah, looking at it now was creepy, but at the time, I wasn’t in my right mind that I didn’t bother thinking about how strange it really was.”
“Did you get what her name was?”
There was a moment of silence before Resto responded, “I think it was Pumpkin. Pumpkin… something. The most I remember about her was that she kept telling me she was five years old. Of course, I asked her what she was doing in a place like this. She said that her mommy didn’t want her, which was why she and the ‘others’ were there.”
“Are you kidding me?”
“No. She tells me that she’s part of a little group. The Lost Foals of Sanctuary. She said that she wanted me to play with them for a while. But when she noticed the bandages, she changed her mind, saying that I should follow her so that I could get help. At the time, it seemed like a good idea.
“So with her on her tricycle, I followed her through the maze of the hospital. For a while, it was just the ponies in blue that I saw, wandering around and muttering gibberish. Even when I wasn’t in disguise, it’s like no one minded that I was there, as if I was a part of the place.
“Anyway, I followed Pumpkin to one of the large rooms where there were nurses around. The foal pulled the skirt of one of them and pointed at me. I didn’t recognize her, but she seemed to understand what happened. She had me get up on a bed, removed my bandages, and gave me clean ones. She seemed nice enough, but before she left, she leaned down and whispered ‘I hope you’ve learned your lesson.’”
“So do you think that this nurse was there for your supposed surgery?”
“I remembered that they all had white masks on, so she could have been. But after that nurse cleaned me up, Pumpkin still wanted me to play with the other foals. I followed her to another room where it was mostly made up of children, about ten or fifteen in all I think. There were toys around, as well as crayons that were all over the floor. Like the older ponies, they were in blue uniforms too, as well as being supervised by the ponies in white.
“Again, even when I clearly saw and heard these kids, I still didn’t sense a thing from them. But they looked and acted quite playfully that even I in my condition couldn’t help but join in. I remembered that we stood in a circle, passing a ball towards the ones that we could name. While we did this, I noticed this one filly in the corner of the room that looked like everything was sucked out of her. There were no emotions or any signs of intelligence. She just looked at us with her mouth hung open, just drooling. Of course, I asked the children what was wrong with her, and they said that one of the nurses took her last night to visit a ‘Mr. Sparky.’”
“Oh Goddesses,” the detective said under his breath.
“Considering that beforehoof I saw a colt get lobotomized, are you really that surprised?”
“Good point. Then what happened?”
“Well, nothing much while we played. A bit later, I felt a tap on my shoulder and turned to find a unicorn doctor there with a wheelchair with straps saying that I was needed. I turned to the kids, only to find that they all disappeared. Turning back to him again, I demanded to know what he wanted out of me. ‘I was told you needed a bath,’ he said, ‘so come along, sit in the chair, and I’ll wheel you over.’ I told him that I didn’t want a bath, but he told me that I must, whether I like it or not. So, he used his horn to put me and strap me to the wheelchair and took me down to another part of the asylum.
“He took me to a concrete room with rusty drains and a hose. The kind of hose that you would use to put out your fires with. Oh, and there was also a metal chair with holes and straps, too. I was levitated out of the wheelchair into the other chair that was bolted to the ground and he strapped me to it. He picked up a can with a spray attached and squirted soap -- at least I think was soap -- on every inch of me before turning to the hose towards me. The only warning I got was a quick ‘close your eyes’ before he suddenly turned the thing onto full blast.
“It was like getting punched in slow motion, all the while you could feel the pressure slapping you at full force. I kept telling him ‘stop! It hurts! Turn it down!’ but he wouldn’t listen over the roar of the hose. He wouldn’t stop until I got sprayed on every inch of my body from my face to my tale. Being strapped down, I couldn’t do anything to protect myself from the freezing water that stabbed me like a blizzard.
“Once he was satisfied, the doctor took a towel and just dried me off. He didn’t let me out of the chair until he was done. I was so weak and bruised that I could hardly move, which I guess was why I was wheeled in and out, to begin with. After that, he took me to my decaying room, tossed me in, and locked the door behind him.”
“Celestia.”
“That night, I laid in my pitiful excuse for a bed, trying to go to sleep from all the moans and screams from outside of my door. I hadn’t the foggiest idea what was going on out there, and I was so weak that I honestly didn’t care. Eventually, I managed to doze off.
“But when I woke up, I found myself lying on a metal table again, being pushed by the same nurse that I saw when I entered that nightmare to begin with. Of course, I panicked and demanded to know where she was taking me. She didn’t answer me as she pushed the table down a corridor, passing through many doors along the way until we stopped inside a particular room.
“With the help of some other nurses, I was unstrapped and, to my horror, realized where I was. I was in the basement again, and this time, Doctor Cross was looking on through the window. Looking around, I saw the same machine that I saw earlier, only this time all the lights were on and buzzing.
“Believe me, I tried to fight back while I was being lifted up. I tried using my horn, but no matter what I did, nothing was working! I tried thrashing around, but it was pointless as soon as they put me onto the table and stuffed a hard tube in my mouth. Once I was secured, they proceeded to put some kind of ointment on my temples before I felt something touching both sides of my head.
“And then someone said something before I felt everything tensing up. Not only was my whole body shaking uncontrollably, but all I felt was pain. Nothing except that heated, sharp pain that felt like my insides were being cooked.” Andrew coughed. “Can I get some water?”
“Yeah, sure thing.”
Click.