07-02-2016, 04:21 PM
It had crept open ever so slowly, inching away from the tiny figure which stood behind it, the responsible party for opening it in the first place. His door did not creak when it swung and the flip of the latch had been lost against the rising ruckus of a man’s footfall in the corridor. Fart had not heard these things in his sleep, was not coherent enough to heed the warning of danger approaching, he was too full and relaxed to notice. And then, there he was, frozen, immobile and unable to let loose the shrill scream that was sure to erupt past his severed lip. Of course it ends like this, he thinks, dread dripping through his veins like a lethal injection. The little man stands before him, no compassion in his wicked eyes whatsoever and Fart can not even have the satisfaction of choosing fight or flight. Not that he was in a frame of mind to fight, but for the sake of common courtesy let us pretend he had it in him.
There he stands, eyeing Fart and somehow taking him in whole with that once over glare that sweeps his entirety. A half-man if Fart knew better and somehow he does know, words and thoughts and ideas taking his mind that have no place being within it’s walls in the first place. A two-legger that barely reaches his chin but this does not provide the green roan with any shred of ease, it does not still the rabbit-like racing of his heart. The maneless stallion is undeniably afraid, if not for the magic holding him in place it was likely he would be trembling like a leaf against raging gale winds, and you can be sure that he would have wet himself- there’s no denying that.
Fortunately (or unfortunately) he can do none of those things, Fart can simply stare wide-eyed at the creature before him because surely it is that, a creature. There is no doubt in his mind just when Grumble’s eyes find his hairless scalp, without doubt he must notice because there should rightly be hair there, there should be a cascade of green instead of a smooth, blank neckline. And again, there has to be some twist of his lip when he takes in the stallion’s face, when he sees the separation of lip. Fart was ugly, it’s not exactly something you can get around. Perhaps there was some sort of twitch of the man’s nose when he took that breath, the one that would tell him how terrible the roan smelled, how soured. Either way he would know him and what frightened Fart the most was that realisation, that knowledge. He knew this man would know him but he didn’t want him to, anything but that.
Without warning that small man reaches for him, takes a hand with crooked fingers and runs it the length of his nose. Angled fingers press into the open space of his lip, pushing past the soft flesh until they are met with his blunt teeth which settled just behind that parted curtain. When finished prodding he took the other curled appendages and stroked his hairless neck and now Fart is not certain whether this compact little creature is pleased or displeased. That uncertainty was something most unwelcome, yet still he had no means by which to show this as those grubby little fingers trace their way about his face and neck. A deft flick of the wrist and a contraption of some sort is being buckled around Fart’s head, thick bands of fabric that make up this thing he now knows as ‘halter.’ Halter? he thinks, the word is odd still in its newness and if asked, Fart would have named it ‘trap’ instead.
No one asks Fart much of anything though, and besides, the green roan is hardly in anyone’s company long enough to even be asked but that is very well beside the point! Now, as it were this particular halter is yet another object of his undoing, as the last buckle latches and everything is fitted he feels, calm. Calm, oh yes. Serene peace washes over his limey skin and all his troubles fade away into nothingness, well, almost. They would be nothing if he still did not hold some small urge to struggle, yet as much as his brain told him to, his body just couldn’t. Oh no, instead, he followed, he allowed this short little thing to lead him without so much as a kick, not even one bite to those nasty little fingers that touched him.
The hall is dim, dank even and now he can see some of the others so very clearly as he passes. He doesn’t want to look at them, he doesn’t want to see their eyes and most of all he doesn’t want to be seen. Fart is a mockery, a jape in the horse world and he knows this, he knows the way their eyes harden when they look on him, he knows the curl of their lips- whole and fine and beautiful as they are. He tries not to meet their faces, aiming straight ahead with his own set of muddy brown orbs, intent on getting where ever it was that they were going. Intent, but why? He didn’t want to go with this man, yet his body minded the tug of lead, heeded its path regardless of what the skinny stallion wanted. And when the path ends, he knows in certainty that he is to die, he knows that he does not want this.
Fart had wished for death many times in his life, wished for but he never made good on it. Truly if he had really wanted to end it all he could have, there were so many ways that were easy enough to manage. Toss himself off a cliff, throw himself down a waterfall, hell, he could have trespassed some mancing brute’s territory. Truth is, Fart was afraid to die. Sure it might be better than his current existence, it might be nothingness for all he knows but the unknown always chilled him to the core, always unsettled him. It is now that they enter the center of the room that he finds this uncertainty still sits unwell with him, and as if to prove this point his bladder releases with a fervent gush against the floor. The man doesn’t seem to notice or if he does he doesn’t show any inclination as to whether he minds, but Fart knows and he is ashamed.
It seems that old Grumble thinks for a moment as Fart stands suspended before him, unable to move or harm the stumpy little man. Thinks of what? Fart doesn’t want to know but soon, soon he will find out. Does it take that sort of consideration then, the maiming of an animal? I guess it does because that is exactly how that pause of thought plays out.
Above him a great light moves to hover and glare with a harsh fluorescence that snaps his eyelids shut and carefully, as he opens them to adjust, his sight is met with the silvery gleam he does not trust. There are some things on a table nearby, tools of some sort, metal he knows as they flash bright white in the glare of the lamp. Little does he know that Grumble does not really need these items but the wicked little creature wants them, all for the sake of experiment he will use them in addition to his magic, all for the sake of his purpose. The first thing to touch him is a silver rod he eyes with the utmost panic, his heart threatens to break free of its cage in this moment of anticipation and when the searing pain traces along neck and back he knows he wants to die.
Please, he thinks as the tears already swell and spill from his eyes, stop, he wishes as the scream leaves him aching and bursts past his neon mouth. No one hears these words, no one heeds his wish, there is no one to help him after all- there is only Grumble.
By tool or by magic, maybe a bit of both, his skin splits, right down past the muscle until white bone is visible. Each scream to leave his body steals the air from his lungs as it pushes past his throat to echo against the chamber walls. He can only cry now, only hollar into the bright room where there is nothing but pain and sorrow. There is however, something that keeps him bound, something that stills his struggle and even if he could fight back, the very soul of his mobility had been compromised. Fart can feel each prick against the vertebrae in his spine, he can hear the digging of the metal as it passes over and over the fragile disks and once he feels a searing hot heat, he finds his voice.
“Nooooo”, the words gurgle up his throat until he gags, retching against his very speech. Spittle and bile find their way up too, choking him until he is sure to pass out, sure to suffocate but he doesn’t. Instead the blockage maneuvers itself out of his airway and no doubt a certain ex-fairy godfather is to blame (or thank) because he cannot very well just allow his little ponies to die so easily, now can he? There is nothing that stops the fire though, nothing that comes to ease the burning that quickly spreads throughout his nerves until he is certain he has been set on ablaze. And though he can not see the flames he can smell them, his flesh burning and melting by cause of whatever contraption digs itself into his back. A fever takes him, eyes fluttering rapidly as he sweats and trembles, his breath comes in jagged pulls, never enough to fill him. Is this moments? Is it hours? Fart doesn’t know any of that, but he thinks it is endless, he feels that it is an eternity of time as he suffers, he decides that it is forever.
And then, it isn’t, not quite. Finally the boiling stops, the fire seeps from his body as if vacuumed away, slowly fleeing from his legs, creeping past his hind and up his chest until everything is cool. It feels cool anyways. “You’ll fly too perhaps,” the little imp promises to no one but Fart doesn’t want this man’s word. What Fart wants, is to know why he isn’t dead, to know what the purpose of these terrible things done to his back were. It can’t be good no doubt, it can’t be anything with promise because once again that fickle fiend is reaching for him.
The stallion’s eyes roll, begging to bulge from their sockets, wasn’t it done? Wasn’t it over? Perhaps he shouldn’t have reacted in such a way though, maybe he should have stilled but Fart was too frightened to simply contain himself now. That’s the problem isn’t it? He knew the pain was coming, he knew the extent of the misery and he knew that he could not escape. He would be made to endure the atrocity of it, he would feel everything. His eyes were unceremoniously plucked from his skull, yanked from their sockets as if they were merely grapes from a vine. Now the squelch of his curdled scream was accompanied with the twang of flexing metal, a snip, snip, snip, yet try as he might he could not assault the abuser. Sightless, he screamed, foaming at the mouth as spittle collected in frothy clouds against his lips. “Tut, tut, tut,” Grumble chided, “A blind sire, well that won’t do.” and again his deep brown eyes are thrust back into his head, blinking wide at the world as though they had never left.
It’s the touching he hates most, he decides, wishing he could dance away as the crooked fingers run the length of him, searching. It’s the touching that hurts most too, making his skin crawl as the fingers tickled the length of his pelt and then his bowels give, releasing that soured smell that plagued his existence. At the very least, that is enough to earn momentary displeasure from Grumble but it is not enough to make him stop. Oh no, too easy. Instead he feels something pull from within him, reaching up his rear and yanking so hard that he is sure his stomach will loose, that his intestines will spill. Then, everything is being routed the wrong way, pushed too far forward, heading to the wrong places. Just when Fart is sure his bowls will spill from his mouth, the pushing ceases and the mere thought of it all is enough to make him sick. Grumble laughs, a sick, twisted sound, something without the usual jollyness or cheer. “Oh-hohohohoho,” but the laughter is short lived, as is the humor because Fart finds none of it funny.
“Enough, please,” the sickly green stallion manages to feebly request, the words scratching his throat as he speaks them. It’s dry, so very dry and raw and chafed and mere speech is enough to zap him like a wave of electricity. “Not done,” Grumble replies in an almost sing-song voice.
Not done, not done, those words echo in Fart’s mind, crashing against the walls of his consciousness until that is all he can hear. The shrieks are not even enough, they come too quickly and too often now to discern when they stop and when they start. It all blends together until he is trapped in the depths of his own mind, swinging back and forth on a pendulum inside his skull. Grumble flays him, the utmost care and precision taken in removing his flesh, inch by excruciating inch. Beneath is muscle and sinew, fat and tendon all laid out for the greedy man to see. It is not that that interests him though, not his blood or his meat or his bones, it is his skin that holds Grumbles attention. When it is taken, when he is bare Grumble snatches yet something else, something that rips him from the inside out as it loosens its hold on the very marrow of his being. “This is called a soul Fart,” Grumble instructs him, waving the shinning material in his face before stuffing it in a glass vat.
Then come the tubes, transparent lengths of plastic that dig into his chest, dive into his hips as they pump ghastly liquids into him. They mix from lidded capsules that sit in a row next to what was called, a soul, churning and pumping into one another until they all blend together in some hazardous recipe. This mixture feeds through the tubes, a pearlescent substance fills him with another burning sensation, one that cools him so much so that it he believes it is white hot. This, this is by far the worst of it surely, but all Fart can manage now is the pattern of words that haunt him. Not done, not done, not done.
This chant begins to make sense somehow and if he could half pay attention he would find himself muttering it in intermittent gasps. “Not done,” he said as he watched Grumble remove the tubes, then sew his skin back, fixing his flesh at the seams were it mended together- fusing without blemish.
“Not done,” Fart breathed against the screams that still left him, each pause soliciting that sequence of words. Grumble dove into his head next, pulling his scalp away, grinding and cutting into the bone to expose the fleshy tenderness of his brain. Still, Fart was quite certain now, “Not done.”
“Not done,” Grumble insisted too as he prodded into each lobe, delving deep into the tissue and ticking off the sections out loud as he went. From there he plucked a piece and moved it, or left it out entirely to replace it with something brand new. A magical substance, had to be, because when he finished mending the wounds Fart could still remember what he was told.
“Not done,” he said but Grumble nodded this time. “I am done,” the imp assured him and in reply Fart screamed just one last time.
There he stands, eyeing Fart and somehow taking him in whole with that once over glare that sweeps his entirety. A half-man if Fart knew better and somehow he does know, words and thoughts and ideas taking his mind that have no place being within it’s walls in the first place. A two-legger that barely reaches his chin but this does not provide the green roan with any shred of ease, it does not still the rabbit-like racing of his heart. The maneless stallion is undeniably afraid, if not for the magic holding him in place it was likely he would be trembling like a leaf against raging gale winds, and you can be sure that he would have wet himself- there’s no denying that.
Fortunately (or unfortunately) he can do none of those things, Fart can simply stare wide-eyed at the creature before him because surely it is that, a creature. There is no doubt in his mind just when Grumble’s eyes find his hairless scalp, without doubt he must notice because there should rightly be hair there, there should be a cascade of green instead of a smooth, blank neckline. And again, there has to be some twist of his lip when he takes in the stallion’s face, when he sees the separation of lip. Fart was ugly, it’s not exactly something you can get around. Perhaps there was some sort of twitch of the man’s nose when he took that breath, the one that would tell him how terrible the roan smelled, how soured. Either way he would know him and what frightened Fart the most was that realisation, that knowledge. He knew this man would know him but he didn’t want him to, anything but that.
Without warning that small man reaches for him, takes a hand with crooked fingers and runs it the length of his nose. Angled fingers press into the open space of his lip, pushing past the soft flesh until they are met with his blunt teeth which settled just behind that parted curtain. When finished prodding he took the other curled appendages and stroked his hairless neck and now Fart is not certain whether this compact little creature is pleased or displeased. That uncertainty was something most unwelcome, yet still he had no means by which to show this as those grubby little fingers trace their way about his face and neck. A deft flick of the wrist and a contraption of some sort is being buckled around Fart’s head, thick bands of fabric that make up this thing he now knows as ‘halter.’ Halter? he thinks, the word is odd still in its newness and if asked, Fart would have named it ‘trap’ instead.
No one asks Fart much of anything though, and besides, the green roan is hardly in anyone’s company long enough to even be asked but that is very well beside the point! Now, as it were this particular halter is yet another object of his undoing, as the last buckle latches and everything is fitted he feels, calm. Calm, oh yes. Serene peace washes over his limey skin and all his troubles fade away into nothingness, well, almost. They would be nothing if he still did not hold some small urge to struggle, yet as much as his brain told him to, his body just couldn’t. Oh no, instead, he followed, he allowed this short little thing to lead him without so much as a kick, not even one bite to those nasty little fingers that touched him.
The hall is dim, dank even and now he can see some of the others so very clearly as he passes. He doesn’t want to look at them, he doesn’t want to see their eyes and most of all he doesn’t want to be seen. Fart is a mockery, a jape in the horse world and he knows this, he knows the way their eyes harden when they look on him, he knows the curl of their lips- whole and fine and beautiful as they are. He tries not to meet their faces, aiming straight ahead with his own set of muddy brown orbs, intent on getting where ever it was that they were going. Intent, but why? He didn’t want to go with this man, yet his body minded the tug of lead, heeded its path regardless of what the skinny stallion wanted. And when the path ends, he knows in certainty that he is to die, he knows that he does not want this.
Fart had wished for death many times in his life, wished for but he never made good on it. Truly if he had really wanted to end it all he could have, there were so many ways that were easy enough to manage. Toss himself off a cliff, throw himself down a waterfall, hell, he could have trespassed some mancing brute’s territory. Truth is, Fart was afraid to die. Sure it might be better than his current existence, it might be nothingness for all he knows but the unknown always chilled him to the core, always unsettled him. It is now that they enter the center of the room that he finds this uncertainty still sits unwell with him, and as if to prove this point his bladder releases with a fervent gush against the floor. The man doesn’t seem to notice or if he does he doesn’t show any inclination as to whether he minds, but Fart knows and he is ashamed.
It seems that old Grumble thinks for a moment as Fart stands suspended before him, unable to move or harm the stumpy little man. Thinks of what? Fart doesn’t want to know but soon, soon he will find out. Does it take that sort of consideration then, the maiming of an animal? I guess it does because that is exactly how that pause of thought plays out.
Above him a great light moves to hover and glare with a harsh fluorescence that snaps his eyelids shut and carefully, as he opens them to adjust, his sight is met with the silvery gleam he does not trust. There are some things on a table nearby, tools of some sort, metal he knows as they flash bright white in the glare of the lamp. Little does he know that Grumble does not really need these items but the wicked little creature wants them, all for the sake of experiment he will use them in addition to his magic, all for the sake of his purpose. The first thing to touch him is a silver rod he eyes with the utmost panic, his heart threatens to break free of its cage in this moment of anticipation and when the searing pain traces along neck and back he knows he wants to die.
Please, he thinks as the tears already swell and spill from his eyes, stop, he wishes as the scream leaves him aching and bursts past his neon mouth. No one hears these words, no one heeds his wish, there is no one to help him after all- there is only Grumble.
By tool or by magic, maybe a bit of both, his skin splits, right down past the muscle until white bone is visible. Each scream to leave his body steals the air from his lungs as it pushes past his throat to echo against the chamber walls. He can only cry now, only hollar into the bright room where there is nothing but pain and sorrow. There is however, something that keeps him bound, something that stills his struggle and even if he could fight back, the very soul of his mobility had been compromised. Fart can feel each prick against the vertebrae in his spine, he can hear the digging of the metal as it passes over and over the fragile disks and once he feels a searing hot heat, he finds his voice.
“Nooooo”, the words gurgle up his throat until he gags, retching against his very speech. Spittle and bile find their way up too, choking him until he is sure to pass out, sure to suffocate but he doesn’t. Instead the blockage maneuvers itself out of his airway and no doubt a certain ex-fairy godfather is to blame (or thank) because he cannot very well just allow his little ponies to die so easily, now can he? There is nothing that stops the fire though, nothing that comes to ease the burning that quickly spreads throughout his nerves until he is certain he has been set on ablaze. And though he can not see the flames he can smell them, his flesh burning and melting by cause of whatever contraption digs itself into his back. A fever takes him, eyes fluttering rapidly as he sweats and trembles, his breath comes in jagged pulls, never enough to fill him. Is this moments? Is it hours? Fart doesn’t know any of that, but he thinks it is endless, he feels that it is an eternity of time as he suffers, he decides that it is forever.
And then, it isn’t, not quite. Finally the boiling stops, the fire seeps from his body as if vacuumed away, slowly fleeing from his legs, creeping past his hind and up his chest until everything is cool. It feels cool anyways. “You’ll fly too perhaps,” the little imp promises to no one but Fart doesn’t want this man’s word. What Fart wants, is to know why he isn’t dead, to know what the purpose of these terrible things done to his back were. It can’t be good no doubt, it can’t be anything with promise because once again that fickle fiend is reaching for him.
The stallion’s eyes roll, begging to bulge from their sockets, wasn’t it done? Wasn’t it over? Perhaps he shouldn’t have reacted in such a way though, maybe he should have stilled but Fart was too frightened to simply contain himself now. That’s the problem isn’t it? He knew the pain was coming, he knew the extent of the misery and he knew that he could not escape. He would be made to endure the atrocity of it, he would feel everything. His eyes were unceremoniously plucked from his skull, yanked from their sockets as if they were merely grapes from a vine. Now the squelch of his curdled scream was accompanied with the twang of flexing metal, a snip, snip, snip, yet try as he might he could not assault the abuser. Sightless, he screamed, foaming at the mouth as spittle collected in frothy clouds against his lips. “Tut, tut, tut,” Grumble chided, “A blind sire, well that won’t do.” and again his deep brown eyes are thrust back into his head, blinking wide at the world as though they had never left.
It’s the touching he hates most, he decides, wishing he could dance away as the crooked fingers run the length of him, searching. It’s the touching that hurts most too, making his skin crawl as the fingers tickled the length of his pelt and then his bowels give, releasing that soured smell that plagued his existence. At the very least, that is enough to earn momentary displeasure from Grumble but it is not enough to make him stop. Oh no, too easy. Instead he feels something pull from within him, reaching up his rear and yanking so hard that he is sure his stomach will loose, that his intestines will spill. Then, everything is being routed the wrong way, pushed too far forward, heading to the wrong places. Just when Fart is sure his bowls will spill from his mouth, the pushing ceases and the mere thought of it all is enough to make him sick. Grumble laughs, a sick, twisted sound, something without the usual jollyness or cheer. “Oh-hohohohoho,” but the laughter is short lived, as is the humor because Fart finds none of it funny.
“Enough, please,” the sickly green stallion manages to feebly request, the words scratching his throat as he speaks them. It’s dry, so very dry and raw and chafed and mere speech is enough to zap him like a wave of electricity. “Not done,” Grumble replies in an almost sing-song voice.
Not done, not done, those words echo in Fart’s mind, crashing against the walls of his consciousness until that is all he can hear. The shrieks are not even enough, they come too quickly and too often now to discern when they stop and when they start. It all blends together until he is trapped in the depths of his own mind, swinging back and forth on a pendulum inside his skull. Grumble flays him, the utmost care and precision taken in removing his flesh, inch by excruciating inch. Beneath is muscle and sinew, fat and tendon all laid out for the greedy man to see. It is not that that interests him though, not his blood or his meat or his bones, it is his skin that holds Grumbles attention. When it is taken, when he is bare Grumble snatches yet something else, something that rips him from the inside out as it loosens its hold on the very marrow of his being. “This is called a soul Fart,” Grumble instructs him, waving the shinning material in his face before stuffing it in a glass vat.
Then come the tubes, transparent lengths of plastic that dig into his chest, dive into his hips as they pump ghastly liquids into him. They mix from lidded capsules that sit in a row next to what was called, a soul, churning and pumping into one another until they all blend together in some hazardous recipe. This mixture feeds through the tubes, a pearlescent substance fills him with another burning sensation, one that cools him so much so that it he believes it is white hot. This, this is by far the worst of it surely, but all Fart can manage now is the pattern of words that haunt him. Not done, not done, not done.
This chant begins to make sense somehow and if he could half pay attention he would find himself muttering it in intermittent gasps. “Not done,” he said as he watched Grumble remove the tubes, then sew his skin back, fixing his flesh at the seams were it mended together- fusing without blemish.
“Not done,” Fart breathed against the screams that still left him, each pause soliciting that sequence of words. Grumble dove into his head next, pulling his scalp away, grinding and cutting into the bone to expose the fleshy tenderness of his brain. Still, Fart was quite certain now, “Not done.”
“Not done,” Grumble insisted too as he prodded into each lobe, delving deep into the tissue and ticking off the sections out loud as he went. From there he plucked a piece and moved it, or left it out entirely to replace it with something brand new. A magical substance, had to be, because when he finished mending the wounds Fart could still remember what he was told.
“Not done,” he said but Grumble nodded this time. “I am done,” the imp assured him and in reply Fart screamed just one last time.
silent but deadly
