She looked with strange curiosity at the young foal that lay gurgling and giggling in his little crib and could not help but notice the similarities between them. The pink mane, the happy sparkle in their eyes…

But her eyes sparkled no longer. Her mane was like a pink rag, unkempt and matted. Months of torment had weakened her, sucked the fat from her bones and left her like a dried husk, a shell of her former happy self. No longer did animals flock to be in her presence. No longer did the soothing sounds of the birds and the happy chattering of chipmunks and squirrels enthrall her. She was, if anything, a ghost with a pulse, a shadow with a body, empty space with volume.

Of course, she was not always like this. Only since the incident. The mere thought of the word incident fronted the memory to the top of her brain and to the front of her eyes.

That cold night outside Ponyville, coming back from picking wildflowers from the meadow. She normally didn’t stay out long after dark, but that night was an exception.

She hadn’t seen the other one, the one lurking in the bushes, trailing her with the devil’s intent blazing in his eyes. She’d been distracted. Angel had been sick with a terrible cold, and she was merely picking wildflowers in the meadow.

The path underneath her hooves still reeked of the heavy rain that had fallen the day before. The night was alive with the chirpings of crickets and the occasional hoot of an owl.

She never saw his face. Never.

He jumped her and made his intentions clear, smiling heinously as she screamed. And then it happened.

Months later, and here she was, staring into the eyes of the burden that had lain in her stomach for nearly a year. Was it a burden still? Surely, as this foal was not a foal but a consequence, an effect to a cause, insult to injury. Literally.

She could no longer bear to gaze into the child’s eyes, but never looked away. She became a statue, a frozen pony, made stiff by fear of the future and fear of the past. It was as if a pane of impenetrable glass separated them, split them apart, so that they could look and do nothing else. She looked over her burden again.

He was small, even for a foal, and his horn and wings were disproportionate to his body, yet somehow they seemed to fit perfectly with the rest of him. An alicorn. The alicorn, the first one born in years. And nopony knew.

Of course, how could they know? She left after it happened. It pained her to see her friends’ faces as she made her way out of the place she had lived for her whole life. They begged, they questioned, they pleaded. And she never told them. She ran.

And now she stood over the crib, gazing at the child with confusion.

With anxiety.

With…hatred.

Hatred for the horn that was not hers or his, but belonged to the demon that brought this blight upon her. Hatred for the bloodred skin that enveloped him. Hatred for the face, the little face he had that whenever she looked into she saw not a baby but a devil…

Hatred.

She hated him. She’d never hated anything before, and now she hated her only child.

But it was not her child. This did not come from her womb. It grew and fed on her like a parasite until it burst from her body, writhing and screaming like the blighted spawn it was. She had cried at his birth, and her wails long outlasted those of the newborn foal.

And now the time had finally come. The tipping point, some call it. When everything is permitted.

Everything.

At her hooves lay a blade of sharpened steel, cold as ice. She reached down and grasped the handle between her teeth, running her tongue over the smooth wood that tasted like the trees she used to cavort around. The knife caught the light, flashing as if eager to meet flesh. The foal, clueless as ever, enjoyed the flashing object, and clapped his tiny hooves together, eager for more.

She began to shake. Ice ran through her body. It was happening. She leaned her head back and positioned the knife’s point right over the little foal’s heart.

Sweat, cold and warm at the same time, rolled down her cheeks, mixing with new tears and forming a miniature waterfall of excess waste down her skin, dripping onto the foal who continued to watch in curious awe, unaware that death lay but half an inch above him.

She closed her eyes, and the tears that she held back stung the inside of her eyes. She could not watch. She could bear it no longer.

Yet something told her to open her eyes, just a sliver. And that was all that was needed. She saw her eye in the blade’s reflection, and she saw him. The devil. She saw him in there.

The demon was inside of her, aching to get out, smiling fiendishly just like he had the night he had made his way onto her and brought forth his devil seed, that which spawned the tiny creature whose life was now separated from death by a mere half-inch. She saw him, heard him, felt him. She tasted him on the wooden handle, smelled his odor, a queer mix of moss and honey. He, the devilish heretic, who turned an act of nature into a twisted, torturous violation, a heinous parody. He, the anonymous, the absolute horror. He, the abomination.

She saw him.

No. She only saw herself.

The knife met flesh and she carved out the baby’s still-beating heart. He never cried, not once, not even as his arteries spewed blood that painted a grotesque portrait of gore across her face. Not stopping, she went deeper, finding the child’s liver, cutting down like one would cut cheese. She separated the baby’s wings and horn from his body, tossing the wings aside and shoving the horn in his mouth to make sure he wouldn’t cry.

He wouldn’t.

And she cut and carved and cried the whole time, her tears mixing with her foal’s blood, entrails splattered across her body. The baby now resembled a split-open stuffed teddy bear, with stuffing pouring out of its belly. Rivulets of blood made crimson waterfalls that poured from the gaps of the baby’s crib.

But she couldn’t see the blood. How could she, when his skin was blood already? She was not hurting him. She was only hurting herself.

Yet she carved and carved, filleting the child until strips of flesh lay scattered around the room. She now wore a dress of blood that ran off her shoulders and legs, and her teeth ached from holding the knife. Sometimes she would put her hoof in the carcass and come away with her baby’s bloody skin, and sometimes her hooves would fill with gelatinous mush that she could not help but bring to her open mouth and let her tongue massage, tasting death, tasting her child, her devil, her burden.

And then it was over. The night was still. She breathed, inhaling blood and exhaling blood. She looked at the carcass.

It was her child no more.

No more.

She blinked, stood the knife up on the floor, the tip facing the sky, and fell gracefully onto the blade, ridding her of the evil, violated place that had been befouled and defiled by the evil demon. Her womb split open, pouring forth the vile, the atrocious. Matted blood seeped from her wound, mixing with her child’s.

And she laughed. Laughed with giddy glee, with joy. She was rid of it. She was rid of the evil at last!

She rolled onto her back and faced the ceiling, the blade of the knife entirely embedded in her body. Blood began to pour from her mouth, and every time she laughed she would spurt a little more, and it would coagulate in her eye, blinding her. Blinded by blood, ripped apart, lying in the remains of her child, she laughed.

For the first time in the longest while, she was happy. Blinded by blood, ripped apart, lying in the remains of her child.

She was happy.

And then the laughter ceased.