Friday: 13:17pm
Lewis Carter, recently fired employee of Frederick’s Family Fluffy Farm, was led down the hallways towards Bay 1, the office of Frederick Peterson, founder and CEO of the company since its inception 5 years prior.
And Lewis had just killed two of his Fluffies.
Leading the way, Gareth Michaels, Lewis’ sort-of supervisor who had been trying to kick Lewis out the door all week, you can’t fire someone for turning into a Hugboxer, but you can torment them into leaving.
Legally it was in a grey area, not that Lewis expected anyone to listen to him anyway.
Michaels stopped outside Peterson’s door and pressed on the intercom. “Gareth Michaels, here to take Lewis Carter to see Mr Peterson.”
A female voice on the other end replied. “One moment please.”
As they waited, Michaels turned to Lewis. “I can’t wait to see how Peterson reams you before you’re kicked out of this place.
“I can’t wait to get kicked out so I punch you in the face without having to worry about getting fired.”
Before Michaels could retaliate, the door buzzed open and the two men entered. The first thing Lewis noticed about Peterson’s office, was that it was clean. Smooth grey walls with a clean white line running along the middle, plants that weren’t dead and the smell of freshness permeated throughout. Peterson was in his own little world away from the dinginess of the rest of The Farm.
A pretty young receptionist walked up to the two of them. “Right this way gentleman.”
Lewis and Michaels followed her to Peterson’s office, it wasn’t a far walk but Lewis guessed it was for the look of professionalism that he was escorted there. Inside Frederick Peterson sat at his desk, looking surprisingly relaxed while drinking a coffee, he smiled and stood up, Lewis had seen him before at company outings but never this close before, he was younger than Lewis expected, still older than him by a fair few years but probably barely into his 50s, his strong jaw-line held his huge smile in place and in general his whole body language seemed genuinely friendly.
If anything that was the most unnerving part about him.
“Hey there.” Peterson chuckled as he took Lewis’ hand. “You must be Carter, nice to finally put a face to a name.”
“Likewise sir.” Lewis knew he was in the shit but he maintained civility, at least until he was pushed not to.
“And… Marcus was it?”
“Michaels sir, Gareth Michaels, I’m the supervisor for this chapter of the company.”
“Sure you are.”
Peterson returned to his desk and sat down, he motioned for Lewis to take a seat but Lewis, still holding onto what professionalism he had, chose to stay standing.
Peterson took a sip from his coffee. “Now then, my guys upstairs tell me that you just killed two of my Fluffies, and that you’ve been an issue for us all this week. My question to you, is why? What’s happening with you Carter, no offence but I’d never heard your name until this week and now it’s all anyone’s talking about.”
“No offence taken sir, I’m aware of how businesses work. As for why I killed the Fluffies, well to be honest sir, I’ve had a change of heart about this place and I’ve started to see it for the abuse pit it has become.”
“Abuse pit huh, interesting choice of words. Care to explain yourself.”
“Do I have permission to speak freely sir?”
“By all means.”
Lewis thought back over the last week, trying to find the point where his mind on Fluffies changed. “Mr Peterson, do you know why they call this place ‘Frederick’s Filthy Fluffy Farm’?”
“Ha, you must be mistaken there son, this is Frederick’s FAMI…”
“I know what it says on the side of the building Mr Peterson, I’m talking about how people refer to us both inside and outside. They call this place filthy because, to be frank, it is, we treat the Fluffies inside here with such disdain and hostility that I’m honestly surprised we can get enough good foals to actually make a profit. We butcher babied in front of their mothers to teach them a lesson then when the stress or their own fucked-up programming causes them to lash out, we dope the males to the gills until they can’t recognise their own mothers and rip the legs, the tongues and the eyes out of the females and send them to be fucked to death then afterwards we send the stallions in to fuck them again, and that’s just Bay 4. We punish children’s toys for acting like animals then punish them again when they become animals, we hire an outside specialist for the sole purpose of torturing Fluffies for no reason than because we want to hurt them, we have such little care for this creatures that we’re not even checking our own records anymore, I watched a Nurse-Mare claim a colt as her own son before it was killed in front of her, only for Michaels here to tell me it WAS her son despite there being three levels of checks to ensure Nurse-Mares never interact with their own young.
Peterson looked questioningly at Michaels, Lewis suddenly got the feeling that this was all brand new information to him. Michaels, being the spineless twerp he was, said nothing.
Lewis continued. “Earlier in the week I had an incident report with Fluffy 07-34, you can look up the full details on the system but long story sort, he was a feral that was brought in with his mate 09-12 and wanted to see her and their foals, she was pregnant when she came in. Per our guidelines 09-12 was given a forced miscarriage which resulted her being sent to Bay 4 as punishment. 07-34 found his way there as well, I’m still not sure how but I have to imagine there was a miscalculation with his hormone supplements. Today, by chance or something far more sinister, the Bay 4 computer matched 07-34 and 09-12 as a good breeding pair, and it just hit me that we put them both through all that stress and heartbreak for no reason, we could’ve evaluated them when they came in and gotten the same results with better chances of repeat business, but instead we destroyed those two because out business mandate said we had to, so I killed 07-34 and 09-12 to save them from the pain we forced them into, and if you ask me I’d do it again to any other Fluffy in the same predicament because it’s better than living on this Farm anymore.
Peterson face had turned serious, taking in everything that Lewis had said, he sat back in his chair and took another sip of his coffee.
“Michaels? Why am I just now hearing about this?”
Michaels face dropped as he was put into the firing line. “Excuse me sir?”
“I said why I just now hearing about this from Mr Carter here, you’re the supervisor for this chapter, you should’ve informed us about this decline in quality.”
“But, but Mr Peterson, we’ve been stretched tight on the budget, more and more Fluffies are coming in but we can’t feed them all…”
“Oh so it’s my fault for being a cheapskate is it?”
“NO! No, no, no, sir, that’s not what I meant at all. What I’m saying is that we have so many Fluffies onsite that… well I figured it be worth turning a blind-eye to some of the workers… proclivities to ensure that they received ample stress-relief while still maintaining a profitable margin.”
“So you’re saying you’re aware of these problems and have done nothing about them?”
Michaels turned very white and very quiet as he slunk away into the background, Peterson turned back to Lewis.
“So, since you seem to have a strong opinion on this matter Mr Carter, what do you suppose we do?”
“Downsize, drastically. Cut down the Bays by half at least, and completely revamp the ones we have left, make them safer, more personalised, treat the Fluffies like actual pets.”
Michaels jumped back to life. “That’ll cost millions sir, we can’t just ‘revamp’ the ENTIRE farm.”
Lewis nodded. “It will be expensive, but only for the short-term, right now the way we’re handling things, the return of investment will pop sooner rather than later, we keep losing foals to stress or killing them or even just selling enough traumatised and untrained Fluffies and eventually our brand name will sink lower than it already has. The Fluffy crisis has been over for a few years now, if people want one as a pet they don’t need brand names anymore, we’re selling low quality product for high quality prices when we should be the opposite. Focus on a few breeding pairs to start with, make sure they’re well-behaved and well-trained, have them raise their young while we install safe, friendly teaching into their developing brains. The Fluffies reputation as a bratty shitting machine is well-earned but if we start offering better colours and patterns AND Fluffies that are trained on politeness and litter-box use, then people will pay good money for that quality. Our return on investment will pay for itself in just a few foals and since we’ll keep the breeding pairs, we can save money on Bio-Waste and housing since we won’t need half a million Fluffies all wondering why we’re hurting them.”
The look on Peterson’s face was neutral but leaning towards interested, Lewis took that as a good sign. “And what would we do with the Fluffies we have now? We can’t just release them all into the wild, we’d go bankrupt from the legal costs alone.”
“This doesn’t have to happen overnight sir, we can start by not taking in any more Fluffies, then with the ones we have, remove any smarties, any bitch-mothers or any Alicorn abusers and with the ones we have left, see which we can pair off to make the best colours. It’ll take some time but I think it could work, your legacy could be the best quality Fluffies in the country, not some shitty Farm nobody wants anything to do with.”
“You make a sound argument Carter, I feel like a dumbass for not paying attention to this site for so long if things are THAT bad. Christ do we really have a torture guy come in here to hurt Fluffies?”
“We do sir, and you do not want to see his pay-cheque.”
“Oh I think I do now.”
The glare that Peterson gave Michaels nearly made him shit his pants.
“But this is a risky venture, re-jigging our entire structure from the ground up based on a whim is suicide as far as stocks go. But I’m gonna make you a deal Carter, I’m not gonna fire you, in fact I’m gonna give you a promotion to take Michael’s job.”
“What?”
“WHAT?”
Both Lewis and Michaels were shocked to hear Peterson say that, Michaels most of all.
“Michaels, you’re clearly pissing away money and you don’t give a shit out the brand-name, MY name. Carter here has killed two Fluffies BECAUSE he cares about the name and he’s given me solutions when you can’t even give me answers. So yes, if he wants it, he can have your job but he has to do a test, take 10, 12 Fluffies, I’ll let you pick which ones you want, and trial run this Hugbox idea of yours, if by the end of the year you’ve shown that this can work and work well, we’ll start revamping the whole farm to your idea.”
“And if I don’t deliver?”
“Then you won’t be fired, but you’ll be forced to quit on the spot and go without severance pay AND sign an agreement where you can’t work in the Fluffy industry for a period of up to three years.”
Lewis paused for thought, he was already half-way out the door from either being fired or quitting, but now he had options. Likely long, annoying and painful options, but options none the less.
He leaned in to whisper to Peterson, making sure that Michaels could still hear him though. “Is Michaels still fired regardless of what I pick?”
Peterson chuckled. “Yeah, he’s out no matter what.”
“Then I think I know what to do.”
“You took the job?”
Jackson damn near shouted when Lewis told him the news, he also expected to never see his friend in the building again and was already preparing his going-away party when Lewis came upstairs to tell him the news.
“Yes, I figured I get to stay here with my friends and I can start actually making a difference. I’ve not gone full Hugbox but I think it makes more financial sense than whatever the fuck we were doing beforehand.”
Jackson’s mouth was still agape, taking in this new information that Lewis had just spring on him, Lewis pitied him and gave him some levity.
“I also wanted to fuck over Michaels as best I can.”
Jackson was brought back to earth and laughed, Michaels being fired would’ve been worth losing Lewis alone had he chose to leave. “Look Lou, are you sure about this, you’ve got a lot riding on this.”
“I do, but I’d feel like shit if I didn’t try it, besides Peterson offered me two weeks’ vacation to sort my head out beforehand, so I got time to figure this shit, already got a few ideas.”
“Such as?”
“Bigger pens, more foal-friendly toys, fire Mongola first chance I get.”
The pair laughed again, neither of them still believing the situation they were in.
“Well look Lou, if you need any help with anything, I’ll be here, just give a shout and I’ll see what I can do.”
“Glad to hear it Jackson, still on for football tonight?”
“Damn straight, me and Sarah will bring the food, you make sure there’s enough beer. See you around Lou.”
“You too Jackson.”
The two friend gave a final handshake as Jackson returned to his work and Lewis went home for the start of a well-deserved holiday, he didn’t know if this plan of his would work, but he knew he needed to try it, even if only to sooth his own soul from all the Fluffies he’d killed.
Besides, there were too many abusers in this fragile world, what harm could a little love bring?
That is the end for this current arc of Frederick’s Filthy Fluffy Farm, I know this might be a bit of an easier ending than some people were expecting but this series seemed to be turning more towards the Hugbox side of things – at least in theory - and I wanted to see where I could go with that.
There’s a good chance Lewis could return, I think he could make a good foil for Josef someday, but for now I’m giving him his rest until he’s needed again to bring some hard-fought decency to this fucked-up world we live in.
