On a cold December night. The stillness formed a veil over a town usually bustling with activity. The only animate activity the flurrying of snowflakes as they divert and sway with the frigid whispering breeze. Well… The snowflakes and… A blue stallion? Not yet full grown but no babbeh either. He happily trots along the sidewalk, darting from one illuminated area of a streetlamp to the next. A solitary brown chirpy desperately nestles into the fluff on his back. The colt’s proud grin stifled only by a near full container of spaghetti hanging precariously by the rim in his mouth as it sloshes around.
He stops suddenly, appraising the alleyway next to him before turning ahead and excitedly scurrying forward to the next with a happy tippy tappy rhythm.
For it is inside the next, nestled amongst the dumpsters and just barely illuminated by stray light from the street. That the reason for the young fluffy’s happiness is found. A semicircle where snow dare not tread harbors an overturned cardboard box once used to house an oven. It is beginning to show signs of sag and decay as it sits atop a vaporous drain neighbouring a hot water feed line. The interior of the box is lined with bubble wrap adorned with torn bits of refuse sack, old clothes, and the dusting of myriad colors of fluff.
This makeshift bedding forms the nest of a family of seven. A white mare in a loaf pattern snoozes away comfortably enveloped by a group of weanlings. A blue colt nearly matching his father stretches his legs out as a dormant green pegasus instinctively returns an embrace. A plump off-white and silver filly lie with their muzzles poked firmly under their sleeping mummah’s belly, straddled atop them is a final brown colt, a bubble of snot inflating and deflating as he enjoys a deep, peaceful slumber.
The young blue stallion feels some semblance of sensation return to his cracked leathery hooves as he steps into the threshold of the drain. And he regards his family with unmatched joy.
It was a week ago that they escaped. The blue stallion, purchased as a weanling himself. Was given to a boy on the cusp of his teenage years who called him ‘Bruiser’. An ironic name if ever there were one, Bruiser was a kind and gentle fluffy whose thoughts never turned to confrontation as a few others of his kind were so prone to do. In a tale as old as fluffies the novelty of Bruiser was soon lost on the boy, replaced by socializing with own kind and digital media. Bruiser was heartbroken and isolated, and sought comfort in the companionship of the boy’s sister’s fluffy instead.
Bruiser and Snowball were purchased together, their relationship started as best friends in the FluffMart. Snowball was deemed exquisite for her appearance and Bruiser for his behaviour. They were placed into the same pen that catered to every one of their playful needs and they needn’t fear euthanasia or torment.
Two months later the family was perturbed to discover Snowball was well along the stages of pregnancy. Had they been more knowledgeable on the biotoy they would have known that a month spent without constant affection and affirmation is torture for a young fluffy. And they would both seek outlets elsewhere.
Perhaps a month further Snowball’s mewling progeny would grow into small mirrors of their parents. Making a ruckus around the house with their parent’s toys and curiously nibbling at their parent’s food bowls. An amusement and annoyance in equal measure for the cohabiting human family.
One fateful day in the garden, watching the snow fall from the warmth of a heat mat within a pink and white shelter. They would overhear human speech through the ajar fluff-flap next to them.
“Well they have to go now… Before they imprint on Bruiser and Snowball even more…”
“Yeah I get that Lisa but Bruiser and Snowball are depressed as it is… Let’s get them neutered and spayed first so they at least calm down on the hormones and can’t have any more babies then we’ll find buyers for the weanlings after that.”
“Speshuw-fwen?! Am big daddeh jus’ say nu mow’ tummeh babbehs fow Bwooza an’ Snowbaww?”
“Bwooza heaw dat! An big mummah sai she am take 'way dese babbehs too!”
“nuuu.. nu wan weave mummah an daddeh huu huu”
“Buh… Wai? Babbehs am bestest fing EBEH.. Wai nu wan nu mowe..? nu wub babbehs nu mowe?”
The parent’s heads both turn in unison to regard the same section of short, spaced slat garden fence with wood rotted just enough to allow a young fluffy to fit through. They had thought about venturing through before. But comfort and care always trumped curiosity. But now was a matter of urgency.
“Come tu mummah babbehs.. we haf tu gu nao..”
“Buh.. mummah.. babbeh am scawed..”
“Buh fiwwy nu git tu twy kibbwe nummies 'gin dis dawkies time!”
“Du as yu mummah am sai babbehs!”
With the urging of their father, they climb up onto their mother’s back. The 5 were, of course, far too big for the young mare to haul now, leaving her shape crawling along the dark garden more like a crowded white canoe than a mother fluff. The three colts would all hop off anyway before reaching the fence, the independence giving the mare a pang of heart ache.
“Babbeh am gu fiwst!”
Exclaimed the green pegasus, ever the explorer, as it tucked it’s wings tight and leapt through the slats. His blue brother soon to follow. The mare then ushered the two fillies through before the laborious task of squeezing through herself. Then her partner. Leaving just the cowering brown colt behind.
“Come on babbeh! Come tu mummah!”
“huu.. babbeh am scawedies mummah.. huu..”
“Id am otay widdle babbeh! Daddeh wub yu! NEBEW am gun’ webe yu! Am AWWAYS gun pwotecc yu!”
The brown colt gazes up to regard his father, large glistening brown eyes peering above a hoof to meet optimistic blue ones.
“Daddeh pwomise?”
“Daddeh pwomise.”
The family is roused from their slumber.
Heads groggily pulling from the tangle of white fluff to peer at the disturbance at the portal of their makeshift nest.
“Speshuw fwen! Babbehs! Come kwik! Wook at wut daddeh found!”
“Buh daddeeeh… Babbeh am nee’ jus’ a widdle mowe sweepiiieees huu”
The mare. Eyes half open, shakes herself free of the fluffpile and wanders out to meet her beloved.
“Am dat?!”
“Yus! SKETTIS!”
“SKETTIS?!”
“SKETTIS! YAAY!”
“Skettis??”
“Skettis?”
“Dewe am Skettis..?”
In a second she is overtaken by 5 foals darting out of the box and crowding the container, sniffing frantically and obsessively at the box slanting from their father’s mouth.
“Nu babbehs! Mummah am nee’ nummies fiwst 'cause mummah am haf nyu tummeh babbehs nao..”
“Huu But smeww su gud!”
“Wha?! Nu FAIW!”
“heehee Id am otay speshuw fwen.. Dewe am wots an wots of skettis! Wet widdle babbehs haf jus’ a widdle skettis den soon-mummah haf da west wif speshuw fwen!”
“Yaay!”
“Yaay!”
“Bwooza nee’ wawmies nestie fiwst! Hoofsies am haf WOWSTEST cowdie huwties! Wan ged dem awwwww wawmies!”
The stallion proudly struts past the lapping weanlings and contented mare. Another successful day of gathering by the bestest daddy in the world!
“Chirp”
The sudden influx of warmth and cheerful cries of other young have stirred the brown baby on the young stallion’s back into action, flapping its hoof it crawls in a circle, twisting up the stallion’s blue mane.
“Oh!”
“Wha? Am chiwpeh babbeh?”
“Whewe am chiwpeh babbeh?”
Suddenly reminded, the stallion crinkles the bubble wrap under foot as he turns in a circle, fruitlessly attempting to reach his mouth to the back of his neck. Before giving up and curtsying to his mate.
“Oooooo.. Am widdle bwown chiwpeh babbeh! Buh… Whew yu fin’ widdle bwown chiwpeh speshuw fwen?”
The mare gently plucks the squirming foal and lies at the back of the nest. Placing the foal in between her front legs to nuzzle it into puffed chest fluff.
“Id am jus’ dewe! Bwooza was making wawkies thwoo anudda twashies pwace an heaw ‘chiwp’ ‘chiwp’!”
“Mebe yu famiwy weave an’ fowget tu bwing yu poow widdwe babbeh…”
Chirp
The white mare coos as she gently lifts the baby up and places it into the honored position of deepest part of her scruff.
“Dewe dewe widdle babbeh… Haf nappies. Soon-mummah am haf miwkies soon…”
At the hearing of the most potent trigger word in it’s nubile lexicon, it peeps and peeps before burping up a small amount of white spittle.
“Wha..? Babbeh awweady haf miwkies? Buh… Hao? Wif nu mummah?”
“Mebe babbeh am pwezzie fwom sanda cwaus…”
“Yus! Dat am it! Big mummah an big daddeh am sai Bwooza an Snowbaww can haf wun pwezzie each fow chwissmas! Mebe babbeh am pwezzie fo’ mummah an.. an skettis am pwezzie fo’ daddeh!”
“Yus!! Fankoo mistuh sanda cwaus!”
“Fankoo mistuh sanda cwaus… Snowbeww wub yu!”
Little did either of them know. The chirping brown foal was not abandoned by a prejudiced mother as one might expect. Instead, it was filled with the last of its mother’s milk and hidden away by the mare earlier that day. In a successful attempt to obscure it from a far greater threat determined to collect her from the streets.
But that fact is irrelevant to them at the moment. As the five children return from post-sketti gud poopies in a stumbling rush to collapse into a seemingly induced snooze on the bedding. The two parents chuckle at their progeny before finishing off the spaghetti and joining them.
Beneath a foreboding starless sky a blizzard of fine snow cascades down through the darkness and into the unshrouded area of a floodlight.
Beneath it, one man attempts to converse with another. His long dreadlocked hair, dark skin and various layers of clothes betray an ancestry from somewhere far hotter than here.
“Alls I’m sayin… Is you wouldn’t catch a brutha tryna get inside a tiny talkin horse’s head n shi’..”
The target of his statements, a gaunt and pallid man. Taller than the other, with cold blue eyes that stare ahead, unblinking, betraying a lack of emotion.
“I mean… I ain’t no hugboxer or nuffin but I only work here cuh if me and Jada ain’t get our weed at the end of the day… There’s GON be problems you know what I’m sayin?”
The man takes another drag of his cigarette before tossing it into the powder-covered ground where it would make its final hiss.
The pair turn and make their way back to the bearer of the floodlight. The front wing of a massive warehouse with two like it jutting out of the sides. It is here that so many biotoys would eventually find themselves in their never-ending quest for ‘nummies’. Either shipped here in bulk by Fluff Control. Sent here by shelters who had partnered with the facility to avoid the unsavoury 30-day annihilation rule. Or sometimes just lured here by the powerful smell of edible material and others of their kind. The facts remain the same. There are too many unwanted fluffies, everywhere, and they all want food, they all want the best food.
But in a cruel twist of fate. They would instead be themselves consumed by another disastrously overpopulated species demanding the highest quality sustainance. They would all go to feed humanity’s slavering demand for meat.
Administration juts silently out front of the facility toward the main road and parking. It is here that the two unempathetic humans would eat, scrub up and fill out paperwork before plying their grizzly trades. All the while the darker one justifies his sadism to the pale one without response.
Somewhere in this cheap concrete monolith of an extension lies the office of Mr Cochrane, who had himself been a humble butcher experimenting with fluffy meat before innovation after innovation earned him the American dream. He discovered a strategy, a technique. A biochemical present as a crux in natural earthly beings would prove the panacea to all the problems of the derived fluffy products sector. Cortisol. Keeping enough of this stress hormone coursing through a fluffy’s veins will abort unwanted babies. It can cause a fluffy to lose all of its fur.. it may even tear it out itself. A fluffy in constant trauma won’t fight other fluffies, it won’t even talk back.
That is to say.. Cortisol would do half of the jobs necessary for the facility’s operations by itself. There’s also the curious effect that prolongued high levels of Cortisol can bring. It causes immense physiological strain on a fluffy’s body. Which can break down connective tissues and cause unmodulated fat gain. It is said by some that the meat of Cochrane’s fluffies tastes even better than Wagyu.
Cochrane started out with the best intentions as to the quality of his product. A frugal barn of mares for breeding and a shed for ‘processing’ and slaughter.
But demand and investor expectations grew, vastly outstripping supply, and now the facility behaves as a pipeline, furtively transmuting hordes of unwanted fluffies into revenue.
Processing juts out to the side. Much like the administration wing except for a port of sawtoothed loading bays facing a service road. The waiting maw of the site. Only one bay is occupied for this night shift as a lone truck awaits its intended porters. Who rush through the corridors of the wing to receive their sedated packages.
“Ay man.. Sorry we late.. There was..”
The panting man is cut short by a heavy-set and impatient driver shoving a clipboard containing a form into his face. Signing it promptly the three men go about the task of unloading the various boxes from the back of the truck.
They were all of different shape, size, material and condition. All taped firmly shut with a label stuck to each containing a biowaste symbol and the header of Fluff Control.
With his task complete the driver wordlessly strolls toward his truck, and leaves the two men to this accursed place.
“…Aight then…”
Although his tone suggested annoyance at a slight, in reality he understood. The explosion of feral populations have caused many in this industry to have to work through the night to satisfy city ordinances and corporate programs.
The two men load the boxes onto a dolly and push them through into the interior proper of processing wing. Swinging the door open would reveal a wailing cacophony and a nightmarish sight indeed.
The colossal chamber was pleasantly bright. Yet even this small good is actually a betrayal due to what the light elucidates. The floor was covered with rows upon rows of plexiglass pens. Two-by-many they lay seperated by stained concrete walkways.
The floors of the pen were covered with a large cast iron grate. Rough with wide apertures leading to a sewage slipway and into an underground fertilizer tank to be pumped for yet more revenue.
At intervals of around 15cm the material of the grate was forged upward into a dull iron pyramid. These pyramids prevented the fluffies from being able to lie down. Forced onto their delicate hooves and legs onto narrow rough iron for the duration of their tenure would ensure easier packing into the pens, as well as a lack of rest and sleep.
On the outside of each pen lie a stainless steel trough, stained crimson through years of hosting its foul slurry. Suspended above one end of each trough was a pipe which would dispense a mixture of bulk-bought kibble mixed with water and the pumped blood from the main chamber of this facility. Yet further above each pen was a gantry, containing an industrial strength water sprinkler initially conceived to extinguish fires in factories.
Next to the extinguisher was a siren-like loudspeaker.
Packed into each pen is a number of fluffies impractical to count by either fluffy or human. Any attempts to track these lives electronically was abandoned long ago. Only the weight of product is tracked now.
The fluffies are all of various ages, sizes, colors, types, genders and condition and all in various stages of psychological decay. The admixture offers no issues. The fluffies trapped here are unable to do anything other than stand and try to endure.
The two men open up an old oven box with a box cutter in front of a row of pens and set about its contents. A sedated white mare is pulled out by the tail and righted into a rare available slot in one of the pens. With a chirpy brown foul still tangled into the longest part of her mane.
“Pwese nu-daddeh! Pwese nu mowe fwuffies!”
“NuuuUU! huuu huuu Dewe am too many fwuffies in nu-nestie bawks awweady! huu huu.. odda nu-nestie bawksies nu haf dat many huuu”
Although ignored by the men. The fluffy’s observation was correct. It’s clear that pens are filled in an order from one side to the other until shoulder-to-shoulder. The presence of fluffies still clinging to sanity in the pens on the far side of the chamber implying that, at its busiest, this facility would pack every pen with fluffies.
The other man then pulls out a group of limp weanlings, 5 in total, from the box and places them next to their slumbering mother. Not out of compassion, but simple spatial availability.
A final fluffy, a blue stallion, is then pulled from the box. With the last pen full, he is placed into the slightly less dense neighbouring pen.
“Uuuuh… hnng Tu wowd! Wai am babbehs being su wowd! Bwooza nee’ mo’ sweepies! Nu mo’ showties an’ cwyin pwese babbehs…”
And so would end the last good sleep Bruiser would ever have. His eyes shuttered open in a panic, flickering closed and open as though the whole situation had to be some ocular error.
To his right was a plexiglass wall displaying the myriad tones of sadness of the poor fluffies compacted against it. To his left was a dirty-red fully grown stallion weeping and mumbling to itself.
In front of him a static dirty yellow fluffy, bulky and unmoving. He suspected there was a fluffy behind him as well.
"Whaaa?! Buh.. Whewe am Bwooza? Whewe am nestie? … "
“gasp WHEWE AM SPESHUW FWEN?! WHEWE AM BABBEHS?!”
The relics of an induced slumber were thus driven away by pain of the heart. Both emotional at the prospect of losing his family and physical from panic.
“huuu huuu Pwese sabe Wusty mummah… huu nu wan’ be in tu-many-fwuffies daycawe anymowe huuu huuu nebah ask fow toysies ebah 'gin huu”
“… Hewwo… Nyu fwen? Whewe am Bwooza?”
“huu huu Nee’ sweepies su muchies.. Pwese mummah Wusty miss pwettie bwankie an softie beddies huuu”
“Hewwoooo..? Pwese nyu fwen Bwooza nee’ fin’ speshuw-fwen an babbehs!”
“huuu.. sniff huu.. Nu eben made bad poopies.. Was Cowal! huuu huu huu huu huuuuuuuuuuu”
His dirty-red neighbor now pre-occupied primarily by weeping into the drain-floor. Bruiser decided to try his luck with the fluffy in front. He bops its rump with his hoof. No response. So he bops it with his hoof a few more times. All this triggered was a twitch and swish of the tail. Not even a jump of surprise nor hint of investigation.
The fluffy next decided to explore his new surroundings. He first tried to push through the corner gap left open between the twin barriers of Rusty and the yellow stallion. No such luck. His neighbouring fluffies wouldn’t budge and he was still smaller than they were. He shuffles and pokes his head through instead.
The fluffy concentration grew even denser in that direction. So he shuffles backward, feeling his rump boop a fluffy’s nose as he does so. So he tries the only option left. Pushing diagonally backward.
“Sowwy fwen! Bwooza nu mean tu gib boopsies!”
“OWWIE!”
He pulls in his left rear leg rapidly. His already worn and frayed leathery hoof receiving a new puncture from a malicious geometry of metal somewhere behind him. Not one to give up, he tries again, until he successfully finds a flat patch of iron to put his weight behind him and… Success! He has shimmied his way out behind rusty and into the back of the pen, which at least isn’t so packed that he can’t shimmy between the hollow fluffies left back here. He looks at the floor, and sees the source of his new injury.
“Wha?! Fwoow haf pointie owwies?! Wai am meanie pointie fwoow?”
“Fuwst.. Fwuffy in shewtew huu.. Den fwuffy am wif owd mummah.. huu huu Den fwuffy in shewtew 'gin! huu”
Bruiser regards the snivelling older fluff now in front of him. Patches of grey and green fur shedding off into the drain below for each sob he catches. He, like all the others, is discordantly mumbling to himself.
“Hewwo? Nyu fwen? Whewe am Brooza? Nee’ git outsies an’ fin’ speshuw-fwen an’ babbehs!”
“Den daddeh sai ‘Woss am tu much monie’ an’ gu in shewtew 'GIN HUUU HUUU”
“FWEN! Pweeeese! huu Wissen tu Bwooza!”
“Nao fwuffy in WOWSTEST shewtew EBAH huuu huuu.. Jus’ wan keep namesie an’ mummah ou daddeh! jus’ fo’ widdle whiwe wongew! aaAAH HUUU HUUU HUUUUU”
Giving up once again on trying communication with the shades around you. You carefully trot on the safe zones of rough iron through the empty gaps of the pen. Before settling on the back corner.
“Dis… dis am jus’ bad sweepie picshuw.. Nu wowwies babbehs… Bwooza gun’ haf widdle nappies an wakies in nestie wif speshuw-fwen an babbehs.”
He slumps over against the plexiglass. The closest a fluff can get to lounging in the pens. The sobbing eyes of the fluffies pressed against the other side of the plexiglass does unsettle Bruiser a bit…
But he simply shuts his eyes and pretends they aren’t real. They’re just phantoms of a bad dream designed to torment him.
“huu Bwooza nu can haf nappies wif nu nestie pwace or softie beddies… huu”
“Huuu.. Id am TU WOUD! Bwooza nu wike woudie noisies..”
At this point Bruiser starts to feel the volume of the cacophony of this place really hurt his delicate ears. He was used to the order of a nuclear family, or the hidden days and tranquil nights of less-travelled alleyways. Now his ears were being stung with a vicious solution of wailing, begging, and a chorus of fluffies all mumbling their sins to themselves as though this place were some kind of biotoy pandemonium.
Bruiser slinks down further squeezing his eyes tighter. Squishing his head between the plexiglass and haunch of the fluffy in front in a vain attempt to deafen the noise.
With the sedative still clinging to life in his system. And the stress of the situation, he might have gotten 5 good minutes of sleep until…
REEOOOEEOOOEEOOOEEOO
EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
REEOOOEEOOOEEOOOEEOO
EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
REEOOOEEOOOEEOOOEEOO
EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
The loudspeakers all blared out a deafening chorus of the harshest noises. Sirens layered on top of a harmony of the frightened screams of uncountable quantities of fluffies.
Alongside, the lights in the entire chamber flash on and off. Oscillating between flooding the chamber with blinding light and plunging it into pitch black darkness. Bruiser squished his face further into the gap of his neighbour’s haunch and the plexiglass.
Utterly terrified, shivering and chirping like a newborn at the sudden unpredictable raid on his senses and, just as suddenly as they came, the noises stopped. Leaving an energized form of the usual wailing. Bruiser pulls his head from where he had it jammed and realized his lapse in bravery had come with fortune.
In cowering his head away, he managed to avoid the concurrent torrent of scaredy poopies jetted out by every single fluffy in the room, including himself.
“huuuHUUUHUUU Fwuffy neawwy am haf GUD SWEEPIE TIME PICSHUWS DIS TIME TU! HUUU HUU HUU”
“nuuuhuhuuhu! NU FAIW! huu Woud noisie time AWWAYS habben when Wosie am JUS’ sweepies! huuuu”
“HATCHU WOUDIE NOISIES MUNSTAH! SMAWTIE HATCHU SU MUCH!”
“huu… Chocowate am WEAWWY jus’ poopie fwuffy now huu”
“P… Pwese nicie wawa fings! Pwese nu wawa! Wawa nu gud fow fwuffy.. huu awways gif cowdie huwties.. huu”
The majority of the fluffies, and the majority of the pens, were now startled into a locked-in-place panic and absolutely doused with rancid fecal matter smelling faintly of iron.
As if on queue, the industrial strength fire extinguishers suspended above each pen clicked to life, blasting the fluffies within with a waterfall of tank-cold water that rinsed the shit and filth off of the fluffies and down into the drain. Along with new clumps of fur and, somewhere, in the next pen, a small brown chirpie foal.
Cold, confused, uncomfortable and alone. With every one of his senses overwhelmed with the most negative experiences the universe has available for it, Bruiser slips into his first breakdown.
"huuu huuuu HUUUU Nuuu! NU WAN! HUUU
“BWOOZA NU EBEN NYO WHEWE AM! HUUU BWOOZA JUS’ WAN SPESHUW FWEN AN WAWMIE NESTIE 'GIN PWEEEESE HUUUU.”
“Pweeese jus’ be bad sweepie time picshuws! huuu speshuw-fwen pwese wakies Bwooza PWESE! HUU Nu wan’ be in meanie BAD pwace anymowe huuu huuu”