A while ago, @Love2HateFluffs wrote and illustrated an amazing comic called The V-Fluffy Problem. Like the brainfucked freak I am, I felt bad for the fluffy. (I know, I know. Maybe it was indigestion.) Anyhow, @Love2HateFluffs was kind enough to give me the OK to write… shudder… a hugbox sequel. In my defence, I can see this going horribly wrong.
Anyhow, I hope you guys don’t come to my place with torches and pitchforks.
***
Glitter’s Worst Day
“Glitter?”
Glitter shuffled deeper into her safe room corner. A whiff of old kibble and damp saddie wawa clung to the grassy green carpet where she pressed her muzzle.
“Come on, sweetheart. It’s been nearly two days.” Mummah shut the safe room door. Her not-hoovsies shushed across the rug. “I can see you.”
“Gwittew nu hewe.” Glitter sniffled. “Nu Gwittew anywhewe.”
Mummah sighed as she knelt. Glitter shivered at a long, gentle stroke from Mummah’s fingers, all the way down her back.
“I’m sorry your channel didn’t work out, baby. You worked hard.”
Glitter shuffled her hooves. Fuzz from the carpet tickled her smell-place. She wrinkled it even as her mane tickled her eyelids.
Mummah scratched Glitter’s neck. “You can try again, you know. Maybe as yourself this time?”
“Nu.”
“Don’t make up your mind so soo—”
“Nu!” Glitter wiped her drippy smell-place across the carpet. “Am ugwy, nu-gud, scawe-away fwuffy! Bettaw eat poopies!”
“Hey!” Mummah swatted Glitter’s flank, though it was more like a tap. “You are a good, sweet, beautiful fluffy, and you had thirty thousand followers! Just because they were creeps doesn’t make it any less impressive.”
“Nu cweeps.” Glitter sniffed as another yucky drip started down her muzzle. “Am wowstest fwiend ebah.”
Mummah made a sound like the funny yellow lady on teebee. She patted Glitter’s back—
Glitter yelped as Mummah hoisted her into the air. “Pity party’s over!” Mummah said as she shifted Glitter in her arms. She grinned. Like Glitter, her not-mane was black and curly and puffy, and her not-fluffy skin was the same brown as Glitter. “We’re going to the park.”
Glitter squirmed. The floor was a whole Mummah away, but it was better to hide than show the world how poopie and friendless she was. Still, Mummah got a solid grip around her middle. From the smiling-sun-shaped hook beside the safe room door, Mummah took Glitter’s harness and leash, the shiny pink ones that said her name. Glitter hid behind her hoovsies. If she went outside, the whole world would see her and go away.
At the front door, Mummah stepped into her shoesies. “Remember what I said when you started your channel?”
Glitter hung her head. Mummah set her on the tiled floor and hooked the harness around her chest and weggies. Glitter scraped her front hoof across the pretty flowered rug where humans put their shoesies.
“Mummah say, ‘Dey nu wan’ see da powew Gwittew got, su we got tu makie dem see it’.”
“That’s right.” Mummah clipped Glitter’s leash in place. “So we’re gonna go out and show the world that it can’t break us. Even thirty thousand of them can’t break us.” She scratched Glitter’s hear-place. “Even the worst heart hurties can’t break us.”
In the end, Mummah had to get Glitter’s shiny purple wagon. Glitter curled into a ball against the sun, against the birds singing, against the people walking by, even the vroomy friends on the street. The sidewalk made the wagon jump and rattle. With her head under her hooves, Glitter’s teeth rattled along with everything else.
“Wan’ gu home, Mummah. Teefies hab owies.”
“Lift your head and it’ll stop.”
But Glitter’s head, full of saddie wawa and icky dribbles and ugliest fluffiness, was too heavy to move.
By the time they got to the park, the nice one with the playground just for fluffies, Glitter’s teethie owies had spread into her thinky place and down her neck. Mummah lifted her from the pretty purple wagon and set her on a sun-warmed patch of grass.
“Go on, beautiful. Look, there’s a mare and foals!” Mummah pointed to a pink mare, who sang to the sky blue chirpie between her hooves while two more babbehs nursed. “I bet she’d let you hold one.”
But not even babbehs could make things better. On the trees and grass, on the happy mare, and on the group of fluffies running back and forth across the playground’s squishy foam floor, the sunlight took on a greyish cast. It was the colour of never being happy again; of all the friends in the world going away. It was the colour of wan’ d—
“Oh, my l-rd, is that Glitter? I heard she lived around here!”
Glitter scowled. Mummah rose from her crouch just as three ladies ran towards them. “Excuse me?” Mummah said.
The ladies shrieked. Glitter froze. She stared, ears pinned against her mane, as the ladies did weird dancies and pulled out their talkie boxes. Mummah pulled out her talkie box, too, but held it close to her chest.
“Can I help you girls with something?” Mummah said in the same tone she used when misters came to their housie, looking for someone called Gee-zuss.
“Are you Glitter’s owner?” One of the three ladies, the one with not-mane the same colour as skettie noodles, bounced up and down. “OK, like, Carson, this guy I know, he was bitching last night about this face reveal thing—”
“Yeah, on YouTube!”
“–And, like, he sent me a link to it, and, oh, my G-d, Glitter is the cutest thing ever! She’s hilarious!”
“Her Kramer impression is perfect! She’s all over campus. There’s gonna be a fan club!” Another of the ladies, this one with a dark not-mane and half a shirt, held up her talkie box. “I know you’ve probably been asked this a million times already, but can you please take a picture of us with her? She makes me want a fluffy! Don’t tell my mom I said that.”
“Erm.” Mummah stared at the nice ladies, then did something with her talkie box. She staggered, and sat on the bench behind her.
“Fifty thousand followers.” Mummah’s hands trembled. “Fifty thousand followers.”
“Mummah?” Glitter held out her leggies for upsies, and gave Mummah the biggest hug she could. “Am Mummah otay? ‘Ou need nicie doctaw?”
“I’m sorry. I thought you knew!” The lady with skettie hair put her hands over her talkie place. “Sorry, you two enjoy—”
Mummah stood and put Glitter into the lady’s arms. “It’s OK. It was just a surprise. Um. Yeah. You three get in close. Which phone do you want to use?”
“Mummah, wha’ happenin’?” Glitter hugged the sketti-haired lady’s arm. Tears swelled in her eyes. “’Ou nu gibben Gwittew tu nyu mummah, am’ ou? Gwittew su sowwy! Nebah show facie ‘gain—”
“Shh.” Mummah stroked Glitter’s mane. She held up her talkie box. “Glitter, baby, your channel has fifty thousand followers. That’s as many hoofie-circles as thirty thousand, but all four hoofies *and* your tail.”
Glitter scowled. She looked at her hoovsies. She looked at them again, all of them. One, two, many, lots. One, two, many, lots. One, two, many, lots, tail—
“EBEWYWUN IN DA WHOWE WOWWD WUB GWITTEW???”
“Yeah, we do!” the third nice lady said at the same time as the other two. “You’re the cutest fluffy ever!”
Not much made sense after that, beyond the yellow sun and the three nice ladies and the grinning ache in Glitter’s cheeks. Other ladies and misters and little ladies and little misters held Glitter, and Mummah did things with lots of people’s talkie boxes. Glitter did dancies for them, and for the pink mare’s chirpy babbehs, and even for the fluffies running around the fluffy playground. Mummah talked to people, and said funny words like “monetisation” and “agent” and “Chattanooga Avenue Fluffy Rescue,” which was where Glitter lived before Mummah took her home.
After what felt like only a little forever, Glitter’s eyes got heavy.
“Mummah, Gwittew am sweepy.”
“I’m not surprised, baby.” Mummah took Glitter from an old mister, who patted Glitter’s head and called her a pretty girl. The last of the nice ladies and misters waved goodbye, and Glitter waved back.
“Glad we went to the park?” Mummah said as they walked home. She pulled Glitter’s wagon, though she carried Glitter on her hip.
Glitter nodded. “Fankoo, Mummah. Wub Mummah biggest muchies.”
Mummah kissed Glitter’s head. “I love you, too, baby girl.”
At home, Glitter recorded a little video thanking her new friends. She took a nap on Mummah’s bed. She even got to watch an extra episode of the best teebee show ever, Mr. Bean. Somewhere in the back of her thinky place, a memory of worstest heart hurties lingered. Maybe even a wan’ die. But the sun was warm, and Glitter had more friends than maybe any fluffy ever, so there was no reason to worry about it. Not right then.
And finally, just to make the bestest day even bestester, Mummah made sketties for dinner.
