“Mummah stiww nu unnastan…”
Christ. Fucking moron. “Look, the pet store is shutting down. We need to get all the inventory together and accounted for. The terms of the bankruptcy are-”
What am I doing?
“All fluffies are going to a…fun…big…housie…place? Anyway, you can’t come unless you bring all your babbehs, so go get them.” The quaking Purple mare calms down considerably. “O…otay Mistah, Miwwy wiww gu get aww babbehs…” Gotta talk to them like they’re…well, like they’re brain damaged cartoons.
Whenever we close one of these places out, the mares instinctively try to hide away their babies. Most of the mares at cheap fly-by-night petstores are captured ferals, so their mothering skills were learned in the context of “oh shit is that literally anything because if it is I’m gonna fucking die.”
Therefore, hidden babbehs.
I don’t have all day to participate in the shittiest Easter Egg hunt ever, so I’ve started trying to get the mares to gather them. It works okay, I guess.
Milly is the last mare from this store. Poor girl thinks she’s going to another store or shelter. No sense telling her we brought a meatwagon, she’ll find out after it’s too late to run, just like all the rest.
. … … … … …
“Hafta gu find awwwww babbehs!” The plucky and excitable mummah clomps into the playroom where she’d hidden her children. She runs around the room calling for her babbehs, and they all come out of hiding! What good babbehs she has, su smarty! Clever, clever babbehs.
“Mummah teww babbehs hide fwum munstahs. Munstah gu way? Babbehs nu hafta hide nu mow?” She beams at her big brown wingie babbeh, proud to have raised such wise children. “Das wite! Nicey hoomin am hewe fow take aww fwuffies tu nyu howsie! Wet’s gu, babbehs! Cwimb mummah pwetty fwuff!” Her five children all started cheering and hugging. They love riding mummah!
Once they’d scaled their mother, she proudly walked back out to the lobby where-
“SCREEEEEEEE! NU TAKE BABBEHS! BABBEHS NEEEEE MUMMAH!” Oh no! That sounds like a mummah! Milly looks around frantically, but she doesn’t see a mummah! But she’s scared, and a scared fluffy seeks help from their most trusted human.
And Milly is very trusting.
. … … … … …
“Christ, Jim. I told you to shut them up! I’ve still got one I’m waiting on!” Fucking fluffies. Hell, it’s mostly Jim’s fault. He knows we don’t separate families until we’re en route to the dropoff. This is why.
“Mistah! Mistah! Hewp Miwwy!” Oh, speak of the Devil.
The panicked mare comes waddling out the front door screaming for help. She must have heard Jim’s mistake. Lucky for me, she’s dumb enough to think I’m not somehow involved.
She sees me and starts waddling even harder, being careful to keep her babies on her back. She’s clearly a loving mother, even loves her useless kids with boring colors. Mares like this are why places like this close. Dumb fucks don’t even know what money is. They throw a fit if something bad happens to their babies, but unlike good fluffies, these needy shits even flip out when it’s a runt or a poopy. Ridiculous.
Damn. She’s got five foals and only one is a decent color. Like a pale orange with a maroon mane. I make a mental note to grab it when I get a chance.
. … … … … …
There’s the human! He can save her babbehs! Milly breathes a sigh of relief as she babbles her fear away to the big friendly human. He even gives her gentle upsies! “Cooooo, fankyu fow swow upsies! Miwwy wub nice mistah! Nice mistah wub Miwwy?” When the human doesn’t answer, Milly thinks he may not have heard her. But as she tries to repeat herself, he opens the van.
Dozens of fluffy mummahs line the walls in cages. Cages they do not fit in. Now that she’s closer, she can hear them all. “Nuuuu! Wan babbehs!” “Huuuhuuuuuu wai huwt soon mummah?” “Pwease wet fwuffy gu! Nu wike meanie cagey howsie! Tuu smaww!” “Babbehs? Babbehs! Mistah, hewp mummah! Babbehs hab huwties fwom meanie cage!”
As she looks down to the last one she heard, she sees two babbehs being smashed into the cage by their mummah. She’s sobbing, both from pain and the emotional agony of feeling her babbehs dying as they gasp for air and try not to be crushed. It is at this moment she feels him pluck one of her babbehs from her back.
No.
No!
“Wet Miwwy gu! Nu wan huwtie pwace! Nu wan babbehs haf wowstest owwies!” She puffed her cheeks out like a Smarty so the meanie munstahs will know she means business. “Put Miwwy down wite nao ow Miwwy gif sowwy poopies!”
She is answered with a solid punch to her snout. Blood and teeth spray everywhere.
“OWWWWWIES! WAI HUUUUUWT? NU GIF HUWTIES TU MUMMAH!” Her captor didn’t relent. He punched her two more times and flung her and her babbehs into the van. She lands on two of them who are killed instantly. Before she can mourn, another human has roughly grabbed her up and socked her a few more times for good measure.
A bloody, broken, and sobbing Milly is thrown into a cage on her back. She can’t feel any of her babbehs now, aside from the one whose corpse is still mostly tangled in her back fluff. She starts to cry but is interrupted.
“Mummah? Babbehs scawed!” No! That’s her babbeh! “Mummah nu can hewp! Babbehs wun way! Wun way fwum munstah hoomins!” The human in the back of the now moving van scoffs. “Run where? Besides, we don’t need them for anything.” A spark of hope entered her life, but it would be the last she’d ever know.
“Weawwy? Nu wan babbehs? Can…can wet babbehs gu?” He scoffs again, louder. “I mean yeah, I could do that. Won’t, though.”
Before she can ask what he means, she sees him come into view above her. Since she’s on her back she can basically only look straight up. On the top row, there wasn’t a fluffy above her. Just the top of the cage where she could now see the perplexingly meanie and nice mister. And her two remaining babbehs! “Pwease, gif mummah babbehs! Babbehs need mummah fow miwkies and wub! Need huggies an gud upsies an stowytime an sketties an-”
And then she sees her babbehs being smashed against the roof of her cage. One is immediately decapitated, and his head lands in her mouth. In a panic, she swallows it. This leads her to start retching on herself which, given her position, almost immediately waterboards her with her own vomit.
The last thing she sees before passing out from pain and exertion is her pretty brown babbeh, clinging to life atop her prison, watching his tummy sketties fall out as he slips further and further from this world.
It is the last time she will see any of her children, present or future, ever again.
