The saferoom door opened silently and gently, as to not disturb the sleeping mare. Fred smiled down at the plump yellow mass cozily nestled in a cat bed, drooling into a stuffed panda. He stroked her side gently, taking care not to wake her, then set a plate of spaghetti next to her. With a final smile, he turned and left, shutting the door without a sound.
A firm knock on the door pulled Fred from his work. He frowned, he’d lost track of time completely. The house was dirtier than he’d like, but that shouldn’t matter. Quickly fixing his hair and wiping down his shirt, he opened the door. Before him was a woman slightly older than him, early thirties was his guess. She wore a black suit with a white blouse and green tie, her faded blonde hair in a neat bun. “Frederick Hamish?” she queried.
He nodded, “Just Fred. You’re with Hasbio?”
“You said you’ve cured five mares of BMS?”
Blunt, Fred liked that, “I… have convinced five mares to stop engaging in BMS behavior.”
She raised an eyebrow, Fred internally panicked. “It’s easier to show you, follow me, main operation’s in the garage.”
He beckoned her in with an awkward bow that he thanked god she didn’t see. After a moment’s hesitation, he began to stride towards the door to the garage, “Didn’t catch your name, by the way.”
“Molly,” was her simple response as she opened the door to the garage herself. There was ample space, it was rather big for the house. That was indeed why Fred had chosen the place, best bang for his buck if he wanted to work freelance with fluffies. Even with his humble pickup parked inside, there was room for ten small pens in a double-file line, enough space between each row of five for a person to stand between.
There was also a workbench to the side with all manors of… strange tools. There were the power tools you’d expect to see in a garage, but also surgical ones. Even some cooking utensils and table salt. Molly guess this bench wasn’t for cars.
The unmistakable, insufferable sound of fluffies came from five of the crates, the leftmost row. Fred beckoned Molly towards the wooden environments. The right row was empty with only sawdust in them. But each left one had a mare and a litter of foals. Every pen had a padding of sawdust providing enough comfort to make it bearable, a bowl of fat-rich-utterly-flavorless kibble, a wall-mounted water bottle meant for guinea pigs, and just enough room for the still-blind foals to move around.
Each mother, however, would have to actively try not to crush her spawn if she were to move. The mares were all in some state of misery. Two were sobbing as their babies obliviously nursed. One stared dead-eyed at the ceiling as her three colts cuddled into her. The other two were having active panic attacks as their foals played.
“So,” Fred began, “Despite their rep, bitch-mares are very loving creatures. They just only love one thing: whichever foal they birth with a color they find especially pretty. I find that it’s a pretty universal law that the best way to control a fluffy is to hold what they love most over their head.”
He approached one of the mares, a light blue and purple one with six foals. But one was notably fatter. She let out a nervous squirt of shit as he approached.
“Why is that one bigger?” asked Fred coldly.
The mare stammered, “u-uh…babbeh j-jus big, daddeh!”
Fred glared at her, “What happened last time you lied?”
“B-Babbeh is… is bestest,” the mare confessed instantly, bursting into tears.
“You know the drill.”
The mare breathed heavily and choked as she gently took the foal from her tit and dragged the now-crying creature in front of her. Hooves-shaking, she sobbed as she steadfastly beat the foal to death, crying harder with each of its pained shrieks. Scared “huu-huus” and farts could be heard from the other pens. The foal’s screams stopped quickly as its mother killed it.
Once it was dead, the mare, shaking to the point of disturbing her living spawn, forced her head into the mangled mass and began to eat, scarfing down the tender flesh with what could only be described as pure agony in her eyes.
Molly whistled, “How… did you manage to instill that?”
Without a word, Fred showed the suit a picture on his phone. A shrieking, skinless, legless, eyeless… thing. The mare before her bound and screaming in the background, a device forcing her eyes open.
“That little bag of meat? That was her last bestest baby. I tortured it to death and forced his mother to watch. After that, I simply told her that if I catch her with another bestest, she can either kill it quickly herself, or I will force her to watch me take my sweet time.”
Molly muttered, “And you’ve done this with all of them?”
“Yes indeedy. All of these ladies were bought off of owners who didn’t want to pay to have their bitch-mares pillowed and milkbagged. I separated them from their foals overnight, sprayed them down in the shower, coldest setting of course. Scrubbed them off nice and rough, then I strapped them to a milking machine and pried their eyes open to watch me skin their bestest baby alive and pour salt on them. My torture sessions take two to three hours. I’ve only had to repeat it once.”
“Hm.” said Molly simply.
“Pros are: Very effective, consistent results, no physical trauma to the mare herself. Cons are: Traumatized mares are rendered unadoptable, torture sessions are laborious and time-consuming.”
“Fascinating…” trailed Molly.
“And, once in a lifetime, you’ll get a mare that just doesn’t cooperate. But there’s always a stubborn outlier.”
“Hm?”
“I tried this about a year and a half ago with just one mare, Daisy. She made me torture five goddamn foals, didn’t fucking break. One morning, I come to feed her. She beat all her non-favorite babies to death, shat on them, and giggled at me as she nursed her bestest.”
“Huh,” Molly breathed, impressed, “One dead mare, nice.”
Fred laughed, “Oh, Daisy’s not dead.”
Molly held back a gasp and nodded. She didn’t want to know, "Well… Mister Hamish, this was very interesting. I’ll email you after I’ve reviewed every applicant. Even if you’re not accepted, your… research may very well be used for other Hasbio projects.
Fred grinned, “See ya, Molly.”
The saferoom door opened. Daisy silently ate the spaghetti, sighing mournfully as she swallowed the last of it. Her eyes shifted towards Fred as he approached her, she knew better than to think showing her fear would do anything. Fred knelt down and grinned as he stroked her mane.
“Hey Daisy! Know what time it is?”
The mare didn’t respond.
“The baby’s recovered enough to play again!”
With a flair, Fred produced a wooden sorry-box and placed it down. He grabbed Daisy by the scruff hard and lifted her up with no care. She simply whimpered pitifully as he held her over the container and kicked it over. Out tumbled a vaguely-fluffy-shaped lump of flesh. Well into stallion-hood, about a year and a half old. It had no fluff to speak of, every inch of skin charred. It laid limp, simply breathing steadily, as that was all it was capable of.
It had no legs, no eyes, ears and vocal chords burned into uselessness. A single tear fell from Daisy’s cheek as Fred gently kicked her son and dropped her to go prepare his ‘toys’