Zephyr was alone when his senses started to return.
He couldn't see anything. For a terrifying moment he thought that maybe it was because he was blind. The terrifying visions he'd had before, born of the horror that he had been forced to witness, had left him under the delusion that he had clawed out his own eyes. It hadn't helped then, as he could still see the ragged flesh and throbbing veins of the organic facility... Of the Knackeryard revealed for what it truly was beneath its facade of artificial decay. The steaming, gut grinding monstrosity that it truly was and always had been. In those visions the Knacker clan had just been it's blood spilling servants, twisted beasts of exposed meat and bone that worked tirelessly to keep the beast fed.
But as his eyes adjusted to the gloom, Zephyr could make out a sliver of light some distance in front of him. The light gave him a flicker of hope, that was immediately quashed as he tried to move towards it. He couldn't move. His hooves were shackled firmly in place, and a heavy yoke across his back held him in place so that he couldn't so much as bend down to inspect them. He tried flapping his wings, forgetting that one had been bent and broken by the thuggish Nuke. The pain lanced through his sore back and he stifled the urge to scream. Her didn't want anyone to know he was awake. He needed all the time he could get to try and figure out a way to escape. Sadly, from where he was standing, it didn't look like Zephyr was going anywhere.
His mind raced. Should he try calling for help? Who could possibly hear him? Even if he did, wouldn't he just be more likely to attract the attention of the Knacker clan or the workers below? Chances are they'd just take measures to silence him then. It was likely that everypony that worked in the facility was in on the Knacker family's scam, murdering ponies and profiting off of their corpses right along side the masked maniacs that ran this place. It was a wonder that such horror existed in Equestria at all, but the more Zephyr thought about it, the more it made a sick kind of sense. He'd never seen a graveyard in Ponyville. They existed in the older cities like Manehatten and Canterlot, usually as catacombs or an undercroft in some forgotten part of the city. But though there were occasional funerals, it was rare to see an actual cemetery. What happened to all those dead bodies?
Maybe it wasn't just the Knackers. Maybe old Pa Knacker was telling the truth and there was an entire system set up, not just to weed out ponies like Snails who were a drag on society, but that also took the bodies of the recently dead and... Reduced, Reused, and Recycled them. Suddenly the world seemed like a very thin, candy colored coating over a deep, dark pit filled with the dead. Was all of Equestrian society built on the bones of the deceased? Were they, literally, the glue that held society together? He wouldn't have believed it if you had told him about all of this, even a few hours ago... But seeing the cold precision of it, the casual indifference to life and death that the Knackers seemed to have...
It gave Zephyr pause.
He'd never imagined that there was anything more important in the world than himself. Oh sure there were Princesses and the magic of friendship, and titanic struggles between the forces of good and evil, but none of that mattered on a day to day basis. Largely, such matters seemed to resolve themselves, or happen to other ponies. What was important... What had been important to Zephyr were long naps, redecorating, and to always work smarter not harder... Which usually meant finding somepony else to do the work for him. Now though, now he felt like he had the chance to really do something. Despite what Pa Knacker had said there was no way that Fluttershy, or any pony else for that matter, could truly know what horrible things went on in this old ramshackle warehouse. Zephyr had to find a way to escape, if for no other reason to tell everypony, anypony who would listen about the horrible things that had happened here! There were bound to be ponies that would believe him and help him shut this place down.
And if there were other places like it in Equestria, he'd find them and do the same. So what if it meant a world without glue, leather, and convenient pet food? He was sure there were other ways of obtaining such things, or products that were close enough to them as made no difference. Besides, what did that really matter when weighed against the life of even a single pony? A single colt like Snails. Or even a stallion like Zephyr.
He knew he was delirious.
He knew that Snails fate was likely soon to be his own.
He'd seen too much. He didn't know why Pa Knacker had seen fit to show him his entire operation, but Zypher knew he had seen too much.
But who cared about all of that? He couldn't move! He tried to raise his voice as the panic and hysteria overtook him, but all that came out was a harsh whisper. Whatever had been in those drugs that the Knacker's had slipped him, they hadn't just stolen away his consciousness but his voice as well. He hung his head low in the dark, awaiting the inevitable.
He didn't have to wait long.
The conveyor belt kicked into motion, and Zephyr was jerked forward against his will. The sliver of light ahead of him resolved into the gap between a set of black curtains. As Zephyr passed through it, he blinked, trying to see where he was despite the fact that the feeling of intense mortal dread in the pit of his stomach told him he was exactly where he had expected to be. The machinery of the killing stage, the disassembly line, gleamed brightly in the flood lights above. Zephyr could still see flecks of Snails blood still dripping from the mechanical armatures arrayed before him.
Apparently he hadn't been out of it for long.
"Hi Zephyr," came a familiar voice. Zephyr Breeze didn't want to believe it. He couldn't believe it. But as he turned his eyes towards the observation room he didn't see just the Knacker Clan standing there, but his sister as well. Fluttershy stood with his mother and father. All three looked uncomfortable, but none of them looked as if they had been harmed. "Are you feeling okay?" Zephyr realized his sister was speaking through a microphone that amplified her usually soft, demure voice. The whine and pop of the speakers just barely concealed the concern in her voice, "They haven't treated you too roughly I hope?"
"Now Miss Fluttershy, ya know that the drugs ya gave him has him senseless. He can no more understand what yer sayin' than if ya was speakin' in tongues." said the voice of Pa Knacker, syrupy with friendliness and put on concern. Zephyr was confused for a moment, and then he realized that the Knackerman was lying! Zephyr had been out of it before, but he was in full possession of his senses now. The drugs had just stiffened his muscles, including his vocal cords. He tried desperately to cry out, to shake himself, to show any indication that he could hear his sisters voice, but his body held him trapped more firmly than even the manacles that bound him. "Anything you say now is for your benefit, not his. Say yer peace and then we'll have this sad business behind us."
Fluttershy took a deep breath. "Zephyr, I'll always love you. And I'll always remember you as my baby brother. But this has gone on for far too long. Every time you start to move ahead on your own, you immediately fall back on Mom and Dad for support. Or if they've had enough of you, you try to live off of me or even Rainbow Dash instead! Mom and Dad aren't going to be around forever, and if i'm being honest, neither am I. The life of a protector of Harmony in Equestria is a dangerous one, and... Well, I just can't bear to think of how you would end up without us, without your family." Fluttershy paused, tears in her eyes. "Seeing you living out in the middle of nowhere, with no food, no shelter, and no friends; it was just far too cruel. In those conditions, I just know you'd end up starving to death, or dying of thirst, or getting eaten by some wild animal or monster. I couldn't bear to think of you meeting such a miserable and lonely end. And since that seems to be the life you're destined to lead, I thought it would be better if we just skipped all that and moved straight to the... to the inevitable." Fluttershy broke down, bawling. She buried her head into Nuke's huge chest and the massive stallion stroked her mane with one hoof to try and calm her down.
Zephyr was dumbstruck by his sisters words. She really was the pony behind all of this? She'd planned to.. what? Have him put down like a dog!? Like some mangy animal? He knew that his sister had a somewhat low opinion of how he acted and how he chose to live, but he never thought that she would consider killing him over it! This had to be a mistake! The Knacker clan had to be tricking her! They had to be!
"There, there darlin'," said Pa Knacker, his words still dripping with feigned concern. "This won't be the first time you've brought in someone for us to put down. Ah know it's different, bein' your brother and all, instead of one of her yer pets... But Ah'm sure he'll be in a much better place when it's all over. Ma, Pa, either of you care to say a few words?"
Zephyr could barely hold his head up as he watched his father tentatively step up to the microphone. "I confess, I didn't know there was a facility like this outside of Cloudsdale," Mr. Shy began. "It's actually a lot more state of the art than the one we took your grandfather to when it was time for him to be... Put out to pasture. I want you to know son, that we've always loved you, despite what a huge disappointment you've been to your mother and I. We wouldn't have chosen this for you, but when your sister explained how you had wound up living in the forest like some kind of savage, well... We really hoped that your Mane Therapy degree would make it so we never had to worry about it coming to that again. When you couldn't find a job after graduation, we wanted to give you as much time as possible, to give you every opportunity to do something with yourself. But as time wore on, you slid back into your old habits. You stopped trying and started expecting everypony else to help you, to do your work, to take care of you," His fathers lower lip began to tremble. "We will miss our little colt, but the way things have been going lately, this may be for the best."
He couldn't believe what he was hearing. Zephyr had never known that his father felt this way. His parents had been disappointed with him? They thought this would be better for him? None of that made any sense!
His mother was the next to speak. He couldn't help but notice that, unlike his sister, his mothers eyes were perfectly dry behind her thick glasses. "Zephyr, honey, there's no point in lying to you now. I always expected you to end up in a position like this. I didn't know if it would be prison or some kind of wacky new age cult, but since you were little you were always willful. You never listened to me or your father. Maybe we were too lenient with you, and maybe we could have been firmer with you. But it didn't seem to matter what we did, you always did your own thing, and always seemed to think that you knew better than us. That you knew exactly how the world worked and the rest of us were just chumps for not seeing things the way you did!" Mrs. Shy paused, her voice thick with emotion. "I'm glad. I'm glad that you will finally make a real contribution to society. That your life will be worth something! That it will have meaning! I thought for so long now that I should have had that abortion and donated your body to science, but your father talked me out of it. He always wanted a son, even though we both regretted that decision from almost the moment you were born." Now, at the very end, his mother did shed a tear. "Goodbye Zephyr. That's all I wanted to say."
It seemed like that was it for his eulogy. It had been much shorter, and far more dismal than Zephyr had expected. They'd barely mentioned his Mane Therapy degree at all. Zephyr hung his head as low as the yoke that held him would allow. He wasn't struggling anymore. Hearing his mother say how she wished he'd been aborted kind of took the fight out of him. The conveyor belt kicked back into motion, and he decided he'd just close his eyes and wait for it all to be over. In a few moments his brains would be sprayed across the room. That would be the closest he'd get to any kind of a rebuttal to his families words. But as the pneumatic hammer swung down on its armature, there was a thin hiss instead of the powerful expulsion of air he'd been expecting. Zephyr raised his head and looked around, confused.
Apparently the microphone had been left on because he heard Pa Knacker swear, "Uh, ahem, sorry about that folks just some ah... technical difficulties." He heard Pa Knacker whispering furiously to Bubba, and he saw the big leather masked oaf hit himself repeatedly in the forehead before his Pa grabbed his hoof and made him stop.
Something had gone wrong.
The conveyor belt chugged on, and Zephyr realized that he was still conscious. Had Pa Knacker lied again, or had something really gone unexpectedly awry? Zephyr didn't have much time to contemplate this as he felt his hooves leave the conveyor belt. As he dangled from the yoke that held him, several metallic arms clamped onto his hooves, and the high pitched whine of the grinding mechanisms in each metal clamp whirred to life. He could feel the vibrations as they juddered up his legs, and smell the scent of his hooves being pulverized. At first it just felt like a deep hooficure, but as the metal ground his hooves down to nubs he could feel the blades biting into more and more sensitive tissue. He smelled the blood before he felt the pain, but he at last found his voice as he let out an ear piercing scream! The sharp metal teeth had shattered his hooves and were grinding the soft tissue and bone beneath the hard exterior. It felt like each of his limbs had been shoved into a blender, and somepony had hit 'frappe'. He screamed out, over and over again, jerking back and forth, desperately trying to pull the tattered remnants of his legs free.
"I thought you said he wouldn't feel anything!?" screamed Fluttershy, accusingly. "I thought you said the process was painless!?"
"Well, it would be, normally," Pa Knacker said with a nervous laugh. "Only my boy here forgot to change out the CO2 cartridge on the pneumatic hammer. Ah'm afraid even the drugs ya gave him can't keep him from feelin' what's happening to him now."
"Well then stop it!" commanded Mr. Shy firmly. "Stop this whole thing right now! We should have never agreed to this, even if the bits would wipe out Zephyr's student loans!"
"I would sir, honest I would, but the process is automated. Once it starts it would be cruel to stop it," Pa Knacker tapped on the glass. "Your boy isn't ever going to be able to walk again. Do you really want him to live like that, even for a few moments?"
"We don't care about that right now!" cried Fluttershy. "Just stop the machines!"
"Fine!" exploded the Knackerman with honest rage, before mollifying his tone. "Fine, Ah'll do what Ah can."
Zephyr could barely hear any of this over the whirring machines and his own agonized screams. His pain brought the cries unbidden from his own throat, until at last the armatures retracted, and the yoke around his neck opened. He fell into a crumpled heap, much as Snails had done earlier. But it wasn't over for him. The conveyor belt continued to move him forward. He could see the sharp blades of the skinning armatures falling into place. He whimpered quietly, knowing that his brief reprieve would be very short lived. He closed his eyes tight, not wanting to see what was about to happen.
But then a miracle occurred!
The conveyor belt stopped! More than that, the entire facility seemed to lose power all at once. As the machines whined down, the killing floor was plunged into a lightless void.
Zephyr tried feebly to move... To shift himself off of the belt. He tried to use his one good wing, but found that it was trapped beneath him while the wing that Nuke had injured earlier was only capable of a few painful, spasmodic flaps. He struggled even so, inching his way to the edge of the platform, doing his best to suppress his cries of pain as he tried vainly to push himself forward on the shattered remains of his hooves.
To the pegasi's horror, the lights flickered back on. Pa Knacker loomed over him, his single red eye glowing brightly with malevolence. "We got good news and bad news boy. The bad news is I had to shut off the main power because mah boys screwed up. We'd have to reset the entire line, and that could take all night to sort out." He paused long enough to lean in, the next words a warm whisper in Zephyr's ear. "Now the good news. We ain't gonna bother with none of that! We're goin' to do things the traditional way, the old Knacker family way. Yes sir, you are in for a treat!" Before Zephyr could react, he felt the conveyor belt dip down. He looked up, and saw Candy posed like a dancer with a claw hammer clenched tight in her teeth. "Ah hope ya don't mind, but it's traditional to let the youngest have the first swing at knockin' ya out. Candy's a might small, so it might take her a few tries. Just be patient and it'll be 'POW!' lights out before you know it!"
Candy skipped and pranced on her hoof tips, leaping back and forth on the conveyor belt. Her eyes never left Zephyr, and he found himself mesmerized by the gleaming metal of the claw hammer as Candy drew closer, dipping and twirling all the while. The manic grin that wrapped around the hammers wooden handle was so intense, he half thought she might bite right through it.
There was no such luck as she drew closer.
And closer.
Until she crouched down low and jumped high into the air...
And Pa Knacker smashed in the back of his head with one mighty swing of a sledge hammer from behind. As Zephyr lost consciousness again, he thought he heard the old Knackerman laugh in a jolly voice, "It's important that he don't see it coming! Otherwise it would be cruel!"
Zephyr dreamed.
He was a colt again.
It was bitterly cold outside.
The weather ponies had whipped up an awful blizzard for some reason. He could see fat snow flakes whirling by the window outside, an almost solid sheet of white as the wind howled. He was huddled beneath a blanket. For some reason, he knew that he couldn't get off of the couch he was on. If he set one hoof on the floor, he'd freeze in an instant, so he just huddled into a tight ball and hoped that his parents or big sister would be home soon to light a fire in the hearth and chase the chill out of the house.
He hoped that would happen soon, because for some reason, his blanket was unraveling.
He could feel the icy bite of the cold room sinking deep into his skin.
The cold was so intense that the pain of it made him cry out.
As Zephyr Breeze came back to his senses, it took a moment for the pegasus to realize what was really happening to him.
The hulking pony known as Bubba was leaning over him. He was moving the pegasi's body back and forth. For all the larger stallions strength, he was surprisingly gentle with Zephyr. The injured pegasus felt like he was being rocked to sleep. It was only when the semi-conscious pony got a good look at the apparatus that was affixed to the end of Bubba's hoof that he realized what was really being done to him.
The array of knives and hooks jutting from the glove must have been sharp indeed. They slid into Zephyr's skin delicately, and the rocking motion was to help guide the blades down the length of one of his legs with all the gentleness of a lovers caress. Bubba really was an artist, and he had an air of deep concentration as he worked on his latest canvas. Zephyr tried to struggle, tried to scream, but it was no use. His muscles were still stiff from whatever drugs his sister had slipped him, and even if that were not the case his limbs were too badly mutilated to be of much use. Besides, the deranged earth pony pinned him firmly down as his blades did their work. A hook slid under the skin just at the nape of Zephyr's neck, and slowly began to tear away the skin from his back. Bubba's blades danced back and forth, back and forth, separating the outer layer of flesh from the muscle beneath. It felt hot and cold at the same time, but the pain that lanced through Zephyr as his nerve endings were laid bare made his eyes roll into the back of his head.
It was over more quickly than Zephyr had expected. Bubba must have been busy as he had lain unconscious, as his hide was ripped from him all in one bloody piece with an organic tearing sound and a wet slap as it was laid out on the conveyor belt. Except, that is, for the skin on his head. For the first time, he really felt the cold bite of the knife as it slipped in just beneath his left ear, tracing a circle before it slipped down and through the flesh of his cheek. He could feel the tip of the blade as it scraped across his teeth and down across the bone of his chin. Then Bubba started on the other ear, taking his time, doing his best to cut slowly and evenly. It was less the pain, as the knives were extremely sharp, and more the horror of what was happening to him that made Zephyr nearly pass out again. He could feel the hooks slip under his scalp, and the blades begin their long sawing motion as Bubba began to peel the flesh from his skull from the back to the front, like a cheap latex Nightmare night mask.
Zephyr realized he wasn't just being skinned alive, but scalped as well. As his mane was lifted free from his head in a single piece of, Zephyr felt a terrible pang of sadness. He'd never need to worry about his own proper mane care ever again. There was a truly frightful moment as he felt the blades work down across his handsome brow, and cut deep beneath his eye lids. Zephyr thought for sure the sharp hooks or the busy knives would sink into his eyeballs, but Bubba was nothing if not a professional. With a kind of grunting laughter, the last shred of connective tissue was sliced away, and Zephyr's face was lifted free. Zephyr looked up at Bubba, holding his grizzly trophy aloft. It had been such a handsome face. Zephyr missed it already.
Removing his bladed work glove, Bubba held the face outstretched against the overhead lights. Fresh blood still dripped from Zephyr's face, but the semi-translucent skin almost seemed to glow against the harsh glare from above. Bubba peeled his old mask off of his face. Zephyr had the briefest glimpse of the idiot smile and the deformed features beneath. It was like looking at the face of a foal that had somehow outgrown nearly every other pony the pegasus had ever met, but still maintained the simple mind that found wonder in everything it saw. As Bubba draped the bloody remains of Zephyr's face across his own bald head, pushing the bloody skin up around his own wide smile and beady eyes, the pegasus couldn't help but grudgingly acknowledge the improvement.
As sick and terrifying as it was, Zephyr's face could even make a brute like Bubba look handsome.
It was then that Zephyr realized, if he was having such absurd thoughts in the face of such grizzly horror, he must be dying from blood loss. Already the pain that had burned all over his body was fading into a warm numbness. He couldn't even feel the chill of the factory air anymore. He certainly didn't feel it when Nuke drug his body to the next station along the conveyor belt like he was a rag doll.
Nuke was certainly not as gentle as his brother, as the large pony seemed to enjoy inflicting as much damage as possible. He set about ripping the bones out of Zephyr's legs with nothing but his bare hooves and a long boning knife. Zephyr could feel that at least, as the bones popped and cracked, slipping out of their warm sheath of muscle. It was such a bizarre feeling having his bones shucked from his limbs. They felt like wet, nerveless noodles, flailing about as Nuke did his gruesome work. After that was done, he wrenched off both of Zephyr's wings in a single motion, finishing the job he had started earlier. That would've made the pegasus howl if he still had the energy to do so. The only comfort Zephyr had was that, surely, it would all be over soon. No one could live through something like this for long.
"Still with us boy?" came the unwelcome voice of Pa Knacker in the bloody stub of what used to be Zephyr's ear. "Ya shoulda said somethin'! Ah woulda' given ya another wack with the old sledge hammer, if I knew ya was awake for this. Well, since yer lucid, how bout it? Any last words?"
"Sss...sister," Zephyr managed to hiss through his lipless teeth. "Fffatherrr...Mmotherrr..." he moaned.
"Sorry son. Ah'm afraid yer family have themselves some mighty weak stomachs. Oh, they'd take the money for yer worthless carcass, but they wouldn't stick around to see how things would end. They high tailed it out of here some time ago. Ah reckon we'll be hearing some complaints from them in the fullness of time, but for right now it's just you and the lovin' embrace of the Knacker family," confided Pa tenderly. "So don't be afraid to say what ya really feel. There ain't no one here who's feelin's ya might hurt. Believe me we've heard it all, from the darkest curses to the sweetest pleas. Heck, if it's a good one, we even write it down! Got a whole book full of last wrods, so you just go ahead and let her rip!"
"Ffffuck...yyou..."
"Not exactly original there son, but Ah've heard worse last words. At least it's short and to the point. Says everythin' that really needs to be said in a situation like this. But now, Ah think, Ah got somethin' Ah want to say to you..." Pa Knacker did something next that Zephyr didn't expect. He reached behind his head, and unbuckled his mask. As he pulled it away, Zephyr would have cringed backwards if he could. What leered down at him was a skull as skinless as his own must be. The raw red muscle was a mass of puffy scars and ragged flesh. One eye socket was hollow, as he had suspected, but the other held a miserable blood shot excuse for an eye that glared down lidlessly. Teeth that had been filed down to sharp points lined a permanent grin that dripped from blood from cracked lips. A long prehensile tongue snaked slowly out, lapping up the crimson flow and wetting the dried out muscle tissue. "That's right boy," the Knackerman hissed. "You take a good long look. Ah ain't never done anything to another pony that Ah ain't been willin' to do ta mahself. All that pain, all that sufferin' yer feelin'? That's fleetin' boy. That don't matter none. It's all in yer mind."
Zephyr wanted to argue, but the light was fading from his eyes. He could barely hear Pa Knacker's voice as a thin hiss as he droned on.
"A hard days work for a fair days wage. That was all you had to do. Even then, if ya failed, so what? At least ya would have tried. At least ya wouldn't have been a disappointment to yer family. At least you could have had somethin' you could point to ta back up all that false bravado and sense of entitlement! But ya couldn't even do that! Pay attention boy, we ain't through yet!" Zephyr barely felt the shock of Pa Knacker's hoof as it bounced off of his exposed teeth, but it was enough to bring him back from the edge of death. "Ah want ya ta know, before we grind yer worthless carcass into dog food, that there was never any malfunction. Those drugs we gave yer sister to slip you? They were never meant to take your senses away. And that pneumatic hammer was never gonna give ya the quick and easy way out we give to most every pony else! No boy, when we heard the grief you was putting one of our best customers through... Not just her, but her Ma and Pa? Well, my kids and Ah, we just couldn't wait to get our hooves on you! We wanted you to be conscious for every minute of it. That's why yer sorry tail woke up after I beaned ya with mah hammer. If Ah wanted ya snuffed out like a light, ya would be. But that ain't what we want, right kids?"
"No Pa," Bubba, Nuke, and Candy chorused dutifully. Zephyr realized that they were all gathered around his splayed form now. Bubba had put his work gloves back on, only this time the knives were far longer, serrated, and clearly designed for chopping and boning rather than slicing. Nuke, for his part, wasn't taking any half measures and was supporting a chainsaw on the end of one beefy hoof. Even Candy held a massive cleaver, almost as big as herself, clenched tight in her sharp little teeth. Pa Knacker shouldered his sledge hammer across his broad back, and Zephyr noticed that one side had been filed down into the sharp wedge of a cruel ax.
"No boy, we want you to experience everything we have to offer from beginning to end. That's why we gave our 'guest' the grand tour of the Knackeryard. That's why we showed you what would happen to ya after yer dead and gone. It wouldn't have meant anything to ya if we just wheeled you into a dark room and blew yer brains out in one go. Oh no son, you see," and here Pa Knacker grinned truly diabolically. "Sometimes ya gotta be cruel, to be kind. To see real justice done in this world. So, with that said... we finally come to the end. Time to punch out boys! Lets finish up."
Pa Knacker dropped his mask back into place over his hideous visage, and then he and his children closed in on Zephyr from all sides. The pegasus didn't even care anymore. He didn't know exactly when, but he had resigned himself to death. As the roar of the chainsaw and the chop of the blades sliced into him, the pain didn't even matter anymore. Pa Knacker was right... It was fleeting. It was all in his head. No one wanted him or needed him. No one relied on him. He'd made sure of that by how he had lived. But he had finally gotten what he wanted. Someone else was doing all the work for him. Someone else was making the decision he hadn't had the guts to make for himself.
Life was hard. That was the one thing that Zephyr Breeze new with an unshakable certainty.
Life was hard.
And then you died.