“Caramel! Time for breakfast!” You stirred, bundled up in soft blankets. Your nose twitched, the smell of maple syrup wafting its way into your senses. Waffles, maybe? Or perhaps your mummah was making french toast. You hoped it was french toast. Stretching out your hooves you felt the soft blankets part, the cooler air of your saferoom entering your little burrow. Just a little bit longer, you thought to yourself, tucking your hooves back into the warmth.
“Caramel! C’mon sleepyhead, Mommy has to go to work!” Your mummah’s footsteps started up the hall, you slowly cracked your eyes open…
To remember the hell you were in.
“WAKE UP SHITRATS!” The gruff voice of your captor called. All around you fluffy voices screamed and sobbed. The harsh lights flipped on, blinding you. You tried to cover your face with your hooves but… you had none. Just the scarred stubs that ached when you tried to move them. Your cries joined the rabble as your eyes adjusted.
You were in a cage, made of thin wire twisted together and just big enough to hold your legless form. Your rear end hung out the back, your tail pinned up to the top. Your head hung out of a hole at the front, over a filthy feeding trough. On either side of you were other fluffies, packed in equally small cages and lamenting their lack of legs. Fluffies were stacked above and below you as well, you felt the bad poopies of the ones above occasionally land on your back. You had no idea how high they went up above or how far they went down below you, but across from you you could see another stack of fluffies in tiny cages going from the floor to the ceiling, far too many for you to count.
“TIME TO EAT!” The monster that brought you here yelled, banging a metal spoon against his bucket. One by one he started filling the trough in front of every cage with a thick greenish mush. You hated these nummies, if you could even call them that. Every fluffy in here did. When you first got here you tried to ask for better nummies, the monster man hit you with his spoon over and over until you ate. You could taste your booboo juice mixing in with the slop, even that wasn’t enough to cover the taste. Bitter, sour, repulsive goo.
You missed your mummah. You missed your leggies. You missed sleeping in your warm nestie, in your wonderful saferoom… You wished you had never run away.
“Nu! Cawamew wan toasties!” you shouted, turning your nose up at the bowl of oatmeal your mummah had made.
“Caramel please, I don’t have time for french toast today.” Your mummah stood with her hands on her hips. “I put cinnamon and maple syrup in it! It’s good, I promise!”
“NU!” You puffed your cheeks at her. “WAN TOASTIE NUMMIES!”
“Well, that’s what you’re getting. If you don’t like it you can be hungry. Mommy doesn’t have time for this.”
“AM WOWSTEST MUMMAH. NU WUB CAWAMEW!” You stomped your hooves on the soft tiles of your saferoom.
“Now that’s not very nice.”
“NU CAWE!”
Your mummah crossed her arms, frowning at you. “You apologize for that right now, missy.”
“NU! NU AM SOWWY! WAN TOASTIE!” You spun around and bucked over the oats, spilling them across the floor. Your mummah gasped.
“That’s it, no sketti tonight.”
“…Wha?”
“No sketti. In fact, no sketti tomorrow either.”
“CAWAMEW WAN SKETTIES!!”
“Sketties are for good fluffies. We’ll talk about this when I get home.”
You didn’t hear your mummah leave over your tantrum, when you finally wound down you found yourself in a puddle of cold oatmeal and tears. How could she take your sketties away?! You ate sketti every night! You puffed your cheeks. Your mummah didn’t know what you were worth.
With a creak your saferoom door slowly opened. Mummah must not have closed it all the way. This happened sometimes, usually it meant you would get to take a nap in her bed and, if you could find the remote, watch some tv. When she came home she would praise you for being such a good fluffy while she was gone and give you huggies and treats.
Today though? You were a fluffy on a mission.
Through the kitchen you had a small fluffy door giving you access to the yard. Normally you were only allowed out when mummah was home, but what did she know? You would go find someone else to give you sketties and french toast, and your mummah would have to beg you to come back.
Squeezing yourself though the gap in the gate, you thought about how smart you were. Your mummah would learn to appreciate you, and you would get all the sketties and toast you could eat.
“Cawamew am pwettiest, smawtest, bestest fwuffy!” You said to yourself, as you started trotting down the road.
With a sickening plop, the first spoonful of the rancid “nummies” landed in your trough. You sobbed looking up at the munstah man with his scary mask. “Pwease…”
The spoon came down hard on your nose. “Shut up and eat.” Another spoonful dropped in, then another, and another. You stifled a sob as he moved on to the next fluffy down the line. Looking down into the goo, you could see a tuft of grey fluff. It wasn’t the first time you had seen something like that. You knew that this was made, at least partially of other fluffies. The monster man said so himself, when the mare below you started muttering “wan die” over and over.
“To the grinder with you! If you wont produce for us, you can feed the ones that will.” He said, ignoring the screams of the fluffies all around him.
With a deep breath you began to eat, choking it down as fast as you could. Nothing good ever came from asking the monster man for something else but… you couldn’t help it sometimes.
You were running as fast as your little legs could carry you. Behind you was a meanie fluffy, a red and white pegasus, shouting about making you his poopy enfie mare. Your heart pounded in your ears, you were looking desperately for somewhere to hide, someone to save you.
Down the road you saw a man getting out of a white munstah. Digging into your energy reserves you pushed past the pain in your hooves. “HEWP! SAVE CAWAMEW FWOM BAD FWUFFY”
The man reached into his van and grabbed a not-sorrybox, and opened the door. You darted into it, the man slammed the door shut behind you. You watched through the wire mesh as he used a sorry stick to grab the mean stallion and throw him in a similar cage. He picked you up, and held the not-sorry box up so he could see you.
“You’re a domestic, aren’t you?”
“… Fwuffy am Cawamew.”
He chuckled. “I mean, you have a home, a daddy, right?”
“Cawamew hab mummah…” your voice caught in your throat.
“Okay, I’ll be sure to make a note of that. You rest easy, I’m gonna get you home safe.”
“Good god it stinks in here.” You looked up from your slop to see another man, this one without a scary mask.
“Yeah, that’s why I wear the respirator, what’s up?” The monster dropped his spoon into the bucket with a plop.
“Boss says we have to look through the stock for domestics again.” He handed the monster man a stack of papers.
“Again? I just did last week.”
“I know, its bullshit, but he says its the law or something.”
The monster man rolled his eyes as he took the papers. “None of these worthless shit factories have owners. Look at ‘em.” He pointed at you, and you shrunk back into your cage hoping to avoid his wrath. “We don’t get good colors or anything that’s worth any sort of money.”
The man chuckled. “Yeah, I figured. But boss said I had to tell you, and I did. My job’s done.” He left, and the monster man stuffed the papers in his pocket. As they crumpled, you could see the face of a smiling fluffy, along with some big words you couldn’t read.
“Says this one is a domestic but…” A man looked into your not-sorry box, curling his lip in disgust. “Orange on tan? Ew.”
“Note must be for the red one, he’s been whining for his ‘mummah’ since we got him.” A lady somewhere else replied. “Set that one over here, we’ll send it to the manure plant.”
You were dropped roughly somewhere, and suddenly everything was dark. You sobbed as quietly as you could, your mummah said that quiet fluffies were good fluffies. You didn’t want french toast anymore, or sketties even. You’d be happy to just go home. Curling up tightly in the back of your not-sorry box, you started to suck your hoof. Mummah would find you soon.
Your mummah never found you. The monster man took your leggies, shoved you in a box, and hit you until you ate the gross slop. You make bad poopies on all the fluffies below you, and all the fluffies above you do the same. All you could do was cry quietly into your trough, hoping that something would break the monotony.
Wherever your mummah was, you hoped she knew how sorry you were. You would eat this slop for every meal if it meant you could just go home.