Be careful what you wish for. Sometimes the things we wish for most arrive in unexpected ways.
Two figures clad in all black moved with steady and determined pace. Sunrise had not crested over the urban sprawl, but already they had filled about a dozen large plastic garbage bags just from this single alleyway.
They wore black surgical masks over thick kn95 dust masks. They wore purple dish gloves taped to their black denim work shirt sleeves, and thick denim work pants tucked into thick socks and taped to their boots. Black brimmed caps shaded their eyes which was the only sliver of bare flesh visible.
The narrow alleyway was congested with foul smelling trash, cardboard boxes from the restaurants on either side, and an overflowing dumpster was rendered inaccessible by the mountains of refuse. The stench was enough to give inexperienced passersby a fit of vomiting. To someone unfamiliar with the foul air around a feral fluffy colony, the stink seemed to linger in their noses and follow them home. The olfactory trauma often lasted hours, and no amount of washing would make the perception of the smell go away.
All of this exacerbated, of course, by the overwhelming green pallor of death.
A day before, the stupid business owners nearby had put out poisoned bait for the fluffy pony colony, wth no thought for the consequences. The smarties died first, foaming at the mouth and writhing in agony, projectile shitting all over everything. As for the rest of the herd, hunger overrode their paltry survival instincts and it took less than 12 hours for a hundred or so ten pound corpses to accumulate around the bait bowls.
Then the rats. The rats swarmed the fresh meat littering the alleyway, scattering body parts into an unimaginable scene of carnage. Then the rats too, began to die, and their corpses added to the mountains of fluffy death. Stray dogs and cats picked at the carrion, spreading the filthy, stinking, bloody mess up and down the entire block. Then these animals, too, began to die from the poison.
It only took the idiot humans who left the poison about 12 hours to realize the horror sitting outside their restaurant kitchen doors, and the smell polluted the air for a kilometer in every direction.
This is where the two figures in black come in. “Ya, that’s the trouble with shitrats, you might only see one or two, but the whole colony can be dozens. I’m guessing by your description theres about fifty in the alleyway, times five kilograms each, plus the contaminated garbage…. that’s about our full hazmat truck. My apprentice can clear it in 2 days. OH? Oh! Rush is triple our rate. We can get a team and do THAT in 8 hours.”
The younger apprentices loaded the dump truck with the thick, bright red plastic bags. Most of an apprentice’s work was getting used to the smells and sights of the grisly job. sit back and observe. The two seasoned veterans picked through the trash, able to distinguish the rotten fluff from the wads of fabric and wilted cardboard.
“Ey…. Ey Alex! What would you say if I bought you a pure white alicorn? Hadn’t you always wanted one?”
“I’d say you are full of fluffy shit, Russ.”
But sure enough. Not only was it alive, it was a pure white alicorn with mismatched eyes… and a disturbing lack of fluff. As hairless as a ballsack, with only a few thin wisps here and there, cheeping and shivering in the morning air.
“oh shit! its alive?!? fuck. Its going to go hypothermic and die …”
“Alex youre so soft, you fuckin hugboxer. what the fuck are you gonna do, raise the inbred runt?” You know those things dont live long, even when they aren’t alleyway shitrats.”
Alex made a little nest in a paper fast food bag, lined with the cleanest bits of paper and refuse from nearby, and placed the little shivering creature inside it.
The little deformed alicorn was male. Eyes freshly open, not quite a week old. Very lively despite being deathly cold and hungry. Alex dripped a little of his protein shake onto its malformed muzzle. The tiny foal eagerly licked his snout, and looked up at his savior.
chirp chirp!
Alex smiled, “ I did always want an alicorn.”
