“Alright, Mr. X.” Said a CIA handler to his fluffy subject. Said fluffy was an obnoxious looking blue and green stallion who had all the qualities they needed for this mission.
“You’ve got everything you need. And…the big secret. You won’t tell anyone your big secret, now will you?” The handler asked the fluffy in a low voice. Puffing out his cheeks, the stallion stomped his hooves around.
“Dis am fwuffy’s wand naow! An’ hab bigges’ secwet! Nebah teww dummehs!” Chuckling to himself, the handler watched as the smarty stomped away with a flick of his tail. Oh the terrorists had faced many things, but they hadn’t faced this yet. This desert hellhole was about to become slightly more annoying.
+++++
Mr. X had once been named Rocket but ever since he’d been wrangled out of some old lady’s front yard and given super secret training by the dummehs, he’d gotten a new and more mysterious name.
The place he’d been let loose in was sandy, smelly, and had lots of dummy babbehs in it. They spoke in a language he didn’t understand, didn’t have skettis, and were pretty much pissing him off to be around.
Wandering into an open air street market, Mr. X stared down a guy selling pottery on a brightly colored blanket. Charging up, he gave one of the pots sorry-hoofsies for no particular reason!
When the guy yelled at him, he just stuck his tongue out. “Dis am fwuffy’s wand naow. Shu’ up!”
Nostrils flaring, he found himself being drawn over to a kebab stand. Headbutting himself against one of the vendor’s legs, he started pulling at his robes angrily. “Gib nummies naow! Am bestest fwuffy an’ yew wisten naow!”
While the hellgremlin was causing trouble in the bazaar, some dude who was maybe a bad guy or a good guy depending on your political views noticed him. One, it was kind of strange to see a fluffy in this part of the world. For another, he was wearing a vest with ‘CIA’ emblazoned over it.
Anyways, it went without saying: Mr X got a black sack shoved over his head and was tossed into the back of a Toyota pick-up truck.
+++++
When the black sack got pulled off his head, he found that he’d been tied up. Now, you could say that he should have known that to begin with but Mr X happened to be a giant dumbass. The room he found himself in was a ramshackle shack that smelled like poopies and had a bunch of buggies crawling all over the floor.
Some brown guy who looked kind of scary walked up to the fluffy out of the darkness. Mr X puffed his cheeks out.
“Mistah X nu am teww YEW bestest secwets. Dummeh. Hab suuuu bigges’ secwet an’ nebah teww YEW.” Sneering up to the brown guy, he farted loudly.
Well, this was no normal brown man. This happened to be a terrorist who specialized in torture. He even had a cool nickname…The Jackal.
“Why not tell me what your secret is?” This torturer asked Mr X nicely. After all, fluffies were well known even here for being pretty gullible and easily falling for kindness. “You wouldn’t want to make The Jackal angry, would you?”
If he was with the CIA, surely he would know the name and what kind of trouble he was currently in if he didn’t cooperate. The agency had found plenty of their best men, or what remained of them, with him taking credit for it.
Instead of cooperation, though, Mr X went cross-eyed. “Da Jack-howe.”
The Jackal gave a puff of breath, finding himself mocked rather than cooperated with. “Jackal.” He corrected the fluffy.
“Jack-howe.” Mr X repeated back.
A fist slammed into the stallion’s stomach, making him puke up what food he’d been given before leaving the secret CIA headquarters in town.
++++++
Two hours into a session which consisted of Mr X being slapped, punched, kicked, and burned with cigarettes. The fluffy was getting whoozy from all of the abuse.
“Tell me now what your secret is!” The Jackal demanded. It’d been one of the only things he’d been saying this entire time.
“Nu!” Mr X retorted, bratty despite the fact he’d been treated like a sack of meat.
“Listen, we…” PBBBTTTT! Mr X blew a giant raspberry at his interrogator.
Looking annoyed, Jackal tried to continue. “We only need…” Squeezing his eyes shut, the fluffy loudly blurted out: ‘BWAH-BWAH-BWAH!’
Grabbing a handful of Mr X’s mane, he forced it back and made the fluffy look into his eyes. “JUST TELL US WHATEVER YOU KNOW!”
Staring back at the human, Mr X shifted slightly and then loudly shit himself.
+++++
A day later. Mr X was sore, hungry, thirsty. Had he caved yet? Of course not.
The Jackal had returned after leaving the stallion tied up in the darkness, covered in his own shit and being crawled on by bugs. After switching the light on, he found Mr X just as he’d left him: With puffed out cheeks and an incredibly bratty expression in his eyes.
Unrolling a canvass wrapped assortment of tools, he brought each of them to bear in front of the fluffy’s face. Pliers. A cruelly shaped hook. Needles of various gauges.
“I’m going to start tearing out your teeth, little fluffy. I will not stop until you tell me your secret.” Before Mr X could say anything, Jackal shoved his mouth open and forced the pliers in there. Sank down against one of his yellowing teeth, gave a twist back, let the fluffy squeal and shriek for a moment.
Blood dripping down his mouth and shuddering from pain, X didn’t give an indication that he was going to speak. Pliers swooping back in for another prize, the Jackal made sure to take his time. Wriggled and jerked the pliers to and fro instead of ripping it right out. Pulling back and watching the still attached nerve glisten in the light, he gave finally rent it free.
Looking down to Mr X expectantly, he could see that the foolish creature was about ready to go out from the pain. Whimpering, the fluffy said: “Otay…Mistah X am teww yew secwet.”
A smug expression from the interrogator. Waiting. It took a moment to realize that the fluffy was waggling a hoof for him to come closer. Well, they were very childlike. Getting down to his knees and pushing close to the fluffy, he pressed his ear close to it’s mouth.
Mr X gave the loudest kibble burp he could before passing out.
++++++
Several days even after that. Mr. X was being kept alive with an IV. By now he’d had all of his teeth torn out, had been shaved, one eye had been jabbed out with a screwdriver. With his fur shaved off, he looked like a purple potato. All bruises, none of them being allowed to heal and instead bearing the livid colors of constantly being abused over and over.
By now, The Jackal had hooked up his testicles to a car battery and was giving them systematic jolts while also allowing a pissed off scorpion to drive it’s barbed tail into the fluffy’s anus.
Aside from a few ‘EEEEEEES!’ and ‘nuuuu’, the fluffy wasn’t really saying much. Perhaps he’d been mindbroken from the last few days. Certainly, a human would have been.
Perhaps it was time for a new direction. Trying to be kind again.
Letting the tools of torture sit to the side, the Jackal tried a new course of action: Giving Mr X recuperation and love. Instead of an IV, he was provided with a dish of pureed skettis that he could slurp up. Instead of laying on the cold ground, limbs tied up, he was given something resembling a bed and allowed to roam around the shack. It’s not like he could move much at first but after a few days, the stallion was up and at ‘em. Even kicking around a balled up piece of foil like a ball.
+++++
This went on for several more days. These activities had actually been stretching on for about two weeks now. The Jackal hadn’t bothered him about his secrets since the recuperation period started, but was now sure he’d crack. After all, he’d been given kindness after such harshness. Would begin to identify that things could be good and that cooperation was better than torture.
As The Jackal opened up the door to the shack, carrying a few cheap toys with which to ply Mr X with, he clicked on the light and had to let his eyes adjust for a moment.
There was no movement in the area. Yet there was a shape standing stock still in front of the door. Mr X, the wispy stub of his tail lifted up to expose the ugly and still swollen anus that had been ravaged by scorpion venom. After days of being fed nothing but sketti puree, Mr X let loose with a flood of rancid diarrhea that exploded back at the torturer with the force of a small bomb going off.
Covered in a sheet of the fetid shit, The Jackal could only watch in disgust and pure disbelief as the fluffy turned to look behind himself.
“Dummeh!”
+++++
Mr X’s mutilated corpse was found swaying in the wind on a fence in town. A sign wrung around his neck declared that he had spilled his secrets, that The Jackal had broken another one of the CIA’s puppets.
That wasn’t true though. Mr X was a true hellgremlin. Unable to change, unwilling to cede one bit of information or act like a fluffy should.
He was just one of a few like his kind who’d been chosen to participate in Operation Playdate. The terrorists thought the CIA were spying with fluffies or perhaps gifting them with secret messages to pass along, but it couldn’t be further from the truth.
What secret had Mr X’s handler given him that morning?
That 9/10 dentists recommend his favorite chewing gum over the competition. Mr X had withstood hellish torture to safeguard an advertisement, a renown terrorist had wasted two weeks of his time, and the operation was going off without a hitch.