Suddenly there was light. Rosemary squinted and tried to shy away, but she had nowhere to go. She was trapped in the confines of her sorry box. The light hurt her eyes for a brief moment, but as her eyes started to adjust she saw…the top of the sorry box was gone! And standing there, towering above her, was…DADDY!
Daddy hated her, though. Oh, she wanted to yell and shout and tell him how much she loved him, how sorry she was, so many things. But her voice was almost gone. Her throat was dry. She’d screamed too much, cried too much, pushed her voice past its limits. There were no words. Just soft sounds.
“Good morning, Rosemary,” John said. “Have you thought about what you’ve done?”
Rosemary tried to make words. She opened her mouth, but only a faint whisper came out. Oh no! She was trying so hard! What if daddy thought her silence meant that she wasn’t sorry? Would he give her away? Give her forever sleepies? What would he do? Her heart-hurties would normally have driven her to tears, but she had no more tears to cry. There hadn’t been any water for so many forevers, and she couldn’t drink the bad water that was full of her peepees and poopies. Oh, she hoped daddy would help her and fix her talkies so she could tell him how sorry she was!
“Jesus,” he sniffed. “That’s a LOT of shit and piss. You’re covered in filth.” He reached over, past the box, and the water started to go away. “Goddamn,” he cringed. “Now it’s all over my hand.” He walked away from over, over to the small bowl where he’d given her that first bath, and washed away the not-smell-pretties from his hand.
Please come back, daddy, she thought with all her might. Please come back, don’t go away again, Rosemary is so so sorry, please daddy please please please please please
Suddenly he was back and he was holding a bath-thing in his hand, a thing that warm waters came out of. He held it over Rosemary and made the warm waters flow all over her. It felt good, it felt soothing, and it washed the cold of the last forever away from her. She could feel most of the not-smell-pretties leaving her fluff. Daddy was going to make her smell pretty again! Maybe he DIDN’T hate her, after all? Once most of her fluff was a little more pretty, daddy pulled her out of the sorry box and set her at the back of the bath place.
“Don’t move from here, or you get the sorry stick. Don’t you try to run away from me like you did last time. Do you understand? Nod if you understand.”
Rosemary nodded. Rosemary loves you, daddy! Rosemary loves you so much and will never try to run away from you ever again! Please love Rosemary! Please!
“Good.” He put the bath-thing into the sorry box and washed away all of the bad poopies and bad peepees, then washed them out of the bath place. Finally everything didn’t smell pretty, but it didn’t smell so terrible anymore. “Christ, I’m going to have to napalm this fucking thing to get the smell out.” Daddy put the box outside of the bath place, then pointed to the center of the white, slippery coldness. “Now stand right there and let me give you a bath. I’ve got to get the rest of that shit off of you.”
Rosemary did exactly as she was told, standing where he told her to stand and moving when he told her to move. He rubbed smell-pretty things into her fluff and it made foamy bubbles, which she loved. She loved when daddy would give her the bestest smell-pretty baths, and she loved it more this time than she’d ever loved it before. It reminded her of the very first time he’d given her a bath, right after he’d saved her life. So warm and pretty and happy and full of love. Daddy had always loved her so much, even before he agreed to be her daddy, and she knew now that she never should have done ANYTHING to give him heart hurties. He deserved the best.
Eventually her fluff was clean again, and daddy rubbed her all over with a towel so all the waters went away from her fluff. Daddy sat her back down in the bath place and put two small bowls down in front of her. NUMMIES! And WATER! She almost launched herself into them, she was so hungry and thirsty! But suddenly she realized that daddy was still mad at her. She needed to ask permission. But her voice was so quiet, just a tiny whisper! Her throat was so dry! Rosemary looked up at her daddy and looked as sad as she ever had, then looked back down at the nummies and water.
“You can eat and drink. I’ll be back in a little bit, okay? Hopefully the water will help you get your voice back. Drink the water first, otherwise the kibble might hurt, okay? When I get back we’ve got a lot of talking to do. You’ve been a very bad fluffy.”
Rosemary nodded and started drinking the water. Daddy walked out of the room, and she was left there in the bath place with nummies and water and heart hurties on top of heart hurties. Daddy hadn’t said that he loved her, not once. He hated her. He hated her so, so much. Daddy hated her and she couldn’t even tell him how much she loved him.
Rosemary loves you so much, daddy. So, so much. Please know that. Please.
===
Fred had conserved his voice. He’d spent all of his sorry box time seething in mostly quiet rage, only crying when the pain was overwhelming, or whenever the fear was too much for him. He’d been planning, plotting, figuring out just how he was going to give the biggest, worstest hurties to the dummy humans and his fluffy family. He hated them. All of them. And he was going to make sure they all knew it before he gave them the worstest sorry hoofsies.
The top of the sorry box came off, and there he was! The dummy human, the not-daddy. Fred didn’t even wait for him to say something. He wanted to be the first one to talk.
“DUMMEH HOOMIN!” Fred shouted. “WET SMAWTY GU WIGHT NAO, OW GET WOWSTEST SOWWY HOOFSIES AN FOWEVAH SWEEPIES!”
“Okay,” John said. “Sure thing.”
“DUMMEH HOOMIN BETTAH DU WHA SMAWTY SAY, OW EWSE SMA…wai, wha?”
“I said okay. You win. You’re the smarty, you make the rules around here, right?”
“DAS WIGHT!”
“Guess I need to get you cleaned up so you can smell pretty again.” John reached in with gloved hands and pulled Fred out of the sorry box. He placed him on a plastic table, right in front of a small, soft object. Fred sniffed it and instantly started drooling. Before John could say anything else, Fred snagged the object and scarfed it down greedily.
“Oh, I see you found your sketti treat.”
“Dat am sketti tweat? Smawty knu dat! Bestest sketti tweats fo bestest smawty!”
“I didn’t really know how much to give you. They’re made for full-grown fluffies, but I think it’ll be okay. Rebekah doesn’t think it’ll kill you outright.”
“Wha…what dummeh hoomin am sayin?”
“I’m saying that you’ll probably be fine once you wake up again.”
“Wha? Smawty nu…nu sweepin…fuhhhhh.” Fred suddenly felt very, very sleepy. He swayed a bit, and the dummy human caught him and held him steady. Fred sank down to the table, his leggies all of a sudden not working so well. “Wha dummeh du? Fwed su sweepy.”
“I gave you some sleepy medicine. I didn’t want you screaming and acting like a little fuckstick while I bathed you and got you ready for your big day. Congratulations, Fred! Today’s the day you get to go fovever sleepies while teaching your mom a big, important lesson about listening to her daddy instead of being a fucking moron. Aren’t you excited?”
“Nu gu…nu gu fowevah…sweepies.” Fred’s head sank lower and lower, finally coming to rest on the surface of the table. His eyes closed and he couldn’t keep them open no matter how hard he fought. As he drifted off, he muttered “hachu…hachu.”
“Good for you, kid. Good for you.”
Then, darkness.
===
“I’m back, Rosemary.” John walked back into the bathroom and placed a shoe box on the counter, right next to the sink. He looked down at the fluffy mare; she had emptied both bowls, but there was no way she needed to make poopies or peepees. It would be a while before that happened; her system was pretty much completely empty. She looked up at him, eyes widening as she saw his face.
“Daddeh!” she managed, her throat moistened again, her voice having come back enough that she could speak softly. “Daddeh, Wosemawy am su, su sowwy. Su sowwy fo be wowstest fwuffy an wowstest mummah. Wosemawy nu mean gif daddeh heawt huwties. Wuv daddeh. Wuv bestest daddeh da mostest. Daddeh, pwease…”
“Rosemary,” he said quietly. I’m going to ask you some questions, and I want honest answers. Okay?"
“Otay,” she said. She propped her front hooves on the edge of the bathtub. “Pwease gif upsies an huggies, daddeh? Pwease?”
“Not yet. Sit back down, Rosemary.”
Tears formed in her eyes, and she sat back down. “Yus, daddeh. Sowwy.”
“Now. Do you have a bestest baby?”
“Aww babies am gud babbehs,” she said automatically. She’d been thinking about it for what felt like forever forevers. “Nu haf bestest babbeh.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yus, daddeh, Wosemawy nu haf bestest babbeh.” She could hear noises from the box that daddy had put up near the small bowl. It sounded familiar, but she couldn’t tell what it was. It was so muffled.
“Your baby, the one who said all those horrible things. The one who says he’s a smarty. Does he deserve to be punished?”
“Yus, daddeh. Wosemawy wiww punish dat bad babbeh. Teww Wosemawy how punish an Wosemawy gif punishes tu babbeh.”
“You need to understand something, girl. He’s gone so bad that he can never be good again. If you had told me about this a couple of weeks ago, when you first started telling him he was the bestest baby, we could have probably saved him. If you’d treated him the same as all of your other babies then he might have turned out good. But now he’s broken forever. Nobody can fix him. The only thing we can do is punish him by giving him forever sleepies. Otherwise he’s going to hurt your other babies. He might even hurt you. Or he might turn them bad, too.”
“Nuuuuuuu!” she cried. “Nu gif babbeh fowevah sweepies! Babbeh am onwy widdwe babbeh!”
“I need you to understand that this is your fault. I don’t hate you. I do love you. But this is your fault. You broke my rules, and not for the first time. You kept secrets from me. You broke your promises to me. And you made a bad, bad baby. A monster baby.”
“Daddeh nu, pwease nu say dat,” Rosemary sobbed softly. “Nu say dat. Pwease.”
“I have to say it. You have to understand that it’s true. Do you understand that it’s true?”
“Daddeh, pwease.”
“Answer me, Rosemary.”
Rosemary was silent for a few seconds. Then, even more softly. “Yus, daddeh. Wosemawy nu mean tu, buh Wosemawy make munstah babbeh. Wosemawy wowstest fwuffy evah. Nu desewf wuv.”
“So you understand that your baby has to take forever sleepies.”
“Yus.”
“And it’s all your fault.”
“Yus, daddeh.”
“Say it out loud, Rosemary.”
“Daddeh…pwease, nu. Gif wowstest evah heawt huwties.”
“Say. It.” His tone was firm, and just angry enough that it made Rosemary take a step back.
“Wose…Wosemawy am wowstest mummah evah, an make munstah babbeh. Munstah babbeh am baddest babbeh an nee take fowevah sweepies cause babbeh nu can evah be gud babbeh. Am Wosemawy fauwt, aww dat am Wosemawy fauwt.” Tears flowed freely now. “Huu huu huuuuuuu, Wosemawy am suuuuuuuuu, suuuuuuu sowwy, daddeh.”
“Good. See, I know you can be a good fluffy. You were the best fluffy when I first found you. You were the best fluffy up until I basically let you get away with breaking that first rule. I thought that the punishment was enough, but I guess it wasn’t because you went and did all of this, too. I know you can be a good mother, because your other three babies are such good fluffies. Don’t you think so?”
“Yus, daddeh!” Rosemary smiles despite her sadness and misery. Her little babies! They were so good, so full of huggies and love! She loved playing with them! Hugging them! Singing them mummah songs and having them snuggle up to her in a fluffpile! Oh, they WERE such good babies! “Wosemawy wuv babbehs! Am suuuuu good babbehs! Suuuu gud, nevah be bad fwuffies!”
“I think you’re right about that. I don’t think they ever will be bad fluffies. I think those babies will grow up to be great fluffies, and they’ll find the best families who will love them forever. I know I promised you that you could keep one of them forever. I’m still going to let you keep one.”
“Weawwy, daddeh?”
“Yes. But I need to make sure that you won’t ever break my rules again. I need to make sure that you won’t ever lie to me or keep secrets from me. I can’t let this ever happen again. That’s why I want you to see just how bad your baby is before I give him forever sleepies. I want you to hear just what he thinks of you. I want him to show you what all your lies and broken promises got you. Nothing. Not a damn thing. Nothing but big heart hurties and a dead baby.”
“Daddeh!” she gasped. “Nu make Wosemawy see babbeh take fowevah-sweepies! Pwease!”
“This isn’t up for discussion,” John said. “You will watch. Do you understand?”
Rosemary hung her head, eyes fixed on the bottom of the tub. “Yus, daddeh.”
She didn’t want to do it. She didn’t want to watch her baby take forever sleepies no matter HOW bad he was! Oh, she wouldn’t ever lie to daddy ever again, not ever. Not for any reason! She’d never keep secrets from him! She’d been the worstest fluffy ever, but all of that was over now. It was nothing but good from here on out! Nothing but good forever and ever. But daddy didn’t believe her. He wouldn’t believe her no matter what she said, no matter how much she apologized. The punishment wasn’t over. Once the punishment was over then maybe daddy would believe her. She just had to endure the punishment, no matter how bad it made her heart hurt. And oh, how it was making her heart hurt!
“Good.” Daddy walked over to the box, reached in, and pulled out…her bad baby!
“BABBEH!” Rosemary shouted. “Babbeh, why babbeh be su bad babbeh? Why gif daddeh aww da maddies?” She started pacing in the tub, nervous and afraid.
Daddy walked over to the tub and held her bad baby up so that she could see him. With his other hand daddy unwrapped a piece of string that had been holding her bad baby’s mouth closed. As soon as the string was gone, her bad baby started shouting.
“DUMMEH MUMMAH! OU AM DA WOWSTEST MUMMAH EVAH! OU NU WUV BESTEST BABBEH! HACHU! HACHU! WAN WOWSTEST MUMMAH TU HAF FOWEVAH SWEEPIES! HAAAAAAAACHU!” He squirmed in John’s hand, trying to break free.
“Bad babbeh nu say dat!” gasped Rosemary, horrified that her bad baby was intent on breaking her heart as much as possible. “Mummah twy to wuv babbeh but babbeh nevah haf ENUF wuv. Nuffin am gud enuf fo babbeh! Mummah twy! Mummah wuv! BAD BABBEH NU CAWE! CAUSE DAT AM BAD BABBEH!” She was shouting as loud as her sore throat would allow her to.
“PUT SMAWTY DOWN!” Fred shouted. “WET SMAWTY GIF DUMMEH MUMMAH SOWWY POOPIES AN SOWWY HOOFSIES!”
“Bad babbeh am onwy wittwe babbeh!” Rosemary said. “Babbeh nu can huwt mummah! Mummah nu scawed!” She was defiant all of a sudden; after being submissive to him for the last couple of weeks she’d apparently finally had enough.
“Do you want me to put him down there with you?” John asked.
“STOOPI DUMMEH HOOMIN! WET SMAWTY DOWN NAO! NAO! NAO!”
“Yus, daddeh!” Rosemary said. “Bad babbeh can say dem bad wowds to mummah wight in mummah face!”
“Well, okay then.” He turned away from Rosemary and shielded the colt from her view for a moment. He grabbed half of a sleepy sketti treat from the counter and dropped it into the screaming colt’s mouth. Fred swallowed it out of reflex and kept screaming. It took all of three seconds. John turned around, leaned over, and placed Fred in the tub with his mother.
Fred charged at Rosemary, his marshmallow hooves slipping and sliding on the wet surface. He kept falling and having to get back up, but he screamed the entire way. “HACHU, DUMMEH MUMMAH! MUMMAH AM DUMMEH POOPIE MUMMAH AND NU GUD FO NUFFIN! MUMMAH HAF BAD MIWKIES AN NU-SOF FWUFF!”
Rosemary gasped again, then stomped her soft hooves against the tub. Pfaff, pfaff, pfaff, pfaff. “Ou nu say dem tings! Dem am nu-twufs! Daddeh am wight, bad babbeh am BAD babbeh, am wowstest babbeh evah! Bad babbeh nee be punish!”
Fred finally reached his mother and started trying to give her sorry hoofsies. He was too small to do any damage, though. He made no impact on Rosemary whatsoever, but he continued trying, insisting that he was going to give her forever sleepies. She reached out a hoof and pushed him, causing him to tumble over on his back. He rolled over, shouted again, and launched himself into her fluff, hooves wailing. Then, as she reached out to push him away again, he paused. And faltered.
“Wha…wha du?” the colt asked. “Weggies, why nu…nu wan wowk? Weggies? Why su…awww su sweepy? Su sweepy. Nuuuuuu.” His words started to slur and he sank to the bottom of the tub, his legs splayed out in all directions. “Nu wan…nu wan fowevah…sweepies. Dummeh mummah? Dummeh? Mummah?”
The anger was drained from his voice; now he sounded scared. Desperate. Pleading. “Mum, mum…mummah. Hewp, mummah? Pwease…hewp babbeh.” Then he sank into a deep sleep. So deep that he wasn’t moving. So deep that Rosemary couldn’t tell it was just sleep.
“Bad babbeh?” she asked, tears trickling down her cheeks. “Mummah wan hewp, but babbeh am suuuu baddest babbeh! Nu! bad babbeh gif heawt huwties!” Rosemary turned to look at John. “Daddeh? Wosemawy hewp bad babbeh? Bad babbeh ask fo hewp!”
“I’m sorry, sweetie,” he said. “It looks like he gave himself forever sleepies. He was so bad, so angry, so full of hate that it overwhelmed him and he couldn’t live anymore. This happens to bad fluffies. You can’t help him anymore.”
“Buh…buh babbeh, awww nuuuuuu,” she started sobbing. “Mummah am su sowwy fo be wowstest mummah evah!”
John picked the colt up and quickly put him back in the shoe box. He uncapped the needle that was taped to the side of the box and gave the foal the injection just as Rebekah had showed him. Rosemary was beside herself, so she barely even noticed that her baby had been taken away again. By the time John set the foal in front of Rosemary again, he had maybe twenty seconds left to live, if that. He’d never wake up again, and Rosemary would always think that his badness, his smarty behavior, had caused him to suddenly die.
“Here, sweetie,” he said as he set the colt back down. “I’ll give you a few minutes to give him goodbye huggies.”
Rosemary pulled the dying foal into an embrace and sobbed. “Fa…fa…fank yu, daddeh. Wosemawy nu desewf bestest daddeh evah. Fank yu-hu-hu-huuuuuuu.”
John left her there to cradle her now-dead foal, and went to check on the good babies.
===
He peeked into the safe room, and what he saw warmed his heart again. Sasha had finally decided to wander in to meet the foals. She was curled up in their nest, and all three of the foals were snuggled up in her belly fur. They didn’t see John as he looked into the room, but Sasha did. She looked incredibly content. He could hear her purring from the doorway.
“Well, what do we have here?” John asked.
“DADDEH!” the foals shouted in unison, scrambling to stand up and trot over to see him. He stepped over the baby gate and sat on the floor, lifting all three of them into his lap so that he could pet their fluff.
“Daddeh!” shouted Sparky. “Dat kitteh-mummah! Kitteh-mummah gif babbehs bestest snuggies! Wuv kitteh-mummah! Can babbehs haf kitteh-mummah fowevah?”
“Kitty-mummah make wumbwe-wumbwe noisies,” giggled Dahlia. “Feew weiwd when snuggies, buh feew gud.”
“Wuv dat kitteh-mummah!” shouted Rosie. “Kitteh-mummah gif wickie baffs!”
John laughed. “I’m so glad you all love her. Her name’s Sasha, and she obviously loves you, too. You know, when your mother first got here, Sasha was very loving and protective of her. I almost gave your mother up, but Sasha wouldn’t let me. If it wasn’t for Sasha, none of you would be here right now. Just thinking about that makes me sad.” He paused, realizing that it actually did make him sad. He loved the foals. Their kindness. Their love. Their goodness.
“Babbehs su happies fo Sossa!” Sparky said. “Buh daddeh, how time tiww mummah?”
“She’ll be back very soon. I know she’ll be happy to see you all.”
“Miss mummah,” Rosie said sadly. “Wuv mummah su much. Wuv daddeh.”
“Wuv bestest mummah an bestest daddeh,” Dahlia said, snuggling up against John’s stomach.
“We love you, too. All of you.”
John played with the foals for a while, rolling the ball around and letting them chase it, giggling, until they’d roll it back to him to start the game all over again. After about half an hour Rebekah stepped into the safe room, Rosemary cradled in her arms.
“Look who’s back!” Rebekah said, lowering Rosemary to the ground.
“MUMMAH!” they all shouted, running and barreling into their mother’s fluff.
“BABBEHS!” she said, giggling as they climbed all over her. “Wosemawy miss dem babbehs suuuuu muchies. Wuv babbehs. Am aww such gud babbehs, su sweeties and su pwetties. Wosemawy su pwoud.”
“Babbehs wuv mummah!” said Rosie.
“Bestest mummah evah! Gif bestest huggies and miwkies an wuv an pway an an an…wuv mummah!” concluded Sparky, wrapping himself around one of his mother’s forelegs.
“Pwease nevah gu way gain, mummah,” said Dahlia, burying her face in Rosemary’s fluff.
“Mummah be gud, babbehs be gud, nu evah haf to weave babbehs. Aww be gud, nu evah be bad. Pwomise.”
“Pwomise!” all three foals shouted.
“Sounds like a plan to me,” John said. “A very good plan. And look who’s decided to come say hello, Rosemary.”
“AWWWW SOSSA! SOSSA-KITTEH! Hewwo Sossa!” Rosemary trotted over to Sasha as best she could while dragging three happy, needy foals, and started babbling to the cat to catch her up on recent events. Sasha patiently listened from the comfort of the nest, licking Rosemary’s face when she came in close for snuggles. All of them formed a giggling, rambling fluffpile that was filled with the sounds of a very happy cat’s purring.
John and Rebekah quietly left the room to talk.
===
“You did good,” Rebekah said, wrapping her arms around John. “You did really good.”
“I don’t feel like I did good. Part of me wanted to make him suffer, you know? But part of me just couldn’t do it. I couldn’t hurt him. I couldn’t torture him.”
“I know. You’re a good man.”
“Yeah, I just killed an animal.”
“They’re considered toys, but yeah,” she said. “I remember the first time I had to put one down. It wasn’t easy. It gets easier. Though I hope you don’t ever have to find that out.”
“Toys don’t talk to you like that. They’re not intelligent, thinking, talking creatures.”
“I know. Look, what you did, that was smart. Psychological is the way to go. Now she thinks that her babies will just magically die if they’re really bad. Hell, she thinks she might die if she’s really bad. She won’t ever forget that. Ever. It’s going to dictate her behavior going forward. She’ll have a bad day every now and then, but I’d bet money that she’s going to be pretty fucking well-behaved from here on out.”
“I hope so. I don’t want to go through that again.”
“I hope you don’t have to. But if you do, I’ll be here with you.”
“Thank you. God, I love you,” he said. “I couldn’t have done this without you.”
“I’m glad you didn’t have to.” She picked up the shoe box which was sitting on the coffee table. “I dug that hole out by the rosemary bush while you were dealing with all of that shit. Are you ready to bury him?”
John nodded. “Yeah. I won’t tell her about it yet. But if she’s good for a while, then I’ll tell her. She can visit her baby when she visits her mother.”
“I’ve even got another one of those little stones so you can mark his grave. This one’s a little smaller. Maybe we should paint names on them or something.”
“I don’t know what I did to deserve you, but whatever it was, I’m glad I did it.”
“Yeah, yeah. Now let’s go bury a dead baby fluffy together. You know, like all good couples do.”
John laughed, feeling a little better about what had happened, and he followed Rebekah outside to finish what he’d started.
