It was dawk time. Moon momma was big. The woods were quiet. The wind rustled leaves gently. Crickets and cicadas silenced. The woods took on an air of menace. Squirrels, rabbits, birds and mice hugged their children tighter. A raccoon mother chittered at her mate to come away from the den entrance. The foxes muttered and rumbled with each other. The eldest of the chipmunks warned his children and his children’s children to stay in bed tonight. The wind carried the warning. It was a dark night. A red night.
The Slayer…has come.
Toby, set down his new contraption. It looked like and oversized higg tech crossbow with a giant metal shoe box loaded on it. He powered it on and hit the button on a small disk he held. As he walked around it tracked the disk. Cool. It was always good to have a cousin who went to MIT.
He set the machine up, adding the cargo to the box, and set off with his rifle slung over his shoulder. Looking through the grass he tracked the trail of a large herd. Fluffies, though light of body, we’re easily tracked. Their hoof prints looked like someone had been squishing marshmallows into the grass and they left tuffs of fur of every color on any bramble, branch, or rock that was sharp enough to snag it. As he went on he saw signs of why he had been called. Strange hoofprints, claws, flipper drags, signs of scales and feathers in the herd trail. The city council hadn’t been kidding, something was definitely wrong with these fluffies. Normally they wouldn’t bother with a forest herd. But claims of nearby residents being accosted by horrors and small aminals going missing had promted them to retain Toby’s extermination services, even if it was only for an investigation.
He walked a short distance from where his truck was parked, and paused. Ahead of him was a large storm drain, that led under the hills of the forest. It was not marked on his map, and the muddy clearing in front spoke volumes of how the herd milled around in front of the drain mouth, and retreated inside regularly.
Unslinging his rifle, Toby switched on a flashlight he had attached to the front of the rifle and quietly snuck closer to the drain mouth. The drain tunnel was tall enough for him to stand, and wide enough the he could have laid down in it. He breathed softly, listening for the usual sounds of a fluff pile. The were distant, muffled. As he made his way further in his toe bumped something soft. A sleeping fluffy sentry for the nest lifted its head and before it could speak, Toby grabbed its muzzle, placed the end of his rifle against it’s chest and shot. The silencer did its trick and the fluff muffled what was left. The sound of the rifle cycling was deafening to Toby in the tunnel, but apparently not loud enough to sound the alarm. Toby left the fluffy, now with an exit wound the sized of a baseball where his back had been, and continued on. Sentries meant the nest was close.
Toby came to a corner in the tunnel, unusual for a drain like this, but pressed on. A short distance later the emerged on a cavern, really only the size of a large living room in any house, with a ceiling maybe 11 feet high. Inside were all shapes, sizes, and colors of fluffy Ponies. As Toby inspected them, to his horror he discovered fluffies with lobster like claws instead of hooves. Fluffies with scales like fish instead of fluff. Fluffies with tentacles colored like burnt pork circling around them. Bug eyed fluffies, fluffies with feathers instead of fluff, fluffies with beaks or frog like floppy lipped faces. A gathering of multicolored abominations that looked like Jim Henson, Frank Oz, and Stan Winston had all decided they were going to scare the everloving fuck out of humanity in one fell swoop. And at the center, laying on an open book on a dias, lit by a dim beam of moonlight shining fron the ceiling…a fluffy with a grey billy-goats beard, one lobster like claw, a tentacle, scales, feathers…and glowing putrid yellow eyes that glared at him with cruel mirth. Ohhh…the jig was up!
“Hewwo hoomin!” The fluffy abomination greeted, a gurgling choke marred his cartoon squeak. He was loud enough to disturb his surrounding crowd from their slumber. Toby fought down the urge to vomit and stepped back as the fluffy…creatures… began to rouse. The fluffy rose, borne upward by a set of spider legs where his rear legs should have been. “Where yuu goin hoomin, don’ yuu wanna stay fo…a BITE!?”
Toby heard a hissing sound behind him and spun, raising his rifle. The flashlight beam illuminated another abomination, a fluffy with large black orbs for eyes and spider legs, scuttling down the wall, and opening a too-big mouth full of cracked yellow teeth. Toby screamed and let loose with his .22 rifle, peppering the creature. The unholy mutant screamed and fell to the floor next to him as he bolted down the tunnel, careening off the wall in the bend and towars the moonlit entrance. He could hear them behind him, scuttling, waddling, slithering, babbling and gibbering.
The reached the drain mouth and the clearing, spinning and firing his rifle blindly into the tunnel. He was rewarded with a few squeaks and cries of “owwies!” Before, like a vomit of rainbow colored horrors, the herd poured forth from the drain and Toby was swamped. Holding his finger on the trigger, Toby expended the drum magazine of the little rifle while hw climbed up on a dead tree. The fluffies tried to follow, slavering with crazed derped eyes and gibbering at him in some strange tongue, mangled by the mispronounciation of fluffspeak.
The herd elder scuttled up to the tree snapping his claw at Toby in anticipation. “Hoomin su bwave fo’ commin aww awone to gib foweba sweepies tu Wubcwaf’s hewd. But nao, Wubcwaf fink is yew who get foweba sweepies.”
Toby snatched the little disk from his pocket and pressed the button on it. Tossing it in the mud in the middle of the fluffies. The disk beeped and a blue light flashed on it, drawing a few nearby abominations to stare at it, cooing and chirping “suuu pwetty.”
At Toby’s truck, the activation of the disk set in motion a chain of events. A computer booted up, triangulating on the disk, lifting the crossbow contraption, turning on blood red lights inside the box loaded on the crossbow, and starting up a recording. Blasting into the box hard enough to rattle a small porthole window set into one surface and from speakers mounted to the outside of the truck, shattering the silence of the forest. The track was Toby’s voice, pitched into a low bass growl as he proclaimed:
In his ravenous hatred he found no peace, and with boiling blood he scoured the umbral plans seeking vengeance against the dark lords who had wronged him. He wore the crown of the knight sentinels, and those who tasted the bite of his sword name him… the Doomslayer.
Immediately followed by the DOOM OST track, “Rip & Tear”.
Batteries charged on the contraption with a whine, servomotors buzzed, the computer made a whirring sound as it made calculations. And the box rattled, and banged, and crashed as something slammed itself around inside and screamed in rage. Finally, with a snap and a whir the cross bow, which was actually a small magnetic accelerator, launched the box high into the air with a PHHOOW!!
Toby prayed the machine worked as he snapped his spare magazine into his little rifle, picking off numerous fluffy mutants before using it like a club to keep the babbling swarm at bay. He heard the music, then the firing sound and his panic turned to a wicked grin.
The box slammed into the ground exactly on the small beacon disk, the fluffies entrance by its blinking light, squashed violently. The surface with the porthole ejected from it and out leaped Slayer!
“WIP AN TTEEEAAAWWW!” He roared, his pent-up rage having driven him deep into the territory of madness and he began to tear through the fluffy swarm without mercy. In fact, he barely aimed himself, instead caving in skulls, ripping off limps with his teeth, impaling fluffies on his armor, charging and jumping an screaming and growling like a force of nature.
The fluffy mutant abominations had heard tales from other ferals, heard of a green fluffy with blades for teeth and spikes for fluff who killed their kind, heard how nothing was left behind him besides blood and death. The weaker amongst them began to turn to flee, only to be cut down by Slayer. No fear, no hesitation. Only wrath.
Toby clutched the tree he was in a bit tighter. Maybe it was a better idea to stay up here till Slayer wore himself out. But with the insane look on his face, that could be a while.
The herd Elder sneered and spat on the ground at the appearance of slayer and retreated into the storm drain tunnel. Slayer massacred the fluffies milling about the clearing, following their trail into the tunnel. Toby heard the ongoing sounds of screams of terror and wet rips or thuds as Slayer disappeared into the tunnel. Snatching up his rifle Toby dismounted the tree and went to the tunnel mouth, tentatively listening and calling for Slayer. The only response was more screams.
Slayer cut his way through creatures from nightmares, unfazed by their appearance. They were BAD fluffies, and the only difference between them and the other fluffies he killed with impunity was they finally were as ugly outside as they were inside. He spotted the elder, the smarty of the herd, scamper into the cavern. Slayer plunged his hoof into the face of a screaming abomination and tore the head clean off, casting it aside. He entered the cavern, finding the elder splayed out on the big open book like he was giving it speshaw huggies.
“Yuu tuu wate heww-wakah! Wubcwaf noe yuu an noe yo ways! Dis am onwy da beg-begee…da stawt! Yuu spiww booboo joosh an made da view between wowwds weakies! Nao see places on twue powa! Noe wha’ hed sickies twuwy be!”
The fluffy looked down and began to chant " Y’un fwewdog Swaanesh, fwewdog Seensh, fwuff hodog Cfuwweww f’taygan-" The air began to swirl, moonlight coalescing.
Slayer leapt high and long. As he descended
he impaled the elder on a spike on his hoof, the elder screeching in its bubbling croak "Nuuu! Mush wewease da ewda sky daddehs! Mush bwing aww yuu wub to hed sickies an fiwe! Yuu wiww beg fo foweba sweepies oh un-chainied pwedatah! Yuu-gak
Slayer slammed him onto the rock floor, twisted his spike and and ripped upward, bringing the mutant elder’s spine and skull with him in a shower of gore. “Yuu tawkies tuu mush” he growled. Looking around he made sure he was surrounded by only the dead. Slayer frowned and pushed the book off the pedestal with his nose and began dragging it in his teeth. After what seemed like any forevers he finally exited the drain tunnel out into the moonlight.
Toby had climbed down from his tree, walking among the broken and shredded bodies. He looked over at Slayer, steam visibly rising from the little murder engine’s fluff.
Toby looked at the book Slayer was dragging. It was funny looking, full of scribbles, what looked like hoof and teeth marks on the corners. He looked at the open page, the words swimming in front of his eyes. He could almost read it. Opening his mouth to sound out one that looked-
“DADDEH TOBY!” Slayer barked at him. Toby shook his head. The book was open in his hands. How’d that happen? What the…
Toby fished in his pocket while looking at Slayer, pulling out his battered Zippo and waving it at the book blindly until he felt it grow warmer. Then he dropped it as the book blazed brightly with red flame. Distantly he felt the air, the forest, the universe shake, and a scream of anger and defeat.
Slayer and Toby stared at each other for a moment in silence. “…summabetches at cee-tee haww payin’ Dubbie tiem on dis one, daddeh.” Toby nodded gravely, “You said it killer…you said it.” And they began to pack up as quickly as possible.