evenge

        It's cold in the gulag north of Stalliongrad. Incredibly cold. The kind of cold that seeps into a man's bones and stays, just lingers, until it feels like he's freezing from the inside out. Like he's slowly turning to brittle ice and the slightest motion will shatter him. The gulag. God how I hated that place. Total isolation for 23 hours a day. Nothing to talk to but the walls and the furniture. The furniture had little to say. The hard cot wasn't much of a conversationalist. The sink; with the water so cold it hurt to drink; it always had the reasonable suggestion of drowning myself in it. The bucket complained constantly. Considering what I did to it I can forgive it for that. The walls themselves...they listened. Always listened. Never once had a word out of them. Suspected they had some stories to tell, but try convincing slabs of granite to talk.

        Then there was the one hour a day when chaos reigned. Four guards, massive white pegasus stallions with golden armor, all intent on restraining me. I stopped resisting after the third day. I stopped pleading my innocence after the tenth. I stopped trying to talk to them after the second month. They never had anything to say. I would occasionally try to speak with the mare that came in and changed out the bucket. Sometimes it was a different one. One actually opened her mouth to talk to me but a quick glare from a guard stifled whatever she was going to say. It didn't matter. They couldn't help me.

        Half an hour in the weak northern sun. Half an hour to pace back and forth inside the cage like some sort of feral beast. I suspect, by the end, that I was half feral. That the isolation and cold and constant craving for meat had driven me almost insane. Sometimes I would just stand there, hands wrapped around the bars, grinning at the guards. Ponies don't have canine teeth. Humans do. It must have been a disturbing sight. There's this thing that came into your world spattered with blood and it's staring at you like you would a big slice of pie.

        I was the only prisoner at the gulag. They didn't even have trained guards, had to import them from Canterlot. The biggest and toughest I learned later. Volunteer duty only. They'd serve month long rotations. Some of the stories they told about me...a bunch of pot smoking hippies may have thought I was a monster because of my job. The guards thought I was a demon. They were convinced I had supernatural powers. They would tell stories of how they would hear me in the night sometimes. Talking to the walls. Arguing with the furniture. Laughing, just laughing for no apparent reason. And yet I never broke. Came close, but never did.

        For two years they kept me there. Two long, miserable, soul crushing years. And when they finally told me that they were going to let me out, going to take me before Princess Celestia and have a talk with her, I didn't believe them. This was how they were going to break me. They were going to give me hope and then snatch it away from me again. I was still demanding to be returned to my cell as they gave me a hot bath and clean, warm clothes (some sort of heavy blanket wrap actually). It took one of the guards sampling the plate of hot food before I'd eat it. And, I'll admit, I froze at the threshold to the place. I was sure that if I stepped across very bad things would happen to me. Took them over an hour to talk me into walking to the waiting chariot and climbing aboard.

        I did meet with the princess. Turns out another human had somehow arrived in Equestria during my imprisonment. Only thing is, he didn't show up wearing a bloody apron with a skinning knife in one hand and the still twitching head of a cow in the other (I was on my way to give it to the inspector). It had taken a little while to verify that yes, we were mostly harmless. It had taken a little while longer (and some covert observation) to make sure that I was not going to be a menace if released. And a little while longer still to piece together the original accounts I had given my captors when I first arrived, that I was engaged in a legitimate profession in my world and that livestock were not sentient. All told, about four months. While this other man walked about free, made friends, hell even enjoyed himself for all I knew. I had a choice there. I could scream, launch myself at the Alicorn in a desperate attempt to draw blood, and wind up a smoldering pile of ash or piece of statuary for my trouble. Or I could laugh. I started laughing. When Celestia asked me what was so funny I laughed harder. I laughed until I cried, until I couldn't breathe. Wiping the tears from my eyes I looked the demi-goddess straight in the eye and said a single word. Tanj. She didn't seem to get it. That's fine.

        They asked if I wanted to meet this fellow. They hadn't told him about me for the simple reason that I was considered a dangerous criminal and they decided he didn't need to know I existed. I can understand that. Figuring that chances were I'd be unable to stop myself from going for his throat I politely declined, at least for the moment. I wanted to be somewhere warm, have a chance to rest and put my mind back in order before I met the man who had apparently been living like a normal human being while I slowly froze in a cell. I'm not one to hold a grudge but for a few weeks at least I needed to be as far as possible from this guy.

        They sent me west, to some little town called Appleloosa. Country to rival the national parks of Utah, a small orchard, and a local buffalo tribe. I've seen smaller towns out on the eastern plains of Colorado. Hereford, for instance, consists of a four way stop, a bar with an attached convenience store (no gas pumps), and a pair of silos across the street. Lots of cattle haulers go through there at night. Very little else. Difference with this place was that it was alive, growing, always things to do and never enough time or hands (hooves, excuse me) to do them. They welcomed me. I had opposable thumbs. I could climb. I knew how to drive a nail and saw a board and set a frame (OK dad, I take back all that bitching I did about putting the deck within 1/64 of an inch square). I wasn't as strong as I was when I first arrived right off the kill floor but extra helpings of the simple, hearty food started to put meat back onto my bones.

        Best three weeks of my life were spent helping the ponies in that town. The sheriff and I got on famously. A stallion named Braeburn and his buffalo friend Little Strong Heart took me exploring every spare chance we had. Usually we'd get to someplace and I'd find a high point to just sit and stare into the horizon until the sun started to set. This is what I had always wanted in my heart. The frontier. A place where I could walk tall and proud and make a name for myself as a good man. Raise fences, raise crops, raise a family. That wasn't an option back on Earth. Too hard to get into ranching, too hard to stay in it. Out here though...I could make it. I would close my eyes and imagine a future for myself helping this town grow. I'm guessing my friends didn't mind the time I spent by myself like that. The one time I had come back early from one of my ponderings I had heard the unmistakable sounds of love making going on behind some bushes. The hat peeking out from the edge had given me all the extra information I needed. I backed away as quietly as I could and waited for them to come and get me.

        I wish it could have lasted forever. But I had to meet that other human. Had to know how he was coping. How the thought of never being able to start a family, always being different was hitting him. So I got on a train and went East. Arrived in Ponyville. Nobody there to meet me at the station of course. They had a resident human. One more wasn't that big a deal. Especially since the official story from Celestia was that I had been found, half-starved and out of my mind with fever, wandering the tundra a month ago. Ho-hum, old news. I had kind of expected to meet my fellow man when I got into town but he must have been busy. Figured the news that there was another person he could talk to would excite him.

        After some questioning of the locals I tracked him down at a clubhouse for a few foals out on the local apple farm. I followed the narrow path leading to it. Little clubhouse, obviously maintained with love. Picnic table to one side. I would have knocked on the door, should have knocked on the door. Instead I hesitated for a moment because I thought I heard something strange. Hesitated another and listened. Sounds of a couple having sex inside the place. Was this some sort of hideaway for this guy? A love nest of sorts? I figured it'd be wrong to disturb a man while he's getting some so I took a short walk to pass the time. Sodden roll of fabric in a pond, scraps from what looked like scenery construction, a few odds and ends that foals might find interesting for a while and then discard. Came back to the clubhouse and it had quieted down.

        I was about to step out of the bushes and hail the place when the door opened. I'll be damned if a little orange pegasus foal didn't even have her cutie mark, stepped out of the door. The human followed. They went down the ramp, she said something to him. He knelt down. She stood up on his knees and kissed him. Kissed him like a lover. Hot and heavy and her wings flared out like I'd seen some pegasi do when they see something that turns them on.

        My first thought was to charge into that clearing and beat the son of a bitch to death. My second was that he might not be in the wrong. My third was something along the lines of 'It doesn't matter; he was having sex with a child. He's a pedo...foalaphile. You know what to do with them. Rope and tree boy, rope and tree.' I faded back into the bushes, let him go past, and didn't say a thing.

        What could I do? Sure, I could have gone after him right then and there. Again, I might have been in the wrong. How would that sound coming from me? Yeah, hey, are there age of consent laws in Equestria? Why? No reason. Straight back to the gulag. Or what if I was right and there were? Would murder be justifiable in such a case? I tried to sort it all out. I really did.

        I wound up catching a train back west. Back to Appleloosa. Back to where I belonged. Where I thought I belonged.

        It's cold in the gulag north of Stalliongrad. So very cold. But it doesn't bother me as much anymore. My mind keeps me plenty warm at night. Part of it is remembering the meat. Charred on the outside, raw on the inside. There's a lot of meat on a bison. In the four days it took them to find me I had barely eaten ten pounds of him. All the choice bits first of course. Tenderloin. Hump ribs. Thick steaks. It was so rich that I threw up the first portion. I didn't care. I just cut myself another with the obsidian knife I had made and cooked it right up too. I was eating when they came across me. Probably fortunate that it was the ponies that found me. The looks of horror were...well they haunt my dreams. But it was worth it.

        The buffalo wanted my head of course. I can't say as I blame them. Again, it's fortunate that I was caught by ponies. Princess Celestia personally oversaw my brief trial and sentencing. When she asked me if I had any way of explaining myself I just laughed. I told her that we're all monsters. Every last human being she would ever meet. All of us, monsters. That seemed to trouble her a little bit. I'm glad. Because it wasn't so much for the meat (although it was worth it) that I did it.

        The cell I'm in now has room for two bunks instead of just one. Room for another occupant. Room for that son of a bitch diddling foals down in Ponyville. I might have been wrong. He might be innocent of any crime. I might never wake up one morning to see a bunch of guards throwing him in with me. But I somehow doubt it. I'm guessing I'll be seeing him again, sooner or later. Put the monsters together, see which one wins.

        I've heard that we taste like pork. I can't wait to find out.