Later that night, Lovejoy’s mind was in full gear. Gathering up whatever books on Psychology that he’d brought with him and recalling his time in the village, he studied them by the flicker of candlelight on his bed stand. After giving some thought, he returned to his notebook.
November 9th – In the space of a day, I have observed that this village of “Our Town” is withholding a much deeper secret than I anticipated. It’s quite clear now that the small population is being controlled by its founder, Starlight Glimmer. On the one lane street, every single pony is a little too perfectly uniformed. Each wears a forced smile, same mane style, and even the exact cutie mark: an equal sign. It is also noted that everypony’s coat shade is almost muted… all except for the founder.
The townspony are almost completely cut off from the outside world, with no visible police enforcement, and they live very, very simple. Instrumental music, sugar, and even the freedom to date anyone or even to move freely at night are prohibited. From one pony when I questioned him about the way this town worked, he immediately left, as if somepony was listening in.
As of now, since I’ve poisoned a mare from last night, I think it’s more important now than ever to be careful how many ponies I could turn into works of art without anyone from the village getting too suspicious. Otherwise, I would need to get creative in the answers they ask me where those ponies have gone to… Then again, it does present an interesting challenge of who I can kill off without getting noticed… Note to self: Keep an eye out for anyone that most likely would run away.
For the time being, I should focus on the leader, Starlight Glimmer. Because from what I could see and what I was told indirectly from these villagers; she seems to be very manipulative in what her ponies can or cannot do. Also, she has a kind of high minded charisma towards her citizens. Although I think I need to study her a little more, I’m beginning to suspect if she’s a goal-driven psychopath or sociopath. Unfortunately, she’s most likely lean towards being all powerful than taking away lives. How dull!
However, I need to run a few tests without her knowing somehow, something that would test her empathy as well as her sense of morality, and to see how her self-esteem is compared to others. Firstly, I’ll need to devise a controlled situation in which I would see personally her reaction to a ‘random’ act of pain from her villagers say… a broken leg?
In the broad daylight, Dr. Lovejoy was waiting. With a book of Post-Impressionist Art on the table, he was looking out on the street. Some of the doll-like ponies were keeping an eye on him as well. Although he was calm on the outside, he was thinking, calculating, narrowing down which pony to subject to his empathy test.
He was also waiting for Starlight Glimmer to come out of her home as well, and he was waiting for- “Here you go, sir.” Lovejoy snapped his attention to the mare that set a plate down in front of him. “Here’s your muffin.”
“Thank you, Ms. Belle.” He nodded to the mare with a bun in her mane, and then looked at the muffin at the table. “I’m sorry, but has something gone wrong with the baking?”
The unicorn mare blinked, “What do you mean?”
“Please, don’t think of me as rude, but… a little baking powder, sugar, and butter would do wonders for this thing.”
Her ears folded back a little, “I’m sorry sir, but this is really the best I can do with what I have.”
The doctor’s eyebrow rose, “Wait, are you telling me that this village has no baking powder or butter? So how is it that you’re able to bake, Sugar Belle?”
“You’d be surprised of all the things you can do without,” she smiled politely.
“They’re just living by their means doctor,” he looked up to find Starlight walking up towards him. “So, how are you this morning?”
“A little tired ma’am,” he said. “I think I was up a little too late reading.”
“Like that book?” she pointed to the open book on the table.
“Yes, it’s a captivating book on Post-Impressionism Art. Like the styles of late Moneigh, van Gogh, and Gauguin,” from the corner of his eye, he spotted a family, and behind the parents were two colts. The little family was so ordinary looking that he noticed that nopony was paying any attention to neither them nor they to him. This looked promising, “It has wonderful artwork and is a fascinating read.”
“Let me see that,” while Starlight and Sugar Bell glanced at the book, Lovejoy’s horn glowed briefly to pick up the stone from underneath his seat, took aim, and quickly fired at the family. Then, in the morning air, the high pitch scream of a colt shattered the calm air.
Dr. Lovejoy’s eyes were now on the founder to see her reaction. While Sugar Belle looked up in horror, he noted that while Starlight looked up, there wasn’t shock on her face, but curiosity. When she went over to see what was going on and saw the colt’s foreleg bend at an acute angle where he was balling his eyes out, the doctor took mental notes that she didn’t seem too fazed about it.
Starlight turned around, “Who did this!” she demanded. “What happened?”
But when nopony responded, the doctor looked at a nearby gray stallion and pointed, “He did it,” he said, “He threw the stone.”
“What!” the accused stallion cried as Starlight marched over to him.
“Check Mate, how could you!” she asked him bitterly. “How could you throw a stone at Starting Line?”
“B-But I didn’t.”
“I saw you,” the doctor interjected, getting up from his seat and trotting over to the crying colt, “I saw you picked it up and threw it. Honestly, you ought to be ashamed of yourself.”
“That’s a lie!” Check exclaimed, “I didn’t even touch-”
“Check Mate,” the crossed mare interrupted, “This is a new low, even for you. For this, you’ll be spending the next few days in the Equalization House.”
The stallion’s eyes shrunk to pinpricks, “No, please! I didn’t-”
“Double Diamond,” she called out, and the white stallion was by her side, “Would you please take Check Mate here to the Equalization House so he may think over what he did.”
Diamond nodded and pulled at the stallion’s tail, dragging him through the dust, “But it wasn’t me, I swear! It was him! He threw it!” but his cries were ignored as he was pulled into the house that was across the street from the doctor’s residence.
Meanwhile, the elderly unicorn lit up his horn. “Now, now... child, you’re in good hooves, I’m a doctor.”
“Starting?” a butterscotch colt asked in concern, “Are you okay?”
Lovejoy examined the broken limb, “We need to make a splint,” he said, looking up at the parents, “I need two pieces of wood and something to tie them together.”
“And… there we go,” the doctor said as he wrapped the last bandage on Starting Line’s foreleg. He turned to his parents, “That ought to do it, just make sure he stays in bed for the next two weeks to heal, but the cast itself should only come off after six weeks.”
“Six weeks!” Finishing Line exclaimed, “But we were supposed to have our race tomorrow!”
“I’m sorry, but I’m afraid your big brother is in no condition to go anywhere,” Lovejoy lifted the colt onto the mother’s back.
“It’s not fair,” the little pegasus said. “Everything’s not fair since we’ve moved here.”
This got the doctor’s attention.
“Now Finish,” his father told him, “You know that’s not true.”
“But he has a broken leg,” the colt pointed out. “And none of us had any candy ever since we’ve moved here.”
“Finish, please,” the mother stepped in, “We can talk about this at home.”
“No! I hate it here!” he exclaimed.
For Dr. Lovejoy, he sensed an opportunity. “Excuse me,” he said as he went into the kitchen. “But I think I might have some candy with me.”
This got the whole family’s attention, the older brother’s neck craned upward, “You have candy!”
“Only some ginger hard candies,” he said from the kitchen, “Now where did I- ah! Here they are.” He returned to the living room with a little bag, he used his magic to pull out four pieces to them.
The younger brother, Finishing Line immediately unwrapped the treat and stuffed it into his mouth. “Mmm! This is so yummy! Thank you, Doctor Lovejoy, you don’t know how happy this makes me feel right now.”
Lovejoy stared at him, “Are you sure you’re happy right now?”
He nodded his head.
The mother went up to him, “This is really generous of you. You’ve been so kind.”
“Likewise,” the elderly stallion said with a smile, “Actually, if it wouldn’t be too much to ask, could you ask Starlight to have Finishing Line to check on me tomorrow afternoon? After all, I’m going to need a little help tomorrow and I was hoping that I could get someone over to help.”
“After your kindness,” the father told him, “Of course we can.”
“Thank you, and Finishing Line,” he gave a warm, grandfather-like smile; “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
The little pegasus knocked on the doctor’s door the next day. Lovejoy answered the door, “Why hello, come in.”
He did, “So doc, what do you need my help for?”
“Well, you see,” he said as he heads towards the kitchen, “I’ve been looking for a little rolled up the jar of a film for my camera, and I think that the ponies that helped move me in, has placed it between a set of boxes in the basement. I’m afraid that I can’t exactly reach it or move it, so, with your size, I was hoping if you would crawl in and see if that jar is there?”
“Um… okay.” The colt followed the doctor into the kitchen, opening a door to the basement and lighting a lantern. He followed him down the steps where the doctor lit a few more lanterns to help illuminate the room beneath.
At one corner of the wall, there were barrels of dry goods like flour and salt that were kept, in another, there were boxes and trinkets that the elderly stallion had brought with him. In the center of the room, there was a table with trays and chemicals. “That’s for the photos,” Lovejoy explained. Yet, underneath that table was a funny looking low table that has several beams stretching across like a wooden mattress frame.
“Over here,” he said, pointing at the gap in the boxes. “Could you crawl in to see if the jar is in there?”
“Sure,” Finishing said as he stuck his head in. “I think I see something,” he started to crawl into the narrow gap. In the dim light, he could see a labeled jar; he reached to take a hold of it. Once he got it in his hoof, he turned it around, but was confused for a moment when he read, “Hold still?”
Suddenly, he felt a sharp pinch in his back, “Ouch!” he cried as dropped the jar and back out from the tight space to find the doctor has an empty syringe in his aura. “What was… uh… doc?”
The door leading to the basement closed shut.
Finishing Line looked at the stallion, “D-Doc, what’s going on? What is that?”
“This?” Lovejoy looked at the syringe, “Oh, this is a painkiller. Within the next couple of seconds, you’ll won’t be able to feel a thing, and soon, you’ll be pretty much be paralyzed from the neck down.”
“Paralyzed?” the colt started to stumble, “Why would you want me paralyzed for?”
He chuckled as his horn glowed, moving the table away, “Why, so I can kill you of course.”
“W-What!” the pegasus fell over, quickly finding that he was losing control of his legs and wings. He was suddenly picked up in the unicorn’s aura like a rag doll.
“Now, just to be clear on a few things,” he said as he placed him on the wooden bed frame. “For starters, you can scream your head off all you want. You can cry for help, beg for mercy, but I’m afraid that won’t do you any good... because I’ve soundproofed this particular room so nopony except me can hear you.”
He then levitated a roll of canvas and lifted the bed-frame up for just a moment to unroll it underneath it, “Also, in case you’re wondering, the answer is no, you didn’t offend me in any way. I’m not doing this because I hate you, but rather because I’m doing this for your benefit.”
“B-Benefit?” Finishing asked, getting all the more frightening. “W-What are you going to do to me?”
“To put it short,” he said as he took his camera, having it pointed at the scared colt. “I’m going to have you killed by bleeding to death.” A flashbulb lit up the room for a moment before the doctor propped the camera by the wall, “Except, I will be doing it in a unique way.”
“How?”
“Let’s see,” he went over to the boxes to open one of them up, pulling a rolled up cloth, he unfurled it to reveal a row of surgical tools. “No. No. No… Definitely not… You’ll do,” he pulled out a scalpel from it, and the colt’s eyes widen. “Oh, don’t worry; you won’t be able to feel a thing, even when you’re slowly dying. This reminds me…”
Lovejoy turned his attention to the phonograph under the stairs; he cranked it a few times until the spin table was moving. He set the needle down on the record which projected a soft drumming sound, followed by a mournful cello. “Much better,” the doctor smiled, picking up a paintbrush from another box, he turned to the mortified colt, “Let’s begin, shall we?”
“P-Please, don’t,” Finishing begged, his eyes tearing up, “Why are you doing this?”
Lovejoy hummed as he moved the scalpel and the paintbrush underneath his back, “A stupid question, but politely asked. Simply put, because you’ve answered correctly to the wrong question.”
“What does that mean?” the little pegasus could now hear wet dripping sounds that were falling on the canvas beneath him along with the brushing of the paintbrush. “What question?”
“Do you remember yesterday, when I gave you and your family that hard candy that you said and I quote: ‘Thank you, Doctor Lovejoy, you don’t know how happy this makes me feel right now’? When I asked you if you were sure that you were, indeed happy, you nodded in agreement, giving all the permission I need to turn you into an art project. And now, here you are!”
“Y-You’re going to kill me because I had a piece of candy?”
The doctor shook his head, “No no. It’s not that, it was because you said that you were happy. Simple as that… Hmm… I’m going to need more paint,” more dripping sounds were heard.
“But… I don’t understand,” the colt said, tears now flowing down over. The increasing sound of the funeral march on the phonograph still played on.
“Here’s a question for you: What is the ultimate goal in life? Really think about it when you still have time.”
“I… I don’t know,” Finishing Line started crying. A staccato of brush strokes was busily painting the stained canvas in rich streaks of red.
“To be happy,” Lovejoy answered. “Regardless of age, occupation or species, all living, thinking creatures live to be happy. It’s something more prized than wealth, security, or even family. Yet, I’ve noticed in life, that happiness never lasts for long. We ponies are cursed in that once we do find any true forms of happiness; it goes away, never knowing when or if it’ll ever return. Like, for example, when I was just a little colt, I found my happiness in art. However, when my parents pointed out that I couldn’t exactly live as an artist, they had me learn things like pony biology and medicine, I’ve ended up getting a cutie mark that would forever deny me of being truly happy. But, I’ve learned that I could still be an artist by doing what I’ve always loved since and that is being able to do just that, photography. Then, I’ve found out several ponies that one day was happy with their lives, the next they were depressed because something went horribly wrong. So, this is the reason why I’m killing you so that the last thing you’ll remember from your life is that you were happy. You’re welcome.”
“But… I don’t wanna die.”
“At this point, I’m afraid you don’t have much of a choice.”
For a while, Finishing Line didn’t say anything, the phonograph still played on for a while until the doctor broke the silence.
“It’s Mahler’s First Symphony, the Third Movement in case you’re wondering. I’ve always loved this particular piece because he ingeniously combined both a funeral march and a wedding together in the same movement. I guess it’s rather fitting, you scared and I just enjoy painting on your burial shroud. For really, there’s nothing like murdering somepony to the sounds of an orchestra.” But when the colt didn’t respond, he looked up from his work, “What’s wrong?”
“I’m never going to see my parents, o-or my big brother again.”
Lovejoy rolled his eyes, “Believe me when you’re dead, then you’ll have absolutely nothing to worry about at all. I still don’t see what’s so hard to grasp.”
He sniffed, “Y-You’re a-a-a mons-ster!”
The doctor shrugged, looking at his work, he said, “If your family is here right now, what do you want to say to them?”
Finishing sob, “Oh Celestia! I didn’t even tell them goodbye!”
“I’ll tell you what,” the elderly stallion leaned over, “Once I have you buried, I’ll tell them that you said goodbye. What? Just because I’m a monster, doesn’t mean I don’t have the capability of being kind.”
“I feel lightheaded...”
Lovejoy smiled, “That’s good, very good. That means we’re almost done. Just a few more minutes, and you’ll never find a reason to cry about ever again.”
The paintbrush still went on, doing quick brushes here and there on the canvas until, finally, the little pegasus, Finishing Line, stopped breathing altogether.
“Dead already?” he asked. “Oh well. Anyway, my boy, thank you for the paint, I must say, I’ve really outdone myself with you. Plus, tonight you’ll have your name carved on a rock somewhere.”
He lifted up the camera over his head until it was looking straight down at the colt, who was over the canvas of a pair of bloody wings that he was about to be buried in.