“Wawa su cowd! Bozzy dun wike!” Whimpered the brown furred mare as hands kneaded tear-free bubblegum scented shampoo into her fluff. Creamy white tail and mane curling in, she gave a shriek as a plastic cup was dipped into the water below. The fluffy was standing in a garish pink plastic basin from the dollar store, flakes dried mud falling from her body and staining the vessel.
Willie was new to this. Warshin’ a fluffy and giving something other than himself care. A man in his mid fifties who’d gone through most his life without something much more serious in the way of relationships beyond weekend girlfriends, care and affection was not something which came up on his bingo card often. Yet here he was on his rickety old knees, sweatin’ bullets under a greasy Cleveland Indians baseball cap in the city park. “Reckon ‘yon wouldn’t be in this cold water if you didn’t go playin’ in mud.”
Park was empty. Course it was. Not another fluffy or human in sight. Hell, even the birds and squirrels seemed to have taken a vacation. Rinsing the last bit of soap from the top of the mare’s head, he’d drag her up into an itchy new beach towel. Giggling as she got rolled around against the material, every nook and cranny dried off, she looked up to her nyu daddeh.
“Bozzy wub mud. An’ wub yew, nyu daddeh. Pway naow?” This was asked after squeezing against him in a hug, getting set to the ground right after.
Taking a moment to consider a red rubber ball on the cobblestone walkway that she’d been fetchin’ up and chewing on, he shook his head. “Later. Let’s go rustle up some chow.”
Looking toward the entrance of the park which by now had become somewhat overgrown with that fast growing grass indicative of July, Bossy nodded.
“Bozzy be wif daddeh? Dun wan be awone. Am scary!” Sometimes she’d been left alone here while he went out to town. Left among their supplies: A tent, the hotplate fueled by it’s butane canister, a collection of her toys. It was so quiet though. Even though there was a battery boombox with an assortment of scrounged up CDs to listen to, she was still scared of the all-consuming silence.
Willie jerked a thumb and nodded her to follow along after tipping the tub of water out onto the grass. Dragged it up, let it rest against the hand-powered water spigot which had been right here in this park in the days when it’d still been someone’s farmland.
“Let’s get ‘er going.”
++++
Normally he’d have told her to wait back at their little campsite but he knew that awful feeling of silence too. The world had gone chaotic, so much noise and energy. Then tampered down to near nothing but the wind. Stepping out of the park with Bossy dutifully at his side, Willie thought back on it like he always did. Of course, the sights laid out in front of them didn’t much help matters in that department.
This sleepy small town park was located smack-dab in the middle of main street. What once had been farmland transformed long ago into the town of Centerville. That park was the only memory of a time when things had been more rustic, though the town had gone to pot anyways.
Main st was actually where he’d lived before everything had gone down. Right up above a hair salon called The Cutting Edge. Had lived up above the establishment in a bachelor’s studio apartment for years, though now like many buildings here it’d been charred black and gutted out by a fire which had raged through.
“Mind yonself, Bossy.” Willie told the mare, indicating shards of glass on the sidewalk. Back when the world had really been going sideways, someone had walked the entirety of the street and slammed out the streetlights with rocks or bottles. Had the electricity been on still by that point? He couldn’t remember. Those days of constant gunfire, siren wailing, and screams had been lost in a haze of whisky. While the world fell down all around him he’d sat around with a case of Canadian Club, a few cartons of cigarellos, and canned food.
Bossy’s nose wrinkled. It stank so bad out here on the street. Of course it didn’t exactly smell great when they were in the park but it wasn’t too bad unless the wind turned a certain direction. This was explosive. Like a rotten curtain which had dragged in over her face. “Nu smeww pwetty, daddeh.” She told him. Did so several times a day as if he didn’t have a big ol’ bulbous honker of his own to know that much.
“Ayup.” Was all he told her. The smell of the raging fires which left many of the buildings here still lingered in the air, yet the char was the least of concerns. Death was in the air. Corpulent and ripe. Bodies, mostly humans and fluffies, were left all over town and this heat caused them to bloom with maggots and bloat with decay. Fluffies had died in most violent ways. Some had been clubbed, shot, ran over, impaled against walls. Were a great many of them in clustered piles showing clear signs of the poisoning campaign which had gone on: What eyes hadn’t been feasted on by insects bulged out of taut skulls, intestines caught in their mouths. Willie sure didn’t know what kind of poison made you expel your guts out your yapper and sure didn’t want to find out.
Looking up to an archway which framed their destination, Bossy shivered. There were five humans strung up with makeshift nooses outside the Stop n Shop, the local supermarket which had luckily been spared the blazes. Aside from clothing, it was difficult to tell what gender they’d once been. Each were stinking, bloated things swinging slightly each time the breeze picked up. Bossy couldn’t read the signs wrung ‘round their necks, but her owner sure could.
‘Fluffy Lover’.
Yup. All this was their fault. The big sickness. News had called it the Fluffy Flu, and it’d presented itself as a small thing for fluffies. Itchy eyes, a scratchy throat, sneezing. Mild irritations for them yet it hadn’t stopped with fluffies. That illness which seemed like allergies to them had jumped to humans and it’d been a whirlwind of pain. Death. By the time folks knew it was a problem, it’d been too late. Wash your hands as much as you wanted. Wear five masks. Bathe in hand sanitizer. It didn’t matter, you were getting the flu. Hospitals had run out of beds quick as you please. Plans to bury people like they had meant something in the world were scrapped and bodies were burnt in big ditches or fields.
Even the crews designated to burn the bodies had gone quick. Maybe they were like some of the folks here in town, strewn out on benches after they’d gotten fever which had melted their brains and coughed their lungs silly. Propped up in cars. Out on the sidewalks? Perhaps God have given them some final mercy and let them die in the privacy and comfort of their own beds instead of getting mad with fever and wanderin’ around.
Either way, Willie grabbed up his fluffy. He didn’t want to enter the doors beneath those fetid corpses a’crawl with maggots. Knowing his luck one of the extension cords winding them up by their necks would snap and he’d be smacked down by a heavy sack of rotten meat.
“In we go, darlin’.” Willie told Bossy as his workboots crunched through one of the destroyed plate glass windows. This supermarket was a mess of shit. Someone had been in here and thrown every damn jar of pickles to the floor so the whole goddamn joint stank to high heavens like a douche.
Scrunching up against her daddeh’s chest, Bossy examined stuff in the aisles as they walked through. They’d been through here a few times and daddeh let her pick stuff out.
“Daddeh pwease? Buddyfingie?” Waggling her hooves out to a candy display, Willie snagged one of the packages up. It was complete mush under his fingers but of course it was: The air conditioner had been out for quite some time now and all the chocolate had melted down. She’d still enjoy it though and he had plenty of baby wipes to clean her face when she did.
Chocolate wasn’t the only thing which had gone bad. Freezer cases which had once been nice and chilly were puddled down with water as things had defrosted. Ice cream which had curdled had dried onto the floor in once colorful streaks now turning brown like everything else.
Now to the canned food aisle. Tinned salmon, apricots, and some of those canned tamales for him. The tamales would give him the shits but who cared? Plenty of toilet paper laying around. Hell if he wanted to he’d wipe his pale white ass with silk shirts.
“Skeggis!” Bossy burst out against his arm, mouth watering at the sight of a Chef Boyardee can. She couldn’t read but that can was so iconic it was likely burnt right into the memories of every fluffy alive. Well. What little of them had to be remaining.
Willie weren’t the smartest man in the world but he knew spaghetti was the last thing he should be encouraging fluffies to eat. “No, Bossy. Bad. Spaghetti’ll make you sick.” Normally a fluffy would perhaps try to explain away the possibility of being sick. Yet in this world? Sickness would always be on her mind. The last thing he needed was for her to get into one of the stockpiles of sketti poison bait. It’d been left all over town. Perhaps every town.
Pinning her ears down a bit, she chirruped happily when he instead selected a box of macaroni and cheese. Not only that, it was in fun shapes from a cool cartoon!
“Daddeh make bestest mac n cheezies? Wub yew!” Cooing up and squeezing up on his arm, she was happy for this alternative they’d come to agree on. Sketti of all sorts was off-limits. If it smelled like skettis, it was BAD and would hurt her.
Walking toward the row of cash registers up front, he stopped at a small display. There were bundles of ‘fireworks’ set up. Pussy stuff for kids, y’know? Sparklers. Smoke bombs. Party poppers. Selecting a tray of one, Willie’d tuck it into a canvas bag he’d been carrying around in.
About to step right past the cash registers, Willie stopped short as his fluffy tugged insistently on his dirty shirt sleeve.
“Daddeh! Yew nee’ pay! It am bad tu steaw!” This had been a process repeated a few times over now. She didn’t know that it didn’t matter: There were no laws. No people to care. That world she’d been instructed in had gone to shit.
Instead of arguing with her though, he’d take his wallet out from his jeans pocket and flip it open. Useless club cards. An ID which showed his baleful hounddog like eyes staring back. Selecting a single dollar bill, Willie worked the register’s drawer open and slipped it inside. Of course it wasn’t enough for all the stuff he’d just gotten but it’s not like Bossy knew the exact way currency worked, just that he had to pay for stuff.
+++++
Back at the little impromptu campsite in the middle of the park. Bossy was finally free to run around all on her own as there wasn’t a risk of stepping on any glass or errant nails. Diving through piles of sun-parched flowers and happilly chasing after a butterfly, she would let her owner mind his own.
Laying back on the scruffy grass which made his hands itch something awful, Willie looked up to the blue sky up above. Puffy white clouds gently rolled by. Not a single plane in sight. No chemtrails, either. At night there’d be blinking satellites up there. How long would their trash last up there?
After some time had passed and their lazy afternoon turned into a dusky evening, Willie propped himself up and mosied on over to the camping stove. Screwing the little green butane bottle into place, he’d screw a knob and let the flame hiss out. Placing an ash smudged pot on top, a few bottles of water got poured into it. Collected from the spigot at the start of each day, of course.
“Daddeh am makin’ nummies?” Bossy had been good this entire time. Playing with her ball or running around in the flowers. Pollen dusted her entire face.
Shrugging a bit, Willie watched the water began to burble and poured her box of cartoon shaped macaroni into the pot. “Ayup.” Was all he said. Man of few words was he.
Happily stamping her hooves the entire time it took the water to boil, Willie had to hold her back as he drained it out. “Easy. You’ll burn yerself.” He told her in a wary voice, dumping the pasta back into the pot. There was no butter but he had some milk. A carton of sterile, heat treated stuff that would keep for who knew how long. Shelf stable and tasted better than the powdered stuff from back when he was young but not by much. Dumping some into the pot along with the cheese powder, he’d get it all mixed together and dumped out into a bowl, setting it down on the ground.
Squealing with delight, Bossy plowed her face down into the cheesy fun shapes. Working a can of salmon open, Willie shoved pieces of the fish into his mouth absent-mindedly.
++++
After dinner and light had truly began to fade away, Willie poked something long and metallic between Bossy’s teeth. Clenching it tightly, she looked up to him with confused eyes.
“Whash dis?” She mumbled around the object, her baby talk made worse even further by the obstruction. Taking a Zippo from his pocket, her owner flipped it open with a ‘click’, rolled the wheel with a calloused thumb, brought a flame to the end of the stick.
Color exploded in front of Bossy’s face. Bright white that sizzled and flared into the air. Amazing. So wonderful. A force most awesome that she nearly dropped the thing right then and there.
Lighting a sparkler of his own, Willie tucked it between two fingers and began tracing it through the air to make designs which impressed on the eyes for a fraction of a moment. “Lookit, Bossy.”
Impressed by her owner’s work, she began trying to trace her own against the air. Lazy loops. Figure 8’s that made her head spin in order to create. Willie was watching the entire time to make sure she was safe, nabbing it out of her mouth when it’d burned down too much. Swapping it for another to burn.
“Dis su fun! Daddeh! DADDEH!” Bopping around on her hooves, Bossy skittered around him in quick circles. Selecting a party popper, Willie dangled it in front of her face. Curiously, she bit down on the string and gave an instinctual tug back. With a small ‘pop!’, colorful confetti blasted out and fluttered down on her face.
Willie sat indian-style on the ground as she used the rest of them, popping one after another onto him with uproarious giggles.
++++
After the excitement of the fireworks, the two retired to their small tent. A battery powered lantern was left on to flood the area with bright white light as they cozied down onto a sleeping bag. Hot as sin but they couldn’t sleep under the stars, no. Skeeters would eat them alive.
Laying there for who knew how long, Willie let Bossy sleep nuzzled against his chest. Drooling on him. It was difficult for him to get to sleep with this heat, especially when she started having night terrors.
“Mummah…mummah…!” Bossy whimpered, kicking her legs around as a nightmare seized her.
Soothing a hand against her fuzzy spine, Willie tried to comfort her. “There, there. Hushaboogle, Bossy.” Rocked her against his side a bit. Tears tracked down her furry cheeks, squealing every so often as she was being ate up with bad memories.
He couldn’t really blame her for such a thing.
++++
Willie’d survived most the town he reckoned. How? Why? Didn’t know. No matter where he went, there were more bodies. Old Herb Hancock had died while cruising around on his riding lawn mower, having crashed into a shed where he still remained. Fannie, the kindly middle-aged woman who run the pharmacy, was face-down in the fountain down town square. He’d at least had the decency to drag her out of it and straighten her dress out, having some reservations about leaving an honest women with her ass sticking out for all to see. Who? God, himself, whoever. Hadn’t felt right.
All alone. Just him. Still piss drunk and wobbling around uncertainly. By some miracle he’d avoided being burnt up in his studio apartment. Had wobbled then fell down the stairs once he’d smelled smoke from surrounding buildings. Passed out for awhile on the sidewalk and now here he was.
At first he’d had a shotgun. Just a twelve gauge double-barrel given to him by his father. Pretty smart to be armed when everything was going down. Down by the courthouse, plenty of folks had been gunned down. Some kind of riot about vaccines that didn’t even exist. Looking down that way, he could still see the barricades which had been set up. Bullet-ridden bodies which lay frozen like matchsticks on the ground. Weren’t nothing to worry about now and he’d ditched the shotgun awhile back.
“Old Daniel Tucker was’n mighty man,
Warshed his face in a fryin’ pan;
Combed his head wit a wagon wheel
Died with’a toothache in his heel“
He’d begun to sing drunkenly as he wheeled down a residential street. Couldn’t carry a tune to save his life but hey, maybe he was currently the best goddang singer in the whole blessed United States.
White picket fences were lined with the lynched corpses of fluffies. Obviously pets, most of them done up with what had to be their own leashes.
All of them gone. Dead as dead. Not from the sickness that’d got everyone else but fear. Hatred. Willie didn’t have much in the way of an opinion one way or another about it.
About to swing past a house on the corner, something stopped him. Movement. Sound. A small sound.
Tap
Tap
Tap
Glancing toward a front window of the ranch style house he’d just been about to walk by without a concern was the face of a fluffy. Not no dead one, by golly, but a real living one. Excitement pounded in his chest. He hadn’t seen a living soul for awhile now. Fluffy or human.
“Just one second now!” The man shouted out toward the window, going up to try the front door. Locked. Well. Going to the window where the fluffy still stood flailing her hooves and tapping uselessly, Willie made a shooing gesture with one hand and picked up a good sized rock from the garden. It took a moment for the fluffy to realize she was supposed to move but finally, she nodded and flit away. Moments later, he bust right through the window and knocked shards of glass away. Stepped through into a baking oven of a home. Stink upon stink. Not uncommon.
Flinging itself at him, the fluffy which had been trapped in here settled up against his leg. Tried to cry but was too dehydrated. The brown fluffball was covered in shit, throw-up, and who knew what else. Was looking a little thin too.
“Pwease…hewp Bozzy…” She murmured out to him.
Though Willie had never been one to like or dislike fluffies, he decided he would in fact help her.
++++
That fluffy which had trapped, near dead from lack of water, was now rolling around the grass giggling. There was a colorful plastic pinwheel clutched in her mouth which rolled gently on the wind with small clacks.
Willie sat on a camping chair, boiling a tin cup of coffee on his stove. That bitter brew made his nose hairs curl with delight and he couldn’t wait to slam it right down into his gut.
“Havin’ fun, Bossy?” He asked his pet as she’d decided to stop rolling around and spend her time delicately dabbing her tongue out at a ladybug. Not to eat it. It was some form of playing, though he couldn’t really see how it was fun to annoy a bug.
Ears twitching in delight, Bossy nodded heartily. “Yis! An’ am weaddy fo’ liberry!”
Yeah, that’s right. They were going to the library. Horribly stuffy in that old building though they had plenty of hot rod magazines for him to peruse while she went nuts in the kid’s area. Either tumbling around with stuffed animals or bouncing on top of a few beanbag chairs. Inevitably she’d drag out her favorite book, Sparkle’s Fun Adventures. It was a book about a fluffy made for human children…though fluffies seemed to enjoy it all the same.
“Ayup. I never graduated high school so I better hit the books.” He told her, setting his coffee aside and getting her wagon ready. On normal trips he was fine with carrying her along but the library was a ways off out by the police station. Easier to put her into a red Radio Flyer wagon he’d lined with blanket and wheel her out there in that case.
Tucking Bossy up in one arm, he’d gently place her down onto the wagon and offer up a small stuffed toy so she’d have something to distract herself with while they made their trip up there.
There was a tickle at the back of his throat, a rush in his head, and he’d whip a blue bandanna out his pocket quick enough to catch a hoarse sneeze into the cloth. Examined it for a moment, found it sticky with mucus.
“Daddeh? Daddeh sickies?” A quaver in Bossy’s voice. Everyone had gone sickies. Mummah had. Mummah had gone fowebbah sweepies and went away.
Everything good had gone away. Except nyu Daddeh Wiwwie.
“Me? Get sick? I eat my vegetables, fluffo.” Ruffling a hand through her bubblegum scented mane, the man brought a smile to the mare’s face.
Just allergies. That’s all it was. All it had to be. She’d been collecting pollen on her face since yesterday. Course he was a bit sneezy and gross.
“I ‘aint readin’ you Sparkle’s Fun Adventures again.” Willie told the mare gruffly, beginning to drag the wagon down the paving stones leading to the park exit.
“Ams tu!” Bossy shot back, and Willie knew that he would. It was a comforting thought. Something pleasant to keep his mind off the tickle in his throat.
He’d been fine so far. No clue why. Why would he be sick now?
Bossy was something to him. A pet. A ward. A friend, maybe. As ridiculous as it sounded, she did feel like a friend. One who didn’t care that he hadn’t graduated high school, or that he’d worked in a muffler shop his whole life.
He wanted nothing more than for that tickle in his throat to be allergies. So he could show her lots more stuff that would make even the sparklers and party poppers look miniscule in comparison.
“Wook daddeh. Giwaffe am dancies.” Clumsily clutching her stuffed giraffe between two hooves as the wagon got pulled along, he offered her a smile.
“Ayup.”