You are Cupcake, a pretty pink fluffy. Your daddeh kept your bestest babbeh and threw you and your other babbehs in the trash, because you were a bad fluffy and didn’t listen. Your babbehs escaped the trash, but you had to stay; daddeh put you in the trash, and you wanted to be a good fluffy, so you stayed. Some hoomins came to take the trash and they threw you in with the trush. Then it got dark, and there was a loud, scary noise, and you got squished tighter and tighter and tighter, and you couldn’t breathe, and it HURT, and… and…
There is no and. You don’t know what happened after that.
“Ah, dammit, Carlos! I told you, when somebody tosses a fluffy in the trash, you don’t take it! That shit goes in the red bin for biological waste, not with the regular garbage! That shit’s gotta be burned! Get rid of that before it gets mixed in with the rest of the shit in the dump! We don’t need another fucking cholera outbreak.”
You shrug; you don’t particularly care about your job as a garbage man. They pretend to pay you, and you pretend to work, doing the absolute bare minimum to slide by without getting fired or punished with a pay cut. You also don’t really care about fluffies; you don’t actively hate them like some of your co-workers do, but you also don’t like them. They’re just there, really. So when you got one in the trash that tried telling you it was sorry and didn’t want to be a bad fluffy, you just accepted that its owner threw it out like the rest of the trash and you tossed it into the truck and compacted it like everything else. Policy? Biohazardous waste from decomposing fluffies? Who gives a rat’s ass?
You grab the limp, broken, bleeding ball of pink fuzz by one leg, walk out of your supervisor’s sight, and then toss it onto a stack of garbage and walk off. You need a beer.
You’re Steve, a sanitation worker. You have a very important job. If you and your co-workers stopped doing your job for just one week, the whole city would be overflowing with trash it couldn’t get rid of. There’d be a huge boom in pest populations like rats and cockroaches, disease would become a problem as people came in contact with unsanitary conditions on a regular basis, and trash cans and dumpsters would be overflowing on every street. It wouldn’t be the end of civilization, not like if the power or water went out forever, but it’d be pretty bad. So you know you have an important job, even if it doesn’t pay much and people tend not to respect you, and you always try your best to do a good job.
You’ve just clocked out and are heading to the parking lot so you can drive home, when something bright pink laying amidst otherwise dull, earth-toned garbage catches your eye. It’s a dead, mangled fluffy. What’s that doing here? Those are supposed to go in the red bins for biological waste, get picked up by a different truck, and taken to the incenerator on the other side of the dump. That shouldn’t be here, and it’s a major policy violation for it to be here. You put your gloves back on and pick it up by its fluff to carry it to the incenerator.
You kinda feel sorry for the poor things; it looks like it was hit by a car, and reminds you of your cat. He was a big, fat mackerel tabby with greenish-yellow eyes, very laid back, and fifteen years old when he died; positively ancient for a cat, but still in excellent health and showing no signs of slowing down in his old age. He’d taken to sleeping on the rear tire of your Jeep for some reason, and you always had to shoo him out of there before you went somewhere. Then one day you were in a hurry to leave and didn’t check for him, and he was asleep when the engine started and didn’t get out in time when you backed out of the driveway… you held his poor, broken body in your eyes and tried to comfort him in his last moments as he spasmed in agony and cried. He’d outlived his mother by more than a decade, and he tried to suckle your fingertip like he was a kitten in his last moments, needing that source of comfort. He died in your arms a minute after you crushed him under your tires.
This fluffy looks about the same as your cat, and you can’t help but feel a pang of sorrow and regret at the reminder. You feel bad for the poor thing. You guess someone ran it over and tossed it in the trash.
You’re halfway to the incenerator when the ‘dead’ fluffy in your hand spasms once and makes a wet, sickening rattle as it tries to draw air through lungs punctured by its own ribs.
Oh shit, it’s still alive?!
You can’t deal with this. You can’t go through this twice. You have to try to save the poor thing, but you can’t do it yourself and you have no idea who in the area does veterinary work on fluffies. But you know someone who might; that one fluffy exterminator you talk to when he comes to dispose of the fluffies he’s killed. He gave you his number when you said you’d look at his Bronco for him and find out what was wrong with it.
You whip out your phone and hit dial.
“Mr. Akins, I have some very bad news. Your fluffy has some extremely traumatic crushing injuries. Both lungs were punctured and partly collapsed, the spine is broken, the hips and legs are crushed, there’s some skull injuries and damage to the liver… I might be able to save her, but it’s very unlikely. I’ll have to ampute at least her rear legs, and the rest of the injuries are just so extensive… Even if she survives both her injuries and the operation, her quality of life will be very badly effected. Mr. Akins, it simply wouldn’t be cost effective. The operation is very unlikely to succeed, and is going to cost quite a bit. I think it might be better to simply say goodbye to your pet and get a new fluffy to replace her.”
“No. I have to try.”
“All right. I’ll do my best, but I make no guarantees.”
You’re Cupcake. You have a new home and a new daddeh. He loves you very much and takes care of you. You’re very, very sad though. You miss your babbehs. You miss your old home and old daddeh, who doesn’t love you anymore because you were a bad fluffy and didn’t listen. Most of all, your miss your weggies. You only have one of your front weggies now; the rest are gone. New daddeh made a thing you can lay on that has wheels, and you can roll yourself with your one weggie almost as fast as you could walk, but it’s not the same and your one weggie gets tired. You can’t play, you trouble getting into the litter box and make bad poopies (even though new daddeh says it’s ok and he isn’t made about poopies, you still feel bad. You want to be a good fluffy so badly.), and even though the nice hoomin in the white not-fluff said you could go home, you still hurt everywhere. You feel very not pretty now.
Sometimes, your new daddeh takes you to see some other fluffies and their hoomin daddeh. The two younger fluffies, about the same size and age as your babbehs, don’t much care about you, but they’re not meanies; they just aren’t interested because you can’t play with them. The old, yellow fluffy likes you though; she knows you hurt, on the inside in a way that makes you sad, and she sits with you and cuddles. That’s nice, but it’s not the same as a fluff pile with your babbehs.
You know your new daddeh loves you, but you just can’t help feeling sad and crying sometimes. You want your babbehs. You want your weggies. You just hurt so much now.
You’re Stacy. You stepped out on your porch to go to class one day and found three adorable little fluffies sleeping on your porch! They woke up and saw you and cried about how they were cold, and hungry, and they missed their mummah and sissie and their daddeh didn’t love them anymore and threw them in the trash. It just broke your heart, seeing how sad they were, and you brought them inside and cleaned them up and fed them.
Now you have two fluffies, Shamrock and Lemondrop. They’re good fluffies; you never owned a fluffy before, but they were just so cute and pathetic you had to keep them. They’re more high maintenance than the dog you had in high school, but they’re very well behaved. You’re glad you have them; you moved out of your parents house a few months ago and living by yourself was pretty awful. Now you have someone to share your home with!
The other fluffy, Honeybun, went to live with your little sister, who still lives with your parents. Honeybun is kinda bratty, but still well-behaved. Your sister saw your fluffies and immediately fell in love with them too, so you let her have Honeybun. You always heard fluffies were difficult and messy, but yours have been wonderful little sweethearts so far.
You curl up on the couch with your fluffies and turn on the tv, glad to have a day off from classes before the mid-term exams.
You’re Snowball. You’re the bestest fluffy! You were sad when daddeh put your mummah, brudda, and sissies in the sowwy box and took them away, never to be seen again, but it’s allright. You still have daddeh, and daddeh loves you!
Lately though, you’ve been lonely. You have no fluffies to play with while daddeh is gone, and being by yourself is scary and lonesome. You wish you had a friend. But what you’d really like most, you decide, is some babbehs of your own! You’ll be a good mummah and make daddeh happy when he sees what a good mummah you are for your babbehs, and he won’t take them away or put you in the sowwy box, or anything! Not like mummah.
You get special huggies from a stallion while playing at the fluffy park when daddeh isn’t looking. You want to surprise him when he sees your new babbehs! He’ll be so surprised and happy! You have the babbeh feel in your tummeh right now! You curl up and sigh in happiness while daddeh holds you in his lap and strokes your fluff.
He’ll be so happy!
