Lonesome Whistle

by Vauclains Understudy

Gallow Drop

As the morning express slowly pulled out of the station, a young unicorn pony sat under the window of the Cake residence. She watched the fast express pull slowly out of the station, gathering speed as it went. If only I had the money for a one-way ticket, she thought, I could get myself out of this hellhole. The young pony went by the name of Gallow Drop, which wasn’t very fitting until one took a good look at her cutie mark. It bore the image of some creature hanging by the neck, dead, from a hangman’s noose.

The young pony lost her parents in a train wreck when the family made the move to Ponyville. Her family occupied the last car on the train. The train’s journey had already been marred by bad weather and a broken brake pipe. But worse was to follow when the last car fractured one of its wheels. The coach was already known to be a rough rider because of its age, so none of the passengers or crew took any notice. But as the train crossed the wooden trestle about three miles outside of Ponyville, disaster struck. The fractured wheel disintegrated, and the back end of the carriage began to sway violently. Eventually, it struck one of the timbers of the trestle and lifted itself off the rails, dangling dangerously over the edge.

Before any of the crew or passengers could react, the carriage slipped free of its coupling with the penultimate coach and fell 200 feet into the gorge. It landed headfirst, causing the passengers and the potbelly stove to smash together into the grounded section of the car. Not surprisingly, a fire broke out, and those who weren’t killed by the impact were burned alive. Young Gallow was one of only three passengers to survive the crash and fire. Meanwhile, the engineer raced his train into town for help.

The train was evacuated of passengers, and local authorities and fire-ponies crowded into the remaining coaches, armed with whatever firefighting equipment could fit into the train. The last coach was fully ablaze by the time the rescue party arrived. The firefighters spent over 40 minutes trying to douse the flames. The locomotive even pitched in by shooting its blowdown valve and cylinder cocks directly onto the flames. It helped substantially, but the entire operation was doubtlessly in vain.

Before the rescue party had even arrived, Gallow had managed to drag both of her parents out of the car. Sadly, they were among those killed on impact. As the fire was brought under control, the engineer of the train climbed down the slope to help search for survivors. The two other survivors, a recently married couple, were taken on stretchers to the infirmary. Both managed to recover, but had suffered serious burns. Gallow had suffered a nasty blow to the head, and was bleeding profusely from a gash in her cranium. All in all, however, she was the luckiest survivor, though even that claim could be argued against.

It was her soft weeps that alerted the engineer to her presence. He approached the young filly, and was about to ask her if everything was alright. But upon seeing her crying over her parents’ bodies, the answer was already quite clear. Gallow looked back at the engineer, and saw that he was in tears as well. He felt responsible for the accident, since he failed to keep his passengers safe, and ended up costing the poor unicorn everything.

“I… I’m so sorry,” the engineer whispered to Gallow. She ran up and threw her arms around him, weeping bitterly. The two ponies just sat there for five minutes, holding one another, tears streaming down their faces.

After the fire was extinguished and the dead recovered from the wreck, the engineer took Gallow alone with his engine to Ponyville, signaling a second locomotive to recover the remainder of the train and the rescue team. Once in town, he personally escorted her to the infirmary, where Nurse Redheart took charge in caring for the filly’s physical (and emotional) wounds. Gallow said a heartfelt “goodbye and thank you” to the engineer. She hoped that if they ever met again, it would be under more favorable circumstances.

Gallow had spent the next three weeks in the orphanage within the hospital. She couldn’t bear it, though. The burned remains of the victims being stored in the morgue downstairs, followed by the mass funeral a few days afterward (which included her parents) were all too much for poor Gallow. It was nothing but a constant reminder of what had just happened. Soon, she was trying everything she could to bring her misery to an end, and by that I mean she tried committing suicide.

Her first attempt involved cyanide pills (how she got them no pony knows), but they were old and just induced vomiting. She tried slitting her throat, but the gruesome images that would have resulted were too much for her stomach to handle, and she simply dropped the knife and vomited in disgust. Her most recent attempt was to hang herself from the balcony of the library (Twilight Sparkle and Spike were not present at that time), but the rope ended up snapping, causing her to bounce off whatever branches she landed on during her drop. And in the ultimate case of Fate giving her the finger, she gained her cutie mark by this point.

Gallow now just sat under Pinkie Pie’s window, contemplating her next suicide attempt. She literally spent three hours browsing her options, from self-immolation to drowning to jumping in front of a cart. That last option seemed quick enough to be painless, but it wasn’t plausible since any pony pulling that cart would be more than likely able to stop in time. Then it struck her. Gallow looked back at the now vacant train tracks, thought about the road-kill idea for a second, and finally put two and two together. She was bright enough to know that trains were impossible to stop on a dime. For the first time in a long while, she smiled. It was a hopeful smile. She looked up into the sky.

As the sunlight shone down on her, she whispered, “I’ll be with Mom and Dad again. We’ll be a family once more….” With that, she stood up and slowly began to walk towards the rails, her silver anklets jingling as she went.

Meanwhile, Ironside and 2398 raced back to Ponyville. Applejack had accidentally herded her cattle over the main line, so now the express was roaring down the rails to make up for lost time.

“My cylinders are gonna pay big time for this!” a voice inside Ironside’s head called out.

“Don’t worry,” Ironside shouted out loud, “We’re only a mile from town. I’ll check on your running gear once we stop. I can always back the train up if you want me to slow down gradually.”

“Thanks, man,” the voice responded, “The last we need is for me to make a sudden stop!”