I Can Pull On A Rope
"Through here."
The griffon leading me through this place lifts up a plastic flap and lets me through, following behind me. He's pretty short with me, treating my presence like more of an inconvenience. I guess it sort of is, really. Truth be told, I don't know why I came here. It was nothing but a hassle to all involved, and my being here serves no purpose. I guess I just wanted to know what they do to my shipments after they arrive.
I'm not stupid, I know the reason the griffons want them. I just wanted to know how it gets from raw product to finished product, I suppose.
The room he's ushered me into is huge. We're walking on a catwalk a good story or two above the floor of the place. Looking down, I can see a few more griffon workers, clad in hard hats and goggles, some sporting dully coloured overalls. A few give me an odd look, but nothing more than that. They were probably otherwise unaware of my presence.
The catwalk rattles as we made our way across it, my hooves and his talons creating an industrial sounding clank-scratch. The path goes straight through the wall and into the next room. I can hear the sounds of machines, and talking. Crying.
"Well, this is it." My guide says with an air of disinterest.
This is what I had come to see, where my shipments end up. It has a proper name, but I heard a few workers describe it as the 'killing floor' earlier. From above was the best vantage point, I was told. See it, hear it, smell it. It was almost overwhelming.
Down below, I can see them all. Cows. Equestrian Cows. That I'd brought here.
The diet of a griffon requires meat, and though they can live on fish alone, most would prefer not to. It would be sort of like a pony only ever eating hay and nothing else.
This is where I come in. The Griffon Empire has been hunted almost completely clean, leaving the sea as their only source of food. Being the cunning businessmare that I am, I got into contact with a, we'll say, less than reputable slaughterhouse, offering a steady supply of beef. They pratically leapt upon my offer, and about a month later we where organising the first shipment. This was the end of the easy part.
Trafficking them out of Equestria was no easy feat. Not only was it a perilous journey, with a massive risk of being caught either end, but it was hard, very hard, to find ponies who could deal with sending a sentient creature not only to die, but to be used as food. Ponies being naturally peace loving vegetarians meant that this particular personality type was very rare. I needed ponies who could deal with this, but that weren't flat out crazy or sadistic. I still needed the cows to arrive undetected and unharmed.
At the end of the catwalk was a staircase leading straight to ground level. The thing wobbled a little bit, but we reached the floor without incident.
The room was divided in two. On one side was a pen, for lack of a better word, where all the cow's were grouped together. The other half of the room was a path, leading to the machines.
There were two or three griffons in the pen fitting nose rings to all the cows. I trotted up to the separating grate to get a closer look at what was happening. At the back of the pen there was a third griffon attaching cables to the nose rings, pulling the cows along into the next part of the facility. From my perspective right now, the cows almost looked like a singular, brown, writhing mass, almost having an ebb and flow. It was somewhat mesmerising.
"You!"
I was snapped out of my stupor by a member of the livestock, face pressed right up against the grate.
"YOU! YOU'RE THE ONE THAT BROUGHT US HERE!"
I'd been recognised. And I couldn't fault what was said, either.
"Yes." I replied, levelly.
"Why? Let us out! LET US OUT!"
"Let you out, and then what?" I retorted. "Let you out and ruin my reputation, my family name? My life? Lose all the bits I've scraped together and saved? That I've worked for? Spend the rest of my life rotting away in some Celestia forsaken dungeon? No thank you."
She was silent for a moment, looking at the floor.
"You'd deserve it." She weakly muttered.
"I'm sorry, say that again?"
"I SAID YOU DESERVE IT! YOU DESERVE EVERYTHING THAT WOULD COME TO YOU! SOILING YOUR FAMILY NAME, LOSING EVERYTHING! YOU DESERVE EVERY BIT OF IT! YOU'RE SENDING INNOCENT COWS TO DIE!"
I stare coolly at her, straight in the eyes. We keep this up for several seconds before I break it and turn to my griffon guide.
"May I?" I ask him. He just shrugs in response.
Seeing this as an affirmative, I spread my wings and clear the separating barrier. I fly over to a free cable and trail it back to the argumentative bovine. She understood the implications.
"No! NO! STAY AWAY FROM ME! NONONO!"
She had nowhere to run, none of them did, the pen was packed.
I stop in front of her face, hovering. There were tears in her eyes. I made a move to attach the cable to her nose ring. She spat at me. Spat, right in my eye. I wipe it off with a free hoof and give her a flat stare before making my move again, this time successfully, the clip closed around the ring with a satisfying 'click'.
I grab the rope in my mouth and gain some height. I could hear a sharp squeal of pain from the cow below as the cable tugged on her nose ring. She was unwilling to move, so I had to make her. Pulling harder, I heard a yelp, and then the cable went a little slack. She was moving now. I was making it hard for her, she had to make her way through dozens of other cows in extremely close proximity. I made it more uncomfortable than it could have been.
We reached the back of the pen, where the machines were. From the look of the cow's face, I could tell she'd given up. There was no fight left in her eyes, and there was blood streaming from her nostrils from where the ring had pulled. She knew what would happen.
I tie the loose end of the cable up to one of the machines, one that feeds the livestock through at an even pace. It pulled, and the cow went along with it, at a slow trot. I walked alongside her.
"Well, I guess you know that I'm no company mare. I don't work here, nor do I belong here. But let me tell you, I can pull on a rope and kill a cow just as well as any of these other fuckers can, see. I walk through the beef, I pull on the rope, and then-" I gesture in front of us, to where she was being led "-then the hammer comes down."
With that, I stop. She however, keeps on going, being pulled. She can't even look back. I don't know if she would, even if she could anyway. As she rounds the corner into the next section, I take off again, landing by my guide. The cows look at me with a mixture of fear and disgust.
"Thank you sir, I believe I've seen enough." I say to the griffon without looking, not taking my eyes of the cows.
'I already know enough.'
I didn't care about it anymore.
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- Nic-Fit · 6.7k words · 19 4 · 640 views
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Reminds me of the slaughterhouse scene in "Faces of Death."
A bit clumsy, but otherwise nice and dark, just the way I like it...
Interesting.
One Shot Reviews has read and graded.
This addition to the Nic Fit collection is a dark and almost sad one. The use of second person writting is not perfect... but its close. Plot is well thought out and explained clearly. Scenery and story progression is highly descriptive and in some parts... too descriptive. (In a good way). A worthy read and great pass of time. The way the author sets the mood is almost spooky. Great characters, great read!
Overall Grade: 88%
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Think we graded wrong or are too biased? Tell us why at the One Shot Reviews home group page. Thanks.
Makes me never want to eat a hamburger again...
ok now as a friend. I GOTS DA CHILLS!!!!!!
(Smooth Criminal plays)
Who doesn't like a good steak and a few bucks in the pocket? And generally cows don't know whats going to happen to them. Pigs know the little bastiches, and just seem to know when its there turn for the axe and will fight for there lives.
5008133
Thanks, man!
Maybe I'll do more like this...
5008284
Oooh, thanks kindly!
5008392
2cold2killa
5008223
Good interesting or bad interesting?
5008362
But they're so tasty...
5009017
I'll re-write the whole thing so that every character is dancing all the way through.
5009403
Ah, but the way I saw it, the cows being sentient would greatly improve their understanding of the situation. Unless I'm missing your point entirely...
5009562
Coming up for a reason for killing the cows was the tricky part I guess. I had two similar ideas in my head for a while, and it seemed to work with the song if I combined the two.
So then this happened.
5010164
Thanks dude! And for the fave!
Probably, but I think I modified them enough.
Plus I used them as dialogue rather than as actual lyrics.
It should be fine...
5010172
We'll see. This was a fair amount of fun to do, so I may do others..
I'd personally quite like to have a go at Deep Six.
To be honest, I'm surprised people liked this one, I was fully expecting all down votes.
It's a nice kind of surprise...
5010214
Bad times, man...
Nah, just musing on that there are animals that know there fate.
5010702
Ah, fair enough
5010029 I like where this is going.
(:gusta:)
5013413
Sorry, dude...
5014514 img0.joyreactor.cc/pics/comment/%D0%9A%D0%BE%D0%BC%D0%B8%D0%BA%D1%81%D1%8B-%D0%BA%D0%BE%D1%80%D0%B5%D0%B9%D1%81%D0%BA%D0%B8%D0%B5-%D0%BA%D0%BE%D0%BC%D0%B8%D0%BA%D1%81%D1%8B-%D1%85%D0%BE%D0%B1%D0%B1%D0%B8-%D0%BC%D0%BE%D1%80%D0%B5-847555.png
Well, if they weren't meant to be eaten, the giant, almighty bearded man in the sky wouldn't have made them so delicious, would he?
And of course nopony ever wonders where the cows disappear to... and with all that magic no one ever spies on the griffons, who'd naturally be the prime suspects. No one ever wonders where they're getting beef from, since apparently nopony ever visits the griffon lands.
And with Luna back, she never bothers to wade through dreams.
Basically, it's a dark story for the sake of being dark and avoiding all the natural pitfalls this sort of thing would rapidly mound up.
This is the sort of thing that could even lead to war if the griffon leaders know of it. Celestia and Luna's and now Twilight's wrath would be swift. The griffons would stand no chance against 3 alicorns.
At any rate, no dungeon for this mare. Not even the death penalty. She would be given to Grimdark Discord as a plaything... to wish she would be allowed to die every waking and sleeping moment the monster twists her being into every mutilated form he can think of... oh, and rapes her lots, because grimdark.
5688685
Spot on, I have no excuse, nor will I make one.
5689628 I can see it leading to MASSIVE anti-griffon propaganda... and then Pony Nazis rounding up all those damned beakies and giving them a taste of their own medicine!
But more seriously, ponies would notice the disappearance of so many cows really damn quickly. Not to mention, I suspect the fleshis only being sold to the griffin elite. Thinking about it logistically, there's no possible way they could kidnap enough for even a fraction of the population.
Therefore, not only would the ponies and their leaders be utterly disgusted and filled with indignation, but the overwhelming majority of the griffin population might be opposed as well. This could then lead to open revolution. Even if many of the griffons secretly wished they could eat cows (and probably ponies too... god-damned beakies!) any opportunistic griffons lower on the totem pole would see this as a perfect opportunity to eliminate the hierarchy and place themselves in the ruling positions by siding with the super-powerful alicorns who move Sun and Moon and defeated the spirit of chaos and Tirek and changelings... yeah, the cow-killers are screwed.
So these fools, all for the sake of their gluttonous, sadistic lusts, are setting themselves up in a war on two fronts they haven't got a chance in hell of winning.
Oh, and the pony conspirator would certainly be executed. This is Equestria, where good and evil are MORE black and white than Earth. I don't think we can fully comprehend how horrific something like this would be to them. It'd be somewhere between serial killer and serial cannibal in terms of sheer evil, as far as the populace is concerned. Hmm, and let's not forget the minotaurs. They're part cow. I am rather certain they would be... rather significantly nonplussed over this distressing affair... and probably demand the right to stomp on the skulls of the perpetrators.
In the end, these sociopathic killers will assuredly fall to their utter destruction.