You are Eustace, your last name ain’t nobodies damn business. You come from a long line of farmers. For generations, your kin had raised hogs in the mountains of West Virginia. You had always expected to follow in their footsteps, but by the time your Pa died and left you the farm, the bottom had fallen out of the market. You wondered what you were going to do, loathing the options of going to the mines practically everyone else in the state earned their living from, or worse yet, leaving to find work elsewhere. Fortunately, you were saved by the strangest of things.
Fluffies.
The strange little pig, horse, stuffy toy hybrids had made their way into the Appalachians just as they had everywhere else in the country. They intrigued you at first, rainbow-colored “animals” with the minds of children. Stupid children, but children. Being an animal man, you studied up on the creatures and even caught a pair of ferals on a trip to Charleston to see what they were like.
You quickly found that while their constant demands for “Huggies” and “wuv” and “Sketties” and a million other toddler-like requests in that irritating baby talk made them piss-poor pets in your opinion, their other qualities made them ideal for another purpose.
They were easy to injure but surprisingly easy to keep alive through all manner of wounds that would cripple another animal, healing with the slightest amount of medical attention. They could survive on practically anything and put on weight faster than any hog. Most importantly, they reproduced like rodents. Pound for pound, they were the easiest and cheapest livestock you could ask for, and that made them ideal for farming.
Ten years later, you and your family run a reasonably successful fluffy farm, selling a variety of fluffy products both in town and through a website your wife Loretta set up. It was no big task to retro-fit the old hog pens for fluffy use. You covered half the large open entrance to give better shelter from the wind, and added a layer of chicken wire to the wider gauge fencing that kept the hogs in (fluffies weren’t good at much, but escaping was an exception) You learned quickly that it was best to divide them up into individual pens of 2 or 3 sheds each, or else they would go crazy from a lack of clear hierarchy and start devolving into atrocities that turned your stomach and worse, cost you money in lost production. You buried the food troughs in the ground to make them low enough for the tiny beasts to reach, and replaced the water trough with a series of hamster bottles tied around a post to avoid drowning. A flew old rags for nesting material, and straw for a shit pile, and you had all you needed to raise the little fuckers to killing weight. You still bred a pair of pigs for personal consumption, and had a coop of chickens for meat and eggs, but fluffies were the real heart of your operation now.
You wake up at 8:30, blessedly late for a farmer and one of the fringe benefits of raising something as lazy as fluffies. Real animals woke early and needed taken care of at the asscrack of dawn, but fluffies were as sleepy as spoiled children.
You roll over and give your old woman a kiss on the cheek and a squeeze on the rump before rolling out of bed and slipping into your grey coveralls. A cup of coffee and a knock on your sons doors to wake them up and it was out the door to work. You cross the yard, scaring off the chickens your early bird of a daughter Suzie-anne had already let out and gathered eggs from, and grabbed a bucket from the feed shed. You always started them off with a serving of cheap kibble, and then supplemented the rest of their diets with grass clippings, crab apples (they hated those, but they were everywhere and nutritious so you didn’t care) and scraps from the kitchen and garden.
Approaching the pens, nine of them all side by side, with roughly 300 fluffies in total, divided by sex, age and pregnancy status. Pregnant dams were kept in the pen closest to the house and got fed first, breeding stallions in the furthest from them. The pens beside the dams were the new mothers with unweaned foals. The middle pens were reserved for the rest, mostly meat but some would go on to be breeders. You made most of your money on harvesting the fluffs, but you never shied from making extra on the side by breeding good colors for sale to hugboxers, or the occasional alicorn. A princess Twilight paid for your last trip down to Daytona.
You grab the frayed rope attached to the clanger of the old cast iron bell by the pens and give it a good hard ring, groans of complaint about “nu wan wakies” “wai wowd noisy wake gud fwuffy, wan sweepies” and CHEEP “Bebbeh nu wike wowd noisy huuuuu”
It baffled you how they could act like every day was the first day they experienced this very routine situation. They had memories that would make a goldfish look genius.
Slowly but surely the various gaggles of multicolored pseudo-equines dragged themselves out of their nests and fluff piles, and out into the morning sun.
“Time for “nummies” Everybody up. Slackers don’t eat.”
“Fwuffy’s am up munstuh daddeh. Can pwease have sketties? Sketties am bestest nummies fowe tummeh babbehs.” The familiar begging started right away. There was nothing a dam liked better than using her pregnancy to get special treatment. Like always, you ignored her and started scooping kibble into the trough and moved on to the next as the bitch huuu huuuu’ed over “bad nummies”
Each pen was full of beggars and each time they were ignored, and in time they all fell upon their dry, tasteless kibble and started munching away. Once the stallions were fed, it was time to clean out the pens.
“Where you at shit boy.”
“Here I am pa.” Deeg, your youngest boy at nine years old, came bouncing out of the house and towards the barn to get the rake, shovel and wheelbarrow. It was his job to muck out the piles of stinking stray and fluffy shit from each pen and haul it off to the compost heap, turning and stirring it up each day to get proper aeration until it became suitable fertilizer for the garden. He came back and started down with the dams and got to work.
“Dank yu smaw daddeh fowe cwean poopie piwe, nu smew pwetty, poopies am bad fowe babbehs.”
“Your welcome, Blossom, you’re such a good fluffy”
“YAY! Bwossum wuv be gud fwuffy fowe smaw daddeh. Bwosum can wiv in wawm housie wif yu an munstuh daddeh an haf sketties an toysies fowe babbehs?”
“Boy?” You give him a stern look, reminding him not to get the critters riled up with false hope.”
“I…I’m sorry girl, but…we need you to stay here with the other soon mommah’s and make sure they all have the bestest babies. They need you and your mommah songs.”
“Huuuu huuu otay smaw daddeh, nu wan be ousidies, bu wan hewp soon mummuh’s haf gud babbehs. Be best soon mummuh fwend eva fow smaw daddeh”
“I know you will, girl, now, let’s have a good day.”
“Yaaaay! Wuv gud day!!!”
He was a sweet kid, sometimes too sweet. No matter how much he was lectured or how many fluffies he saw die, he couldn’t help getting attached. You suppose no farmer really could to one degree or another. You remembered all the Christmas ham you ate that your grandpa knew by name. As Deeg reached the next pen over, there was a shrill ear-piercing sound.
“SCREEEEEEE BABBEH NUUUUU COME BACK KITTY MUNSTUH, GIF BABBEH BACK, NEE BEE WIF MUMMUH, NU FOWE NUMMIES HUUUU HUUUU”
“MUMMUH SABE BABBEH!!! NU WAN BAD UPPSIES, NU WAN GU WIF KITTY MUNSTUH HUUUU NU WAN BE NUMMIES AND GU FOWEBA SWEEPIES HUUU HUUUUUUU SABE BABE-” The crying was cut short abruptly and the mother began wailing.
“NUUUUUUUHUUUUHUUUUUUU BABBEH FOWEBA SWEEPIES HUUUUUUU KITTY MUNSTUH TAKE MUMMUH SPECIEW WINGIE BABBEH HUUU HUUUUU”
“God damn it, Sylvester!” You look over to the porch and see the culprit, curled up in his favorite spot under the swing, a yellow pegasus filly dangling from his mouth, blood dripping down from it’s neck where the cat had crunched through his vertebrae.
“Boy if you don’t keep that damn cat out of the foal pen I’ll hang it up in the smoke house with the fluffies.”
“I’m sorry pa, I didn’t know he was creeping around there, honest.”
“Well keep a better look out. In a year that thing could have shit out a couple dozen more, that’s good money wasted, and now the mothers are all stirred up.”
“Yes pa, I’ll keep a better lookout.”
“See that you do. Now hurry up and finish if you wanna make it to that baseball game at the school in time.”
“Yes pa!” He runs off to get through his chores, excited for the game the local farm kids were playing against the townies this morning at the middle school.
You eyeballed Sylvester, but he was totally uninterested in your judgment as he enjoyed his fresh foal liver.
“Smug bastard.”
You go to put away the feed bucket and fetch the supplies you’d need for the next oh-so-pleasant chore of the day.
“Cleet, get out here and give yer old man a hand. It’s time ta move the colts.”
“Yes pa, comin!!!” Your middle son, Cleet, thirteen, came from behind the barn with a suspicious red stain on his overalls.
“That better not be-”
“It’s not, I promise, I don’t fuck with money”
“Watch your mouth boy.”
“Sorry pa.”
“Damn right you are, come on, let’s git r’ done.”
You both go over to the two pens holding the mothers and each take one for themselves. Most of the babies were either experimentally munching on kibble, or running around playing with eachother, with only a few still clining to their mothers fluff and sucking milk from teats that were becoming noticable less swollen each day. It would only be a couple more days before they would be separated into their new pens, the babies split up by sex and introduced to the rest of the heard, waiting to be slaughtered, with a lucky few with good size or colors becoming breeders. The mothers would get a weeks rest before being bred again the studs, by then, the dams would all have given birth. Everything ran on a predictable cycle.
“You know how to do it without killing them?”
“Course pa, I ain’t no idjit.”
“It’s not your lack of ability I’m worried about, it’s your self control.”
“I’m fine old man”
“Boy I’ll but you on your ass faster than a fluffy shits if you want to go throwing that old man talk around.”
“Sorry pa.”
“Yeah, a lot of “sorry” going around today. Less sorry, more work.”
You toss over a leather roll full of tools and an old plastic spray bottle of antiseptic.
“You know what to look for in the exceptions, you got any questions, just ask. You go ruining a money maker and I’ll do the same to you.”
“I know jeez, quit riding me.”
“Hmf” You shrug your shoulders and get to work.
Mommuh’s, bring your colts over to ugh “Daddy” And remember, if you try to hide any “bestest babies” from me, I’ll take away your legs. You don’t need those to have babies.
“You heard him shit rats, give me the boy babies or I’ll give you the worstest hurties you’ve ever had, and let the stallions give your filly’s bad enfies.”
“Nuuuuuu babbehs nu am fowe enfies! Huuu mummuh wisten”
It disturbed the hell out of you to hear him use that baby talk, especially about something as fucked up as fluffy pedophilia, but it was effective.
The mares in your pen carried over their babies and set the colts down in front of you as instructed. No hold outs this time. It was easy to tell since fluffs were such awful liars.
“Stay hewe an wisten tu daddeh babbehs, huuu mummuh sowy.”
“Mummuh! Nu weave babbeh, nee mummuh huggies, nee miwkies an wuv, nu wan be wif munstuh daddeh!” A little black unicorn pled with his mother, a turquoise and black mare who was the defacto leader of this pen, to no avail. You grabbed up dozen or so colts and dumped them in one bucket, where they cried and begged and shit and hugged each other in fear, not guessing what was about to happen. You pulled up the three legged stool that stayed in the corner of the pen for such occasions and sat down, another bucket at your side. Before you even had your clippers ready you heard screaming next door.
“SCREEEEEEE NO NO STICK HAF WOWSTEST HUWTIES HUUUUUU WAI SMAW MUNSTUH TAKE STICK HUUUUU HUUUU NEE FOWE MAKE GUD PEEPEES AN GIF SPECIEW HUGGIES TU SPECIEW FWEND HUUU HUUUU PWESE GIF BACK AN GIF HUGGIES FOWE MAKE BETTAH, MUMMUH WAI WET BABBEH HAF OWIES HUU HUUU NU WUV NU MOWE?”
A colt was shrieking in pai and grabbing for the bloody stump that used to be a full sized baby cock.
“God damnit you little psycho, what did I tell you?”
“It was an accident! He wouldn’t stop wiggling, besides, who cares? He doesn’t need it, he’s the color of sick baby shit, and they heal up fine.” He snipped again, severing the testicles as intended this time before spraying a liberal amount of antiseptic on the wounds.
“SCREEEEEE BUWNIE WAWA BAD FOWE NO NO STICK AN WUMPS HUUUUU WUMPS GONE TUUUUU!!! WAAAIIIII HU HUUUUUU WOWSTEST DAY EVAAAAA MUMMUH PWEASE SAFE BABBEH!!!”
You shake your head and turn to your bucket of foals. It was like this every time. You wish you had better help, but your oldest, Noah, was to busy with the hogs and working on the tractor, and Deeg wasn’t cut out for cutting just yet. Still too soft when he heard the things cry. Cleet was your go-to for anything that caused the rats pain, no matter how unsettling that could be.
You set about picking over the foals in the bucket, quickly judging colors and features and deciding the fate of their genitals with a glance and a flick of the wrist, they either lost their lumps, snipped off into a bucket that would become Sylvester’s breakfast (second breakfast now) or they would go bouncing back to their mothers, shaken but otherwise ok, for another few days of maternal comfort.
Few passed the check this time. There were two beefy looking earthies you decided you’d give a chancen to prove they could make some meaty progeny, and a black and hot pink unicorn that you thought some edgy teenage girl would pay good money for, but other than that, they were all dull or average, and said hello to the blade.
“HUUUUUUH WAI TAKE WUMPS!!! WAI MUMMUH WET MUNSTUH DADDEH TAKE WUMPS!!! WUMPS NU FOWE HUWTIES, NEE FOW MAKE BABBEHS HUUUUU NEBA GONE BE DADDEH HUUUUUU NEBA GONE HAF GUD FEEWS!!!”
“Pwease munstuh daddeh, can babbehs haf wumps back, just dis timesies?”
“You know that’s not how it works. They are gone forever, only good babies get to keep their lumps. Now shut up and go take care of your babies, they need hugs.”
“Huuu come hewe babbeh, mummuh gib huggies, make owies awe betta!!!”
“SCREEEEEEE WET GU WET GU WET GUUUUUUU HU HUUUUUU NU WIKE PINCHY HEWTIES!!!”
“CLEET GOD DAMN IT CUT IT OFF AND CUT IT OUT!!!” You turned around in time to see him pulling his hand away from the crotch of a puke green earthy with still atatched but obviously twisted testicles.
“You have five minutes and if you are still here and they still have their balls when I come back, I’m gonna let the stallions give you “enfies””
“Yes paaaa….” He looked annoyed to have his fun spoiled, but took up his clippers and got to work.
You grab the bucket and leave the pen and sobbing fluffies behind. You dump the slimy contents of the bucket into the cat’s bowl, and give it a spray off at the hose before going in to say hello to the wife.
“Morning sugar.”
“Morning studd.”
“That boy ain’t right.”
“He’s fine, it’s normal to have a little cuteness aggression. He’s all full of hormones telling him to kill or fuck anything he can get his hands on.”
“Well he needs a bottle of lotion then, because I’m sick of screaming fluffies every time he gets within eyesight of the pens.”
“He’ll grow out of it. “I’ve got an order for you. Two bags.”
“Ok, I’ll have Deeg help, Cleet might be too rough with ‘em, but Deeg needs to learn to be a little less soft.”
“He’s a sweet boy, I’m glad he’s so nice.”
“It’s a farm, not a petting zoo. If he can’t make them a little miserable then he’s going to be miserable himself.”
“Fair point, I leave him in your capable hands.”
You head back out and holler for your boy
“Cleet! Come here, and grab the clippers.”