“Daddeh? Wai su meanies tu babbeh?”
It was a fair question. Miriam had six foals and I was a loving daddy to five of them. One, I use as a receptacle for all of my verbal outbursts. All of my mischievous and petty tendencies focus on one brown foal. Why him? Honestly, I’d adopted the mare assuming she hated them. I figured she’d likely have one and they’d all hate it so it could be fun family bonding.
Instead she’s just confused. He’s a perfectly fine baby, he can kinda walk and give huggies and knows some words. Why does daddy bully him? Because I want to. Because I’m resentful that this fucking idiot horse can’t just be shitty like I want it to be.
So if she won’t hate the poopy babbeh, I’ll punish any love she for him. Not by punishing her, no. But by tormenting her child. Either she will collapse, or she will alienate him out of resentment and emotional self preservation.
“Daddy doesn’t know what you’re talking about, hon. I’m nice to all your babies.”
She scrunches her face up. She knows I’m full of shit, but also knows that humans are always smarter than fluffies. Poor girl, she’s got a strong sense of herself to shrug off my attempts to just sort of normalize it. That’s gonna make this hurt.
“Daddeh, ou am meanie tu wittwe bwown bab-”
“Oh, you mean that Poopy Baby. He’s just not a very good baby. I don’t like him, and when he’s having a good time it makes me sad. But don’t worry, I would never be that mean to a real fluffy.”
She’s still trying to rationalize what a piece of shit I’m being. Truthfully, I don’t mind brown fluffies. My beloved Emma was a brown pegasus and my loyal companion for over a decade. No, this is more about trying to find a proper approach to upset my fluffies.
Emma passed a few months ago, and I’m still grieving. I’ll move on eventually, but for now I’m experimenting a bit. Really getting weird with it in a way dear Emma would’ve never tolerated. Christ, I miss her. She really lit up my life.
“But…but daddeh, dat am mummah wittwe babbeh! Wittwe babbeh hab saddies aww time! Wen bwuddas and sissies am aww pwayin huggie games and habbin fun, wittwe Bwownie am-”
“Miriam, stop. His name is not Brownie. I like brownies. I don’t want him to be named Brownie. I want you to call him Poopy. That is his name.”
She’s tearing up. This is the only time I’m ever cross with her, when she tries to defend little Poopy. Other than this I’m patient and kind, almost to a fault. She gets so flustered when I’m angry.
“But daddeh, dat nu am pwetty name! Bwownie am muchies mowe pwetty an-”
I cut her off. I squat down next to her and grab her firmly but carefully by her head fluff. “Miriam? I also eat brownies. They’re one of my favorite snacks. Do you want daddy to eat your dummy poopy baby?”
She’s horrified, but the “dummy” was too far. "Nu! Daddeh nu say dat bout mummah wittwe speshuw bwown babbeh! Babbeh nu am dummeh! Am gud babbeh!" Okay, might need to get a little rough.
“Miriam? He’s not special. He’s not even good. He has ugly brown fluff. His mane is probably gonna grow in some shitty puke green or neon pink or whatever. He’s not cute like your babbehs. He’s some ugly baby, I don’t know whose he is.”
“Nu! Babbeh wewe in Miwwiam tummeh! Babbeh am gud babbeh! Daddeh nu be meanie nu mowe! Mummah wan hab aww happy famiwy!”
“He sucks. He’s shit. He doesn’t have wings or a horn.”
“Wat? Babbeh hab hown.” Good. She dropped the brownie schtick. Thought she might. Well, guess I’d better not be a liar. I pat her on the head and softly kiss her. “Okay honey, I’ll go get him and we’ll check! I hope you’re right, then I can love him!”
Her eyes light up and she starts clapping her hooves. She seems to forget she needs them to stand, and falls on her giggling face.
Idiot.
I go to the living room. It’s a small house, four rooms. Everything’s basically fluffy safe, what little there is. Furniture is all low and flush with the ground, all cabinets are countertop and above, all outlets are halfway up the wall. Nowhere for them to get into, and no way to get high enough for a bad fall. This way I could let them all roam.
This was nice because it made it easy to separate them.
I have some speakers in each room hooked to a 2.4ghz remote, and when I need to shuffle the deck, I’ll set off a scary noise and freak out babies that aren’t in the room. That way Miriam will run off to save them and I can have time alone with Poopy.
I retrieve the depressed brown unicorn from the toyroom. Two of his siblings are playing with a ball, but not Poopy. I told him he’s not allowed to play with toys unless he asks me permission and I say it’s okay.
Then anytime he asks, I say no. If he tries to ask again, I just berate him until he doesn’t want to play with it anymore. I make him think about stuff that bothers him and he gets too upset to have any fun. He completely forgets about it. I’ve only had to bust him playing with it once.
I have a Nerf pistol. The XX-100. It shoots marble sized foam balls at kind of a ludicrous speed. Perfect for disciplining fluffies. I came into the playroom to find him nudging the ball with his nose. His brother had been playing and accidentally left it blocking the food bowl. Poopy was clearly trying to get at the food. He wasn’t playing. But I’d rather double down his fear of even touching it.
Naturally I shot him seven or eight times. No injuries, barely even welts. But it stings, and it scared him. He was a bit smaller then, and he’s always been weak. Probably a result of me squeezing every third meal back out of him while he was a chirpy baby. The gun scares him, and he’s a babbeh who’s already had a nervewracking foalhood.
So when I walked in to see him staring longingly at his siblings playing and having fun, I knew he had been staring like that for a long time.
I approached the pale brown unicorn. His fluff is a pale brown mixed with a sort of pea soup green. His mane is a really ugly pale teal. It shows dirt super bad, and it’s just the wrong side of a decent color.
Probably because as soon as I saw his beautiful white mane I knew it was gonna be as much trouble for me as his wings had been when he was born. Miriam is Alicorn friendly, and I wanted her to hate this baby. So snip snip, goobai wingies.
With the mane all I had to do was bleach the shit out of it and constantly use grease stripping shampoo. Dried and fried his hair, and now his mane is both coarse and thin. It looks sickly, and I sometimes see him crying and trying to floof up his tail. It’s so limp it drags in the litterbox.
I kneel next to him and pick up the former Alicorn. “Hey poopy, your mom told me you have a horn. Are you hiding a horn from me?” He looked confused. “N…nu? Babbeh hab h-Poopy! Poopy hab hown… Huuuuu…” Christ. Doesn’t even need me to yell anymore. “I don’t know, you just look like an ugly poopy to me. Fat too. Have you been stealing nummies from your siblings again?” He gasps in horror. “Nu! Daddeh, Poopy nebba steaw nummies! Nu nebba du dat since was wittwe dummeh miwkie feef! Babbeh nu dud dat nu mowe, babbeh sowwee!”* I don’t stop glowering at him. "Oh whatever. Fat lazy fuck." On the stressed syllable I snatched him up. He’s learned to stop screaming and begging when I do. Again, I don’t hurt him, but he really really doesn’t like that I get up in his face and scream insults at him. He finds it both scary and really mean. Instead, he just hides behind his hooves as I clutch his belly in my fist.
I squeeze just enough that he shits. I scold him for it and go into the bathroom. He actually gets excited because I never give him a bath. He’s too big of a babbeh to get licky cleanies, but he still has to because I don’t clean him.
I set him on the counter, then grab a tissue. I use it to smear his watery unhealthy shit all over his back. “Daddeh, nuuuuu! Nu put poopies in pwetty fwuff!” I flip him roughly onto his back, eliciting a tiny “oomph” from him, and a small scaredy poop. Good. My brush was dry.
I smear this sort of mucousy sick shit in his very puffy and very absorbent tummy fluff. All the way up past his chin. He tries to move his face away as I near it, batting impotently with his front weggies and writhing around to escape the shit rag. He squirms and twists, but I’m bigger and stronger. He can’t escape, and I make sure to get some in his mouth.
He’s crying quietly. He’d be louder, but he’s desperately pursing his lips so I don’t get any more shit past them. It’s kind of adorable, he’s so fucking scared. I rub it in his nose, on his thin ugly mane, I even get his closed eyelids. Press them a little. Not hard enough to do any real damage, but he opened his eyes and screamed out. “Screeee! Scawy cowows!”
To his dismay, I seize the opportunity and stick my finger in his mouth to the back of his throat. I’m protected by my tissue, and he’s puffing his poor little cheeks trying to expel my giant finger. I leave it back there for a few seconds while he twists and contorts himself trying to get away. I’ve never been so physically cruel to him before, and when he starts to weaken from lack of air (the shit in his nostrils has audibly labored his breathing) I squeeze his jaw down on my finger and pull back. His jaw and teeth are fine.
More importantly he helped me scrape the grossest part off my finger. When he starts spitting it out, I put my thumb on his shoulderblades and force him prone. I push down far enough he has to exhale, and hard enough his legs are really straining.
“Eat it. Eat it or I’m never feeding you anything but poopies ever again. Then you’ll be really poopy.” The look of revulsion and confusion on his face gave way to fear. Not just any fear, but that broken down fear you only see in someone who’s had their spirit broken but is too afraid of pain or death to fully check out, emotionally.
He’s terrified, but he’s almost too exhausted to be. Quivering and crying, he’s squinting his eyelids over and over in a desperate attempt to clean the grit out of them from his only partially digested kibble. I see him start chewing. He looks up at me with this look of sorrow. His eyes were barely open and kind of puffy but his pupils were right locked onto mine. His jaw only moves a little because his chin is on the counter. I see him struggle to swallow because of the angle his neck is at. He gets almost all of it down before gagging on the last bite and spitting it out.
“All of it. You aren’t done until you get that bite down.” I release him and he looks up. “D…den daddeh cwean ugwy Poopy babbeh?” I start washing my hands off as he starts to chomp up the vomit soaked bite of wet shitpaper. As we both finish, I put on a rubber glove and pick him up.
I pass him once under an ice cold tap. Not enough to really make a dent in the shit, but enough to make him cold and wet. He starts shivering and sobbing right away. I’ll have to remember this combo of sadness and cold, the vibrato is fucking unreal.
“You can either be clean or warm and dry. Either I clean you off in that cold cold water, or I dry you off but don’t clean you.”
"Huuuuuu wan b…be d…dwy an…an-an-an w… wawm, t-t-tuu!" Dumbass. The house is warm enough he’d have been fine. Instead I’m gonna blast him with my hairdryer and bake all that shitwater onto his skin and fluff.
His mother is not going to be able to clean this. It’s like if there’s still oatmeal on your bowl after the water and soap have done there thing in a dishwasher, any heat drying is gonna cure that like fucking cement.
Oatmeal doesn’t smell like week old hobo shit.
He’s no longer afraid of the hairdryer. He hates the way it makes his fluff feel, especially when his fluff is already dry, so I bully him with it frequently. As I get him nice and even, he starts to feel the drying and begins to step away.
Nah. No dice, kid. I follow him more until his fluff is all dried out and frizzy. Little bits of shit are dried and caked into his fluff like mud in the hair of most of the kids I grew up with after we’d get home from throwing rocks at construction sites and pushing each other down muddy hills.
Weeping and trying to pull the dried shit from his fluff, he isn’t making much headway. I pick him up in my gloved hand and carry him to his mother.
I set him down and look sternly at her. "You know, Miriam, you keep saying this stupid ugly POOPY!" I scream DIRECTLY at him, and he yelps and tumbles over backwards trying to flee from me. "Is a good baby. But I found him digging in the litterbox! Isn’t that gross?" He pouted and squealed a denial. "Nu! Dat nu twoo! Daddeh tewwin wies! Daddeh gab babbeh bad poopies, an den put aww poopies in babbeh fwuff! Nu wet babbeh be cween! Nu smeww pwetty! Daddeh am dummeh meanie munstah! Babbeh hatechu! Hatechu! Hatechu!"
I’d never seen him come unglued like that before. Shit. I might actually have to start from scratch. Fuck, I knew I was pushing it too far with the mouth stuff. God, this was going so well and now-
“Poopy.” I looked down. Miriam was looking down at the amped up and emotionally raw little foal. Her scrawny babbeh, who was always a bit smaller and a bit slower, but who seemed to always be trying to sneak meals when mummah was asleep or distracted. Always dirtier than his siblings despite never playing with them. And every time he did play with them, the few times I’d allow it, I’d stage some scenario where he breaks the toy. Did it like six times so far. His siblings love him and they talk to him but they don’t ask him to play anymore, and he knows not to ask them or I yell at him.
Her babbeh is looking back at her. “Wat? Wat mummah mean poopy? Nu am poopy, am babbeh, wemembew?” I should jump in here, but I begin to suspect my wildest expectations of today are about to be surpassed. “Poopy.” She says, looking down. "Nu am babbeh. Babbehs nu pway in wittabocks, nu wuin pwetty bwown fwuff wif gwoss smewwy poopies!" He’s sobbing and falling on his knees. Mummah has always loved him unconditionally. She’d even stand up to me in front of him. But after weeks of forcing him to let her down, she’s finally there. She’s given up.
He waddles over towards her. "Pwease mummah, babbeh nu smeww pwetty! Hab poopies in fwuff! Babbeh feew aww sticky, am gwoss! Nu wike! Poopies in see pwaces, an-an-an meanie daddeh make num aww poo-"
POMF
She bats him pretty hard and he tumbles four or five times. Gets rugburn on the end of his tender and sensitive snout. He immediately starts scream-crying as Miriam approaches him. “Mummah aweddy said. Ou nu babbeh. Ou onwy poopies. Daddeh twy teww mummah, but mummah nu beweeve. Nao dummeh poopy show mummah weawwy am dummeh poopy!” He starts crying so hard his words sorta fail him. She keeps going, her resentment building steam.
“Am dummeh ugwy cowow dat daddeh nu wike! Nu haf pwetty gwass ow taiw tuu! Ou gwass am dummeh sicky gwass an make dummeh poopy wook wike icky stoopi poopy munstah! Gu way!” She’s screaming and stamping her feet now. She’s really getting into it. “Gu way wite nao! Gu tu poopy pwace! Poopy onwy gud poopy in wittabocks!” She seals her rejection by grabbing his tail in her teeth and hoisting him up. He screamed complaints as she strutted down the hall. “Nuuuuu! Owwwwies! Nu wift babbeh by pwetty taiw! Gibbin huwties tu babbeh!”
I heard his sobbing disappear into the next room, followed by a sort of dry crunch. I checked inside, and sure enough, he was in the litterbox.
His mummah dug a little hole like she does for her poopies, and rolled him in. He tried to stagger away a few times, but she’d give him sorry hoofies until he was too owwied to move.
Then she scooped the litter over him. His head was sticking out and she looked sad. “Mummah nu wike dis. Mummah wish poopy was weaw babbeh. But poopy am poopy, nu am babbeh. Nu get huggies ow wub.” He screamed an appeal. Pinned beneath filth and silt, only his head and front right weggy exposed, he pleaded for compassion. “Mummah, peeze! Babbeh am babbeh! Nu am poopies! Babbeh wuz in mummah tummeh, memba?” Then she did something I’d not anticipated.
“Wotsa fings gu in mummah tummeh. Mosta dem tuwn out be poopies. Ou nu am speshaw.” And she stomped his exposed limb until it was flat and he was passed out from the shock.
Fuck me, I need a cigar.