ASK FLUFFIESAREFOOD
Volume 4 Number 2
Happy December, Fluffherders! It’s Friday December 1, 2084, and time the next chapter of that heartwarming Christmas story, Melissa Glockmeister’s A Fluffy For Christmas.
The initial publication of this story took place during the tenth anniversary of the events that led to the division of the United States into four different nations. In those times it served as both a remembrance and as a re-framing of those tumultuous days, which made it the cultural touchstone we know and love today. The weeks and months following the death of President-For-Life Donald Trump ended with the detonation of a nuclear weapon high over the North Atlantic and the breakup of the United States into the Russian-occupied Eastern United States, the California-dominated Western United States, the Christian Dominionist Confederated States, and the Republic of Texas. Over the next 46 years these successors would struggle against one another until the EUSA and WUSA reunited in 2076.
A Fluffy For Christmas ran unedited in WUSA media, and in libertarian Texas. EUSA papers ran an edited version that omitted parts that looked bad for the EUSA government or their Russian patrons. The Confederate government banned the story for containing depictions of “undomesticated” women, as Joan was too independent and uppity for their standards.
For many of my generation, Part Two was an especially poignant part of this story. It recalled the days when we thought democracy might return to the entire United States - the so-called American Spring. Some of the events of those days have become the stuff of legend, particularly the so-called “shitrat day” when authorities tried to break up protests with stampedes of terrified ferals. Retelling this story is a way for us to remember what happened, and in some ways, what we lost.
And so dear readers, please enjoy part two of that holiday classic, A Fluffy For Christmas.
–
A Fluffy For Christmas
By Melissa Glockmeister
Part Two
September 13, 2030
Joan was on kilometer four of her five kilometer jog through Central Park when her phone - and every phone in Central Park - started buzzing with a National Security Message. She stopped to look at her phone - the penalty if the National Morale Police caught you not reading a National Security Message nearly immediately was steep and brutal - expecting to read some all-caps rant from President For Life Trump. Instead she shared a moment of shock with nearly everyone in the world at that time.
PRESIDENT FOR LIFE DONALD TRUMP HAS PASSED
WHITE HOUSE ANNOUNCEMENT - DONALD J TRUMP, PRESIDENT FOR LIFE OF THE UNITED STATES, PASSED AWAY THIS MORNING IN HIS SLEEP. HE IS SURVIVED BY HIS LOVING WIFE MELANIA, HIS DAUGHTER AND VICE-PRESIDENT IVANKA TRUMP, HIS SON DONALD TRUMP JUNIOR, AND HIS SON BARON TRUMP. VICE PRESIDENT IVANKA TRUMP HAS BEEN SWORN IN AS PRESIDENT. THERE WILL BE A PRESS CONFERENCE AT NOON EASTERN TIME.
Joan read the message again, and again, and again. She could barely believe it. Trump had been President since she was sixteen years old. Nearly half the time I’ve been alive, she thought. His Presidency had changed everything about America. America without him was nearly impossible to imagine. What’s going to happen now? she thought.
Joan didn’t bother with the rest of her jog. She walked straight back to her apartment, passing throngs of New Yorkers with faces showing a variety of emotions - shock, fear, surprise, sadness - even joy, which was really ballsy considering the potential consequences.
Inside her apartment was a different story. Joan and Dave and their fluffy Woody danced for nearly an hour, quietly so not to get caught, but with joy that a chain might have been lifted.
–
The next morning’s jog brought an almost as great surprise: a throng of hundreds of persons on the Great Lawn of Central Park, demanding Ivanka Trump’s resignation.
Joan hadn’t seen a demonstration like that since … How long has it been? she wondered to herself. It must have been in 2021, in the days after the election was corrected - no, she reminded herself, stolen, those bastards stole it and we never had another election again. But the popular backlash in 2021 was short lived; people filled the streets for days, and then one day the artillery shells fell on the Capitol Mall, and after that came the mass arrests. They didn’t go after small fry like her, but any opposition group of national importance, including the Democratic Party and the Green Party, was over.
Joan finished her jog and stopped at a bodega to buy a sports drink. She saw armored cars loaded with riot police on their way to Central Park.
On returning to her apartment, Dave shushed her, and showed her his phone.
Joan couldn’t believe her eyes. There were social media posts showing demonstrations - unauthorized, opposition demonstrations - in Chicago, Denver, Los Angeles, DC, Portland, Seattle …[/i]
“I just saw one in Central Park.”
“We should go tomorrow,” Dave said.
“Tomorrow?!? The police are about to bust the one in Central Park right now!”
“They’re saying to go early. If we get there early, we’ll be there before the police show up.”
“They’ll suspect us of being radicals.”
“Not if we’re walking Woody.” Dave pointed to their bedroom where their fluffy was sleeping.
“I don’t know…it’s dangerous…”
“Joan, we used to be a democracy. Don’t you want to live in that America again? This is our chance!”
“Not tomorrow. Maybe the next day, Let me think about it.”
–
The next day, Joan had barely started her jog around Central Park when she ran into a phalanx of police. There must have been more police this day than there were demonstrators the day before.
A policeman in body armor, carrying a rifle, came up to her. “State your business, citizen, and show me some ID.”
She took out her driver’s license and showed it to the policeman. “I’m just jogging here. What’s going on?”
He examined her ID and handed it back. “Illegal demonstration. Go jog somewhere else.” His scowl and his rifle both said, “Don’t argue.”
Joan jogged up and down Columbus Avenue. She could hear flashbangs and smell tear gas coming from the Park. When she got back to her apartment, her mind was made up.
“No way,” she told Dave. “There’s just way too many police.”
“The demonstrators just beat back the police in Central Park.” Dave showed her his phone, which was streaming video from an illegal opposition site. “They’re at a statemate.”
Joan didn’t believe what Dave was telling her. Demonstrations in America had ended quickly and violently for the last almost ten years. This was a real change.
“We should go,” Dave repeated.
“I still don’t feel safe. Let me think about it?”
–
The next day, the police - this time fortified by the State Police and the National Guard - had Central Park completely surrounded and access ways cordoned off. Social media, except for the official and legal stuff, showed that the demonstration had grown nonetheless. Now it completely filled the Great Lawn, was pushing against the Reservoir, and had grown southward too.
–
The next day, the police retreated. The demonstration grew even bigger, growing into the Burns Lawn.
“We should go,” Joan finally said. Dave excitedly agreed. They both called in sick to work. They packed Woody into a fluffy carrier and went to the demonstration. They picked up leaflets, they chanted, they met peope who were as excited as the prospect of real democracy again as they were. They went home that night, equal measures exhausted and elated.
–
The next day Joan let Dave know that she had to be at work - she didn’t want to use all her sick days that quickly - and Dave took Woody to the demonstration himself. She came home from her twelve hour shift stunned to see Dave sitting at the kitchen table with his laptop, in his underwear, covered in bruises.
“What the hell happened to you?!?”
Dave looked traumatized. “Those fuckers … do you remember how they cleared all the ferals out of Central Park last summer?”
“Yeah…?”
“They let them loose on us.”
“They … what?”
“The cops surrounded Central Park again. They trucked in about a thousand ferals, herded them to the south end of the demonstration, and then set off flashbangs behind them.”
Joan gasped, audibly. She could only imagine the horror this unleashed.
“The fucking shitrats ran through the crowd, shitting, screaming, running into humans in blind panic. People kicked them and beat them with their signs, and that only drove the fluffies crazier. There was a stampede, of both fluffies and people. I’ve never seen so much blood and guts.”
“How…how is Woody taking it?”
“Not well. Fluids came out of every hole he has. I had to throw out my clothes.”
“My God.”
“Yeah. Also, we’re going to need to figure out how to un-traumatize him.”
“Oh.” Joan only knew one way to de-traumatize a fluffy: through shock therapy. Most veteranarians could do this with a large dose of insulin or cardizal. But vets were expensive and it was the end of the month - payday was a few days off - and Joan knew that a traumatized fluffy could enter into a “wan die” loop that would make it suicidal. That left another form of shock therapy, which had to be applied immediately.
Joan took a deep breath. “So, are we thinking electric shock?”
Dave nodded. “Unless you have insulin.”
“No, no I don’t. Also, remember our deal? You’re going to have to do the homework on how to shock him.”
“Already did.” He tapped on his laptop and turned it around to show Joan a web page with instructions on how to apply electroshock therapy to a fluffy in the convenience of one’s own home.
“This looks dangerous.”
“It is,” Dave said grimly. “We’ve got to apply just the right amount of current for the right amount of time. Too little will just make the trauma worse. Too much will kill him. And that’s not even counting the danger to ourselves. But it’s this or we euthanize him.”
Joan knew that “euthanize” in this context meant snapping Woody’s neck, cutting the body in half, and tossing both halves in the trash or compost. She shook her head. “Nope, let’s give him a fighting chance.”
“Okay. I’ll do the honors.”
Dave fished through a kitchen drawer. He pulled out an old extension cord, the three-pronged kind, and three wires. He fished in another drawer for a pair of dishwashing gloves.
“Do we have a fluffy diaper anywhere?” Dave asked.
“I think we’re out.”
“Okay. So we’ll have to put the ass-half of him in a platic bag unless we want to clean up an ungodly mess.”
“Ew. Right.”
Joan got a trash back from under the sink. She picked up the gibbering, shivering, unresponsive Woody from his bed, and secured the mouth of the trash bag around his ribcage with duct tape. Meanwhile Dave carefully shaved the fluff off Woody’s temples and from under his chin. He stripped the insulation from the ends of the wires. He taped the wires to the temples and chin of the fluffy, then stuck one temple wire into the hot outlet of the extension cord, the other temple wire into the neutral outlet, and the chin wire into the ground. Their work done, Joan stood clean while Dave sat next to the power outlet with the male end of the extension cord in hand.
“Ready?”
Joan solemnly nodded.
Dave plugged Woody in. There was a sizzle and a muffled sound of bowels unleashing as Woody convulsed for one, two, three seconds, before Dave unplugged him. Joan and Dave both smelled burnt hair and the faint scent of hamburgers.
Woody slowly came back to consciousness. “Mu…mummah? Daddeh?”
Dave spoke with Woody in a sing-song voice. “Hello little one. Do you know who we are?”
Woody’s expression changed to one of intense concentration. “Nu no who am me. Nu no who am yu. Onwy no am fwuffy.”
“Well little one, my name is Dave. I’m your daddy.” He pointed at Joan. “This is Joan. Joan is your mummy.”
Woody’s eyes crossed as the factory settings took in this configuration information. “Fwuffy wuv nu daddeh Dave an nu mumma Jown.”
“I’m glad to hear it. And your name is Woody.”
Woody’s eyes crossed again, then uncrossed. “Tank yu daddeh! Woody wuv nu name!”
“We love you too, Woody!”
Dave untaped the wires from Woody’s head as Joan removed the tape securing the garbage bag. As soon as a gap opened between Woody and the garbage bag, an unholy and potent stench filled the room, like the sewers of Hell itself. Joan and Dave both took Woody, still ass end in garbage bag, into the bathtub before removing him completely. The cocktail of terror piss and liquishit soaked his hindquarters and dripped off the fluff. Fortunately most of it was in the garbage bag, but it would take Dave more than an hour of soaking and scrubbing to remove the foulness from Woody’s assfluff.
Joan and Dave agreed after that never again to take Woody to a demonstration. Sadly their traumas would not end there.
–
And thus Woody and Dave survived, if only barely, “Shitrat Day” of the American Spring of 2030 - but what about the rest of the events of 2030? Find out next week in the next installment of A Fluffy For Christmas!
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