“Wai da fuk am we hewe Jon, dis pwace gib Scawwett da cweeps.”
“Just hold on a second Scarlett, this will be a quick stop, I promise. Just need to…”
Jonathan Mongola ripped out a piece of the vines blocking his way into the tunnel. This whole patch of woodland was overrun with weeds and overgrown bushes, what was once an old outflow pipe was now a refuge for damp plants and dead animals.
Absolutely perfect for your mad bomber on the run.
Jonathan gave another almighty tug and ripped the hanging vines right out from the roots, the entrance to the tunnel was now – mostly – free, pulling out a torch, Jonathan shone the low light into the gloom, the moist walls of the blackened stone reflected very little making it a dangerous trip for anyone who’d never come this way before.
Luckily for Jonathan, despite 8 years in prison, he’d been here plenty of times.
Ducking down to avoid the low ceiling, Jonathan pushed onwards into this dank piece of forgotten history, the walls were wet and cold to the touch, every new groove in the brickwork pressed into his fingertips, freezing them just enough to be painful. Silently he shuffled forward, his feet looking for the raised piece of concrete hiding just out of sight around the corner, after nearly breaking his jaw on his first trip here he wasn’t taking any chances.
“Wha Jon duin in dewe?”
“I’m looking for something, give me a moment.”
“Yu take tuu fukin wong.”
“You wanna come in here with me?”
“…Scawwett gud out hewe.”
Jonathan chuckled, for all her bravery Scarlett was still a Fluffy and that fear of the dark was way too overpowering. Hell even Jonathan himself had to admit that he probably wouldn’t be in here if he didn’t know the way.
His left foot shuffled forward only to stop suddenly as he reached the raised concrete, a manhole cover leading deeper into the sewer system. Carefully he traced his foot around the rim, making sure to keep himself as steady as possible as he shimmied around the obstacle in near total darkness. Once on the other side he raised his hands up, took a couple of blind steps forwards until he felt it, a piece of curved rebar hanging from ceiling.
He was close now, using the rebar to centre himself, Jonathan turned to the right, stepped forward until his hands touched the cold brickwork again, then he slowly and carefully started to kneel, keeping his hands pressed against the course, cold stone until…
Gotcha!
A small hole in the wall, barely noticeable in the gloom but a handy place to keep things stored. Jonathan reached into the wall until he felt something solid and plastic, carefully he pulled it out, making sure to keep it wrapped up tight under his arms as he made his way back outside.
Jonathan climbed out of the tunnel, finding Scarlett chasing after a butterfly.
“Dummeh wingie bugggie am showin off, jus cos Scawwett nu can fwy nu mean yu can.”
Jonathan snickered. “Leave ‘em alone Scarlett, he’s harmless.”
“He a pwick.”
“Yeah maybe, but he’s a bug, his brain isn’t big enough to know he’s annoying you.”
Scarlett growled at the butterfly but turned away and let it be, instead wandering over towards Jonathan as he sat down on the grass with his package.
“Wha dat?”
“This? This is a few things I put away for safe-keeping, just in case I ever needed them again. I dropped this off… just over eight years ago, it was one of the last things me and Joey ever did together.”
At the mention of his brother, Jonathan felt his throat clench as he remembered the last time he was in this place.
It had been a little over a day since Jonathan and Josef helped their Uncle Herman rid his farm of a feral herd, Jonathan had taken over the driving and had taken the two of them on a little detour to drop off his supplies. Something Josef found a tad annoying.
“Why the hell are you tracking me through this God forsaken forest?”
“Because I’m not having you done in if we’re found with an illegally owned firearm.”
Jonathan was relieved that the shotgun he’d hidden in the boot was registered to Herman, should that become an issue.
He continues. “Anyway, I’ve dropped shit off in here before, I won’t be long. You could’ve waited in the car you know.”
“And leave you to your own devices? Not a chance, you’d probably get distracted and start chasing after some feral Fluffies or some shit like that.”
Jonathan stopped, he dropped the sack carrying the supplies and reached into his back pocket to pull out the most important item he had on him. The Luger.
Jonathan could feel Josef tense up at the sight of the gun, partly due to his own conviction against firearms, mostly because of what the gun represented and what they’d just been through. Jonathan tried to remain as casual as possible as he checked the magazine.
“I’ve still got six bullets, you wanna?”
“Want to what?” Josef asked, his eyes zeroed in on the pistol.
“Chase after some feral Fluffies?”
Josef sighed. “You can’t be serious Jon, we just eviscerated an entire herd and you’re still thinking about killing. That shit almost drove you insane.”
“I know, I know, this’ll be different. This is casual brotherly bonding, just to use up the last of the bullets, less risk of them going off while the gun is left here.”
The two brothers stood and stared at each other, for Josef this was another worry for his brother’s fracturing mental health, for Jonathan it was the final chance to spend time with his brother before his plans for dealing with their parents.
More to the point, Jonathan hadn’t decided if he was going to survive these plans or not yet, not if he even wanted to.
After a few moments of silence, it was Josef that broke first, letting out a light chuckle and shaking his head in disbelief at what was coming out of his own mouth.
“Fuck it, just to get rid of the bullets. But you fuckin try anything…”
“Do you really think I’d blow my brains out in front of my own brother?”
“Yes.”
“Fuck you.”
Jonathan playfully smacked his brother’s arm as the two of them shared a laugh, a much needed relief after the past few days. Jonathan pushed his supply sack over to a tree trunk and motioned for Josef to follow him.
“Come on, we’re sure to find something sooner or later.”
Given the size of the forest and the dilapidated state it was in, it took a little longer than the brothers planned to find some ferals, but Jonathan had been marking the trees they passed with a knife and he knew these woods well so he wasn’t afraid of getting lost.
Eventually they came across a little clearing, a dead tree that had fallen over years ago and now served as a shelter for a small Fluffy family, an orange earthie stallion with a red mane, a yellow Pegasus mare with a green mane, and four foals who looked to be close to reaching the age where they would be weaned off their mother’s milk soon. A red colt, a green filly, an orange filly and a brown colt.
“Six Fluffies, six bullets.” Jonathan whispered to Josef. “You sure you don’t want a shot?”
“No fucking guns Jon.”
“Fair enough.”
“You sure this is a good idea? What if these guys are ok, are we really gonna kill a whole family who might actually be decent?”
A sudden voice from the tree answered Josef’s question for him. “Poopie babbeh. Gib bestesh babbeh wickie cweans ow daddeh gib yu wowstesh enfies.”
Josef scowled at his brother’s shit eating grin. “Fuck it, fine. Let’s fuck em up.”
The two brothers burst out of the bushes, taken the family by surprise, the two fillies shit themselves out of shock, the yellow mother gasped, and the red colt didn’t stop drinking his mother’s milk as he spilled out of his fat mouth and dribbled down his cheeks.
The orange father ran up to the intruders, his cheeks puffed up. “Wha dummeh hoomins duin in Fwuffy wand?”
Jonathan sneered at the stallion. “We heard there was bad Fluffies in the area, Fluffies who were threatening to give bad huggies to their own babbehs.”
“Hmmph, dummeh poopie babbeh onwy gud fow enfies, daddeh hab wump huwties wen speciaw-fwiend gibben gud babbehs miwkies.”
Josef looked over at the brown colt, using the opportunity of the distraction to hide away from his fat red brother. From what he could make out, it didn’t look like the colt had been raped by his father, but dad was clearly using the threat to keep him in line.
He relayed this to Jonathan by whispering in his ear so the stallion couldn’t hear him.
“Wha dummehs sayin, tawkies tu Fwuffy wight nyo!”
“My partner was just informing me that you ARE, in fact, a bad Fluffy. And we’re here to give bad Fluffies what they deserve.”
The stallion growled at them. “ONWY FING FWUFFIES DESEWVE AM WAWM HOMESIE AN SKETTI! ONWY FING DUMMEH HOOMINS GIT AM WOWSTESH SOWWY POOP…”
POP
As soon as the stallion turned around to aim his arsehole at the Mongola Brothers, Jonathan whipped out the pistol and fired right at the stallion’s nut-sack. The shot was a deadeye, piercing right through the stallion’s right testicles while ripping open his sack and severing his left bullock to plop out onto the ground.
“HHHHHUUUUUUUUU!!! WOWSTESH WUMP HUWTIES!” The stallion howled as he collapsed to the ground, trying desperately to stop his ruined ballsack from bleeding out. His mate looked on from her place inside the tree, scared at what had happened to her beloved, all the while her red son kept suckling on her teats.
“Speciaw-fwiend?”
POP POP
Two more shots, both aimed at the mare’s teats, the first one blew open her left tit in a flurry of red and white, shattering her hip and piercing through her guts. The second shot through the neck of her red son, before ripping into her right teat and ricocheting into her lung.
The mare started to panic, she couldn’t walk, she couldn’t breathe, and her bestesh babbeh was gurgling the last of his life as he drowned to death on blood and milk, unable to lift his head off her deflated tit.
“BES…BESTESH BAB…BEH! WHA… WHA WONG?” The yellow mare struggled to scream properly as the air leaked out of her blown lung.
Outside the tree, the two fillies ran around crying, but with their eyes shut and their self-preservation sills low enough to be considered non-existant, the two of them could only run in circles.
“HUU, NU WAN MEANIES IN FWUFFY HOMESIE!” The green one wailed.
“WAN MUMMAH, WAN HUGGIES, WAN MIWKIES!” The orange one howled.
The two of them blindly ran around until eventually they crashed into each other, knocking their heads together and falling onto their respective asses.
The green filly rubbed her forehead. “Owwies, wai sissy gib babbeh huwties?”
“Wowstesh finkie-pwace huwties, wai sissy huwt gud babb… GURGKH!”
The orange filly was cut off by the sharp stick that Josef had shoved into the back of her neck, piercing through her mouth and into the skull of her green sister. The orange filly gargled and choked, her eyes unable to look away from her dead sister and her speared eyeball, for several moments before she finally died herself.
As the pain between his legs started to fade – by the slimmest of margins considering his balls had been blown off – the stallion peeked out and looked around him, his whole family had been wiped out in an instant, his special-friend was hunched over, blood dribbling out of her mouth, their beloved red bestesh was still planted firmly on her tears, blood stained milk dripping out the back of his beck, and their two daughters were skewered together… Or at least they were until Josef coldly whacked their dead bodies against a tree to shake them loose.
All he had left was his poopie babbeh, the same poopie babbeh that Jonathan was strolling towards, the traumatised thing cowering behind some of the broken branches of the fallen tree.
Jonathan knelt down, hand outstretched. “Hey there, it’s ok. You’re not a bad Fluffy.”
“Ba… babbeh nu am bad?”
“No, you poor thing, I hear your family has been awfully mean to you.”
The brown colt sniffed and carefully stepped out of the branches. “Famiwy am wowstehs meanies, daddeh say he gib babbehs wowstesh enfies in nu wick bwudda’s poopie pwace. Mummah nu gib babbeh miwkies ow huggies, an sissies waugh at babbeh, caww babbehs poopie dummeh.”
“Oh that’s such a shame, If you liked, I could take you to a place where you could have all the milk and huggies you want.”
The brown colt gasped and bounded forward. “WEAWWY? Mistah be nyu daddeh?”
“Not exactly.”
POP
Jonathan’s movements were so fast that the brown colt didn’t even hear the shot that killed him, just a flash of white then nothing. Good thing too since Jonathan;’ fired the gun so close to the colt that the entire top half of the foal burst open from the blast.
“HUUUUUU!!!” The Stallion howled as Jonathan and Josef stood over their final victim. “WAI HOOMINS BE WOWSTESH MEANIES! WHA FWUFFIES EBA DU TU YU?”
Jonathan chuckled. “That’s a long and complicated question, but for why we targeted you specifically? Boredom mostly, plus we needed a reason to empty out my gun here, and since you’re all that’s left I can proudly put my final bullet right in your fucking…”
“Second final?”
Jonathan turned to Josef, a little annoyed at the interruption. “What?”
“Second final, you have two bullets left?”
“No I don’t.”
“Yeah, you do, I counted. One for this dude’s nuts, two for the mare’s tits, and one for the brown kid, that’s four. You have two left.”
Jonathan fell silent for a moment, doing the maths in his head, then without saying a word he fired a shot into the stallion’s spine, the bullet shattered the stallion’s backbone and kept pushing forward until it blew out of his asshole, oozing blood and shit onto his already wounded testicles.
“Is that better DAD?” Jonathan asked with a smirk.
“Don’t do that, you did that all the time when we were kids, the minute I pointed out a mistake you accused me of being dad.”
“Well maybe don’t point out all my mistakes then you fucking facist.”
“Well maybe learn to count you dopey cunt.”
The stallion looked up, between shock and blood-loss he was feeling woozy but he was sure these two humans were calling each other the meanest names and both laughing about it.
“Wa… wai am hoomins, so meanie?”
Jonathan jumped slightly. “Fuck, I forgot about you.”
POP
With no pomp or fanfare, Jonathan fired the final bullet into the stallion’s head, killing him at last. With the gun now officially empty, Jonathan turned back to Josef.
“That was rather fun, don’t you think?”
Josef shrugged. “Eh, it was alright. I think after Uncle H.A.M.’s I’m a bit burnt out on Fluffies. But I supposed it was nice to spend a little more time with you.”
“I’ve always got time for you Joey, and yeah, maybe I wasn’t ready to let this all end just yet. So I got an extra hour or two with you, seems worth it to me.”
“You sure you’re ok, I mean really ok?”
Jonathan let out a breathy chuckle, ironically his mind was so focussed on the upcoming murder of his father than he hadn’t put much thought into his trauma since leaving the farm.
“I’m good, I swear.”
Josef stared into his brother’s eyes, not fully believing what he said. “Alright then, if you say so. Now let’s get going, if we hit the road now we can hit the nearest town before nightfall.”
Leaving the dead Fluffies where they lay, Jonathan and Josef headed back through the woods, taking a considerably shorter time to return to where the tunnel was. Jonathan found his sack by the tree and pulled out a small cardboard box already half covered in cling-film, inside the box was a stack of notes, a couple hundred for emergencies, his black leather gas mask, and a large bag of rice into which Jonathan placed the Luger.
“What’s with the rice?” Josef asked.
“It’s to keep as much moisture away from the gun as possible, in case I need to use it again.”
Josef’s face dropped. “Can I give you some advice?”
“What?”
“Get rid of it, that gun and what it represents are as toxic to you as dad himself. Just be done with the damn thing, focus on getting yourself better.”
“We’re Mongolas Joey, we don’t get better.”
“You did. When you had Martha and Rolfy you were an entirely different person, a better person. All that gun and mask does is keep you tethered to dad’s bullshit ideology, you’re not the guy anymore John.”
Jonathan looked down at his supply box, it was true he probably didn’t need this stuff ever again, but his headspace was not in the right frame to think about that just yet. Not when he still had his father to contend with.
Silently, Jonathan closed the lid on the box and finished wrapping it in cling-film. “When the time comes for me to be the better person again Joey, I’ll let you know.”
Without waiting for Josef to respond, Jonathan climbed into the tunnel to hide his supply box away, thankful for the impenetrable darkness to hide the look of frustration on his face, knowing he let down both his brother and himself once again.
Back in the present, Jonathan stared at the open supply box, the gun, the money, the mask, it was all still here. Carefully Jonathan picked up the Luger, Josef’s words ringing in his eyes, as well as - for a brief moment – flashes of Jonathan using the gun on Katherine, putting one in each of her eyes as revenge for taking his brother away from him.
But Jonathan was older, not necessarily wiser but the idea of revenge tired him out now, he didn’t have the strength to hate any longer.
Quicker than Scarlett could comprehend, Jonathan unloaded the magazine from the Luger, threw the gun itself back into the tunnel with a loud clatter and tossed the empty magazine in the opposite direction further into the forest.
Scarlett jumped at the loud crash. “Da fuk was dat?”
“An old memory I had no use for anymore.”
“Da fuk dus dat mean?”
“Don’t worry about it.”
Scarlett grumbled slightly but said nothing else. Jonathan returned to the box, the cash he pocketed, figuring it would be better to use it than let it go to waste, providing it was still legal tender of course. All that remained was the gas mask, it’s darkened eyes staring back at him with hollow intent, saying nothing but sending a chill down his spine all the same.
He picked it up, ready to toss it away as well, when something fell out of the bottom, something Jonathan had forgotten all about. It was a photo, one of him, Martha and Rolfy not long after Rolfy has been born. Josef has bought the family a photos-hoot to commemorate the occasion, he said it was ironically sentimental but Jonathan knew there was some heart to the gift.
Picking up the picture, Jonathan had to laugh, between his shitty beard and his stress lines he looked 31 instead of 21, but it was a nice photo, the best one he had of Martha and Rolfy. He stared at the picture for several more minutes, too ashamed to admit that seeing their faces again reminded him of how little he actually remembered of them, how after 18 years he could barely recognise their faces anymore.
Quickly he put the photo away before Scarlett saw the tears pooling in his eyes. “So, yeah, let’s um… let’s get going.”
“Am Jon dun?”
“Yeah, I think I am.”
“Fank fuk, Scawwett am su bowed hewe. Need num sumfing fat an fwuffy soon.”
Jonathan chuckled as he pulled himself to his feet, placing the picture inside his jacket pocket next to Rolfy’s letter as he did. All that remained was the gas mask, something Jonathan could very easily leave behind, excise that part of him for good and move on with his life.
But instead he took it, not because he wanted to, but because there was some parts of his life he wasn’t ready to let go of. Not yet anyway.
Thanks to @infraredturbine for the picture of the happy couple.
This story is now my 300th chapter, so to mark the occasion I wanted to give Josef and Jonathan some time together, considering circumstances made that impossible for them currently.
Plus since Josef never used guns and since I try to avoid using them as much as possible in other stories, I figured a little shooting gallery would make a nice change of pace.
Thank you all for following me this far, God help me if I make another 300 of these damn things.
