The Abuser’s Web Guide, Episode 14
By: Turboencabulator
Interocitor, still with a pixelated face and sporting a fresh sunburn on his exposed arms,
comes into view behind the usual white table. He’s carrying a banker’s box, which set sets with
a mild grunt on the tabletop.
“Hey all, welcome back to the series, I’m Interocitor, and today we’re covering fluffy
healthcare and disease treatment.” He says, opening the top of the box and lifting out volume
after volume of books.
“These are the current US standard veterinary reference texts for family vet practice.” He
says, then sets down a short stack of five decently thick octavo volumes, neatly bound in a
rugged library style. “And these are the fluffy medical references. They weigh a fifth of the
regular vet texts. These are the Alenix texts, by the way. Obviously the HasBio equivalent is
only worth buying if you need to level a table. The official fluffy vet association texts
aren’t bad though, but they tend to be overpriced for what you get.”
“Why am I showing you this?” He asks, setting out the five volumes. “To show you how far we’ve
come.”
He picks up the first volume. “This one, we’ve basically covered completely. It’s the
introduction, basic anatomy, all that.”
The fifth one he puts on top of the first. “That’s psychology, which, yeah you should
reference but we covered a lot of the basics.”
“The focus today is going to be books three and four, if you get this set. Diseases and their treatment.”
He picks up the books in question, putting the others aside. “Now, I should point out that
these volumes are not exhaustive. These are manuals for practicing veterinarians, and we’re
going to be covering only a small portion, the things that you, as a hobbyist, are most likely
to come into contact with.”
He sets the books aside. “We will also be covering some things that you cannot treat, but you
need to be on the watch for.”
“Now, some things are obvious. Fluffies have a surprisingly robust immune system, probably
because they were designed to be around children, but they can still get things like colds,
flus, and so on. Treat as you would in humans, with the obvious caveat that fluffies have
fluffy-specific dosages for drugs. Pharmacology can be referenced in volume two.”
A colt is laying on a hot pad, his head stretched out straight, poking out from a little
blanket. Yellow mucus is seeping from his nostrils, and once in a while he coughs, with a
little hoarse whinny sound. Interocitor pulls up a chair behind and sits with the colt, softly
rubbing between the fluffy’s shoulders for a second.
“This unfortunate little one has strangles. This is an affliction you’ll see in horses as well,
but it’s basically the equine version of strep throat. Fortunately it’s specific to fluffies
and horses, so you aren’t at risk.” He says, taking out a small thermometer. “Symptoms include
depression, problems eating, fever, a nasty painful cough, nasal goopage, swollen lymph nodes
in the neck, and pus drainage from the same.”
“Hey.” Interocitor says softly, to the colt. “Sorry, I need to take your temperature again.”
The colt whinnies and coughs, groaning, and lifts his tail. Interocitor applies some lubricant
and gently slides it in the colt’s rear. “Alright. It’ll be out soon.”
He looks up to the camera. “The first signs are usually a fever and the goop. If you see this
is any fluffy, separate them immediately from the others.” He gently indicates a raised bump on
the foal’s neck. “You can see the lymph node here, there’s one on either side. Be very, very
gentle when checking for these because they can be quite tender.”
“Unlike in horses, fluffies generally only have this for about three weeks, instead of six. The
10% carrier rate persists though, and this means that if a fluffy has it, there’s a chance that
the disease can persist in their gut flora and intermittently infect others. The ‘bastard
strangles’ complication also exists in fluffies, but is far more rare. This is when the
diseases causes abscesses to form in other organs and is basically fatal.”
“Treatment, though.” He says, removing the thermometer and reading it. “Aside from rest and
warmth, is a soft diet, plenty of water, and warm compresses, and using a siphon-bulb to help
get the gunk out of their noses. Do not compost the waste of an infected fluffy, and bathe them
regularly. It spreads from direct contact, fecal contact, and sometimes through infected cloth
or toys.”
“If they can’t take food easily, you will need to set up IV nutrition. Fortunately.”
Interocitor says, cleaning off the thermometer. “This little one seems to be on the downhill
side of it.”
The colt looks up at Interocitor and mouths something, barely a whisper.
“Yes, the owwies are finally giving up.”
The little fluffy wags a bit.
A mare is eating from a bowl, leaning against a padded post to aid her balance. Her head is
tilted sharply to one side and she stumbles a little bit when she moves to get a drink of
water. Interocitor comes into frame and sits with her.
“Hello Doris.”
“Hewwo Daddeh.” Doris says, before taking a slow, unsteady few steps back to the food dish.
“Doris here is showing a symptom known as wry neck.” Interocitor says. “Formally known as
vestibular torticollis. Doris, how does your neck feel?”
“Necky is widdew owwie, bu’ otay.” She says, between bites.
“Just sore and a little tight?”
She nods, then winces and eeps.
“So, this is something you’ll also commonly see in guinea pigs and rabbits, and less commonly
in dogs. Since fluffies, as far as I know do not have canine genes, we’ll look at the symptoms
for the first two.”
“Doris here has had the neck issue for a few days, which came on suddenly. This is one of two
issues, either an inner ear infection, which can be treated with simple antibiotics, or a
fungal infection called Encephalitozoon cuniculi. Differentiating between the two is
reasonably easy.”
He gently bumps Doris. “Doris come here please.”
The view switches to a shoulder camera on Interocitor. She bumbles over carefully and he helps
steady her. “First, check the eye.”
He gently opens her eye a bit more, she looks around, her iris a clear amber and the whites
still white.
“The motion of the eye is normal, there’s no vibration, or nystagmus. Nor is there uveitis, or
inflammation of the cornea.” He says, letting her eye go. “That’s good. Have you been making
pee-pee more than normal?”
Doris shook her head. “Nu?”
“Alright. Last check.”
He bends down and smells her ears, making her giggle and paw playfully at his face. He chuckles
and boops her nose. “And there’s that smell of an ear infection. I’m afraid that’s treated with
pokey medicine.”
She whinnies soft, and cringes. “Nuuu, nu wike, dey huwties.”
“I know, but if we don’t fix this, you might lose hearing on that side and it’ll always be hard
to walk.” He says.
With a whine, she nods and lays down on her side, hiding behind her hooves. Interocitor fills a
syringe slowly. “As you all can tell Doris understands injections. A standard cillin drug works
perfectly in this case, though you should be aware that fluffies can be allergic, in which case
Alenix does market what is basically a fluffy version of both vancomycin and doxycycline.”
Interocitor gently inserts the needle in Doris’s haunch, making her eep and her eyes water. A
swift injection, and the needle’s out.
“Atta girl, Doris.” He says, giving her a sketti-treat, which she sucks down
immediately. “Finish your food and we’ll get you settled for afternoon nap.”
Doris happily stumbles back to her dish of greens.
“Now, that’s the treatment for an ear infection. In the case of it being E. Cuniculi,
you’re kind of hosed. Fluffies, unlike rabbits, have two states with the fungus. Either they
resist it completely, which is true for about 95% of the population, or they simply don’t fight
it off correctly. In that latter category the prognosis is universally fatal, usually by renal
failure, or in severe cases infiltration into the brainstem where it does all sorts of
fuckery.”
“In that case, immediate disposal is recommended, however you see fit. Just be sure to immolate
the remains.”
Interocitor is in frame already behind a nursing mother, with several patchy looking
chirpies. She’s nearly as bad, with thin and rashy spots visible in her fluff.
“One of the most common issues you’ll come across is how to deliver antibiotics to chirpies,
since they’re simply too small for a normal injection and dosage.” He says, gesturing to the
litter. “Tippie here was found abandoned in a dump, with a particularly nasty skin
infection. Unfortunately when she gave birth this was passed onto her litter, and while it was
bad enough in her, it could be potentially crippling for her foals.”
Tippie is nervous, listening. She carefully rotates the chirpies between her teats.
Interocitor gently pats her. “It would have been but you’re here now and I know how this can be
fixed.” He says, then turns back to the camera. “After an initial bath in a mild, warm epsom
salt solution followed by a rinse in clean warm water, there are two options. The first is to
thin some over the counter antibiotic ointment with coconut oil and gently massage that in, but
even this can overwhelm chirpies if they’re particularly fragile.”
“The solution though, is obvious when you remember they’re chirpies.” He says, and gently taps
one of Tippie’s teats.
She blinks. “Miwkies?”
“If we give you extra medicine, it goes into your milk, and then your babies get the medicine.”
Tippie stares at her babies, thinking about what she just heard. Interocitor turns back to the
camera. “This is a method that was developed when the fluffies were still in lab development,
as a way to bolster health for shipment and early development. Dosing information is in Volume
2, section 4.”
Interocitor holds up a colorful softgel. “I’ve already calculated the required release time and dosage
for Tippie here. Naturally you should strive to make sure each chirpie is fed equally, but
Tippie here is good about that.”
He offers her the meds, which she downs immediately.
“As usual, don’t bunch up on antibiotics, give them even after symptoms pass as far as the book
recommends, all that jazz when it comes to medicine. It’s important.”
Interocitor is in the background, hanging up his cell, before approaching the camera and
sitting down again. “Alright folks, minor change of plan. I’m keeping what I’ve filmed so far
as an introduction but I’ve gotten a lead on something uh, in keeping with the theme of the
video but distinctly unique. I have some stuff to set up so this is probably going up late but
I swear it’s going to be worth it.”
“Here’s the story thus far.” He says, adjusting his seat. “There’s a feral herd in the woods on
my property. The smarty actually has two brain cells to rub together and he and I get along
well. There are neighboring herds that have decent smarties as well, except for one, so I kind
of lucked out.”
“Property politics and all that aside, I found that these herds had effectively made a leper
colony where they banished fluffies that were sick with something… new. I talked to Basil,
the smarty, about it and he seemed to be trying to describe a disease that made fluffies behave
strangely. He was smart enough to know that they couldn’t treat it, so exclusion was the only
thing that they could do.”
“I found one of the infected, dead.” He said, the shot cutting to stills of a dead fluffy taken
on a camera phone. It was a stallion, eyes bloodshot, tongue hanging out, in the middle of
rigor. It was laying in a shallow puddle. “And I bagged and tagged it, and took it to a friend
of mine over at the University.”
The shot cuts back to Interocitor. “Turns out this is a fluffy-specific disease called Teller’s
Encephalopathy. It’s a fungal prion that causes a range of symptoms, but fortunately is
reasonably easy to trace as it can only be passed sexually. I’ve got some people from the
university coming down in the morning to round up the infected after a field study.”
Interocitor is on an electric ATV, quietly motoring through the woods on a cut path. A railer
rattles along behind him, and another ATV is further back.
“Morning everyone.” He says quietly. “Gents from the University are here, I’ve gotten the rest
settled with the surrounding herds, and I’ll be introducing Dr. Daniels back there to Basil so
hey can process his herd and make sure nobody else there has the disease. Afterwards, we’ll be
going ahead to observe the excluded fluffies before the uni folks do the bag and tag. They’ve
agreed to let me film and when we have specimens to examine we’ll present a detailed overview
of this disease.”
The duo trundled through the woods until coming upon a dark grey fluffy seated on a
rock. Interocitor parked the ATV and got off, going up to the stallion. “Hey Pepper, we need to
talk to Basil.”
Pepper leaned and peered around Interocitor at he stolid, bespectacled man adjusting his
moustaches. “Whu dat?”
“That’s Doctor Daniels. He studies sicknesses.” Interocitor said. “This is about the wandering
sickness.”
Pepper looked up at Interocitor and blinked, eyes widening a bit. “Oh. Gu head.”
Interocitor and the doctor walked past, going into a dell tucked away in a ravine. A dozen
fluffies were visible, gathering food or re-bedding the barrels sunk into the hillside. A jet
black alicorn broke off from conferring with a small group of toughies and walked over.
“Hewwo 'Ostew. Whu dis?” He asked.
Interocitor and Dr. Daniels sat on a stone bench. “Basil this is Doctor Daniels, he studies
diseases and sicknesses. A while back I found a fluffy with the wandering sickness that had
gone forever-sleepies and took it to him to examine.”
Basil climbed up and sat on a smoothed stump, listening. “Wut fwuffy?”
“It was a green and yellow stallion. Probably one year old, two at the most.” Interocitor said.
“Basiw kno dat fwuffy.” He said, nodding slowly, with a wince. “Wus a tuffy fow Bewyl’s
hewd. Tuffy’s speciaw fwien got da wandewin’ sickies an aftew mawe was taken to da sickie-fiewd
he got da sickies tu.”
Doctor Daniels leaned in. “He got it after his special friend did?”
Basil nodded, curious.
Daniels sighed. “Alright, that makes sense. Basil, the disease passes from one fluffy to
another when they have uh, special huggies.”
After a moment of thinking, Basil nods slowly. “Su, a fwuffy can gib it to dey speciaw fwien?”
Daniels nodded. “And if a stallion gives bad special hugs to another stallion. Special hugs
pass it from one to the other.”
Basil nods slowly, thinking. Then he looks up as Daniels continues.
“There’s also a second thing to consider. This sickness has what is called an ‘incubation
period’.”
“Wut dat?”
“Well, it means that when a fluffy gets the sickness, it doesn’t show up right then. It takes
time for it to start doing things. Sometimes many bright-times.”
The alicorn gets a grim expression. “Den hao can kno if fwuffy hab sickies?”
“That’s why I’m here.” Daniels says. “I brought things that I can use to test all of the herd
and find if any are sick, but don’t know it.”
“An den yu make dem bettew?”
Silence for a minute, and Daniels sighs. “This is a sickness that can’t be made better, Basil.”
The alicorn looks down at the ground, thinking.
He turned to the toughies. “Gathew da hewd.”
Interocitor is hiking through the woods with a rucksack. “Well, Doc D is with Basil’s herd,
going one by one from the geriatrics to the chirpies testing crotch-swabs.”
The camera pans and shows Interocitor is following Pepper. “And I’ve got a guide to the
exclusion area. Apparently they put up walls and stuff so once a fluffy goes in they don’t
wander out. Though that does make me wonder where that stallion came from.”
Pepper stopped, and looked up at Interocitor. “Dis de pwace. Dewe a wock obbew dewe yu can
watch fwum.” He said, pointing at a large boulder.
“Thanks. When the doctor is finished would you lead him here as well?”
Pepper nodded and trotted back into the foliage, heading off.
Interocitor climbed up the short hill and sat with his back to the boulder, taking out a second
camera drone and setting it up. “Well let’s get some field recordings.”
The exclusion zone the fluffies were using was a natural flat area, a rocky clearing where the
trees separated overhead, about an acre in size. It was sunk into the terrain a bit, ringed
with low stone outcroppings and the steep slopes of ravines, making an effectively walled-off
area. Trampled paths where fluffies had come and gone were visible in a few places around the
edge, where they had forced the infected in and left them there.
A dozen fluffies were visible in the clearing. The nearest, a rotund mare, was walking in a
wide circle, dragging her feet. Her eyes were cloudy, with grey fuzz coming out of the tear
ducts. The drone passed near her, and she did not react.
“Beh… behs… wan… beh… behs…”
She droned the mantra, endlessly. Nearby a stallion nervously looked around, his breath audibly
wheezy and shallow. One eye had fogged over already, the other was bloodshot and
sore-looking. He wandered past the mare, who turned, sightlessly looking at him.
The mare pushed up against the stallion suddenly, rubbing her cheek against his neck. “Spe-ciw
hu-gz-zz” She droned, drunkenly pawing at his undercarriage.
The stallion, for his part, looked confused, obviously split between being afraid of his
circumstance, and the effects of the disease. After a moment’s indecision he pushed her away
and cantered off, huu-huuing, conflicted.
The drone followed the stallion, who looked back at the mare after getting away. She had
forgotten him, and gone back to aimlessly wandering in a circle. He pressed on, until he found
a tuft of grass to eat.
Unfortunately a larger stallion surged out of a pile of rocks, eyes red-shot and flocked with
grey fuzz, locked onto the newcomer. He let out an unearthly grunt as he immediately mounted
the smaller fluffy and pounded away, tongue flopping out of his mouth, eyes rolling up in his
head.
The smaller stallion screed and struggled, until finally landing a kick with his hindleg on the
leg of his assaulter, knocking the larger stallion off balance. He squirmed out and ran as fast
as he could, his hindquarters smeared with grey spores. The rapist pursued him, gaining ground,
but the smaller stallion was clever.
He ran back towards the infected mare, so the two crossed paths. Immediately the duo came
together in a loud clash of the sexes, and the smaller stallion got away as fast as he could,
hiding under a rock outcropping, where he lay in the cool dirt and sobbed.
Lifting his hind leg, he examined his posterior as well as he could, the assault leaving him
with a bit of blood. His genitalia was saturated with spores, and had a pulsating, infected
look to it. The fluff had gone patchy on his testicles, and pustules had begun to form.
He gently pawed at one ball, and screamed as a pustule burst. Gingerly he put his leg down
again and lay, panting, crying quietly, until he fell asleep.
The drone lifted off again, past the couple of fluffies having infectious intercourse, until it
settled on a technicolor ball of fuzz, on a rock.
It used to be a fluffy, and still was, in a way. The fluffy was laying splay-legged, head up
and frozen. Its eyes, desiccated, stared sightlessly, mouth frozen with lips pulled back in a
rictus grin. The fungus had infected it so thoroughly it appeared to be dusty. It breathed, and
each exhale carried a thin cloud of grey spores. A squirrel passed by it, and the fluffy’s head
turned to follow it, the bones in is neck audibly creaking.
The drone lifted away and returned to where Interocitor was seated.
The scene cuts to a lab, in the evening. Interocitor turns the camdrone to face him, in front
of a whiteboard. “Hey, sorry about the jump in continuity. Not all of the people working this
gave permission to be filmed so we’re moving on to the lab scene now that we’ve gotten all the
fluffies filtered out and the area sprayed down with antifungals.”
The drone turns to the completely parasitized fluffy in a glass case. Doctor Daniels is taking
a sample from it using a glovebox wall on the case.
“This is one of the most advanced cases we’ve seen. The fungus has infiltrated the brainpan and
is saturating the remains of the brain stem and spinal column in mycelium.” He says, watching
as the fluffy coughs once, a cloud of spores coming out. “The lungs are about eighty percent
full. Another few days and it would probably be unable to oxygenate itself anymore and it’d
pop.”
“Doc, you mind taking the folks through from the beginning?”
Daniels looks over, then pulls out of the glovebox and walks over to an isolation pen. Inside
is a mare, sedated. “Right, here we have a female fluffy, age approximately one year, and
infected with the fungus, partway through phase one.”
He slips into a glovebox port in the wall of the pen, turning her and lifting the mare’s hind
leg, exposing her genitals. They have a thin fuzz of grey on them. “This is a bit more
pronounced than you would usually see. The spores latch onto the mucous membranes of the sex
organs and stimulate blood flow by encouraging sexual arousal, then dump the prions in the
bloodstream. This doubles as a method of procreation.”
Doctor Daniels moves on to the next glovebox, with the smaller stallion inside. The Doctor
inserts his arms into the gloveports again, this time he gently patted the fluffy’s haunch. The
fluffy flinches, and looks up at the doctor.
“I’m going to lift your leg for inspection again. Please relax.”
“Huu, nu-nu stick an speciaw wumps hab wowstest owwies, mistew.” The stallion whines, wincing
as the Doctor gently lifts his hind leg.
“I’ll take care of it in a minute, ok?” Daniels says. The fluffy nods and whines quietly,
laying his head down again, wincing and tearing up.
The stallion is sporting a full erection, lightly dusted with spores. Abcesses have opened on
the fluffy’s scrotum.
“This is the second stage, where sexual stimulation is enforced by the prion infiltrating in
the lower spinal cord, and open abscesses are present on or near the genitals. These are a
result of spores infecting the pores near the genital mucosa. Infections are primarily isolated
hear due to their higher average temperaure than the nasal passages or other membranes. This is
the last stage that is treatable.”
He sedates the fluffy without warning. “So long as the genitals still have sensation, then the
prion concentration in the blood is low enough and the nerve damage has not begun. With
appropriate antifungal treatment he’ll be fine. However, the main mass of the fungus has
entirely infiltrated he penis at this point, which requires removal of the genitals.”
With a practiced hand, the doctor slices off the fluffy’s genitals and immediately applies a
heal-gel saturated bandage and accelerated clotting agent. “This fluffy is already showing
initial signs of stage three, but he should be alright and can provide us further study of the
disease progress and long term effects of recovered subjects.”
After setting the stallion up with medication in a drip, Doctor Daniels moves on to stand in
front of a group of fluffies in isolation pens, seven in total. Each one is mobile, various
degrees of blind, and aggressing either against the front viewing window, or to try to get to a
neighbor.
“This is a range of fluffies in stage three. The prion behaves in a way similar to rabies at
this point.” He says, spraying a misting bottle in front of the fluffies, making them retreat
for a few seconds, then go back to their prior behavior. “Hydrophobia, probably because the
fungus needs a warm, saline environment. However it still uses water from the body, so slow
dehydration is one fate for the fluffies. It also causes pronounced sexual aggression,
blindness, and a mild fever. At this state the fungus has infiltrated the length of the
epidural space from the pelvis up to the skull, and has begun to attack the sinus mucosa.”
One fluffy, a stallion, charges the front plate, and knocks itself out. “It also causes them to
follow a simple series of state changes. If trapped, get free, if nothing’s around, wander. If
you see a fluffy, try to have sex with it.”
“Unfortunately, these fluffies cannot be treated.” Daniels continues, turning back to the
camera. “The infection is firmly in their spinal cord.”
He moves on to the fluffy he was originally working on, which turns to blindly stare at
him. “In the terminal stage motor function is destroyed except for the neck and
respiration. The fluffy’s eyes are reduced in function to sensing changes in light intensity,
and the lungs are gradually filled with spores. It’s difficult to see now but the fluffy is
also completely infiltrated with subdermal spore sacs, which use the saline in the fluffy’s body
to slowly build more spores.”
Daniels pauses to start his own recording, and inserts an arm in he glove again. “When the fluffy’s
corpus is no longer capable of supporting life, the sudden decrease in body temperature will
trigger the spores to release. I’ll simulate this with a spray bottle of ice-water.”
He spritzes a dense cloud of water over the fluffy, and sets the bottle down. After a few
seconds, the whole back of the fluffy erupts with a constellation of wet popping sounds,
spraying grey spores everywhere in the isolation pen.
“The spores do not live well outside a host unless in a saline environment of the correct
temperature.” He says, taking his arm out again. “So a spore burst is only really an issue if
near other fluffies. However the spores inside the body can persist for an extended
amount of time, and contact with or near the body can lead to infection.”
Interocitor comes back into frame as he camdrone turns to him. “And after stage two, the best
course of action is to burn them.”
“Correct.” The doctor says, rejoining Interocitor by the whiteboard. “The progression from
stage one to two is three to five days, and two to three is on average two days. Three to four
is expected to be around two weeks.”
“Well I think that covers it.” Interocitor says, shaking hands with Doctor Daniels. “Thanks for
letting us have you on and for sharing your knowledge.”
“Anytime.”
