Popsicle was scared.
She didn’t know where she was or what was happening, but she knew that for sure.
She knew that she was called Popsicle. She was called that because she had icy blue fur and a teal mane. She knew that she was a fluffy… but apart from that, she didn’t know much else.
Except that she was scared. S-C-A… whatever came next, SCARED!!!
She tiptoed forwards, lost in the darkness, as she finally mustered up the courage to speak.
“Huh… h-hewwo…?” She whimpered.
“Hello, Popsy.” A cruel voice called from the shadows all around her. Popsicle spun around frantically, trying to look in every direction at once to isolate the source of the noise, but to no avail.
It was coming from everywhere at once.
“Who dat?! Who yoo?!” She squeaked in fear.
“Oh come on, you remember me, don’t you Popsy?”
Popsy began to tremble. She DID know the voice, but couldn’t place it.
“Let me help you remember…” The voice said, having apparently read her mind.
Suddenly, the floor gave way beneath Popsicle and she felt herself plummeting through the air. She landed with a violent crash and found herself bobbing around inside a huge white bathtub, filled to the brim with…
“WAWA!!!” She shrieked, flailing and thrashing as she desperately tried to escape. But no matter how much she kicked and fought, it seemed like the rim of the tub was getting further and further away.
“I always loved this game!” The voice said. Popsicle looked up and saw a huge, talon-fingered hand reach down to the chrome taps of the bath. It spun them around, and suddenly the taps erupted in more water. The bath was already full, but it didn’t matter, the water just continued to pour.
And then, as if it couldn’t get any worse, it started to bubble.
“EEP! WAWA HOTTIES! BUWNIES!” Popsicle shrieked, feeling her body beginning to cook in the boiling hot water.
“Don’t you just love this game, Popsy? Now you get to play at being SOUP!”
“Nu! Nu wan be soup! HEWP! PWEASE HEWP POPSICWE!!!” She squealed.
Suddenly she felt something grab one of her rear hooves from beneath the water, and she was violently pulled down. She fell again, for what felt like forever, but also not long enough as she suddenly landed with a thud against a flat surface.
She blinked her eyes open, her fluff miraculously dry, and saw she was lying on a large piece of wood. Then she heard the sound.
The horrible, whirring, grinding sound.
Popsicle flicked her head around, glancing behind herself, and saw that the piece of wood ended at the mouth of a paper shredder, which had been opened up to reveal a mass of gnashing, tearing, shining metal teeth.
“Eep! Nu! Pwease nu huwt Popsicwe, mistah shweddah! Popsicwe a gud fwuffeh!”
She attempted to crawl away from the roaring machine behind her… but then, suddenly, she felt the wood being tilted, lifting upwards from the side she was facing, leaving her head higher than her rear.
And then she began to slide.
“NU-U-U!!!” She screamed, tears pouring from her eyes as her blunt hooves scrabbled against the smooth, polished surface of the wooden board. “POPISCWE NU WAN BE SHWEDDED! PWEASE HEWP! HEWP POPISCWE!!!”
“This was my favourite game!” The voice cooed all around her. “‘Hide The Evidence’. Isn’t this fun, Popsy? You get to be the evidence! I’ve gotta shred you before the feds find me!”
“NU! NU FUN! NU WAN BE EBBY-DENSE!!!” Popsicle shrieked over the roar of the shredder, which was getting louder as she slipped closer and closer to it’s terrible, tearing jaws.
Suddenly the wood tipped upwards vertically and Popsicle felt herself falling again, fully expecting to land in the shredder… but that didn’t happen.
She landed with another thud on a cold concrete floor. She picked herself up, her body already weary from the panic and exertion, but it wasn’t over yet.
Suddenly, from out of the darkness around her, a dart whistled through the air and buried itself a few inches away from Popsicle’s front left hoof.
“Dammit, I missed!”
Popiscle then realised the voice had been aiming at her.
“HEWP! HEWP POPSICWE!!!” She squealed again, as she tried to run away, but found she couldn’t move at all from her spot. No matter how hard she ran, no matter how hard her tiny hooves pounded against the hard concrete, she couldn’t move at all.
“Hold still, shitrat.” The voice snarled. Popsicle ignored it and ran even harder… but still didn’t move at all.
Another dart whistled through the air, brushing past Popiscle’s face before thudding into the ground again.
“Almost got you that time, Popsy! Almost got you!”
“NU! PWEASE NU MOWE! NU MOWE HUWTIES FOW POPSICWE! PWEASE!!!”
Another dart. It hissed through Popsicle’s back fluff, only just missing her skin.
Another dart. This one went under Popsicle’s belly, the plastic fins on the back scraping against her as it passed.
Another dart.
This one hit.
The shining metal tip buried itself in her side, sending an all too familiar jolt of pain through Popsicle’s body.
“Fuck yeah! Bullseye!”
“OWIES! HUHUHU! POPSICWE HAB OWIES! PWEASE NU MOWE! NU MOWE OWIES!”
Suddenly, the taloned hand reached out of darkness, snapping out like a snake as it snatched up Popsicle by the fluff on her back, painfully lifting her into the air.
“You fucking retard. Don’t you get it yet?” The voice hissed in her ears. “You’ll NEVER leave me, Popsy. You can NEVER get away from me!”
Popsicle suddenly knew who the voice belonged to.
And as she made the connection, his ugly, scarred, hideous face loomed into view above her, glaring down at her with huge red eyes. He grinned, revealing a mouth of sharp, jagged teeth (with some missing) and a forked tongue slithering around his lips.
It was her last owner. The man who made every day of her life worse than the last one, with constant new ‘games’ to play.
But this wasn’t possible! Popsicle had been taken away from him! His nice neighbour had helped her escape, then brought her to a ‘rescue center’, and then… then she’d been taken home by a nice new family!
HOW WAS HE BACK?!
“Because I’ll NEVER leave, Popsy!” He hissed at her. “No matter where you go, no matter how far you run, I’ll ALWAYS be here, hiding inside your mind! You’ll NEVER be free of me, Popsy! NEVER!!!”
"Popsicle! Popsy! POPS!!!"
Popsicle suddenly awoke with a start, her eyes wide and staring, her fur soaked with tears and sweat, and her rear uncomfortably damp (informing her that she had, once again, wet her bed.)
She looked around, terrified, until she saw the faces of her new mama and new daddy looking down at her.
“MUMMAH! DADDEH!” She cried, reaching up with her arms for a hug. Mama reached down and scooped her up, pulling her close and gently rocking her as she cried into her shoulder.
“IT WAS HOWWIBWE!!!” Popsicle sobbed. “OWD DADDEH WAS THEWE, HE SAID DAT POPSICWE WAS NEBAH GONNA BE SAFE, AN’ DAT HE COULD ALWAYS FIN’ POPSICWE, AN’-”
“Sh-sh-sh… it’s okay honey…” Mama cooed, stroking Popsicle’s teal mane as the terrified fluffy shivered and wailed.
“I’ll get some fresh bedding.” Daddy said, picking up Popsicle’s pillow and carrying it out of the bedroom.
Her ‘bed’ was just a pillow from the couch with a blanket, but it was more than enough for Popsicle to be happy. Unfortunately her ‘accidents’ were part of why they would only use cheap and easily replacable pillows for it.
Daddy dumped Popsicle’s urine-soaked pillow in the kitchen sink and filled it with cold water to let it soak overnight, then went to the lounge to grab a fresh pillow for her. It was just as he was turning to leave that he saw ‘mama’ in the doorway, still holding Popsicle in her arms.
“You go back to sleep, I’ll wait up with her a little while.” Mama said, still gently rocking Popsicle as she quietly sobbed and whimpered.
Daddy nodded and put the pillow back on the couch, while mama carried Popsicle over and sat down. Daddy left to go back to sleep, while mama continued to coo and stroke Popsicle’s trembling form.
Their life together hadn’t been easy.
‘Mama’ and ‘daddy’ couldn’t have children, so had (at their doctor’s recommendation) gotten a fluffy pony instead. They were, as the doctor explained, functionally no different from children at times. They spoke the same, behaved the same, needed disciplining all the same, they were even recommended to couples planning on having children to practice with first.
So the two of them had decided to get a fluffy pony. They had been careful about the selection, they’d heard all about ‘Smarties’ and ‘Bitch Mares’, and figured the best option was one that had already been domestic and later given up for adoption.
The downside was that, the only fluffies in such cases were former abuse victims who had either been left abandoned after they’d stopped being fun, or ones that had been rescued by family members or friends of the abusive owners.
Mama and daddy had walked into the rescue center and felt immediately sick.
The place was divided into two sections which, as a member of staff explained to them, were for each ‘type’ of rescue. Each section was lined with containers for individual fluffies, larger than a typical pet-carrier but ultimately the same thing. They couldn’t risk having multiple fluffies in the same pens, the staff-member explained. They got upset very easily, and then that led to fights, and…
The first were the physically abused. Missing limbs, missing wings, horns, eyes, ears, tongues, genitalia… there wasn’t a single complete fluffy in the entire area, every single one looked miserable. Most didn’t weren’t even excited at the prospect of a new home, because it didn’t matter where they were, they would still be incomplete.
The second section was, they were told, for the mentally abused fluffies. The ones who were overall physiaclly intact, but had been made to suffer in such a unique way that they’d come away with lasting trauma from it all.
Many of the containers had signs attached, which listed the ‘concerns’ (as the staff-member put it) of the fluffy in question. There was one that was wearing a specially designed pair of earplugs as he’d been tormented by air-horn blasts and loud music on a daily basis. There was another which froze still as a statue when any humans came past, which (according to the sign) was because her last owner had played a vicious game of ‘Red Light Green Light’ with her, and used to hurt her if he saw her move. Now she remained perfectly still whenever humans were near, which resulted in her almost starving herself more than once.
Mama and daddy were about to give up hope when they finally saw her. A new addition to the rescue center.
Popsicle. With her icy blue fur and her chilly teal mane, who just had the prettiest dark blue eyes and the most darling little smile.
“H-hewwo…” She whispered nervously as she waddled up to the front of her container. “A-am Popsicwe…”
Mama’s heart was melted immediately (which was ironic, given Popsicle’s name). She and daddy read the sign and understood what they were getting into.
Popsicle’s last owner had liked ‘games’. He’d invented a new game every single day, where the objective always seemed to be ‘hurt Popsicle’. There was the game with the boiling water, then the one with the shreder, and another with darts… there was one with thumb-tacks, another with pepper-spray, another where he put a blindfold on her head and chased her around while she ran head-first into furniture and walls.
Despite all that, Popsicle had come out mostly unharmed… externally, at least.
The sign noted that she had frequent night-terrors and could be set off by a lot of words, with ‘game’ being the worst one.
But it didn’t matter. Popsicle had won them over, and she had clearly taken a liking to them too.
The papers were filled out that day, and they went home with her that same evening.
Mama felt Popsicle finally settle and slowly drop off in her arms, and she gently carried her back to their bedroom, a couch pillow in her other hand.
She put the pillow at the foot of their bed, same as usual, and softly placed Popsicle down on it, drawing her blanket over the top of her to keep her warm.
But even as Popsicle slept quietly, exhausted from her earlier misery, she still couldn’t shake the feeling that Old Daddy’s claws were still somehow sunken deep into her heart, her mind, and even her very soul.