Monday: 14:27pm.
“Lou, we got a Code 13 on 27-50, you ok to check it out?”
Lewis Carter groaned, making sure his button was off the radio so his supervisor didn’t hear him.
“Does it have to be me? I’m just back from lunch and I haven’t even dried my hands yet.”
“It was between you and Alan and Alan’s already covered a Code 4 with 32-17, you’re up.”
“Fine, but I want ten minute, a FULL ten minutes to clean up afterwards.”
“I can give you seven.”
“Fuck you Jackson, deal.”
Lewis turned off his radio before they could ask him to do anything else, it was a long walk to Bay 27, and he still his lunch sitting like a stone in his stomach.
Maybe the exercise would do him good.
He reached Bay 27 in about ten minutes and started looking for 27-50. She should’ve been on the bottom row since the columns were in stacks of ten, but in her spot was 27-44, clearly management had upgrade to stacks of eleven without telling anyone.
It wasn’t the moving everything that annoyed Lewis, it was the passive-aggressive manner of his boss telling him he had more work to do now.
Eventually he found 27-50, he looked over the clipboard on the front of her drawer then opened it up. Inside the small box that counted as a living space was a Fluffy mare, a unicorn with fur a dark yellow with black spots and a red mane, around her five foals, a fat yellow colt sat on her back, with two more colts; one a red unicorn, the other a brown earthie, and two fillies; one an orange earthie, the other a lime green Pegasus, sat to the side, none of them looked at filled as the yellow colt but the brown and the green foals looked especially sickly.
“Two Seven Five O. Do you know why I’m here?”
“Fwuffy nu knyo, is time fow nummies?”
Lewis made a note of her not using her name. “I’m here for a Code 13 Five O, you DO remember what a Code 13 is right?”
Five O gulped, she’d seen other mares in her bay suffer a Code 13 before, but she’d been so careful, how could they have known?
“Fibe Oh du wememba, bu siwwy Woo-ish mush hab miss-take, Fwuffy wuv aww babbehs.”
“Really? Cause a Code 13 is a mother not feeding all her young equally. You’ve been playing favourites, and I can tell which ones you’ve overfed from here.”
“Pwease Woo-ish, Fwuffy nu mean tu, jus bestesh babbeh am suuuu pweety an…”
“So you admit you have a best baby, you ARE playing favourites?”
Five O stopped, realising she’d walked right into a trap. “…Fwuffy nu knoy.”
“Sure you don’t.”
Lewis reached into the box, he knew exactly which foal to pick up but management dictated that he draw out the process as long as possible. Lewis hated this part but it was sadly necessary for the mares to learn.
His hand went for the red unicorn, then slowly moved away, next it went for the orange filly, but bypassed her as well. When he went for the brown foal he saw Five O start to smile, thinking she was getting rid of her poopie-babbeh.
So Lewis avoided the brown foal and went for the yellow colt on her back. Five O instantly tried to back away.
“NU! Dummeh Woo-ish nu take bestesh babbeh, Mummah wub bestesh babbeh, desewved aww miwkies. Poopie-babbehs can hab fowea sweepies.”
“Five O, you know the rules, every babbeh is special and has a role to play, all babbehs get their fair share of milk and huggies.”
Lewis rolled his eyes as he deadpanned the sickly-sweet memo that all Fluffies were taught, it was supposed to make sure they didn’t kill any potential profitable foals, or risk turning them into smarties, but 9 times out of 10 it didn’t work.
Fluffies were too stupid and too selfish for their own good.
“Fibe Oh nu mean tu, be betta neks time, can Woo-ish wet Fibe Oh keep babbeh?”
“Not going to happen I’m afraid.”
Lewis quickly grabbed the fat yellow bastard before Five O could stop him, in his hands the foal felt disgusting, all squishy and soft. It let out a squeak of scardie-poopies which hit Five O in the face.
“Wet bestesh babbeh gu.” The colt grunted as he tried to free himself from Lewis’ grasp. “Ow dummeh git sowwy-hoofies.”
Five O was in tears at seeing her favourite child getting ‘bad upsies’. “Huu huu, gib bak bestesh babbeh, am onwy wittew babbeh, nu need fow huwties.”
“Five O you know the rules, you’ve been her long enough to learn them, and you know we have a Zero Tolerance policy on code breakers. This is for your own benefit.”
Lewis took out a switchblade from his work belt and unsheathed the blade. For a moment he considered doing a mercy kill, getting the colt in the neck so it bled out quickly.
Then he remember the cameras, management were watching him at all times, and they wanted problems dealt with from the bottom up.
Reluctantly, Lewis pressed the tip of the knife into the colt from the bottom, piercing him through his penis. As the colt screeched about his ‘no-no stick’ Lewis flicked the blade upwards, slicing the young Fluffies stomach and chest wide open and letting his innards fall out into the box. The colt gave a final almighty scream of pain before shock and blood loss killed it, it’s final act in its young life was shitting on his siblings out of fear.
Lewis looked down at Five O, her yellow fur stained with the blood of her best child, she was crying even more now.
“Huu, hab wowstehs heawt huwties, bestesh babbeh am nu mowe.”
“That’s why we don’t play favourites Five O, so it hurts less when you have to say goodbye. Now feed your babies equally, or we’ll send you to Bay 4.”
Five O gasped and a little bit of bad pee-pee came out, Bay 4 was the worst place for a Fluffy to go, she took her two poopie-babbehs, both still scared at their brother’s violent death, and pressed them to her teats.
“See, Fibe Oh am gud mummah, wuv aww babbehs, nu need send tu Bay Fouw.”
“We’ll see, won’t we?”
Lewis closed the drawer and made a note on the clipboard for a Wash & Dry later that day. He then dropped the fat corpse of the yellow foal into a bio-waste bin and went off to find the toilets and scrub his hands clean of the blood and shit.
Naturally he didn’t make it five steps before his radio went off again, he regretted turning it back on at all.
“There’s a Code 9 in Bay 12 Lou, need you on hand to help out.”
Lewis carefully pressed down on the radio, making sure to touch as little of it as possible. “No can do Mikey, Jackson promised me seven minutes in the bathrooms to wash my hands after a Code 13, and I’m taking those seven minutes.”
“Eat shit Lou, there’s sinks in Bay 18, wash your hands there and get down as quick as possible, and bring a bucket if you find one.”
Lewis rolled his eyes, he knew his dreams of properly cleaned hands was a far off fairytale, but it was nice to hold on while he had the chance, still he owed Mikey and made his way to Bay 12, hoping there wouldn’t be as much blood this time.
Such was the working life at Frederick’s Filthy Fluffy Farm.
This is a little taster for a future series I’m thinking of, I haven’t got a full story planned – I’m thinking more little one-off vignettes about life on the farm – but I wanted to give a go at an industrial abuse story before moving onto the next full narrative.
For those curious, this is set in the same universe as my Josef Mongola series so expect some reference and maybe even a cameo later on but it will be primarily its own separate thing.