People always say to get a hobby, but none of them seem to like mine.
Hi. I’m Peter. I spend my free time walking around downtown Indianapolis fucking with ferals.
I’m not some knife wielding lunatic, no. I like to work indirect. Clean. Well, clean for me. It’s summer, and in the midwest, that means ants. Ants are drawn to sucrose, and they can wreak havoc on a fluffy nest. I’ve been coming to this one three days now. Every day, I dump an entire jar of synthetic honey on Mummah. The first day she was just confused, then scared when I dumped it, then angry when it was sticky, then less angry when it was sweet.
Yesterday, she’d discovered problems. Firstly, it attracted bugs. Bugs who didn’t much care where the sugary goop was, so anywhere the panicked mare tracked it? Ants.
Secondly, her babbehs could eat it. Not bad, right? Wrong. It’s way too high in sugar for even adult fluffies, let alone foals. They’d helped with licky cleanies, but by the time I came back at least one was dying. Ate too much, went into diabetic shock.
Today was day three. I’ve arrived in the alley where a bedraggled mare is frantically trying to kill hundreds of ants as they assault everything. Her bed, her nest, her food pile, even her children. Covered. Screaming. “Kaff! Ptoo! Mummah heeeeewp! Meanie buggieth gebbin ib mouuuuuffgh!” One foal tries to signal for help, only to be filled with the crawling menace.
It reeks. There’s shit and piss and vomit everywhere, it’s been caked in honey, and left to sit in the hot sun. She doesn’t notice me approaching so I announce myself once I’m close. “Hey fluffies, nummy time!” The mare wheels around at the sound of my voice. “Nuuuuu! Nu mowe sticky nummies! Sticky nummies make meanie buggies gu ebbywhewe! Nu can gif nuff stompies tu stahp buggies!” Ignoring her pleas, I start dumping. Not on her this time.
No, I dump all of it on her babbehs. It’s thick and goopy and they’re too weak to escape. Their heads submerged in honey, they can’t even gasp for air. Mummah is still batting away bugs and spitting them from her mouth. “Nu! Babbehs!” She waddles over in a frenzy and tries to pick them up, but there’s too much honey! Her babbehs snouts are drowning in it even when she picks them up! “Nuuuuuu! Sticky nummies bad fow babbehs! Hewp! Hewp!”
They can’t even exhale. They aren’t drowning because their tiny lungs are too weak to push air past the thick honey, or pull enough in to drown. The mare starts clumsily licking honey off of her Bestest Babbeh, but it’s not fast enough and she knows that.
His eyes are bugging out and his thrashing is getting weaker and weaker. The mare starts taking bites of honey to speed up but…
CRUNCH. Right through his snout. At least he has air now.
“Eeeeeeeeeeeeeee! Guggaaaaah! Gai haat gaggeh? Ghuuu ghuuuu ghuuuuuuu…” Christ I about pissed myself laughing. This pitiful looking white pegasus was missing everything forward of his fucking eyes. It reminded me of a fluffy I’d seen in an old Roachqueen vlog. Just sorta gurgling pathetically, not yet cognizant of the fact he can’t form actual words.
Meanwhile, next to him, his siblings are dying. Well, almost all of them are. His wingy pointy sister got lucky. Honey got her from the neck down, so she’s stuck but she can at least breathe. She’s terrified, her brother has been mangled, her mummah has been miserable for days, and now the meanie buggies are coming for her! “Huuuu pwease meanie buggies, nu gif mow itchy huwties tu fiwwy! Fiwwy huwt aww obah! Aww da time! Huuuuu…” The ants were all over her. They were focused on the honey, but there were enough that some were starting on her exposed face, much to her horror.
They kept crawling up her nose and in her ears. In her mouth they were gross, but she could kill them. Fluffies aren’t powerful sneezers, and nobody can fight bugs in their ears. It’s the one flaw humanity has. But for fluffies, it’s just one more of thousands.
“Eeeeeeee! Buggies in smeww pwace! Buggies in smeww pwaaaaace! Ooooowowowwwies!” She’s thrashing her head around. Bounces it off the pavement a few times. The last one chips her horn off. Right at the base. It lands just out of reach from her snout, which was now covered in honey, tears, saliva, mucus, and blood. Not a great combo if you’re a fluffy. Ants seem to dig it though.
Heheheh. “Dig.”
"Huuuuuuuuuuu buggies in heaw PWACIES! BUGGIES GU WAY WITE NAO! BABBEH MEAN IT! NU WAN! SCREEEEEE!" She trailed off, her howl going from rage to pain. The ants had been accumulating in her ears. “Nuuuuuu! Tuu wowd! Buggies tuu wowd! Nu mowe scwitchy scwatchy! Babbeh nu wike!” She tries to puff her cheeks, but when she breathes in, she starts sputtering and coughing violently.
I see ants come out of her nose and mouth, along with no small amount of blood. She’s stopped forming words and is just alternating between screaming in rage, screaming in terror, sobbing formlessly, coughing violently, and gurgling as she tries not to drown in what must be a not inconsiderate amount of internal bleeding.
Her mother has a new problem. The ants have taken a keen interest in her eyes. Not all of them, not even many of them. But eyes are vulnerable, she’s a fluffy, and there’s a lot of dumb shit that might seem like a solution.
She starts howling amd sprinting around like she’s on fire. Genuinely, that’s the only other time I’ve seen a fluffy move like this. She only takes about ten seconds or so to get tired, but that’s long enough for her to find something that can save her.
A big cup from Hardees. She knows wawa bad for fwuffy, but also bad for ants? She is not sure, but it’s a possible solution. Unfortunately, she’s not aware of the role such cups play throughout the midwest. As she drops on it with her full weight to free the cool liquid within, she instead finds a potent mixture of sunflower seed shells, chaw spit, and probably piss depending on how bare the worksite is. And it had been sitting in the sun all day.
The smell must have been horrid, because she vomits immediately no time to say some dumb shit about it not smelling nice or whatever. Like no shit, it’s a cup full of the grossest shit available heated to damn near boiling by the unforgiving Indiana sun. She had shade, it didn’t.
It’s a dark brown sludge, but it’s certainly more fluid than the honey. Most of her fluff was exposed since she didn’t get honeyed too bad today, so it was nice and dry. Ready to soak up all that hickory flavored goodness.
It seemed to bother the ants, though. They retreated from her face. Her daughter had been sputtering ants out this whole time and her coughs were getting more and more frequent. She was forced to watch helplessly as her pwetty pointy pwace was slowly devoured by ants. It’s still soft at her age, I’m told its roughly the consistency of a Lucky Charms marshmallow. I’ll have to try one sometime. Maybe a new salad topping? With everything else around her, I can still make out words she’s trying to choke out. Like “nu” and “hown.” Today has not gone well for her.
It is at this point that daddy and big babbeh return. They’d been gathering nummies, as they’d been the last few times I came by. I was happy to catch them here. The father, a well worn and streetwise looking maroon unicorn, approached. “Wat hoomin du tu hewd?” He’s not screaming like a smarty, he’s just firm. Calm, even. His son stands just off his flank, puffing out his chest and cheeks to help back the no doubt considerable threat his father represents.
“I was giving them nummies.” He doesn’t flinch. Just narrows his eyes some. “Dey gud nummies? Ow meany huwtie nummies? Cuz Weginawd see Speshaw fwend cwyin. See wittwe babbeh haf bigges’ owwies. Hoomin du aww dat?” Huh. Old bastard has a pair. Better confiscate them.
“Sure.” I start casually pacing the alley, trying to look sinister as an excuse to stack the deck. “I’ve been giving them nummies, but I think the meanie buggies ate most of them.” I chuckle as I grab a plastic milk crate off a loading dock step nearby. "They didn’t eat your son’s snout though. Your special friend did that aaaaaall by herself." This sets him off. His cool demeanor drops and he charges me. Big mistake. As soon as he’s in range I snatch him up by the scalp. He’s screaming and kicking and trying to bite when I drop him in the crate. He’s just big enough to fit entirely under the lip, but not comfortably. It’s like when a cat contorts itself to fit in a small container for fun, only fluffies aren’t flexible and he’s really not having fun.
I don’t wait for him to say or do anything. I punch him really hard in the face. I look down and as soon as he makes a sound I punch him again. He gets it after that.
I walk over towards the dumpster they’ve been scavenging from. It’s next to a concrete gutter, the kind cities put in alleyways so rainwater doesn’t destroy freight entrances to businesses and shit. This one’s nice and wide. Deep too. I overturn the crate and set it down in the gutter. He tries to lift it up, but I stand on it as I start pulling the dumpster.
Eyeballing the height, if I can move the dumpster into position, it ought to be able to hold the crate down without being unstable or obvious. That means it won’t move unless a human being purposely moves it. And it’s not like the sanitation workers union is pro-fluffy. They’ll either kill him or keep him trapped while they empty the dumpster, just to make sure they can put it back.
I pull it out and set it down. Only has about half an inch of clearance left on the corner posts, and that ought to settle down to zero once the weight of it flexes the plastic a little.
It’s got holes. He can see and hear and speak to everyone. They can bring him food and water. But that’s it. They cannot save him, and he can’t move.
I step back to admire my handiwork. This family was happy a few days ago. They were prancing around and playing games. Now that’s done. The young colt with no snout will likely die within the week unless he finds some hitherto unheard of liquid species of grass. His ex-alicorn sister hit her head and was deprived of oxygen long enough to derp herself. Mummah managed to free two other babbehs. One lost both front weggies, the other is clearly paralyzed. Looks like pretty low on the spine, just forward of the rear hips. He’s dragging his useless hindquarters along, still sometimes getting stuck in honey. His deweggified sibling was trying to scoot along with his back weggies, resulting in a lot of street grit in his face. He’s constantly spitting out bits of rock and glass, and I can already see blood soaking his chest fluff. He’s gonna quickly develop callouses. Good for mobility, bad for self esteem. Callouses don’t grow fluff.
Mummah is a wreck. She’s trying to calm her remaining children. Snoutless is still sobbing and trying to get milkies, but without a mouth he can’t latch. His mummah is too frazzled and stupid to help him. Besides, she’s trying to give huggies so her daughter won’t be dummeh anymore.
“Nuuuu! Speshaw munstah babbeh! Huuhuhuhuuuuuu ou was su smawt! Was gunna sabe famiwy wif gud finky pwan! Nao am onwy dummeh huuuhuhuuuu…” Her daughter was visibly upset. Where minutes ago she’d been a shockingly well spoken weanling, now…
“Dubbeh Mubba! Babbab sbowty! Ub dubbow, nub fibby! Fibby wibbo pooba bebbu! Dubbah moobow!”
Freed from the ground, she further shows her displeasure by kicking her mother in the tit. She hasn’t been able to give milk for a while and they’re clearly sensitive. Mummah howls in pain and reflexively smacks her daughter, who tumbles end over end into the gutter, stopped by a collision with her father’s prison.
Here he is, face to face with his pretty and smart daughter. He’s at his lowest. The sheer sadness is incomprehensible, his face is practically oozing regret and despair. I hear a wheezing “huuuuu.” He must be so compacted in there he’s having trouble drawing a full breath. He oughta get lightheaded soon. His daughter yells something incoherent. It had the letter “b” in it a lot, so I’m sure it was super insightful. Then she did an about face, to shit in her father’s mouth.
Mummah is at wit’s end. In a blind rage, she clomps her way over and whump! Kicks derpy babbeh back into dad’s nyu howsie pwace. “Nu! Gif poopies! Tu speshaw! Fwend! Ou dummeh! Bad! Poopy! Babbeh!” By the time she’s got ahold of herself, the damage is done. Her daughter is dead, reduced to chunks of soft bone and fatty meat smeared across her father’s eyes.
He didn’t even speak. He just stared.
…
…
…
It’s been a day. I came back to the alley to find the family gone. The corpses were left behind, but mummah and her newly tumbly babbehs were gone. Snoutless was there, barely clinging to life. His chest rose and fell rapidly but weakly. As I stepped in front of the milk crate, I saw the stallion. Eyes still looking at nothing. He takes notice of me, and I hear a weak noise. “K…k…kiwwwww…” I squat down. "What, kill you? Why? You’re already fucked.
"K…kiww…b…abb…babbeh…tuu…huwties…nu…nu faiw…" Huh. Weirdly noble. Shame I’m a douchebag. I’d already planned to help Snoutless if he lived through the night. I pull out some wipes and hydrogen peroxide to clean his wounds. He’s in agony but it’s not like he can fight back lol. After he’s disinfected I dress his wounds. Okay “dress.” I stick some sanitary napkins to them. Then I get a bottle of cheap foal milk made from real foals, I squeeze it down his throat in record time, and while he’s still crying and sputtering and gurgling I drop him in front of his father. With the medical attention and food, he should outlive his father, though not by much.
“Don’t tell me what to do, you stupid little fuck.” I walk past, kicking the dumpster once they can’t see me. I hear them yelp. Hilarious.