[Author’s Note: It’s been a while, but I decided to post again for no particular reason.]
Saturday morning. The sun was just peeking above the horizon and there was a brisk chill in the air. The first frost of the season would be soon. The air was clear as crystal and just as bright, but it wasn’t a beautiful day for everyone. For feral fluffies, today marked the first day of real cold in the dreaded, miserable age of starvation and chill: the cold time.
Of course, for city-dwelling humans the seasons meant next to nothing these days. There would be no starvation, no freezing nights cowering in a box that sagged under the weight of the snow, and certainly no waking up to the frozen corpses of your newborn offspring. The last one was definitely the fluffies’ own fault for not taking seasons into account when reproducing, but it would be unfair to expect them to think in the long term. It’s not something they were designed for, after all.
Wayne woke up at dawn, a hard-dying habit reinforced by his genuine love of the early morning. While these days we worked afternoons and had no reason at all to be awake this early, he cherished these moments. Many days he’d sit on his porch, doing nothing at all but appreciating the beauty of the first rays of sunshine, the dew sparkling on the grass, and the clear, sharp air. Today, however, he was only outside to pick up the mail, which he’d forgotten to pick up last night when he was dropped off, drunk as a skunk, by his best friend Bjorn.
Wayne winced at the light and decided that he’d be going back to bed to try to sleep off this hangover. He was getting too old to be out drinking, but Bjorn had insisted that they should celebrate his return to the small, unremarkable city of his birth after years away. Wayne could appreciate the sentiment, but the blinding pain of the sunlight made him resolve to be a bit less competitive when it came to drinking with a man almost twice his weight.
So long away, and only today had he finished unpacking his meager belongings and resumed life in the somewhat alien suburban environment. Years doing fulfilling but hard work in an arctic research facility, if you could even call the tiny outpost that, had definitely made their mark on him, physically and mentally. His back certainly wasn’t what it used to be, but more important was the strange feeling he couldn’t shake of there being too much life around him. Desolation had become his new norm, it seemed.
As he tried, and failed, to open the mailbox without actually opening his eyes all the way, he noticed a sound. High-pitched wailing and shouting coming from the side of his small house, along with bird-like chirping, if birds could somehow sound frantic and were dramatically less melodious. He winced. Already?
Of course, Wayne had heard about fluffies, even if he’d never seen one in person. The arctic had been blessedly spared the toys-turned-ecodisaster. Toys, though, made Wayne uncomfortable. They were animals, weren’t they? Malformed and maladjusted animals, to be sure, but still animals? Corporate bullshit and lobbying couldn’t get an entire species of animals redefined and stripped of the basic rights and respect all life should be given, could it?
He sighed. Of course it could, and had. Wayne wasn’t a…what was the word again?..boxhugger?..whatever. He certainly wasn’t one of those. He’d studied biology long enough to understand that fluffies were simply engineered, however poorly, to manipulate human protective instincts. He wasn’t going to be one of those poor folks who couldn’t get past that and let the critters walk all over them. And he definitely wasn’t going to be the type who let the creatures trigger primal aggression in him. He’d learned all about controlling that living for years in a tiny freezing hut hundreds of miles from civilization with a bunch of scientists who, to put it delicately, had studied their passions when they should have studied how to interact with other people.
This left him with a choice, however. He could go back inside and hope the fluffies went away on their own, or he could deal with the problem now. The former option was incredibly appealing, and he knew his throbbing head wouldn’t help him make good decisions, but he’d also heard that if a herd of stray fluffies settled down they would be much harder to clear out, and would no doubt cause far more property damage, to boot. So, best to deal with them now.
Grumbling under his breath, Wayne made his wary way around to the side of the house, noting that the dilapidated gate had opened on its own. He followed the noises around the back of the antiquated gardening shed that he’d resolved to tear down as soon as he was settled. There, he saw them. Fluffies. Four of them.
Well, four of them now. A pair of gory smears on the ground indicated it’d once been six, and the state of one of the larger two told him it’d soon be three. So, two dead foals, two living foals, one adult in decent shape, and one dying adult. The dying adult had stopped shrieking, now, and was coughing wetly. She, for the fluffy was quite obviously a she, had several stab wounds.
The healthy, or healthy-er, adult was a unicorn. Its horn and hooves were covered in blood and a snarl of rage was on its face. Wayne was shocked at how well the faces of these creatures showed emotion, given they were far from human, but he put the feeling aside for now and watched a little longer before intervening.
“Dummeh mawe,” the unicorn spat, glaring down at the…was the term “earthy?” Wayne couldn’t recall. “Smawty wan’ babbehs! Wan’ pwettiest bestest babbehs! Dummeh mawe gu fowebah-sweepies wif dummeh ugwy babbehs!”
Wayne could sort of understand what was said, but not well. One of his coworkers at the outpost had had far too many videos of fluffies downloaded over their painfully limited bandwidth, and watched them very loudly when Wayne had been trying to sleep. So, he understood the gist of what was said. So, a kidnapping and murder incident? He wasn’t super surprised, considering what he knew about the natural world and how close supposedly reasonable intelligent beings could be to returning to that world.
“Pwease,” the neon-purple dying mare managed to gasp, looking directly at Wayne. “Sabe babbehs…”
The voice betrayed a complete lack of hope that he’d do anything such thing, and the…smarty, was it?..ignored the words, except to kick the dying mare viciously in the side. Fine, Wayne though, sighing internally. With a practiced hand he grabbed the smarty, quickly turning the little monster to avoid being sprayed with a defensive barrage of excrement, and stepped into the shed.
He set the shrieking, enraged creature on a high shelf, and it immediately cowered, terrified of falling. Wayne shrugged and left it to return outside to finish resolving the situation there. Not that I have any clue how to, he thought in resignation.
The mare was on death’s door, and Wayne knew there was no way she was making it, not with the amount of blood soaking her fluff and into the dirt. That left two foals, and he noted that neither seemed really capable of moving, merely flailing in the dirt blindly, their eyes closed. So, either newborns or very close to it.
“What now?” he asked aloud, to himself, and was surprised when the mare answered. It was still jarring when an animal responded to him with an actual phrase instead of just parroting.
“Pwease, nu wet…CAFF…nu wut babbehs gu fowebah-sweepies.”
Well, obviously she’d want her offspring to survive, and it wasn’t like they could make it on their own. That being said, Wayne didn’t like the options he had for preventing their deaths. Keeping them himself was out of the question, and while the two had very vibrant colors, which would likely make them easily adoptable at a shelter, he had qualms about that, too.
Fluffies has become as cheap as dirt in the three years since their release, but paradoxically ones with “good” colors or patterns matching their original design had become shockingly expensive, as the rampant uncontrolled breeding had made the delicate appearance controls completely nonfunctional. So, if he brought the pair to a shelter, they’d almost certainly be snatched up by some illegal fluffy-mill, which Wayne figured was a fate far worse than that. To make matters worse, they’d need space in the shelter, so less desirable fluffies would be culled to make space. He wasn’t willing to let that happen, let alone cause it.
But it wasn’t as if he was willing to adopt the pair either. Fluffies were notoriously high-maintenance pets, and he wasn’t one of those folks with some mysterious job that let him be home all the time to take care of them. He knew that newborn fluffies especially died at the drop of the hat if left alone after a tearful rant about the subject back at the outpost. How anyone got that attached to animals they’d never met eluded him, but he appreciated the knowledge now, as it let him avoid making a mistake here.
So, realistically speaking the pair was dead regardless of whether he kept them or left them. Taking them to a shelter was condemning them to a living hell and condemning other fluffies to die. When Wayne considered it rationally, waiting for the mare to die and then euthanizing the foals was the best choice. Less suffering for them, the mare got to die believing her foals would be safe, and Wayne didn’t have to stress over the situation. Win-win-win, sort of. Okay, more like lose-slightly-less all round, but life could be shit sometimes.
“Fine,” Wayne lied. “I’ll save your foals.”
The mare beamed, and Wayne could tell she’d let go, as her expression froze in death. Well, that was that. A gentle hand to each of the foals, and this whole situation would be done and soon forgotten.
It wasn’t reasonable to expect Wayne to try taking care of the pair, he reasoned to himself as went back inside. They’d just die anyway, he rationalized as he scrubbed with warm water, hoping to avoid catching whatever diseases the smarty had no doubt been carrying. It was kinder to end it quickly instead of letting them suffocate or whatever it was they did if left alone, he told himself as he set the newly-washed pair on a folded towel.
I’m not going to be guilt-tripped by a goddamn animal, he told himself as he fed the pair warm milk from an eyedropper.
“Fuck.”
“And that’s why I have two newborn foals,” he finished his rant to Bjorn over the phone. “Any suggestions?”
“Killing them is the right choice,” Bjorn replied, in a shockingly casual tone considering what he’d just said. “Even if you do raise them they’ll be fucked up and all kinds of overdependent on you since they won’t have had a mother or father. Plus they’ll probably die soon even if you get an incubator for them. They need constant attention the first week or so.”
“Yeah, I figured,” Wayne replied. On one hand, he felt vindicated. On the other, he felt like an idiot for not just going through with euthanizing the foals already. “It just…doesn’t feel right, though.”
“Well no, it won’t,” Bjorn’s tone clearly indicated he believed he was stating the obvious. “You’re killing two newborns that are designed to make you want to protect them. Doesn’t mean it’s not the right thing to do. You know that.”
“Fuck, I’m getting soft, aren’t I?”
“You were always soft, jackass.”
“Fair,” Wayne sighed again. “Well, thanks for the advice at least.”
“Happy to help. Don’t be a stranger.” Bjorn hung up.
Well, that was that. Wayne was going to do the smart thing and just end this before it became more of a mess. Just euthanize the foals, put them in a bio-waste bin, and put this whole mess behind him. Fuck, the smarty, he remembered. He’d have to deal with that, too.
That presented a question for him. What to do about the smarty? It was a foal-killer and had killed the mare as well, but Wayne was going to kill the remaining foals anyway, so it’s not like he could really judge. Obviously the smarty was a danger to others of its kind, so he’d have to neutralize it one way or another. Maybe drop it off at a shelter? No, that’d just put a presumably-innocent fluffy in the ground, or more likely an incinerator. He’d have to deal with the smarty himself.
For a moment he wanted to make the creature pay for making him have to make these decisions, but he quashed that emotion. No, too often even so-called hugboxers crossed the line when it came to that sort of thing. Torturing the creature to death would be cathartic, maybe, but it wasn’t justice. Wayne would just end it quickly. Death of one to save the many, and all that.
Thank fuck I don’t have to make these decisions for people, he thought.
In the end he’d been spared making the call anyway, as the ancient shelf had torn free of the rotten wood of the wall and the smarty had tumbled onto the floor. Of course, that meant there was a ghastly mess to clean up, but Wayne considered it a win. Consider it karma getting its due through random chance, he figured.
Now he just had to wrap up the last of the loose ends and he’d be done. Two little fragile necks snapped and this whole affair would be cleared up nicely, and he could get back to getting settled into his new life. It felt shitty, of course, but it was mercy. Doing what’s right doesn’t always mean doing what’s nice, after all.
Which is why Wayne cursed a blue streak to himself as he went to go get a nurse mare to take care of the pair.
Well, that hadn’t panned out at all. Turns out that since one of the foals had both wings and a horn some stupid fucking glitch in the fluffy psyche meant most nurse mares would kill it on sight and those that wouldn’t were sold at a premium. Wayne couldn’t afford that right now, and the…other option, euphemistically called a "milkbag,’ was…yeah, fuck that.
Damn the luck, he seethed as he walked back out to his car. Why was everything so difficult for him in particular? Wasn’t he due a fucking break right about now?
Then he almost stepped on the break he felt was so far overdue.
Babbeh wheezed softly as she ran, her body protesting with every step on the rough asphalt. She had to run, she had to run, she had to run! Even now she heard them getting closer, the munstah-fluffies that had given her mummah and her daddeh and the other babbehs forever-sleepies! She had to run!
He eyes blurred with tears, making her stumble over and over, but she didn’t blink the tears out of her eyes. No, she tried not to blink at all, because when she did she saw it again. Saw the evil, evil smarty doing unspeakable things to her beautiful, pretty sister. Saw the trail of blood the doomed filly had left behind as she tried to crawl, her back legs un-moving, towards the corpse of their mother.
Babbeh sobbed, hiccuping as she felt a sharp pain in her side, staggering as her legs threatened to give. At least, she reasoned, at least when they caught her she’d die quickly. For the first time in her life she was grateful for being a munstah-babbeh. At least they’d kill her quickly instead of using her like a plaything.
Her vision swam with strange black lights, her lungs screamed at her, her legs demanded she stop, but she kept running. She knew it didn’t make a difference. Knew she should just give up now. Just accept her death and hope whatever came next was less cruel. Then she turned a corner and she was out in the open.
Suddenly the maze of alleys and backstreets turned opened into a wide open space. Dread mixed with relief as she realized she was in one of the metal-munstah places, where the huge beasts waited for their human masters. The smarty and his thugs wouldn’t follow her here. The metal-munstahs would stomp her into a paste for them, and they wouldn’t risk their own lives for this.
She stumbled on a bit more, before collapsing onto the hard asphalt beside a sleeping metal-munstah. Normally she’d have been too scared to do so, but…well, to be honest she was terrified, but just couldn’t physically move any further. She just lay there and gasped, trying to gulp down enough air to make the agonizing pain in her lung stop.
Footsteps. The strange, loud, crunching footsteps of a human. Instantly Babbeh regretted not just letting the smarty catch her. The smarty was horrible, sure, but humans were inventively cruel. Every feral fluffy had seen a survivor, either miraculously escaped or callously dumped, of human torture. Things that should have killed them a hundred times over. Suddenly the idea of dying to hoofsies or bad-enfies didn’t seem so bad.
She couldn’t run, and there was nowhere to hide. So she lay there, hoping that maybe the human would think she was dead or would somehow not notice her. Then the footsteps came to a sudden halt, and that last hope was dashed.
“Pwease nu huwt,” she murmured.
Then she heard the human say something under his breath, felt a hand like iron wrap around her, and despaired. Then the human spoke clearly.
“Don’t worry, I will.”
Babbeh’s terror swelled until it became so huge it pushed all her thoughts away, and she lapsed into unconsciousness.
Wayne stumbled as he abruptly stopped, having almost stepped on a gray fluffy that was surprisingly well camouflaged against the parking lot. Was the foal trying to pretend to be dead? If so, maybe audibly wheezing wasn’t the best idea. Whatever. He leaned closer to take a better look.
Well, knock me over with a feather, he marveled. A…what were they called, again?..an alicorn? A fluffy with wings and a horn. About time he’d had some good damn luck. Seemed to be a stray or a feral too, so there was nobody to stop him taking it, either.
Some part of Wayne realized that maybe getting an extra fluffy he didn’t want to take care of two more fluffies he didn’t want was counterproductive, but the still-lingering hangover made it hard to think. Surely three couldn’t be that much worse than two, and this one was clearly nearly weened, if not entirely weened, so it should be able to keep an eye on the newborns when he was away at work. It’s not like hugging a foal was difficult.
“This better not give me worms,” he muttered, scooping the limp juvenile up. It had muttered something he couldn’t hear, probably asking if he’d be her new daddeh. “Don’t worry,” he reassured. “I will.”
Part Two
19 Likes
Very interested!
I like it! Wayne’s a great protagonist already, poor dude’s brain and heart are at war and heart’s clearly winning out. And he’s not willing to torture anyone to death! A sane man!
There’s a couple of wrong words (“Wayne knew there was no way she was making it, not with the amount of floor soaking her fluff and into the dirt”) but nothing that ruined the flow, I suspect autocorrect’s to blame there. Looking forward to reading more!
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Can’t wait for part two