“CYKA BLYAT!!!”
It was another morning at the Jacob and Vasily household. Jacob wakes up with a sigh to the sound of Vasily having another argument with their neighbor. It was like this every morning, Vasily would wake up to some loud noise coming from their neighbor’s house and then would… chat… with him into the late morning.
“Here we go again.”
Jacob rolls himself out of bed, only barely managing to stop the alarm from ringing with a second to spare. As he is walking over to his closet to grab his security officer’s jacket, Al’s bed is empty inside the little space Jacob had set aside as his saferoom; which meant Al was off eating breakfast in the kitchen.
After getting dressed, Jacob walks over to the kitchen to the smell of homemade sausage, mayonnaise, and potato pancakes; a Slavic breakfast according to Vasily. A breakfast that they have almost every morning despite Jacob and Vasily’s combined income. As Jacob sat down to eat, he sees out of the corner of his eye, Al eating his skettie-flavored kibble from FluffyMart. Al sees Jacob and he lights up, his white and brown tail wagging estaticly.
“Mawnin daddeh!”
Jacob smiled as he glanced at Al.
“Good morning, buddy.” Jacob starts digging into his breakfast and Vasily walks in from the back porch, slamming the door behind him.
“Mudak!”
Jacob raised an eyebrow.
“What was he doing this time?” Jacob took a bite of his sausage.
“The cyka was banging his hammer on wood again right before sunrise, the bastard!”
Jacob sighed again. Their neighbor, who Vasily claims is named Vadim, has been working on a carpentry project in his backyard. The man has gotten into the habit of working early in the morning and then doesn’t stop until the early afternoon. Vasily has had repeated confrontations with “Vadim” for the last few weeks to no avail at getting him to change when he works.
“Maybe you should be less aggressive with the man,” Jacob suggested.
“Then he’ll just walk all over me!” Vasily starts wagging his finger. “Nyet! This. is. war!”
Jacob sat there eating as Vasily continued on his tangent. Whenever it wasn’t about “Vadim”, Vasily would go on about his younger days back in the motherland… before he had to flee the country. Jacob could never get Vasily to talk about why he had to leave Russia. All he would say is that some very nasty people were after him and his only option was to leave the country completely.
Jacob looked at his phone and started eating a little faster; he had 20 minutes until he had to leave for work. Once Jacob was done eating, he scratches Al behind the ear before grabbing his keys. “I’ll see you for supper, Vasily.”
“Dah! Have a good day, my friend!”
Jacob leaves the house to the sound of Hardbass playing from the living room as Vasily tried to drown out the noise from their neighbor’s yard. The drive to the Fluffy Eugenics lab went as usual; going past a street of empty businesses, then a short distance over the freeway past the subway line, then over to the local college campus where the lab was. He parks his car next to the building where the lab was housed and gets out with his keys in hand. As he walks to the door, he sees Chris standing there, waiting to get inside.
“Morning, Chris” Jacob said somberly.
“Morning, Jacob” Chris said slightly groggy. Jacob rose an eyebrow.
“Long night, eh?”
Chris shook his head. “Haven’t had my coffee yet.”
Jacob huffed with a half-smirk. “Was Starbucks closed today?”
Chris slowly turned to look at him with an irritated look on his face.
“No. My coffee machine broke so now I have to use the one here.”
Jacob put his key in the lock and turned. The lock disengaged, pulling the pin inside the mechanism itself, allowing the door to be opened.
Jacob holds the door open for Chris who briskly walks past Jacob and swipes his id card to get past the second door without Jacob’s help.
Later in the day, most of the interns finished up their classes for the day and arrived at the lab. Chris had been working with the labs two sole paid lab assistants all-day getting things ready for the day’s experiments.
Rebecca was in the lab with one of the assistants; a guy everyone called Crazy Gary who stood looking proud as he took off his latex gloves before throwing them in the trash. Chris was there with an irritated look on his face
“So what was it you wanted me for, Gary?”
Gary pretty much looked like a younger version of Doc Brown from Back to the Future, with the spiky greyish hair, and a slight eccentric streak.
“Ah yes!” Gary closed the trash bin with his foot. “Rebecca, show him our results.” Gary stood there smiling as Rebecca came over to Chris with the clipboard in hand, she hands it to him and he looks over the details of the experiment and its initial aftermath.
Chris looks up at Gary with an eyebrow raised and only says one thing.
“What the hell is this?”
“Something completely different, boss.”
“…A fluffy with…?” Chris was so confused, that he couldn’t finish his sentence so Gary finished it for him.
“A fluffy with three buttocks!”
Chris only stood there as he tried to process what he just heard.
“What?!!” He said.
Gary waved him over. “Have a look for yourself!”
The three of them went over to a glass enclosure on a table with a yellow fluffy in it that did in fact have three buttocks.
“How the hell did he get a third asscheek?!!”
Gary shrugged.
“I thought this test was to help increase fertility in fluffies!!”
“It was!” Gary replied. “But unfortunately, the drug didn’t give him enlarged testes or a longer dong as we hoped.”
Rebecca intervened.
“Instead all the drug did with this fluffy in particular was give him an extra… cheek.”
Chris raised his eyebrow.
“What about the other four? We gave you five fluffies to test on. How did they turn out?”
Rebecca and Gary look at each other and Gary gestures to go look at the next enclosure.
“If you will follow us.”
At the next enclosure, a purple fluffy sat fast asleep in a bed of straw.
“Here’s something completely different for you, Mr. Evans. A fluffy with three eyes!”
Chris had a look of confusion on his face once more.
“That’s it?! That’s all the drug did with these fluffies?!”
“I’m afraid so, Chris.” Rebecca said.
“Two of the last three didn’t have any changes, period.”
“What about the last one?”
“Something completely different than the others.”
“Why do you keep saying that?”
“Saying what?”
“Something completely different. I feel like I’ve heard that somewhere before.”
Gary shrugged and Chris sighed.
“Alright fine, let’s see the last one.”
The three of them went over to the last enclosure.
“Here it is, boss. A fluffy with three noses.”
Chris looked into the enclosure. The fluffy was peach-orange with a white mane. The fluffy looked up at Chris.
“Pwease mistah! Tae fwuffy away fwom meanie munstah! Be nyu da- ACHOOOOO!!”
The fluffy sneezed. As the fluffy’s head rocked back during the sneeze, Chris noticed a pair of strange growths on the fluffy’s legs.
“Fwuffy smeww pwaces nu feew gud… ACHOOOOO!!”
The fluffy sneezed again, this time hard enough to flip on its back, revealing its scrotal mammary glands.
Chris inhaled through his nose and then pinched his bridge in irritation.
“What a waste of chemicals.” He then stared off into space in thought. As he did, the orange fluffy squealed as she tried to right herself off her back.
“Hewp!! Fwuffy nu can geh upsies!! Hewp!!”
Rebecca reached in and rotated the fluffy right-side up.
“Tank ou pwetty wady! Fwuffy wan gib ou huggies!”
The fluffy sat on its hind legs and spread out its front legs waiting to give a hug. Chris glanced back at Rebecca.
“As much as this experiment was a bust, we at least learned something important here.”
Rebecca and Gary turned to face Chris.
“No more using cheap chemical cocktails from the chemistry lab. I’m going to have to call Kritzer for some new chemicals, so we’re going to have to put this project on hold until we can get a new shipment in.”
“What about our current stock?” Gary asked. “We still have a ton of the stuff in storage.”
“Dispose of it all. Those chemicals are garbage. If you and Tom are worried about your pay, you two will still have shit to do. The interns on the other hand…well…”
Chris looks over at Rebecca.
“You guys get to have a couple weeks off from the project since it’ll take a while to get the new drugs so enjoy your new free time, we’ll call you guys when the stuff is here and we’re ready to resume the project.”
Rebecca nodded and left to tell the other two interns the news, while Chris stood with Gary looking over the test subjects of the failed fertility drug experiment.
“Let’s get these five back to their pens, then you go and check the kibble bags. See if we have enough to last the two weeks til the drug shipment gets here. I’ll give Doctor Kritzer a call.”
Gary nodded and started rounding up the five fluffies from their enclosures.
Chris pinched the bridge of his nose as he sighed in frustration.
“I better pray to god that the doc can get us better chemicals… otherwise I might have to update my resume.”
He swiftly turns to walk out of the room…
“Pwease nu weave fwuffy in dawk pwace! Fwuffy am scawed!”
When he heard a fluffy cry out to him. Apparently, Gary forgot one of the five test subjects.
He walks back and finds a blue male fluffy, specifically one of the two test subjects who were unaffected by the failed fertility drug. The fluffy sat up, reaching to him with his front hooves hoping for Chris to pick him up.
“Pwease tae fwuffy to wawm pwace with toysies an speciaw fwiend.”
Chris shook his head wondering why they were testing a fertility drug when the fuzzy bastards were already popping out foals faster than rabbits.
“Come on. Let’s get you back to the pen.”
Putting his irritation aside, he reaches in and picks up the fluffy into the crook of his arm and carries him out. As he put his finger on the light switch, his thoughts go back to the predicament with the chemical supply.
“Things better not get any worse than this.”
He flicks the light and closes the door.