Detective Pony When I Feel Like It
@inspectorEquine
DESTRUCTION IS CREATION. IDENTITY BEGETS AGENDA. A MARTYR DIED AND SAID FUCK. SHARED WITHOUT HIS PERMISSION. WITH THANKS TO JEANNE BETANCOURT AND SONNETSTUCK.
[“Then it is settled,” Pam said. “We follow that fucking cat and descend into hell together. Then we find Acorn, free him from the eternal damnation that he is surely suffering at this very moment, and lead him back with us, where he will live out the rest of his sinful days haunted by the knowledge of what awaits him when he inevitably is pulled back into the pit.” “And then we can all ride our ponies down the Pony Pal Trail!” Pawnee blubbered excitedly.] Anna smiled at her friends. “Thank you.” “Pony Pals stick together,” said Pam. [——— Acorn seethed as he watched Minos smugly shit off the edge of the lone tree stump in the middle of the dead clearing. Acorn wasn’t sure what it was with which he was seething — rage? self-loathing? jealousy? — but seething he surely was. “When will the other two judges fucking get here?” Acorn snapped. “But Acorn,” said a voice from behind the pony, “we’ve been here all along.” Acorn spun around and saw two figures standing on — or were they slightly hovering above? — the grey marshy ground. One was a tall middle-aged woman in a plum crushed-velvet pantsuit, whose glasses did nothing to hide the keen glimmer of her brown eyes. There were a few streaks of silver in her wavy brown hair, and they imbued her with a sense of dignity, like— Fuck it, here’s a picture of her. https://dyslexia.yale.edu/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/Jeanneheadshot.jpg Over there to the right. She looked pretty much exactly like that. Much more efficient to do it this way. The other person was a really rad dude with really rad shades who needs no introduction. “Who are these douchebags?” Acorn whinnied. The rad dude spoke again: “We’re the douchebags who wrote you.” “Wrote me?” Acorn said. “What the fuck is that supposed to mean?” “I means that you’re a fictional character,” the woman said. “That’s right,” said Dirk Strider. (He hadn’t introduced himself as Dirk Strider yet, but it should be totally obvious who he is. No need to be coy. And the woman’s Jeanne Betancourt. Let’s not pretend this was any sort of dramatic revelation.) “You’re a text, Acorn,” Dirk continued, “and I’m going to fucking deconstruct you.” “You wouldn’t dare to… That’s a daring proposi… I dare you… to try…” Acorn said falteringly. “Couldn’t get that Derrida pun to work, huh?” Minos observed dryly. “Fuck you, cat. I’ll keep working on it.” “All puns aside, Acorn,” Jeanne Betancourt said, “yes, you are a character from a book that I wrote. And Dirk… well, I’m not sure exactly how he’s involved in all of this, but apparently he wrote it too?” Dirk waved his hand dismissively. “Don’t worry about it, Jeanne Betancourt. Doesn’t matter.” “If you say so, Dirk.” (There, they’ve introduced each other. So now everyone knows everyone else’s name and can refer to each other accordingly.)] #DetectivePony @beatboxingHeart @justDirk @numberoneRainbowdashfan @plushrumpdotGay @tempestuousTestimonium @timaeusTested @timaeusTestified @timaeusTestified#0414 @timaeusTestified#2840 @timaeusTestified#3765 @timaeusTestified#4199 @timaeusTestified#7269 @timaeusTxstified
Chapter 7 Blood in the Snow [Pawnee] and Pam exchanged a worried [ferret]. They couldn’t make Anna see reason when [she was so blinded by the special love a girl feels for her pony]. But they couldn’t leave [the world of the living to save a millennia-old pony that was closer to a god than anything else that ever trod the earth] either. [The worried ferret squirmed out of Pam’s hands and ran off to worry elsewhere.] Pam sighed. “We’ll [go to hell] with you,” she said. [Anna turned back around, tears welling up in her eyes.] “Maybe you and Acorn [can be redeemed],” said [Pawnee]. “Maybe the cat [— and death itself — aren’t as powerful as we mortals think.”] “But promise us [you won’t] turn back [as we leave the underworld,” said Pawnee, “or Acorn might be pulled back into it.” Pam rolled her eyes like, we get it, you know a bit about mythology. You want a fucking pat you on the back? Where were you when I learned numbers, huh?] Anna wanted to [hug her friends]. But she knew it was dangerous to [show affection, since it could be taken as a sign of weakness. Acorn had taught her that.] #DetectivePony
“Then you two can go back,” said Anna angrily. “I’m going to [go into that good night, and I’m sure as fuck not going gentle]." She put out her hand[, beckoning for the only two friends she had left in this world to come with her. “Burn and rave with me,” she whispered. “Catch and sing the sun in flight. Rage, rage against the dying of the light; both Acorn’s and your own.] “You can’t [go fucking Orpheus on our asses now]!” yelled [Pawnee. She had only recently learned basic Greek mythology, and showed off this new knowledge at every opportunity.] Anna put her hands on her hips. “Oh, yes I can!” she told them. “You can’t make me go back.” [“Well, looks like somebody’s being a sassy Susan,” Pam said. “Look, we want revenge on that fucking cat too, but if we follow Acorn, there’s no guarantee that any of us will come back. Least of all Acorn!” “It’s his time, Anna,” Pawnee said. She touched Anna’s hand gently, and couldn’t help but shudder at the unnatural coldness. She grew more concerned when she realized that Anna’s metal hand hadn’t been the one she touched. She pulled out her emergency margarita kit and fixed herself a strong one. Anna was undeterred. “I’m saving Acorn’s life, god damn it. Even if it means sacrificing my own.” She glared at her two friends. “If you wouldn’t do the same for your pony, then you don’t fucking deserve to be called a Pony Pal.” She spat in the snow at her feet. (Pawnee could have sworn that she saw the saliva glow slightly. Was it radiation from the uranium-powered arm? Ectoplasm left over from Anna’s brush with death? The light of pure, burning rage and love? Or was Pawnee just sloshed?) Anna turned her back on her friends both literally and metaphorically and began to walk away. Away from all that she had ever known, and towards that which could not be known.] #DetectivePony #DayOfRest
[“You can stop here, Acorn,” said the cat. “What part of Hades’ lair is this that you / Have brought me to, you—” “No, we’re done with the terza rima now. You don’t have to talk in iambics anymore.” “That’s a relief,” said Acorn, relishing the dactyl. Acorn glanced around at their stopping place. The slimy banks of the Acheron had long since transitioned into a forest of dead, white trees, through which the pony and the cat had been walking for what felt like either minutes, hours, or decades. But now Acorn and the god damned cat stood in a small clearing, filled with cold, flat light that filtered down from some unseen source in the uniformly cloud-covered sky. The ground beneath Acorn’s hooves was grey and marshy, and seemed somehow ephemeral, as if it was only ninety percent there. An oppressive mist hung in the sky and over the ground, sending cold tendrils to lick at Acorn’s fetlocks. Silence, stillness. “So this is where it happens?” Acorn asked. “This is where I’m judged by you?” “Well, by me and my two co-arbiters,” Minos said as he leapt off Acorn’s back and sashayed to a broad, low tree stump near the middle of the clearing. He jumped onto the white stump, sat, and curled his tail around himself demurely. “Yes,” said Acorn, “You are referring to your brother Rhadamanthus, and Aeacus, the former king of Aegina. The three of you judge the souls of the dead and decide which realm of the underworld they shall inhabit.” “Right. Exactly,” said the cat. “You didn’t have to explain all of that to me, since I obviously know it already.” “I know,” said Acorn. “But this part of the plot’s really important. And so I wanted to make it all explicit for people who don’t know every fucking detail of Greek mythology by heart.” “Fine, whatever. The point is, Acorn, the other judges will be joining us shortly. And then your soul shall be laid bare. For I have known your sins already, known them all— the sins that fixed you in that formulated phrase. And when you are formulated, sprawling on a pin, when you are pinned and wriggling on my wall, then how will you begin to spit out all the butt-ends of your days and ways?” “And how should you presume?” Acorn shot back. Minos shook his tiny cat head. “Acorn, that is not what you meant at all; that is not it, at all.” The cat began licking one adorable white paw, and shot glanced slyly at the defiant pony from the corners of his bottomless eyes. “…So tell me, has it been worth it, after all? Has it been worth while?” ——————————————————————————————————————] “I think we should go back,” said Pam. “It’s the safe thing to do. [Acorn has gone to be judged for his sins, and that godawful cat left with him.”] “I agree with Pam,” said [Pawnee]. She put [the severed head of the ]rapper [Snoop Dogg back into] her saddlebag. “We should go back [to Wiggins, even though that’s still a dumb name for a town.”] “I thought the Pony Pals didn’t give up!” said Anna. [Sparks began to fly from her mechanical arm, and the other Pony Pals heard a horrifying grinding; whether from the arm or from the tortured swarm of brain-gears inside Anna’s head, they were unsure.] “We’re not giving up,” said [Pawnee]. “We just don’t think [that we can rescue Acorn’s soul now that it has been reaped by that fucking cat."] “Anna, it’s two against one,” said Pam [proudly. She had only recently learned to count, and showed off this new skill at every opportunity. Anna was conflicted. She knew that Pawnee was right; Acorn’s soul was irredeemable. She also knew the true nature of that fiend posing as a cat. There could be no revenge taken on such a creature, and if she provoked it, it might well come back to the plane of the mortals and keep fucking with the Pony Pals out of pure spite. Finally, Anna knew that if she went into the underworld, she would never be able to return to this realm. She’d been yanked back from death once, and now the Other Side had a magnetic pull on her soul, trying to drag it back to where it by all rights should be. Her next death, she knew, would be final. But Anna fucking loved Acorn.] #DetectivePony
[In Gilead there’s not a drop of balm, Nor respite nor nepenthe to be found; The shepherd’s absent from King David’s psalm, For in the river Enon He was drowned. Towards other rivers now sped Acorn on, Which through this murky landscape curled and wound: Cocytus, Lethe, Styx, and Phlegethon. ‘Twas Acheron, though, that they now drew near, And Acorn knew he’d seen his final dawn. Grim Charon waited at his marshy pier, But Acorn whinnied, “Fuck that noise,” and leapt Into the waters, biting back his fear. Against the rotting waves the pony schlepped, Amidst a thousand thousand slimy souls That howled or gnashed their teeth or prayed or wept. The river’s morbid currents sucked and pulled, But our determined Acorn stayed in stride: His iron hooves struck out and beat the cold And damnèd spirits right between their eyes. The wraiths shrank back, and in their swirling blood, As black as sin, was Acorn re-baptized. At last, his hooves did touch the fetid mud Of that dread river’s other, darker bank, Where blew a constant miasmatic scud Of misery, from which all pure souls shrank. The pony plodded onward towards his fate, The wretched water dripping from his flanks. It seemed that nothing now could break his gait, That from his course he never could be budged. Despite his rider’s grim, oppressive weight, The steadfast Acorn merely onward trudged, Prepared to have his heavy sins be judged.] #DetectivePony
[Now, at the end of Acorn’s lifelong journey, He found himself deep in a silent wood, The slate-grey sky foreboding, dense, and stormy. An evil fucking cat kept scheming brood Upon his back, a burden unremitting. As Acorn cantered on, he understood Their destination would be one befitting An unrepentant sinner such as he. But then that cat of darkness started shitting. And now it seemed that every shrub and tree Was naught but cat shit sown in shitty earth; A shitty island in a shitty sea. The cat shit on, and laughed with gleeful mirth At Acorn’s clear disgust at such a sight. And now, like an inverted fecal birth, They neared the source of this unholy blight – A guano gate, upon which words appeared In script that burnèd red with fiery light: Abandon all hope, ye who enter here. “Derivative,” said Acorn, “and cliché.” “I’d say ‘Dantesque,’” the cat replied, “but we’re Not in this place to sightsee.” Acorn neighed, “The suffix ‘–esque’ implies a likeness, not A phrase that’s stolen wholesale – which conveys The writer’s laziness, like they forgot Allusion must be more than blatant theft.” Caught up in meta-referential thoughts, The pony failed to notice they had left The realm of life, and entered that of death. Of light and joy, of love and mirth bereft, This cloudy and adumbral land impressed Upon its visitor an eerie calm, As if some cosmic power held Its breath.] #DetectivePony
[Pawnee] swung back up on [Lil’ Sebastian]. [“But there shall be no Greyhound born between Feltro and Feltro],” she said. [“Only another fucking cat.”] Anna took the lead again. When they reached the three birches, Acorn stopped. [He knew that it was his time to leave. Page 43, he thought to himself. A prime number. Is it fitting or ironic that a life full of multiplicity end with something indivisible?] “[It’s just as the prophesy foretold]!” said Anna excitedly. “[Where the three birches rise, there shall He descend],” said Pam. “You know Acorn [is not long for this world, Anna. We were wrong about the cat. He’s not here for us. He’s still a son of a fuck, but we can’t interfere with this.”] “There could be a clue,” [Pawnee burbled]. “Let’s see what [really happens beyond the veil; on the Other Side of the Other Side.”] Acorn sniffed for another minute, then he raised his head. He turned toward a trail that started behind the three birch trees. [Minos sat in the upper branches of one of the trees, shitting silently and solemnly onto the forest floor below.] “Acorn [needs to leave with his feline psychopomp, Anna. We all knew that his reckoning would come one day,” Pawnee said quietly. “I’m sorry.” Anna nodded sadly. All three girls dismounted in silence. Anna closed her eyes and dropped Acorn’s reins. The cat began to come down from its perch, hopping from branch to branch, leaving a tiny kitty shit on each one. It landed lightly in the snow and began to saunter towards Acorn, but Anna stepped into its path. She knelt and looked the cat right in its god damned eyes. “You are an evil fucking thing,” Anna whispered. “I now understand who you are, and what you must do, but I will never, never forgive you. I warn you: judge fairly, for even the eternal Judge is not free from my judgment. Yes, I too have a secret. There are wheels within wheels in the town of Wiggins, and fires within fires. Now go.” She stood. The cat walked between her legs and jumped onto Acorn’s back.] [Minos] rode Acorn [down the long and winding path into the Unknown.] #DetectivePony
“Look for [local politicians] in the snow,” said [Pawnee, secretly hoping to find her mother and settle the question of her true paternity once and for all.] Anna and Acorn took the lead. Anna looked straight[, but was actually bisexual]. [Pawnee knew that the anti-regulatory libertarian Ron Swanson politically leaned] to the right. And Pam[, as she was known to do,] left [inflammatory manifestos nailed to every tree she passed.] After a while Pam [barbarically yawped], “I see some [bullshit over here to advance the plot!”] Anna turned Acorn around and looked to where Pam pointed. Small tracks in the snow [crackled with intense violet majyks]. To Anna, they looked like the [marks she had seen in her dream last night. Her robot fist clenched.] [Pawnee] dismounted to get a closer look at the tracks. She [pulled out her PKE meter; its readings were off the charts. This adventure had gone off the rails. Pawnee was off the wagon.] https://i.imgur.com/f7DDMfx.png “These are very [fiendish] tracks,” [the town] said. “But they have [Eldritch runes]. A cat’s track [is so god damned evil that no runes can bind its strength.] A [leopard] made these tracks[; fleet and nimble-footed, with coat completely covered by dark spots! And those tracks over there are of a lion, head held high and furious for hunger, so that the air itself seems to be shaking. And those tracks are from a she-wolf, ravenously lean, seemingly laden with such endless cravings that she had made many live in misery! By nature, she is so depraved and vicious that her greedy appetite is never filled: the more she feeds, the hungrier she grows.”] *RESIDUAL MAJYKS THAT SPILLED TO THE BOTTOM OF THE PAGE* #DetectivePony
Chapter 6 The Fight The Pony Pals rode their ponies [with the kind of solemnity usually reserved for soldiers en route to battle. The cat weighed heavily in all their minds. Acorn was afraid of it. Pam felt a burning hatred towards it. Anna secretly hoped that it could answer her questions about what had happened to her in that twenty minutes during which she had been dead. Pawnee wanted to learn new cocktail recipes from it. She had a serious problem.] “Where should we start looking for the cat?” [Pam asked, munching on the pheasant that she had just plucked from the sky mid-flight.] “Acorn was staring in the direction of Pony Pal Trail,” said Anna[, somehow still unaware of how fucking stupid “Pony Pal Trail” sounds.] “Let’s start there,” [Pawnee extravasated.] “It could be a clue.” The Pony Pals galloped across the field. They [turned] down [the three magic beans that a mysterious man standing in a field offered them in exchange for their immortal souls. It was probably a wise decision.] #DetectivePony
[After eating their healthy soup, the two girls and the town set out on their journey to find the motherfucking cat so they could kill it and get back to their regular Pony Pal shit. As they rode, Pam looted a sweatshirt from a conveniently-nearby corpse. Anna didn’t ask Pam how she knew the corpse was there.] “This sweatshirt will make a perfect [smothering tool] for the cat,” she said. When they went back outside, Acorn was still standing at the fence, looking into the woods. The Pony Pals [thought he was idly contemplating the terrifying vacuum that one inevitably finds when searching for any sort of meaning in existence, as he was wont to do. Little did they know that today, Acorn was brooding on a more personal terror. Minos would be coming for him, and Acorn had a feeling that the moment of his arrival would be very soon indeed. And then that infernal cat would lead Acorn somewhere. He would use no halter or reins, but Acorn knew that this was the one rider that he could not buck.] “We have important work to do today,” Anna told Acorn. “We’re going to look for [that unholy] cat[, and then we are going to embrace our basest and most primal bloodlust and rend its head from its body.”] Anna put her left foot in the stirrup and swung up on the saddle [for what Acorn knew would probably be the last time. Acorn was not one for sentimentality. Emotions, he had found, started to fade from one’s mind after the first few thousand years of living. But Minos’ words the other day had reawakened something within him. Why did he let Anna put a saddle on him? His previous riders had all been mighty gladiators, inspiring leaders of men, brilliant warrior-poets, or chefs of above-average talent. And now... Anna Harley, Pony Pal. He was no unicorn, attracted to and tamed by the purity of a young woman. Then again, Anna was far from pure. But it was not her bloodthirstiness that had drawn Acorn to her either. Was it really, as Minos had tauntingly suggested, fear of his own power and his increasing inability to properly control it? Acorn had to admit that he was getting old. Getting tired. Was he trying to sequester himself, to forget all the he had been, and the potential he had? The potential to be what had never before been, and what could barely be at all? Was Anna the steel-lined concrete containment building around the nuclear fusion reactor that was his mind? Anna took up Acorn’s reins and led him into the woods. Together, they melted into the tree line. All three — the girl, the pony, the woods — were lovely, dark, and deep. But Acorn had a promise to keep. And miles to go— and miles to go] #DetectivePony
LITERALLY. BECAUSE THEY ARE AFRAID OF THE CAT. THEY DO NOT UNDERSTAND IT. PEOPLE FEAR WHAT THEY UNDERSTAND. LITERARYILLY. IT IS UP TO YOU TO DECIDE WHAT THE CAT REPRESENTS. IT HAS PRESENTED ITSELF AS A JUDGE. IT DOES NOT STOP SHITTING. IT HAS POWER OVER LIFE AND DEATH. DOES THE CAT DESERVE DEATH? DOES THE CONCEPT DESERVE DEATH? THE CAT HAS ALREADY SHOWN THAT IT CAN NOT BE KILLED. WHAT IS THE PURPOSE OF AN IMPOSSIBLE TASK? DOES THE MEANING CHANGE WHEN THE UNDERTAKERS DO NOT YET KNOW IT IS IMPOSSIBLE?
[sincerely trying to write a compelling, dare I say meaningful, story about the nature of sin and redemption. It’s certainly a possibility. Perhaps this whole project is some Freudian mechanism I’m using to work though the complex issues tucked away deep in the neglected, cobwebby corners of my troubled teenage psyche. Or a Jungian mechanism. Or a Janetian one. Jasperian? (Christ, what is it with European psychotherapists and J names?) Sorry, I’m a bit rusty on my late-nineteenth-early-twentieth century analytic psychology and the various mechanisms thereof. It’s like psychology is Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory, and I’m Charlie fucking Buckett out here, looking through the gate, my little sooty pauper nose poking through the bars, wondering what could possibly be inside. O what saccharine phantasies! O what levulose reveries! O the vagaries of gumdrops and licorices and taffies. (But no tootsie rolls. Because fuck those disgusting things, am I right?) But then I find one of the five golden copies of On the Interpretation of Dreams, and I get to actually explore this mysterious Wonka wünder-palace, where events unfold as predictably and phallocentrically as would be expected from an such adventure through the psyche of an aging candy tycoon who’s the type of guy that invites nubile youths to his factory to inspect his fantastic contraptions. Okay, fuck, I got way off track here. My attempt to assure you that I wasn’t going to succumb to the allure faux-philosophical meta-commentary turned into just that. (And then it turned into a lengthy fantasy about Willy Wonka, I guess??) Needless to say, the whole digression was/is ironic. But it’s the type of irony that has actually become sincere by virtue of its utterly failed approximation of sincerity. You know I’d never unironically write something like those first few paragraphs, and I know you know. So the fact that I did is a de facto breach of an unstated contract of communicational transparency between us. That I would betray said contract then becomes the actual meaning of the gesture: why would I do such a thing if not to emphasize the degree of my sincerity? The form of the message becomes its content, and the original content and the meaning thereof is jettisoned off to god knows where. Eventually, we both become so concerned about whether (or to what degree) I’m being ironic that we lose track of what it is that I’m being or not being ironic about. And, of course, in the above paragraph (as well as this one), the pretense of shedding my irony to address you directly about my (failed?) use of irony elsewhere is another level of overarching irony, further masking/enhancing the sincerity of said address, as well as the original content, if it’s even accessible anymore. Sincerity has become just another pharmakon: the supposed “cure” to my irony, yet one which effaces the original message just as much as the poisonous irony that obscured it in the first place. Either way, meaning is lost. It’s complicated, is what I’m trying to say. Layers. Pharmakon. I’ll explain it to you someday.] #DetectivePony https://i.imgur.com/1CZQmBU.png
“It’s so cold out there,” said Anna. “I would say I hope he freezes, but I know that the liquid brimstone that surely flows through his veins will keep him warm.” Pam put a mink stole around Anna’s shoulders. “We’ll all look for the cat,” she creaked. “But first we have to feed our ponies.” “Okay,” said Anna. Pam went to the barn to get her pair of balances. When she returned, she leapt on Acorn’s back, and lo, Anna beheld the black horse and its rider. “Come and see,” Pawnee told Anna. “A measure of wheat for a penny, and three measures of barley for a penny; and see thou hurt not the oil and the wine.” “What the fuck are you talking about?” asked Anna. Acorn ran around the paddock once and then stopped. Anna was surprised that Acorn didn’t run with his friends. But the white, red, and pale horses and their riders were nowhere to be found. Acorn just stood at the fence and stared into the woods. He’s looking for the cat, thought Anna. Even the company of a devil must be preferable to being alone. After they ate breakfast, the girls packed thermoses of You know what, the liquor joke is too obvious here. This time, I’m going to make the thermoses full of healthy soup. You’ve got to give your characters a break once in a while. You’re responsible for them, after all. And not in some shitty pseudo-clever, magniloquent, metafictional way; don’t worry, I’m not going to get all Six-Characters-In-Search-Of-y here. That would just be self-indulgent. I mean, I’m obviously going to inevitably write myself into the story later, and it’s going to be incredibly fucking self-indulgent. I’m going to be handing out indulgences like a sixteenth-century Catholic clergyman. Except I’ll be handing them all to myself. Indulging myself all over the damn place. Martin Luther’s going to have to come over here himself and bust my popish ass for it. I guess what I’m saying, Jane, is that I’m directly responsible for the Protestant Reformation. I conceived of this book as a dumb gag birthday present for you, but it somehow turned into a Faustian (perilously close to fustian) saga about good and evil. At least, that’s what I think it’s become about. I honestly still don’t know at this point. Ergo aforementioned responsibility. I always get carried away with my projects, you know that. But here’s the rub: when I started inserting all that grandiloquent prose, it was ironic and intentionally turgid and purple as shit. But I’m really not sure if that’s still what I’m doing, or if I’m #DetectivePony
[Anna swirled the brandy some more and observed the liquid’s widening gyre. She drained the glass and threw it against the wall, watching as it fell apart. Anna had no innocence to be drowned, and she was certainly full of passionate intensity; she welcomed the mere anarchy, and bathed in the blood-dimmed tide. She would deafen that fucking falcon herself if it came to that. Perhaps the long-awaited rough beast was neither Acorn nor Minos, but Anna herself. But towards what destination was Anna slouching? She] dressed quietly and went out to the new barn. [She was going to find that fucking cat. Someone was going to die today.] Anna looked for the cat in the straw and on the rafters of Acorn’s stall. The [little fucker] wasn’t there. Acorn nuzzled Anna’s shoulder sleepily. “I’m going to [exterminate from this world every trace of that goddamn] cat,” she told him. [But Acorn wouldn’t meet her eye.] [Anna was accustomed to Acorn’s pensive moods, especially after he returned from one of his mysterious disappearances. She’d never begrudge him the time it takes to clear one’s brain of a new Darkness (or to wait for the new Darkness to spread until the whole brain is uniformly tainted and therefore uniformly purified). But this felt different. Was this the cat’s doing? she asked herself. Or has Acorn finally gnawed through the last thread that connected him to sanity, as I always knew he eventually would?] Anna looked in the rest of the horse stalls. No cat[echism could assuage the fear that coursed through her, as religion is helpless in the face of that which is inherently and insistently not only godless and ungodly, but even god-negating.] No cat[harsis was to be had today, Anna knew. “κάθαρσις,” she said aloud, then shook her head sadly. Her soul would remain unpurged.] No[,] cat[atonia was not the answer either; it was far too late to hide or feign unresponsiveness.] Pam and [Pawnee] came into the old barn. “Did you find the cat[egorical imperative that I explained to you last night to be helpful in your struggle to understand morality?” Pawnee asked.] “No,” said Anna. “[I believe that we live in a post-Kantian world. Also, the cat’s still fucking missing.”] “Maybe he went into the woods,” said [Pawnee, while drinking peppermint schnapps straight from the bottle. She had a serious problem.] #DetectivePony
[Anna experimentally flexed the hand of the new robotic arm that Pam had whipped up for her. She would miss the sloth arm, but somehow having a mechanical left arm just felt right to her. After the Pony Pals cleared their web browsers’ histories] and cookies, they went back outside with [the intention of finding and killing that damn cat]. It was safe for the horses and ponies to go back in the barn. The girls led the ponies inside, [licked] off the snow, dried them off, and [discussed their plans for dismantling the patriarchy]. The whole time Anna was helping with the ponies, she kept [sharpening her dagger] for the cat. She didn’t see him anywhere. [Nor did she see Acorn. But she didn’t worry — she was used to Acorn vanishing for weeks at a time and then suddenly returning, covered in assorted viscera and miscellaneous cruor. “Cruor” is a good word, she thought to herself as she absentmindedly crushed a rock into fine sand with her robot hand.] “We have to sleep in my room,” Pam told [Pawnee] and Anna[, with a not-at-all subtle wink at the two of them.] [“We can share my bed].” Anna didn’t care [much for Pam’s sexual advances. No matter how attractive Pam might be, standing there in the moonlight, her hair still flecked with ash, her eyes bright and sparkling, her lips half-parted and strangely inviting... but no. Not tonight, at least.] Tomorrow she could search for the cat [and explore the complexities of her developing adolescent sexuality.] Anna was the first Pony Pal to wake up the next morning. She [had had terrible dreams — if they could even be called dreams. Ever since she had died, everything was different. It felt as if rather than returning to life from the Other Side, she had traveled straight through and come out the other end, returning full circle to her starting place. The Other Side of the Other Side. No one could possibly understand what it was like to awaken from that slumber that should have been eternal. “Is this mockery of life, this half-existence, really better than death?” Anna whispered to herself as she gazed out the window at the falling snow, swirling a snifter of brandy with her robot hand, the other hand pressed longingly against the windowpane. Shape without form, shade without colour, paralysed force, gesture without motion. She took a sip of her liquor. But not even spirits could give her the temporary relief of oblivion that they were once able to offer. Perhaps because I have no Spirit of my own, she thought.] #DetectivePony #Feminism
[“One more thing,” hissed Pawnee. “About what you said earlier in the paddock.” Pam licked her lips. “Oh, so you are curious about the identity of your real father.” Even in these dark times, Pam could not miss a chance to play mind games with the Indianan city she called her friend. “My father is Ron fucking Swanson,” Pawnee said. “And if you even try to suggest otherwise to me, I will dismantle you. Understand?” Pam just smirked. She knew that the seed of doubt had been planted in Pawnee’s mind, and it was soon to become a sprout of doubt. Then a tree of doubt. For a seed — be it a metaphorical or literal one — has power. “And what tremendous power it is, Acorn,” said the cat in its adumbral, soul-melting tones. “But I command power too. The power of death. And I used that power to pluck Anna’s life from this earth like a speck of dandruff from a slovenly head. She died of a heart attack twenty minutes ago, Acorn.” The horse said nothing. “But, as I told you, you have power. In this case, ironically, it is the power of life. I will bring her back, but only if you make a deal with me.” “What sort of deal?” Acorn asked hoarsely. (Please take a moment to appreciate my pun. I put hours of work into it.) “You must simply agree to take a walk with me. That’s all.” “Where will you lead me?” Minos chuckled. “Ah, now that’s the question, isn’t it? You’ll just have to wait to find out. Although I’m sure you already know.” “When?” “When I call you.” Acorn ruminated. “Seeds symbolize life, yes, but they’re also inextricably wound together with death, Acorn,” the cat said, beating the seed metaphor to within an inch of its metaphorical life. “‘Verily, verily, I say unto you, except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.’” “John 5:24?” “Very clever, Acorn, but neither the word nor the Word can’t save you now. You know it’s 12:24. You also know that it’s the epigram of Братья Карамазовы. Yes, Acorn, your life is more Karamazovian — and more Dostoevskian, for that matter — than the lives of most.” “I would assume yours is as well. Tell me, which better describes your own life: Преступлéние и наказáние or Бесы?” “I’m sure you’d like to know. But let’s just say that my Записки are both из подполья and из Мёртвого дома.” Acorn was silent for a brief moment. The galaxies of synapses and neurotransmitters that crackled in his Gothic cathedral of a brain churned and stewed in deepest contemplation. “All right,” he said at last. “I’ve know that this day was coming. And I’ve put it off long enough. I’ll follow you, Minos.” “Don’t pretend you’re doing this for you, or for me,” the cat said. You’re doing it for her.” Acorn said nothing. “You’re not even going to deny it? Maybe you have changed after all. But too little too late. I look forward to our walk. Goodbye, Acorn.” Minos took a tiny pebble of a shit and slinked off into the black night. Ten minutes in the past, a dead girl’s heart restarted and she sat up in the snow. Acorn knew better than most that nothing comes without a cost.] #DetectivePony
the cat hiding [knowledge even more sinister and frightening than Acorn’s]? She still didn’t see him. “Where’s the black cat that [has been terrorizing us since this fateful] morning?” she said. Dr. Crandal looked around the office, too. “Isn’t he here?” he said[, the panic rising in his voice.] [Pawnee] came into the office. [Her blood ran cold when she saw that Anna was alive once more. But not literally cold in the sense of reptiles’ blood. She could still thermoregulate with the best of them.] “Where’s the black cat?” asked Anna. “Dr. Crandal got him out of the fire,” [Pawnee said, casting an uncertain glance at Pam. Pam mouthed, “Later.”] “Then what happened?” asked Anna. [Pawnee] thought for a second. “Brandy started to [admit to his many horrible crimes and murders],” she said. “I put the cat down [and gagged Brandy. The time for confession is later. Trust me. I know what I’m doing.] When I looked back, the cat was gone.” Anna felt [the] shiv[ that she kept in her pocket]. “Do you think the cat ran back into the fire?” she asked Dr. Crandal. “Like horses do?” Dr. Crandal shook his head. “No,” he answered. “[No animal but a horse would be idiotic enough to do that. God damn are horses stupid. Jesus Christ.” Pawnee pulled Pam aside as Anna and the doctor tended to the pets. “What the Christ-loving fuck happened to Anna?” she whispered. “I don’t know,” Pam said. “She seems unchanged so far. But who knows what she brought back from the Other Side with her?”] #DetectivePony
Chapter 5 Missing “Dr. Crandal, [what happens after death? Are all of our sins tallied]?” Anna asked nervously. “Every last one,” he said. He smiled at Anna. “[Pawnee] told me that you discovered the fire, Anna. You [just had to stick your fucking nose where it didn’t belong, didn’t you? If the clinic had burned down, I could have gotten a huge insurance check.”] “Acorn is [frightening me more and more each day],” said Anna. “He [has secrets locked inside his mind that no mortal should know. And I have a feeling that he will soon unleash them.”] “Then you’re both [abominations before the laws of man and God,” Pam whispered to herself.] Anna looked around the office again. Was #DetectivePony #TransDayOfVisibility #EridanWeek
room. The [sloth whose arm Anna had taken] was in one kennel. Two other cats and a dog were in kennels, too. The third dog was lying [to himself if he thought that his new haircut didn’t make him look like a washed up daytime talkshow host.] There had been three dogs[, three cats, and one sloth] in the kennel room that day. Now, [Pam saw only two cats, three cats, and the resentful sloth. She let out a sigh of relief]. The black cat was missing[, hopefully burned to a crisp like neglected bagel bites in a toaster oven.] Anna felt a [coldness that she had never before experienced]. What had happened to [her after she collapsed?] she wondered. Did [she] die in the fire? [Was this the afterlife? If so, the afterlife was really shitty. She tapped her sloth claws on the table in front of her rhythmically and pondered the consequences of her own existence as she had never done before. Pam, looking at her from across the room, was doing the same.] #DetectivePony #TransDayOfVisibility
https://i.imgur.com/LoYuW47.png #DetectivePony #SponsoredPost #Subway #EatFresh #FiveDollarFootLong #EridanWeek
“Anna, I’ve been looking all over for you,” one of the firefighters said. It was Anna’s father. [Pam] hardly recognized him. His face was [preternaturally pale, and his eyes seemed to glow faintly red — reflecting the still-glowing embers of the fire? Pam wondered, not yet suspecting what forces were working through him. From his words, it seemed that the poor man had not yet realized that his daughter was dead, Pam thought sadly. She watched the soot-stained firefighter kneel over Anna’s body in the snow. He took off his helmet and held Anna’s hand.] “You okay?” he asked. “I’m fine,” Anna answered[, sitting up. Pam gasped in shock. The girl had been indisputably dead for the last ten minutes. How was this possible? Not even in the most forbidden of dark magic books had Pam seen anything that could explain this seemingly miraculous revival.] Anna gave her father a quick hug. “See you later, Dad,” she said. Pam [decided not to question her friend’s resurrection for the moment. Anna seemed unaware of her own death, so Pam led her to the barn office without comment. But Pam was cautious: it was likely that this was not the same Anna that she had once known.] Dr. Crandal was putting a fresh bandage on Brandy’s wound. “Pam, please get [a clean pair of Sturmhose for this reprehensible war criminal],” he said. “They’re in the closet under the hayloft ladder. Anna, could you [sedate] Brandy for a second?” While Anna [pressed the ether-soaked rag over Brandy’s face,] she looked around the barn office. The Pony Pals’ [bound volumes of NYPD Blue fanfiction] were piled in a corner. Portable kennels were set up around the #DetectivePony