Everyone’s a Critic
A Short Story by Za
Meet John.
John lives in Maine, on that little part of the city limits where you aren’t quite rural but you’re only just suburban.
John lives alone.
John likes to sit at his bedroom window and shoot fluffies that wander out of the woods and into his backyard.
John tends to do this three or so nights a week, because when he stops, fluffies start getting into his trash.
His rifle isn’t anything particularly remarkable. It’s a cheap .22 he bought before he moved here from Tennessee.
.22 is more than enough to put a fluffy in the ground.
Today is a shooting day, so John posts up at his back window with his rifle, a beer, some cigarettes, and a magazine full of things he can’t afford but will gladly peruse as if he could. Oh, and Johnny Cash is on the radio.
You know. The essentials.
John sits at his window, enjoying the evening breeze.
And along comes… what the hell is that?
“Nee find nummies fow tummy babbehs…”
A fluffy unlike anything John had ever seen emerged from the brush.
It sure was a highfalutin-looking fluffy, John thought. White as snow, golden mane, with… a horn… and wings, too?
John hummed in amusement. He’d never seen a fluffy quite like that.
The alicorn began trying to knock John’s trash over.
“Pwease twashie thingie, gib soon-mummah nummies…” she pleaded, shoving the bin harder this time.
Well, John had seen enough. He put his cigarette down in the ashtray, wiped the beer from his mustache, and took aim.
POP!
One round right through the head was all it took for that alicorn to drop like a sack of taters. Its legs crumpled beneath it as it voided its bowels… and evidently its uterus.
John picked up his cigarette and took another drag before mashing it out.
John swung his legs through the windowsill and hopped out into his yard. He stopped down by the alicorn to give it a once-over. The force of the bullet did a lot of damage, despite the low caliber. One of the alicorn’s eyes had been forced out of the socket, and blood was pouring out of the nose and ears, and the brain was jumbled apart as he could see through a dime-sized exit wound.
“Hey bro!”
That was his next-door neighbor, Callum. Twenty-something former van life weirdo. Surprisingly cool with John shooting the pests.
“I heard the gun. More fluffies?”
John turned to see Callum’s head pop over the fence just in time. His neighborly smile twisted into a scream of abject horror.
“Is… is that a white alicorn? NOOOOOOOOOO!”
The cry was so powerful that John swore he saw Callum’s beard shake and his man bun begin to unfurl.
“DUUUUUUDE, NOOOOOOO!”
Callum was leaning heavily over the fence by this point.
“John, bro! You could’ve, like… sold that thing, man! For like, thousands of dollars, bro! Like, legit!”
John looked down, a twinge of disgust in his eye. People would pay that much for a fluffy?
“And it was a mare, too? Gaaaaawd! What were you thinking, bro? Like seriously. You could’ve made like, a couple bands, man!”
Callum sneered behind his glasses as his face grew red.
“You… you can’t hurt valuable fluffies bro! You gotta, like, see the business opportunity, man!”
And then came another voice from the left side of the fence.
“What is going on out here?”
You see, John had two neighbors. On his right, Callum. But someone new had just moved into the house on the left. John hadn’t spoken to him much. Oliver, he thought his name was.
Oliver peeked his head over the fence, his eyes wide with terror.
“OH GOD! Did you kill that fluffy, John? Why would you do that?” Oliver cried, his face twisting as he began to weep. Snot ran down his nose and into his pedo stache like he’d just watched his own child die.
“That’s what I’m saying, bro!” Callum chimed in. “That fluffy was worth like, thousands, bro!”
Oliver pointed a finger at Callum, leaning equally hard against the fence.
“No, that’s not the point you opportunistic prick! She was a living, breathing creature with intelligence and a life! You had no right to kill her!”
John looked back down at the fluffy and wondered why he ever moved to Maine.
“Dude, it’s like, okay to kill them. They’re not, like, real living things, man. I mean, I caught a feral trying to attack my cat and I, like, beat it the hell up.”
“Then you’re just as twisted as John here! These are creatures that want nothing more than love and friendship! Why would you ever hurt one?”
“Because man, I don’t care if I’m not getting paid! You could sell that alicorn mare to a breeding mill and, like, make a mint, bro!”
By this point, Callum and Oliver were shouting at each other across John’s yard. John looked over at the red-faced twenty-something, screaming about potential profits. He looked then to the scraggly forty-something shouting about love and spaghetti.
“Would you two shut the fuck up?” John finally said. Both of their mouths snapped shut and their attention directed to the older man, scratching his greying beard.
“I don’t want to sell fluffies to someone that’s gonna make more of em, and I don’t want love from one of these little road apples neither.”
John pointed a finger at Oliver, gritting his teeth.
“You’re a fucking idiot for thinking these things are anything other than vermin and pests.”
John turned his attention to Callum.
“And you’re a soy latte drinking faggot.”
John turned to go back inside, but heard a small peep.
“Peep! Cheep!”
John turned around to see that one of the foals that the alicorn ejected was actually alive. A small white alicorn just like its mother.
And immediately the two started up again.
“SAVE IT, SAVE IT, SAVE IT!” Oliver pleaded, bawling like a child.
“SELL IT, SELL IT, SELL IT!” Callum begged, his lenses fogging up with frustration.
John stomped the foal and went back inside.
Doesn’t anyone just kill fluffies anymore?
FWOM