The herd was in chaos after the untimely and violent demise of Thunder. Cynthia ran and crashed down onto the dock, nearly killing herself and her babies. The others ran and hid. Bear pulled himself together and yelled out.
“QWUIET!”
The adult fluffies hushed slightly, limiting themselves to sniffles and occasional “huu’s”. The foals were muffled into their parents’ fluff after Bear kept glaring at them.
“Qwuiet,” Bear repeated. “Fwuffy teww oda fwuffies tu num da gween gwassies. Fwuffy nu say num wed gwassies.”
Buster tilted his head; but he remembered-
“Tunda nu wisten,” Bear continued. “Tunda am foweva sweepies nao.”
Bear puffed his chest. “Su hewd wisten tu Beaw. Nu num wed gwassies. Num gween gwassies. Beaw gu fin’ mo’ nummies on nu wand.”
The herd nodded in approval, happy to have such a thoughtful leader.
Buster, however, was not convinced.
—
The brown baby awoke with a spasm that elicited shrill peeps of pain; his side, ribs, and legs sustained bruising in the fall. Despite the discomfort, the colt stumbled onto shaky legs, and made his way to his mother’s face. The red baby had already been trying to wake their mother by gently pawing at her snout.
“Pwease, mummah nee’ wakies,” the red baby shrieked, pressing on his mother’s snout and nipping at her ear. The brown baby could tell his mother had a lot of hurties. Her face looked…wider somehow. And her horn wasn’t as pointy or long as it used to be. And her eyes…
Her eyes flew open, one at a time, neither focusing in the same location. They also seemed to be straining against their sockets, ready to explode at any moment.
Cynthia’s tongue lolled out of her mouth as she managed to roll up to a sitting position. “Hebbo, babblehs!” she sloshed, her mouth full of excess saliva. “Bime fo’ blibbies!”
The brown baby wet itself, backing away slowly. The red filly wasn’t so lucky; Cynthia reached a hoof out and caught her daughter, the filly hyperventilating and peeping in between escape attempts via squirming and biting. Cynthia swatted the filly on the nose, perhaps a little too hard, but it stopped the crying.
“Blibbies,” Cynthia repeated, blinking her eyes separately and placing her daughter onto one of her teats. Her hunger overriding her fear and discomfort, the filly greedily began suckling on her mother’s teat, kneading aggressively. Cynthia cooed.
The brown colt, realizing what his mother had meant by her new funny word, raced to the other teat, but was met by a backhand to the face. Tears welled up, and the baby let out a horrible wail.
“Wai mummah nu wet babbeh dwink miwkies? Babbeh nee’s miwkies and wuv.” Cynthia shook her head violently, and swallowed some spit as her stomach gurgled.
“Pooby babbleh bo.” Cynthia reached forward and haphazardly swiped forward, grabbing her paralyzed light blue colt roughly by the legs.
The colt, while unable to ever move again, retained his consciousness, only able to move his bulging and unblinking eyes. He screamed in his stare as his mother pressed him forcefully to her other teat. “Bwink, babbleh!” Cynthia, unfazed, manually latched the colt to her teat, and began kneading the milk into his mouth while he remained unable to voluntarily swallow…as Cynthia’s stomach got louder and louder.
The brown baby suddenly remembered his mother having more than her fair share of the red plants as he noticed the ground get wet underneath him. He looked down in horror; his mother had been silently and continuously voiding her bowels for some time…enough to have covered nearly half the step-down dock. The brown baby colt, desperate to stay away from the bad poopie wawa’s, found a stray cooler to climb onto.
Cynthia, her horn having permanently damaged her brain, was not processing her body shutting down from her overconsumption of poisonous plants. Instead, she was relying on her base instinct which was to provide food for her young.
It was thanks to the paralyzed colt choking that the filly was able to escape drowning in milk. Cynthia picked the colt up in both hands, confused. She planned on asking, but suddenly it was really difficult to talk. There was a way to get her baby to listen, but Cynthia was having trouble remembering. It had something to do with her mouth, she brokenly thought. So, she opened it.
Cynthia’s body heaved, and she coated her light blue baby with thick foaming puke. His eyes bulged further, wanting to scream but having no voice-
Cynthia heaved again, sending more thick red foam all over the colt…and into his open and inhaling mouth. The colt could do nothing; he could not move, he could not scream, and he could not breathe. The last images to drift through his mind as it got hotter and hotter, searing white pain burning away his consciousness…were of his mother squeezing and drowning him.
Cynthia’s higher brain patterns had burned out moments ago, the effects of the poison acting faster than the body had time to react. With her brain fried and heart stopped, Cynthia finally stopped vomiting, the rest dribbled out as waste as she fell into herself, a heap of pink and red and brown sludge. Cynthia was dead.
The brown baby, too traumatized to cry, simply stared at the mess that was his mother and sibling. A quiet sniffle broke him out of his stupor, and he turned to face his sister, the red filly.
“Babbeh dwink mummah miwkies,” she whispered, blood trickling out of her nose. “Su many huwties.” She stumbled, clenched her stomach and farted wetly.
“Nu daddeh. Nu mummah. Nu bruddah.” The filly coughed, her mouth foaming.
“Su sweepies.” The filly laid down, in a pile of her mother’s excrement, and her body began to convulse while she cheeped and chirped frantically. Her eyes bulged and her limbs straightened painfully, as her body’s liquids escaped through every orifice. Moments later, she was gone…a wrung out husk.
The brown baby blinked once, and screamed itself unconscious.
—
John coughed, smoke billowing out of his mouth and nostrils. “I’m just telling you what I saw. I don’t think any plant survived.” He heard Gary grumbling. “So you’re saying they were supposed to be fluffy-repellant?”
“They’re poisonous plants, full stop,” Gary explained. “Maddy loves them, they’re local flora, and we don’t have any small kids or pets to worry about. Most animals can tell if something isn’t right for them to eat.” He grunted again. “But we are dealing with fluffies.”
John tapped his joint ashes into the top of an empty soda can. “Well, whatever those flowers were did a fucking number on these things. It looks like the start of a Terminator movie out there, Gary.”
Gary laughed. “Yeah, well. Everything can be replaced, and Phil will make the place spotless. Assuming they managed to leave the grill alone, you should grab something to barbecue from the store.”
“I just might,” John said hoarsely. “Well all right. I’ll text you when Phil heads out, Gary.”
“Sounds good, kid. Get back to relaxing!”
John tossed his phone down, unpaused the cooking show and began to seriously think about burgers.
—
Bear checked again, but it was no use. There was no way into the dummy human housie. He tried everything: yelling at the door, giving the door sorry hoofsies, and giving it sorry poopies. Nothing worked!
Kiki’s snout trembled. “Speciaw fwiend, nee’ fin’ nummies! Keekee su hungwy, nee’ bestes’ nummies fo’ babbeh.” She prattled on as she worriedly held a peeping scared colt. Bear paid neither of them any attention; clearly not destined for leadership, the ordeal overloaded his brain. Rationale flew out the window.
Bear’s breathing quickened, his eyes widened. He couldn’t stay here anymore. His focus shot towards the fencing, where the bowl of the birdbath blocked the dug-out hole underneath the fence. His brain had switched to self-preservation; he completely mentally abandoned his herd at this point, and took off for the bowl.
The white dam, still catatonic, had not moved since her bestest baby died. She sat, rocking slightly, holding half a filly and warbling a mummah song. Bear barreled past her, the dam paying him no attention, and he began pawing at the bowl and fencing in a frenzy.
“Wet Beaw out,” he hissed through his teeth. “Beaw wan weave.”
“Wat am Beaw du?” Kiki whimpered, slowly ambling after Bear.
The bowl would not move. His stubby little hooves slipped and slid, finding no angle to wedge in between. Bear whined and complained, pushing and shouldering the bowl with what little force he had. “Wet Beaw out!”
His heart pounded in his chest, and Bear seethed at the bowl. “Stoopi! WET BEAW OUT! WET BEAW OUT! WET BEAW OUT!”
“Beaw nu scawe Keekee an’ babbeh,” Kiki pleaded. “Beaw am scawy!”
Bear beat his front hooves on the bowl, throwing his fat little body against it. His shrill voice repeated over and over, scrambling to push and hit and hoof the bowl from all sides. He stood on his hind legs, and forced his tubby frame to jump for the top of the birdbath bowl. His repeated mantra became gibberish and his stamina was running out.
His hooves weren’t able to grasp on, at first. Bear’s nonstop onslaught, however, jostled the soil and weakened the foundation of dirt keeping the bowl upright. Bear hopped again, grabbing the bowl and causing it to teeter away from the fence.
And down to himself.
Snapping to his senses, Bear did what only a fluffy could have done: let go and immediately crouch down and hide while still under the shadow of a fallow clay birdbath. He realized all too late what his mistake was, and braced for impact. Kiki screamed.
“EEEEEEE! BEAW NUUU!”
“SCREEEEE-”
-THOCK-
Bear heard a sickening crunch, and was waiting for the pain…but it never came. He slowly opened his eyes and looked up.
The bowl was inches from squishing him, but the bowl hit the head of the white dam first, pushing it straight down into the ribcage, killing the fluffy instantly. Bear, wide-eyed, watched a fountain of blood run down the neck of the dead dam, now unrecognizable as a white fluffy. He scrambled his pudgy body out from underneath the bowl before the corpse could no longer hold the weight.
“BEAW!” Kiki’s tail wagged. “Beaw am otay!”
The bowl now more or less out of the way, Bear saw his opportunity and dove face first at the exit, but found himself stuck. The bowl was still obstructing about halfway; Bear didn’t care. He had come this far and could taste freedom. His breaths were ragged and he was angrily squealing, all limbs kicking around for leverage. He wiggled his body violently, grinding and cutting his fluff against the bottom of the fence.
Kiki’s tail slowly lowered. “Beaw? Wai’ fo ‘ Keekee an’ Beawbeaw.”
The bowl bounced up and down with Bear’s constant attempts, causing the bowl to slip a bit. Undeterred, Bear pressed his hooves hard against the fence, straining and straining, until the bowl had slipped just enough for his hips to get through. Bear was free! Missing a lot of his fluff on his back legs, Bear scrambled to his feet and took off as fast as he could.
“BEAW! NU GU WIF OUT KEEKEE AN’ BABBEH!”
Both Kiki and Bearbear chased quickly after Bear, bumbly climbing up the bowl. Bearbear was about to squeeze through before Kiki’s jaws clamped down on his hindquarter fluff. He let out a shriek and partially shat on his mother’s face, but Kiki nevertheless pulled him out of the hole and whipped him aside.
“NU. KEEKEE GU BEFOE BABBEH. KEEKEE NEE’ BEAW.” Kiki hunched down and started to shove herself through the opening, but Bearbear recovered quickly. He slid under his mother’s raised backside and jumped over her front leg to squeeze in next to his mother. Bearbear managed to squeeze half his body through, while his mother was stuck with only her head and left front leg clear on the other side.
“DUMMEH -kaff- BABBEH,” Kiki wheezed. “Nao nu move! KEEKEE STUCK! HEWP KIKI!”
Kiki’s heart rate nearly doubled at the prospect of being stuck. Her tail lifted, announcing the arrival of a rancid torrent of liquid feces that quickly coated Kiki’s fluff and legs. Worse, it made it more difficult for Kiki to brace herself to get traction. Her soft rubbery hooves unstable, Kiki repeatedly tried pushing off only to fall and slam back down on the bowl, which seemed to rock and bounce with each Kiki escape attempt.
The bowl teetered, up and down, finally freeing itself of the white dam’s corpse. The blood-coated white fluffy’s body fell backwards, spilling the head from inside the chest like a morbid Jack-in-the-box. The bowl came to rest parallel to the ground, and both Kiki and the red colt fell silent.
The birdbath, having no corpse to keep it angled, now narrowed the hole from its final resting spot. The clay bowl forced both Kiki and Bearbear’s bodies upward into the fence.
Bearbear, being so little, went quickly. The fence and birdbath squeezed him like toothpaste, forcing much of his internal organs out through his mouth. He barely had time to chirp before all the air [and his anatomy] came rushing out.
Kiki lingered; the birdbath and fence had crushed her ribcage. She pissed herself, her back legs kicking ineffectually. “-HAFF- -HAFF- Kee…kee…hewp…Keekee.” She spat out blood, tears clouding her vision. “Beaw. Sabe. Keekee.” Her left hoof pawed at the loose soil on the other side of the fence. She was losing energy.
Her head turned to the side, and Kiki saw what was left of Bearbear, his body distorted and hollow. His jaw was broken, bits of his insides still hanging from his mouth. His eyes, milky and bulged, were fixated on Kiki. The birdbath squeezing the last of her breath out, Kiki’s left leg seized and her head jerked violently. One last half of a squeal, and she was gone.