In a nondescript building in a nondescript suburb of a nondescript Midwestern city, there is boundless suffering in service of meager goals.
In this facility, scrap metal is shredded and sorted magnetically. Most facilities either have workers picking through what remains for more valuable materials missed, or they box their remainders and sell them to other firms with the time and desire to do so. But not Bobby Cox. He thinks he’s got them beat.
He is wrong. It will not matter because he’s a rich white business owner and society is set up to reward even the barest mediocrity displayed by people in his class, but he is wrong.
Bobby left all the automated systems in place, but he eliminated the pickers. This not only cut his costs, it also freed up space for more machines so he could get the scrap in smaller and smaller pieces. This was vitally important, because he’d replaced the pickers with fluffies.
See, Bobby was kind of dumb. The way he saw it, the most important job pickers have is separating out things like copper, gold, or brass. Metals that may not be picked up by the automated steps due to lack of magnetic properties. By grinding, crushing, shredding, and smashing scrap into bite sized pieces, he ensured that fluffies could move all the pieces to search for that extra bit of profit.
When before he’d used conveyors to slowly move processed scrap past pickers, now he simply has a funnel to the basement. Once it’s down there, it piles up in the middle of the room.
The basement is as big as the footprint of the building, but he’s only using about a third of it. Walled it off from the rest to keep the disgusting fluffy smells contained. Once the scrap falls down, fluffies dig through it for “pwetty wockies” to recover for payment. In the corner of the room sits a basket attached to a pulley. They place the metals in that basket, and once a day Bobby hauls it up.
The rules as the fluffies understand them are that they need to put ONLY pretty rocks in the basket. They are told that they will be given food based on their output, sort of a “pound for pound” type deal. They are also told that for all the non pretty rocks they send up, some of the food will be poisoned and make them very sick.
These are both lies, but the fluffies hear them repeated day and night through a ceiling loudspeaker. Bobby dumps a whole bag of kibble down every night, and he dumps poisoned kibble down with it when the mood strikes him.
The fluffies live their lives under blinding white LED panels. They’re cheap to run and they provide clear even light. They have no toys, they have no beds. They are fed from the sky. The dumbwaiter is always returned with nummies, and their water drips down the concrete wall and through a rusty old drain. They have to lick the wall and floor for tiny sips of water. It’s constant and nobody has to go thirsty, but what would take less than a minute to drink from a bowl or a bottle feeder can take up to thirty in these conditions. Fluffies wind up with a lot of grit in their mouth. Fucked up teeth, digestive problems, basically the sorts of things you expect to find in a creature whose only water source contains a shitload of concrete dust.
They are not disciplined. They are not monitored. There is no equipment down there for that. The fluffies just know that, if they ever fail to send up pretty rocks, the meanie sky monster will kill them all. He had to, once. A long time ago. A smarty got the bright idea to withhold labor and strike for better conditions. It would have been easier to let them starve, but Bobby wanted results now. He went downstairs in a HazMat suit and hardcore ear protection. He had his trusty S333 Thunderstruck, eight rounds of .22 Magnum firing two at a time.
He had been buying crates of FluffShot, ammo with a payload of mostly rock salt, pepper powder, crystallized citric acid, and concentrated capsaicin. He’d seen it on an online guide and loved the idea. He didn’t want them all dead, just the aggressive ones and the ringleaders. He needed the bulk to survive, not just to continue operating, but to act as messengers to future generations.
The Smarty came up first, stomped, and puffed his cheeks out. Before he could issue a demand, he was soccer kicked in the nose and sent soaring into the debris pile. His tuffies attacked next, and were met with stomping and more kicking.
The Smarty wheezed from the back. “Nao! Haftu…haftu be wite nao! Nebba gedda nudda chance!” All at once the mass swarmed. Few hundred scared fluffies converging on Bobby. So he pulled out his sidearm and started shooting.
The first thing the fluffies noticed was the sound. They were in a concrete box and there were gunshots going off. Regardless of the lethality of the bullets, on the first trigger pull virtually all of them got tinnitus. Bobby was firing at random. The shots weren’t lethal, but the indgredients caused fluffies to uncontrollably cough and sneeze while burning like mace. Mace would kill most fluffies, so this dusting of Hot Shot is the alternative.
For almost fifteen straight minutes Bobby kicked and shot. Reloading more times than he could count, which isn’t all that high, he was really enjoying this target practice. Eventually, though, they were pacified.
That’s when part 2 started.
“Bring me the fluffies who convinced you to do this.”
The fluffies were barely over the chemical warfare portion of the evening, but they started morosely waddling around whining about “owwies” and “whewe babbeh” and “wai nubuddy say nuffin” and “onwy heaw wingy noisie huhuhu” as they collected the ringleaders and supporters.
Most of them were dead, but the Smarty and several mares were rounded up. They were too weak to resist, and their babbehs followed chirping for attention. “Good. Now I need all of their babies.”
The fluffies, fully broken, complied. When foals tried to run, multiple adult fluffies would attack them and make them return. “Huuu owwies! Nu mowe kicky gud babbehs!” Bobby had them laid out. Five fluffies, thirty foals. He looked out over them to make sure he had their attention. When he did, he set up a chickenwire enclosure around them to prevent escape.
“All of these fluffies are bad fluffies. You all? In the back? Right now you’re good fluffies. You’re here because you give me pretty rocks, but you’re good because you help me punish bad fluffies who don’t do what I say.”
He smirked as he began the next bit.
"All these fluffies have to die. All of you have to watch. This is what happens when you don’t do your jobs. This is what happens when you don’t work." With that, he grabbed a particularly adorable and chubby babbeh. It had been comforting the other babbehs in the corral, and its mummah was helping nurse babbehs whose mummahs had been killed.
It tried hugging his hand and looked up at him with big wet eyes. “Babbeh wub ou nice mistah, wub babbeh? Gib huggies? Hab wowstest heaw pwace owwies huhuhuhuuuu…” He took his gun, placed the barrel against the babbeh’s forehead, and fired. Despite the soft payload, two .22 powder charges will obliterate a foal’s skull at close range. Brain and bits of viscera coated the doomed creatures below as the loving and kind foal was reduced to biomass and memories.
The fluffies in the pen began to panic, begging for help. The fluffies watching on were upset, but none dared speak up. One tried, and was immediately kicked until he shut up. It didn’t matter. Bobby demanded him, and the fluffies dragged him kicking and screaming to the fence.
“Nuuuuu! Nu wanna gu fowebba sweepies! Pwease nu kiww! Fwuffy just nu wike fwens habbin su much huwties! Nu wan see hoomin kiwwin babbehs!” Bobby picked him up by the scalp and while he thrashed around, shot him point blank in the penis. It exploded like a hot dog in a microwave. His shredded scrotum could no longer hold his balls, and the one that hadn’t burst from the gunshot was now dangling down below him by the vas deferens. “SCREEEEEEEEEEEEEE! NUUUUUUUUU! SPECIAW PWAAAAAACE!” Bobby dropped him, bleeding and sobbing, outside the fenceline. Then he resumed his task.
One by one he executed them. Gunshots every time. They’re loud and effective. Each round hurts everyone in this basement not wearing ear protection. The foals he started shooting without picking up. They died slower, but it was a bit easier.
“Sp…speeeeep…” A once vibrant blue filly was doubled over in pain. She’d been shot in the back while fleeing and it smashed her spine. She couldn’t feel anything below her belly, and everything above it hurt. Blood seeped out of her mouth as she slowly lost the strength to clench her teeth. Like a hydraulic pump losing pressure, all the life drained out with her fluids.
The Smarty was last to die. He’d seen his herd terrified. His closest confidants butchered to make an example. Children, actual children, converted into pink mist and chunks of bone. The air tasted of pepper and everything smelled like blood and shit. Throughout the ordeal, Bobby had paused and shot the Smarty somewhere nonlethal. By the end, the miserable fuck had all his knees blown out, his dick and balls smashed by hand, his lower jaw dislocated, his ears and tail ripped off, and his soft pudgy body was bruised all over from abuse. He’d been shot in his soft spots alone twenty times.
Bobby sat down amidst the carnage and laid the Smarty in his lap. “Tell them you failed. Tell them you’re a dummy and I’ll make it quick. If you don’t, I’ll make it slow and painful.” The Smarty winced. He knew what this meant. He knew he had no choice.
“Smawty sowwy fow…fow be dummeh…onwy wan…wan hewp aww hewd…wan sabe fwends…”
Bobby smiled. He’d broken it. Good. “There, wasn’t that easy?” He held the gun to its head and it closed its eyes, tears flowing free. But then, from the crowd, a tiny voice.
“Nu! Nu huwt daddeh!”
Bobby looked. A green foal who didn’t even have his mane yet was puffing his cheeks as fluffies around him ran scared. Bobby grabbed him and brought him over to the Smarty.
“Is this your daddeh?”
“Uh huh! He bestest daddeh ebba! Nu gib huwties ow babbeh gib sowwies!”
“Why didn’t you come over here sooner?”
“Daddeh dummeh fwend put buncha meanie wocks on babbeh! Babbeh had tu make bestest diggies fow gud escapies!”
He looked at the Smarty. Where once he’d seen defeat, now he saw hope. That wouldn’t do.
He grabbed a fistful of scrap metal chunks and started force feeding them to the babbeh. He struggled against this as best he could, but he’s only a foal. His poor mouth was absolutely shredded. He was vomiting blood and his face was one of pure terror. He gave the babbeh to the Smarty.
“Here. Comfort him. Tell him it’s going to be alright.”
The weakened Smarty clumsily reaches out with his battered and broken weggy. “Nu…nu wowwy babbeh…ebbytin gunna be o-”
POP
The Smarty was gone. His body remained, but two rounds of what amounted to taco seasoning tore through his brain like Errol Flynn through a big unfurled sail. His babbeh became a two seam fastball, then shortly after became a stain on a wall.
That was five years ago.
Now, there is no defiance. No dissent. He never goes down there, and the fluffies keep fucking and providing more fluffies. Anytime one gets out of line, he never hears about it directly. But he can always tell.
He knows what it means when the metals he hauls up are covered in blood.