The backyard of an innocuous, small house, is laden with bushes and flowers. The garden is a strange kind of wild and unkempt, yet paradoxically cultivated and controlled. The plants grow in every which way, but they don’t go beyond the enclosing fence, and they form a partition in their own right. The vegetation grows in a semicircle around a cluster of rocks.
The minerals and crystalized deposits make each rock a bit of an anomaly in the environment. They clearly do not belong. Some are shades of pink and orange. The more ferrous rocks gleam bright, rusty red, and simmer with brown tones.
Nearer towards the house lies a half-rolled carpet. At one point, it was a colorful piece of textile, now rendered sickly and frayed. Its colors are dull, dirty and sallow. Although the rotting elements have just about run their course on it, a stench continues to waft off of the carpet. A stench to human noses. But to certain creatures…
The smell drew the attention of a stray that followed the perimeter of the wrought iron fence, and predictably failed to find a way into the yard. Still, fluffies were oddly persistent depending on the situation, so the stray braced against the fence to stand upright on his rear legs.
“Mummah fwuffy am stuckies wiff babbehs in hoomie pwace? Babbehs!? Mummah!?” the fluffy called out.
The odor of afterbirth disturbed him. Without thought, some misplaced protective instinct had manifested itself in the dim animal.
“It otay, mummah! Fwuffy am hewp from hoomie housie! Fwuffy am…”
The fluffy mumbled pensively to himself and he started to shuffle his hooves on the sidewalk. What to do? There was only one answer for a simple fluffy to resort to in these matters, regardless of the time spent struggling in alleys and stealing from the garbage.
The fluffy waddled right up to the front door of the house and patted his soft hooves against it with panicked urgency. Eventually, it opened up to reveal a young girl to him.
“Nice hoomie-mummah! Dere am a mummah fwuffy awound 'ou housie! Mummah am twappied!”
The girl tilted her head to one side and raised an eyebrow at the creature at her doorstep. “There’s no fluffies here anymore, little guy.”
“Nu!” the fluffy insisted. He started to stamp his front hooves with agitation. “Dere am nu waysies out fwom housie-pwace! Mummah twapped! Smeww pwaces kno’…”
The girl blinked her eyes.
It did not take any time for her to zone out and have the fluffy’s prattling enter one ear and leave the other.
“Pwease nice wady! Hewp mummah an’ mummah babbehs!”
The girl shook her head. “I’m telling you the truth, little guy. If you keep pushing, you’re going to start something you won’t like!”
But the fluffy could not be swayed! “Pweasies! Hewp mummah pwease!” he begged. He started to pant and whimper.
To that, the girl shrugged. “Well, you can come in and try to rescue her, if you’re so sure.”
The fluffy gasped. “Fwuffy sabe mummah?”
With a smile, the girl replied, “Sure! You’re so big and brave banging on my door,” although ‘banging’ was a vast overstatement, “you’re bound to save her and–”
She gasped and covered her mouth as though she had imagined something scandalous,
“-- maybe she’ll let you be the daddy to her babies…? Let you give her special huggies, even…”
The stray fluffy’s eyes widened with the onset of expectation and opportunity. “Fwuffy do! Fwuffy sabe mummah an’ hab famiwy!”
The girl chuckled. “Yeah, go get 'em, you stinky fuckhead!” she cheerfully encouraged the well to do hero.
Panting, the fluffy charged head long through the girl’s legs and quickly found himself lost in her house. In the unfamiliar realm of a human abode, the fluffy’s grand visions eroded, and he came to a sudden, anxious halt.
“Nice wady… Whewe am mummah…?”
The girl shut the front door and shrugged. “I told you, there are no fluffies here, sonny. If you’re so certain, you go find them.”
“Nu! Smeww pwace smeww mummah! Mummah hewe!”
The girl sighed. This felt oddly circular in its manner, didn’t it? Then she cleared her throat, realizing that she had a correction to make. “Ah, there’s… one fluffy present. Yourself,” said she.
“An’ mummah!” the stray stallion reiterated. Math was never a fluffy’s friend.
“Well, shoot, go show me where this mother-fluffy is, then! I’m curious now!” The girl put her hands on her hips and tapped her foot. The fluffy recoiled at the pressure put upon him.
“Huu huu, otay, wiww findsies mummah fo’ nice wady.”
On uncertain hooves, the fluffy slunk through the girl’s house. He entered a sparse living room area. What it lacked in pretty furniture, it made up for with its pretty smell! Some candles burned upon a small corner table, filling the air with their sweet aroma.
He did not think much about this, though, and pressed on.
The fluffy then came across the girl’s lounge. Her television and beanbag were in view, but there did not seem to be many places for a fluffy to hide in, especially a mother. Why weren’t her babies making happy chirps and cheeps?
Later still, the fluffy found the kitchen, and fear started to well up in his heart. He was sure that a forever had passed in the time that it took him to get this far in this human maze! How was the mother fluffy doing!?
“Nice wady, hewp fwuffy! Nu kno’ whewe to go!”
The girl wore a sympathetic look on her face, and hummed thoughtfully. “I could put you back outside, where you came from–”
“Yus, pweasies!” the stallion interrupted breathlessly, the faith in his quest already broken.
She reminded him, “–But that fluffy won’t ever be rescued, if she really is here!”
The stallion balked. “Huuu huuu huuuu, nuuuu!”
“Then you know what you’ve got to do,” the girl ushered the fluffy on.
He swallowed hard and collected his shaken resolve to continue. He went a full lap through the small house before finally coming across the screen door that led into the backyard. He tapped on the glass erratically upon its discovery, and the girl released the stray into the yard.
He followed his nose straight to the carpet. “Mummah and babbehs am hewe! Mummah, babbehs an’… an’… a daddeh…”
A coldness ran through the fluffy’s body upon this somber realization. There was no place for him in this family! The stray’s lips quivered as he fought to keep himself from crying.
“I don’t see a fluffy anywhere, sonny,” the girl observed coolly.
This forced the stallion to choke out, “Smeww… pwace… sneww…”
“The living room carpet that my fluffies used to love, yes. But they’re all gone, now.” The girl stated the fact bluntly, and with a bitterness that hadn’t been in her voice up to now.
The fluffy was having difficulty processing the simple concept, of course. “Fwuffies am gonesies? Buh’ whewe fwuffies go? No wub housie no moa?”
“Well, mother-fluffy went nuts and tried to kill herself a bunch of times. Then when the foals came premature, she squished them all into that carpet. Then she stomped her special friend’s face into mush! So I had to punish her for being a bad, bad fluffy. She lasted longer than I expected, but…”
The girl gestured to the rocks not far from herself and her fluffy guest.
“They all get a proper grave. Even if they were bad in life.”
The implication of mortality was not something the stallion’s mind could fully grasp at that moment, but instinct had every nerve in his body primed to fire off. As sluggish as the fear response was, it could not be denied that everything about this situation was the preamble to gut-churning danger!
“Oh well. At least I’ve got you, now. I get to try again. This time, I’ll make sure you’re a good fluffy.”
Choking fear and sadness caught in the fluffy’s throat. In a hasty panic, he bolted towards the plants that wrapped around the graves. The girl proved much too quick for him, unsurprisingly, and she yanked him off of his hooves by the scruff.
“Bad upsies! Huwties!” The girl hurried back over to the carpet, upon which the stallion defected in his terror.
“Bad fluffy!” the girl was quick to chastise the stray for his misdeed.
“SCREEEEEE!” he shrieked in vain.
The girl returned to her home with her captive in hand. She went right to the kitchen and slapped the filthy street-fluffy into the sink. The girl loosed the faucet into the stray and he screamed his vehement protest against being wetted.
“Only bad fluffies don’t like baths, dipshit,” the girl cooed.
“NU WAN’ BAFF. BAFF HUWT. BAFF BUWNIE OWIES. BAD FO’ FWUFFY.”
“Oh hush,” the girl replied dismissively, watching the steam rise.
She did eventually turn off the hot water to give the fluffy a proper bath, but by then, his skin was so scalded and irritated that the soap was a gruelling assault on his nerves. The stinging and burning of his skin and fluff sloughing off was a kind of agony unimaginable to the creature’s tiny brain.
Eventually that torment came to an end, and he was pulled from the sink and dried. Even after being patted down with a towel, the fluffy’s remaining fluff was still heavy and damp with water and blood.
“W-w-w-w-wowstest owies, eba!” the stallion sobbed.
“Don’t be so premature,” the girl advised him matter-of-factly.
From a drawer, she selected a humble rolling in. With her free hand, she drew out one of the fluffy’s legs prone.
“This is how good fluffies are made,” said the girl with a glimmer in her eyes.
The stallion closed his eyes and shuddered in anticipation of whatever it was that was going to befall him. While he could not see, he felt the pressure on his leg release, and then a sternness on his jaws and lips. The girl’s fingers pried the fluffy’s jaws open and–
His eyes flew open from the flavorful jolt that graced his tongue. A spaghetti noodle!? The stallion reflexively wolfed down the strand of wheat and felt a rush of euphoria. “Fwuffy wub sketties! Wub! Wub! W–”
And in the middle of that soaring high, the girl brought the rolling pin down on the fluffy’s leg.
“–WOWSTEST HUWTIES!” he screamed.
And the girl kept bludgeoning that same leg. Over and over, to the dismay and horror of the stallion. The flesh was discolored, and the limb was twisted in a sickening way in multiple directions. Bits of bone poked through the skin, and blood seeped across the countertop. The stallion’s vision was fuzzy, and he was seeing double.
The girl tried to force another spaghetti noodle into his mouth, but the stray was already on his way to unconsciousness. With deft expertise, she bound the mangled leg at the base with a string-tie to stop the blood loss and to prepare the fluffy for later.
She raised the rolling pin three more times against the sleeping fluffy. She tied his limbs that same many times. Then she finished her grisly work with her trusty meat cleaver, before feeding the fluffy the remedies brewed from the plants in the garden.
He woke again with his mind in a fog, and without feeling in most of his body.
It took some time to realize how much of his body was actually missing.
“W-w-weggies… weggies gone… munsta took weggies…” the fluffy sniffled to himself. He was lying on a cushion in the middle of the living room. A litter box had been positioned strategically near his rear end. A small blanket was draped over his midsection, cozy in its warmth, but placed in such a way to accentuate the reddened stumps that used to be his limbs.
So terrible was this loss, the fluffy could not comprehend it in its entirely.
There was no hysterics eked out from his small body, made even smaller by the amputation of his legs. He could only lie there on his side in a world collapsing in on itself. The open sky of the street was now a dark ceiling under the roof of his captor.
“Oh, you’re finally awake,” the girl commented as she strode into the room, holding a bowl of cereal. “You had me worried, friend!”
The fluffy heard her cheery tone and frowned deeply. “Wai do dis to fwuffy? Wai, munsta!? WAI!?”
“Quiet, you. You’re starting to be a bad fluffy. Pillow fluffs are happy fluffs. Now, shut up and eat some of this marshmallow shit, you little fucker!”
The stallion started to cry, but his despair was interrupted by a spoon intruding into his mouth and pouring the overly sugary contents down his throat.
Thanks for reading!