Fat Shaming
PeppermintParchment
Fluffies don’t understand much. Of course they understand the necessaries, like sketties are delicious and babbehs are the most important thing in the world, that toys are to be shared and poopies made in the litterbox. Fluffies know that huggies and love could fix, would fix, any obstacle thrown in their paths, so Crepe couldn’t understand why her Mummah was still crying.
Allison sobbed into the chocolate pastry, fat tears rolling down fat cheeks and splashing on the fat fluffy pony that hugged her girth.
“Mummah, pwease nu cwy. Cwepe nu wan’ Mummah to hab biggest heawt huwties.” The mare consoled. Allison patted Crepe, smearing Bavarian cream in her dirty yellow mane.
“The other kids hate me Crepe. They hate me because I’m fat.” The young girl admitted, eyeing her pastry with scorn before taking another bite. Crepe frowned, her small brain struggling to comprehend why humans would hate a fat friend. Chubby friends gave the biggest, warmest, softest huggies! Crepe told her Mummah this and Allison glared at her.
“That might be how it works with fluffy ponies, but with humans, skinnier is better. Nobody wants a fat friend. Or a fat girlfriend.” Allison said sadly, her mind lingering on how her crush had finally talked to her earlier that day, but only to offer her his uneaten pudding cup with a nefarious twinkle in his eyes. She had turned indignantly away, but not before hearing the mocking snorts of the boy and his friends.
“Mummah am too wittwe fo’ speshaw fwiend. Am onwy wittwe babbeh.” Crepe offered. Allison said nothing as she wiped angry tears away from her eyes, the chocolate cake clenched in her hand showering the mare with crumbs. Crepe shook them away. Later Allison would gather them in her hands with the intention of throwing them away, but, somehow, they would find their way to her mouth.
That night the pair laid in bed, Allison staring at the ceiling as a rhythmic tapping and obscene creaking haunted her walls. Crepe, curled on her chest, felt her heart beating a frantic tattoo of fear and anger and sadness as her Mummah whispered concepts to Crepe that made no sense, like “Dad’s working night shift” and “Maybe it’s just the pipes”, pipes that moaned and gasped and filled the house with a wet slapping that originated from a bedroom occupied by just one parent. Crepe didn’t understand affairs or sex beyond anything but procreation, but she knew the sounds of enfing and was happy for her Mummah, because now Mummah would have a little baby brother or sister to play with and maybe she wouldn’t be so sad anymore.
Allison cried as the creaking got louder, the pace racing her heart, her mind spinning with impossible scenarios and weak excuses until she stumbled out of bed and into the bathroom. She sank to her knees before the toilet as a river of bile and chocolate poured from her throat. Crepe hopped out of bed and hugged Allison’s thighs as the teenager vomited, blocking out the insults and the ceaseless creaking and the self-loathing until nothing was left but a defeated, empty shell of a girl.
She raised her teary eyes from the bowl. Her mouth dripped with bile and her throat burned, but a sweet serenity had gripped her mind. The remainder of the chocolate pastry swirled in the toilet bowl, unable to pollute her. She had tasted it and enjoyed the sugary friendship it brought to her, and yet she was glad to see it again, undigested and harmless. Allison felt purified.
“Mummah? Why hab sickie wawas? Hab bad nummies?” Crepe asked hysterically. Allison wiped her face and gently lifted the fluffy from the tile. Crepe fought her instincts to yell about bad upsies, knowing her Mummah needed her huggies badly so the hurties would go away.
“Yes, Crepe. I had the worst nummies. All nummies are bad.”
Since all nummies were worstest nummies, Crepe couldn’t understand why they kept appearing in her food bowl, or why Mummah kept bringing them. Each day before school Allison would fill the bowl with high quality kibble and pat the mare on the head. In whispers she would update the brown earthie on her weight loss, the simple mare unable to comprehend what “seventeen pounds in a week” and “only 500 calories a day” meant, but her Mummah was happy, so it must be okay. Crepe would eat the kibble and then feel miserable, expecting to make sickie wawas like Mummah or upset her because she ate the worstest nummies. However, Mummah kept giving her food and Crepe kept taking it until she was convinced that Mummah was just being silly, that nummies were good.
Somehow, though, food couldn’t stay in Allison’s stomach long. Each day after school and each night after dinner Allison would return to the bathroom and reach her hand down her throat. Crepe thought she was pulling the bad nummies from her tummy and was impressed that she could tell bestest nummies from worstest nummies when she couldn’t even see them. Crepe, though simple even by fluffy standards, still watched sadly as her Mummah was forced to give up so many nummies, something primitive whispering in the back of her mind that what Allison was doing wasn’t healthy. The fluffy stood a silent sentinel over Allison as she vomited, the sole witness to the harm the teenager was doing to her young body.
Six weeks after the daily ritual of puking began, Allison staggered into her bedroom, sweaty from a three mile run. Crepe, who had been busy stacking an impressive block tower four cubes high, sprang up and rushed her Mummah.
“Upsies! Upsies!” The mare cried. Allison happily obliged, although her head throbbed with dizziness as she bent over. The girl plopped on her bed as Crepe squirmed happily, her yellow tail beating a rhythm against her Mummah’s much smaller thigh.
“Guess what?” Allison chimed happily.
“Wha’?!”
“I’ve lost fifty pounds!”
“Yay! Mummah am da bestest!” Crepe exclaimed, uncomprehending but hugging her Mummah tightly around the neck. Bony collarbones dug into the fluffy’s rotund belly.
“Thanks Crepe. I’m so glad I can share this with you.” The girl said. Crepe nodded, her assent fueling a crippling addiction.
Eight months later one of Allison’s mother’s lovers discovered the teenager hunched over the toilet. Crepe had been out of the room, due to an urgent need to make good poopies, and had been unable to protect her Mummah from prying eyes. The man reeled back in disgust as the skeletal girl rose from her position, tears twinkling in her eyes, though whether they were from sadness or vomiting it was impossible to tell.
“Please don’t tell Mom.” Allison whispered. The man had promptly ignored her, and less than five minutes later a screaming match had possessed the house. Crepe stumbled out of her litterbox and to her Mummah’s aid, though she was unable to do anything to curve the insults that gushed from the women’s mouth, words like “whore” and “anorexia” and “therapy” and “divorce” assaulting her innocent ears. Allison snatched up a vase and slammed it against the hardwood floor, barely missing the fluffy that cowered behind her legs. A river of urine flowed across the brown panels as Crepe emptied her bladder in fear and confusion. The women paused in their tirades as the fluffy shook, the lover slipping unnoticed out of the back door. Allison’s mother raked her fingers through her blond hair, exhaling shakily.
“You need help Allison. This isn’t healthy.”
“Yeah, and neither is you fucking every guy that looks at you twice.” The girl spat. An angry blush rose on Allison’s mother’s cheekbones.
“Leave that out-”
“If you…if you try anything, if you even…I swear I’ll…I’ll tell Dad. “Allison threatened shakily, her fighting spirit draining out of her as a dizziness crowded against her brain.
The blonde woman inhaled sharply and then sank to the couch, her face buried in her well-manicured hands, trapped between what was right and what was painful. Allison scooped up the crying fluffy and left the room, confident that her secret would remain so.
It was another two months before Crepe finally realized something was wrong. As her Mummah laid her across the bed and bragged about losing 112 pounds and eating less than 150 calories a day, of running six miles daily and finally reaching size four, something in Crepe’s mind finally snapped into place.
“Mummah am sickies.” The mare sighed sadly. Allison froze, her mouth hanging open mid-word.
“What?” The girl whispered.
Crepe gazed at her Mummah. She could finally see the brown eyes sunk in the harsh indent of her eye sockets, the narrow bones of her cheeks straining against thin flesh, and the suddenly sharp edge of her jaw for what it truly was. Crepe nodded miserably.
“Mummah hab da wowstest sickies. Nu hab enuff nummies, nu eat gud nummies, an’ awways make sickie wawas when tummy nu hab huwties. Mummah am sickies…”The chocolate colored mare explains. Allison stared at the fluffy before rolling onto her back. She trapped her hands beneath her head, her wispy blond hair tangling around skeletal fingers.
“I thought you understood, Crepe. First Mom, and now you. Don’t you understand that I have friends now? That I’m happier and healthier than ever? That I don’t have to eat to get away from my problems, because I don’t have any problems anymore?”
Crepe examined the reclining form of her Mummah, absorbing the concave stomach and the jutting hip bones, how the remnants of her breasts barely clung to her ribcage and how her legs refused to gain muscle despite the fact that she exercised daily.
“Cwepe nu am Smawty. Bu’ Cwepe nu dat Mummah am…hab biggest sickies. An’ maybe biggest heawt huwties, too.” The earthie struggled to explain. Allison sighed loudly.
“Please, you’re just a stupid fluffy. You don’t understand anything.”
“Cwepe knu dat Mummah hab biggest sickies.”
“No I don’t.”
“Knu dat hab biggest heawt huwties ‘cause oddah hoomins caww Mummah fat, but Mummah nu-”
“Shut up Crepe.”
“-nu dat Mummah hab wowstest sickies an-”
“Shut up!”
“-wiww hab fowevah sweepies if nu get he-EEEEEE! BAD UPSIES!” Crepe screamed as Allison lifted her by her scruff. Allison watched with malice as Crepe’s chubby belly and small udders swayed with the movement. Disgust reared its ugly head as the teenager saw the belly roll and flop with Crepe’s struggle.
“Look at you! You preach to me about health and what’s good for me but you carry around this fat belly! As if you have any room to talk! You’re just a fat, ugly, stupid fluffy!”
“Huu huu, Mummah nu yeww at Cwepe, Cwepe jist wan’ Mummah tu nu hab fowevah sweepies!” The mare whined. Tears filled her large purple eyes as Allison dropped her carelessly on the bed. The vibrations made the earthie’s belly jiggle and the girl snarled.
“You’re going on a diet. I can’t stand to look at you, you disgusting animal.”
Dieting wasn’t so difficult at first. Crepe realized that Mummah didn’t take away too many nummies, and although she was a bit peckish before bed time each night, she could certainly manage until the next morning.
Crepe even enjoyed the little walks her Mummah would take her on around the block, even though she was tired and her hooves hurt by the time she returned home.
Crepe was really beginning to feel and look healthier, too. Her belly didn’t bounce as much as it used to, and she enjoyed the rush of endorphins that filled her small body as she trotted alongside her Mummah. She was no longer bored as often and she slept better than ever. Maybe Mummah was right about not being sick! The thought made Crepe feel silly. Of course Mummah had been right!
That’s what the fluffy thought until she pranced into the kitchen one day and found a measly handful of kibble. She cast her eyes around warily. Where had all her food gone? Had a munstah stolen it? The fluffy puffed up her cheeks and sniffed through the house, intent on finding the kibble thief and taking back what was hers. Instead she found her Mummah in the laundry room, digging through a pile of freshly laundered clothes.
“Mummah! Gud bwight time? Mummah knu where am kibbwes?”
Allison brushed her frizzed hair away from her gaunt face, “It’s in your bowl.
“Mummah! Munstah stowe Cwepe’s nummies! Dewe am onwy a wittwe.” Crepe explained. Allison sighed and patted the fluffy with a skeletal hand.
“That’s all you need Crepe. Fluffies only need 300 calories a day. I gave you 500. You should be grateful, my little lard.”
Crepe cocked her head in confusion. Words like “calories” and “lard” drifted in one ear and out the other, “Su…nu mowe nummies fo’ Cwepe?”
“Nope. That’s all you’ll get all day, so you better ration it.” And with that Allison traipsed out of the back door, her school bag tossed over a thin shoulder.
Crepe flattened her ears against her skull and returned to her food bowl. She stared forlornly at the smattering of kibble, her appetite mysteriously gone.
In a matter of three weeks, Allison had restricted Crepe to a diet of mixed greens that consisted of roughly 100 calories. Throughout the day Allison would reward Crepe with small stalks of celery, and Crepe would expend more calories trying to tear apart the rugged vegetable than was gained in eating it. If Crepe was a particularly good fluffy Allison would smear half a teaspoon of peanut butter on the stalks, which Crepe would greedily lick away.
Allison was very pleased with Crepe’s progress. The brown mare had lost most of her girth and had acquired a nicely arched stomach. Her bottom no longer jiggled when they went on their daily run —which Allison had to cut down to half a mile, Crepe would vomit profusely if pushed much farther—, but instead rose between two jagged hip bones. Her legs were no longer like miniature tree trunks covered in fur, but dainty bones trapped in form-fitting skin. Her ribs peaked from beneath her coat, and her purple eyes followed Allison from room to room in sunken sockets. Sure, she didn’t talk as much and spent most of her time sleeping, but that was to be expected from such an active fluffy. Allison didn’t really like how rugged her pet’s fur felt now, or the way she would hunker down when she approached, but she knew that Crepe would thank her in the future. Afterall, Allison knew what was best for herself and her fluffy.
Allison’s mother, however, had never seen a more pathetic pair in her life. Allison flounced around in revealing outfits, showcasing her concave stomach and the sunken cleavage between her tiny breasts. Short skirts clung to thighs that belonged on an emaciated corpse, and stringy, split blond hair rested despondently on withered shoulders. The girl barely picked at her food, and what she did manage to choke down for the sake of her mother ended up in the sewage thirty minutes later.
Crepe drifted through the house as if she were a ghost. She said very little, and ate even less. Allison’s mother used to toss extra food to the fluffy after dinner, but once Allison had discovered this she had threatened to tell her father about her mother’s infidelity. Allison’s mother was forced to feed the fluffy scraps in private, but chances for even that were few and far between. Allison hovered over the mare like an overly protective parent, and she watched as Crepe slowly starved to death.
Crepe, though not the smartest fluffy alive, knew what starvation was. She knew that if she didn’t eat more soon, she would take forever sleepies. The mare watched from her bed as her Mummah flipped through television channels. She heard the very light clinking of dinner plates against one another. She perked her ears up and halfheartedly lifted her tired head. Her mouth watered weakly at the thought of the food that Mummah’s Mummah must have been making. Maybe she would give some to her? The brown earthie casted a weary glance at her Mummah, who was now busy tapping at her small light box, before she pulled herself out of her bed. She wobbled on weak legs to the kitchen, taking special care to trot lightly across the tile. Her eyes had trouble focusing on the bustling form of Mummah’s Mummah, but the older woman finaly came into focus for the strangely exhausted mare.
“H-Hewwo.” Crepe’s voice scraped out of her dry throat. She shook her head in an attempt to alleviate her sudden dizziness. Allison’s mother doesn’t acknowledge the mare but a small chunk of hotdog plopped to the tile, as if accidentally pushed off the cutting board. Crepe quickly gobbled it up, salivating furiously as her appetite roared to life. Allison’s mother nodded at the wall.
Another piece of hotdog rolled off the counter and within striking distance Crepe. Crepe inhaled it hungrily, wagging her dull yellow tail across the linoleum. Allison’s mother smiled weakly but didn’t take her eyes off the chili she was stirring. The woman removes the spoon from the pot and a torrent of thick, hot bean juices splatters onto the tile. Crepe scurries over and frantically licks the ground.
“Not so loud.” Allison’s Mom whispered from the side of her mouth. Crepe nodded quickly, her hunger driving her to agree to anything.
“Good girl.” And a whole bratswurst tumbled to the ground. Crepe fell upon it, drooling as she attempted to swallow the meaty treat whole. Her weak teeth bit through the skin, and hot juice flooded her mouth. The fluffy, deprived of such deliciousness for weeks, gasped loudly in pleasure.
And suddenly, Allison was there.
“CREPE! SPIT THAT OUT!” The girl screamed in fury. Crepe did the opposite, pulling the hotdog as deep into her throat as possible and galloping behind the counter. Allison pushed her mother aside angrily in her pursuit of the mare.
“Nmph mumph nuph! NUPHHHH!” Crepe screamed as her Mummah attempted to pries the weinie from her mouth. Crepe, driven by hunger and primal survival instincts, bit ferociously at Allison’s probing fingers. Allison pulled back in shock as blood leaked from a small crack in her fingernail.
“You bitch!” Allison grabbed the fluffy by her right ear and pulled violently. Crepe screamed in pain, the bratwurst rocketing from her mouth. Allison hauled the mare from the tile, her meager eight pound weight tugging heavily at her malnourished muscles.
“Bad fluffy! It’s the sorry stick for you!”
“NU! NUUUUU!” Crepe cried, thrashing with renewed vigor as she caught sight of the abandoned hotdog on the ground. Her stomach grumbled in anger.
“HATECHOO! HATECHOO!” Crepe shrieked as she writhed and bucked in Allison’s feeble grasp. Feeble muscle grinded against thin bone as the two starving companions struggled.
“Allison! You have to stop this! Can’t you see she’s starving to death?! That you’re starving to death?!” Allison’s Mom makes a desperate grab for the mare. Allison wheeled away, Crepe swinging in her pendulous grasp.
“Fuck off Mom! We’re fine! I’m fine!” She screamed. Crepe cried loudly in her arms.
“Wan’ nummies! WAN’ NUMMIES!”
“NO YOU DON’T! WE’RE FINE, YOU STUPID ANIMAL!”
“HUU HUU MUNSTAH MUMMAH!”
“Allison! Let Crepe go or I’m calling the cops! You can’t starve her! It’s animal cruelty!” Allison’s Mom appealed. Allison paused.
“No…you won’t.” She replied,” I’ll tell Dad. I’ll tell Dad everything.”
Allison’s Mom swallowed loudly. Tears filled her eyes as she inhaled shakily. She looked at her anorexic daughter and the dangling fluffy. Her eyes glided over the scrawny creature of angles Allison had become, the flayed hair and papery skin and pronounced bones that crowded together to form the damaged person before her.
“Do it then. I’m calling the cops. You need help.” She whispered. Allison turned on her heel and ran. The bony fluffy bounced in her arms, each rise and fall of the teenager’s steps rattled Crepe to her core as her Mummah fled up the stairs and into her room.
“Stay there!” Allison commanded. She tossed the fluffy to the carpet and slammed the bedroom door. Her steps echoed as she stampeded down the stairs and into the kitchen, where her Mom was tearfully informing a 911 operative of her daughter’s condition.
Crepe cried loudly. She suckled her hoof, relishing the faint taste of meat grease on her feet. Her stomach growled in anguish. The room spun around her as her simple mind struggled to understand what was going on. Why did her head feel so light? Why did her stomach have the worstest hurties, like she was going to make sickie wawas, but she couldn’t make sickie wawas, could she? What did she have in her to make sickie wawas with? Celery and two meat pieces and why was the room so hot and her brain so muddled and what was this bitter taste in her mouth that burned as it climbed her throat with acidic claws and-
Crepe gagged, thin yellow bile and hotdog gushing from her mouth in chunks as she vomited on her Mummah’s white carpet. She sobbed as her innards offered what little they had to the world.
“Huu huu, pwease get back in tummy, nummies. Am su hungwy. Nu wan’ fowevah sweepies.” Crepe begged. She pressed her face against the rug and licked the vomit, her abused stomach crying out in vengeance as she dry heaved at the smell. She shook her head.
“Nu taste pwetty…” She whined, and yet she licked and bit at the carpet, tearing away chunks of fiber flavored with acid and meat. She was driven on by a primal hunger, a desire to endure and live at all costs. So she ripped at the white strands until her gums bled and until her tongue was raw from scraping against the coarse fibers. She sobbed, salty tears mingling with salty blood and salty meat juice, coating the carpet in a cocktail of desperation. Small pebbles and broken hairs met her tongue but she swallowed them greedily as well, a looming fear of death driving her on. She filled her neglected stomach with strands of carpet and wiry threads until she could hold no more. Until, finally, the hunger pains didn’t possess her small body. Her stomach poked out again as a fluffy’s should, although she noticed that her tummy bulged in odd places. She didn’t feel very well. She knew that sickie wawas weren’t good nummies, but what choice did she have? She didn’t want forever sleepies.
Crepe felt very warm on the inside. She recognized the drowsiness that followed a good meal. She smiled serenely, although a small pain was building in her stomach. It was probably upset because it hadn’t had so much food in so long. Silly tummy! She closed her purple eyes and leaned back on her haunches. They weren’t the bestest nummies, but they would do. Mummah might be angry that she nummed so much, but she would understand. She didn’t want Crepe to take forever sleepies, afterall.
A light foam bubbled from the corners of Crepe’s mouth as she reclined. Suddenly she was very, very sleepy. The brown mare braced against the warm tightening in her stomach. She hoped Mummah wouldn’t be mad because she nummed so many nu taste pwetty nummies.
The fluffy collapsed to the carpet, her bloated belly pointed towards the roof. Her stomach gurgled loudly, finally full.
