Die, Brony, Die

by Paul Neuhaus

  I grinned. “Keri, if I’m gonna help you, you’re gonna half to stop sugarcoating the pill. Give it to me straight, girl.”

  She actually laughed. “I guess we must look like a real shit show to you. The Wieners, I mean.”

  “No, you look human.”

  The girl cocked her head. “Are you human?”

  “Yeah, I’m human. What do you mean?”

  “Don’t get offended. You know why I’m asking. You say you’re human, but, according to local legend, you’re thousands of years old and you catch evil spirits in a magic jug.”

  “That... is true. But all that was just bad luck. I had a hex put on me and it complicated my life. Apart from that, I’m as human as you are.”

  “Debatable,” Keri said with a smile. “Even if you take out the curse part, you’re still eight inches taller and you look like a pleasingly plump Monica Bellucci.”

  “Not my fault. If you like this particular look, try getting born Mediterranean next time.”

  “Should we get started on our warrantless search and seizure?”

  “Yeah. Where’s this office of Elijah’s?”

  “Come on,” Wiener said, and she led me up the steps to the second floor.

  A bath and three bedrooms, one for mom and pop, one for Keri, and one kept as an office. The door was shut and there was a traffic sign hung on it. “No Trespassing,” it said. Just the kind of accent you’d expect on a tween boy’s room. My guide took me to the office and put her hand on the doorknob. “I have never been through this door. I have no idea what’s inside. If we find mangled bodies or something, you can’t testify in court. I won’t let you. I have a low center of gravity and I’m mean. You may be bigger than me, but I think I can take you.”

  I grinned. “I believe you. Do you think Addie’s ever been in here?”

  “No. And it isn’t out of respect. It’s out of a complete lack of interest. Again, if it doesn’t help Addie, Addie doesn't care.” Keri turned the knob and opened the door. Which revealed not mangled bodies but another door. The office had a teeny tiny little vestibule. Elijah really was serious about his privacy. After she opened the second door, Keri clearly wished there had been mangled bodies. She was mortified by what we found. I was just dumbfounded.

  The walls were covered with pastel-colored ponies with huge eyes. Cardboard pastel ponies hung by strings from the ceiling creating pony mobiles. Plush pastel ponies stared back at us from wooden shelves. It was hard to find a square inch of space that wasn’t occupied by a pastel pony. “What the fuck?” I said.

  Keri plopped down on the leather couch against the right wall. She put her chin in her hands and looked stricken.

  “What is all this?”

  “Apparently my dad is a brony.”

  She might as well’ve said, “My dad is ham sandwich with provolone” for all the good it did me. “What is a brony?” I said, turning my head here and there to take in the brightly-colored equine tableau.

  The teenager sighed a full-bodied sigh. “There’s this show. It’s a show for little kids. For little girls, actually. It’s called My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. They put it on, expecting to, I don’t know, grab the pre-teen chick audience and sell some merch, only something weird happened. All these dudes started watching it. And, by that, I mean dude dudes. Old dudes. Like twenty- and thirty-something dudes. They started gathering online and then meeting in person and they’d talk about how they loved ‘My Little Pony’, and they bought dolls, and they wore t-shirts, and they cosplayed. It’s fucking bizarre, but I assure you, it’s a real thing. I heard about them online, and then I watched this documentary about them, and I remember thinking, ‘Man, these are some broken-ass motherfuckers. Only now, my dad is one of them and, I gotta tell you, I’m shook.”

  I tried to reassure her. “Maybe you’re jumping to conclusions. Maybe this isn’t what you think.”

  Keri bugged her eyes out at me and said, “Really? Take a look around.”

  “Okay, okay. I’ll grant you, it looks bad, but let’s not worry about it right now. Mission number one is still finding Elijah.” I moved around to the business side of the desk and sat down behind the iMac. Next to the computer was rack of papers and next to the mousepad was a little date book. Before I picked up the book, I opened the drawer in front of me and saw me looking back. El had an old photo of yours truly. Nice, I guess, but I was still thrown enough to slam the drawer again. I picked up the little book and started to thumb through it. “Where does the term brony come from?”

  “Bros. Bros who like ponies. Bronies.”

  “Right. Of course.” I flipped to the current week and saw all the dates Elijah had been gone were blocked out and labeled “B.K.”. “Bingo,” I said and handed the book to the teenager.

  “‘B.K.’? What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Search me. But whatever it is, it accounts for Elijah’s whereabouts.”

  “B.K.? Could that be the woman he’s having an affair with?” Then she snapped her fingers. “B.K.! Beyonce Knowles! Do you think my dad’s having an affair with Beyonce Knowles?”

  “I do not think your dad is having an affair with Beyonce Knowles. Beyonce Knowles would never date a brony.”

  Keri scrunched her face. “Yeah, you’re right about that.”

  I took the papers out of the rack next to the computer. They were all printed receipts for various and sundry. The third one I looked at was another piece in the puzzle. “Double bingo!” I said and handed the sheet to Wiener.

  “It’s a receipt,” she said. “For the BronyKonfab. Confab with a K. Two hundred and forty-nine dollars and ninety-nine cents.”

  “Look underneath the two forty-nine.”

  “There’s another charge. For a hotel in Santa Monica. BronyKonfab must be a convention.”

  “Mystery solved.”

  “Ugh. I wish he’d been having an affair instead.”

  I smiled. “Now, now. Try and be charitable.”

  “I can be charitable all day long with someone like uncle Jack. He didn’t choose to be the way he is. My pops chose this.”

  “How do you think it happened? I mean, when I knew him, Elijah never displayed any... brony-like tendencies. Sure, he was a nerd, but this brony thing feels like a lifestyle choice.”

  Keri sighed. “Well. You’ve had your hard knocks. Jack’s had his hard knocks. Pops had some hard knocks too. For a while, he was doing well. Doing what he wanted to do. He made enough scratch to keep us all comfortable, but he lost it and it hurt him. He wanted, more than anything, to make movies, but he had a business partner. Money started disappearing. The ground got shaky. Do you see this poster?” She flicked her thumb over her shoulder and, for the first time, I noticed a non-pony item in a sea of pony-ness. It was a framed poster for a horror film. The Grim Reaper standing in front of a spooky forest. The logo underneath.

  “Yeah.”

  “Look closer.”

  I looked closer and saw what she wanted me to see. The words on the poster were “A new Experience in Terror: The Grim Raper.” I sighed. “The Grim Raper?”

  “Right. That poster marks the end of my dad’s professional life. He had his production company. They made a little movie called The Grim Reaper. They spent their last dime on those posters, and they came back from the printers as ‘The Grim Raper’ and that was it. They didn’t have the scratch to get them redone, and you can’t market a movie called ‘The Grim Raper’.”

  “It’s a tough sell, I’ll admit.”

  “Plus, there were other missteps. Dad tends to lead with his chin. To act on instinct. He invested in a line of pet synagogues. That went about as well as you’d expect.”

  “Pet Synagogues?”

  “Yeah. A real flame-out. He couldn’t get the little yarmulkes to stay on the doggies and kitties. It was doomed to failure.”

  “Wow.”

  “I know. If you see my dad again, don’t ask him about the poster. He’s sensitive.”

  �
��He’s sensitive? Then why’s he got the poster on his wall?”

  Keri rolled her eyes. “I dunno. He has a thing about destiny and an uncaring universe. You know the shtick.”

  I stood up and walked away from the desk. In transit, I accidentally bumped the mouse. The screen came awake and, at first, I didn’t pay it any mind. Then I did a double take and backed up. On the screen was a photograph. In the photograph were two men standing on either side of a horse. Not a cartoon horse, but a real horse. Both men were dressed as characters from “My Little Pony”—and that wasn’t even the most arresting thing in the photo. “Get over here,” I said to Keri.

  Keri got up off the couch and came around to stand next to me. “Oh my god!” she said.

  The man on the left was Elijah. I didn’t recognize the guy on the right. “Who’s the guy on the right?” I said.

  Keri leaned in to take a closer look at the picture. She was fixated on the same thing I was fixated on. “What? The guy on the right? That’s my dad’s best friend. Chad Kroeger.”

  I was stymied for a moment. “Chad Kroeger? The singer from Nickelback?”

  “No, but he has the same name, so he does that ironic, hipster thing of embracing it. He claims to be the world’s biggest Nickelback fan.”

  “And he’s also a brony?”

  “Looks that way.”

  “Ouch.”

  “Why’re you focusing on Chad? Look at the fucking horse.”

  She was right.

  The horse between the two men had wings.

  3

  Fear and Loathing at BronyKonfab

  Seeing the picture gave me a shot of adrenaline. For the moment, thoughts of sleep went out the window. The horse in the photo was either the Pegasus of legend, or it was some damn-convincing equine cosplay. I looked closely, trying to determine if the wings were made of papier-mâché. They looked like the genuine article. Like bird wings only fucking huge. I couldn’t see the animal’s back because his head was in the way, but the wings looked like they were placed properly and were sturdy enough that they could’ve gotten the critter aloft.

  “Is that what I think it is?” Keri said.

  I squinted even harder, almost willing myself to find some defect. “It sure as hell looks like it.”

  “What do you think now?”

  “I think maybe we oughta go find your dad.”

  “See? I told you there was something weird going on!”

  “Good for you. When they hospitalize me for exhaustion, you can tell them you were right. Come on. We’re going back to Santa Monica.”

  We exited the room for the second time, shutting both doors behind us. On the way to the stairs, the teenager moved toward her bedroom. “Hold on a sec. I gotta get something.”

  “Time for another dose?”

  Keri tried to look innocent, but she took my meaning. “A dose?”

  “Of happy pills.”

  The girl dropped her hand from the knob and went for the stairs. She didn’t comment, so neither did I. When we got outside, Beardie was still sitting in his BMW. I waved at him as I got into the Firebird and started her up. Sure enough, as we pulled out of Westwood, the beemer followed at a discreet distance.

  I took the long way back to Santa Monica by way of Malibu. If the picture of Elijah, Chad and the winged steed was real, I wanted some back-up. I needed my Intel.

  All I wanted to do was scoop up Hope and be on my way. Unfortunately, another rude surprise was waiting for me when I opened the door. There was Hermes sitting on my couch in front of my laptop with his pants around his ankles. He scrambled to cover his cock and I slammed the door. Through the door, I heard him say, “Don’t you believe in knocking?!”

  I shouted back at him, “This is my house, motherfucker!”

  After a moment, he poked his head out the door and said, “Please. Come right in.”

  Keri and I brushed past him. Both of us gave the messenger god a sour look. “What were you even looking at on there?” I said. “I don’t have high-speed Internet.”

  Hermes shut the laptop. “An archive of J.C. Penny’s catalogs. Lingerie section.”

  “Dude. You have a problem. You need to talk to someone. You have no impulse control.”

  “You made yourself into Jellybelly’s Happy-time Petting Zoo,” Keri said to Hermes.

  Hope chimed in. “I cleared my throat a few times, but he ignored me. He’s like a horny little monkey.”

  Hermes rolled his eyes. “Okay, okay. We all got to see a god’s pee pee. Big deal. Let’s try and stay adult about this.”

  I started to say something about maturity levels and self-gratification, but I didn’t wanna spend any more time on it. I turned to Keri. “What’s Jellybelly’s Happy-time Petting Zoo? That’s the second time you’ve mentioned it. Was it a kids’ show?”

  The teenager shook her head. “No, it was a real place. My dad used to take me there. During better times.”

  Hope drew my attention away from Wiener. “Thank the gods you’re home,” she said. “We’ve got an Evil right on top of us. In Santa Monica even.”

  I hadn’t expected to hear that. “Wait... What?”

  “I just picked up a blip,” my jar-bound friend said. “Right before you came in. He’s only a few miles from here. And he’s a nasty one.”

  “Swell. That’s a complication we don’t need. You said Santa Monica... He wouldn’t be in the Convention Center, would he?”

  “That sounds about right.”

  “Fuck. Okay. I knew I was right to stop for Intel.”

  Hope cooed at the word "Intel". I’d found an idiom she was deeply in love with. “Take me with you. I can be Nicky Parsons!”

  “That’s right. You can be Nicky Parsons.” Nicky Parsons was the character Julia Stiles played in the Bourne movies. More often than not, her role was to feed Matt Damon information through an earpiece. I scooped up Hope and opened the front door again. “When I get back,” I said to Hermes. “I’m going over this place with a black light. Just so you know.”

  The god mocked me in a sing-song cadence. “Just so you know.”

  Keri and I exited, ran to the Firebird, and jumped in.

  On the drive over to Santa Monica, Hope and I shared info. I told her about our probable Pegasus sighting and she told me the Evil in play was none other than the Kraken. A sea monster spawned by Poseidon. That added an extra dimension since the Kraken had a personal beef against Pegasus. It was Pegasus and Perseus who stopped the Kraken’s attack on the coastal city of Argos. The beastie might’ve been looking to settle an old score.

  After Hope told me her bit, she said, “I’m sorry.”

  “For what?”

  “Because the Kraken was one of the nine thousand we already had. He must’ve slipped out when I rolled over. On top of Vasquez Rocks.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” I replied. “That was a joint operation and we were spinning a lot of plates. The fact we only lost one of the little fuckers is nothing short of amazing.”

  “I know, but I still feel bad. And, yes, before you ask, I did take an inventory as soon as I realized the Kraken was loose. He’s definitely the only one that gave us the slip.”

  I shrugged my shoulders as I drove. “Look on the bright side. The fact we came out as well as we did kind of makes us badasses.”

  Hope mulled that over for a moment. “Don’t be too hasty,” she said. “There’s an aspect that maybe hasn’t occurred to you...”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, this is only a theory, but it seems like a strong one: What if the Kraken got access to Pegasus? What do you think he’d do?”

  “You mean apart from killing him for revenge?”

  “Yeah, apart from that.”

  Then it hit me. I saw exactly where Hope’s head was at. “Oh. Shit.”

  Keri had been looking back and forth between me and my talking jug. “What? What would the Kraken do apart from killing Pegasus for revenge?”

  I sighed,
hooking us off of the Pacific Coast Highway into Santa Monica. “A long time ago, Hope and I captured the Kraken. When that happened, we sucked out his essence and put him in the pithos. When he escaped us recently, he was still just a disembodied spirit—but he doesn’t have to stay that way. If he can drink the blood of a magical creature—like Pegasus—he can get his physical form back.”

  “And that would be bad?”

  “Only if you think having a forty-foot bipedal crab running amok over Southern California is bad.”

  I had to hand it to Keri. She was taking the more outlandish elements of our misadventure in stride. Maybe she was the type to soldier on and put off the nervous breakdown until after. Maybe that’s what the pills were for. “Okay, okay,” she replied. “Hope said the Kraken was at the Santa Monica Convention Center. That’s not where Pegasus is. At least it doesn’t look like that’s where he is.”

  “No, but there are at least two people at the BronyKonfab who know where the horse is holed-up.”

  “My dad and Chad...”

  “Your dad and Chad.”

  “Can’t you make this thing go any faster?”

  When we got to the Convention Center, the first thing we noticed were the cop cars and the ambulances. They were hard to miss since they were blocking one of the entrances and their sirens were strobing blue and red. In fact, we’d arrived in time to see a gurney wheeled out of the big building—a gurney with a body covered from head-to-toe by a sheet. Where the head was, there was a huge red-black stain.

  Keri gasped. “Oh, shit! Do you think that’s my dad?”

  “No, I do not think that’s your dad,” I said in the most reassuring tone I could manage. “The odds of that being Elijah with all the other people who’re in that building, are slim to none.” I started going over the options in my head. There was no way in hell we were parking at the Convention Center with all the chaos surrounding it. I tooled around for a while until I found a meter on a side street, then I parked. Sure enough, the BMW S was still lurking about. I’d almost forgotten about him in all the confusion.