Zephyr wasn't sure if he should be relieved or terrified.
It was true that he didn't want to work here, so finding out Pa had no intention of employing him should have been good news. But then why was he out here? Why had Fluttershy lied to him about this being a job interview? Or was it she that had been lied to by the Knacker family? While Zephyr would have liked answers to these questions, more than anything he wanted to take off this bloodstained mask and the itchy coat and fly away as far and fast as possible. Only he still had no idea where Bubba was or what had happened to the keys to the front gate. He had to settle for two out of three, and leave his mask and coat on a coat hanger as they left the pet food processing room.
What had been the point of trapping him here? Why had Pa insisted on showing him around the Knackeryard, as the talkative pony had called it? The more he tried to wrap his head around what was going on, the more Zephyr just wanted to curl up into a ball and go to sleep and hope that when he woke up that this was all just a very bad dream.
Pa lead Zephyr up a set of winding stairs, into a maze of catwalks and pipes that had been hidden in the high ceiling of the facility. Thick cobwebs were illuminated by fly specked lights, or at least the ones that weren't burnt out. Steam hissed from the rusted pipes as brown water seemed to drip from everywhere. The pet food room might have been somewhat clean under the freezing conditions they kept it in, but this place was still so unsanitary that it made Zephyr wish he could take off his hooves and give them a nice long soak in a tub of alcohol. Making his way across the rusted metal catwalks didn't do anything to make this feeling lessen, and by the time Pa lead him through an iron door into some kind of control room, Zephyr was just happy to be out of the wet guts of the facility and back in something that looked at least somewhat like an actual room.
Nuke and Bubba had apparently been waiting for them for some time. They stood to attention as Pa came into the room, scattering cards to some kind of game that they had been playing and acting as if they hadn't been doing any such thing. Pa just shook his head, and then Candy jumped out at him and yelled 'Boo!' at the top of her lungs. Pa just ruffled her curly mane and gave a little chuckle. "Well son, ya've already met most of the family, but Ah'd be remiss if Ah didn't give ya the formal introductions. Candy-Mare here you've already met, and these two idjits are Nuke and Bubba from the yard. Most folks just call ole Bubba 'Leather Head' on account he likes to do arts and crafts with the scraps from the tannery, but Ah won't stand for that kind of talk myself. Mama ain't with us no more Ah'm sorry to say..."
The entire Knacker clan looked down at their hooves sadly. Zephyr wasn't sure what was expected of him, so he just said "I'm sorry to hear that. It must be rough losing a loved one like that." He must have said something wrong, because all three of Pa's kids gave him a funny look.
"We ain't lost her," said Nuke. "We know exactly where she is." He nodded behind Zephyr, and the pegasus turned to look over his shoulder.
She must have been beautiful once. Her mane was still long and beautiful, auburn brown. As a Mane Therapist, Zephyr could appreciate the work that must have gone into making it so rich and glossy. Even in this dim light it still shown with all the colors of autumn, crimson and gold and burnt orange laced beautifully through the rich earthy brown. It was a shame that the rest of her was so shriveled and worn. There had been some effort made to hold her together, thick black cord had been used to stitch together places where she was rotting apart. Her skin looked a lot like those on the tanning rack. Yellowed, stretched, and thin, to the point that her bones showed through plainly beneath. Ponies didn't often wear cloths, but in this state she seemed truly naked. Zephyr wanted desperately to find a blanket to cover her up... To try and keep her bones warm given her skin was no longer up to the task and obviously failing her in that regard.
It was funny how Zephyr's mind worked so hard at keeping him from acknolwedging the obvious... The fact that he was looking at the preserved corpse of a mare.
Mama Knacker.
"She was always the flighty sort," began Pa Knacker, gravely, his voice choked with emotion. "Loved to travel, Mama did. But accidents happen to you on the road," said Pa, quietly "And then sometimes you happen to accidents. But what could Ah do? Ah can't raise these kids all by mahself. And little Candy wasn't even a year old. Kids need to have their mama." He paused and then he gave a little chuckle. "Course she ain't much for conversation anymore, but at least she kept her looks!" He laughed at his own black humor, and Zephyr fought dueling emotions to strangle him for his disrespect towards the dead and to just run away. Sadly, the moment of indecision and the distraction of the horror that was Mama Knacker's preserved corpse allowed Bubba and Nuke to move in to either side of him. For such big ponies, they moved deceptively quickly and quietly. It was like one moment they were standing with their Pa, and the next they were sternly, but gently, guiding him towards the darkened observation window on the other side of the long control room.
"Dis is the best part of da tour," Confided Nuke, giving Zephyr an uncomfortable squeeze. "These demonstrations are very popular!"
"I don't know why you brought me here," Zephyr said, squirming ineffectually to break the brothers grip. "I don't know what you're planning to do, but I swear to you I won't tell another soul about all of this if you just let me go." He was crying now. This was all far too much for him. "Not about the meat, or the skins, or the glue, or even about your... Your Ma. I mean none of that matters to me! I'm a Mane Care Therapist! I mean, it's an important job, but who would even believe me?"
"He sure talks funny Pa," said Nuke Knacker, giving Zephyr another squeeze around the shoulders, his muscles slithering over the bone as if it were a python that gripped Zephyr and not a pony. "What's he talkin' about?"
"Don't you worry none, he's just operating under a bit of a misunderstandin'. We gotta make things clear for him. That's what this entire exercise is about," explained Pa in a knowing voice, despite Zephyr crying and pleading otherwise. "You boys just make sure he keeps his eyes on the stage! It's time for the show!" Candy squealed and hopped up on her brother Bubba's shoulder so she could have a better look herself. It seemed whatever was about to happen, the Knacker siblings were all excited about it.
With that, Pa Knacker flicked a large switch, and light flooded the room beyond the observation window. There was a long conveyor belt that ended in a wide grate on one end. Complex machinery hung from the ceiling, and despite the blood stains all of it looked well oiled and maintained. In fact it was the most state of the art looking machinery in the facility, and looked extremely out of place among all the leaking pipes and dangling cobwebs. As Zephyr watched, the conveyor belt began to slowly move and a pony, a unicorn in fact, passed through a black curtain on the opposite end of the room. It looked as if he was somehow shackled to the conveyor belt, his neck in some kind of yoke that held him upright and his legs out straight in blood stained manacles.
Zephyr had a sick sinking feeling in his gut that he knew exactly what was about to happen.
Pa Knacker flipped a switch and the conveyor belt paused, "Now, here we have us a fella by the name of Snails. Ah tell ya true, Ah don't know if that's the name his mama gave him or if it's just a cruel nickname he picked up in his colthood, but this fella here is well known fer bein' slow. So slow in fact, that all he's particularly good at is raisin' snails! Horrible, snotty pests that eat up a garden quicker than ya'd think given how sluggish they crawl, but a rare delicacy among certain highfalutin unicorns in foreign parts." Pa popped a few vertebrae in his neck before his hooves began to fly over the control board. He kept talking as he worked. "Now, If he was born a pegasus, he would've failed his flight exam and ended up as one or two pigments of a rainbow. If he was born in Canterlot, he would've likely spent his time as a research specimen in that school for 'Gifted Unicorn's' they have up there. Since he was born in Ponyville, it's a wonder his number never came up, but that particular lottery doesn't always pay out that way. That's why our bonny boy Snails here ended up being sent our way."
"Why are you doing this?" asked Zephyr. "Why are you making me watch this? Just let me go. I never saw any of this. I don't know you ponies. I don't know him either! I've never met a pony named Snails!"
If Pa Knacker heard him, he ignored him as he continued his spiel, "There are some folk that it don't matter how much schoolin' you give em, they are always goin' to be useless. Oh sure, you could just give them a job doin' anythin', but they'd never apply themselves. They'd never learn. They'd never live up to societies expectations. In times long past, we fought wars and gave folks like this a purpose. Colts like Nuke and Snails here would go off to war, and they'd do their duty and due diligence, and who knows? Maybe it would be Snails that would come back, injured but alive, and my boy Nuke would be rotting in a field somewhere far from hearth and home," Pa Knacker choked up a bit as he said this. It seemed the thought made him emotional. "But we live in an era of peace. Even Yakyakistan is friends with Equestria for a Thousand Moons! Oh there's still monsters and menaces out in the wilds, Mama Knacker found that out the hard way, but this entire generation is remarkably sheltered. Ya got nothin' to die for, and nothin' to live for, so you just waste your time. No, worse, you waste society's time and resources just by existin'. As if just being alive is enough to justify yer existence. As if the world somehow owes you, and not the other way around!"
The conveyor belt jerked back into motion. Snails struggled feebly, but it seemed like he had difficulty moving. "Why doesn't he just use his magic to free himself!?" Zephyr Breeze howled, struggling in Bubba and Nuke's grip. "Why doesn't he just teleport away!?"
There was a cruel laugh from Pa Knacker as he turned and glared at Zephyr with one eye, glowing with a fiendish scarlet light. "Are you thick boy, or have you just not been payin' attention!? If Snails here had been born in Prance, maybe he could've had a life as a Snail farmer or somethin', but he would've never been the brightest bulb on the Hearths Warming tree! Oh no, not this one! The boy don't know any of that fancy magic, and even if he did, well..." The Knackerman laughed again, his children joining him with fiendish glee. "Lets just say he might find it hard to think straight at the moment..."
"You drugged him," Zephyr said, as the penny dropped. "You drugged him and now you're going to murder him."
"We done no such thing!" screamed Nuke. The stallion grabbed one of Zephyr's wings and twisted it viciously. Zephyr didn't hear the snap, so much as he felt it as the delicate bones shattered. Zephyr howled in agony as Nuke bellowed again, "No such thing!"
"No such thing! No such thing!" chanted Candy along with her big brother, Bubba grunting excitedly in the closest approximation of speech he was capable of.
"Easy there Nuke, don't go gettin' ahead of yerself. He still don't understand. If he passes out now, he won't learn nothin' and then this will all have been a huge waste of time," crooned Pa calmly.
Nuke let go of the Zephyr's wing, and the ruined appendage dangled by its tendons from Zephyr's back. The pain had gone from blinding to merely agonizing, yet the pegasus was in no mood to be grateful to his captors. He glared sullenly at the head of the Knacker clan.
"Nuke's right though. We didn't drug the poor boy and we ain't about ta kill him. We're Knackermen, not murderers. Heck, that's what the machines are for! Besides, the boy was dead before he ever came into our care. No hope, no prospects for his future. All that's left for him is one last service, one last repayment for the debt he owes society by bein' born." Pa flipped a few more switches, and the first set of articulated mechanical arms dropped down from the ceiling and into place in front of Snails. Despite the drugs coursing through his system, the colt struggled as the conveyor belt brought him closer.
It was the arm that swung in at the last moment next to his head that actually killed him. A high pressure bolt shot out of a hydraulic armature, smashing through the side of Snail's skull and ejected a spray of grey matter onto the observation glass.
"No!" screamed Zephyr as pieces of Snails brain slid slowly down the glass.
"It's important that they don't see it coming," said Pa conversationally, "Otherwise it would be cruel. Ya see Zephyr we're a great many things, but we try not to be cruel. We don't want to actually hurt ponies, or take advantage of them. We always aim to treat folks fairly, even when they've been unfair to others. And if you're worried about that unicorn through the glass there, he ain't quite dead. At least not yet. It's important to keep everything fresh for as long as possible, so we leave the parts of the brain that do the living intact. We just blew out the bits responsible for the thinking and the feeling. We wouldn't want him feeling what comes next."
The conveyor belt moved on, and the yoke that held Snails lifted him up so that his hooves dangled loosely. Four arms reached out and clamped over each hoof. The familiar sound of whirring and grinding blades came to Zephyr's ears as the machinery chipped away at the colt's hooves, breaking them into small chunks that fell into a gap in the conveyor belt, just over the vats in the glue room. A fifth arm dropped down at head height and covered Snails' horn, and began to grind that up as well. Dust from the grinding machinery engulfed Snails in an orange cloud. The unicorn didn't react at first, but he screamed instinctively as the machinery began to eat into the delicate nerve endings sheathed beneath the hooves and horn.
It was a wretched, animal scream, high and keening. Even if Snails couldn't really 'feel' what was happening anymore, his body could. The armatures retracted, the yoke opened freeing Snails, and the unicorn fell into a bloody crumpled heap on the conveyor belt. The ends of his legs looked like they had been gnawed off, while his horn was completely gone save for a bloody bony nub on his forehead. Snails looked around blankly as his legs twitched, tears streaming from his eyes and snot from his nose as he whimpered pathetically.
"Next up, we get to the gory part," said Pa, Candy immediately lighting up as he said this. "Make sure he keeps his eyes open kids, even if ya have to pry them open."
Bubba raised Zephyr's head, and Candy peeled back his eyelids with her tiny hooves. The articulated arms that dangled over Snails prostrate form each had long, thin blades or hooks on the end of them. They moved in a blur as they did their swift work, slicing and tugging skin away from flesh. There was surprisingly very little blood as the machine peeled back snails hide, taking most of it in one piece. Zephyr felt his meager breakfast rise into his throat as first one leg, and then another was degloved. The skin tubes that were peeled from the unicorn's legs flopped against the conveyor belt with a wet, dull slap that was audible even in the observation room. Snails screamed rythmically, quietly as the knives peeled the skin from his back. The last of his flesh for the machine to remove was on his face, and Bubba jumped up and down gleefully as the hooks and knives did their work. The machinery sliced through cheek and gum, sliced up around the eye sockets and the ragged wound where the unicorn's horn used to be. The flesh tore away somewhat messily, but it seemed Bubba had the makings of a new mask for his collection.
The colt's muscles and sinew lay exposed now, and his bloody teeth clenched in pain. If Zephyr thought Mama Knacker had looked nude, it was nothing compared to poor Snails. He curled into a fetal position, tucking his ruined forelimbs up against his chest. He looked as if he was shivering the sudden cold of having his skin taken away, but it was more likely he had gone into shock. "You're monsters!" Zephyr cried. "You're all monsters!"
"Easy does it there son, we're almost done here," said Pa with something approaching genuine tenderness. The machines secreted the scraps of pony hide away for later processing in the tannery. Snails continued his doomed journey down the disassembly line, and all Pa Knacker did was kick up his hooves on the console as he flipped the last of the switches to send Snails on his way.
The arms that moved into position now had much larger, serrated blades. Some were merely cleavers, but others were thin boning knives, and still others were circular saws designed for but a single purpose; To slice through meat as quickly and cleanly as possible. Thankfully the process started at snails head, severing his spine before cracking open his skull and scooping out what grey matter remained. The blades then moved over the rest of the carcass, popping bone from flesh, splitting open the ribs, and spilling the colt's steaming innards onto the conveyor belt quickly and relatively cleanly. The slimy, slithering intestines were minced and diced along with the muscle and fat, until all was an indistinguishable crimson and pink jumble. The spray of crimson juices that washed over the conveyor belt from this process drained into waiting receptacles that had been set up for just that purpose. After all, the Knacker clan motto was 'Waste Not, Want Not' and they likely had a use for even this run off from their grizzly work. Maybe they sold it by the barrel to the local hospital for transfusions? Or perhaps it was just boiled down into the gravy for the 'fancy tinned feasts' that Opalescence so enjoyed? Maybe the demented clan of butchers drank the steaming gore themselves?
Who knew?
Zephyr stared blank eyed as the chunks of what had once been Snails sluiced through the grate at the end of the conveyor belt, destined for the long process of being turned into pet food. He imagined his big sister feeding that goofy bear Harry a tin of Snails. For some reason, then and there, he found the idea comical.
He started to laugh.
It was quiet at first, but it rose quickly.
Zephyr laughed and laughed, and the Knacker clan joined in!
The family of killers weren't wearing their masks anymore. In fact, Zephyr realized, what he had taken to be masks were actually their true faces. As they ripped their faces off, there wasn't anything underneath at all! Just bloody holes where faces should be, laughing and gurgling, and spraying blood everywhere. The entire room began to stretch and peel away, revealing the wet meat of the Knackeryard that bled and pulsed beneath. No wonder the building hadn't fallen down! It was a living thing, hunched over on itself but hungry for pony flesh.
And Zephyr had walked into its hungry maw willingly!
It was all just too funny!
"Oh sure, now the tea kicks in." grumbled Pa Knacker. "Ah told that mare that it worked better if you put it in coffee, but no, she went and had to put it in tea cause this foal here was picky about where his coffee beans come from! What a shit show!"
"It's okay Pa," said Nuke, trying to calm his father down. "It'll probably be better this way any how."
"Oh shut up," roared the head of the Knacker clan, "It's you and your idiot brothers fault we're so far behind schedule anyways! I was supposed to be entering our latest batch of pet food into the County Fair tomorrow! Ten years running we've won the Blue Ribbon, and now that's all in jeopardy because you lard asses had to take an extra long break for arts and crafts! I swear if you foals keep this up, when I join yer Mama in the Sweet Here After, Ah'm gonna leave the Knackeryard to Candy!"
Candy seemed to like this idea very much, as she hopped up and down excitedly on Zephyr's back.
He didn't mind. His mind was too far gone to mind anything at the moment., even when her hoof stomped down on his broken wing.
"Get that stinking homeless bum out of here before he starts drooling all over yer Mama's nice clean floor!" growled Pa, "And get him ready! We got one more show to put on tonight and Ah'll be damned if we're going to be late for that too!"