The abuser entered thirty minutes later, carrying three bowls of kibble and a bottle of water. He filled up the fluffy’s shared water dish, and placed all three bowls on the ground, each one colour coded to it’s recipient.
Pink for pink. Yellow for yellow. Green for mama.
Nothing for blue. He was still too little, he had to drink only milk. Because he was still just a baby. Obviously.
“Hey everyone, nummy time!” The abuser said. Yellow and pink dashed over and began devouring their food, while the abuser waited to see if they’d notice what was different today.
Mama took a minute to rouse herself from her miserable sleep and dragged herself over to the green food bowl, flopping down in front of it to eat.
Yellow and pink finished quickly, and realised this themselves.
It was only then that they noticed their bowls seemed to have shrunk since yesterday. They’d had less kibble than usual, and… maybe they were going crazy, but… it looked like mama’s bowl was bigger too!
“Daddeh… fwuffeh stiww hungwy…” Yellow chirped. “Can pwease hab some o’ mummeh’s nummies?”
“Hungwy…” Pink murmured, echoing it’s sibling.
“No, sorry guys.” The abuser said. “See, mama needs more kibble than you two, because she needs to support your baby brother too.” He said, pointing at the wheezing, sobbing blue lump in the middle of the room, which had been left abandoned since mama had hoofed his snout.
“Buh… buh hungwy…” Pink argued back.
“I’m sorry guys, I really am, but blue needs help. See…” He paused, ensuring his tone of voice was correct. “Your baby brother… he’s very special. He’s a special fluffy who needs lots of special help.”
“Bwuddah… speshul?” Yellow asked, confused. He didn’t SEEM special. He seemed smelly and stupid and fat and ugly and lazy and oh how he HATED his baby brother!!!
“Yes, he’s very special.” The abuser said. “That means mama needs to spend a lot of time looking after him, so mama needs a lot of extra food. Understand? You guys don’t get much food now, because of blue.”
He felt like spelling it out would be too obvious to the fuzzy morons, but evidently not, as it was only then that they seemed to finally understand.
Pink and yellow turned, looking at blue, and glaring at him. If looks could kill, blue would be stone dead on the spot.
“Wan mowe nummies!” Pink insisted.
“Well you’re not getting any.” The abuser said, collecting the now empty bowls. “And it’s all blue’s fault.”
As soon as the abuser left, he was back at the keyhole.
Just as he’d expected, it began all over again. Yellow and pink damn near tackled blue, charging into him and beating him with their stubby hooves.
“Dummeh fatteh bwuddah! Takin’ ouw nummies!”
“Stoopid poopy bwuddah! Pink hate yoo! HATECHUI!!!”
Biff. Bonk. Bap. Whap. Thud. Clomp. Boof.
All while blue cried and wailed, tears pouring down his fat face.
“OH-EE! OH-EE!!!” (Sorry! Sorry!!!)
All while mama sat quietly, facing away from the vicious assault behind her, eyes staring glassily into space.
She was miserable. She was confused. She was maybe even angry. And it was all blue’s fault.
She still couldn’t wrap her head around it. Why was blue still a baby? He had grown, clearly. He still had his legs, he was making some noises! There was no reason he SHOULDN’T be a grown-up fluffy like her and pink and yellow… so why wasn’t he?!
Was it her fault? Had she not loved him enough? Had she hurt him somehow? No, that was impossible, she was the best mama ever (obviously), and both pink and yellow were perfect babies…
So why wasn’t blue…?
The rest of the day passed very typically. The fluffies were fed again, the same routine was followed. Pink and yellow were left hungry afterwards (the abuser could actually hear their stomachs rumbling as he took the bowls back out), and he saw them assault and abuse blue again, this time going so far as to pee on him too. Evidently they were done caring about being caught in their abuse, although they were still waiting for their ‘daddy’ to leave… maybe they just weren’t thinking about the consequences.
Eventually mama reluctantly gave blue another meal of milk, then later, while the others were playing, he needed to make poopies again. They succeeded in dragging his bruised, bloated body roughly two feet closer to the litterbox before he couldn’t hold it in anymore, and once more, his bowels erupted. This time, pink had made the mistake of being near blue’s anus at the time, resulting in pink being splashed liberally with runny feces.
This, in turn, gave way to another violent assault on blue, as he cried and wailed and wheezed, unable to do anything but lie there and receive his abuse, his limp, atrophied legs being of absolutely no use to him as his siblings beat him again and again and again.
Eventually the abuser returned to put them all to bed, watching as mama, yellow and pink hauled blue’s fat blob of a body back into bed, as he farted and cried the entire way across the floor. The abuser briefly wondered if he was getting carpet burn from all the dragging and pushing, but he figured he could check it in the morning.
But then, that night, everything changed.
The abuser entered their room again in the morning, same as usual.
“Hey mama! Hey babies!” He announced, same as usual.
“Hewwo daddeh.” Mama said. She was nudging a ball around by herself.
“Hewwo.” Pink and yellow murmured from opposite sides of the room. They were both sitting facing walls, staring directly at them.
Blue was left slumped in the bed he shared with mama. He didn’t seem to be moving at all.
“How are you feeling today?” The abuser asked them.
“Mama otay.” Mama said.
“And how are your babies?” The abuser asked. Mama jumped like she’d been electrocuted.
“BABBEHS HAPPEH! BABBEHS FINE! BABBEHS AWE AWW AWIVE!!!” She squeaked in panic and fear, lying poorly. The abuser had a feeling this would happen at some point.
“All alive?” He asked. “Is that so?”
“YUS! AWW AWIVE! SEE?!” Mama said, gesturing wildly at the room.
“Well, blue looks pretty sad all by himself.” The abuser said, making his way over to the bed. “What say we get him out and play for a while?”
“NU! NU DADDEH!” Mama immediately squeaked, leaping up and trying to stop him from reaching the bed (by standing in his way, which he avoided by simply stepping over her).
“Nu wan bwuddah!” Pink yelled.
“Nu wan pway wif stupy bwuddah! Pwease daddeh, nu wan!” Yellow chirped.
The abuser reached the bed and heaved out blue’s obese body, feeling it was already cold and stiff. Blue had died during the night, probably as soon as the fluffies had all been put to bed.
The abuser looked over the body briefly.
New bite-marks and bruises were all over the blue fluffy’s skin, clumps of fluff had been torn out roughly at random points all over his body. His still glued shut eyes were still damp with dried tears, and the mouth hung open limply with the tongue lolling out.
The abuser vaguely noted a scent of urine on blue’s face, particularly from inside his mouth… and he spotted a few tiny fragments of green fluff caught between blue’s teeth.
The abuser didn’t need to be Columbo to figure out what had happened.
Mama and her babies had gotten so tired of taking care of ‘baby’ that they’d decided to off him, mafia style. During the night they had beaten and assaulted him, maybe even pissed into his mouth, and finally mama had decided to lie on top of him, smothering him completely with her soft, fluffy body.
It was why they had been so strange at first. They were all pretending things were fine, but in typical fluffy pony fashion, they were overcompensating. They probably hoped it’d look like an accident too.
“Mama, I don’t think blue is doing okay.” The abuser said.
“WHA-A-A-A-A?!” Mama asked, with all the acting skill of a plank of wood. “Buh how?! How di’ babbeh gu foweveh sweepies?! Mummah wight dewe AWW-W-W night!”
The abuser didn’t mention that he hadn’t said anything about her baby being dead. He just continued instead.
“I don’t know. But blue baby is dead now.”
“Wha? Oh nu!” Yellow whimpered, waddling over with a smile on his face that betrayed his words. “Bwuddah go sweepies fowever!”
“Nao no mowe stupy bwuddah to make stupy poopies!” Pink said, before remembering he was meant to be sad, and added a ‘hu-hu-hu…’ despite not actually crying.
The abuser looked down at them. A mother and two of her children, all enthusiastic over the death of one of their family members that they felt was an inconvenience to them.
The abuser suddenly felt vindicated in his decision to torture them.
“So blue is dead.” He said again. “Do you all know what that means?”
“Yus! Nao pink and yewwow get mowe nummies!” Pink said happily, as yellow bobbed up and down next to him.
So they’d killed him for ‘taking’ their food away from them. The abuser could work with that.
“No. It means no more nummies ever.”
Their faces fell.
“Whu… wha?!” Mama shrieked. “Buh… buh no mowe bwue babbeh fow takin’ nummies!”
“It doesn’t matter.” The abuser said. “One of your babies is dead. Don’t you know what that means? It means you’re a bad mama.”
Pink and yellow looked at mama, frightened. Mama herself looked unable to comprehend what she was hearing.
“Buh… buh… buh babbeh…” She mewled as she desperately tried to justify her choice. “Babbeh… swow, n’… n’ dummeh… n’…”
“It. Doesn’t. Matter.” The abuser repeated. “You were his mother. You were meant to take care of him. Instead, you let him die.”
(He felt it would be easier to avoid the subject of murder and treat it more like an accident.)
Both pink and yellow had begun to back away from their mother. Their tiny brains were making the connection that the mama’s wasn’t, so the abuser filled her in.
“If you let blue die, what’s going to happen to pink and yellow?! What if they die too?!” He asked. Mama looked at both of her remaining babies, which had backed away from her by several feet. Of course, they had known about the murder of their big baby blue brother, but their mother had been involved too. And it had been so easy for them to kill blue… so what did that mean for them?
If they became an inconvenience to mama, would mama kill them too?!
“Wha… babbehs, nu… nu, mummah wub babbehs…”
“But not all of them, and not enough to keep them safe.” The abuser said, dropping blue’s cold, stiff body on the floor. The fat corpse landed with a heavy ‘WHACK’ directly in front of mama’s face, blue’s sightless eyes staring out of his motionless skull, directly at his mother / murderer.
"Nu! Nu, mummah wub babbehs! Wub pink! Wub yewwow! Wub bwue!"
“No. You didn’t.” The abuser replied coldly. “Otherwise you wouldn’t have killed him.”
Mama gasped in shock. She hadn’t expected him to ever figure that out!
And again, pink and yellow were slowly making the connections themselves. For the first time in their lives, they realised what killing actually meant. They had readily killed blue, sure, but now they were at risk of dying too! That was an entirely different, far more serious matter!
“So…” The abuser said, looking at the three emotionally damaged fluffies sitting around the room. “What are we going to do about this?”
(Okay people, I’m gonna do something I’ve not actually done before. I can’t think of an ending for this story, so I’m going to start accepting suggestions in the comments to see if anyone can give me any good ideas on how to resolve this matter. I figure, people do it anyway, might as well try and make use of it this time. So, if you have any ideas on how this story should end, leave them below and I’ll see what I can come up with for a final chapter.)
(Update: the next chapter has now been written and posted, thanks for all the ideas everybody.)