We don’t have a tag for like skeleton or corpse. Death as a tag can be a bit misleading because it implies the action of dying.
Anna woke up to her phone alarm. The foals had begun to panic at the noise and began tumbling about. A few made scaredy-leaks on her. She caught Maybell before she fell and quickly swiped the alarm off.
The purple one limped pitifully as he landed on his hooves too hard. Anna apologized and explained what the alarm was and assured them it wasn’t dangerous. She checked that the purple colt had no permanent injuries then gave them all food. Finally, she took Maybell outside to poop.
Still no bones. It was weird as meat normally caused incontinence in fluffies, who were designed to eat a vegetarian diet. In fact, the reason so many people had the stereotype of fluffies spraying people with shit was that they were being fed canned human sgettis with meat sauce. She reminded Maybell of their agreement and then went to take a shower, get dressed and rush out the door.
She contemplated calling in sick but today was Friday. It was a tough day for the store and the Milkmares needed help adjusting to the inventory rotation. Particularly Pinkie who was their designate milkmare for brown foals. She always had to say goodbye to at least one foal who wasn’t adopted every month despite how hard she tried to find them new mummahs and daddehs.
She was already running a few minutes late and called John to let him know. She made an excuse of forgetting to charge her phone and the alarm not going off. It wasn’t a big deal but communicating it saved him some peace of mind.
Catching every green light, she got there barely on time. She made a mental note to set her alarm earlier now. She rushed in, separated the two defectives from their ‘Mummahs’ a brownie earthie from Pinkie, who’s great misfortune was being the wrong color, and an incontinent orange pegasus from Horseradish, a tan mare with a green mane, that kept kicking his diapers off. She briefly wondered if pillowing the orange one would have saved it’s life as she carried him back to John to get boxed up and shipped to ‘Skettiland’.
She dismissed the thought; all pillows were miserable even when they knew the alternative. She had been assured the euthanasia process was painless. It prevented overpopulation and miserable abused fluffies ending up in shelters. The delivery truck arrived to distract her, and she distributed the new litters to the mummahs and made sure everyone settled in.
Parents and children would always stop in to see new arrivals and her primary job on these days after the hard part was to basically play goalie at the front displays to keep children from ripping the blind chirpy babies away from the mares and manhandling them. They miraculously got one reservation. A snow-white filly in Candy’s Pen. Candy was a purple mare with a brown mane blind in one milky eye from a roughhousing incident with a unicorn.
She looked around the shelves when there were only customers shopping in the accessories area. There was a good deal of FluffTV tie-in merchandise. The whole toy section was littered with Flufftastic Friends merchandise that she previously only found for customers via online ordering. Apparently there was a new movie and a giant cardboard cutout of the team at ground level was set up for fluffies to take pictures with.
She walked past a green colt on a leash that was trying to hug the display but was getting tearfully frustrated that his hooves could not wrap around the cardboard wall. His owner was trying to gently tug him away with a box of scented litter on his other hand.
She looked at the box of huggie stuffies made to look like the team. She contemplated grabbing one or two for the litter of foals, but it would be a hard sell to convince John that her neighbor’s elderly fluff wanted a huggie friend from a little foal’s show.
Anna had been a late teen teen when fluffies came out. She miraculously escaped fluffy fever like her friends. They were all surprised when they lined up to buy fluffies from the newly opened Fluffmart only to find her working the register as her first (and only) job.
She had been there since opening ‘climbing the corporate ladder’ as she and John liked to joke. She passed the hiring interview specifically because she wasn’t insane over fluffies. But now the fluffy fever was finally getting to her as she found she had unconscious been carrying a Chip plush around the store.
“A memento for all defective stock?” She turned to the sound of John’s voice. “The toy” He pointed to the brown stuffed fluffy in her hands “I get it. This job gets to you sometimes.”
She looked down at the huggie friend she had been carrying “Oh, um, right. Haha.”
He smiled. “We actually have an overstock of those in particular, so I’m supposed to cut a few up and toss them in the trash but why don’t you take that one and I’ll just write it off with the rest.”
She nodded and forced a smile. “Um, yea. Thank you.”
The rest of the day passed uneventfully, and she managed to clock out and drive home with her officially branded Chip huggie friend.
She walked in the door and called across the house to Maybell and the litter. “Miss Anna is back! aaaand… I got a surprise!”
The foals began hooting and hollering with excitement and she heard shaking on the gate as she rounded the corner. “Wut am Supwise?” “Am mowe sgettis?” “Suu ‘cited!”
She held the toy behind her back as she approached. “Step back please.” They made room for her to open the gate and walk through. There were little piles of foal sized poops all over her carpet. She considered not giving them the toy after all. But a quick look around for their mother answered her questions. She saw Maybell was laying in the litterbox.
“Sowwy fow bad poopies mummah!” The yellow filly saw her look of disappointment and spoke up first. “Nuu wan tu make sowwy poopies on mummah!”
Anna shut the gate behind her, “That’s ok babies,” She made eye contact with Maybell who had a look of shame on her face and knew why, “Look everyone! It’s Chip!” pulling out the huggie friend from behind her back.
They all jumped with moderate excitement. A few looked a little disappointed but were still riled up. “Chip is mommy’s favorite Flufftastic friend!” Anna said, knowing foals were very impressionable to peer pressure.
The purple colt chirped up “Weawy!? Den bebbeh wub Chip tuu!” They all began to hug and tug on the toy as Anna stepped past them and over to Maybell.
“Sowwy miss Anna. Maybeww twy to howd poopies buh…” A hand stopped her.
“It’s ok. You did the right thing by keeping your babies from seeing it, now let’s get you cleaned up.” She lifted the litter box, mare and all carried it to her kitchen. She lifted Maybell out and set her in her sink with the stopper in the bottom.
She looked inside the litter box. Sure enough, was the spray of liquid feces, bone, and fluff. She scooped as much as she could out and placed it in a Ziploc bag. She was going to show this to Elizabeth at the least and see if she wanted to bury or cremate it. She may also still decide to put Maybell down. Hugboxers could take severe about-faces with their fluffies if they did something reprehensible.
She walked back to the sink where Maybell watched. “Do you like baths?” the pregnant mare nodded with a quivering lip. The mare was still wracked with the shame and guilt of eating her own child. This was good Anna thought she wasn’t a sociopath after all. “I’m going to turn the water on, it might be cold first, but it will get warm, ok.” Maybell nodded sheepishly.
Anna washed the dried poop from Maybell legs and belly, being gentle with the Mare’s pregnancy bump. The vet had given her a sponge bath, but her fluff had still felt a little grimy. Maybell closed her eyes and coo’d softly as she imagined the soft sponge was licky-cleanies.
