Over the Rainbow was targeted to hugboxers right down to the sickly saccharine name. Though far from the best bio-toy shop, Ms. Camomile still ran a reputable business. Her livelihood depended on humanely bred and reared fluffies with all the accessories required for their care.
“They’re not toys, they’re family!” She would say with a wide grin whenever the opportunity struck to ‘empathize with and educate’ anyone with as much as a passing thought otherwise. She was a real hippy-dippy lady who required all her fluffies be treated with the highest quality care possible.
Which made working there pretty damn difficult for anyone who didn’t believe the light of the world shone out a fluffy’s ass.
Kyle didn’t care for them when he first started working there. His little sister had one, and it was stupid as hell. He had a good laugh sometimes scaring the shit out of it, literally, and tormenting it when it went to the sorry-box for ruining the carpet. But most of the time his sister kept it attached to her hip. It even learned to avoid him, so he rarely had to look at it.
He hadn’t thought working in the bio-toy shop was going to be so bad, but he should have known better. He’d applied at Fluff-Mart™, too, but he ultimately chose Over the Rainbow because it was two blocks down from the bus stop after school. He should have gone with Fluff-Mart™ despite how much he’d spend on gas getting there.
Kyle didn’t care for fluffies when he first started. Seven months later, though, he loathed every minute he spent within twenty yards of one of those jelly bean shit-sacks. Forty hours a week looking after them was driving him absolutely nuts.
Ms. Camomile made her employees take better care of the fluffies than a lot of people took care of their kids: baths for every fluffy twice a day to keep them clean and smelling pretty; human huggies for every fluffy every four hours; cycling through the cages every other hour to make sure they all had time in the play-pen for exercise and socialising; cleaning the cages three times a day; hand-chopped veggies, mineral water, Himmalayan salt licks. The official list she kept on a clipboard by the back door covered three stapled pages, front-and-back.
All for some ugly, annoying puffballs.
It just meant more work for Kyle. Sure, it paid the bills for his apartment after his mom kicked him out. And sure, Ms. Camomile loaned him enough for the security deposit so he sorta owed it to her to keep working until he could pay her back for that at least. But since he was one of only three full-time employees, he was constantly left to close up on his own which meant staying an hour late after closing to get through the ridiculous bedtime rituals Ms. Camomile demanded.
More than anything, he was sick and tired of pretending he gave a shit about the fluffies.
So, when a loud muscle car pulled up in front five minutes until close on a particularly dismal Thursday, he may have squeezed a foal a little too hard when transferring it from the playpen counter. He did not have the patience to deal with an out-of-touch forty-something looking for a fluffy for his baby girl to make up for his and mommy’s divorce after he was caught screwing his secretary. Not again.
“Bad upsies! Meanie Kywuh! Huwt babbeh!” The green filly screeched, writhing in his grasp. “Wet go! Wet go!”
Kyle loosened his hold on the foal, hurriedly plopping her into the cage with her two cage-mates. The two other fillies came over to her immediately to offer huggies. Sniffling, she moved to close the distance and flopped forward onto her face. She cried out in pain and confusion, managing to get to her hooves with a bit of help, but the hugs given to her only brought more tears when she tried to return them. One of her front legs wasn’t moving.
Shit.
Ms. Camomile was going to tear him a new one for that. There were already two marks on his record for handling the fluffies too rough. To be fair, one wasn’t even his fault. If that colt hadn’t fought against him when it knew it was time to go back to the cage, he wouldn’t have dropped it. At least it was one with wings, probably thought it was flying before it landed.
Still, he felt bad for the family that walked in right as it happened. A buy-one-get-one-free offer on foals, courtesy of his own pocket, probably hadn’t done much for their trauma except help repress it. He felt like he owed it to the single mom, though, having to explain mortality and death to her twins on the ride home.
Luckily, though, Kyle was pretty sure he hadn’t broken this foal’s leg, probably just pushed it out of the socket. That was an easy enough fix. Foal bones were still highly cartilaginous, still easy as hell to break but also quite flexible if one was careful about it. Popping the leg back into the socket wasn’t the problem - that part was easy - but making sure not to pinch any nerves took a lot of practice.
Given the way fluffies cried bloody murder over something as small as a hair getting pulled, there was no way Ms. Camomile wouldn’t find out if he screwed it up. She’d probably find out even if he didn’t. Fluffies never shut up, little gossip-hounds they were. The only way they wouldn’t mention her injury is if something really, really ‘wondewful’ happened: she got a new home.
But with five minutes left to close and nowhere near enough spare cash to afford the price listed on the cage, he would have to find another way to get rid of his mistake.
Kyle slid the front acrylic panel of the cage back into place as the bell over the door rung. He slapped on his best customer service grin and turned to greet the asshole walking in while Kyle should’ve been locking up. On instinct, he started into the customary, “Hello, welcome to Over the Rainbow! How can I help you find your pot of gold today?”
He stopped halfway through when he saw the guy standing there in front of the door. This guy was six foot four at least, jacked as hell, some sort of blonde Clark Kent look-alike wearing an outfit straight out of a fashion magazine. As he stood there using his hand to shake the rain out of his hair, Kyle could only think that he did not belong there.
Yeah, plenty of people came through all the time that didn’t look like the typical fluffy-owner. Alt fashion punks looking for a ray of sunshine. Straight-laced business men wanting some company in what little time they had free. Hell, even macho guys coming in looking for the perfect toy for their little sweetums wasn’t unusual, but this guy wasn’t after toys. Not the kind to keep a fluffy occupied anyway.
He was pissed. About what? Didn’t matter. Kyle knew that look: the squared off stance, the clenched jaw, the fingers twitching into fists, the furrowed brow and out-of-focus glare. He’d only ever been so mad once, senior year, when Valerie George turned him down for prom only to go with Stephanie Frederickson. Fucking dykes always steal away the hot bi chicks.
Kyle sighed and grabbed his broom where he’d leaned it up against the playpen island. He was hoping he wouldn’t have to shoo the guy away, but he could never be sure. Abuse was an addiction, and when someone needed a fix, they needed it and would do whatever it took to get it. Ms. Camomile kept a stun gun behind the register for a reason.
He took a step forward, making sure he got right in the guy’s line of sight and spoke calmly, “Look, man, I get it, I do, but you’re gonna have to go somewhere else. Owner’s policy, I can’t sell for 'in-store use.’”
“What?” For a moment, the anger slipped from the man’s face to make way for a look of confusion. Kyle pointed to the wall, a sign set over the checkout counter with a set of family friendly terms to use to avoid scaring the merchandise.
Mrs. Camomile would sell to abusers. They needed accessories and fluffy food just as much as anyone else, but that didn’t mean she’d put up with them ruining the magic for everyone else. (Or the rest of the stock, for that matter. Traumatized fluffies didn’t sell.)
“Doesn’t look like you’d be able to wait until you’re out in your car," Kyle continued.
“What?” The man glanced back out the door to his car, and something finally clicked. His shoulders fell slightly, and he shook his head, “No, no, that’s not why I’m here. It’s not for me. It’s for- look, do you have any cannibal fluffies?”
“Cannibal fluffies?” Kyle repeated.
“Yeah, the ones with the crazy eyes?” The guy pointed to his own, widening them exaggeratedly and spinning his fingers in the air to mimic the swirled irises. He dropped his hand with a sigh, “I’ve been to every other fluffy shop in the city, and not a single one sells them. I was just passing by, saw the sign. You know you guys aren’t in any search results online? Probably ‘cause you don’t have fluffies anywhere in your title, to be fair.”
He continued to ramble as Kyle processed what he was asking for. Ms. Camomile didn’t stock cannibal fluffies. Actually, as far as he knew, no one stocked cannibals. That was a feral adaptation - mutation? - and they didn’t really like humans either. Ms. Camomile had mentioned something in passing about them not doing well in captivity either, something about them being too stressed to mate or carry to term or something she’d learned in one of her fluffy-rearing courses online.
Kyle looked down at the bottom row of cages, their tinted acrylic cage-fronts often overlooked by browsing customers in favor of the other cages with colorful, eye-catching interiors. He finally answered, “Not exactly.”
The man nodded, frowning, “I was afraid you were gonna say that. I spent half this afternoon in alleys looking for one.” The guy took a few steps forward, craning his neck to look around the store, “You have any traps or bait, then? Like, something normal fluffies would avoid?”
Kyle loosened his grip on the broom. This guy wasn’t dangerous, he was just stupid. Kyle was not in any mood to deal with stupid. “Dude, look around you. This is like a pet shop.”
“Yeah, you’re right,” he laughed. “Uh, sorry I came in so late. You want me to turn off your sign when I go?”
“I-uh, sure, I guess? But, wait a second. You’ve got me curious. Why do you want a cannibal fluffy?”
The guy flipped the neon sign off. He turned back around and leaned up against the store’s window-front, scratching the side of his neck. “It’s sorta a long story.”
Kyle shrugged, “Closing up takes half an hour.”
“Fair. So, I might’ve…” The guy trailed off, eyes glued to the security camera above the counter. He glanced around the store, counting the rest of the cameras silently to himself. He cleared his throat, "Do these cameras record sound?”
“No? Why, is it fucked up?”
“Meanie wowd!”
Kyle scowled and hunched over to peer into the cage where the three fillies were. Usually the acrylic was good enough at keeping out sound, but he hadn’t gotten it closed all the way. “Good fluffies don’t interrupt adults when they’re talking,” he chided, pushing the panel in all the way to block out their huu-huuing and protests of buh am good fwuffy!
He put his key into the lock, turning it and giving the acrylic panel a wiggle to ensure the lock had engaged properly.
“So, d’you like these things?”
Kyle grumbled, walking around the built-in cages to the check-out counter. He put the broom against the back wall and leaned his arms on the counter. “It pays the bills, but I definitely don’t want to be here.”
“Oh, good. Yeah, they’re weird. Okay, so… God, where do I even start?”
“A name?”
“Jason.” Jason extended his hand to shake.
“Kyle.” Kyle shook his hand.
“Cool.” Jason took his hand back and shoved it into his pocket. “So, Kyle. This week’s been pretty rough. Whole year’s been rough, really.”
Kyle nodded his sympathy. His mom kicked him out earlier that year when she found out he hadn’t been going to college like she wanted him to, had just been hanging out at the mall when he said he was in class. He’d moved into a shitty duplex with really loud neighbors that most definitely were growing something in their shed out back but refused to share. “I feel you, man.”
“I’ve been having trouble with the bae - well, ex now, I guess - and one thing led to another, and… I’ve been drinking. A lot. I know I’m an asshole when I drink that much, but what can a guy do after he gets an inbox full of automated ‘I’m sorry, but your application has been declined’ emails? Kick back with a six-pack and try again tomorrow, right?
“Shit like that puts a lot of stress on a guy. And it’s not like I wanted to sit on the couch and game all day. It’s just the only thing that keeps my brain from rotting between sending out applications and getting rejected. Can’t do housework or anything like that with all that mental strain, you know?
“Anyway, I’ve been sleeping on the couch for the past month. Smelt too much like booze. Whatever, I sleep better on the couch anyway, don’t have to fight for leg room. I figured once I get back on my feet, the whole thing would blow over. Kiss ass a bit, it’d be like the whole thing never happened. Well…
“I got up one morning, and I went to get a headstart on the day, yannow?” Jason mimed shooting one back. “I wasn’t watching where I was going and… he has one of these things. A rescue or something, I don’t know. It’s ugly as hell, but he let it get pregnant, and it popped about a week ago.
“He never kept it in its… what is it called? Like, fallout shelter or whatever so it doesn’t ruin the house?"
“Safe-room?”
“Yeah, that. He never kept it in there, let it wander around wherever it wanted. Which, I’ll be fair, the thing is litter-trained just as well as the cat, but come on. It was getting itself some water, and it’d brought its babies along. Whatever. Walk around it, no big deal. It minds its business, I mind mine.
“But the dumb shit had let its babies down. Looking back, it was probably just taking advantage of the heated hardwood.”
“Nice.”
“Yeah, man it was. Ex came from money, so the whole house was bougie. Wine cellar, bookcase doors, heat-reactive tiles in the guest bathroom… heh, real fun to push someone up against… ahem. Yeah, uh, so the thing was in the kitchen getting a drink, and so was I. I get my drink, I turn to leave, and one of the thing’s babies was reaching up at me.
“It was a little shitstain pawing at my ankle and whining, wanting up. And I was still hungover, so its high-pitched begging was just like someone taking a hammer to my head. I pushed it off and went to leave the kitchen, but it came at me again so I had to teach it that I wasn’t its fucking daddy.
“You see videos all the time of birds crashing into windows. You know that noise, the thunk? Yeah, turns out kicking a foal into some french doors makes a similar noise. There was a crack, too, and gurgling. I couldn’t just leave it there to make a mess, it’d probably stain the grout, so I picked it up in a napkin and threw it away.
“I went back to pass out on the couch cushions. I woke up getting pulled off the couch and thrown out the door with a suitcase full of my shit and my car keys. The bitch is blind had three more babies, so I don’t know what the big deal is; it wouldn’t have known the difference! Would have called it a monster if it did. It was a… what’s the one with the horn and the wings?”
“An alicorn?”
“Yeah, yeah, alicorn. It wasn’t the favorite or anything, a little more adventurous than its siblings or more developed or something, I guess.”
“Alicorns tend to develop faster, yeah. They’re supposedly smarter than the others, too, though I’m not really sure if that’s saying much.”
“Yeah, two times as smart is still stupid when you’re on par with a potato.”
“That’s one way to put it.”
“Anyway… I thought, ‘give it a week, a couple days, it’ll all blow over.’ And, uh, yeah that’s not how it worked out. Went back after a while, and my key didn’t work. So, I thought I might as well give Mom a visit to bum on her couch for a week or two and… this morning she answered the door to a lawyer or something. She had to watch me get served a no-contact order. That was a fun one to explain.”
“I’m sorry, man.” Kyle wasn’t really sure what else to say. Jason sounded like a real loser, but Kyle couldn’t judge. At least Jason had gotten some action in the past year.
“Yeah, me too. I was the best thing that ever happened to that nerdy twink, and he just throws me out like garbage, cares more about some bio-toys than me! I didn’t even get break-up sex!" Jason pouted silently for a moment before sighing and continuing, “Anyway, that’s why I need a cannibal. Throw it in his yard when he lets his bitch out and let nature take its course. I don’t want him crawling back or anything, I just want him hurt. You can’t treat someone like that, you know?”
Jason’s ex kicked him out because he killed one of his fluffies. And he thought the best way to get even would be to kill the rest of his fluffies with a cannibal.
Kyle couldn’t help himself, he laughed, "That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard…” As soon as Kyle said that, Jason’s face fell, and suddenly Kyle was feeling much less safe. He’d forgotten he wasn’t talking to one of his friends and couldn’t just say whatever he wanted to.
Jason toyed with the sleeves of his cardigan, pushing them up to his elbows. He carefully undid the latch on his watch and slipped it into his pocket. “I must have misheard you, because you did not just say what I think you said.”
Kyle stood up straight, pulling one hand behind the counter, feeling for Ms. Camomile’s stun gun without taking his eyes off Jason because he looked like he was ready to vault the counter and crack his head open against the linoleum. “Let me repeat myself then,” Kyle continued because he couldn’t shut his big, stupid mouth. “That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard. And I work with fluffies all day, man.”
Jason stalked forward, pupils constricted like he no doubt wanted to collapse Kyle’s windpipe to get him to shut up. “Give me one good reason not jump over this counter and pop off your bobblehead like a PEZ dispenser or I swear to fuck-”
Kyle finger’s brushed against the stun gun, finally. He wrapped his hand around the grip, but he couldn’t find the damned power button. “Be a little creative!”
Jason stopped on the other side of the counter, “What?”
Kyle blurted out the first thing that came to mind, hoping his penchant for bullshitting would be enough to placate Jason. “You want to kill his fluffies. Boom, done, I get it. But a cannibal fluff just randomly showing up in his backyard the week you two split? Anyone would piece that together. It’s like you want to be sued. Or, hell, with that no-contact order you’d probably get jail time.”
Jason slowly crossed his arms as if he was taking the advice seriously, “Oh, yeah? And what do you suggest, Einstein? A sincere apology and a bundle of roses?”
"Fuck that, just be smarter about your revenge, dude. You’re not going to be able to just get a cannibal. You’d have to find a no-kill shelter that managed to catch one, and they’d make you chip it so it would get traced back to you anyway. You can’t catch one. You’re too eager, you won’t be able to find one, let alone be patient enough to catch it.”
“Fair enough, I don’t want to wait that long.”
“So, next best thing…” Kyle moved around the counter, bidding Jason follow along as he made his way back to the cages in the middle of the store. He wasn’t going to win a fight with this guy, so he might as well just make him happy and get him out of the store as fast as possible.
Jason followed at Kyle’s heels, paying no mind to the cages as the fluffies within tried to get his attention. Pawing at the acrylic fronts, they squeaked out their promises of love and huggies and good poopies for “new daddeh,” but none seemed to understand he wasn’t interested. Jason wrinkled his nose at a particularly eager foal who began dancing to earn his affection.
He turned away from the cage, eyes catching something else that made him growl, “Fucker looks just like the dead bitch."
Kyle glanced back to see, just because he was curious. Jason’s gaze had locked on a filly, one of their few alicorns in the shop. She had to be caged alone, and she was one of the few fluffies Kyle could stand simply because she didn’t feel the need to fill every last second of silence with her own voice. Alicorns generally sold before they were talky babbehs, especially when they were as well behaved as she was, but she had stayed in the shop a bit longer due to her beige coat. Her mane and wing feathers, though not fully grown, were coming in a lovely pastel pink.
The filly played with her stuffy toy, setting it up in the middle of her cage and walking back to the side behind it. She dropped her front to the ground, wiggled her rear, and pounced on the toy, giggling as she tumbled and wrestled with the toy twice her size. When she tuckered out, she happily relaxed on the floor of her cage, somehow still having lost against the inanimate squid toy. Only then did she notice Jason glaring at her, but instead of fear, she showed only curiosity.
Huffing with the effort, she pulled herself free from the weight of the fleece tentacles and trotted over to the acrylic cage-front. She raised one of her front hooves, waving enthusiastically. The acrylic muffled her words, “Hewwo, nice mistah! Wan pway wiff fwuffy? It awmost time foh fwuffies go bedtime, but fwuffy wove to pway!”
Jason grit his teeth, jaw clenched so hard Kyle could see the muscles in his neck twitching.
Quickly, Kyle crouched down, jamming his key into a cage at the bottom of the display and pushing open the acrylic pane. He grabbed the sleeping fluffy inside by the scruff of its neck. It made a pained noise, eyes widening when it came to consciousness and realized what was happening. It thrashed in Kyle’s grip, legs flailing, wing-nubs buzzing, teeth clacking together audibly when it missed a bite meant for the side of his hand.
Kyle plopped it down unceremoniously onto the playpen counter, a raised playpen with clear walls on a three-foot concrete slab. It kept merchandise closer to the eye-line, and it kept kids from touching things they shouldn’t.
Seriously, the horror-stories from stores with child-accessible playpens were brutal. Just the previous week, there’d been that news story of a toddler getting into a foal pen and deciding he liked the noise their heads made when he pulled them off. That photo they used in the news coverage? Kid smiling, happy as could be, surrounded by multicolor corpses and absolutely covered in blood? Serial killer in the making.
The foal tried to land upright, failing abysmally and smacking its jaw when it fell forward onto the carpet-covered concrete. It shakily pushed itself to its feet, spitting out a glob of crimson and shaking its head to reorient itself.
“This is what you want,” Kyle said, pulling Jason’s attention back to the matter at hand.
Jason narrowed his eyes at the foal. “What the hell is wrong with it?”
The foal blinked a few times, dark eyes bloodshot when it made eye-contact with him. It wasn’t shaped right either, a little too… sharp. It wasn’t round and soft and fluffy looking. Somehow it was even uglier than a normal fluffy, wronger somehow. As if it could understand what he was thinking, the fluffy snapped at him, growling with an open mouth to show off its serrated teeth.
Instinctively, Jason pulled back, “What the fuck?”
“It’s a hunter,” Kyle explained calmly, wiping his hand off on his apron. This was one of the few fluffies that didn’t get baths daily. While some had health restrictions on their baths - fluffies with chinchilla-esque fur could easily get pneumonia if bathed too often or not dried properly - this one was too ill-behaved.
“A what?”
“Doesn’t matter. It’s a fluffy that eats other fluffies, but unlike cannibals, hunters were engineered this way.”
“Hmm… they’re the kind the mayor was trying to get put on the sanitation crews, right? Get rid of the pests with slightly less annoying vermin.”
“Sure. Plus, they look enough like normal fluffies to fool most people, provided you don’t look in their mouth.” Kyle reached down into the playpen, swatting the foal when it tried to lunge at his hand. The hit flung the foal against the plexiglass side of the playpen with a pathetic thunk!. It groaned with the effort to get back to its hooves, though it did not try its luck with another attack, content enough to pace around the wall of the playpen with eyes fixed on Kyle’s hand to watch what he was doing.
Kyle prodded at the bloody spot of saliva the foal had spat out. Suspended in the gooey mess, two white specks stuck out against the childish blue carpet. Kyle pulled the teeth out of the saliva, wiping them off on the corner of his apron before offering them to Jason.
“They’re like little sharks,” Kyle explained as Jason took the teeth, testing them by pressing them against the side of his thumb. One pierced through his skin when he slid it to the side, and he grimaced as the wound swelled up with a drop of blood. “They’re serrated, razor-sharp… and they have two rows of them.”
“Sick… What’s wrong with this one?”
“Metabolism problem, we’re not really sure. Doesn’t matter how much it eats, it won’t gain weight. Not that it doesn’t try, it eats everything.”
“Great. Get me a healthy one.”
Ms. Camomile would kill him if he let this guy take a healthy hunter. This guy was going to release it. If his ex didn’t catch it, it would wreak havoc wherever it went. These things could be worse than a housecat when it came to their body count. At least with this one, if it got out like that, it would eat itself to death, eat and eat and eat and rupture its stomach.
Kyle set his shoulders. “No.”
“No?” Jason raised a brow, popped his knuckles.
Think like a crazy person, Kyle, think like a crazy person.
“You want a cannibal? Its fucked, demented shtick? This thing is the closest thing you’re gonna get. You take a healthy one, it’s over too quick. You want revenge, right? Take this one. It’ll tear his whole house up. I’m telling you, it can’t get full.
“Take it, rip out its teeth, starve it a little. Dump it at your ex’s place. He’ll see it, think it’s a normal, malnourished foal, and his bleeding heart means he has to take it in. Without a calcium supplement, it’s going to take three or four weeks to get its teeth back. It’s usually only a few days, but hunters need way more calcium than whatever vitamins he gives his fluffies.
“He’ll bond with it by then, give it a name, treat it like his own. One day he’ll go to work and come back to a quiet house. He’ll look for his precious babies only to find this one gorged on them. And it’ll all be his own fault for bringing it in the house.”
“That’s twisted.” Jason’s lips curled into a smile, “Ring me up.”
Jason turned his back, pulled his wallet out of his back pocket and headed to the checkout counter. Relieved that he wasn’t going to be getting his shit kicked in, Kyle allowed himself to finally breathe. Carefully, he reached into the playpen and plucked out the hunter foal, putting the pocket on his work apron to good use to carry it up to the front.
He slowed in front of another cage.
Jason flipped through his wallet, counting out his cash because he sure as hell wouldn’t have this showing up on his credit statement. When he looked up again, Kyle had two cardboard take-home boxes. Jason spoke up as Kyle gingerly put a green filly into one of the boxes, “Hold on, I only want the one. I’m only getting the hunter or whatever.”
Kyle punched in the register codes for a foal and a hunter foal, “You’re taking both and I might turn my back long enough for you to get out of here before I grab the chip-gun and make you register them.” He pressed the button to open the cash drawer, the till chiming as he stuck Jason with a smile, “Or I report you the second your orange eyesore of a car peels out on the street. That’s a vanity plate, right? G-4-Y-”
“Whatever,” Jason grumbled and pulled another bill out of his wallet, passing over a wad for Kyle to run through the register. Kyle passed back the change; Jason stuck it in his pocket. Kyle turned his back to get the chip-gun; Jason stacked the two take-home boxes and bolted.
Kyle wanted to make a show of bolting to the door for the cameras, but it was all he could do to grab the trash can beneath the counter and curl over it. His stomach gurgled after throwing up, and he didn’t let go of the bin until he was absolutely sure there was nothing left to come up. He leaned back against the wall, sliding down until he sat on the cool linoleum tile. With one hand, he wiped away the bile from his mouth and with the other he felt his neck for a pulse before giving up because he couldn’t find it with his shaking fingers.
Kyle pushed himself to his feet, forced himself to get to the door and lock it, tug on it to make sure it was locked. He turned back, stumbling to the playpen counter so he could brace his wobbly steps by using it as a handrail. He made his way down the wall of cages, unlocking the panel for the alicorn filly.
She looked up at him from where she sat playing with the legs of her stuffy toy, head tilted curiously, short mane flopping down in front of her eyes. “Hewwo?”
“C’mere.”
“Huggies? Fwuffy aweady have night-night time huggies. Can have mowe?” She murmured incredulously, unable to fathom getting more attention than she already had.
“Yeah. Yeah, you’re getting some more. They’re, uh, they’re because I want huggies.”
“Yay! Wove hoomin huggies!” She bounced over, pushing herself into his chest a moment before noticing the sad wawa running down his cheeks. She gasped, “No! No have saddies, mistah Kywuh! Have huggies, happies! Huggies give happies!”
Kyle choked back a sob as the filly crawled up his chest and rubbed her face against his to wipe away the tears. “It okay, mistah Kywuh. You okay. Pwease no cwy! Fwuffy give huggies untiw you okay, pwomise!"
In the break room, the filly curled up on his lap asleep. Her hugs and the champagne in the fridge leftover from Janet’s going-away party were enough to stop his tears. It wasn’t until after the filly fell asleep did Kyle’s shaking finally subside enough to call Ms. Camomile and let her know what happened.
He could only think one thing as the dial tone sounded, as Ms. Camomile picked up the call cheerily, “Kyle! I was starting to worry about you, taking so long to call and let me know you’ve locked up. Was everyone good? No one’s getting sorry-boxed tonight, right? They always behave so well when you’re working! So, tell me, how many of our little lovelies got wonderful new homes today?”
“Uh, yeah, about that…”
God, he was so fired.
