“Kaywee feew babbehs comin, daddeh!” the pink and white fluffy tells me.
“That’s good honey,” I say, smirking, “Just relax and they’ll come out fine.” A birthing mat has already been placed behind my new pet in preparation for this moment.
Kaylee was a Christmas color fluffy - a red and green maned unicorn to be precise - that I bought in January, when they were going on sale after the holidays. The breeder I bought from was an unauthorized operation, so she wasn’t spayed or neutered in any fashion. It was ideal for my current plan.
I remembered when I first bought her, when I told the mill operator that she was the one I wanted. Her eyes were so bright, and her lips had curled up into a big grin. When I carried her out of the store tears of joy streamed down her face. Days later, I bred her, exciting her at the prospect of getting to keep her children instead of having them taken, as it would be in the mill. I have treated her relatively well during this time, and she has been grateful, having never asked me for a thing.
I rub her head gently while she strains herself giving birth. One by one, the slimy foals come out, and I scoop them up in my hands, mercifully protected by gloves. There are five in all. As I’m walking out the door with them, Kaylee speaks up.
“Daddeh! Wait! Daddeh say dat Kaywee can keep babbehs! Wai daddeh take babbehs?”
“I’ll bring them back, Kaylee,” I say, “I’m just going to clean them up first. So that way you can hug and love them properly. I’ll only take a minute.” She looks as if she wants to say something more, but hunches her head towards the ground in meek acceptance.
I leave for the saferoom for the bathroom. My excuse is not entirely false; the first thing I do when I enter is spray the foals down with cold water. They cheep frantically, undeveloped limbs trembling and jerking about erratically. I dry them off and they quake to the touch. They instinctively try hugging my fingers, but I deliberately avoid their touch, leading to distinctly despondent peeping. Altogether, I have a dark blue earthie (male), dull pink earthie (female), light orange pegasus (female), moss green unicorn (female), and bright purple pegasus (male).
Thus, my plan can begin. Taking the strips of cloth I had cut for this exact purpose, I carefully wrap each of the foals up. Their chirping is a bit more subdued when I do this, but afterwards, once their still tiny minds start to realize that they’ve become immobilized, they peep even more than before, small bodied forms wiggling back and forth in a futile struggle against their bonds. All five successfully swaddled with only their heads bared to the world, I carry them back to their mother.
“Here you go, Kaylee!” I say, faking shared joy, “your babies are all ready!”
She looks at them, slightly worried. “Daddeh,” she asks, “wai babbehs hab nu weggies?”
I laugh. “Oh, they have legs alright. I wrapped them up in blankets so that they wouldn’t get hurt. It’s important that they only start moving around when they’re old enough. I’m sure you know by now that they’re very fragile when they’re young. Anyways, I hope you don’t mind if I watch you for a little bit, just in case there’s any problems.”
She says nothing to me concerning my explanation and simply keeps her expression of worry. The foals’ continued distressed peeping prompts her to place their exposed heads to her teats for feeding. It calms them some, but their cheeping does not end. Even when she takes the time to hug and cuddle them, they do not stop.
“Nu hab saddies, mummah hewe.” Kaylee tells them. They wriggle some more against their soft prison, their instinct to hug their parent back denied. After a while, their inner frustration, fear, and confusion prompts more squeaking, rising in intensity. Kaylee whines to herself, then walks over to me to tug on my pant leg.
“Daddeh,” she complains, “babbehs hab wowstest saddies an Kaywee nu can fix! Can daddeh hewp babbehs?”
I stare down at her, expressionless, and give a non-answer. “Babies cry a lot Kaylee. Maybe you shouldn’t have asked for any if you couldn’t handle it.” She gives a defeated “huu” and goes back to trying to calm her young. She tries singing to them, cooing at them, licking them, but nothing works.
After waiting a while, fiddling with my phone whenever I get bored of the spectacle, I hear Kaylee make a disgusted gag. The smell takes root in my nostrils and confirms my suspicions; the foals have defecated themselves. Unsurprisingly, the smell of their own feces sends them into louder chirping and intensified struggling. They succeed only in making a bigger mess with their restraints, disgustingly smearing it around.
When I take my leave, I spy on Kaylee through the secret camera. Her foals maintain a steady stream of pained chirps, and as her redoubled efforts to calm them keep failing to do so, she becomes increasingly confused and agitated.
“Wha wong babbehs? Mummah hewe, give huggies an wuv! Wai stiww hab saddies?” She suddenly has a eureka moment, gasping and saying “Meybe babbehs nee mowe miwkies!” Smiling at the brilliance of her lateral thinking, she puts each of the foals to her teats once more.
Having already been well fed earlier, the foals initially refuse the attempt at further feeding, moving their mouths away from their mother’s nipple and squeaking in protest. “Wha?” she says, “Stahp dat! Bad babbeh! Dwink ‘ou miwkies!” she says with each resistant foal, occasionally shaking them in momentary anger to get them to cooperate. After much prodding like this, each complies. Many painful sounding hiccups are had, which are Kaylee’s only respite from their still constant peeping.
“Huuuuu…babbehs maek tu much noisies!” she says. Capitulating on finding a solution, she mournfully walks away to play with her toys unenthusiastically while leaving the incessant children behind to wriggle on the ground. After about half an hour, she trods over to them to see how they’re doing, and her nose visibly wrinkles in disgust.
“Huu huu! Babbehs weawwy smeww nu pwetty!” Evidently, the overfeeding has led to them messing themselves even worse than before. My stomach does knots just thinking about it, and I make a mental note to get a can of Febreeze. For her part, Kaylee looks even more troubled by the new problem her children have caused and quickly retreats from the bundled up foals. Too distracted to play with her toys, she just paces up and down, wiping an occasional tear from her eye. From distress or sheer disgust, I can’t tell.
Nothing else of particular note happens before I enter, and so, with a can of air freshener in hand and face covered by a mask, I spray the air when I go in. Once it’s at a tolerable level, I take my face mask off, and notice Kaylee sitting patiently at my feet, looking up at me.
“What is it, girl?” I ask.
“Babbehs hab wowstest ugwy smeww, daddeh.” she calmly explains. “Can daddeh take dat tingy,” she points to the Febreeze, “an maek babbehs smeww pwetty ‘gain?”
“Oh, uh… I run a hand through my hair, not expecting the question. “Well I’d love to, but it could hurt your babies if I spray it on them. They’re still very small right now.”
She sighs. “Otay daddeh. Am it sweepy time nao?”
“I’m afraid it is. Time to say goodnight.” But as the morose fluffy goes to retrieve its foals, she recoils in disgust. It is not hard to see why: the shit has accumulated to such an extent that it’s actually pouring out of their cloth binding.
“Kaylee,” I say with an annoyed tone, “what’s wrong now?”
“Huu…” She does not meet my gaze. “Kaywee tink…babbehs maek bad poopies.”
I shake my head with disdain. “Kaylee, the rules are simple. All fluffies living in my house have to follow them. Babies included.” I turn to go grab my usual implement for spanking (a wooden spoon) when Kaylee grabs my foot.
“Bu daddeh! Babbehs am too widdwe to maek gud poopies!” I shrug her off.
“I won’t make it too bad this time,” I say, “but they must be taught to behave early and often. Remember that.” I leave, and she sniffles, shrinking back.
I stay true to my word when I spank and batter the foals. They screech their little lungs out anyway, still tender bodies sensitive to the pain. I can see their tiny limbs pushing desperately against their cloth wrappings, while their heads twist and turn in agony. I am done quickly, and after all five are thoroughly worked over, Kaylee runs over and hugs every single one. This does not calm them, no doubt because they’re very sore, the pressure of the hugs intensifying the hurt from their bruises. I also notice that the ones she hugs the longest are sweaty and panting, likely overheating.
My work here done for now, I tell the nervous mother fluffy “Tomorrow I’ll change their blankets, but for now, we’ll just keep them as they are.” I lean down and give her a tender caress on the back, partly out of worry that I’ve done too much too quickly. “Don’t be sad Kaylee. This is all for their own good. I wouldn’t be doing this if I wasn’t trying to make them good fluffies.”
I turn her head to face me. “You trust me, don’t you?” She looks down at her young, and then back to me, before nodding.
“Dank ‘ou daddeh,” she says, to my surprise, “Babbehs nee’ be gud babbehs, an Kaywee kno dat daddeh am gud daddeh.” She looks up at me with a loving, understanding smile, and it reminds me of when I picked her up from the mill. “If daddeh teach babbehs tu be gud fwuffies, den Kaywee wuv daddeh.”
I smile in return and scratch behind her ear. “Good girl. I’ll see you in the morning.” I say, giving the beleaguered fluffy mother an affectionate rub on the head before dimming the lights and leaving.
The next morning I go in, and the smell is more overpowering than before. Evidently Kaylee felt the same, because I see she moved away from the foals again during the night. They peep intermittently still, but nothing close to what it was before. Taking a closer look, I nearly gag. They almost certainly messed themselves more at some point, their feces leaking out all over the place and ruining the pet bed.
Instead of waking Kaylee, I take the foals out of the room, holding them at arm’s length, using gloves, and being careful not to let their filth spill out onto my floor. Dropping them into the sink, I unwrap them and throw the disgusting rags out. Turning on cold water, I roughly scrub each of the nasty bastards, eliciting high pitched wailing from all of them. Once they’re dried off, I wrap them each back up, all of them shivering, too weak to screech this time around.
But not everything goes smoothly. The last foal I have to work on - the female orange pegasus - shits itself while I’m in the middle of wrapping it. Some of its crap gets on my shirt. Gritting my teeth in anger, I take the cloth strips that got defecated on, and tie it around its head, completely covering it.
For the first and last time in its short life, its legs twitch and spasm in the air awkwardly. It paws at the spot where its head is tied, and hyperventilates. Audibly choking on the shit, its body convulses and it heaves, creating a dark wet spot on the cloth where it’s vomiting profusely. With a couple more seizures, the tiny creature steadily stops its struggle, intermittent muscle spasms being the only sign of life it still had, until those too are gone.
My anger now subsiding, I throw the garbage away and change my clothes. Internally I chide myself; how will I explain to Kaylee that one of her children is gone? With the four others in tow, I resolve to wing it, and prod her awake. Groggily, she blinks her eyes open and stretches her legs.
“Hewwo daddeh.” she says, tone signifying neither joy or displeasure. She notices the foals I’ve got in my arms, and sniffs in their general direction. “Babbehs smeww betta.”
“I went and washed them while you were asleep.” I say. I then hand each one over, and she cradles them, taking turns cooing softly to each. It takes longer than I anticipated for her to notice that something’s wrong, but when she does, she simply raises an eyebrow and looks around for a couple minutes.
“Daddeh, whewe am oddah babbeh?” she asks in a calm tone.
“Well Kaylee, they uh…were a bit misbehaved. So I had to give them away. They’ll be spending time with somebody else now.”
She smiles, saying “Otay!” before going back to cuddling with the rest. Easier than I expected.
“Babbehs nu maek much noisies nao.” she says, thinking out loud. “Babbehs maek wots ob noisies when Kaywee twy tu hab sweepy time. Babbehs am weaw siwwy.”
She looks up at me suddenly, wide eyed and uncertain. “Daddeh, am babbehs gud babbehs?”
“Well…” I say, dithering in order to come up with a satisfactory answer. “I think that in order to make sure a baby turns out to be a good fluffy, you have to teach them how to be good. That’s why we have the sorry stick. You have to be ready to do what’s necessary in order to make sure they don’t turn bad. Does that make sense?”
She nods while grinning. “Daddeh am su smawt!” she praises. I give her an affectionate pat on the head. I take the pet bed out and throw it in the wash, replacing it with an old blanket. With nothing else requiring my immediate attention, I decide to prepare for work and check on the fluffies later.
A work shift later, I open up the saferoom door and once again, have to deal with a pungent and rotten odor. Kaylee runs to my feet in a panic.
“Daddeh! Daddeh! Babbehs hab wowstest sickies!”
“What? Where are…” I look around the room and spot faint wriggling in the litter box. I get closer to look and the smell intensifies, like a decaying carcass.
“Holy Christ!” I shout. Not only are they coated in shit again, but their attempts at moving have only smeared it all so badly that it’s gotten on their heads and faces. There’s also copious amounts of yellow and green vomit that has also gotten all over them, dribbling from their mouths and down onto their cloth clutches. Commingling with that is gooey mucus leaking out their noses. But by far the worst of it is the pus, the putrid white and yellow crud that oozes out occasionally into the open air, slithering on top of the diarrhea. Some of the pus is actually coming from the foals’ still shut eyes.
The sounds they make aren’t much better. They cough watery coughs with throats encrusted with mucus. They gurgle and wheeze, daring only to breathe through their mouths, for their noses are too crammed with snot. Only a brief chirp every couple of minutes serves as a reminder of what they used to sound like. They frequently shudder and shake, as if they’re freezing.
One of them, however, is totally still. Lying face up in a puddle of its own shit and vomit spittle trailing down either sides of its cheeks, the dark blue earthie does not appear to be breathing. Judging from the amount of puke that’s pooled up at the entrance of its mouth, and considering the fact that the other foals are all face down, I’m guessing that this foal ended up choking on its own puke.
When I pluck them from their spots with glove covered hands and drop them in the bathroom sink, I make sure to throw my gloves away alongside the dead foal and get a new pair. Before I begin the work of cleaning them off, I take the time to suppress my disgust long enough to know what I’m dealing with besides the obvious. Just getting a closer look shows me that their mouths are cracked and dry, so I’ll have to make sure they stay hydrated. I also notice that the moss green unicorn is lacking a horn, and resolve to understand this issue later.
Snipping their diseased rags off, I can see the reddened, swollen spots on their bodies and the open sores near their leg joints where the pus is being secreted from. With rigorous application of soap and water, most of the disgusting crud gets washed off. A q-tip and rubbing alcohol are applied to the pus wounds, something that reinvigorates their chirping a bit. Some of them hack up yellowish bile during the cleaning. The pink earthie pisses an unhealthy orangish color and emits a soft, pained screech as it does so. They all shiver throughout.
Now that they’re clean, I apply a gentle finger to their heads, confirming that each has a fever. I grab a box of pet antibiotics, get a good amount of the liquid in a dropper, and administer it through their mouths. They’re too weak to even resist instinctually, so it’s an easy job. Once it’s done, I wrap them up anew, but this time I make sure the area around their respective crotches and anuses aren’t covered as well. I’ve had enough of cleaning up fluffies covered in shit, piss, and puke for a lifetime.
I bring the surviving children back to the grateful Kaylee, who showers me with praises, until again, she realizes that there’s a missing foal.
“Whewe oddah babbeh, daddeh?” she asks.
“That one was too sick for me to treat,” I lie, “so I had to give it to a friend.” Quickly, I change the subject. “You’re going to have to watch over the rest of them very closely. We don’t want them getting any worse than they’ve already gotten. They’ll need food often to keep their strength, but make sure they’re not too far from the litterbox, so that way if they start to mess themselves again, it’ll be easy to clean up. I’ll leave the door open a crack in case you need anything.”
Taking my words to heart, she replies with a quick “Yus daddeh!”, and does exactly as I ask, feeding them next to the litterbox. I take a step to leave and feel something solid underneath my boot. Lifting my foot up, I see that it’s small and hard, like a pebble. It’s colored white.
Choosing not to mention it to Kaylee, I leave and go review the camera footage. Skipping around the recording, I see the point that I’m looking for and watch as about an hour after I left for work, Kaylee shows a marked change in attitude. It all starts when the foals start to escalate their peeping again.
“Wai babbehs make ee ee noisies? Babbehs aweady hab miwkies an huggies!” she asks, anger adding an edge to her words. It seems that the foals themselves pick up on this, and start to chirp more in fear. “Stahp dat!” she shouts at them, which only causes them to chirp more. This produces a feedback loop where she gets angrier and angrier at their behavior, until…
“Dummeh babbehs! Mummah say be quiet!” She shakes the foal she’s currently holding - the now deceased blue earthie - and screams in its face, tossing it when this prompts terrified squealing. The rest of them add their voices into the squeaking, and the now enraged Kaylee kicks their swaddled up bodies to try and get them to stop. She pauses, and sniffs the air.
“Bad babbehs! Poopies gu in da wittabawks!” she chides. She picks them up in her mouth and chucks them in the direction of the litterbox, reminding me of a little kid throwing their toys at a younger sibling in a tantrum. The green unicorn lands face first during this violence, generating an audible snapping sound, and sure enough, when Kaylee picks it up again, its horn is broken off on the ground.
Once they’re all deposited in the litterbox, she lectures them some more. “If babbehs wan be gud babbehs, den mummah wiww gib huggies an wuv. Bu’ bad babbehs dat maek bad poopies gu in da wittabawks! Nu get wuv!” With a huff, she turns around and leaves the peeping foals to their fate, playing a crude Jenga game with her blocks.
I skip through more of the footage. Every once in a while the foals peep too loudly and Kaylee goes near the litterbox to scream at them. This is virtually the only interaction she has with them aside from a time she feeds them. Five hours in the foals start to cough and wheeze, prompting another round of yelling and screaming from their primary caretaker. Six hours in they start the puking. They writhe a lot for the first couple hours of being sick, this being the point where the blue foal accidentally rolls itself on its back and chokes to death. Kaylee seems to regain some of her conscience the worse they get and stares at them with concern, even singing to them to help ease their agony, but still keeps a distance, presumably not wanting to touch the filth.
Fascinated at the direction she seems to be going, I’m shaken from my thoughts when I hear the Kaylee of the present shouting for me. Running to the saferoom, I quickly blurt out “What? What is it?”
“Babbeh hab wowstest sickies ‘gain!” she blubbers, pointing her hoof to the pink earthie that’s rapidly seizing. It keeps trying to take in rapid breaths, but there’s still so much mucus in its nose and throat that it’s only succeeding in drawing itself in snot, making disgusting wet coughing noises as it does so. I press my finger to its sweaty forehead, confirming that it has a severe fever. This foal is not long for this world.
“Wait here,” I tell my pet fluffy, and run out of the room like I’m actually going to get something to save the foal. Knowing how short my time left with it is, I scramble to find something to enhance its pain before it expires. Rummaging through drawers and cabinets, I come across a small pin. Immediately, I know what to do, and so with adrenaline juicing up my nerves in anticipation, I charge back towards the saferoom.
“Alright,” I explain, keeping my composure despite everything, “we have to let the sickness out of the baby. To do that, I’m going to have to poke some holes into them. Don’t be scared if you see some blood, okay?” She nods vigorously.
“Huwwy daddeh!” she encourages, her front hooves clasped together in anxiety.
Biting my lower lip to suppress laughter, I start sticking the pink foal violently, netting small trickles of blood in reward. The foal’s body thrashes harder than ever at the new pain inflicted, and its head whips around in every direction it can. Spittle gets whipped in every direction and it keeps trying to inhale more air, until little by little, the life starts to die and it can breathe no longer. The foal goes inert within seconds. Sparing a glance towards Kaylee shows that she’s been suckling on one of her hooves in sheer nervousness.
I lift up the soulless body, saying “Hm… I think she’s going to be alright for now, but I’ll have to leave her with the doctor before she makes a full recovery.” Kaylee suddenly hugs my leg.
“Dank 'ou daddeh,” she says, “Am da bestest daddeh fow hewp babbehs. Kaywee wuv ou!”
“Alright, alright, I gotta take them out now.” I say, shaking off this outpouring of gratitude. Not waiting for her to spout something else, I take the dead foal out of the room and throw it away with the others. The task completed, all that’s left is to make sure the remaining two don’t die as well. Thankfully, no more surprise seizures occur during the night.
In the short term, I let the two remaining foals recover from their sicknesses. The next few days pass in a similar manner; the foals will start to peep and chirp in pain from their swaddling rags, Kaylee will get angry at them when they don’t cease (especially when they start up during night time), and when they defecate themselves in fear she’ll hit them and throw them in the litterbox. She takes them out after a couple hours, often admonishing them for misbehavior.
I catch these outbursts on camera only, never in person. She makes no effort to clean up their messes, and when I do my daily check-ups she is quick to throw them under the bus as the cause of the mess. Maintaining a façade of ignorance as to what she does when I’m not around, I spank the foals whenever she tells me of their supposed transgressions. I don’t know how their throats aren’t rendered hoarse from all their pained squeaking, but they carry on no matter what.
The day they open their eyes to the world and begin to speak is roughly a day or two behind when normal, properly raised foals are supposed to. Unfortunately, I’m not there to witness it firsthand, and only know about it after a day at the office when Kaylee runs up to me with the kind of giddiness you see in a kid at the carnival, shouting “Daddeh! Daddeh wook! Babbehs am tawkie babbehs nao!”
“That’s great honey,” I say, my own distinct and separate enthusiasm rising, “Let me take a look at them.”
She brings the both of them to me in an excited hurry. Immediately I can tell that something is wrong with the both of them. For starters, when Kaylee picks up one of them, they cry and shiver in fear. Their heads whip around in every direction like they’re trying to see something that isn’t there. The moss green foal doesn’t utter spoken language, communicating only in grunts and nonsense sounds. The purple one can speak (uttering simple words and phrases like “mummah” and “nee huggies”), but when I look at its eyes they appear clouded up and white, an obvious sign of blindness.
Kaylee seems aware of their condition, but not the severity of it, because she shuffles her front feet a bit and looks down at the ground, apologetically saying “Kaywee sowwy if babbehs nu maek gud tawkies…Kaywee tink dey stiww too widdwe fow dat…”
“No, no,” I reassure, “it’s fine. They’re coming along great, keep doing what you’re doing.” With a nod and small “dank ‘ou daddeh”, Kaylee pets the two foals gently in an effort to soothe them. They look deeply uncomfortable at the sensation.
I decide to keep the both of them swaddled for a little longer to see what transpires. As early as the next morning, I can see that the already agonized fluffy foals are coming up to their limit. The green one still shows no sign of being able to articulate any kind of speech, resorting back to peeps and chirps while fighting the cloth it’s trapped in like a demon. Purple, however, is more direct in what it wants.
“Mummah! Babbeh huwties! Wan move!” it bleats. The foal is so insistent on being freed from its confines that Kaylee asks me if it was time to do so yet. But I hold firm, explaining that a foal can’t be unbundled too quickly, as they’re still very sensitive when they’re young. Satisfied with my explanation, she tells the foal:
“Daddeh say nu.”
The purple foal starts to sniffle, which gives way to outright crying. “Babbeh huwties! Babbeh huwties!” it keeps shrieking.
“Babbeh stawp!” Kaylee shouts back. I lean forward intently, eager to see a screaming match in-person. The foal continues its weeping, and Kaylee plants a firm hoof on its head, pressing its face into the ground.
“Babbeh wisten to mummah! Daddeh say nu, su babbeh stay in bwankie! Unnastan?” she says, pressing harder to emphasize the point. The purple foal dejected mutters “nu huwties, nu huwties”, and satisfied with this, Kaylee lifts her hoof up gingerly and caresses its back. She looks back to me and asks “When babbehs nu nee bwankie nu mowe, daddeh?”
“Soon,” is all I offer to her. “Very soon.”
What this ends up meaning is that the next day I declare that the purple foal is mature enough to be freed from its cloth prison…but that the moss green foal will have to remain tied up. The purple foal naturally celebrates its newfound freedom, but Kaylee is somewhat perplexed.
“Wai gweeie babbeh nu get wet gu fwom bwankie?” she asks.
“The problem is, Kaylee, that the green baby hasn’t learned how to talk yet.” Indeed, even now it still makes confused, pain tinged peeps and chirps. “Until it can demonstrate that it knows how to talk, it can’t learn how to walk. Do you get it now?”
She nods dumbly, remarking “Daddeh am da smawtest! Kaywee neva tink ob dat!”
And so, without further ado, the purple foal can now begin its new life on legs. As I untie it’s rag bonds, I find I must suppress a chuckle. As I predicted, the foal, living through much of its formative days being so tightly wound up, has developed legs that are bent at odd and uneven angles. Sitting it up reveals that its tiny wings have long been deprived of blood flow, and look shriveled up and wilted. Needless to say, when the small creature tries to stretch its legs and unfurl its wings, it can only respond in one way to the sudden and extreme jolt in pain.
“SCREEEEEEEEEEEEE!”
Kaylee looks suitably horrified at the crippled foal and its tortured existence. “D-daddeh, wat wong wif babbeh?”
“Oh nothing sweetheart,” I say, stroking her hair, “he’s just not used to using his legs. You’ve just got to teach him, is all. You don’t have to teach him now, but he’s gotta learn sometime. Don’t forget about it. You also shouldn’t forget about your other baby, and how it needs to learn how to speak before it can become unwrapped.”
Taking my words to heart, Kaylee carefully nuzzles the crying purple foal for a little while, before just as carefully laying it down on their resting blanket. Then she trods over to the green foal and tries to teach it language.
“Otay babbeh, is time to make tawkies nao. Say ‘wuv mummah’!” It peeps nervously and does not maintain eye contact with Kaylee.
“Mummah am oba hewe, babbeh!” she chides it. She tries to reposition its head to face her, but every time she lets go of its head, it gazes in a different direction. “Stawp wook ‘way fwom mummah!” she shouts. Giving up on continuing this back and forth, she flips it onto its stomach, leaning on it and placing her hoof firmly on top of its head so that it can’t move.
“Nao mummah teach babbeh tawkies! Say ‘wuv mummah’!” The foal groans in pain. “Dat nu wight!” Kaylee shouts in response. “Say ‘wuv mummah’!”
This goes on for several minutes, until Kaylee gives up in annoyance. She lifts her hoof off the foal’s head and tells me “Daddeh! Babbeh nu wan weawn tawkies!”
“Oh that’s fine Kaylee. She’s just going to take time is all. It doesn’t have to be right away.” The fluffy mother looks troubled at the suggestion that she has a long road ahead if she ever wants her foals to be normal.
“Kaywee neva kno babbehs am su much wowk!” she says, voicing her thoughts out loud. I chuckle at this, and scratch behind her ears.
Inevitably though, I must leave the fluffies by themselves and go out of the house. When I come back, another surprise greets me: I cannot see the purple foal anywhere, and the green foal is totally still, face down. There are a couple small piles of fluffy feces, including one in front of the green foal. Kaylee is stacking her blocks stoically in the corner. When she notices me come in she frowns despondently.
“Kaywee sowwy daddeh,” she says, looking to the side and aimlessly stretching her left leg with her right. “Babbeh made bad poopies when Kaywee twy teach wawkies.” She points to the piles of crap left behind, still not looking directly at me. She sniffles and dabs at her eyes.
“Kaywee nu can teach babbehs how be gud! Am bad mummah!”
“Shhh, it’s okay, it’s okay.” I pet her on the back, not eager to deal with a fluffy meltdown. “Where’s the purple baby?”
She points wordlessly at the litterbox. I stop petting her to go look (incidentally causing her to sob more), and see that the purple foal is motionless as well, eyes half open.
“It’s fine, Kaylee.” I say over my shoulder. “I guess I’ll just have to take them to see someone who will be able to teach them properly.” She starts to wail at my suggestion.
“HUUUU! KAYWEE NU CAN DO ANYFING WIGHT! AM BAD MUMMAH! WOST AWW BABBEHS! AM BAD FWUFFY!” she screams.
“Calm down girl, calm down! It’s okay! These kinds of things happen sometimes, it’s not anybody’s fault. You’re not a bad fluffy.”
Her sobbing lowered down to a trickle now, she says “W-weawwy?” while holding back hiccups.
“Yes, really. You can dry your tears now, everything’s going to be okay. You’ll be able to see your babies again - all of them - real soon, and by that time they’ll be healthy and lovely. Now, just calm down, and let me take care of things.”
“O-otay,” she says, wiping away tears and snot, “Wiww be…quiet nao…” Once I collect the purple and green foals and I’m just about to exit, she calls out to me one more time.
“Daddeh?” She hesitates, then says “Wet babbehs kno dat Kaywee wuv dem aww, nu matta wha. An dat dey am aww gud babbehs, eben if dey maek bad poopies ow cwy tu much.”
“I will, girl. I will.” Annoyed at her outburst, I close the door without another word and confirm my suspicions: the foals are dead. Depositing them in the same place as the others, I now have only the camera footage to tell me what happened.
I can see on the recorded footage that a little while after I left, Kaylee attempted to teach the green foal how to speak again. For about fifteen minutes she keeps her composure even though the foal seems to not be understanding the lesson. But when it starts chirping up a storm and trying to break free of its restraints, things turn.
“Babbeh stawp! Wisten tu mummah!” She grabs it in between her hooves and shakes it back and forth, making it cry. “Wai ‘ou neva wisten to mummah? Wai stiww nu maek tawkies!? Nu wan tawk wif mummah? Nu wuv mummah?” She stops shaking it and leans in close.
“Can ‘ou say ANYFING?” Her expression softens with her next statement: “Pwease?”
But the foal doesn’t utter a word, only making quiet peeping noises and chewing against its rags. Kaylee’s expression of rage returns, and she shouts “Fine! Den babbeh can stay in bwankie foweva!” She tosses the foal to the ground, a pop or cracking sound just barely audible. Lingering frustration still bubbled up inside, she goes over to the purple foal and roughly nudges it, eliciting a small squeak.
“Babbeh get up. Is wawkies time nao.” The purple foal balks.
“Stiww huwties! Stiww huwties!” it pleads.
“Babbeh hab to wean wawkies. Nao watch mummah!” Kaylee walks in a circle, head held high. “Nao babbeh twy.”
The foal tries to support its tiny body with its bent up legs, but screams hellishy and drops to the ground.
“SCREEEEEEEEE! WEGGIES HUWTIES! WEGGIES HUWTIES!” it bawls.
“Twy ‘gain!” Kaylee responds. But the foal’s second attempt goes just as badly as the first, leading to more high pitched screaming. Kaylee covers her ears until the foal is no longer as passionate in its wails, and then begins poking the foal with her horn.
“Mummah gib point owies if babbeh nu maek wawkies!” she tells it. But despite her aggressive, painful encouragement, the foal resists any further attempts to use its legs again.
“HUUUUU! MUMMAH MEANIE! MUMMAH MEANIE! BABBEH HEAWT HUWTIES!” it screams. And then, too agonized to notice or care, it shits on the floor. This drives Kaylee to her breaking point.
“Bad babbeh!” she screams, landing blow after blow on the terrified foal. “Bad, bad, bad!” She carries it in front of the green foal and drops it unceremoniously.
“Tawkie babbeh can hewp maek sissy into tawkie babbeh tu!” she declares. “Mummah nu wan wook at bad babbeh tiww cgiwpie babbeh am tawkie babbeh!” She then stomps off and kicks her ball around.
The purple foal just sobs in pain, agitating the green foal. The latter thrusts its head in as many directions as possible and chirps rapidly, as if expecting a new attack. The purple foal drags itself closer to the green one, groaning in pain with each use of its legs, until purple is talking right in green’s ear.
“Sissy nu chiwpies!” purple begs. Green twists and turns even harder upon hearing something talk to it. Purple lays one of its fucked up lags against green’s back, presumably an attempt at hugging. This, however, turns green berserk. Green suddenly bites purple’s neck, drooling and panting. Purple gags in pain, tears streaming down its cheeks as it throws its legs against its attacker. It is not nearly enough, however, and purple perishes, its body excreting one last time as it expires.
The green foal releases its grip long after it is necessary to do so, and breathes heavily. Skipping ahead a while, Kaylee finally takes notice of the scene roughly twenty minutes later.
“Babbeh gon get da sowwy stick by daddeh weasel bad!” she warns the corpse. Grabbing the purple body, she drops it in the litterbox. “Ou wait hewe fow daddeh.”
The green foal simply goes still some time later. I presume that whatever blunt force trauma Kaylee caused provoked internal bleeding, but perhaps it simply died of shock, unable to take the stress of the world any longer. It takes a while, but Kaylee does notice the sudden quietness that the two have undergone. She walks up to the dead green foal first, prodding it with her hoof.
“Babbeh am sweepies? Wan twy tawkies ‘gain?” No answer forthcoming, she becomes more insistent. “Wai babbeh nu maek noisies? Nu wan tawk tu mummah? Nu wuv mummah?”
Her lower lip trembles and she rubs her front hooves together nervously. “Am mummah…bad mummah?” she whispers. She shakes her head. “Nu…babbeh jus’ sweepy…babbeh jus’ weaw sweepy…nu am bad mummah, nu am bad mummah…” She keeps muttering to herself, playing dispassionately with her toys. Nothing else of note occurs in the video.
There’s only one thing left to do now. I grab a sedative pill and go visit Kaylee’s room one last time. She’s still very upset since I left her, hiccupping while trying to stymie the tears.
“Kaylee? C’mere girl.” I beckon her over and offer the sedative. “This’ll help you feel a little better, okay? Go ahead and take it.” She does as I suggest and downs the pill in one gulp.
“That’s it, that’s a good girl.” I say, giving an affectionate rub. She hugs me while still choking up, sniffles seasoning the sounds of misery. Before she drifts off, I hear her speak one last time.
“Mummah sowwy babbehs.” she murmurs. Minutes later her breathing is quiet and she’s fast asleep.
Using the blanket that she and the foals have been sleeping on for days, I wrap her body up completely. Only her head is exposed. It is not entirely accurate, I must confess, to have said that I dumped the foal bodies in the garbage. There is a garbage can I’ve been using, but it’s separate from the normal trash, a can I tend to use for dead fluffies only. For one sees, throwing dead fluffies in with the regular garbage is considered…distasteful. So, a different can for different waste.
I drop Kaylee in with her dearly departed and horribly rotting younglings, leaving it outside and open just a crack so that light can seep in, but not enough that a bird or wild animal would be able to easily crawl in. My days of swaddling fluffies now (probably) over, I leave the mother to its fate and start considering my next plan.
