The Edge of My Vision
Pinkie Pie is dancing at the edge of my vision. She’s been doing so since I became irrelevant.
Recently I asked a stallion to kill me. I chose the seasoned esquire who owns the sugarcube bakery down the street. I believe his name to be Mister Cake, but I prefer to call him simply ‘Carrot’, as it was my second cousin’s maiden name and has an alluring ring. He is a fine and friendly, if not waifish cavalier with a flaxen cowlick he keeps hidden under the garb of his office. Further, he has six wives, forty-five children, and penchant for waving about meat cleavers and other utensils conducive neither to his profession nor his matrimony. I find his espresso to be much too bitter and feel he would have made a better tailor or perhaps a dentist, but far be it from me to judge. All of these factors clinch him as the ideal choice.
Pinkie Pie is dancing at the edge of my vision. She moves with all the grace and sincerity of Barnum. Or perhaps Bailey. Her transfixing, supple limbs are as eidolic as her bubblegum coat. Her mane and tail are odious to the sensibilities of my retinas, but I have a soft spot for the big red nose she wears. If I could, I’d like to ask if I could borrow that nose for my internment. It would be a trifle really, and the item should be long returned before my flowers have wilted, unless I am cremated or buried at sea.
Every morning Carrot and I talk about the best way I should die over crullers and crème brûlée. Each afternoon, before I am politely asked to cease overstaying myself, we discuss methods. I shamefully admit that there are times when we disagree. He calls me picky, but I ask you, can I be blamed for harboring the just desire to eliminate myself, along with myriad other things that have no value to society? Firearms leave an awful mess. Hangings take a dreadful amount of time that would inconvenience the overworked headsman, since he would have to come all the way out on the train from Canterlot. Furthermore, I insist that the last sound I hear be more enlightening than the cracking of vertebrae. Poison is simply out of the question. The natural reaction to the expectation of being poisoned is to starve oneself to death, and I simply refuse to be responsible for my own demise.
Pinkie Pie is dancing at the edge of my vision. A phantasmal alicorn ringmaster with an unimaginative hairline and enough stars on her flank to daze a pugilist beats Pinkie mercilessly, until she dances so fast that her limbs are beyond my comprehension. The ringmaster has six hairs growing out of the tip of her bulbous muzzle; unforgivable grooming when one dons gaudy sundries like a satchel of books or the crown of a princess. She pretends they aren’t there, but I know better. I have tried to warn her both about her fashion faux-pas and how to properly manage a local government, but no matter how loudly I shout on the crowded sidewalks, I cannot capture her attention.
Carrot was not only amenable to my request, but kind enough to accommodate me without payment. Assassination is a costly affair demanding handsome compensation. I’d even brought the remittance along with me into his presence – three hundred and seventy-eight lollipops from Bon Bon’s finest stock, cast in a menagerie of handsome depictions of Trottingham landmarks from the 1851 Equestria World’s Fair. I’d been collecting them from various sources since I was six years old in anticipation of a perfect rainy-day application. I considered leaving them at the Sugarcube Corner barista counter in an attempt to stubbornly settle my debts, until the real reason for Carrot’s philanthropy occurred to me. He chose to exhibit the virtue of generosity, as any purveyor of sweets and sharp objects would. Certainly he was influenced by the fashionable mare up the street that he sees on the side.
Humbled by his grace, I attempted to emulate Carrot by passing my succulent life savings out to the foals in the back alley. Hopefully the more enterprising of their number will put a few aside to pay their own way to oblivion someday. If not, there’s a special surprise in the middle of each lolly that most of the young ones should survive, if they are of sound breeding.
Pinkie Pie is dancing at the edge of my vision. She moves as a blur through the thistledown mattes that bind the maudlin headstones in the graveyard across the street. Or perhaps I am simply referring to Maud’s stones. It is of little consequence. Furious, euphoric spittle ruminates down Pinkie’s jowls in a manner congruent with all of history’s greatest thinkers. The ringmaster beats her with heavy books; employing a genteel sensibility well-suited to corporal punishment. Cavorting at the royal hooves are the illegitimate stock of Carrot’s wives, posing in such scandalous ways that you’d think the Lady of Friendship and the pink horse she drives to be the center of their very universe. Their baying howls are exquisite, though I’m at a loss to determine how the headless one manages to offer such a swarthy baritone from the recesses of her neck.
Some time passed. At the risk of sounding catachrestic, I believe every afternoon I spent at the bakery can be described as thoroughly purple. Purple is a very versatile adjective because it has no emotional pretenses beyond the cold, regal dominance of ‘friendship’. Red is angry. Blue is morose. Green is envious, black is evil, and white is pure or ghastly, as you prefer. Yellow is something I prefer not to imbibe.
I digress. The savage yet noble method Carrot employs to mash together innocent tons of powdered sugar, yeast, flour, and fruit jellies is so perplexing that I can only describe it as utterly and ignominiously purple. He uses the resulting abominations to lure the slavering foals of the neighborhood into his parlor. They cannot be blamed. When I was their age, the prospect of dessert would have just as easily instilled in me a bravery that could be quashed neither by confectionary debauchery nor the pony who purveyed it, no matter how many gnarled butcher knives tinkled like wind chimes at his flanks.
I knew the day had come when Carrot’s constant grin grew broad enough to bisect his cheeks, like the tender flesh of a fuzzy peach parting under stainless steel. There were also fewer Popsicle sticks emanating from behind his apron. He spent so much time whittling them into sharp points that I could only assume he had settled on a means for my demise. Bizarre indeed, but I deferred to his primacy in the matter. Growing up, I was taught just as readily as any other pony to respect the homicidal expertise of bakers.
Pinkie Pie, is dancing at the edge of my vision. All gaunt skin and rattling bones now, her undulating gyrations are hypnotic both by day and by night. She is beautiful, though her ominous smile continually appears in every surface I look upon.
These days, Carrot has taken up residence in the old laird’s estate once referred to as Ponyville Town Hall. I’m told he inherited it eight months ago by way of birthright – or perhaps he merely paid the trifling number of bits required by the ringmaster’s landscapers to keep it from being demolished. Abandoned in the years since the mayoral office became extraneous, it is said that ages ago, the landed gentry openly claimed the heads of a thousand commoners from all walks of life there, simply for sport. This was of course long before my own administration – I preferred to conduct such acts with a modicum of discretion. Those who remember are too decrepit or fearful to speak of it. In its architectural decadence, the structure is a tangle of cob-webbed buttresses, icy stone, and ichor-stained obelisks.
No mare of honor perishes without an audience, so I was certain to invite the ringmaster and her cadaverous cupcake companion to Town Hall for root beer and after-dinner mints just prior to the main event.
Carrot, our host, acquainted us with his remaining wives. They might have returned our toasts to their good health had they lips by which to form words, but their silence was probably for the best. The one who stood in the conservatory with candles running the length of her akimbo forelegs had collected far too much dust to have anything of value to add to the evening’s revelry. The others did sit in on a few games of bridge, though it turned out gambling was their forte. The greatest poker faces pale in comparison.
We eventually adjourned to the Great Hall, where forty-three suits of armor stood ready. I would have thought such décor contrived and trashy, but I could hardly fault my gregarious assassin for his mindfulness of the occasion. The knights were each shackled smartly to the floor; prevented from abandoning their posts at the behest of the innumerable smiley-faced helium balloons noosed about their necks – Carrot’s nod to Pinkie no doubt, whom I believe once shared his home and much more. Invited to peruse, I noted the grinning veneers of young colts and fillies behind the visor of each gallant helmet. I’m certain they would have preferred to be at play, so I smiled back at them in appreciation of their patronage.
The presence of the foals caused me to recall the package I’d left in the hall. In it was the remainder of Bon Bon’s stock – another hundred or so delights of transparent, colorful sugar I’d kept in a burlap sack by the furnace since the return of the Mare in the Moon. After removing them from storage I made a point of breaking the amorphous, bloody blob into bite-sized chunks to keep from frightening those with palpable memories. It was a terrifying experience, after all. I was pleased to find they had aged well and were since gifted by nature with fungal proteins, so I slipped two lollies through the slats of each knightly visor.
Though the evening seemed to be proceeding smoothly, I soon found myself breaking with the propriety of mayoral decorum and giving up a measure of my normally austere temperament. You see, there was only one suit of armor that didn’t resonate with the stench of turning meat, and I had expectations for it that were left unfulfilled. I’ll spare you the details regarding the final foal’s fate, suffice to say that in involved eighty-four of Carrot’s picketed Popsicle sticks and a large, cantankerous machine of infernal origins, cobbled together from old bakery equipment. While it went about its work, the contraption belched a rather foul-smelling ash into the atmosphere and emitted a delightfully repetitive chorus of Turkey in the Straw in a pitch fit mainly to startle diamond dogs.
The audience was moved to tears, save for myself. I had spent several months courting Carrot’s services to perform a nonsensically simple to understand task. As such, I was not ready to accept his voluntary pro bono status as an excuse for lousing it up. Pinkie was to hoof over her big red nose, some switches or whatnot would be thrown, applause and catcalling would append a mindful rendition of Pomp and Circumstance, and I would be merrily off to my freedom from the mortal coil and the uselessness of my existence. Instead, Mister Carrot Cake had the appalling notion to pre-empt months of planning with an exhibition devoted to the glory of his two original children, who were romping gleefully about the armored prisons of the remainder of the young rabble! While I pride him on building a machine that could obfuscate basic identity traits such as appearance and gender after only a few moments of work, I find it the epitome of egotism that we should all be called to his presence for such a self-indulgent purpose. What was worse, festivities were at that point concluded; Carrot invited the entire audience to a round of billiards with cognac and fresh hous d’oervres. It was clear by the contented expressions on the expired faces of the bearded mare, the midget dragon, and the Siamese mimes (all self-invited members of the ringmaster’s entourage) that I was the only one left out of the joke.
My reaction was justifiable. I hurried to the broom closet, and as expected found all the implements I would require. Among these were a bellows in acceptable condition, an ornamental gold-plated grapefruit spoon, and four canopic jars containing the desiccated leftovers of a pharaoh of little influence. I reasoned that had Daring-Do been present and on the lookout for the king’s entrails, she would surely have already thought to search the laird’s closets by that point in the evening. I therefore deposited the unproductive offal in a nearby wastebasket, retaining the containers for my immediate use.
I began with the ringmaster. As I mentioned previously I already found her countenance as loathsome as her affront to my formal administrative function in Ponyville, so this seemed as good a time as any to improve upon both. I began by using a hacksaw I found unsurprisingly in the cabinet next to the toilet to ensure the raspberry hue of alicorn magic would not interrupt my audience with the princess. Then, making use of the ductile bellows, a wine cork, and a few meters of gauze, I took exhaustive notes regarding the maximum capacity of the pony digestive system prior to rupture. Modern science no doubt benefited from my research. I did, of course, submit my findings to the Canterlot Royal Institution some days later for academic publication. I have yet to hear back.
Being already in various stages of disembowelment and evisceration, Carrot’s wives were somewhat beneath my attention. Despite this, I chose out of the goodness of my heart to include them in my antics. I could do little other than to pulverize the remaining sinews and connective tissue that held them fast to existence, but judging by the pitch of the gurgles they emitted, I believe they were grateful for what efforts I could spare. I believe one of them was the elusive Miss Cupcake, but I cannot speak to that for a certainty given the level of decay.
Mister Cake, who really should be called Carrot, was last. I learned in his last moments that my altruism knows no bounds, for I afforded my betrayer a fate not at all in keeping with his offense. I even went so far as to spare him the chloroform, so that we might share words regarding the apple turnovers that were to be the bakery’s special for the following week. I was looking forward to sampling them, but Carrot did me the injustice of ending the conversation exactly twenty-seven minutes into my skillful disassembly of his yielding anatomy with the grapefruit spoon. In the days hence I took the liberty of preparing the sweets myself, as Carrot found it rather difficult to fold syrupy fruit wedges into shaped triangles of fried dough from the confines of four small pottery jars depicting the sons of Horus. He and I have been enjoying a good turnover during tea time every day since; I from my armchair and he from the mantelpiece.
The barrels of kerosene I found under the covered piano in the town hall’s Grand Ballroom brought a true end to the evening’s nuptials. I considered staying for the conflagration, or perhaps seeing to the condition of the foals, but it was by then a quarter to the witching hour and I had no interest in encountering macabre spooks by gaslight on my walk home.
Pinkie Pie is dancing at the edge of my vision. Or perhaps that ended. I believe her overstimulated heart exploded last Thursday with a final clattering of meatless bones on the sidewalk. To my deepest regret, I no longer have anything to look forward to on a daily basis. My days are filled with droll discussions about hay bales and the weather with the landlady, dry wanderings about the vegetable stands in the blistering afternoon, and a watered-down espresso from the new management of Sugarcube Corner.
Bon Bon went back undercover a year ago, but I am compiling a list of her former patrons in the hopes of rebuilding the fee for my assassination. They can’t say they don’t have it on them. Some of the most dreadful chemicals and preservatives in sweets are destined to stay with the body for years to come. According to my research, such substances should be receptive to repurposing once I’ve extracted them all. I’ve grown quite fond of the grapefruit spoon and wear it now as an ornament just above my right ear - it would be uncouth to place it near the left, since one does not eat with their left hoof in polite company.
Rather than restore my position, the powers that be have appointed the ringmaster’s brother to stand as regent.
Pinkie Pie has begun to stir again. I have much work ahead.