Hello everypony. Having a terrible sort of day, and my melancholy and emotional turbulence has me sitting here writing constantly as a distraction from the world. So, I'm back with the second short story that fits in between volumes 5 and 6. This is also the first Drake story written in third person, so it's a bit different from tall the other stories. It was the best way to write this one, so I went with it. There's a reference to a movie in here...in fact, most of the story is an homage to a scene in said movie. I hope you all enjoy this one. Please review.
"Drake?" Budder called quietly. The yellow-tan earth pony foal, unable to sleep, walked down the long hall from her bedroom. She often wondered to herself why her big brother had bough such a huge house in the first place. The bedrooms alone were twice the size of a normal bedroom. The thirteen year old pony would never complain about that fact, but the idea of a home having two big living rooms and a walk in cupboard still took a lot of getting used to.
Budder walked past the door of Drake's study, a bedroom her brother had turned into his private office, and she halted as she heard the sound of a drill. She rolled her grayish-blue eyes. It was midnight, and her brother was still at it. Budder knew that he'd been working on a murder case, a side project for the local police. Her brother told her everything, of course, and even allowed her to accompany he and Dash on their cases sometimes. Still, she worried about Drake when he got like this. He would stay up, barely getting any sleep and barely eating anything while he was working on one of his mysteries. And while Budder admired her older brother's intelligence and detective skills, she had to admit that he could get a little...weird.
"Hey..." She said, opening the door to the moderately-sized room. Her mouth fell open as she beheld what her brother was up to at this hour.
On a table near the back of the room was a head...as in a real, dead, flesh-and-bone head. It was suspended in a strange vice-like contraption. Her brother, the stark-white earth pony stallion detective was standing near the table, his messy black mane indicative of the fact that he was up long after he should have been asleep. He was carefully focusing a round mirror of some kind. He looked over and spotted his little sister staring at the scene, and looked at the head, then back to Budder.
"Oh, hey Budder. Thought you were asleep." He said.
"Um...couldn't...sleep..." Budder replied, still glancing at the disembodied head.
"Oh...well, come in if you want." Drake offered, still acting like there was nothing at all strange about the situation. Budder stepped into the room. Drake chuckled a bit, and threw a lock of messy black mane from his face. "Sorry about the...uh...the mess." Budder stopped in front of her brother, and pointed a hoof at the nearby table.
"That...is a pony's...head..." She muttered, half-shocked, and half-confused.
"Oh, that." Drake answered nonchalantly. He trotted to the head, which Budder could now see had a large circle of skull removed from the back, and the brain was missing. "This was one of the two victims of the murder case I've been working on.. He was...without any identification, a real John Dough, so I...borrowed his head from the medical examiner, Dr. Bone Saw."
"That...is a pony's head..." Budder groaned.
"See sis," Drake continued, seemingly unfazed. "...there's a medical theory I heard, that the last thing somepony sees before they die is imprinted on the back of their eyes...kind of like a photograph. They say if you shine a bright light onto the back of the eyes just right, it will project the image so that we can see it. Pretty neat, huh?" He proceeded to focus the mirror, shining a bright light from two large oil lamps into the hole in the skull, making the eyes glow slightly. Budder wrinkled her nose in disgust and looked in disbelief at Drake.
"Thaaaat...is a ponyyyyyys...heeaaaaaaad..." She squeaked, trying not to be sick. Drake's expression turned sour. He played with the mirrors a few more moments before letting out an exasperated sigh.
"Welp...that didn't work." He shrugged. Drake loosened the bolts holding the head, and took the macabre item over to a large metal pan. "Gonna have to bag this up and take it back to the medical examiner tomorrow morning." He smiled at his sister and shrugged again. "Worth a shot, right? I mean, at least we know the theory is wrong now, huh?"
"That was...a real, scientific theory?" Budder asked, still grossed out.
"Weeellllll..." Drake grinned nervously. "Heheh...I saw it in a movie..."
"THAT...is a pony's...HEAD!"
