Joe was miserable.
If there was one word to describe the man known to the world as Joe Vanzetti, it would indeed be ‘miserable’.
And why would he not be? Was there any real reason not to be miserable?
His wife left him for another man years ago.
His son moved overseas and barely even calls anymore.
And as if to cap it all off, he works a dead end job at an IT call center.
Faced with these factors, is misery not the right and proper state of mind?
And so, with another miserable day behind him, Joe was making his way home. It would of course be false to claim that there was no joy or respite whatsoever in Mr. Vanzetti’s daily existence. Indeed, one of the few moments of contentment he reserved for himself, was on a friday night, when he could get home, drink some beer, and listen to his old Uriah Heep CDs. And so it was, that today was indeed a friday, and Joe could look forward to at least one fleeting moment of serenity.
Mummah wub babbehs~
Babbehs wub mummah~
Dwink wots o’ miwkies~
Gwow up big an’ stwong~
A dissonant tune, sung in a childlike voice entered his ears. The saccharine lyrics combined with the evident tone deafness of the singer and what seemed to be a debilitating speech impediment served on the whole to create an entirely unpleasant experience for anyone unfortunate enough to hear it.
Which of course, Joe was.
Joe knew of course, without much thinking what it was. The telltale sound of a fluffy “mummah song” was a familiar thing indeed to anyone living in the city, as despite the best efforts of both exterminators and natural selection the number of fluffies only seemed to increase.
Joe turned towards the direction the sound was coming from, and immediately happened upon a dirty alleyway, a favourite haunt of all stray fluffies. On any other day, Joe would probably have just ignored it, after all, why waste time on fluffies when he could just go home, get drunk and listen to some classic rock tunes?
And yet, today, the tune of the mummah song seemed to almost be taunting him, it’s vomit-inducingly sweet lyrics and tone of voice dripping with love was akin to a cruel joke. What right did some fucking shitrat have to be happy? What right did it have to act as though life could be joyful, and that love was something to be given and received freely?
It pissed him the hell off.
And so, making his way to a telltale cardboard box lying next to an alley wall, he looked upon a happy little family of fluffs - a mother, and her three foals. As he drew near, the mother was roused from her song by the sound of Joe’s footsteps. Unlike most stray fluffs, the mother did not react with fear or apprehension at the approach of an unknown human, instead, she merely beamed up at him with an utterly sincere smile, and greeted him.
“Hewwo nice mistah! Fwuffy am happies to meet yu!”
Joe said nothing for a moment, merely taking in this quartet of fluffies. The mother was a fairly unremarkable green with a matching lime mane. Of her foals, there was one with the same exact combination of fur and mane colours, an obvious candidate for the usual “bestest babbeh” nonsense. The second foal was, like his mother and sibling, unremarkable, his coat a dark blue complimented by a red mane. The final foal of the trio of siblings was the spitting image of the oh so common “poopie”, being completely uniform brown.
Joe turned his attention to the mare, and greeted her, his voice dripping with barely concealed contempt that the fluffy in question was still too dim to pick up on.
“How’s it goin’ fluffy? These your babies?”
The mare simply continued to smile at him, as she nodded her head.
“Yus! Dese am fwuffy babbehs!”, she declared, as she gestured towards her young with a sweeping motion of her forelimb.
The foals were slightly more apprehensive at the strange man’s presence, but nonetheless greeted him, with a round of hewwos.
The mother seemed very happy indeed that her foals had so politely introduced themselves. And she couldn’t help but declare.
“Babbehs am bestest babbehs! Mummah wub aww babbehs!”
At this, Joe couldn’t help but sneer.
“You say you love all your babies? Please, I’m sure you love the green one most of all, cause it looks just like you. And conversely you and it probably make the brown one eat your shit all the time just cause it’s a ‘poopie’ colour.”
The mare looked horrified at this, and vehemently began shaking her head.
“Nu! Mummah wub aww babbehs! An’ bwonie babbeh am nu poopie!”
Joe was slightly taken aback by this, while fluffies on the whole were certainly as loving and friendly as the old advertisements marketed them as, strays were somewhat of a different matter. The pressures of a life they weren’t designed for caused certain behavioral issues to manifest such as the infamous smarties and bitch mares.
Still, the presence of a genuinely caring stray, only seemed to make Joe hate it more. Where did this piece of shit stray get off acting like it’s actually capable of love - genuine love? The scowl on his face only grew as he ruminated.
The mare for her part, seemed to pick up on Joe’s worsening mood, and felt… bad for him. She saw a man who looked angry, but also sad. So she decided to try and cheer him up.
“Nice mistah nu be saddies! Wook! Babbehs am dancie babbehs fo yu!”
Indeed, as Joe looked down he saw the trio of foals sit on their haunches, and being waving their upper bodies around in a fashion that they probably considered rhythmic. As the foals waved around, giggling happily, Joe simply felt nauseous. He couldn’t stand this sickeningly saccharine display any longer, so he decided to put an end to it.
In one swift motion, he raised his right foot, and stomped on the monochrome foal. In response both the mother and her other foals shat themselves in fright and began to cry out loudly. The monochrome foal for its part did not die instantly, it’s spine was shattered, and the latter half of its body was severly mangled, but it cling to life stubbornly.
“NUUUUUUUUU! WAI MISTAH HUWT WITTWE BABBEH!?”, the mother screeched, and reached out to pick up its rapidly expiring child. As her legs took hold of the crippled monochrome foal, it began to screech out in pain - its body being moved evidently causing immense agony.
The mother merely tried to hug it, which caused it to only squirm more and more, until it suddenly stopped moving altogether.
“Babbeh? Nu pwease babbeh nu go foweba sweepies!”
As the mother cried for her dead child, the remaining two merely hugged eachother and cried.
The violent killing seemed to bring some sense of sick satisfaction to Joe, as he looked upon the tragic scene, but it wasn’t enough. He wanted them to feel that the world was a miserable place, and that their lives be as miserable as his. Suddenly, a twisted idea came to his mind, one that he immediately decided to make into reality.
He roughly grabbed a hold of the mare’s face, and held her still, causing her to drop the mangled corpse of the foal. “I’m going to kill one more of your babies, but because I like to be fair, I’ll give you the choice of who I kill.”
As Joe let go of the mare’s face, she quickly began to sputter, “Pwease mistah wet fwuffies go! Nu wan’ babbehs to go foweba sweepies!”
“If you don’t choose, I’ll just kill them both.”, said Joseph as his ultimatum.
At this, the mare could do little else, but cry. She sobbed as she couldn’t even conceive choosing one babbeh over the other. She sobbed because she knew that Joe would kill them both if she didn’t. The impossibility of the choice she was presented with made her utterly despondent. How could something so cruel, so utterly unfair happen to her? WHY was this even happening to her? What did she do? Was she a bad fluffy? Were her foals bad fluffies? How could they be? - They were just little babbehs. On and on her thoughts swam in a circle.
Eventually, she seemed to reach some kind of emotional plateau, and she directed her gaze at her two remaining foals, desperately hugging each other and crying out that they didn’t want to go forever sleepies.
Suddenly, she had an idea. Something that she’d consider completely out of the question in any normal circumstance, but which had been awoken by what was at stake.
“Mistah… maybeh onwy gib mummah foweba sweepies? Wet babbehs go?”
“NUUUUU! NU WAN MUMMAH GO FOWEBA SWEEPIES!”, cried her foals in unison.
Joe was honestly impressed, for the mother to sacrifice herself for her foals like this, was truly sublime.
“No. One of your babies must die.”, he said, not moved in the slightest.
The mother was once more crushed, her one last desperate hope had been dashed so definitively. And yet, as she despaired, her resolved to do the unthinkable seemed to manifest itself. She looked at her babies, and slowly pushed them apart from one another.
She looked at her greenie babbeh, the colour of grassies and leafies that were so pretty in warm times.
She looked at her brownie babbeh, who she thought looked like chocolate, something she’d once heard described as only being second to sketties in tastiness.
She considered their chances of survival. The greenie babbeh was a colour that other fluffies also thought was pretty, plus she was always the best at hiding in grassies and bushes. The brown babbeh was just as pretty in her mind… but she knew that other fluffies didn’t always think the same. The mare thought that if something bad ever happened to her, or if she wasn’t around, a bad smartie or toughie might make her num poopies, or be an enfie mare… She didn’t want that for her.
She hugged both foals once last time, then turned her head up at Joe to speak her decision out loud.
“Mummah choose…”, she held back tears for moment, “Mummah choose bwonie babbeh to go foweba sweepies”
The corners of Joe’s mouth rose slightly in a barely perceptible smile. He nodded at the mare, and raised his foot…
And promptly crushed the green foal instead, this time aiming for the head, exploding the soft cranium with a small “pop!”.
The mare seemed to freeze. It’s mind couldn’t keep up with what had happened. Joe took this moment to lean close and say to her:
“Now your only baby will forever know you wanted her to die.”
Joe began to laugh as he walked away, leaving the agonized wails of the fluffy mare behind him in the alley.