“Wai nu wan Honey nu moah? Honey wub mummah!” You protested, feeling the tears soak into the fluff on your cheeks. You are Honey, an auburn pillow fluff with a yellow mane. You lost your leggings to a mean monster when you were just a tiny foal, one your mummah rescued you from. You’ve been her constant companion ever since.
Today mummah came home very sad, and told you that you would have to go away. You didn’t understand! You were her best friend, what would she do without you? What would you do without her?
“Honey…” your mummah looked down at you, crying as well. “I can’t… I can’t take care of you anymore. I told you. This is for the best.”
“Buh wai? Honey am sowwy fo’ whaebah du, wan be guud fwuffy fo’ mummah!” You wiggled your stumps at her, reaching as if to hug her.
“You… you didn’t do anything, Honey.” Mummah slumped down in the seat of the car. “Mummah did some bad things. I… Mummah took some things that didn’t belong to her, and so she has to spend some time in… the sorry box.”
You gasped. “Dat am nu guud! Di’ mummah twy say sowwy? Say nu du again?”
Mummah sighed. “Yes, Honey. But I’ve done this before, so they didn’t believe me. I have to go to the sorry box tomorrow, and I won’t be back in many forevers.” She picked you up off the seat of the car, sitting you up in her lap. “It’s nothing you did, I promise. You are the best little fluffy, and I found a nice place for you to go until I’m done. They’re going to take really good care of you, okay?”
“…Otay. Mummah cum bak fo Honey?”
She held you tightly to her chest. “Of course sweetheart. Of course.”
Your mummah bundled you up in your favorite blanket and tucked you into a cardboard box with your favorite stuffy and a bowl of kibble. She kissed you gently on the head as you got settled.
“They’ll be really nice to you, I promise. Give this to them when they see you.” She handed you a folded bit of paper to hold in your mouth. “Mummah loves you, Honey.” She choked out as she closed the box over you.
“Mub mummah moo!” You mumbled around the paper.
June Johnstone slid her beloved pet into the intake slot at the Happy Pillows County Shelter, hearing her land lightly in the dark space in the wall. It had glowing reviews, even if it was hard to find current ones. A warrant was out for her arrest, she’d been identified on the security cameras of a convenience store she held up at gunpoint in an effort to make rent. Did she have many other options? No. She didn’t have the body for porn and her prior felonies made her hard to employ. She knew she should just do her time, it would give her a chance to figure out some other housing, maybe hunt her brother down and see if he’d take her in while she got back on her feet. Then she could come back for her beloved fluffy, and things would be okay again.
As she turned to leave, dabbing at her eyes in an effort to not cover her face in mascara, she stepped on a sodden piece of paper on the pavement.
SHELTER CLOSED
NO INTAKES ACCEPTED
NO ONE WILL CHECK THIS BIN
You sat in the dark box for a very long time, sniffling into your beloved Mr. Bear. It couldn’t possibly be fair, your mummah was the bestest person that ever was! She didn’t deserve the sorry box! And you didn’t deserve the one you were in!
“Poow Mummah…” you mumbled into Mr. Bear. You could see a slit of light above you as the afternoon sun peeked through the clouds. You wondered how long you’d have to wait here before someone would come for you. You had some kibble, but no water bowl and kibble always left your mouth so dry.
You decided to take a nap. Surely someone would come get you before it got dark.
“Oh jeez, they left so much behind
…” Cathy Ferris, now the new owner of a long defunct fluffy shelter, looked out across the adoption floor.
“I heard they kept taking surrenders until the day the county evicted them.” Her boyfriend Derrick replied.
“Wonder what they did with them all.” She sidestepped a knocked over stack of carriers, making her way towards the back.
“We can hope they were rehomed or euthanized. In practice….”
“Don’t be so dark!” She chided. “As far as I’m concerned every one of those fluffies got an old lady to live with ‘till the end of their days.”
“Whatever you say, dear.” Derrick rolled his eyes.
Cathy unlocked a door marked INTAKES and pushed it open. Inside was a metal slide leading, presumably, from outside along with a metal sink and a wall of kennels. “Oh, the surrender slot is kinda neat actually!”
“Ugh, it stinks in here though.” Derrick replied, following in after her.
“They must have been in too much of a rush to clean one of the kennels.” Cathy grabbed a cardboard box sitting in the surrender bin and set it up on the counter. “I’m sure they had bigger priorities than-”
She froze as she saw the soft brown fluff at the bottom of the box. Her hand covered her mouth as she slowly pulled back the blanket over the top.
The corpse inside was rotted away to nothing, a dried pelt stretched across her dessicated form. The small plastic bowl near the front of the box was empty, and the plush bear next to it had been ripped open and its stuffing pulled out. Patches of fluff were missing from the pelt as well, but only within the range of the restricted pillowfluff’s reach.
Cathy turned and vomited onto the floor, her boyfriend rushing to her side.
He looked over the box, wincing at what was inside. “Poor thing…” he mumbled, gently lifting the dried husk of the fluffy out of the box. As he did, a note fell from under its chin, lightly nibbled on, and landed on the table.
“This is Honey.
She’s a very good fluffy, and I love her more than anything.
I can’t care for her, so please love her in my place.
I’ll be back for her if I can, but if I don’t return please find her a home.”
