You know, I still remember the first time I ever saw a fluffy in the flesh. It was way back in the day, maybe a couple weeks after that first big breakout? Yeah. Anyways, I got a call from this lady, Mrs. Weiser - real sweet old woman, God bless her soul.
Anyway, I remember she called me saying there was some kind of mangy badger, or beaver or something in her garden. I was still working animal control back then y’see, mostly just clearing out raccoons or getting rid of wasps nests; basic stuff. So I arrive at her property, and ask her where exactly in her garden she’d seen the thing, and she pointed out this one huuuge redcurrant in the back corner. Well, nothing to it, I thought, grabbed my pole catch from the van went to catch myself whatever was rooting around back there.
Didn’t take me long to find it, but it sure as hell took me a moment to figure out what the hell I was even looking at it. The thing was munching away on some redcurrants - bright neon pink fur, stubby little legs and a wide, fat looking head. I was about to snag it with the pole catch, when the damn thing started talking. Shit, I still remember exactly what it said.
“Dese am’ bestest bewwy nummies!”
God. I damn near shit myself. Turned around to see if Mrs. Weiser’d had any grandkids suddenly pop into the garden, but nothing; just me and the weird pink fluffball chowing down on berries. I coughed loudly, and the thing immediately tensed up, then turned around. It’s face was strange, not like any animal I’d ever seen. Sort of like a mix between cow and pig features. It smiled widely at me, staring with those big ol’ eyes that seemd just a hair too large for it’s own skull. Reminded of a pug.
“Hewwo nice mistah! Fwuffy fin’ bestest bewwy nummies! Mistah shud hab bewwies tu’!”
Now, all things considered, I remember thinking that it was pretty cute looking. The talking though? That was just off-putting. Anyone still remember those Furby things? They were already old as shit when I was growing up, but I found my dad’s childhood one in the attic one time. I swear to Jesus, that thing talked even though it didn’t have any batteries in it. Fuckin thing was possessed or somethin’.
Anyway, where was I? Oh, right - talking. I thought I was losing my mind listening to this pink stuffed toy looking thing talking to me about its latest meal, so I asked it what it was.
“Fwuffy am fwuffy!”
Real elucidatin’.
In the end, I decided to pick the thing up and bring it over for Mrs. Weiser to take a look at. Y’know, make sure I wasn’t the only one seeing and hearing this thing? Had a buddy once who worked in the same field tell me he’d known a guy that went crazy one day, completely lost his mind talking about invisible monsters and trying to take all his clothes off. Apparently the doctor later said he’d suffered from brain damage as a result of insecticide exposure caused by faulty protective equipment.
So I picked the thing up, it squealed happily and babbled something about “upsies”, and I took it back around to the front of the house where Mrs. Weiser was planting some roses.
“Oh my goodness, Mr. Groff, is that a fluffy pony?”
Fluffy? Sure. I wasn’t so sure about the pony part though. The lady said it was some new scientific marvel created by this company Hasbio. I’d never heard of em before, nor these “fluffy ponies”, but apparently they’d been all over TV lately. Something about em escaping a lab or something. Great.
I decided to call my boss and ask him, and he proceeded to tell me that I’d need to call a special number they’d gotten from some Hasbio representative. Apparently they’d been contacting animal shelters and animal control services all over the country, telling em’ to return any fluffies to the nearest Hasbio office if they ran into any on the job.
Well, it was just my luck then that the nearest Hasbio office was 50 miles away. I ended up driving for hours with a stunted, talking, pink pony thing in the back of my van. It kept complaining about the car being scary, and it not liking the carrier I’d stuck it in. I did feel kinda bad for it honestly.
I handed the fluffy off to a sour-faced Hasbio employee, and drove back. Didn’t hear or see anything about fluffies for a little while after, but it didn’t take too long before we were practically drowning in the things. Eventually things got so bad that regular animal control companies started refusing to handle anything related to fluffies. Same thing with shelters - they’d been overcrowded before with just cats, dogs and the occasional pet parakeet, but now they were being overrun with hordes of talking, pastel faux-horses.
Well, in the end a bunch of animal control companies ended up rebranding, including my own. Instead of working in animal control, I now worked in “biotoy control”. Or just fluffy control, speaking plainly. I tell ya, those first few years were rough with how the fluffies kept breeding like crazy. Any fluffies in the wild back then were considered sole property of Hasbio, so taking em’ home with you, or even thinking about putting em’ down to cull their numbers was enough for company lawyers to come down on your ass. Hard.
I remember the fluffies changing. The first few gens, the ones that’d grown up in a nice Hasbio facility? Perfectly pleasant little critters - polite, friendly, never demanded anything of you or acted anything other than a perfect companion. Before too long though, we started running into ones that weren’t quite so nice. It was subtle at first, y’know? They wouldn’t address you as “nice mistah” anymore, just call you “hoomin”. Started asking for food, which, hey, reasonable enough right? Not a lot to eat out on the streets, especially when you’re competing with thousands of other fluffies for food and a place to sleep.
But, I think it was bouta year after they’d escaped into the wild that we started running into the real bad ones - smarties, they called themselves. Territorial, aggressive, with no inhibitions whatsoever; they were something else. The first time I ran into one I found it raping a baby fluffy. I almost couldn’t believe what I was seeing, like, weren’t these things been made to be toys for children? Why the hell would they even be capable of something like that?
That first time, I remember just seeing red. I think I stomped the little shit into paste before I even knew what was happening. Put the baby out of its misery too. If Hasbio hadn’t already gone under by then, I might’ve been in trouble for “damaging company property”. How Hasbio ended up going defunct is a hell of a story in its own right, but the gist of what I remember is this: a shitload of feral fluffies got together into one big-ass herd, and marched their way straight through some city in the midwest.
The sheer number of em clogged up the streets. People couldn’t leave their houses, cars couldn’t drive. Whole city essentially shut down. I hear some people even died, small kids or elderly that fell over and got essentially suffocated under hundreds of fluffies. Bad way to go. Things got so bad that the federal government had to step in and organise a massive culling. Even called in the army to do it. I hear there’s mass graves outside the city now, filled with tens of thousands of dead fluffies. Crazy stuff. The clean-up ended up costing the city hundreds of millions in damages, and Hasbio everything they had.
Anyway, following this incident the President did some executive order or something, and called for fluffies to be hunted down and culled nationwide. The former luxury pets now regarded as worse than rats or cockroaches. I’ll tell ya - those were busy days. Me and the rest of the boys working at Roscoe’s Fluffy Removal would hop in the company truck, and cruise around looking for any signs of fluffies. The government was giving out subsidies for anyone willing to put the work in reducing the fluffy population.
By that point, any anger or disgust I might’ve once felt for even the worst fluffies had turned into apathy. What was the point in getting angry at something that would never learn? Something that couldn’t learn, y’know? It was all routine. We had these things we called “pokers”, basically just a shovel shaft with a thin metal spike at the end of it. Stick a fluffy in the head with one - SHUNK - and it kills em’ pretty much instantly. Most of the time.
See a fluffy.
It responds with either “Hewwo!” or “Dummeh hoomin!”
SHUNK
Put the body in a plastic bag
Repeat
A buddy of mine - also used to work at Roscoe’s, but his was a desk job - said that he’d gotten the opportunity to speak with one of the Hasbio R&D guys, right about the time that big lawsuit was happening. The lab guy had said that fluffies were never meant to be born, grow up and live on the streets. The reason behind smarties and all the other ugly shit we’d see on a daily basis was all cause these fluffies essentially grew up without any care or education. He compared it to Lord of the Flies. A bunch of innocent creatures forced to survive a hostile environment, with no “adults” to teach em’ right from wrong.
A whole species of wild children, except with even less ability to learn or tell the difference between right or wrong.
What a fucking nightmare.