It is cold and dark. A small trembling ball of peach fuzz and tears sleeps fitfully on a bed of wood chips beneath a blanket made from dryer lint.
It is are a fluffy. A newborn babbeh, from the popular Guodzilla line. He hasn’t opened his eyes yet, and already he’s felt the warm embrace of mummah, tasted her bestest most sweetiest nummie miwkies, and then been ripped away, placed in this itchy scratchy place by forces beyond his comprehension.
He doesn’t know it yet, but he is home. For lack of a better word, this bed and the confines around it are his entire world.
It has been several hours since he last fed, since he last smelled the comforting scent of mummah. He instinctively suckles his hoof, seeking the safety of nursing. His tummy makes scary noises and no longer feels pretty.
It’s not so much a pain as it is an extreme discomfort. Like his tummy is sad and trying to curl up and cry like he is. But it’s a tummy, and tummys aren’t supposed to do that! Tummys are for filling with nummies and miwkies fow babbehs…
After a while, he finally passes out from hunger. He’s awoken by a sharp pain in the back of his neck. He starts squirming and wriggling and peeping his little heart out, but the strong hand holding him down won’t let him escape the pointy hurties! He feels the pinprick widen, and before long warm fluid flows in.
He’s been hooked to a tube to test a potential new technique for long term fluffy storage. Fluffies eat and shit like any animal, bit what if they didn’t have to? What if you just circulated nutrient rich oxygenated blood on a constant cycle? They’d always have the sustenance they need, just not in a form that produces solid waste!
The trembling little fuzzball was finally released from the crushing grip of whatever munstah imprisoned him. He peeped as loud and as hard as he could, left shaking and pissing himself on the cold metal floor. He could feel something in his neck and it was really sore, but what’s worse was his tummy.
He didn’t understand. His tummy hurties had made him weak to the point he passed out, but now he was awake and able to drag himself along as through he’d just been fed… But it still felt wrong. His tummy was all twisted up in knots, screaming and begging for nourishment. His blood was properly nutrified, but his stomach was still kicking out hunger signals.
He gave up finding his itchy scratchy nest and curled up on the floor peeping and sucking his hoofsie.
…
…
“Okay so walk me through it one more time.”
“It’s simple. We have the IV hooked up. Your station is recording data on the effects of pressure on nutrient uptake and general health. You’re gonna be monitoring all fifteen fluffies and taking notes. Don’t worry, we record everything as well. Docs just like to have a first instinct report. They like to have eyes on this shit that aren’t made of glass and silicon.”
The moustachioed young intern cracked his knuckles and sat down at his work station. He had a screen in the center showing vitals and pressure data for each of the fifteen foals, and set up in an array before his eyes, he could see all the enclosures.
They used to use cameras and monitor remotely, but that resulted in too little data. Fluffies are very good at describing what they’re feeling, but they don’t like to get super specific unless it’s with a human. So, the monitor sits physically next to the tanks. One fluffy per tank, all hooked up. Three high, five across. Spread before him in an arc.
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…
The foal awoke with a labored squeak as it felt like the meanie tube in his neck moved. He got up and started stumbling around, but as he did, he felt like his muscles were…he wasn’t quite sure. Like they were “too tight” somehow. He tries to ignore it but after a few more steps he starts really hurting. He falls down and all his muscles are feeling sore and swollen. He tries to cry out but it hurts so much! His eyes haven’t even opened yet but he’s so scared he forces them open.
He’s seeing red, literally. Blood vessels in his eyes are bursting as he tries to see the world for the first time. Slowly, it comes into focus. He sees a human staring at him. “H…hewwwp…” He wheezes." Ba…beh h…ha…haf haf haf hab…ow…owwie…s…huuuuuuuuuuuuu…" He was in so much pain and he was so tired. His heart was beating like a drum and he was terrified so adrenaline amped everything up around him. He couldn’t stand without shooting pains through his leggies, but wherever he laid was sore and tender to the touch. He knew this was it. He was dying. He’d barely lived a few days and it was already over. He’d spent a few moments being hugged by mummah, spent several forevers sleeping on pokey wood under an itchy blanket, he’d been stabbed, and now he was going to explode. That had to be it. He felt like he was going to burst.
But he never did. He eventually passed out from exhaustion. Breathing was labored but not to the point of suffocation, and he stopped feeling worse, but he still felt like a balloon ready to burst.
He was so scared and confused. Hurties this bad should give him forever sleepies! Every time he fell asleep he was so relieved but every time he woke up he wanted to scream and cry and beg for death.
“N…nu faaaaaiw…” was all he croaked out before losing consciousness again.
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…
“Yeah no Bob, it’s wild. You were absolutely right, yeah. Yeah, no I know I do! Happy to do so! Like I said, my treat. When you told me you thought you could not only keep a fluffy alive indefinitely on transfusions, but that sufficient pressure would halt cell growth and degradation? I thought you were losing it. The runt, the shitty weak one you had to pull away from his mother before she smashed him for stealing milk from his siblings? He wound up on high pressure. It’s been six months and he’s still like the size of a fucking baseball.”
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…
A fluffy sits alone in his bed. It is made from wood mulch and scrap fabric. He no longer cares that it itches or pokes him. All he feels now is a constant pain screaming from his every blood vessel. He longs for death, but it never comes. Nothing ever comes.
Nothing ever changes.
Every day he awakes.
He hasn’t moved.
He hasn’t grown.
He should have a mane by now, he’s sure of it.
He should be able to walk without collapsing in agony.
Hell, he should have starved to death an eternity ago, but none of this happens. His only lucky break was that being hungry for so long had basically numbed him to it. Every day he wakes up, every day he is in constant pain, every day he fails to speak up. Doing so hurts his poor throat. He has trouble breathing still. He’s always had trouble breathing. No. No! It’s too much! He can’t take it! He ignores the pain! Ignores the feeling of his throat muscles tearing. He belts out the loudest most bloodcurdling scream he can muster, and for the first time in his life, something he did changed his circumstances.
He could feel blood going down the back of his throat. Most of it was going to his tummy, but he could feel it pooling in his lungs. He wasn’t afraid. To the contrary. He was gasping for air trying to breath as much blood as he could. Trying to drown from his own internal wounds. Wounds he howled into existence.
He feels his breath getting short when he’s grabbed. Everywhere he’s touched burns and stings. He tries to scream more but whatever he tore was necessary. He only got one. He passed out, feeling more blood flood his lungs. Here it was. Finally. Death. An escape. An end, once and for all.
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…
A foal wakes up. Though he does so every day, this one saddens him most of all. He did not die. Now there’s a horrible thing in his mouth that he can feel going to his lungs. It’s inflating and deflating him rhythmically. He tries to establish his own breathing rhythm, but he can’t. He struggles against it a few times but ultimately tires himself out. When he goes limp and lets go, the machine takes over. He sat. He cried. Scared, broken, suffering, and having ingested something other than tube fed water for the first time he could remember…
Hungry once more.