Thanks to AgentASCI for this last minute prompt, I cannot think of a better way to send this project off.
Early Christmas morning, well before the sun rose, the last few delivery trucks rolled out of the parking lot stuffed to the brim with whining packages of fluffies. One by one each and every one of those fluffies would be delivered to their new homes. What happened after that was up to fate, some would live out their days as beloved family pets, others didn’t survive the night. Such is the life of a fluffy. Some get lucky, some just barely scrape by, many meet the cruel and uncaring gaze of lady luck.
Some are doomed from the beginning.
Truck eight sat in the lot, in its designated spot, as the others departed. Its burdens were loaded in already, awaiting a driver to take them to their destinations. The loading crew exited the building into the night, chatting about their Christmas plans as they made their way to their personal cars. Not one of them looked back at truck eight and wondered why it was still there. None of the building administration checked the parking lot before locking up the warehouse, in a rush to return home to their families and holiday plans.
Truck eight sat alone.
In a jail cell a town over, the would-be driver of truck eight lay on a cold concrete bench, awaiting a family member to wire him the money for bail. He’d been arrested for driving under the influence for the third time in as many months and his gig job was the last thing on his mind as he tried to get comfortable in his holding cell. He worried about how he would afford rent and booze if his license was suspended. He worried about whether anyone was actually going to bail him out. He worried about his girlfriend leaving him like she had threatened the week before.
He didn’t think once about the truck full of biotoys sitting in a cold parking lot.
The trucks were somewhat insulated, just within the legal requirements for delivery vehicles. Insulated enough that during the summer the AC kept the metal box from cooking the drivers alive and the heaters kept them from freezing in the winters. This, however, was designed with the intent that the truck would be on while maintaining a safe temperature. Which, without a driver, it certainly was not.
And so, many small souls sat helplessly in that truck, awaiting their fates.
One blue stallion curled up tightly around himself as the temperature dropped, shivering under his thin blanket. A single father waited by the door of a house in the suburbs for him, intending to give him as a gift to his son. He would have been called Storm, and gotten to go everywhere with his human best friend until he would pass peacefully in his sleep six years later. Instead, he would make the fatal mistake of trying to sleep off the cold and never wake.
Snuggled together, a pair of green chirping foals barely cling to life, meant to be the surrogate foals of an accidentally spayed breeding mare. Her owner was quite wealthy, even more so after the lawsuit surrounding the mistaken procedure, and planned on depositing the foals in her fluffy’s bed and claiming a christmas miracle. Tonight the foals will succumb to the elements within the hour and she will receive an apology and a coupon for her trouble.
Sticking her hooves out through the air holes, a pink filly tries to escape her frigid prison. She has the address of a known abuser written atop her box, where an older woman is fastidiously cleaning her “play room” and preparing her “toys”. Death due to the cold is a mercy compared to what was originally in the cards for her.
An orange unicorn wails into the night, begging for anyone to come save him from the darkness. His box is dented from rough handling, as he began screaming the second the lid went on. This did very little to endear him to the packing crew, and would do even less for his planned home. His endless whining would earn him a boot out the door on January third, where he would live for another week as a feral. Either way it could have gone, he would die cold and alone.
One by one each little soul is snuffed out by the uncaring elements. When the trucks return, having finished their deliveries they will park on either side of truck eight, none of the drivers bothering to check if it ever left. Why would they? It wasn’t like they got paid enough to care. Though the Biogrift company paid well enough to attract enough drivers for the last minute seasonal work, their job ended the second the trucks were parked.
The last fluffy alive in truck eight, a thick furred white mare, tries to call out for help hearing the other drivers outside. She’s far too weak to make more than light whispers, and even if she could yell her high pitched voice would never escape the confines of the closed truck. As her eyes slip shut for the last time, she feels warm for just a moment, as if someone has wrapped their arms around her in a loving hug.