The Monster of Canterlot Falls
“Mares and stallions, fillies and colts,” boomed Wheeler Dealer from atop the tiny stage. “I stand before you today to show you one of the great wonders of the world.” The years passing since Equestria shunned the earth pony had left him out of practice, but everything was about to change. “Behind these curtains waits a beast so vile…so terrible…and so horrible that even now I hesitate to bring it forth.” This was a lie! The beast was his ticket to fame and fortune, and the mere thought of passing up this golden opportunity sickened Wheeler.
He paused…“Parents, hold your children.”
Wheeler rushed offstage, pulled back the shoddy velvet curtains, and the crowd gasped. Toddlers cried and clung to their parents for comfort. Some ponies ran while others choked and wretched. Cameras began flashing, blinding the beast, and the uproar deafened it. The beast backed away from the crowd, but the heavy rusted choke-chain stopped it before it could escape. Colored splotches obscured its vision, and finally the beast cupped its palms over its eyes. Then it dropped to the floor and trembled. Unable to comprehend the meaning of the shouts around it, the beast sobbed and watched through its fingers as Wheeler stepped forth to answer questions. He made sure to pose for the cameras.
Reporters shouted, demanding to know the beast’s name. Honey, Wheeler said. A tag clipped into Honey’s earlobe that read, “Honey - Property of Wheeler’s Amusements,” was shown as proof. Wheeler had chosen this name after finding Honey clutching a teddy bear. The beast still clung to the bear as it trembled.
The questions continued, more answers were given, and slowly the flashbulbs stopped...Silence. Sweat dripped down Wheeler’s neck. He waited for Honey to do something, to captivate the audience and keep it entertained, but the beast merely cried and hugged its teddy bear. So, with the utmost subtlety, he slid a hoof towards the beast. He stomped on its toes, and it screamed.
Taking the sound as a burst of spontaneous savagery, the crowd gasped. Hooves stomped in applause. Wheeler quickly closed the velvet curtains and bowed, waved, and blew kisses. He winked at a cute mare in the front row as the stagehands threw the beast back in its cage.
And the mare winked back.
Wheeler was flooded with offers in the weeks that followed. Journalists from the most respected magazines in Equestria pleaded for interviews. He was invited to wine and dine in the lavish palaces of Canterlot, and he mesmerized his hosts with fictitious tales of past adventures. Prestigious universities offered mountains of gold and jewels to obtain the beast, but Wheeler refused. He wasn’t done with Honey. Not yet.
The beast, a little girl, was put on display in cities across the country. For each performance, she was placed on a stage, the choke-chain coiled about her neck, and then the crowd would panic. Every performance would then end with a “hurt”. Sometimes it was a stomp on her little pink toes, sometimes it was a blow from a baton when she refused to move. One night, a colt threw a rock at her forehead, aiming too low and breaking her nose. Wheeler had the colt thrown out, then sued the parents. Their money did nothing to fix Honey’s nose, but in Wheeler’s eyes, justice had been served.
Honey grew to expect these hurts. They were natural, like the blowing wind or the rising sun. Her mind adapted and grew to ignore the signals of pain, and she soon accepted the hurts without protest.
And Honey learned. Wheeler taught her to juggle, to dance, and even tried teaching her to sing and paint. Her voice was worse than a wailing cat’s, and her paintings were below the level of a filly, but still the crowd marveled. “Look at her!” audience members shouted. “She thinks she can paint. How adorable!”
Honey’s tricks were rewarded with scraps of food, and she scrambled to swallow the treats. Wheeler kept her hungry, just above malnourishment, to keep his expenses low, and spent his profits on alcohol, mares, and food. Honey and her teddy bear would watch from her cage as Wheeler drank and ate himself sick, and she would salivate as he stuffed more and more food into his mouth.
Her tricks brought food, so she repeated the tricks. However, when tricks were done at the wrong time, food was withheld. Honey would whimper as Wheeler held food between his teeth to tease her until she learned to act on command.
She was rewarded with large tomatoes, red and juicy. Heads of green, crunchy lettuce. Stalks of broccoli, thick orange carrots. Onions. White things, purple things, blue things, yellow things!
And meat!!! Raw, sticky, and moist. Meat was a delicacy for Honey. It was only given when she performed flawlessly, and Honey quickly learned this. She put her heart and soul into every performance, she let ponies pet and tug her hair, and she refused to fight when they hurt her. Everything was done in the name of meat.
The cross-country tour ended, and Wheeler was rich. He then gave the highest-paying universities the opportunity to examine Honey - as long as she remained “intact,” as Wheeler put it. Honey’s long and silky brown hair, kept clean for the audience, was cut away. Sticky patches were attached to her head, and data collected. She was injected with irradiated dye, an MRI was done, and body images were recorded. Blood was drawn, stress tests were performed.
“She’s remarkably similar to a chimp,” a doctor informed Wheeler once the tests were completed. “She’s likely a distant cousin - a genetic blunder nature couldn’t erase.” The universities then offered more money to conduct further tests. But Wheeler refused. His name had become a whisper in the years since the tour, and he refused to be forgotten a second time.
And so, three years after Honey had been revealed, Wheeler opened a zoo. “Wheeler’s Wonderland,” the billboard read. A photoshopped picture of Wheeler’s smiling face dominated the sign. The grey hairs scattered throughout his red coat were painted over, his yellow mane was highlighted gold, three years of built up neck fat were removed from the image, and his round snout was reshaped into a chiseled square. The result was an gorgeous, red and gold Adonis. Or, as Wheeler put it, “Good enough.”
Honey’s teddy bear was painted on the right, telling visitors to “See the Monster of Canterlot Falls!”
The ponies came, and Wheeler’s Wonderland expanded. Wheeler scoured the world for exotic animals that would grab the public’s attention. The Everfree Forest was plundered for cockatrices, timber wolves, manticores, and hydras; lions, cheetahs, and phoenixes were then imported from distant lands. These and more were caged and displayed for the public to see.
Gift shops could be found throughout the zoo. Here, the fillies and colts could beg their parents to buy them teddy bears, picture books, and other trinkets secretly manufactured in sweatshops. Five bits could buy a hat that read, “I saw the Monster of Canterlot Falls!”
And Wheeler once again became rich and famous.
The years passed, and Wheeler opened a theme park next to the zoo. Roller coasters, spinning tea cups, merry-go-rounds, and “I saw the Monster of Canterlot Falls!” hat-selling gift shops attracted thousands, and Wheeler grew richer and more famous.
Wheeler had a problem, though: Honey. She was a target, and on multiple occasions security would find intruders planning to steal her for private interests. His anxiety was laid to rest once he hired a bodyguard for her. The guard forced Honey into a dark cell each night, and watched her in her enclosure each day.
Wheeler spared every expense creating a pen that replicated Canterlot Falls. A square pit was dug by the cheapest construction crew money could buy, then carpeted with artificial grass. Red and brown plastic rocks were cemented to one wall. Generators and pipes pumped water to the top of this wall, where it then poured out with a gurgle. This miniature waterfall made a white mist as it emptied into a concrete channel, which flowed to the adjacent wall before draining out.
Murals of trees and shrubs were painted on the walls. Wheeler had insisted on painting them himself, not that anypony objected, and he had lectured any worker that stood near him as he worked.
“The trick is to visualize the tree before you paint it,” Wheeler had told a construction worker. An ant on the grass caught the worker’s eye as Wheeler prattled on. “I cannot tell you how many times I’ve seen ponies try to make masterpieces off the tops of their heads. It can’t be done. Wouldn’t you agree?”
Wheeler answered for the worker, who was busy trying to give the ant a piece of lettuce. “Of course you do!” he said. “You of all ponies should know what I mean; without your blueprints, you’d never get things done - not properly, anyways,” he added, waving his hoof around with an air of pomposity. “Only an idiot thinks he can make a legacy without a plan.”
The ant nibbled the lettuce, savored the taste, and crawled away, leaving the worker alone with Wheeler and his wise teachings.
Once Wheeler’s paintings (testaments to nature, as he called them) were finished, he and the construction crew planted rubber trees scented with Pine-sol. Finally, iron bars were welded along the pit’s perimeter. Wheeler was fiercely proud of the enclosure, so for the workers’ hard work, he promised them a bonus. They never received it.
One day, as a blistering heat wave roasted Equestria, Honey and her teddy took comfort in the river. She placed her bear on her naked thighs. Her toes wiggled in the cold, refreshing water, and the bear bounced and danced, making her giggle.
“It’s not doing anything,” a voice complained. Honey’s teddy stopped dancing, and she looked up. Three male unicorns were leaning against the bars of the enclosure, staring down at her. One stallion grumbled, “I want my money back,” then walked away.
His friend stopped him and gave a mischievous grin. A peanut struck Honey in the temple, and she picked it up. Was it a treat?
“See,” said the first stallion. “Boring.” His friend held him in place and winked. The friend then strutted back to the bars, and his horn glowed. Something pulled on Honey’s teddy, and she held on in a panic. She heaved and pulled on her friend and heard a tear, then looked at the leg in her bony grasp and screamed. Her teddy flew though the bars and stopped before the stallions. Her legs coiled and she sprang across the river, scrambled up the wall and clung to the bars, then reached through as the stallions laughed.
Tears ran clean streaks down Honey’s dirty face as her teddy’s head split open. Inch by inch, her friend was ripped in two, and cotton spilled to the ground in white heaps. The stallions laughed louder. She screamed and shook in a violent seizure, which the stallions found hysterical. A crowd had gathered to see what was happening. Children started to cry.
Then Honey saw the aura surrounding her friend, and the aura of the stallion’s horn, and she knew. He killed her teddy. Before the crowd knew what was happening, Honey had seized the stallion by the mane and slammed his head against the bars. The crowd burst into panic as she clawed his face. She shredded his ears with her teeth, tasted meat and blood. Then she reached into his mouth and pulled his tongue until he cried and whined. “Get it off!” he squealed. “Get it off!”
A whip wrapped around Honey’s neck and tore her from the bars, and she plummeted. She hit the ground, hard, and the whip loosened. It slid away, and in an instant she heard the crack and felt the sting of the whip across her chest. Her back arched and her jaw dropped as she gasped. The guard raised his whip a second time. Another crack, another sting.
Honey’s palm bled where the whip had landed, but her grip was tight. She tore the whip from the guard and rushed for his throat. A small black object floated from his holster. It clicked. There was a deafening boom, and Honey’s shoulder ripped open. Honey froze and looked at the wound, the hot metal buried inside, and the blood streaming out. She fell before the guard and clutched her shoulder, screaming.
A dart stabbed Honey in the thigh and she dropped, dead to the world.
Wheeler was in a panic. His lawyers were having a field day with Honey’s “stunt,” and no matter how many times her guard said, “The kids started it,” he couldn’t stop the sweat from running down his fat neck. The lawsuit was a pr nightmare, and it was all the accursed beast’s fault! None of this would be happening if not for her...but still, he owed her everything. Without Honey, he would still be nothing. He would be yet another performer the world had tired of, discarded for the next best thing. She was the next best thing…No! She would have died without him. Honey was far too dim to survive on her own in the wild. She would be eaten the moment he left her. He didn’t need her; she needed him. He was the Great Wheeler Dealer, and she was nothing but a freak of nature. She needed to learn her place, for her own good.
When Wheeler told his lawyers these things, they were sure he had gone mad.
But fate was on Wheeler's side! The case was settled in less than a month, and not only did Wheeler not have to pay, but the prosecution had to pay him! Wheeler celebrated by treating his lawyers to a banquet at his mansion. They ate to bursting and drank the night away, but Wheeler hadn’t forgotten about Honey. Once his hangover was gone, he paid ten bits, from his own wallet, for a new teddy bear. It was an exact replica of her old one, after all, so he knew she would love it; besides, she was too stupid to know the difference, or even care.
The bear appalled Honey. It wasn’t her teddy. The thing was a pathetic and insulting attempt to replace the irreplaceable; and so, before going to sleep each night, she spat on the bear.
The teddy bear became moldy with spit as the years went by. It smiled blankly as Honey grew. Restless nights frequented her as her feet cramped and stretched; her hips widened and pushed against the meager amount of flesh her diet allowed; she was perplexed by the soft lumps that expanded from her chest, and had to change her posture to keep from falling over; and a foul odor wafted from her armpits. The only way to remove the smell was to wash herself in the river. Worst of all, though, was the bleeding.
Honey’s first menstruation was terrifying. Spilt blood was always caused by a hurt, and there was so much blood! She awoke in the night and screamed at the sight of her legs, red and sticky. The guard came to see what was wrong, and when he saw the blood he tried to calm her down, to tell her it was normal. The girl only screamed louder. Unable to stand the noise any longer, he bucked the bars and shouted, “Stupid animal!”
She immediately retreated to the corner and quietly cried herself to sleep.
The bleeding occurred every thirty nights, but the more Honey bled, the quieter she became. She learned something from the bleeding: hurts were nothing to fear. Pain would come, pain would go. Blood would run, blood would stop. These things were natural, and only the weak cried over them; nevertheless, the bleeding was usually followed by discomfort. She would groan under the sun and hold her abdomen as it cramped and gurgled. It was annoying, but it was normal.
Mood swings also became normal. A calm afternoon would end abruptly, and a raging typhoon would swoop in. Hours were spent screaming and hollering at irritating foals and animals that squawked throughout the zoo. These angry mood swings pleased the crowds, though. Whenever Honey shouted at them, more would gather to watch. It was many years before she learned why…
Spring arrived the day Honey turned twenty-three. She grumbled as she stood in the river, cleaning encrusted blood from her thighs. Then she heard shouts.
Honey exited the water, climbed the plastic waterfall to look outside, and saw two colts, an earth pony and a pegasus, arguing under a tree. The pegasus shoved the other to the ground and jumped on top of him. A crowd of fillies and colts gathered. They cheered on the pegasus as he pummeled the pony screaming under him. They shouted one word, over and over. She watched their lips and moved hers in turn. “F-…f-fie…e…ta,” she struggled to say. “Fi-fie…Fight!”
The crowd cheered as the pegasus knocked out one of his opponent’s teeth. It appeared to Honey that violence was interesting, and violence brought crowds; crowds could be studied, and their words could be learned. Her heart raced, and an idea took form.
Honey looked to the corner of the enclosure, at the guard glaring at her, and the black gun floating in the air. The guard had grown weaker, slower. And he was meat.
Honey studied the guard each day - when his muscles relaxed, what noises made him tense, how he walked, what he did while standing. She pinpointed his weaknesses and committed them to memory. She also studied the crowds; she dug shapes in the dirt, she dove into the river, and she danced and sang to draw them in. She put objects to words and slowly her vocabulary grew. She was Honey, Beast, and Monster.
Once Honey’s muscles had grown strong from months performing in the hot sun, she was ready to fight. She merely threatened the guard at first. She shouted at him and flashed her teeth, but he was unmoved; however, a crowd was drawn in, and every pony spoke. She repeated their words each night until she understood them.
The guard was blind in his right eye, forcing him to swivel his head to see everything. He never saw Honey toss away his gun or whip, and before he hit the ground, his neck was snapped. Pandemonium surged through the gathering crowd as the she crouched over her kill and growled and snarled. The ponies spoke, and every word was remembered. She understood they were afraid, and she laughed. They were right to be.
Honey’s victory was cut short as a fresh dart drove into her side, and she fell into darkness.
Her body ached when she awoke in her cage, stitches lining her abdomen. Wheeler had been given an ultimatum: kill the beast or kill the urge. Wolves and manticores in heat were prone to violence, and like testosterone, estrogen promoted violent behavior. The hormones needed to go in order to subdue the wildness, and so Honey’s data was collected. Her ovaries were pinpointed, then hastily removed. “It’s for her own good,” a veterinarian told Wheeler. “She’ll be happier this way.”
But Honey was miserable. She became sluggish and boring and, consequently, the crowds thinned. Wheeler panicked when he realized his mistake. The beast was of no concern to him, only the money he lost. The amusement park thrived, as there was always an exhilaration to be had. Panic, fear, vulnerability. The Monster of Canterlot Falls had provided these thrills, but now she was useless. The zoo had become like any other zoo.
Wheeler gave Honey black market anti-depressants. He hid them in meat and prayed, but she stayed boring and dull. He tried being cruel. Wheeler starved her, shocked her with cattle prods, woke her in the night with pots and pans, but nothing worked. Nothing made her savage and terrifying, and ponies stopped caring. Not even the universities wanted the now-butchered monster.
“It’s not fair!” Wheeler shouted at Honey. Fresh from an argument with his wife, Wheeler had come to pester Honey in the middle of the night. She watched him, motionless, as she lied on the floor of her cage. “I’m a good pony,” he said. “I love my family, I donate to charity…” He struck the bars with a hoof and his body jiggled.
Honey rolled over and closed her eyes.
“I give up! You can just stay in your cage and rot!” Wheeler walked to the exit, where a security guard opened the door. “If anything happens,” Wheeler said to the guard, knowing full-well nothing would, “I’ll be in my office.”
And Honey grinned.
Wheeler slammed his office door shut and waddled to his desk. Alone in the darkness, he nursed a bottle of seventeen-year-old scotch until he slipped into a drunken coma. His rolls of fat jiggled as he snored, dreaming of money and fame. Meanwhile in her cage, Honey was wide awake.
Honey pushed herself up from her straw bed and glared at her teddy bear. Its arms were stretched out, ready for a hug, and its wide, empty eyes shined at her with pre-fabricated love. Its belly was fat and bloated, stuffed with the anti-depressants she pretended to swallow. The little pills were always given with treats, usually hidden in meat. Over time, she learned to hide the things with her tongue. Free of the nausea and grogginess of the pills, she spent her days doing nothing. It pleased her whenever the suited blob known as Wheeler would waddle up to the bars and sweat and panic. His spotless vest, which wrapped against his fat so tightly he looked more a dressed ham than a pony, would always glisten as he sweated feverishly. The blob would relax whenever Honey became hostile, so she remained sluggish.
The pills brought nausea, so what happened when a fistful was swallowed?
Wheeler burped in his coma as Honey tore open her teddy bear. She twisted off the head and tossed it aside. Then she dug into its belly and grabbed as many pills as she could manage. Fist by fist, she choked them down until the plush carcass was empty.
Her body protested. Her stomach flamed as acid burned the pellets down and ulcers formed along its walls. Her heart pounded away as it raced to circulate her chemical-saturated blood. Neurotransmitters fired across synaptic gaps, flooding her senses as she writhed and lurched and shrieked. She gagged and screamed until a pony brandishing a cattle prod rushed in to help, and then she charged.
Honey smashed the pony’s skull against the iron bars, then seized the cattle prod with one hand and bludgeoned the struggling pony with the other. She heard a crunch and the pony went still.
In the dim moonlight that came through the window, the remnants of the pony’s face glistened with blood. The pony’s mouth was wide open, with multiple teeth bashed out. Its right eye socket was caved in; its eye, formerlly a deep emerald green, had ruptured. The site made Honey smile-
“Sweet Celestia!”
Honey’s eyes shot to the exit. A unicorn was standing in the doorway fumbling with his gun holster. With a shriek, Honey attacked. The gun rose, fired, missed. There was no time for a second shot, as Honey tackled the pony and kicked the gun away. She squeezed. The unicorn kicked her, bit at her, made her bleed. Then, just as the last light drained from the unicorn’s eyes, Honey gripped the door and slammed it against the unicorn’s neck. There was a crack, and Honey was splattered in blood.
She wiped her hand across her face and chest, then licked her fingers clean. "...Meat."
Cattle prod in one hand, gun in the other, Honey sprinted through the zoo. Every corner was explored, and with every turn, a mental map was drawn. Manticores slept in pits at the far back left of the entrance; penguins frolicked on plastic rocks surrounded by frigid waters; a seven-headed hydra was chained and sedated in the zoo’s center.
And then she found him.
Shards of glass carved into Honey’s fist as she shattered Wheeler’s office window. She poked Wheeler in his gelatinous cheek, and he continued to snore and jiggle. She slapped him, barked at him, kicked him. Nothing happened. The alcohol and thick barrier of fat kept him in a fantasyland. Finally, she put the cattle prod to his inner flank and sent seven thousand volts of electricity coursing through Wheeler’s genitals. Wheeler’s desk cracked under his weight as he awoke with a yelp.
Wheeler took one look at Honey and froze. "Honey? H-how did y-”
The cattle prod cut Wheeler short, and Honey toppled him onto his back. His rolls of fat undulated as he hit the ground. Honey grabbed the tag on her ear and ripped it off, then threw it at him as blood dripped onto her shoulder. “Not Honey!” she snarled.
The words left Wheeler stuttering, and so she electrocuted his throat until he was quiet. “No,” she said sternly. Wheeler whined and cried, and again he was electrocuted. “No!” she repeated. She shocked him, commanded “Watch me,” and he obediently looked into her eyes. He saw himself, tiny and scared. “Good,” she said and patted him on the head.
Wheeler’s eyes quickly darted from the woman, and she turned to look. Photos of a young and handsome Wheeler lined the walls of his office. He stood smiling alongside large, cigar-toting stallions, all as wild-eyed and joyful as he looked. Other pictures showed him in the loving embraces of beautiful mares in elegant, flowing dresses. A few mares were blushing as they kissed him on his cheeks.
He shook hooves with sultans, kings, diplomats, and a radiant white mare brandishing a horn and magnificent wings. This mare, her multicolored mane sweeping around Wheeler, was blushing hardest of all. And across from his desk, next to the door so Wheeler could look whenever he felt depressed, was a picture of himself onstage. His black and white tuxedo bulged with muscle as he bowed, the audience showering him with roses.
Honey looked at Wheeler’s desk and grabbed a golden picture frame of Wheeler’s latest wife. The white mare stood atop a balcony decorated with plastic furniture. A neatly organized garden shined in the background as the mare, lips plump with collagen, blew a kiss to the camera.
Wheeler whimpered, so Honey threw the frame at his head. She shouted, “No!” and held the cattle prod to his chest as it scorched his fur. When the battery died, she broke the prod on Wheeler’s muzzle.
Wheeler cried as the Honey’s cold, sticky hand held him by the jaw, and he screamed as the gun thrust into his mouth. “Please don’t hurt me. I’m sorry,” he managed. “I have a family. Please!”
Honey paused and moved her lips, sounding out his last word. The word was alien to her. It sounded soft, peaceful...It sounded wrong. She spat on Wheeler and forced the gun barrel down his throat.
“I don’t wanna’ die!” Wheeler sobbed. "Please! Please, I'm sorry!" Honey looked into his eyes and saw herself. A little girl, tiny and scared. “I don’t wanna’ die. I don’t wanna’ die. I-”
The trigger clicked, and the shot rang clear.