“It ain’t fair… it just ain’t fair!” Ted sulked, hurling a stone into the gently flowing river, interrupting it’s quiet babbling with a heavy ‘SPLOOSH’.
“Yeah, yeah… I heard you the first fifty-dozen times.” His older brother, Buck, replied from his position behind Ted, leaning back against a tree.
“Well it just ain’t fair, that’s all!” Ted replied, defensively. “He said he was gonna! Then he didn’t! It ain’t fair!”
“Fifty-one-dozen…” Buck muttered to himself, closing his eyes and attempting to doze again, before another ‘SPLOOSH’ woke him up.
“It just ain’t fair! He said he was gonna!”
“Are you gonna act like a damn baby all day long?!” Buck finally yelled. Ted shrunk down slightly, and kicked at some dirt under his foot.
“I’m not a baby…” He muttered.
“Then quit all yer yowling already!” Buck replied, settling back again. “It ain’t fair, that’s been good and damn-well established!”
It had started as such a nice morning.
Buck and Ted had woken up at 7am on the dot, their backpacks already packed with everything they needed. Clothes, toothbrushes, field-glasses, flashlights, batteries… everything they needed for a trip away with pa. And this was no ordinary trip. Pa took them often, but he’d never brought Buck and Ted along with him… until today.
Pa’s favourite past-time was hunting. They lived in the south, but as they always said, that didn’t mean they were hicks. Pa was a high-ranking executive in… something, it was boring and Buck and Ted could never remember it, but he earned well and the family was pretty happy. In the den, above the fireplace, was Pa’s pride and joy: a bolt-action hunting rifle with a dark brown walnut stock, gleaming steel barrel and a powerful scope, chambered for 5.56mm rounds.
Ma had forbidden Pa from taking Buck and Ted out on one of his trips, despite Buck, Ted and even Pa’s pleads that they be allowed to go and have their first experience of the true wilderness… but Ma’s word was law, and Pa quietly bent under it, as they all did.
There was Pa, Ma, and their two sons Buck and Ted.
Buck was the eldest, a strapping lad of ten years old, with his father’s ash-black hair and his same sharp blue eyes. But while his father was loud and brash, Buck was quiet and reserved, he only spoke when he felt he needed to, or more likely, to tell someone else (usually Ted) to shut the hell up. He was smart for his age, but smart enough to know not to brag about it.
Ted, comparatively, was seven years old, and was definitely his mother’s son. He had her soft brown curly hair, and the same gentle watery-green eyes. He was the youngest in the family, and always felt like it. No matter how many years passed, he somehow still felt like he was always just ‘the kid brother’ to Buck. He could never go out and play on his own, Buck always had to go with him. He could never be left home alone either, Buck had to be there for him. Even now, when Ted wanted to go out and blow off some steam, Buck had been sent after him.
Buck and Ted had been asking for almost the entire year before Ma finally relented and agreed at long last, saying Buck and Ted could finally go with Pa on his annual trip this year. The two boys were delighted, but not as delighted as Pa, who scooped them both up in a big bear-hug and laughed his booming laugh, promising to bring Ma home her weight in veal.
Buck and Ted had been excited for weeks, preparing every day, getting more and more excited, until the day of the trip finally came… and with it, came bad news.
Pa’s brother was sick, and he was two states over. Pa had found out only the night before, and left for the airport while the boys were still asleep. Thus it had fallen to Ma to tell them both in the morning that, despite what she said, despite Pa’s promise that he was going to take them on the hunting trip of their lives… it wasn’t going to happen.
Weeks of hoping and dreaming had been shattered in an instant.
And so Ted had stormed off to the sticks, hunkered down by the river, and began hurling stones into it to try and feel better about it. Buck had followed along, and decided to take it easy until Ted cooled off.
Of course, neither one could blame their father. They loved Uncle Joe, if anything they were upset they couldn’t have gone with Pa to go see him… but that didn’t change the fact of the matter, that their hunting trip, their dream trip away with Pa, had been cancelled at the last minute.
“It just ain’t fair!” Ted shouted, hurling a handful of gravel into the river (as no stones were left) before storming over to sit next to Buck. “We were waiting on that trip all month, Buck!”
“Yeah.” Buck said.
“We went 'n bought new flashlights for it, and new shirts, and you even got your new boots!”
“Yeah.” Buck said, glancing at his sturdy boots, still tightly laced up on his feet from that morning.
“And… and… and we was gonna get to shoot Pa’s gun! He said he was gonna let us! He said so!”
“Yeah.” Buck said, thinking back to the rifle still hanging in the den, forgotten and forlorn.
“It just… it ain’t fair.” Ted huffed, finally lapsing into silence.
Buck had to agree. Of course, Ted was being a whiny baby about it, but he agreed.
He’d wanted to go on one of Pa’s trips ever since he was old enough to know what the word ‘hunting’ meant. His father made it sound so glamorous, so rugged, so unique. Camping out, lighting a fire, stalking your prey, taking aim, then that twitch reflex of squeezing the trigger at just the right moment, feeling the gun kick back against you and seeing your target fall, with a quick jet of red spurting out of it, right where you aimed.
“Yeah… it ain’t fair.” Buck said, patting Ted’s shoulder. “But ain’t much we can do abou-”
He paused.
He could hear something.
“Buck, wh-” Ted began.
“Sh.” Buck hissed. “Listen.”
Ted strained his ears for a moment… then he heard it too.
“It sounds like… voices.” Ted said.
“Yeah, like… like lil’ kids.” Buck replied, confused.
The two looked around, and began creeping towards where the sound seemed to be coming from: the other side of the river. As they neared the bank, they dropped to the ground and crawled army-style, elbows and knees, until they reached the edge. The quiet splashing of the water made it difficult to hear, but the sound was definitely coming from the other side of the river.
“Otay hewd, we hewe!” A high-pitched voice squeaked.
“What the fuck is that?” Buck asked. Ted stifled a giggle. He knew Buck liked to swear when Ma and Pa weren’t around, but he didn’t dare do it himself, just in case they heard somehow.
“It looks like… cotton candy.” Ted said, feeling stupid as he said it, but Buck couldn’t say he was wrong. What they saw across the river was a thicket of trees, with a small clearing ahead they could just about peer into through the brush and foliage. Inside the clearing, there was a cluster of fuzzy colourful lumps, all around and fluffy and soft, like… well, like cotton candy.
Some were sitting still, others were moving around, but the voices seemed to be coming from them.
“Wissen up, hewd!” A voice said. One of the fuzz-ball things. “Dis new wand! Dis smawty wand nao! We wiv hewe!”
“Otay smawty!” One of the other fuzz-balls said.
“Yoo knu bestest!”
“Safe pwace! Bestest pwace!”
Buck and Ted shared a glance. They had worked it out at the same time.
“Fluffy ponies.” They whispered.
They pulled back from the river bank and returned to the tree so they could talk easier.
“Fuckin’ fluffies.” Buck muttered. “Damn things. Y’know they almost killed Suzy’s dad last month?”
“No way!” Ted said, noting how often Buck liked to talk about Suzy, his class-mate with the blonde hair and the perfume that smelled like strawberries.
“Yeah, one was hidin’ under his car, then when he went to work, it got all chewed up under the wheel, made it so he couldn’t control the car. Slipped all over the road and hit a garbage truck.”
"No way!"
“Yeah, he only just got out of hospital last week.” Buck muttered, kicking the tree’s roots. He was pissed. He hated those things. They were all over the news, always responsible for ‘eco-log-ick-al’ disasters and problems… there was even an advert that played for ‘Fluff-Busters’, an exterminator operation you could call out to get rid of 'em.
Ted thought the same thing.
“We should call Fluff-Busters!” He said. “They’ll get rid of 'em! Maybe they’ll even give us a reward…”
But Buck had a better idea.
“No.” He said. “Here’s what we’re gonna do… we’re gonna go home, get my BB gun, grab our backpacks we made up for the trip… then come back here. We’ll set up camp, and we’ll have our own little hunting trip.”
He turned, looking through the clearing to where the feral fluffy herd was milling around.
“We’re gonna be hunters after all.” He said. “We’re gonna bag us a whole herd of feral shit-rats, Ted. A whole fuckin’ herd of 'em.”