Sam Christens the Terminal Shelter
By: Turboencabulator
Sam’s eyes watered behind his sunglasses as he stood on the top of the ridge, looking over the
pristine new shelter, unsullied by hugboxer regulations or the stink of scared fluffies. Neatly
ordered, identical buildings in two rows, painted soothing earth and pastel tones cast no
shadows in the noonday sun, the power lines swaying in the gusting winds. Sam sneezed and
nearly fell over, swearing to himself and cursing the existence of pollen.
After another moment quietly surveying the new buildings, Sam got back on his bicycle and
coasted down the road, making his way to the first building, Intake 1. Spotting a car pulling
in as well, he waved and rolled to a stop, standing his bike just outside the building’s access
door.
The muted sedan parked by the door and Chad climbed out, wincing.
“You ok?” Sam asked, wiping his eyes.
“They changed assigned cars on me. Thing’s built for someone three inches shorter than I am.”
Chad said, stretching and popping a bit.
Sam sneezed violently, followed by a honk in a tissue. “Motherfucking… I hate this time of
year.”
After a moment to groan and sniff, Sam opened the door. “Come on in, Will’s out cold so you’re
going to hafta help me get this place ready for the pilot load.”
Chad followed him in, mildly concerned. “What do you mean out cold?”
“I mean ‘Someone took a trip to Indianapolis and bought two hundred dollars of single craft
beers’ out cold.” Sam said, pushing a button on an industrial control panel.
Shutters in the ceiling slid out of the way, opening the skylights to illuminate the spacious
intake bay. Two garage doors stood, one with a large raised pen for loose fluffies, the other
backing up to groups of tables for fluffs already in carriers. A conveyor belt of lexan boxes
was set between, lifting upwards and turning to exit the building, bound for the next one
over. A loading zone was on the opposite end of the building, with soon-mummah pen modules and chirpy incubators on standby.
“I hope you aren’t expecting me to actually work the load.” Chad said, looking around. “I’m not
sure I’m allowed to as an inspector.”
“Nah,” Sam said, turning on the water supply to a sprinkler system over the intake pen. “Just
help direct traffic when they show up and maybe carry the occasional thing.”
Chad shrugged and began his inspection. “So, how does this place work, exactly?”
In a little shelter, tucked away in the corner of town, there was a gelding named Cal. Cal was
asleep in a patch of sunshine, back-to-back with his best friend Buckwheat, another
gelding. The two had been in the shelter since they were colts, and after their special lumps
were taken away they were only calm when near each other. Marcy, the shelter human, didn’t know why. Neither did Cal and Buckwheat, they just knew that they couldn’t be separated. It made their hearts hurt.
Something blocked out the sun, and Cal made a quiet harrumph noise, his hoofs twitching as his
warm spot went away. After a moment, he opened his eyes, bleary and half-focused. After rubbing
his face on the soft carpet of the pen’s floor he sat up and looked out the window.
A big truck had pulled up, and Cal jumped up excitedly, turning and immediately falling over
Buckwheat, who barely stirred. Cal trotted over to the wall of the pen and with great effort
managed to stand up against the side of the pen, poking his nose over the edge.
“Miss Mawcy! Da nyu-fwuff twuck hewe!” He said, loud and energetic.
Marcy chuckled and walked over, patting Cal gently. He trotted over to the window and sat down,
watching the truck. “Wunnew if gun net nyu fwiends.”
“'Fraid not, Cal.” Marcy said, with a sigh. “It’s taking fluffs, not bringing them.”
“Fwuffs get nyu daddehs?” Cal asked, watching as the men working outside opened the back doors
and pulled down the ramp.
“Cal, they’re taking you all to a new shelter. You all have been here a long time.” Marcy said,
setting out food and gathering up the toys.
“Buckwheat too?”
Buck sat up, sleepy. “Buck nu wan go way fwom Caw.”
“Don’t worry, you’re going together. Now why don’t you two have something to eat, and make good
poopies in the litterbox. It’s not a short ride.”
Marcy moved on, gathering up the toys and making sure the fluffies were aware they were going
on a little trip. Cal and Buckwheat were put in a double carrier, with a note about their
separation issues. The other fluffies were put in carriers and loaded, the doors quietly shut,
and the van rolled off, leaving the fluffy shelter empty and silent for the first time in
years.
With a long, slow sigh, Marcy took the fluffy toys out back and dumped them in a pair of old
steel oil drums, before dumping a bottle of lighter fluid over the piles and setting them
alight.
She took out her cell phone and dialled a number, on speaker.
“Hello, Big Al’s Discount Tobacco.”
“Hi, I’m trying to reach Sandy?” Marcy said, picking up the flaming leg of a stuffed rabbit and
using it to light a Parliament.
A short session of shitty hold music later and the line picked up again.
“This is Sandra.”
“Sandra, hey, it’s Marcelle. You still looking to put a franchise location in Blacksburg?” She
said, with a grin.
“Marcelle, yes, we were. I thought you were full up on fluffies though.” Sandra said.
“Nope. Dumped the shitrats now that there’s a kill shelter open. You give me three weeks to get
the drywall and carpeting replaced and I’ve got a building with fifteen-hundred square feet of
retail space.”
“I’ll send you the paperwork.”
Marcy smiled, watching the fire. It was the first real smile since she opened the shelter.
Chad watched as Sam started the conveyor, the plastic boxes rolling up and out the side of the
building, then shut it down again, seemingly satisfied with the result.
“So, we do one fluffy per box.” Sam said, with a shrug. “It’s pretty automated after
that. Pregnant ones and non-adult fluffies get taken to the clinic and sold off there. The new
system means we don’t need to bother with castration since they’re never in a group where they
can be aggressive or get their rocks off.”
A chime rang out, and Sam turned and opened one of the garage doors, letting in a cargo
van. “Light load, this is our pilot group.”
Cal snuggled in tight to Buckwheat, the dim light of the van cut with nervous flatulence and
the muttering of fluffies. He wiggled over to the door of the carrier and looked across to the
next fluffy, a round dam with a wing set in a cast.
“Hewwo? Yu nu fwom shewtew.” Cal said. “Fwuffy am Caw, wut yu namesie?”
The dam perked up and shuffled over to the door. “Hewwo Caw, am Wacy. Nyu fwiend?”
“Nyu fwiend! Bu’ nu can huggies untiw at nyu shewtew.” Cal said, with a bit of a pout. He
looked Lacy over, cocking his head. “Yu gun be mummah soon? Yu su big.”
Lacy giggled and wiggled. “Yus, gun hab babbies suun. Den daddeh cum bak!”
“Yu hab daddeh?” Cal asked, confused.
“Daddeh was siwwy, say nu can hab babbies. Den I foun’ a speciaw-fwien an hab babbies nao.”
Lacy said, rolling on her side and feeling her rotund abdomen. “Su daddeh get angy an take Wacy
tu shewtew. Bu’ he gun see, babbies bestest fings.”
Cal blinked, thinking as hard as a fluffy could think.
“Otay… but… hao?” He asked.
Lacy looked over at him. “Hmm?”
“Hao yu daddeh gun see if Wacy nu whewe yu daddeh weft yu?”
Cal never got his answer though, the doors opening and spilling bright light in, making
fluffies flinch and draw back into the dim shadows of the carriers.
Chad nodded, looking around. “So, they come in, you sort out the ones that don’t get put in the
system, and then what?”
Sam gestured for Chad to follow. “So once they’re in here they get taken over to analysis.”
The pair climbed up and followed a catwalk in a closed skywalk, next to the conveyor. In the next
building was a large, padded plate on a piston, right over the conveyor. Underneath was a machine
hidden behind a metallic shield.
“This gently pushes the fluffies down on their bellies so the autosampler can get some blood.”
Sam said, indicating the large set of racks in the bulk of the warehouse. “Any reject genes and
they move on but if they’re viable for my work they get stored temporarily until the full
sequence can be run. If there’s something I can use, they come to the clinic. Otherwise they
move on.”
Sam walked further down the catwalk, pointing to another station. “This one’s a scale, if a
fluffy’s over a certain weight, they get diverted for meat processing. If that’s turned on of
course.”
The intake bay started growing in noise, the fluffies babbling and whimpering as they were
unloaded.
Cal peered out of the carrier again, but only saw the back of a row of other carriers on a
shiny table. The room they were in was huge, bigger than any room he had seen before, and
smelled strange. Buckwheat snored happily in the back of the carrier, occasionally letting out
a little snort as the dream merited it.
“Dun wike dis, Buckwheat.” Cal muttered. Two human stallions came down some stairs, barely in
Cal’s vision, and walked over.
“Ok, thanks guys. There’s coffee and stuff over there if you want.” One of them said, the one
without the brown paper-holding board. The humans from the metal monster walked off.
“Nu! Nu huwt Wacy, am soon-mummah!”
Cal turned to watch the human, pressing his cheek against the grid of the carrier door.
“Well yes you are.” The human said. “You’re nearly ready aren’t you? Why don’t we get you
someplace a bit more comfy.”
The new human picked Lacy up carefully and put her in a pen on a cart, and the other human
rolled her off someplace Cal couldn’t see. At least the new shelter humans seemed nice?
Sam opened carrier after carrier, pulling out fluffies, most somewhat clean, but a few were
well soiled from the trip. He silently thanked whoever invented disposable gloves and put them
where they were destined, most of them going in one of the clear pen-like boxes on the
conveyor, setting them in the discrete leg holes, not high enough to be uncomfortable, but
secure.
There were a few pregnant ones, and an intact stallion with an absolutely hideous coloration
that interested Sam, so he got pulled for examination. Then he came to a carrier with an index
card taped to the top.
He pulled it off and read. “These two have separation anxiety, and are prone to extreme
behavior if kept apart. Geldings.”
Leaning down, Sam peered into the carrier. There was a robins-egg-blue and a sunflower-yellow
fluffy pressed together. The blue was awake, watching, while the yellow was snoring, quite
rotund.
“Hello.” Sam said. “Your last shelter worker said you two didn’t like to be apart?” He flashed
the note. “Left us a note.”
“Yus.” The blue said quietly. “Pwease nu take Buckwheat 'way fwom Caw?”
“Oh don’t worry.” Sam said, opening the carrier. “You two will be right next to each other.”
Cal carefully stepped out, watching as Sam lifted Buckwheat out expertly and tucked him in one
arm. Sam lifted Cal and carried them both over to the line, Cal in front, Buckwheat in the box
behind. Cal turned to try and look behind, with a soft whimper.
“Don’t worry.” Sam said, giving Cal a soft pet. “It’s only for a little bit. Besides, you two
are close enough to talk, so that should help right?”
Cal nodded quietly. Sam turned away as the two fluffs were slowly moved along and up the
incline. Cal didn’t see the smile on Sam’s face turn from kind to something quite nasty.
The weird box had a hold on Cal’s legs. He was scared, but it wasn’t hurting him, and he found
he could lay down quite comfortably. He turned and looked out the box as it went up the
incline, looking at the rows of fluffy-carriers, half emptied. The human was carefully going
through each one.
He seemed nice.
Buckwheat snorted, behind Cal. “Whewe Buckwheat?” He asked, sounding groggy.
“Buck!” Cal said. “It otay, we in nyu shewtew. It weiwd but we goin new pwace!”
Then they both heard a scree, making their ears twitch, and they looked around, searching for
the source. There was a dull hiss-pwuf-hiss sound, and then another scree, followed by a
chain of ‘hu hu hu’.
“Why huwt gud fwuffy?” A fluffy asked ahead.
Cal saw a big silver rod push down on a fluffy, and then the fluffy let out another scree,
crying. Then the line moved along. The fluffy in front of Cal, a dumpy mare absolutely covered
in poopies, was pressed down by a big cushion.
Then she screed, spraying the back of the box with owwie-poopies, and sobbed as the cushion let
up. The machine cleaned the poopies off the cushion as Cal’s box rolled underneath it, and then
the pad descended.
Cal whimpered as it pressed him down on his belly. Then something stabbed into his armpit, and
Cal let out the loudest scree he could manage under the cushion. He clenched tight, trying
not to make bad poopies, and then the pain went away. The cushion lifted, and Cal stood up
again, crying a little and sniffling.
He heard Buckwheat let out a scree a moment later, quieter. He was always tougher and bigger
than Cal.
“Yu otay Caw?” Buckwheat asked, sniffling.
“Yus. Dis pwace meanie.” Cal said, sullen. Then he watched as the fat, filthy mare ahead of him
went a different direction.
Cal went straight ahead. Buckwheat, however, was diverted.
“Caw? Nu! Nee’ go wit Caw! Meanie boxie! NUU” Buckwheat shouted, as he went down the path after
the mare. He was struggling to get loose, but the box had his leggies.
“BUCKWHEAT!” Cal shouted, also trying to get loose. He could just turn his head enough to see
his almost-brother vanish down another path.
He tired after a moment, sniffling, sobbing as he lay down, the line trundling along slowly,
taking him further away from his friend.
“Right, intake looks good.” Chad said, going down his clipboard. “How many intake buildings are
there?”
“Four.” Sam said, signing paperwork while the truck drivers hosed down the carriers and tossed
'em in the back. “There’s two auxiliary buildings, one at either end, and there’s four groups
of buildings connected like those T-shaped Tetris pieces. The middle is overflow and holding
for genetic testing, and the rest are intake, meat processing, and butchering. Assuming two or
three workers from the trucks per line, the total intake cap is about a thousand an hour per
building.”
Chad let out a low whistle. “That’s pretty damn good, how long can you sustain that?”
Sam shrugged, walking. “Well there’s that regulation that fluffies need to be available for
adoption for one day before termination so that kind of puts a block in the works. Every fluffy
that isn’t diverted for meat or genes gets photographed and put up for adoption automatically
with a timer for their intake lot. If you wanted to push a building set to saturation it’d take
only about two hours but that would require more trucks than the state has for this so we’re
fine.”
The duo went in to meat processing. Chad looked at the array of machinery behind a long
glassed-in viewing hall and sighed. “This is going to get nasty isn’t it. What kind of meat
processing is this anyways?”
With a grin, Sam bumped Chad with his elbow. “Oh it won’t be that bad. I got a contract with
Morheld Foods for canned processed ‘meat products’.”
Chad sighed, rubbing his forehead. “Fuckin’ fluffy Spam?”
“Dog food, actually.”
Buckwheat watched as the box ahead of his dropped away, leaving the mare on a leg-separator
board, kicking uselessly in the now open air. His own slowly dropped away as well, and he
watched as the board separated down the middle, the two halves slowly rotating so his legs were
splayed out wide.
The mare was struggling, shouting something Buckwheat couldn’t hear over the sound of the
whirring, buzzing, clanking, and hissing machines from the light ahead. He watched as the mare
passed through a curtain of liquid, and struggled as he drew near it as well. She began to
scream, not scree, and as he passed through the fluid he understood why.
It burned, his eyes were on fire and his skin felt like nothing he had experienced before. He
quickly became hoarse from screaming himself, and blinking furiously, he saw the mare pass over
a large fan.
All her fluff blew off, leaving an ugly, smooth pink mass of screaming flesh held in midair by
the split legboard. Then he passed over the fan and felt the curious sensation of his own fluff
just falling away, being taken up a tube in the ceiling.
There was a flash, and the mare let out a single sharp, wet sound, before going very stiff, the
stub of her tail standing straight up. Buckwheat whimpered, then saw he was passing over
something new. He looked down just in time to see a sharp, curved blade flash up, splitting his
skin from sternum to taint, and then falling away again.
Something in Buckwheat’s mind shut down then. He could only stare as the mare ahead of him was
invaded by a large metal probe, which plunged a spinning blade in under her tail, and ripping
downward. He began to scream as a probe was inserted in his own asshole, then felt a blade cut
as well.
The probe expertly extracted his rectum, and he watched the mare ahead as her entrails were
ripped out in one smooth motion by the machinery. A blade flicked down, beheading her, and her
esophagus was pulled out through her abdomen, finishing the process of gutting her.
Then there was the sound of a falling blade, and Buckwheat was free from pain at last.
Chad watched as fluffies were cleaned, gutted, drained of blood, stripped off the bones and
finally ground into a pink mass of meat product, packed in five-pound plastic sleeves, and
blast-frozen as ‘premium recycled fluffy meat’.
“That’s not as bad as I thought it would be.” He said, taking notes. “What do you do with the
remains?”
Sam picked his nails absentmindedly with a pocketknife. “Oh, the guts and heads get
incinerated. The bones are sent off for processing into bonemeal fertilizer or bone china or
any other useful product. Though I have had a researcher interested in getting their hands on
some fresh fluffy brains so that might be a once-in-a-while thing.”
“And parasite testing?” Chad asked, glancing over at Sam.
“Taken care of with the blood test.”
Chad paused, then blinked. “Wait. Fluffy brains? Do I want to know?” Chad asked, with a sigh.
“I didn’t even ask. Though it did give me some ideas.” Sam said with a wicked grin.
“Not even going there.” Chad said, looking over the equipment. “And this is all automated?”
“Yes. The only human interaction that’s needed is refilling the depilatory fluid when enough is
used up, re-stocking the plastic sleeves, and sharpening the blades once in a while. Plus
taking the meat out but we have a huge freezer to store it in until the truck can come and pick
up a load.”
“Ok. I’ll need to get someone to inspect the butchering process more thoroughly but on my end
this is fine. Let’s do the storage next?” Chad asked.
Sam lead him out and across into another building. The interior was dim, empty metal frames
from floor to ceiling, all empty.
“This is dreary.” Chad said.
“It’s temporary. Overflow and gene-test fluffies get taken off the line and shoved in one of
these slots. There’s a water source but they don’t spend long enough of a wait here for food to
matter.”
“Right. Well I suppose as long as it isn’t needlessly cruel it’s fine.” Chad muttered, ticking
off boxes.
“Lunch?” Sam asked, checking his watch. “That should give enough time for everything to settle
here so we can demonstrate the rest.”
Chad shrugged, and they left for lunch.
Cal sniffled, watching as the tunnel turned and opened up in a big room, full of big walls of
metal cages just big enough for a fluffy, separated by a few feet of open space. There were big
no-see walls between the walls of cages, but he could see the reflection off them. He watched
as the fluffy ahead of him was dumped in a cage, and then he followed suit, tumbling
ass-over-teakettle into a tight, metal cage.
He managed to get upright, surrounded in dim grey as the cage closed, the only light being a
few small LEDs in the ceiling, except for a round hole at one end. Cal looked around, the solid
walls cold, and the floor a simple silicone pad. He walked over to the hole, and stuck his head
through, finding himself with a neighbor on either side, and a trough of wet food underneath
the hole.
Cal immediately dug in, filling the hole in his stomach that he had not noticed until now. He
could hear fluffies chattering, but remembered Buckwheat, and withdrew, backing up and sitting
down with a sigh in the quiet cage.
It took a few minutes of sniffling and huu-ing, but eventually Cal lay down, shivering a
little, and managed to fall asleep.
Chad groaned a bit as he got out of the golf cart, stuffed from a meal. “Jesus Christ how do
you even make that much dim sum?”
Sam got out equally awkwardly. “Take a weekend and freeze 'em. I’ve got gallon bags full.”
Chad let out a belch, earning some applause from Sam.
“Right.” Chad muttered, walking with Sam to the final building. “How’s this one work then?”
Sam opened the door and walked in with Chad. “The system’s pretty straight-forward. Each fluffy
is in a cage with an opening for food and water. If they’re half smart they’ll back up to shit
but who knows. They normally get twenty-four hours to get claimed, but if not, each batch gets
terminated, dumped into wire hoppers, and taken in to the incinerator. Fifteen minutes and five
hundred fluffies go from shitting to dust.”
Chad sighed. “Ok, now we need to make one thing clear for the report. You aren’t sending them
in live, right?”
“No, we’re not. They’re terminated first. Painless and hygienic. And cheap too.” Sam said,
walking over to the test population, watching their fat little faces eat and talk behind the
dividing sheet of plastic…
“Painless.” Chad said, skeptical.
“Well as painless as we can get it.” Sam said with a shrug.
He walked over to a small booth and opened the cover over a control panel. “Since this is the
pilot group we’ll just pretend it’s been 24 hours.”
The lights turned out, and a loud chime woke Cal. He looked around in the darkness, huuing in
fear, and quickly got up, pushing his head out the hole and looking around. There was a click
and the hole got smaller, trapping his head in place.
“Meanie howe, wet Dumfuk go!” His neighbor proclaimed, a unicorn with a busted horn and
permanent smarty face.
Cal felt the hole get tighter and tighter, and managed to get a big deep breath in before it
cut off his air entirely. He struggled, trying to pull his head back, but nothing was
working. He heard the room fill with the sounds of panicked shitting and hooves scrabbling and
kicking. The sound faded, and Cal felt the world start to go black.
The hole let him go, and he fell back into his pen, coughing and wheezing. He didn’t hear other
fluffies anymore.
The back of his cage opened and the whole wall tipped back. Cal slid out and fell, banging
against the no-see wall behind and landing in a big wire basket with dozens of dead
fluffies. He couldn’t scream as his hind legs snapped from impacting the edge of the basket. He
was still out of breath. Eventually the shower of fluffies stopped, and sprinklers rinsed out
the cages, showering filth on the corpses.
Cal managed to get his breath, sobbing, and used his forelegs to drag himself to the
surface. The wire basket was moving, going away from the mean cages.
Cal poked one of the other fluffies, shaking, watching as their sightless eyes stared ahead
without blinking. He huued and sobbed, then the basket stopped. The door it came through
closed.
There was a hissing sound, and a row of flames lit in a ring surrounding the cart. Cal looked
around, shaking and sobbing, at the bare metal walls, and the gas jets lighting overhead.
Then, all was light and pain.
Then nothing.
Chad nodded, taking down notes. “I’m not sure I’d call strangulation ‘painless’ but it’s
clean at least.”
Sam shrugged. “It’s better than the first design I had with an automatic drowning system.”
After a moment, Chad sighed. “I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that. So the strangulation
system works reliably?”
“99.9% fatality rate.” Sam said. “Technically. You can never engineer something like this to
cover everything without going to some extremes.”
“Well the pilot group was what, a hundred fluffies?” Chad muttered. “Yeah I’d say one in a
thousand is acceptable.”
“So, we good to go?” Sam asked.
“You’ll have your first four thousand tomorrow.” Chad said with a smile, signing the report.
“Excellent.” Sam said, pulling Chad along, back to Intake 1.
After a few minutes of confused walking, Sam gets in a saddlebag on his bicycle, taking out a
bottle of cheap Prosecco.
“I declare this terminal shelter open.” Sam said, and threw the bottle against the brick wall
of the intake building.
The explosion of liquid made rainbows in the afternoon light.