Now, it was Tuesday when I first started my little project, and it would be Friday morning when the truck came by and disposed of the fluffies in the dumpster. First, however, it was time to give those numbers on the tags a call, starting with Creampuff’s. The thing had barely rung before it was picked up, and on the other end was a middle-aged woman’s voice, “Andrews residence, Melissa speaking.”
“Yeah, uh…” I cleared my throat, “My name’s [redacted], I found a fluffy pegasus with a tag, named ‘Creampuff.’ This yours?”
“Oh, my daughter has been such a mess since she disappeared; we only noticed the hole in the fence the day after she disappeared. Is she safe?”
I hesitated, since Creampuff was currently in a filthy dumpster, that was no doubt getting much filthier thanks to the spoiled alfredo sauce the fluffy herd had been eating, “Yes… she’s not exactly clean and should be okay, bu-”
“Could you bring her right over? Our address is 1416 Manch-”
I interjected sharply, “Ma’am! You really should let me finish. She’s pregnant, like “unable to move” preggo. I found her with a feral herd, and I’m damned sure that its smarty leader is who knocked her up.” Her sigh on the other end was telling; I knew Mrs. Andrews wasn’t going to go for raising a whole litter of fluffies. The simple fact a feral butted his way into her yard probably soured her on keeping Creampuff at all.
After a while, Mrs. Andrews spoke, “Is there a way you can uh… ‘take care of it?’”
“What, like with a shovel?”
“N-no! That’s horrible! I mean… abort them? Allison clearly can’t take care of the one, and I’ll pay you for your time if you can. I-if you can do it without hurting her pony.”
For a moment, I wondered how to respond to that. I make pasta in some podunk midwestern town, so any extra cash would be good. You’d have taken it in my shoes, right? “Sure, I know how. Can’t say the fluffy’ll like it, d-don’t get the wrong idea! It’s not coat-hangers or kicking her in the gut. It’s an all natural herbal method I learned; a friend of mine uses it to keep them from overrunning his garden.” The sharp intake of breath she made was followed by a sigh of relief at my quick correction. “Alternatively, I could keep her on hand to have them; the father is a decent color and a unicorn. Even with not so great sires, alicorns sell, right? Less chance of hurting the fluffy, physically or emotionally.”
“…we’ll see. I’ll tell my daughter that her fluffy’s been found, and is at the vet. Thank you.”
With that out of the way, I gave the second number a call, this time a man around my age croaked a greeting. That didn’t necessarily raise red flags; plenty of adult men keep fluffies, and it also was none of my damned business. After a few seconds, he asked again, clearer but less patient.
Sighing, “Yeah, you wouldn’t happen to own a fluffy pony named ‘Sunbeam,’ would you? Earth type? I found her in a dumpster behind [redacted], off the highway?”
Long story short, Sunbeam was shit out of luck thanks to Alzheimer’s. She had belonged to the man’s mother who needed company, but her diagnosis had since put her in an assisted living home. I bid him my condolences, and hung up. I’ll admit, I thought about just leaving her to rot in the dumpster with the others, but by the sound of things, Sunbeam was a good fluffy whose owner had no issues; her falling in with ferals could have just been her wandering out a gate the guy’s mom forgot to close.
After a bracing shower, I headed to the restaurant to check how my dumpster fluffies were doing, most importantly the three fluffies I bothered to learn the names of. Sunbeam and Creampuff were sleeping in the fluff-pile with the others, a good deal away from spots where shit had begun to cake.
Outside of the pile is the long dead Gumdrop, but with his spawn stomped to paste next to him. His “special friend” was near, facing away from her dead mate. I wasn’t really angry. Not disappointed, or even surprised. If anything, this proved why feral herds are such a nuisance: they are usually led by the shit-rats that bully the fluffies with anything redeeming about them.
I went inside for a can of air freshener, something I sorely needed if I was going to address the herd. It reeked manure, rotting garlic sticks, and all the things starting to grow in what the fluffies couldn’t finish. With a shield of lemony fresh perfume to hide the stench, the grieving dam turned and waddled my way, “Speshaw Fwiend foweba sweepies, an’ babbeh too. Nu stay in Sketties Box.”
As bad as she stank, I put my mouth as close to her ear as I could stand, whispering, “Spaghetti Daddy is going to tell you a secret; the Spaghetti Box is to find bad fluffies. If I take a fluffy out, they’re a good fluffy who… uh… who just needs to find a good mama or daddy, or at least a good smarty.” It was cold comfort to the mare, and she only waddled off towards the exit of the alleyway…
This time, I didn’t give them any sort of greeting, just got my part of the day’s work done, and kicked off early with plenty of nasty near-expired pasta in tubs. When I showed up, they were in chaos; the few who decided to keep eating what was left of yesterday’s trash were curled up in balls, leaking from both ends and shivering, complaining about their “tummy huwties” and “sickie wa-was.”
After watching the grieving mother waddle away, it was easy to conjure my plastic grin, and let that cold, tight sensation spread in my chest. I was done with frustration, and real malice was growing for that horned shitstain. Unsurprisingly, the smarty friend, his toughies, and Creampuff weren’t among those suffering food poisoning, and had clearly kept the best (meaning least nasty) pasta for themselves.
“I’ve taken the bad fluffies from the Spaghetti Box. That mare couldn’t keep her babies alive, could she?”
“Nu, dat bad dummeh mummeh.”
“I’ll be taking more bad fluffies with me today, but I should know the names of the good fluffies first. Let’s start with the best ones. Wh-”
The smarty rudely cuts me off, “Fluffy name am Twinkew! Wuv Spaghetti Daddy! Toughies aww Tigew, Bumbew,” he pauses, counting his hooves, “Two toughies! Speshaw Fwiend is Cweampuff, who is soon mummeh!” Twinkle continued introducing his herd, but repeated most of them a minimum of twice, and hadn’t bothered to learn the late Gumdrop’s herd. Some of them waved for me, but most remained curled up. It seemed like Sunbeam wasn’t part of his herd.
Intestinal distress didn’t even seem to be the only thing afflicting the herd. As I looked, I noticed the state of their pseudo-hooves; the calluses on them split in places, and the ones still walking weren’t enjoying the activity. Life as a feral isn’t sanitary, but nowhere near as dirty as living in a literal trash can, and this one was growing particularly ripe in the heat. Whatever injuries they had from the fight or just walking on the asphalt too long were obviously infected.
In such a state, not even their programming could make the bounty of relatively fresh pasta appetizing. Most gushed watery vomit at the sight of it, mumbling weekly about “bad sketties” or the “wowstest poopies,” but more than a few toddle over. Tiger and Bumble rolled Creampuff closer, while the two other dams by those not puking their guts up. For a while I watched them, occasionally spraying the air to keep it breathable.
The suffering fluffies whimpered, and their well-meaning fellows tried to comfort them to no avail. I observed a particularly miserable filly, fluff matted around her face and tail from emptying her guts at both ends, mewling weakling, “Huu huu! Nee’ huggies… wowstest tummy huwtiees…!” When one of the others waddled up, he tried to give her a hug, but the gentle pressure caused her to puke all over his face.
He squealed and flailed blindly, bloodying her nose as he pushed the filly away. The slick bags gave her no purchase and she began sliding down into the fetid abyss. A plume of trapped gas pushed by the commotion wafted up, dry heaving as her scrambling hooves only slowed her descent into the fetid soup that had been accumulating at the bottom…
Shortly after I watched the doomed filly slide between the bags, a slice of cheesecake tumbled out from one of the bags I brought, relatively fresh and clean. One of the males, an earthie with an ugly mix of mustard yellow fluff and a purple mane, saw it. Seeing such a treat, he tenderly tried to carry it to one of the nursing mothers who had found a reasonably flat piece of cardboard to lay on. She was no more attractive than her mate, a similarly dull shade of orange, a red mane, and weanlings on her belly that any pet shop would have sold for snake food for their unattractive colors.
“Mustewd haff sweetie nummies fow bestest miwkies,” he chirped, trying to place it in her reach, mushy as it was. He did not, however, get far with his gift.
My favorite shit-rat Twinkle, who I had been tracking in the corner of my eye, clumsily made his way over to them, screaming at the fluffies, “Dummeh mummeh nu get sweetie nummies! Sweetie nummies aww fo’ smawty fwiend!” This didn’t automatically cow him; the structure of fluffy politics is simplistic, and he was clearly one of the late Gumdrop’s toughies.
“Nu! Good mummeh, stoopi hownie fwuff haff sketties!” The confrontation attracted Tiger and Bumble, who were quick to begin a (relatively) savage beating. In full view of the weeping dam and her chirping babies, the three worked him over; Tiger holding an ear in his teeth as Twinkle hoofed him in the face. Bumble was slower to actually get in, but turned around and began performing weak little donkey kicks.
His aim was dismal, mostly bucking into the air and flopping on his face, threatening to roll into one of the greasy seams that were swallowing the unlucky. Eventually, the little idiot managed to land a telling blow that filled the dumpster with a shrill scream: Bumble had struck the engorged tits of the weeping, hysterical mare.
What came out was an inarticulate wail, not even attempting to complain about her “miwky pwace” hurting. She thrashed reflexively, flinging her peeping newborns away; pain blinded her, and was unaware that her precious “chirpeh babbehs” had been thrown onto the greasy trash bags. I knew what was coming, as did the increasingly bloodied daddy, “Nu go spwowin’, babbehs! C-come to daddeh!” Alas, the blind, helpless things crawled one by one the cardboard boxes layered throughout and slipped between the bags. Their peeps were heard only momentarily before there was silence.
I had definitely seen enough. Sure, I had put them into the dumpster to make them suffer for making more work for me, but this was a bit much. “Hey Twinkle! I see two bad fluffies that need to be taken out of the Spaghetti Box.”
He looked around, not thinking who it could be; Tiger wrinkled in fear, clearly thinking I had meant him. Fittingly, Bumble lived up to his namesake, finally stumbling face first into one of the seams that swallowed plenty of fluffies already. He did not sink, however, beginning to bawl pitfully, loosening his bladder and bowels, running down his body in stinking rivulets. Stuck as he was, he wasn’t going to free himself, and his friends were only going to rip his fluff out by trying.
The cogs in his deficient brain slowly turned over, and Twinkle slowly said, “Dummeh mummeh an’ daddeh wooz babbehs, so… dey bad fwuffies? Twinkew gud fwuffy! Twinkew’s babbehs stiww in speshaw fwend!”
“That’s right, but Spaghetti Daddy is thinking the Spaghetti Box isn’t safe for babies or mamas. Just think how many babies have taken forever sleepies already!”
Yet again, I was straining the unicorn’s faculties. He counted to four, starting over repeatedly when he entered the mysterious territory of numbers that he couldn’t count on his hooves. “Den… mummehs should… weave Sketties Bawks?”
“You’re a very good fluffy for having that idea! Spaghetti Daddies always know good fluffies from bad fluffies.” The praise and the dopamine high of being constantly surrounded by the best food his species were programmed to think of seemed to blunt any suspicions Twinkle might have had. Maybe even thought that it was his idea.
Once more, I reached in, pulling the emotionally broken fluffies from the trash, sniffling and sobbing as I set them on the asphalt of the alleyway. For the second time that day, I was made to feel dreadful for those things. I squatted down, and addressed the two who were sobbing into each other. “Yeah… you’re both good fluffies. I was telling a fib to that bad dummy friend. The Spaghetti Box isn’t for good fluffies; it’s so Spaghetti Daddies can tell good fluffies from bad fluffies.”
The concept wasn’t really sinking in, whether because the idea of a behavior test was too complex, or their brains were too fried with grief to understand, I’m still not sure. All I could do was start getting the dams out of the dumpster. I was relatively lucky in that regard; the last of the helpless newborns or weanlings were smothered or drowning in whatever godless sludge was filling the bottom of the dumpster. It was still one of the grossest things I’ve done while sober.
Make no mistake, I wasn’t going to be keeping any of them as pets. but I did need to make room for Creampuff. Thankfully, I did have a basement with a drain I used for the short term. I did not, however, have any idea what to do with the others, but none were in good spirits. Even if they were taken out of the stinking dumpster, it was away from “sketties’’ and their special friends.
“Hello, Creampuff,” I said cheerfully.
“Huu huu, nee’ sketties an’ Twinkew huggies… nu am bad fwuffy… nuuu dummeh mummeh!” The other two mirrored the sentiment, each whimpering about how their lack of pasta was going to be bad for their tummy babies, or how much they missed their mate. They, however, sounded sincere.
“Spaghetti Daddy is sorry, but you’re coming to my house. You see, I know your mommy Allison. Do you remember Allison?”.
Her cheeks puffed up, wiggling her legs and buzzing her wings angrily, “Dummeh mummeh! Cweampuff HATE Awwson mummeh! Gib no sketties, said Cweampuff nu be mummeh, an’ so Cweampuff find speshaw fwiend an’ hab wots of speshaw huggsies wif’ Twinkew! Now Cweampuff haff smawty tummeh babbehs!”
Quite a diatribe for a fluffy, but the money riding on the fluffy meant punting the fetuses out of her was a no-go. I let my frown rest naturally, “Creampuff, I’m letting you have your babies. That means food and a clean safe room until they come out, but you’re going back to Allison.”
“NUUU! CWEAMPUFF NU GU BACK TO AWWSON! STOOPI SKETTY DADDY!”
I thought of the money, but weighed my odds; the chance of this bratty shit-rat popping out an alicorn was too slim to be worth it. “How about this: if you’re a good mommy whose foals don’t take forever sleepies, you can go back to your herd in the Spaghetti Box. If not, you will go back to your mommy Allison.”
Confident in her abilities as a mother, Creampuff squeaked out her retort, “Be bestest mummeh! Nu gu back, an’ wiv’ wiff speshaw fwiend in Sketties Bawks, and dummeh Sketties Daddeh can… uh… can eat Cweampuff’s poopies!”
“Well, I’m not doing that, but I’ll be bringing these other two to watch and make sure you don’t cheat.” In reality, I was going to use them to twist the knife in the coming days: They were going to be the “bestest mummehs,” and Creampuff would be seeing exactly how unsuited to having babies she really was.
Before that, however, I needed to prep the basement for their stay, and transport them there without turning my car into a port-o-potty. One of the perks of working at a place that had all its food pre-made or just needed to be boiled for a bit is we had cardboard out the ass. A quick word to the manager, and I had as much as I could fit in my trunk.
I squeezed them as best as I could without causing “big poopies,” as fluffies call them, and was damned glad I did. As soon as they were in my car and I turned over the engine, Creampuff was the only one that didn’t try to evacuate her bowels, one dam screaming, “NUUUUU! Roary munstuh no huwt Bwownie!” I couldn’t decide if it was a fluffy or a very uncreative human that named her that, considering she was just a fluffy ball of solid brown. Once Creampuff started singing to her “tummeh babbehs,” and the others sniffled as they tunelessly joined in. I was smiling and laughing, because I knew for a fact that her babies weren’t definitely not going to grow up, weren’t going to love her, and she wasn’t going to like what came out of her backside.
I explained to my roommate my situation (if not my plan,) and all I needed from him was to keep the basement door shut, maybe check on them if he heard something. The reason was his cat, the Emperor, was the sort of predator that dragged in baby rabbits, birds, fish, and even the neighbors’ lawn decorations if they looked too real. Suffice to say, there were quite a few mornings when I found foals or some unlucky colt or filly on the back porch, chirping their last with most of its organs missing.
It wasn’t hard to make a sort of “paddock” around the drain in the basement, bare concrete covered with the thick, laminated cardboard our frozen chicken was shipped in and walls made of the somewhat more flimsy boxes, all held together with a mix of staples and electrical tape. After tossing some Goodwill-worthy old clothes down to make rough bedding and putting down some makeshift water and food bowls, it was time to bring the mares down to their erstwhile home.
Creampuff initially seemed excited to be in a “weal housie” that “smeww suuu pwetty,” but was let down when we descended the stairs into my mostly unfinished basement. It was probably the fluorescent lighting, the damp smell, plain white walls, and an opening to the crawl space (that even I admit was a bit creepy) that did it. The sniveling and “huu huuing” started immediately.
The ferals, on the other hand, remained ecstatic. I was, after all, the “Sketties Daddy,” and even my creepy, serial killer-esque basement was nicer accommodations than they’d ever had before.
Next, I set about the unpleasant task of washing them; only the off-white pegasus needed to be presentable, but I was saving myself a headache. If only one of them “smewwed pwetty,” there was either going to be a bratty hierarchy forming, or two dams bitching about not getting the same treatment. As much as they squealed “wawa bad for fwuffy an’ tummeh babbehs” and tried to foul the buckets of warm, soapy water I put into an old storage tub for the task, they eventually began cooing. A thorough drying later, and all three were looking much more presentable.
Rinsed of all the caked on dirt and crap, Creampuff was the only one that would have cost a decent price at a pet store; her fluff was a creamy kind of off-white with a man the color of sand. Brownie was… well, brown. The other could not have been less attractive: a loud neon green and pink that only looked worse in the stark light of the fluorescents. “Well, aren’t you all pretty?” I assured them, “Pretty mamas have pretty babies.”
“DEY DO?!”
“YAY! PWETTY BABBEHS FO’ CWEAMPUFF!”
“WAWAMEWON GON’ HAF PWETTIEST BABBEHS!”
“Pressing X to Doubt, you day-glo eyesore,” I thought, pouring the filthy water down the drain. After all the work of cleaning the dams and building the paddock on top of the work of cooking over a hundred pounds of pasta that day, I had managed to work up an appetite. Considering my company, I resigned myself to making just one more batch that day.
Little tip: Jarred sauces are a scam. Sure, not everyone wants to go through the trouble of crushing tomatoes or grating a mounting of parmesan, but cacio e pepe is literally “cheese and pepper.” Simple, delicious, and cheap, three things that I needed if I was going to keep the dams downstairs happy. I, however, deviated from the recipe: a heaping helping of crushed red pepper for myself, cheap “italian seasoning” for the ferals, and plenty of chopped parsley for Creampuff.
