Braden was sick of his parents. He was sick of their holier than thou bullshit and their squeaky clean life. He wanted no part of it. He was planning on moving out when his friend Kyle got them jobs at the arcade in town, but that got put on hold with COVID.
Now his folks were on vacation for three months, and they were paying him to take care of their fluffy pair while they were gone. The mare was ready to give birth, but the plane had to leave she could pop. This left Braden in charge of the birthing, too. All this would be awful if not for one thing.
Two days after his parents left, he got the call from Kyle. He’s got the job, and Kyle’s roommate has moved out. He’s gone, if he wants to be. He could skip out now and ghost the old folks while their pets starve.
But why burn bridges? He can work his job and still come feed them. He can even do it while moving his stuff out and stealing shit his folks won’t notice. Mea while, he keeps their pets alive.
Alive. Not well, and not how his folks want them.
He’d see to that.
Braden, as it turns out, isn’t exactly innocent. Sure, his dad is emotionally distant and too demanding. He thinks believing all the right things means not having to work on yourself because hey I’m not wrong. Yeah, his mom is a moralizing busybody who gets into his business and hates his friends. But Braden’s friends are fucking awful. It’s why he hangs out with them. He’s fucking awful.
But he’s always struck his parents as a more benign awful. The kind you don’t like but can’t hate. Never too destructive or cruel. And he was a little curt with the fluffies, sure, but they’re fluffies! They can’t have a day so bad that a hug and some cheap pasta can’t fix it. They’ll be fine.
Braden isn’t an idiot. His parents aren’t going to miss him much when he moves out. If anything, they’ll mostly be relieved. The fluffies certainly will. They don’t like him. He’s pretty sure the mare is afraid of him.
But now? Now he’s got time. Time and the knowledge that his parents can’t do anything to fuck with him if they realize what he’s done to their pets. If.
“Babbehs cummin! Time fow babbehs! Is babbeh time nao! Hewp Bwoobewwy!”
The foals came easy. Seven in total, a mix of average colors with a couple wingies and pointies for variety. Blueberry was quickly licking them clean and her special friend Springfield was drying them off in his tummy fluff before placing them to feed. He kept the rotation too. All Braden had to do was constantly remind Blueberry to breath and not to go to sleep.
Once they’re all out, mummah and babbehs become better acquainted as she lovingly feeds all of them. Now she handles the rotation, often switching out babbehs who still want milk so their siblings who’ve yet to drink can partake. “Fiwstest miwkies nu mean hab aww da miwkies, haftu shawe!” It’s adorably pathetic and by the time she’s done her foals are full to bursting.
Before long, the whole family was sleeping soundly. Mother and father cuddling belly up in their bed, forming a warm fluffy cushion for their plump babbehs. The siblings are all spread out. They’re newborns, their first fluff not yet grown and their eyes still days from peering open. Because of this, they stay close to the smell they know: Mummah. Soon they’ll know each other and form a pile. But tonight, each babbeh is an island.
Braden quietly retrieves the first babbeh from the cloud he sleeps on. Being born is exhausting, and the babbeh can scarcely even notice he’s been moved. Braden is in the detached garage by the time the foal is awake enough to make nervous peeps. It is placed in a tupperware container full of cotton balls that is itself atop a tupperware container full of hot water. This makes a rough facsimile of the environment he’d just been sleeping in, and he quickly pipes down and returns to dreaming.
It only takes a few more minutes to get all the bruddas and sissies. Next, he retrieves the litterbox from the laundry room and empties it entirely. He’ll need all the space he can find.
He cuts a small hole in the side of the babbeh tub, and affixes a rubber hose, sealing it with cauk. The hose connects to an oxygen tank and a small pump to circulate it through. He cuts a hole in the bottom for another hose, which he connects to a weak vaccum to handle exhaust. It will always draw at 2/3rds the pressure as the oxygen pumps in, so the CO2 ought to be negligible.
By the time he’s done, the babbehs have started to notice how much less warm they have gotten. But it’s too late. They’re placed in the litterbox and the mechanical components are meticulously covered by litter. Braden fills the surrounding box, leaving the now cheeping foals at the bottom of a sort of antlion pit safe in their nice, not quite as warm nesty.
This is of course ruined when Braden pours a full bottle of warm foalmula over them, soaking them and their bedding with nasty smelling fake milk. It’s warmer, but not in a good way. The cotton balls make it easy to avoid drowning, but they’re still blind terrified infants incapable of even asking for help.
And after a few moments of brushing and scooping, they’re buried terrified infants. He can just barely hear them huuhuuing through six inches of litter which, if his math is right, should be light enough not to crush them while also spreading weight enough for them not to be crushed if a fluffy uses the box.
He returns it to its normal position and flicks on the “Nature Sounds” noise machine that his dad got for Blueberry. She’d been a feral and sometimes she had trouble making poopies or peepees when she couldn’t hear pretty wingie friends tweeting or buggie friends singing.
Then he goes to their bed in the living room. Mother and father both blissfully unaware that their children are gone. Off in dreamland. He gets a cup of warm water and dips Springfield’s hoofsie in it. He starts to squirm before clumsily rising and dragstepping off to the laundry room. “Sp…pingfeew gunna…pee…guhhhhh.” He’s barely awake. Good. He repeats the trick on Blueberry with similar success. Hopefully they were on autopilot and won’t realize anything’s amiss.
Braden sleeps through the night, telling him the plan worked. He goes down at 7 AM, earlier than he likes. Still, has to be up before the fluffies. He goes downstairs and there they are. Still asleep. Now face down like they usually are. Seems that habits take over when they aren’t fully conscious.
Braden makes waffles and is halfway through eating them when Springfield comes into the dining room. “Mownin wittwe daddeh. Gud sweepies?” Braden nods. “Yeah, pretty good. How about you? Did the babies sleep well?”
“Yeah, dey sweep pwet…” Springfield stops. Rewinds his mind. “Babbehs.” Braden feigns confusion. “Babies?” The look of horror on Springfield’s face grows. "Whewe…whewe babbehs?" He takes off running back to the living room, yelling to his mate. “Speciaw Fwend! Speciaw Fwend! Whewe babbehs? Whewe dey gu?” Blueberry is awake and quickly grows panicked as she realizes what’s happened. “Nuuuu! Babbehs! Babbehs cum backsies tu mummah! Nee mummah huggies an miwkies!” The topheavy mare starts waddling around in distress with Springfield, checking under objects and in places he’s just looked. She’s not exactly sharp as a tack.
Braden pretends to look, but soon he has to go to work. He leaves the terrified parents to their task after filling their food and water and reminding them where bad poopies go.
After his first shift at the arcade, Braden is feeling good and heading home. He opens the front door to find the circus still in town, so to speak. Blueberry is sobbing as she gallops around in a panic, while Springfield is trying to tear apart the entire living room. He’s mostly just been able to move cushions and pillows, though.
“Still haven’t found them?” The fluffies look sick with worry, unable to speak. “Okay guys. Let’s find them. Good thing mommy and daddy aren’t here or you’d be in huge trouble for losing your babies!” Springfield almost stumbles over backwards while Blueberry cowers and sobs behind her hoofsies. “Nuuuuu! Spwingfeewd gud fwuffy! An…an Bwoobewwy am bestes’ speciaw fwend! An bestes’ mummah! Nu huwt, nu gif meany sowwies! Jus wan fin babbehs gain!” Braden spends a few hours helping them search before it’s time for bed. The fluffies don’t want to stop searching, but Braden refuses to hear it. He leaves them in their bed as he goes to his.
That night the new parents can’t sleep. They quietly try to search to no avail, until they finally give up for the night. “Hafta gu make gud poopies. Spwingfeew cummin? Make gud poopies, tuu?” Blueberry and Springfield were two of a kind in a lot of ways, but one way they differed was in their attitudes towards the litterbox.
Blueberry had grown up in a park herd, she was adopted by Mummah and Daddeh when she was three. For her, poopies are a group activity, and often dangerous to do alone. But Springfield was a domestic. When he was raised, nobody would be at the litterbox if anyone else was using it. But for his beloved, today, he’d indulge her.
He knew this wasn’t her normal silliness. She was scared, and frankly, so was he.
The dejected fluffies walked to the laundry room. Ah. This must be the problem. The noise machine is off. Blueberry is always more scared of the litterbox when she can’t close her eyes and picture a creekbed. They enter the box and-
peep
They pause to ask if the other heard that, but they don’t have to. Each can tell what the other was about to ask, and it’s their answer. They strain their ears again to try to-
peep
There it is again! It’s faint, but it’s…it’s…
"BABBEHS! MUMMAH CUMMIN, BABBEHS! MUMMAH GON SABE AWW BABBEHS!"
Frantically she starts to dig. Springfield tries to help but he’s never been much of a digger. He’s gently brushed aside by Blueberry. “Mummah hab tu du dis, nu wowwy Spwingfeew. Ou aweddy hewp sabe babbehs.”
After a few minutes of clumsy scraping and failure, she manages to devise a way to not have all the litter fill in wherever she digs. In a matter of minutes, she has them. All seven. They’re filthy and sobbing and hungry and she can see their ribs, but they’re alive. All of them.
Braden hears the commotion and gets his game face on before joining them.
“Oh my goodness, you found them! I was going to give you hurties for disobeying me, but this changes everything!” The fluffies were elated, their tears with new meaning. “Hey so what’s up with the litterbox? It looks like you destroyed it.” Blueberry shudders. “Babbehs wuz in scawy bad wittabocks! Babbehs unda da sandy stuff!” She turns to indicate towards Springfield. “Daddeh haftu find! Den mummah haftu make gud diggies fow sabe aww babbehs!” Braden’s face grows grim. “So wait, you buried your babies in your litterbox? Why?” Springfield looked confused. “Wat? Nu, babbehs gu tu wittabocks by…” He trails off. “How…how du babbehs gu tu wittabocks?” He and Blueberry share a puzzled look, and both turn to Braden. “I see.” He strokes his chin pensively, hoping it makes him more credible to the fluffies. “Well they can’t move themselves, and the litterbox didn’t eat them, so you must have done it.” Blueberry is melting down. “Nu! Nu dat nu twoo! Boobawwy am gud mummah! Babbehs jus get wosted! Am found nao!” She lapses into her Feral Pronunciations when she’s freaking out.
“Well unless you think the litterbox tried to eat your babies, I think maybe we don’t want Mom and Dad finding out about this. Agreed?” The fluffies seize this opportunity and nod enthusiastically before resuming the gross process of cleaning their babbehs. They’re coated in a sludge made from litter dust, fake milk, piss, shit, vomit, tears, and bits of actual fucking cotton. It’s hard work, but they do it.
Braden retrieves the litterbox “to clean up this mess” and removes his equipment.
After another week, his folks were back and he was gone. Nothing flashy, nothing mean. Just “Hi, bye.” He barely hears from them anymore, maybe a couple calls a month to check up. During the last one, they dropped an interesting detail.
“Y’know Braden, it’s the damndest thing.”
“It’s like they’re afraid of the litter box. We don’t know what to do.”