The Twilight Zone

by Bad Horse

20. The Mechanical Donkey (Cranky Doodle)

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“Well?” Bounder said, grinning gleefully. “Is it creepy, or what?”

It was so dark in the barn I had to stand right next to the thing to make it out. The slits in the rafters cut the moonlight in stripes and laid them across it. I ran my hooves over it in the dark places between the stripes. It looked like a sawhorse wrapped in felt, but I could feel hinges underneath, and thick rubber hoses.

“I don’t get it,” I said, and sneezed in the dusty air. “What is it?”

He smacked my shoulder, hard. “What does it look like, idiot?” He pointed at two long, stiff strips of buckram sticking up from a ball on one end. They looked like ears.

I squinted. They were ears. Donkey ears. Suddenly I saw the whole thing was like one of those dummy ponies in the clothing stores, but all flat lines and sharp angles.

The front legs were long wooden slats that stuck up way past the shoulders. There was a flat yoke across its back, connected to each leg by a hinge. I thought maybe the parts sticking out above the shoulder were wings, but they were too skinny, and anyway I was pretty sure it was supposed to be a donkey. A rubber hose ran up the inside of one leg to the top of the shoulder, then across to the other shoulder, hanging between them like a fat black clothesline, and down the other leg to the floor.

“Why’d you think he never opens the windows?” Bounder said. “He’d die if anypony saw this. Which is why we’re gonna splash a photo of him with it across the front page of the school paper.”

“I don’t think it’s the kinda thing for a school newspaper,” I said.

Bounder narrowed his eyes at me and I flinched.

“Come on,” he said. “He’ll hafta leave town! Or do you like being yelled at every time you speak louder’n a whisper? Every time a ball bounces on his side of the street?”

Well, I sure didn’t. I didn’t know how bad being caught with a thing like that was, or why, but I guessed it couldn’t be worse than that grumpy old donkey deserved. Nopony would miss him.

“He’s a pain in the ass," Bounder said.

“Shut up. You said that like three times already.”

“In the ass,” he said again.

“Wait. How’re you gonna get him in the picture?”

“He comes out here every night before bed.”

Outside, I heard a door slam. Bounder dashed across the floor and disappeared. I stood staring at where he’d vanished.

“Under here, idiot!” he hissed.

I blinked, and saw Bounder crouched in an even darker spot under a wall cabinet. I stuffed myself under it a moment before I heard the barn door slide open and saw the old donkey’s shadow stretched across the floor. Even as a shadow, his wig looked ridiculous.

He shut the door, and everything was dark. I heard him clomp towards us. Beside me, I sensed Bounder lifting the camera.

There was a snap, and a mechanical humming started. Something moved in the strips of moonlight. After a minute, the old donkey started moaning, like maybe he was in pain.

Bounder did his ugly gargle-snigger, real quiet. It gave me a sick feeling. I wanted to call out and warn the old donkey, but I was afraid, of him and Bounder both.

Then the flash blinded me, and I heard Bounder scrambling out and running, and realized I was running too. I groped for the latch in the dark, and then somehow the door was open and we were outside. I ran straight home, stumbling in the dark and startling at shadows.

The next day I passed by the old donkey’s place on my way to school. It was silent. The barn doors were open. I didn’t see anything inside.

I was jumpy all through school, expecting the teacher’s hooves to grab me every time he walked past. Afterwards I met Bounder in the school’s darkroom.

“This’ll be good,” he said, swishing the film under the developing fluid in the red light.

There were two shapes in the picture, facing each other. Soon I could tell which was the real donkey and which was the fake. The fake donkey’s forelegs were lifted up and lying across the real one’s shoulders. The hose between its shoulders that had sagged before was full of air, pushing out on the slats and pushing the forelegs together. They squeezed the old donkey like it was giving him a hug.

Bounder looked at it and said some bad words. I still didn’t get what was so bad about it. Anyway, with the real donkey already gone, we never did run that picture.

Author's Note:

This was in a write-off and took, like, 70th place. I still think it's good, but you won't get it if you sit back and wait for it.

Comments

[Lord Of Dorkness]

...Didn't really get this one, to be honest.

Was Cranky a robot? Did a robot kill Cranky? Was the 'real' Cranky some sort of animated balloon animal made nightly by the poor robot?

Neat idea either way, but this was just kept too vague. Becoming annoying to understand rather then creepy.

[Dracon_Pyrothayan]

I got kind of a blow-up doll feeling...

[howard035]

7212950 I think the idea is Cranky was so sad and lonely he built a mechanical donkey just to hug him, and he fled town so no one would realize his shame.

[Lord Of Dorkness]

7212981

Definitely rather dark if that's what happened.

[Level Dasher]

7212981 Yeah, that's kinda what I was thinking. Since these characters are likely OC's, I'm guessing this is some time in the future, and Matilda has likely died prematurely from something, so he built a hugging robot for comfort.
Definitely a sad undertone there.

[FanOfMostEverything]

I remember this one. (And the one before it, which was awesome.) A touching tale told largely through subtext. I'm glad to see it on Fimfiction.

[Bad Horse]

7212950 7212975 You're not the first people to have trouble with it. There are at least 3 reasons it's confusing:

- you're never told the old donkey is Cranky
- Bounder thinks the mechanical donkey is a sex bot, but he finds out in the end that he's wrong
- the narrator never understood that was what Bounder was thinking, so he doesn't understand what's going on for most of the story

Some clues to figure it out:

- assume the donkey is Cranky
- the donkey seems to be living alone
- Bounder wanted to get a photo of the donkey with the machine, and thought it would make the donkey leave town
- the description of what the donkey did in the dark is important
- so is Bounder's reaction
- the description of the photo is important
- Bounder was disappointed when he saw the photograph
- the donkey left anyway

I could have written it from Bounder's point of view, and he'd have made it clear what he thought the thing was, and then at the end he'd have made it clear that it wasn't that, and why he was disappointed. I think then the reader would've been too busy being indignant at Bounder to feel sympathy for the donkey. The narrator distances the reader from that ill will.

Complete spoiler: What 7212981 said.

[Rubiks_Err0R]

7213031 No, I think the implication behind the AU tag for this is that Cranky and Matilda never reunited at all, either because "A Friend In Deed" never happened, or Pinkie never got the idea to bring Matilda over to Cranky's,

The second interpretation, I feel, is more plausible: not only has Cranky never found his love, but he was driven up the wall by a crazy pink horse insisting on being his friend; after that point, you'd be a little desperate to find some form of companionship you would tolerate, even if it's just a hug machine.

[Level Dasher]

7214013 Fair enough. I can see that as a totally legitimate interpretation, too.

[Titanium Dragon]

I reviewed The Gentle People, The Element of Audacity, and The Mechanical Donkey as part of Read It Later Reviews #51.

You can find my review here.

[mishun]

The hose between its shoulders that had sagged before was full of air, pushing out on the slats and pushing the forelegs together. They squeezed the old donkey like it was giving him a hug.

Can't say I understand how it works