“Wu be scawed,” a shaking mare murmured, hugging her terrified foals. “Mummah nu wet anyfin’ huwt babbehs. Babbehs wiww be otay.”
It was a lie, and she knew it. She, along with the rest of the less-valuable fluffies and foals in the mill, were scheduled to be disposed of, which was why she was sitting here in the incinerator along with a few dozen other fluffies and babbehs. Terror and confusion scrambled her thoughts. What had she done wrong? Why did her babbehs have to die too? Why was the incinerator not burning them?
She let her chirping foals suckle as best they could, but with the recent cut in feed she had precious little milk. Even if the humans hadn’t decided it was cheaper to kill them all, the foals would have died from malnutrition soon anyway. Only the valuable foals got enough milk, enough bedding, and access to toys now.
She couldn’t understand why, the concept of yet another mass resource shortage being alien to her. All she knew was that they’d started getting less and less food, and toys that broke weren’t replaced, and that there weren’t enough nesties for all the fluffies anymore. All she knew was that, even if they hadn’t been condemned to the incinerator, they would likely have just starved as the mill struggled to maintain its razor-thin margins.
“Nu buwnie-huwties?” an unfortunate stallion asked in confusion, with a slight tinge of relief. In a cruel twist of fate, his bright-pink fluff would have been valuable on a mare or filly, but only reduced his chances of finding a home. Worse, he was sterile, so he retained no value as a breeder.
“Shhhh! Nu scawe babbehs!” the mare snapped.
“Sowwy!”
As one fluffy, they all turned and began to tremble as one of the employees walked into the incinerator room, looking down into the pit the fluffies were confined to. With a shrug lowered a bucket into their midst, which a few of them sniffed, then withdrew from the painful, stinging reek. Confusion intensified.
“Sorry about this,” he said, sounding more bored than remorseful. “With fuel prices being what they are, it’s just not viable to do this the normal way, and the composter can handle corpses just as well as it can ash.”
This started the fluffies panicking, running around as best they could in the small space they had while avoiding the putrid cloud surrounding the bucket. The employee’s face finally showed a little bit of sadness, but it soon turned to disgust and annoyance as the mass of fluffies became more and more filthy in their terror. Finally he decided he’d wasted enough time.
“Disgusting little shitrats,” he muttered, before dumping the contents of a large white jug into the bucket and slamming the lid of the pit shut, enveloping the fluffies in darkness.
They froze, not wanting to risk running into walls in darkness. Huddled with he foals, lying low to the floor, the mare herd strange noises. First came a voice. "Wut nu smeww pwett-wai bweafin’-pwace hab huw-CAFF! CAFF! CAFF! before the voice turned to pained gurgles. Other voices joined, briefly complaining before their voices died.
The mare wrapped herself around the chirping pile of foals, trying to protect them from whatever munstah was hurting and killing the other fluffies. Soon, there was no sound but gurgles, coughs, and brief wails of pain. She closed her eyes tight as they began to burn, tried to hold her breath as each lungful of air grew more and more agonizing, tried not to notice how her babbeh’s chirping had stopped.
After what seemed like forever, she slipped into unconsciousness.
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