This was discussed on chat a week ago. Figured I would try my hand at the Fluffy vs Nature genre.
The alarm had come in the middle of dinner, a roast chicken sit on the table, plates with peas and mashed potatoes around it sat uneaten. There was no time to close windows or secure the barn. Fortunately, only machinery sat inside, no worry of horses or cows.
The siren blared across the plains as dark grey clouds tinged with green swirled in the wind. Even this far from town, it was clear and distinct to the Bauer family on their corn farm. They were a hardy family since they first came to America in the 1860s.
They survived the war over there, the long journey across the Atlantic, the taming of the land that they had homesteaded, the dustbowl, great depression, the scrutiny they lived under during the second world war, the economic hardship and corporate buyouts of the late 20th century, the feral fluffy swarms, and the subsequent fluffy plague of the early 21st.
The swirling clouds began to descend on the land. They would survive this too. John Bauer, an aging man in his early 50s hardened by the land, ushered his wife Mary and their daughter Madeline towards the tornado shelter his grandparents had built, once a bomb shelter for the cold war. It offered more protection than the vegetable cellar of the main house.
All around, the wind kicked up anything it could: window shutters banged against the walls, garbage cans tumbled along the ground, some birds even tried to get away from the storm fighting the turbulent gale. Outside, the grass and corn rustled loudly in the wind.
Inside the house was eerily silent in comparison, all but for the banging of the shutters, the muffled wail of the siren, and a single voice.
“Why am scawy noisies mummah?” An pink fluff getting along in years asked as she shuffled into dining room. The fur around her muzzle and hooves was losing its color and her joints did not bend like they once did.
“Dahwie nu feew gud! Nu wan mowe nummies…” Dalia, or sometimes ‘Dolly’, meekly chirped, she was not allowed in the dining room during meals, instead being given kibble in another room.
She was well behaved and rarely disciplined but felt something in her joints that deeply unsettled her. So much so that she broke the “no fluffies during dinner rule.”
She noticed that her mummah wasn’t in the dining room, no one was, and sniffed around. She smelled her mummah though and followed her scent to the back kitchen door. To Dalia’s surprised, it was cracked slightly open.
Dalia’s first memories were of mummah. She remembered hearing fluffies screaming, a loud noise (of mower blades) and of mummah’s hands picking her up out of the corn stalks.
“Momma, momma! She’s so cute, can I keep her?” Madeline had asked. Just then Dalia opened her eyes and saw her mummah staring down at her. Dalia knew Madeline wasn’t her real mummah but she loved her just like she was.
Dalia poked her nose at the open door, the wind whistled through the crack. As she got her head an inch through it, the wind caught it and slammed it violently open.
“SCREEE” Dalia jumped backed and let out a little squirt of pee. She looked down at her mess when she was confident the door wouldn’t eat her. “Huu, Dahwie am sowwie. Nu mean tuu make bad pee pees…”
She looked back out the door and saw her mummah and her parents across the farmyard, around 300 feet away. It was an insurmountable distance to such a small creature as a fluffy, even more for one as old as her. Her little hooves trembled. Where were they going?
She started forward after mummah and tumbled down the stairs “oof” she let out and steadied herself on her tired legs. She began to trot after mummah, her joints ached as she did. Even walking in a straight line after mummah was an endeavor as the wind whipped this way and that, catching her fluff and pulling her about.
She pushed forward with all her might. Keeping pace as best as she could. The power of her love over powered her fear and her tiredness. “Mummah! Pwease waiwt fow Dahwie!” she cried, out of breath.
Dust kicked up in her eyes and she squinted to see. Daddeh had opened a door in the ground and mummah and her mummah were climbing down into it.
“Mummah! Mummah! Nuu fowget Dahwie!” she cried as she continued on her stubby legs.
Daddeh looked out and his eyes locked with Dalia. “Daddeh! Dahwie awmost dewe!”
He looked past Dolly, then back down. He said something Dalia couldn’t hear and then shut the door.
“Nuu! Pwease nu weabe Dahwie!” She managed to shuffle the last 50 feet to the metal door and began scratching and banging her hooves on the door. “Mummah! Dahwie am hewe! Dahwie wub yuu! Nuu fowget Dahwie pwease!”
Behind her, she heard rumbling. It unsettled her and she turned. A big grey munstah was spinning around. It was so big that she could not comprehend it. It was numming the fence in front of the house.
Dalia wanted to scream in fear but was too terrified to do even that. The munstah moved on to the house. She watched as it ripped up the second floor. Mummah’s room went first, the bed and her favorite stuffy friends, next was Dolly’s saferoom, she saw her brightly colored toybox get pulled into the big munstah.
The rest of the house was quicky pulled in, the empty rooms, the master bedroom, dining room with roast chicken. All of it was gone in an instant.
“nuuu…” Dolly was able to just meekly force out.
She backed up against the door as it approached. The roar of the wind became deafening.
Dalia, cowered as the munstah approached her. Tears silently welled in her eyes. It was coming too fast for her to run away. Not that she was thinking of running either. All that occupied her mind was fear and the faint hope that mummah would save her.
Unknowingly, Dolly was holding her breath. The munstah was almost on top of her, the noise was unbearable loud as her face was pelted with dirt and pebbles that were swept up.
She felt her legs leave the ground. The munstah was numming her now. No one would save her.
She stopped holding her breath and let out a final scream.
The sound outside was too loud, and the bunker too insulated for Madeline to hear Dolly’s cries. John saw the tornado touch down on the other side of the house. If he waited to the fluffy to catch up, then he would just be putting his wife and child at risk.
If they were lucky, she would find a hole to hunker down in or that the tornado would change directions. Madeline had asked about her fluffy, but John had lied and said he hadn’t seen her.
They sat around with nothing to do except listen to the horrendous scream of wind overhead.