To the lowly herd falling under its wake, the rain was pouring from the heavens like a Biblical deluge. Wind whipped the water into their faces, eliciting soft cries of “owies” from the ones old enough to speak, and fearful chirps from the foals not yet matured. It was some small miracle that the little ones weren’t tossed from their mother’s backs and enveloped into the rainy night sky.
“Smawty!” one of their number shouted over the cacophony. “Nee’ tu fin’ safe pwace wight nao! Wawa gon gib fwuffies foeweva sweepies! Can 'ou see anyfing?”
The smarty strained his ears to hear. This wasn’t a particularly insightful declaration.
Nonetheless the smarty refrained from snapping at whomever it was who made the remark. The smarty had seen what a selfish, mean smarty could do to a herd before.
He looked around. Dark, dark, dark, light, dark. The smarty blinked. He rubbed his eyes to make sure he saw right. Yes, he could see light!
“Dis way!” he shouted over the rain. Leading them to the source, the smarty could see that the light was coming from a house.
A house.
The smarty’s shiver wasn’t from the cold. If there were humans living in that house, chances are they were not going to take the entire herd in. The smarty wasn’t ready to up and quit just yet, but his mind was going blank at what to do. Upon closer inspection, the smarty realized that there was a crack in a wall of the house. Was this hole big enough for a fluffy? The smarty wasn’t sure.
“chirp PEEP PEEP chirp” There was no time to double check. the babies could die out here if they didn’t get somewhere warm and dry, fast.
“In hewe!” One by one the fluffies squeezed their way through the crack. Within half an hour, the herd had pushed their way inside. As they sat and began to dry, the tell-tale thumps of human footsteps provided indisputable evidence. They were not alone.
I like rain. Love it, as a matter of fact. The soft pitter-patter of the droplets relax my mind. All my life, rain has been my closest ally, giving me respite in times of stress or tension. The plunking on the roof, the clapping against the walls, they’re just right.
It’s only when those sounds come from within the walls, only then do I grow anxious. Perhaps, then, it could be understood why the soft tapping within my home’s walls aroused goosebumps on my arms. I felt uneasy at the thought of just what could be in my walls. Soon, however, silence reigned again as the tapping died off, and I could soon chalk it up to rain hitting the wall at just the right angle. I had nothing to worry about.
That night, I slept on and off, as a near inaudible whisper, indecipherable, kissed the innards of my ear, and once again my mind began to fizz as my fears worsened throughout the bitter blackness of my room. Daylight had to come soon, surely, for the quiet yet deafening phantoms of clicks and clacks within the confines of my home’s walls. And to my throat-clenching terror, daybreak brought tapping, endless tapping, right next to my headboard.
“Tee-hee, gon catch 'ou sissy!” one of the weaned fluffies called out to its sibling. The duo were playing a common fluffy game, huggie tag, to celebrate their rescue from the night’s deluge. The area they were playing in was practically just a corridor, so they kept running back and forth along the same path.
The smarty was taking a headcount to see if any of their number had perished in the deluge. He noticed one mare was fretting, anxious, breathing in and out rapidly.
“Wha wong Sawwy?”
“Huuu, Sawwy nu can find two babbehs!”
“Meybe dey take foeweva sweepies when da sky wawa come down?” He said, hesitantly, not wanting Sally to become overly distraught, but also wanting her to have a realistic view of her options.
“Nu!” She protested, “Sawwy kno dey wewe hewe! Babbehs wan 'way!”
The smarty’s fear and panic began to rival that of Sally, though he dared not show it, lest the entire herd be overcome with it and alert the humans.
“Smawty gon go wook fow babbehs. 'Ou stay hewe!” Without another word, the smarty raced through the tight confines of the herd’s new home. Giggling wafted it way to his ears. He followed the sound, and bore witness to the duo stomping up and down the little corridor they chose to utilize for playing. The smarty brought his hoof down hard enough for the two to hear and they abruptly stopped, scared by the noise. The smarty wordlessly pointed in the direction from which he came, glaring at the two as they morosely avoided his gaze.
The tapping had been going back and forth behind my bed forever. It was absolutely maddening. I got no work done, I had no thoughts isolated, I was at my wit’s end. Soon, however, more tapping from the hall came to my headboard and halted. Only a second later, a decent bang rang from my wall and I jumped, spinning about and eyeing the wall, expecting a bullet hole in it and myself.
Alas, my question was not answered, as the tapping only moved back down the hall and out of my room. I needed answers, now. I began to press my ears against every surface in the house. Some places, I swore I heard air moving, too quickly to be a draft, as if the walls were breathing, waiting for my word to speak. Soon, I had gotten to the last room I needed to check. All silent. As I pulled away from the last wall, two words nearly made me scream. “Aww hewe…”
Satisfied with his count, the smarty sighed. Then, suddenly, loud thumping noises sounded out from above them. Everybody was too scared to make a sound. The smarty realized that the sounds were moving away from them, and growing more distant. What was the human doing?
Whatever it was, it seemed like it was moving away from the herd. The young foals began to chirp, the others shed a few tears, and their mothers hugged them, telling them platitudes of comfort. Even though the immediate danger is over, fear rolled over his body like a shockwave. He had to set things straight.
“Wisten up! Hoomin mistah nu can kno fwuffies aww hewe!” The smarty looked around the herd to make sure everyone was listening.
“Fwuffies gon hab to be vewy, vewy quiet, ow ewse da hoomin cou’ fin fwuffies an twow fwuffies out ob new home!” He took a moment to make sure everyone took in the implications of this statement. “Nao, weaw quiet, fwuffies can 'spwowe da new home. Be cawefuw!” the smarty shouted out to the now dispersing herd. As the fluffies slowly, quietly, began to branch out in their new environment, footsteps could be heard where the herd once was.
I ran straight out of the room with a vigor unmatched. I was damned. I couldn’t be losing it. There was no way, it wasn’t possible. Being a nervous wreck and being psychotic were not one in the same. But they had to be, there were voices in my walls. I dared not speak to them. Who could foretell what folly that could be?
I tracked the tapping all around the house, slowly coming to terms with the unfathomable possibility of being schizophrenic. It was just too much. I spun on the spot, grabbed my keys and slammed the front door of my home as I got into my car and drove. I didn’t know where to. Just anywhere but home. Somewhere where I knew the walls wouldn’t speak a syllable.
The fluffies explored the nooks and crannies of their new home, becoming familiar with the odd turns and twists, the occasionally cramped spaces, even the odd, musky smells. The smarty kept three fluffies with him at all times - two stallions and a mare. Since they were the quickest, they could run through the passages fast enough to warn everyone if there was a major problem and the herd needed to bug out immediately.
“Smawty, when fwuffies gon be abwe to hab nummies? Fwuffy gon hab tummie owies soon.” one of them asked. The smarty considered this conundrum for several minutes. Food was going to be hard to come by in this place.
The smarty rested himself against a wall, exhausted from the cumulative events of last night and the following day. But then, suddenly, the smarty fell on his side. At first he thought that he simply misjudged the distance between himself and the wall, but upon looking around, he realized that he was in another room. The wall had been loose.
“Smawty? Whewe 'ou gu?”
“Oba hewe fwiends! ‘Ou can move da waww out o’ da way!”
The smarty picked himself up and analyzed his surroundings. It was a bit dark, with light
seeping in from a thin crack in the middle of the room. Big and small immobile objects were scattered around the strange room. The smarty approached one of them and squinted his eyes.
It was blue in coloration, a bit on the long side. It had letters on the top of it, but try as he might, the smarty couldn’t read it, though even if he could, the meaning of the words ‘CHIPS AHOY’ would be lost on him. He looked over the object and saw pictures of cookies. Cookies! This the smarty could understand.
“Dis way fwiends! Smawty find nummies!” The quartet pulled the cookie package back into the wall from whence they came, and worried about getting the package open for later.
The forest. The forest, bless it, the forest would not speak. Not so much as a single abnormal peep. I could finally relax and sort myself out. I knew I wasn’t crazy. I couldn’t be, I’d know so, I would know because… because…circular logic said so. I didn’t have a clue, I was kidding myself. I needed some outside help. I pondered if it was so bad being a basket case and just keeping it to myself.
Unfortunately, going ballistic in my own home wasn’t worth it, and after some time and a drive later, I parked outside my home and set up an appointment with a psychiatrist. Going made me sick, but it was better than devolving into a loon. I made my way inside and sat down upon my recliner, sighing deeply and waiting. Within the hour, the worst sound to grace my ears made its return, and I had no choice but to bear it.
Clenching my hands, I decided to eat something, anything to take my mind off the noise. I opened up my pantry and…
Something was off. I was missing something. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but I knew I hadn’t consumed whatever was missing. Had I? I couldn’t be sure. I reached down to grab a box of macaroni and was about to turn and get a jar of alfredo when a crack caught my eye. It was large, strangely so. The piece of wall was on the shelf, dust spread about it.
Had I pushed something in too hard and broken the wall, and it fell when I took it back out? It seemed reasonable enough. My brow bore beads of sweat nonetheless and only once I had finished my dinner did the strange hole begin to fade from my mind. As I laid in bed some time later, the whispers began and I desperately clenched my pillows against my head to stop the noise, that damned noise, that goddamned noise. I groaned in frustration as tapping slowly made its way to my room.
“Mummah wuv babbehs, babbehs wuv mummah,” a mare sang to her children, walking above the ceiling of the bedroom of the man below. All the children under her care could walk and talk at this point, and marched behind her. A strange looking shape with strands emanating from it caught their attention. The foals took to it and began to clamber up on it.
“Tee-hee, dis am fun!” one of them said. They giggled as their mother looked on, happy to see them playing, enjoying themselves, getting a respite from the world. Something clattered under them, but they didn’t take notice until they heard a massive crash, like breaking glass.
As soon as the ceiling lamp hit the ground, I flew out of bed and sprinted out of my home and into my backyard. Thank God for isolation and the safety it held, my underwear could only conceal my bottom half so much, and naught could conceal the utter terror I wore on my face as I stared at my room from outside. This was absolutely, utterly, without a single doubt in my mind, the most fucked week of my life.
I dared not utter such language even alone, but I was already a bundle of nerves caught in a cat’s trap, and here I was, unraveling at a lamp. I creeped back into the silent home after a solid minute, carefully cracking open my door. Indeed, my ceiling lamp had fallen out of the roof and came down upon me, breaking all across the floor and leaving a deathly dark void in the ceiling.
There was no reason for it to fall out, it was brand new! The man I had come and installed it couldn’t have done such a poor job it could fall out yet work perfectly for a month! I was on the edge, and I had little patience to wait out whatever was ruining my reality. I dressed myself, took off for a hotel, and checked into a room, patiently awaiting my appointment with the psychiatrist to fix my problems, once and for all.
The shattering sound rang out through the entire house, awakening all the fluffies in the walls. The smarty’s head darted up immediately.
“Peaw, gu wook whewe da noise come fwom.” he commanded. Pear got up and raced through the winding paths to trace the source of the noise, but since she began by searching under the floor instead of the spaces above the ceiling, the fluffy family that caused the great ruckus was long gone.
When the smarty hears her report back, it raised more questions than answers. What is that human doing? Surely they wouldn’t want to go around breaking things in their own home. For now, he shrugged the issue off, and returned to sleep. When morning came, a new issue became apparent. Many of the herd have dry mouths and parched throats.
One amongst them pipes up when the problem is brought up.
“Bwuebewwy ‘memba seein’ wawa somewhewe!” The colt leads the herd to a spot under the house, where water pipes snake through the interior. One pipe is dripping water with the speed of a tortoise.
“Dis nawt 'nuff wawa fow evewyfwuffy!” one in the group shouts out. The fluffies mill about despondently, stuck at a crossroads. Some of them bit down on the pipes and winced at the pain of teeth against steel. The smarty poked at the dripping point with a couple of others, trying to figure out how the water is getting through. In frustration, the smarty smacked the weak point.
The blow caused the pipe to shift slightly, leading to the water to drip at a quickening pace. Realizing what just happened, the smarty resumed the assault, encouraging the others to help. Within the span of a couple of minutes, the pipe became dislodged significantly from its original position, creating a steady stream from which to drink from. The herd celebrated this victory, drinking to their heart’s content.
I had finally arrived at the office of Miss Whatsername. Polly? Molly? Pauline? Something to that effect. It didn’t matter who she was, it just mattered how much she could help. I stepped in, 5 o’clock sharp, and received an admittedly award winning smile and warm, “Hello, hello, come in!”
I meagerly waved my hand and sat down in the chair across from her. Pleasantries were
exchanged, the whole nine yards of family history with mental illness and my predicament, the whole nine yards and our session drew deeper and deeper still.
“Do you believe you are going insane?”
“Has this ever happened before?”
“Why do you think you are going insane?”
All questions of the most mundane variety. Our time ended seemingly as soon as it began, and the polite exchanges of goodbyes coincided with my departure. I sat in my car for a good minute, and bit my cheek. With one quick turn, I made my way back from the hotel with my things in tow and my eyes on home once more.
Having been satisfied, the fluffies left the busted and still leaking pipe alone to go around the house’s walls once more. The trickling stream began to soak into the ground and the surrounding walls, dampening them. A puddle began to form, then grew larger, and larger still. Water was leaking out the wall adjacent to the growing spill and onto the floor. The wall was becoming mushy and soft to the touch.
None of this, of course, was apparent to the fluffies who were climbing in the cracks and crevices above the leakage. Rosebud hooked her hoof on a support beam, then the other, pulling herself up to the top. Her friend Tulip was having a harder time getting herself up to the top ledge.
“Wosebud won da cwimbie game!” She did a little dance in commemoration of the victory, putting more strain on the weakening bottom beams.
“huff Dis game haff am too hawd huff fow Tuwip!” Tulip looked down, and it started to dawn on her just how far high up she was. Her heart rate started to climb higher than she was. “Wosebud! Tuwip am scawed!”
“‘Ou awmost dewe Tuwip! Jus’ widdwe mowe!” Rosebud encouraged. Then the bottom beams started collapsing. Falling into the veritable lake forming underneath the chasm, they displaced yet more water. Tulip was hanging on for life and limb.
“EEEP! Huu huu! Tuwip nu wan faww! Wosebud! Hewp Tuwip!” The fluffy at the top
outstretched her hooves to grab her friend and pull her up, but she was just out of reach.
“Nu can weach Tuwip! ‘Ou’ hab to cwimb mowe!” Tulip eyed the watery grave below. She
started to cry. “Be bwave Tuwip! Nu hab scawdies, just come to Wosebud!” Tulip shut her eyelids tight, and pushed with her front legs as she could. When she thought her front legs were going to give out from under her, Rosebud held on to her, pulling her to the top ledge with all her might. The two fluffies were worn out from the ordeal as the water continued to churn below.
I threw the front door open and eyed the walls of my home. Yes, tapping, whispers, but
something more to them. I was sure of it. More sounds, begging for me to listen closer, and I would foolishly do as they asked, only growing in frustration as the only result reared its ugly head to spite me again.
I would not have it any longer. I marched straight over to my bathroom and hoped to begin furiously scrubbing my face, desperate to wash myself away. Instead, I was greeted with absolutely nothing. Not a drop to be had. I could feel every muscle in my body clench so tightly I could break my own bones.
What could have possibly happened now?! Every day, something else is coming apart. My body, my home, my mind, all deteriorating like a corpse in a field. My blood boiled and I could feel blood vessels fit to burst in my head as I ground my feet about, dragging myself down to the basement. I had nearly hit the bottom step when a groan followed by a splash caught my ears.
The collapse of the beams did not go unnoticed by the fluffies who decided to stay close by the water pipe.
“Wha dat noise?” one of them asked. A young filly turned to her father and hugged him.
“Daddeh, Cawwie am scawed. Awe dose munstah noisies?” she asked, looking into his eyes for guidance. The maroon stallion was frightened too, but steeled his will.
“Daddeh gon fin’ out wha da scawy noise am, otay? Don’ wowwy babbeh, daddeh gon be back weaw soon.”
“Bu wha if dat noise come fwom munstah?”
“Den daddeh gon gib da munstah foweva sweepies!” the father declared, overconfident in his ability to take on a dangerous threat.
He departed the small group to search. His advance yielded him damp, wet feeling air, getting colder and colder as he went through. As the ground underneath his feet felt damp as well, the fluffy noticed that the corridor was becoming more cramped as he traversed it. That felt odd to him. This passage didn’t feel so tight before. He strained to move under the weight of the soggy wood, slowing to a literal crawl, before getting stuck.
“Huh? Wai nu can move nu mowe?” he pondered aloud. He pushed, pressed himself against his immobile captor, to no avail.
He decided to gather up all his energy and make one last big push against the heavy surface before trying a call for help. Loudly grunting as he heaved, the fluffy managed to free himself. Unfortunately for him, this caused the floor underneath him to fall out from under him. Without even a single breath to cry out in surprise, the fluffy fell into the billowing lake below, submerging himself in water, surrounding him with darkness as he struggled not to suck the cold tendrils of the water into his lungs. Pushing his way to the surface of the water ever so briefly, he managed to get just enough air to yelp before sinking once more.
I heard a yell. I heard a yell, a splash, and I felt the whole of the world twirl me like a ballerina. I was absolutely psychotic. Downright delusional. Seriously sick. I was out of my goddamned mind and I was going to make this place talk if it killed me. I stormed down the few stairs left and gazed upon the large bulge in the wall adjacent the stairwell. A pipe had burst, and now the wall was swollen like a water balloon that had been overfilled. Something was pushing about inside, faint presses against the surface.
I felt my skull shrink around my own engorged and overzealous brain as I made my way over and examined it. I was soooooooo going to need professional help, and I’d be sucked dry of more of my money, all whilst I was having an episode of serial proportions. I finally let myself go and shouted in pure rage and punted a box nearby, which promptly flew into the wall and opened a two inch hole in the side. Now I had to patch that up. Utterly defeated, I trudged back upstairs, holding my head in my hands and shaking with residual anger as the world whirled around me.
The handful of fluffies close by heard the impact of the box against the wall long before they saw the result of it. They stood in silent fear for a long minute before one of them decided to speak up.
“Gwape hab tewwibwe scawdies, meybe fwuffies shou’ wun 'way, wiww be safe wif da oddahs.”
“Cawwie nu wan weave daddeh! Cawwie wan wait, daddeh come back soon.” the filly spoke out, attempting to re-assure herself as much as the others.
“Meybe fwuffies gu an wook? Meybe dat am 'ouw daddeh, meybe he need hewp?” another of them piped up.
“Ow meybe dat da munstah!” yet another argued.
“Nu cawe! Cawwie gon stay wight hewe an wait fow daddeh!” the filly insisted.
“Wedggie am gon gu wook an see wha da noise am, nu scawed ob munstahs! Am bwave
fwuffy!” And with that, Reggie marched towards the source of the impact, heedless of his
companions urging him to either stay or flee with them. Grape decided to retreat back into the recesses of the walls, looking to book it as far away from the sound as possible. Carrie stayed put. One fluffy decided to stay with Carrie to ensure she didn’t get hurt by any monster or something else.
It wasn’t long before Reggie found the crack in the wall. Reggie stuck his head
out to look. His eyes darted around the room. Boxes, some empty, some closed, some open with odd assortments of junk overflowing its packaging littered the room. In the corner was a big black object that a tiny mind like Reggie’s couldn’t comprehend was a furnace. Across the wall was old gardening tools.
Reggie’s head looked down at the box that had opened up the hole in the wall. It’s contents had since spilled out all over the floor, which included a now damaged beyond repair clunky radio set, a dented Pickelhaube, a tennis ball, and an ugly as sin Christmas sweater. He looked back at the ball. A toy, he found a toy! Jumping out of the hole, Reggie pawed the tennis ball back and forth with his front hooves.
Meanwhile, back behind the walls, Carrie and her self appointed protector were becoming increasingly worried about her father’s lack of return.
“Meybe someting happen tu 'ouw daddeh.” the protector morosely suggested.
“Nu! It nu twue! Daddeh gun come back soon, weaw soon, an-” she was cut off as she noticed that water was beginning to pool under her feet. In little waves the water approached, inching up further and further.
“It nu safe hewe, fwuffies nee’ tu weave!” the protector urged the little one.
“Bu wha 'bout-” Once again she was cut off, for on the waves of the steadily increasing water level, the corpse of her father washed up in front of them.
“Daddeh? DADDEH! NU! NUUUUUUU!” Carrie wailed and sobbed as the protector dragged her away to a safer location, kicking and screaming.
Reggie could hear the screams as well. He considered heading back into the wall, but at this point his playing had caused him to move quite a bit far from his original location. To make matters worse, he heard footsteps. It sounded as if it was walking down the stairs.
Reggie began to panic, until he looked behind himself, staring at the gaping maw of the furnace. There was no choice. Reggie rushed in. He felt something sharp poke his hoof. He looked down to see a glove, but it was no ordinary glove. Someone had put knives on the fingers. It was probably left there as a cruel joke of some kind, the prankster having never bothered cleaning it up. He held in his desire to exclaim “owies!” and tried to hold his breath to be as silent as possible. He moved up against the walls of the furnace, the inside of which was so dark that a person would be unlikely to see him if they were looking right at him.
I knew I heard voices. Not muffled whispers. Voices. Speaking. Distorted, slurred words,
incoherent in their way, yet fluid in their response. I arrived once again in the basement and screamed in horror as my wall was now leaking much faster, threatening my room and my wallet further. I scrambled desperately to save everything I could, shoving it all away from the growing puddle before patching it, albeit shoddily, with the tape I had brought down.
I finally sat down and breathed. They were speaking now. Not whispering, speaking actual things, no matter how indecipherable, and my entire body chilled in fear. That cold stayed with me, and soon it became clear my home was in need of warmth. I stood up, neatly packed in my great-grandfather’s Pickelhaube, my gardening tools, everything that had fallen out, yet something wasn’t there.
I gazed about the room and spotted a tennis ball, right outside the furnace. How did it get there? I began to fear the answer, instead quickly pacing my way over to it, picking it up and tossing it into the box before making my way back upstairs to retrieve my matches and relieve myself of my feverish cold.
Reggie breathed a sigh of relief. The monster’s footsteps and clattering had finally ceased, and were moving far away from him. He peeked his head out of the furnace to make sure that it was gone. Sure enough, it was not in sight. All the junk had been removed from the room too, even the ball he was playing with earlier. Reggie looked at where the crack in the wall was, but couldn’t find it.
“Huh? Wha happen tu howe?” The footsteps started coming back, and Reggie ducked his head back in. He closed his eyes, and internally thought to himself ‘please don’t come here, please don’t come here’. The furnace door was cracked open a bit more. Reggie held his breath and held his eyes even tighter than before, anticipating the monster’s horrible claws or teeth to sink into him at any moment.
Then he heard something move into the furnace. Then another something. He opened his eyes. The furnace was getting filled with wood! A large piece brushed up against him hard, jabbing his soft flesh with splinters. Reggie winced a bit, hoping that his soft whine went unnoticed by the monster. A pause made Reggie afraid that the beast had heard him. Then some sort of liquid started getting poured on the wood. Reggie absolutely hated the stench that assaulted his nostrils. What kind of water was this, he wondered?
A scratching sound sputtered out. A light of some kind entered the furnace - it was fire! Reggie slinked back as much as he was able, not wanting to be illuminated by the light of the fire. Then the fire was dropped into the wood. Then it started to burn. The furnace door closed. Reggie was trapped! Smoke billowed up above him, making it difficult to breathe, causing him to cough. The fire started coming his way, quicker now.
“Nu, pwease mistah cough cough mistah fiaw, pwease weave fwuffy gasp awone.” He spoke very quietly, just in case the monster was still around. Fire does not heed any words, and soon began its encroachment on Reggie’s flesh. At first, Reggie tried to hold in his screams, whimpering in pain instead, but as the fire started to boil the skin on his supple body and burn his soft fluff to ash, the smoke causing his eyes to dry out into flaky husks, Reggie could no longer hold himself back.
“SCREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!”
As the fire continued to waste him away to the bone, Reggie’s agonized hollering stabbed through the house like a fist through wet tissue paper.
Screaming. Now they were screaming at me. I angered them, and now they were going to make their dissatisfaction known. I practically sprinted out the basement and slammed it shut, locking the door behind me and running all the way to my room where I dove under my covers and hid for two or so minutes before dead air ruled the house once more.
With extreme caution and increased awareness of the endless whispers in the other walls, I made my way down to the basement where I found only silence. Sweet, sweet silence, so sweet I nearly cried before I went back to retrieve some towels to dry the puddle near the swell in the wall. After a call to the plumber, I retreated once more to my room and collapsed into my bed, fried and fearful for my safety, as per usual.
The smarty and his entourage barreled down the bends and turns of the walls to investigate the source of the screaming. Turning a corner, they accidentally crashed into Grape. “Owies!” were exclaimed by several. The smarty recovered and immediately started drilling Grape with questions. Who was she with, where had she been, what went down, so on and so forth. Shaken up considerably, Grape relayed to them information on the group she had been staying with, and the bizarre noises they had heard. The smarty and his companions trudged onwards, letting Grape continue her withdrawal to the rest of the herd.
It wasn’t long before they met the sobbing Carrie, and the fluffy who had decided to keep her safe. After another series of questions, they were led to the body of Carrie’s father, bloated from taking on so much water. The smarty had them take the corpse. They dragged it back with them painstakingly to the inadvertent hub of fluffy activity, then the smarty had his entourage call up and gather the rest.
“Wook at dis fwuffy!” he shouted out, once the teeming mass had shown up. Murmurs of fright blitzed through the crowd. The smarty pounded his hoof down for silence.
“Dis wha’ happen when fwuffies am dummies, an dis wha’ happen when hoomin munstah catch fwuffies wivin hewe!” A pause. “Nao wiww ou’ wisten to smawty? Nao wiww 'ou use 'ouw tinky pwaces?”
The herd mournfully nodded or verbally affirmed the smarty’s declaration. The smarty
allowed the fluffies to be dismissed. He sighed to himself once the others had left. He was starting to wonder if taking shelter in this place was a good idea after all.
Unbeknownst to him, a new problem was soon beginning to make itself known. After several days of living between the walls, the fluffies had produced a significant amount of feces that simply lay bare in the confines. The smell was starting to make itself known throughout the entire house.
It was a time before I could pinpoint the pungent odor that began to castrate my nostrils. It had to have been me, what else was in the house that could possibly be reeking so badly? Yet, no matter how vigorously I scrubbed myself in my now cold and unpowered bath, tensing me evermore, or how deathly my cologne was worn, the smell remained, and soon I was faced with the possibility of my home falling into a state of decay. No longer was the house talking to me, it was driving me out.
I was absolutely infuriated, spraying Febreeze in every nook, every cranny, every molecule of my home was coated in air freshener, and I bathed deeply in my strongest soaps to wipe it from myself, afterwords bleaching my tub and wiping everything in the house that wasn’t nailed down, then everything nailed down.
Nothing was spared, I cleaned things I hadn’t touched even before I moved in, found things most intriguing, and the epitome of which was the pistol I dug up in the attic. Old. Worn. Easily over 100 years old. There were still rounds inside, and soon the idea of blasting my walls to bits wriggled it’s way into my cranium, never leaving as I continued to clean. I would stare deeply at the origins of the sounds, imagining silencing them with one. Precise. Shot.
No, it would be maniacal, pure madness to shoot my own home, yet I wanted nothing but to shut everything up and bathe in the forthcoming silence it would behold upon me. I writhed in my bed as the rotten scent once again invaded my head, and screamed into my pillow as my escape provided no solace from the sound or smell.
Percy eyed the wires carefully. Blue, red, black, they snaked in and out of the walls at odd angles. He had been looking at these stringy objects over ever since the herd got here. They looked almost like spaghetti strands.
Percy’s stomach growled at him. It had been a long time since he had the heavenly meal. Was this the delicacy he craved? He didn’t think someone would put spaghetti in a place like this, but he wasn’t sure. He climbed up closer to a bundle of them and sniffed. They didn’t smell bad, but that didn’t mean they were good, either. He licked them just to make sure. Didn’t taste like much of anything to him, but it didn’t taste bad. If it didn’t taste bad, maybe that meant it was okay to eat?
Percy looked back and forth to see if anyone was looking. He leaned in close to the wires, then bit into them. They were hard, and not very tasty. He kept chewing. Maybe it would taste better if he softened it up a bit more. Wait, it was starting to taste different now, a bit like something metal or-
BZZZZZZZZZZZZT
Electricity had its way with Percy’s body worse than a two dollar hooker. Arcing through him at rapid speed, the electricity caused parts of his face to burn to black ash, his eyes rolled back into his head, veins and arteries inside his entire body split open, causing massive internal bleeding, and his brain steadily turned to mush inside his skull as he spasmed on the bitten wires. Continuing to destroy his body from the inside out, the electrical power to the house short-circuited, causing a total blackout.
Having started dragging a box of crackers down into the improvised den, the smarty froze when darkness descended without warning. Usually he could guide his actions from the light that seeped in from the cracks in the walls, but now he was going to have to make his way back without knowing where he was going. As if his day wasn’t bad enough already! When he was about to start making the attempt to feel his way through, he heard a horrible, guttural cry.
This sound belonged to no animal or fluffy the smarty had ever heard from before. That could mean only one thing - that was the human. As the throaty shout reverberated across the house, the fluffies began to panic, crying, making their own screams of terror, or shitting and pissing in fear.
The ring of my scream died out, my throat feeling bloodied and battered because of it, and in its place came my endless company of whispers, some shouts in between, all berating my mental state regardless, and I once again was thrust into anger. Sleep was fleeting and infrequent, and only when I pulled my head from my pillow did I notice the lights had died as well.
My worries once again flooded my mind, and I flipped every switch, pressed every button, plugged every outlet, only to receive naught. I trudged down to the fusebox, and received no more electricity than that of which had been accompanying me the last half hour or so.
That could only mean one thing. The walls were not only going to speak to me, not only were they going to ruin my nasal cavity, they were going to deprive me of every electronic appliance in my household. It was all conspiring against me. No, no, I was acting like a psychotic. Something had to have gone bad with the wiring. But what? The wires weren’t even a year old at this point. Surely they were still good? I lit another fire in the furnace, my mind wandering and slowly unraveling as I asked every possible question and was denied every single answer.
Of course, the bulge in the wall had grown since last, and as I retrieved a bucket I wondered if perhaps it had come to short the circuitry? It was not unreasonable to believe so. I let out all that could be and dumped it outside, wearily walking back to my only place of solace and closing my eyes, hoping for a better tomorrow, but my faith laid anywhere but in that dwindling hope.
The smarty closed his eyes as the sounds of panicking fluffies echoed throughout. This is it, he thought, this is when the human is going to kill us all. Hot tears had streamed down the fluff of his cheeks, and he stayed where he was, daring not to move from his spot.
Slowly, the frenzy died down, and without howls of pain to replace them. The smarty opened his watery eyes. It was still pitch black, but nothing had changed. He still had the box of crackers, he was still right where he was when the human had screamed his horrible scream. Nothing happened. The smarty blinked. Sensing that whatever danger that existed before had passed, he pulled his box into the drink of night, feeling his way along to make sure he was going the right way. It took him nearly triple the time it would have if there had been light, but he made it back to the hub.
Once morning came, he took stock of his herd. Many had cuts and bruises accumulated during the night, having run into walls or tripped on their own feet, but none worse than that. The most severe damage was to the house itself; though the fluffies could not have known, in the veritable riot they had caused paint to chip off of walls, paintings to fall down, or caused loose furniture or boxes of junk to fall over in their haze.
The smarty was just relieved that no-one was seriously injured, or worse. As they opened up the cracker box and tore the wrapper open, the smarty hugged each member of the herd individually, and reassured them that the screaming monster in the darkness wouldn’t do them any harm. After meal time, the fluffies dispersed, going back into the niches which they had made their respective homes.
A barely weaned fluffy decided to wander from his sleeping mother’s nest. There was a small spot a ways away that he liked to play in, climbing up and down from the wooden beams that supported the house. On his way there, a smell drifted into his nostrils. Very faint, but there. Even though he’d never known the smell of spaghetti, his brain recognized the scent as a favorable one, so off he went to go discover its origins.
I was so very, very hungry, and I had never been angrier about it. I knew for a fact, for an indisputable, rock-solid, absolute fact that I was not consuming all the food in my home. And yet, it was all disappearing, as if I had not already lost so much. Oh yes, my home was quite fickle with me, and it was going to take my food, my money, my sanity…no, no, a house cannot eat food. But then, where was all my food going? Not to me. Not to me. Not to me, the one who had purchased it and taken it into my godforsaken car and brought it to this glorified shack with a temper, and all of it was going to send me over the edge, I swore on Christ’s anorexic body that I’d have one. Peaceful. Meal. Before I let myself go.
And so, here I was, cooking spaghetti for dinner and brewing a fresh pot of coffee. Not that I was hungry. Not even famished. I was absolutely ravenous. And so, I made more spaghetti than I had any right to, more than enough to feed three men, oh so foolish was I that I cooked for three men, and three men could never consume as much as I could, for I was hungrier than an Ethiopian child without teeth, and I was going to eat until I’d never put another accursed bite of food into my stomach. And so, I finally finished making my spaghetti and had just poured myself a cup of black coffee, but events conspired again to prevent me even the barest moment of peace.
I noticed faintly at first, but now with undivided attention that there was a stinging pain in my toe. Gritting my teeth in pure fury, I found that there was a sliver of glass that had pierced my flesh. Pulling it out with a wince, I marched through the house of the damned trying to find where the offending shard came from. A framed photograph of happier times had been knocked straight off the wall and shattered to pieces, and I hadn’t even noticed until now.
My hands quaked like a meth addicted vagrant in the throes of withdrawal while I retrieved the picture. The house was trying to erase every trace of my presence from its confines, a stain it was trying its damndest to wash out. Surely it was just a loose nail, I tried to tell myself. But no matter how hard I tried to convince myself of the answer it wouldn’t take. I just stared at that fucking picture until finally I sank my head in shame of my deteriorating state and prayed to any deity that would listen to please, oh please, please spare me the torment of living with an ailment as cruel as what had afflicted my home.
Beaten down and demoralized, I went to go grab a broom and dustpan from the closet to clean up the mess, until I noticed that the framed picture was not the only object that had gotten uprooted for no certain reason. I felt my lungs tying themselves in knots thinking about it. Had there been an earthquake? How? I lived in the middle of Kentucky for Christ’s sake! I refused to think about it any further and bitterly began some of the process of cleaning up the disaster zone.
The weaned foal followed the trail of smell. Hopping over wood planks, stepping over out of place nails, and pushing through dusty cobwebs that made him cough a little bit, he felt like he was on an adventure. The Great Quest to Find the Source of the Wonderful Scent.
He arrived at a wall. He was baffled. How could the smell be coming from the wall? There was nothing on it, probably nothing in it either. The few brain cells active in his mind rubbed together. Not on the wall, not within the wall, but behind the wall. There was something behind this wall that was causing the smell. The foal wanted to cry once this revelation became apparent. How was he going to get past the wall? Maybe it would move for him?
“Mistah waww, pwease move fow babbeh? Jus’ wan fin’ whewe nice smeww am. Pwease
mistah waww?” The wall said nothing. The wall continued to be a wall. “Pwease mistah waww! Babbeh nu am meanie babbeh! Am gud babbeh! Pwease wet fwuffy gu!” The foal felt moisture starting to well up underneath his eyelids.
“Pwease pwease PWEASE!”
The foal stood up and pounded it’s hooves against the wall in a desperation move, unable to think of any other response. Luckily for the foal, this section of the wall belonged to a poorly fastened electrical outlet. The outlet gave in, sending the foal through to the other side, causing him to land with an “oof!”. The foal looked around and realized his efforts were a success.
“Tank 'ou mistah waww! Fwuffy wub 'ou!” the foal told it. He looked around. Directly in front of him was a big white thing with a handle. To his immediate right was a huge black machine, with something transparent in the middle. The fluffy sniffed both of these, but the smell of them was bitter, so he concluded quickly that these weren’t the source of the smell. It was definitely a lot stronger here though. Walking past the two things, the fluffy spotted another big thing, also dark, but a lot wider than the other two things. The smell was even stronger there.
The foal walked over some odd looking ground that was a little warm, and stood on his hind legs, gripping the side of the pan to look in at the contents. There was a mish-mash of something red with yellow stringy looking things in it. The foal, so overwhelmed by the joy of the scent, decided to lick the red stuff. It tasted wonderful. The foal had to have more. He pushed himself off the ground, into the pan, and started chowing down. It was the best nummies in the entire world, for sure. The foal practically frolicked in the mess, until he heard some noises.
They sounded like footsteps. The human monster was coming this way! Of course! There were his nummies! The foal defecated in fear, and upon realizing it’s mistake, tried to bury the feces with what was left of the nummies. The foal then shot out of the pan, streaking spaghetti sauce wherever it walked, and ran smack dab into the white thing. The white thing fell off the edge of the ground, and made a crashing sound, accompanied with a splashing sound. The foal didn’t dare look at the mess it had made, instead pushing itself back through the electrical outlet.
My counter had sauce on it. The electrical outlet had come out. A coffee cup had shattered on the ground. And my spaghetti was all…messed about. I dropped my broom and dustpan on the ground, my brain crystalizing in sharp, hounding agony. The house wouldn’t let me clean. It would just make a brand new mess when it thought I wasn’t looking. Rationality had sprouted wings and flew out the window, and I was just too hungry to keep caring about all the attacks on my mind, body, and soul to think of cleaning the new mess.
I took one bite of my greasy meal and instantly regretted it, spitting the disgusting concoction back into the bowl. I heaved painfully and teared up. So now the house was trying to poison me. It was no longer content with attacking my sense of hearing, but also of taste. I had a mad vision of some snaking tendril coming out of the electrical outlet, smashing my mug to the ground, and sticking its dreadfulness into my food. No matter how much I tried to convince myself that this was an impossibility, that a house couldn’t live or breathe or have appendages, much less attempt murder, the image, the possibility of it burned my eyes dry.
I had nearly gone to bed, desperate to gain some escape from the noise and the everything, when a very, very, very devious idea hooked my brain, and a deathly devilish smile graced my face for the first time in many days. It was so simple, so genius, I hadn’t even the thought of anger at myself for not thinking of it sooner. Determined not to stroke out right before my idea, I bolted out the door, into my car, and floored it to the store. Within minutes, I had my saving grace at last. My tickets to peace.
Earplugs.
With their entry into my ears, I sighed a near orgasmic sigh. Peace at last. I cleaned my home with joy, not paying any mind the mess on and around my counter. It would no longer matter. The plumber would be here come morning, my home would be fixed, I could sleep easy at last, how wonderful could a night be if it were any moreso than this? Oh, impossibly so, for tonight was a night of utter pleasance, and I would bask in it as a snake does the sun.
I threw away the spaghetti, put the electrical socket back into its rightful hole, swept up the remains of the coffee mug, and retired to bed, eager to sleep soundly at last, and as a full night’s sleep held me in its loving arms, I could only smile that my troubles would soon be resolved and my life would never again be as torturous as it had been for a time so long, yet so short as these weeks of agony. With that final, comforting thought, I closed my eyes, and dreamt of the coziest of homes and the warmest of days for the first time in too long.
The foal continued to trail spaghetti as he beat his retreat to his mother’s nest. Turning a corner, he came face to face with the smarty. He didn’t look happy.
“Mistah smawty, wha wong?” the foal asked. Instead of an answer, the foal got a smack to his nose. “Huu huu! Wai huwt babbeh?”
“Babbeh tink dat smawty am dummeh? Babbeh hab skettie sauce aww oba fwuff!” the smarty scolded the youngster. “It am 'OU dat make woud nosies, wight?” The weeping foal nodded his head. “Wha smawty teww hewd?”
“Dat fwuffies nee’ be cawefuw, a-an nu make woud nosies?” the foal meekly replied.
“Dat wight! Bu 'ou nu wisten!” The smarty glared at the kid. After a moment, the smarty pointed in the direction of the foal’s nest, marching him there and telling his mother to keep a closer watch on her children.
The smarty retired to his own nest. He tried to make himself comfortable. When were they going to learn how precarious the situation was? How many chances did they have before the human monster flushed them out? These questions clouded the smarty’s mind, preventing him from drifting off into slumber. Who knows what kind of emergency could happen in the middle of the night again?
Elsewhere, another fluffy was playing with the nails embedded in the crevice she currently occupied. A couple of days ago she bumped into one that had been jutting out of the wall and boy did it hurt! She was certain that everyone would be better off if these nails were pulled out and put in a spot where they wouldn’t be able to hurt anyone else.
Out went one. Then a second. Then a third. Fourth. Fifth. Sixth.
Wood started to creak and buckle. The spot above the fluffy’s head was starting to sag.
Seventh. Eighth. Ninth. Tenth. Eleventh.
Almost there. She was coming close to finishing now! She couldn’t let the scary noises that the ceiling or the walls were making deter her. She had to make sure it was safe!
Twelfth. Thirteenth. Fourteenth. Fifteenth. Sixteenth. Seventeenth. Eighteenth. The wooden beams started giving way.
Sleep, sleep, sleep, what a wonder it was. And with silence at hand, I was finally within its enclosure and enjoyed the consuming feeling of happiness it brought. However, earplugs only stop sound, and a monumental thud reverberated throughout my bones and convinced me my home was not going to give its grasp on my sanity up as easily as I had presumed. No, it was going to throw itself at me, and as I ventured downstairs and saw my poor, poor living room, that sentiment became all too true, as I was gifted with the horrible sight of a caved in ceiling.
It was finally happening. My house was coming apart at the seams, and no amount of money, time, effort or goodwill was going to save it. The building was forfeit. All of it, forfeit, every single fucking inch. The solution was clear now. I had no other choice. I was going to reclaim my home, no matter how much damage I may do.
With fury unmatched beforehand, I made my way to it. Loaded. Cocked. Ready. I took out my earplugs and listened for the voices. Speak, speak, speak dammit! And so one did, and it would learn that I would not forgive anything for enraging my mind so.
Bang! A hole appeared just like that in my wall, and slowly, blood oozed from it like a cut would on a child. Excellent. It’ll learn. It will most certainly learn. Crying down the hall. I focused myself. One shot. Bang! Similar results as before. More crying. Oh yes, yes yes yes, cry some more, beg that I don’t kill you all!
“SCREEEEEEEEEE!” BANG
Chaos. That would be a generous way to describe it. Fluffies were darting back and forth like possessed by demons. Some of them streaked blood all over the confines as they raced through, having been grazed by a shot or two. Mothers tripped over themselves or others, sending the foals on their backs in every direction.
“SCREEEE! Weggie nu wowk! Fwiends hewp fwuffy!”
“Speciaw fwiend! Whewe speciaw fwiend gu?”
“NU! MUMMAH! NU TAKE FOWEVA SWEEPIES MUMMAH!”
BANG BANG
A bullet hit a fluffy in the side of its face, caving it in entirely, reducing the side that bore the impact to little more than red ribbons and causing it’s jaw to hang at an unnatural angle.
“Pwease, hewp fwuffy” was weakly uttered by a fluffy that had taken a horrible, indirect wound to its chest; the rib cage was exposed, and the ribs themselves had been shattered by the bullet, spreading bone splinters directly into the unfortunate fluffy’s lungs. At least one fragment had pierced a major artery or blood vessel. This fluffy would die within minutes.
BANG
A pregnant mare had been virtually gutted by a bullet, under-developed foals with umbilical cord still attached decorating the wall next to it.
BANG
Several foals on the back of a mother were disintegrated, the only substantive thing left being the upper half of a foal who wheezed a couple times before giving out.
“NU! Babbeh! Mummah gon hewp babbeh, nu wowwy!” The mare tried to propel herself
forwards, but her back legs would not move. The bullet had severed half her spine.
The smarty looked to his side to give an order to a subordinate, to tell them to round up whoever would listen, but when the smarty turned his gaze there, his friend had been turned into mince meat by a bullet as well.
BANG BANG BANG
That settled it. He was going to have to rally the herd by himself.
“Evewyfwuffy, dis way! Dis way to sabety!” Over the din, over the roar of the gunshots, the smarty shouted to anyone who could hear, directing them to the exit. It was risky. The human monster was shooting at anything that made a noise, and standing still was close to a death sentence.
Still, the smarty held his ground as fluffies fled past him, running through the crack from which they had originally come. Eventually there were no more fluffies that were forthcoming. The only sounds left were fluffies that were moaning in agony or were too far away to hear the smarty, and even those were getting snuffed out, one by one.
The smarty wiped the tears from his eyes before he left the house for good. This would’ve been such a nice home to live in. Thus, he disappeared into the night with the remainder of his herd.
I followed every. Single voice. All of them, not a single one spared, all eviscerated by lead and fury. When the bullets ran out, I took a steak knife and stabbed the walls, and they all bled the same crimson water I had been gifted every other time. Soon no sounds were left. No more tapping, no more speaking, no more violations of my privacy that I had earned and rightfully deserved.
I had had my way at last, and finally, amidst the rancid odors, leaking water, blood,
wood and silence, I collapsed and tried my hardest to weep. And yet no tears came, and it was in that single moment I realized I had been bent out of shape forever, lost to a million years of my own demented dominion.
Wonderful.
At last my eyes fogged, and I was taken by sleep, no more forcefully than I had been with my walls, yet no less so, and nothing was gained or lost then, as I finally, truly rested, and as morning came and I was awoken to the plumber who came to my home as kindly as I had asked, I could only allow him the grace of fixing my water problem. At last, he had resolved it, as worried as he appeared, and with that he told me of a truth I had been unaware of for so long. At last, my questions were answered, and as he left I could stare blankly at the photo of a new home and new owner, prideful and hopeful, so detached from myself, as I had ruined my home and destroyed my mind.
And all because of fluffies hiding in my walls.
