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Shatter Me

Written by Arian Mabe (Amethyst Mare) for Technophile

Isole screamed. They had always told her that riding her motorbike at high speeds through the city would be the death of her one day and it seemed that day had come all too soon. Head down, the unicorn whooped as the lights turned green at the intersection, twisting the throttle for more revs - ever more and more and more. The city skyline towered above, geeing her on as sunshine glanced off her shiny black coat. The equine pushed a darker mane tinged with deep purple away from her neck where it obnoxiously clung. Damn the weather. Her crimson horn glowed fiercely.

And then the toymaker's globe took a tumble. The car that did not wait at the intersection smashed into her bike, catapulting her through the air as easily as a child would hurl a rag doll away in a toddler's rage. She left the bike behind and horns blared in every direction and no direction all at once, lights flashing in blinding beams, too bright for the day. As if in slow motion, she watched, fascinated, as she flew into the bonnet of another car that screeched to a halt, the driver as slack jawed as a pet goldfish.

The world quickened.

Thrown across the diamond shatters of a ruined windscreen, the wind tore her shriek from the raw stretch of her throat an instant before she struck tarmac. The impact knocked the breath from her lungs and she rolled, hair tangling in a wild mess around her muzzle. It knotted around her neck and, for a moment in motion, she panicked, clawing at it in crazed fear that it would prevent her from breathing.

Of course, breathing was not something Isole had to worry about. She had far more pressing concerns.

At first she thought that she had gotten away scotch free - what luck! The unicorn parted her lips in a grin, teeth flashing white. What other fur could say they had walked away from a crash like that? It was nothing short of a miracle. With the back of her skull on the tarmac, she rolled her head to the right and pushed her forelock out of her eye, brain slowly catching up with her body. She should have been in more pain than she was, surely? Something shiny caught her eye.

There was a leg in the road. Isole almost laughed. What was a leg doing on the road? What was that doing there? Had one of the other drivers had such a horrible crash that his leg had been severed? The leg gleamed black, tipped with a metal hoof, and the thigh sparked with multi-coloured wires, electricity making the limb twitch as if alive. It was familiar. Too familiar. What was it? She had to know if it was familiar, it was only logical to know. Something burned. The unicorn's eyes went wide and injury seared her skin.

It was her leg.

Pain swelled, a rising tide in the pit of her stomach that churned and churned and churned. If she had had the capacity to, she would have vomited at the sight of her own limbs strewn across the road like toys. For it was not just her leg. The largest 'whole' part of her body remaining was her torso, blessed with both arms and most synthetic flesh down to below her breasts, devoid of nipples, where what had been her body devolved into a wreck of her.

And all through the carnage wires screamed and sparked, jetting shudders of increased pain through her mind in relentless waves. One after the other, wave after wave came, and she pounded her fists into the tarmac, lunging for her severed abdomen and hips, sex gaping for the world to see, as if she could put herself back together, piece by piece.

"Look, mummy!"

Isole whimpered and turned away from the young fur, pressing her muzzle into the tarmac. Crowding around, her audience raised phones, capturing her horror in digital form, not a soul making a move to help her. The unicorn howled, throwing her head back. Was it okay just because she wasn't bleeding? Because her body was made up a little differently to most furs? Why wasn't anyone calling an ambulance? Tears rolled down her cheeks to splatter on the ground and she cried out lowly, a wounded, haunting sound that stopped onlookers in their tracks. The mother hushed her curious cub, bundling the little ocelot away in a flutter of skirts.

"Don't look, darling. Don't look."

Would she ever be whole again? Isole cried openly, holding her severed parts close. It was wrong to pull it in closer to her, so shown off and viewed from the wrong angle entirely, and she tried to reach for one leg, though her strength failed and she collapsed writhing to the ground. Twisting her paw into her mane, she wound the strands tightly through her fingers, focusing on the clean pain over the dirty, encompassing hurt that threatened to overcome her mind.

Focus! She had to focus! She tried not to let the darkness take her - what would that be like for a being of technology? - and clawed at the crowd, feeling every jerk of her severed leg, directly in her line of sight. There must have been enough synapses remaining to convey the sensory feedback, though for once she wished that it did not have to transmit every, single excruciating detail to control centre. Out of the corner of her eye, she spotted the antagonist of the day, the driver who had not been paying attention, scratching his head at the new dent in his sports car. What a bind for him.

Sirens wailed. Help coming? Isole blinked slowly, eyes losing their light. They would have to be swift in a world of shattering hurt. Would they be able to save her mind? A body could be reconstructed, but had her mind been damaged? That was the important part. Movement was beyond her and Isole succumbed to throbbing pain, body twitching and jerking as her inner workings malfunctioned - a cruel dance. Even that was beyond her control.

"Miss? Miss?"

A face swam into focus above her, a fox desperately striving to keep his eyes averted from her sex, cradled on display as pain dominated Isole. The fox gulped and the world phased out, a dull roar flaring up louder and louder in her ears, though one cut through the turmoil like ice through a swollen mountain stream.

"Are you all right?"