EXODUS
AUTHOR’S NOTE: Story was originally written in 2014, jesus christ. Well, it’s 2026 now and I randomly stumbled back to this site. Some brave soul found “Exodus” on a pastebin and made me aware of it. This story is so old that a Dodge Neon is mentioned as a regular kind of car.
This was my third story and was my take on “gang of suffering alleyway fluffies” that was the style at the time. I have trimmed it for wordiness, fixed a few errors, rewritten a few sections and tried to cut down on redundant description.
I would say that the theme reflects the historic misery of hopeless refugees, caught up in conflicts and changes they don’t understand and forced to ignorantly choose from bad options until they run out.
One story I wrote, “Baxter Street Blues,” is still lost media. As I told the kind people who inquired, I am not at all possessive of my work so if you find any of it anywhere, feel free to post it, edit it, rewrite it, craft a gritty reboot, go nuts. Do what the devil tells you. Big weird love to the community.
I plan to publish these ~70 pages in 5 installments over the next week or so.
*****1*****
Rusty leaned his head down and carefully disgorged the wads of greenery from his cheek pouches. It all seemed smaller and more full of twigs than when he had scrounged it up. He turned and brushed the small pile of grass, stems and leaves from the blue-purple fluff on Nibbles’ back, and again he was disappointed. It all looked so meager in the dim light slanting into the makeshift den. Rusty and Nibbles had been out in the cold, hunting down the remaining islands of green clover and crabgrass around the sprinkler heads on the broad, brown lawns. These were sadly shallow once he and Nibbles pulled them up. The younger fluffy had plucked a few waxy, bitter rhododendron leaves and put them on his back, but Rusty knew they were near-inedible. He spent longer than necessary brushing the pile together before raising his eyes to meet the rest of the herd.
“Haf nummies,” he offered them. The other fluffies shuffled forward, slowly at first but after a few seconds they were shoving each other, squabbling and scarfing up whatever mouthfuls they could before being jostled aside. Nibbles and Wendy had already taken mouthfuls of clover and grass and begun chewing. Pregnant Bridget panted and grunted as she levered her pink bulk forwards to inspect the pile - she won in weight but lost in speed, and in the end only came up with a meager few bites of fodder. She turned towards Rusty and puffed her cheeks out. It made her sunken, drawn face frightening in the dim light. The bags under her eyes quivered as she confronted the tired older male.
“Dese not enuff! Not enuff num-num! Wan’ moar nummies! Bwiget haf tummeh owwies tuu wong!” she said, her voice growing even more shrill than usual between snarfing and chewing noises.
Rusty took a deep breath before trying to explain himself. He was exhausted and had been dreading this.
“Wusty twy to fin’ nummies, but gwassies nu good,” he said. “Wots of hoomans, an’ cowdies, an’ dawkies come. Nu can fin’ nummies.”
Bridget didn’t even seem to hear him. She humped forward a little more, and Rusty saw that her limbs were shaking as she tried to bounce in frustration, but her swollen belly foiled her. She wheezed between words.
“Dese not enuff! Wan’ moar num-num! Hahhh! Bwiget haf tummeh owwies! YU GIF BWIGET MOAR NUMMIES!” she gasped. The other fluffies flinched. Wendy turned her head away from the squealing, angry dam as Nibbles stared with wide eyes and started to sob around the mouthful of dry greens he was gnawing.
Rusty tried again. “We twy tu fin’ nummies, but nu can fin’ wots of nummies bef-”
Bridget again seemed like she couldn’t hear him. Gobbets of half-chewed grass and stems burst out of her mouth as she screeched. “NU WIKE! NU WIKE COWDIES AND HUNGWIES! WAN’ NUMMIES!” she paused to gasp, then “NU FEAW GOOD! NU WAN’ TUMMY OWWIES!” She made weak, abortive attempts to swing her hooves at the stallion.
Rusty gaped at Bridget from six inches away as her eyes lost focus and she started to pant and flail her stumpy little legs around the sides of her pregnant belly. He stuttered and tried to back away from her but found that she had cornered him against the stuccoed wall of the makeshift den.
“Wusty t-t-twy to fin’ moar nummies after sweepies, bu-”
“NEE’ NUMMIES! HAHH! HAHH! NEE’ NUMMIES! GIF NUMMIES!” shrieked the pink dam as her body began to shudder and spasm. Rusty knew something was very wrong, but he couldn’t do anything besides stare as her eyes rolled up into her head and lips peeled back from her teeth. “WAN’ GO HOME! WAN’ GO HOME! WAN’ NUMMIES!” she howled, and then gritted her jaw shut tight and made a hideous groaning sound while wrapping her limbs down tight against her belly and sides. She contorted as if she was trying to raise her midriff off the floor and Rusty saw her tail lift up over the bulk of her body.
He heard a wet splattering sound and saw Cricket frantically backpedal away from Bridget’s hindquarters and moan in dismay.
“Nuuuu, Bwiget make poopies!” bleated the lavender mare.
The pregnant mare started weakly slapping herself in the belly with her hooves and raving. The stench of shit immediately filled the den, followed by a peculiar musk that Rusty had only smelled a few times. Bridget flexed her spine, straining to lift her head and hindquarters, then bore down again like a crazed, fat pink inchworm.
“Huuuu! Huuuuuu! Bwiget wan’ daddeh! Bwiget sowwy! BWIGET WAN’ BWANKIE! HUUUUU! HUUUU!! SOWWY, DADDEH! BWIGET WAN’ GO HOME!” howled the unfortunate mare as spasms wracked her round body. Her face was livid, and a trickle of blood burst out of her nose and she started jerking her head up and down spastically. She let out a full-throated scream and flailed as her starving, pregnant body began to renege on the promises it had made. Sticky, grey-green fluid mixed with blood spurted fitfully from her hindquarters, then trickled out, then spurted again as another tremor struck. Nibbles hid his eyes behind his hooves and began to wail while the other fluffies in the den flattened themselves against the cold walls and looked away or burst out crying as they watched the starved mare miscarry. Bridget’s hoots, howls and screams reached a crescendo, and a tiny pink and turquoise package slid out of her rear end and fell into the pile of mucus, gore and feces under her tail.
“NU WIKE! NU WIKE! GO ‘WAY!” screamed Cricket, kicking at the strings and gobbets of fluid that had landed near her.
“Heeggh, HUUUU!” the dam gargled, sticking her tongue out as far as it would go before drawing it back, “Heegghhh! Nuuuu!” she drooled and gasped for a second, then tensed up every muscle in her body again. This time another foal was squeezed halfway out of her body accompanied by another helping of slime and a dark mass of blood. The fluffies stared in horror as Bridget spastically scrabbled halfway to her feet and then fell down again.
“Haggghh! Hewp! DADDEH HEWP BWIGET!” she said one final time, then “HARRRkkkKKK!” as all four of her legs churned the air frantically, then stood straight out from her body, and then went completely slack. A second foal slid out into the muck next to its sibling, while a third one sat just barely visible, its head not fully out of Bridget’s birth canal. They looked more like grubs than foals - their pink and grey skin was visible through a thin coating of down, and their limbs were pitiful little twigs. They wiggled for a short time, making nearly-silent croaking noises, and one by one went still.
The only sound in the den was the mewling of lost Cupid’s second foal, who had still not opened its eyes or said a word since the death of its mother. Cricket lay on her side sobbing silently and tried to soothe the little thing by hugging it, but it obstinately chirped like the newborn that Bridget’s offspring would never have a chance to become.
Rusty stared at the face of the dead mare, its eyes simultaneously sunken and bugged halfway out of its skull and the last drop of blood from its snout stubbornly hanging there. Things had not always been like this. Once he and his little herd had been very happy - at the old den, the safe-place, where there were plenty of nummies and none of the fluffies took the Longest Sleep. It had not been a pleasant journey.
*****2*****
Forces beyond Rusty’s understanding had created an idyllic life for his herd at the old den. The city had steadily grown, devouring chunks of land, paving them, and slapping down buildings where cows once grazed. Developers had rolled the dice over and over, and there on the outskirts of the little city a garden center had sprung up. A big, sprawling place, it was skirted by a vast parking lot and a half-acre of terra cotta flowerpots, concrete birdbaths, sundials and hardy outdoor crops. On the other side of the building a row of great greenhouses sat seething with water, heat and life the whole year around.
The garden store faced a strip mall across a paved street, but behind it was only a gravel alley and a big vacant lot - the skeleton of a deceased old farm, not valuable enough to be paved. The last remaining structure was a great old wire-and-timber chicken coop, twelve yards long and six wide. A Chinese elm tree had taken advantage of the shelter and sprouted up there, along with a copse of shrubs, ferns, and woody bushes that climbed up the chicken wire and gently fought for sunlight. A variety of animals had settled in the little copse over the years - most recently, a little feral herd of chattering, brightly-colored biotoys.
Still unknowing, Rusty himself was as necessary for the den’s existence as the chicken coop or the garden center, for he was smarter than your average fluffy pony. He had been born at the den, and he knew The Rules that would keep the herd safe. The Rules were that if you saw humans you should run for the den, hide and be quiet, and that you should never stray into the parking lot or the road.
Following The Rules, Rusty and his herd thrived. They would sleep late, frolic and forage around the old chicken coop, and only approach the garden center in the evening when it had closed for business and the staff had all gone home. There, in the twilight, the fluffies could sneak through a breach between a heavy plastic tarp and a chain-link fence on the east side of the greenhouses - a hidden doorway out of sight behind a composting frame. Once inside, they could pilfer trimmings and wilted plants from the composting piles and pluck blossoms from low shelves. It was a bounty that had sustained the small herd of fluffies through three of their short generations.
Blessed with courage and authority, Rusty led the nightly foraging missions. He was afraid of the spooky, silent nighttime environs of the garden center, and was perpetually hissing and whispering at his little squadron and inclined to cut their little ventures short at the first sign of trouble.
“Nu be woud!” he would snap, “Nu make noisies! Nu make poopies in nummies pwace! Fin’ nummies an’ go!”
He knew, somehow, that his herd’s access to this mysterious human palace of water and food was a fragile thing. That was why it scared him so badly and so deeply when disaster finally struck.
It was a cool evening, and the little herd had spent the day hugging each other, playing games, and snoozing around the little thicket. Rusty watched his special friend, Wendy, gently but firmly push their colt, Winky, away from her for the umpteenth time.
“Nu! Babbeh nu haf miwkies. Mummah nu haf miwkies nu moar. Babbeh haf toofies, num on big fwuffy nummies.” Wendy shoved the maroon little earthie colt away, puffing her cheeks at him.
“Nuuu! Wan’ miwkies! Wan’ miwkies!” cried the little fluffy. He shuffled left and right, as if contemplating a dodge around his mother’s forequarters to latch onto a teat. He was obstinate, but had been smacked on the nose enough that he would no longer push it too far. His sister, Feather, was a more docile creature and would only curl up and cry during these arguments.
“Nu! Nu be bad babbeh. Num big fwuffy nummies. Nu miwkies fo babbeh wif toofies!” scolded Wendy.
Jumper’s foals were younger, and while they could all walk they would cry and soil themselves if they were separated from their dam, Cupid, for too long. Shell’s foals were younger still and could barely hobble about. Shell’s special friend Waggy would gently place them in the fluff on her back and tour them around the coop, the sandy berm and the alley in short little visits, babbling to them when they would chirp and cry.
Bridget, the new arrival, would launch into her favorite subject whenever she was around the other fluffies’ broods.
“Bwiget wiww haf best babbehs. Bwiget wiww wuv hew babbehs mowe den aww offew babbehs and wiww be bestest Mummah evew!” she would chatter to no-one in particular, eyeing the other mares. “Bwiget wiww gif dem bestest miwkies and huggies!”
It was a line of conversation that the other fluffies had become used to since the bedraggled, recently-impregnated mare had showed up at the old farmstead. She would go on at self-satisfied length about her cruel human daddy, who refused to let her have foals, and her subsequent escape and adventure to find a willing stallion in a nearby alley. She was quite different than the fluffies who had been born feral and would sometimes demand to be fed or tell them how wonderful her blanket or ball was before remembering she had left it far behind.
Rusty would make them all practice running to the coop: the little fluffy families and Bridget, the unattached stallion Nibbles and the two young mares, Elsie and Cricket. He would hiss at them and chivy them along, and even if they would cry and complain, they seemed to understand how important it was to follow The Rules.
“Hoomans! Hoomans come! Wun to safe pwace!” he would say, even if there weren’t any humans to be seen. The fluffies would clamber under the weathered old timbers and chicken wire and cower in the underground den with its fluff-lined floor. The dams would silence their foals, cooing and stroking them if possible or scolding if necessary, and the fluffies would sit and listen until Rusty told them it was clear.
Rusty knew the fragile arrangement had been disturbed that night he took his untested little colt along on the foraging expedition. Rusty had been about the same age the first time he was shown the gap in the wall, but perhaps his offspring was not as cautious or wary. Little Winky had watched Jumper gently pull some blossoms off a low shelf and had innocently tried to do the same thing, but when he reared up to imitate the older male, his hooves had tipped the black plastic container over.
Rusty, Jumper, Nibbles and Elsie had watched in horror as the first pot clattered into the second, and the second into a third, until the whole front-loaded rack of potted flowers and plants had smashed down to the floor, scattering dirt and tiny plastic signs. Worse, Winky and Nibbles were so frightened by the calamity that they had hunched over and emptied their guts onto the concrete, bawling.
“WUN!” hissed Rusty and Jumper, as all the other fluffies were too scared by the noise to do anything but stand and mewl in their fear. “Wun to Safe Pwace! Take nummies and wun!”
“Nu wike woud! Fwuffy scawed! Nu smeww pwetty!” moaned Nibbles, slumping down and putting his hooves over his eyes until Jumper half-hugged and half-dragged him to his feet. The little pack of brightly-colored creatures waddled back down the broad aisles and clambered through the secret doorway. It would be a sleepless night for Rusty as he listened to his herd coo and snore in the fluffpile and wondered about the future.
*****3*****
None of the other fluffies seemed disturbed the next day. They slept late, and then rose one by one and waddled out of the den into the sunlight, which was just barely warm enough to drive away the biting pre-dawn chill.
“Cwicket make big poopies!” grunted the little lavender mare, hunched over at the Poopie Place.
“Waggy gif babbehs huggies! Waggy wuv huggies!” chattered the khaki unicorn as he lifted one of his offspring from his mare’s fluff and embraced it, cooing and wiggling his rump.
Rusty’s little filly, Feather, had bravely ranged away north of the thicket and found a late-blooming dandelion that matched her pale yellow coat. She was prancing with it and showing it off to the other fluffies until she crossed Bridget’s path.
“Bwiget wan’ num fwowa nummies!” bleated the pink mare, her swelling belly causing her to hump along a bit as she approached the tiny filly. The little foal stopped cavorting and cowered in fear as the pregnant earth pony came closer, then cried as Bridget held her down with one hoof and pulled the dandelion away from her.
Cupid and Jumper had found a plastic bag that would dance and waft about on the breeze, and were taking turns sitting with their foals while the other let the bag go and waddled after it to jump on it, which made them giggle every time. Nibbles was once again gracelessly sniffing at Elsie’s rump and asking to be her special friend, and she was again pushing him away, leaving him to rub his crotch with his hoof and sob. In short, the fluffies were carrying on as usual with the exception of their leader.
Rusty couldn’t stop himself from climbing over the sandy hill and peering across the alley at the back wall of the garden center. It was open and busy, and the usual mysterious noises were echoing across the alley - thudding car doors, gurgling and hissing fountains, and chatter of human voices. He could see the secret doorway from the top of the sandy slope. It looked different to him somehow, and that made him flap his tense wings.
Hours later, the sun had gone down and the gravel alley glowed under the streetlights. Rusty had climbed back up the berm and laid down with his head peeping over the top. It was chilly and the brownish-red pegasus felt silly for waiting, as if he were a scared foal hiding its eyes with its hooves. Sooner or later he would have to go take a look. He quickly found out that he was not the only one growing impatient.
“Yu go get num-nums nao?” said a voice behind Rusty. He jumped a little, and shuffled around to see Bridget standing a ways behind him. “Bwiget wan’ moar fwowa nummies!”
Rusty was startled and grew angry at being surprised, particularly by the greedy ingenue.
“Bwiget go haf nummies in Safe Pwace!” he snapped.
“Nuuu,” bleated the gravid pink mare, “Bwiget wan’ moar gud fwowa num-nums! Bwiget nu wan’ dummeh weafie an’ gwassie nums!” She stuck her tongue out.
“Bwiget steaw fwowa fwom Feffa dis bwight time! Bwiget is meany mawe, take nummies fwom babbeh!”
The pregnant mare snorted. “Dummeh babbeh nu nee’ fwowa nums. Bwiget nee’ fwowa fow make bestest babbehs! Bwiget wan’ fwowa nummies!”
“Bwiget go back to safe pwace an’ nu mowe be stupit an’ meanie!” Rusty lost his temper, and before he knew what he was doing, he found himself rounding his hindquarters on the pink mare and kicking two hooves full of dirt, sand and rocks at her. Gratifyingly, she waddled off in tears. Unfortunately, she was replaced by Nibbles. He was looking morose.
“Nibbews wan’ haf speshul huggies wif Ewwsie, wan’ speshul fwiend, but she meanie fwuffy an’ say nuuuuu.” He looked into Rusty’s eyes sadly, and shifted his weight a bit. His right front hoof moved down and rubbed at his crotch a little.
Rusty turned away, looking down across the gravel alley at the back of the garden center. A chilly wind blew.
“Wusty, you teww Ewwsie tu wet Nibbews haf speshul huggies? Nibbews am gud fwuffy, am gud stawwion an’ wan’ haf speshul huggies.”
Rusty ignored the ivory stallion and stretched his stiff muscles before trotting back down towards the little thicket. Nibbles followed him, mournfully rephrasing his request every few yards. It was going to be a long night.
In the end, Rusty chose dependable Jumper and nimble, quiet Cricket to come with him to the secret doorway. His cohorts sensed his nervousness and didn’t chatter as they rambled down the bank. Instead, they turned their dopey eyes back and forth as Rusty clumsily pawed the flap of plastic away from the prongs of the fence. Despite his fear, the trio of fluffies slipped into the garden center and fill their cheeks and backs with fodder without any trouble, but noticed that the mess from the previous evening had mysteriously vanished. He flapped his wings, imagining huge humans taking away his herd’s droppings like a good mother fluffy, but knew somehow that wasn’t the case.
*****4*****
He didn’t have long to wait. Around thirty-six hours after Winky knocked over the flowerpots and squirted his foolish terror out onto the floor, the general manager of the garden center stood in the middle of the alley beside a thin, bearded man in a navy blue jumpsuit. Two employees in bright green aprons were busy with a roll of chain-link fencing, wire ties, duct tape and sheets of tough plastic. It was just after dawn, and the air was cold enough that the two older men could see hints of breath as they spoke.
“Well,” rasped the man in blue, standing shoulder-on and showing the portly manager his iPad, “There’s no charge for my assessment, which is that there are between six and twelve fluffy ponies living behind your store. Based on the deposit of droppings, they have been here for a good long time.” The pair of gents had walked around a little, and the exterminator had pointed out pinches of brightly-covered fluff caught on twigs and small hoof-prints near puddles of runoff.
“Maybe if you cut them off from their food source, they’ll eat whatever they can out of the field and then die off in the winter.” He gestured at the busy employees.
“No, I need this dealt with, I can’t have these things running around and,” the manager waved his hands irritably at the fence, “bothering customers and causing trouble.”
“Well,” repeated the bearded soul, “we offer removal plus coverage. That way you don’t have to worry. Three hundred eighty plus tax and materials will cover you until March first of next year. We’ll handle the infestation, and if you see what-all sign of them afterwards, you call us on up and we’ll take care of them, no further charge.”
Salesman’s banter came easy to this man - while he was talking, he tilted his iPad towards the pudgy manager and handed him a stylus, gesturing meaningfully at the bottom of the screen.
The manager in the apron murmured to himself and scribbled at the ipad. He awkwardly bobbled the iPad back and then clapped his pudgy fist on the exterminator’s, then patted his shoulder.
“So what do you guys do first?”
“I’ll show you,” said the exterminator, turning towards a weathered pickup truck with incongruously bright and clean advertising and decals – Bugs, rats and fluffy ponies with X marks over their eyes. After some clanking noises, he produced a metal ring, very like hubcap, with a confusion of wire hoops and shiny springs dangling from the rim. In the middle was a tiny black box, a display screen and a stubby antenna. The bearded exterminator set it down in the alley, twenty yards from the garden center employees, and knelt down next to it.
“Snares, you see?” The man in blue had a slow way of speaking that the manager found comforting. “This is a smart set. It will call us when it snags something, and Ill have my boys come around for a look.”
“You take them alive?” said the manager, watching the exterminator’s gnarled fingers pull open the snares one by one and snap the triggers down against the springs.
“Not so much alive as intact. If we’re lucky the whole pack may end up snared here. If not, my crew will learn what they can and we will take further steps. Dealing with this sort of thing is actually easier than, say, termites, but sometimes it takes a trick.” The exterminator rose stiffly and pulled a bright red can of cheap microwave pasta out of his pocket. This he peeled open and dropped in the center of the snares, and pushed the green button.
Beep.