Note:
Your eyes do not deceive you. That is in fact a ‘hugbox-ending’ tag above this story. See, I fully intended for this chapter to be the end of the story. It was going to be bitter and bleak and miserable… but goddamit, I’m too nice of a person to do that, so the ending went on a little longer (see if you can spot the point where I deleted what I’d written and put in something totally new), and there’s going to be an epilogue chapter too, just to close everything off. I would’ve written it in here but it was already getting too long, so that’ll come later.
Chapter 7: It Ends
After leaving Smarty, the miniscule herd had trudged their way deeper into the sewers, unsure of where to go. Smarty may not have known either, but he sure seemed like he did…
The uncertain group of four adults made their way to another dead-end, but it was free of any rats and didn’t smell as bad as some other parts of the sewer, so they decided to call it home for the night and formed the best fluff-pile they possibly could, all four adults surrounding the few remaining foals, all of them quickly falling asleep from the traumatic ordeal of the last few hours.
All except for Limpy.
Limpy was feeling worse than before. He felt dizzy, his body felt hot, and his hurt leg smelled worse than ever. He’d managed to drag himself along behind the rest of the herd, but was slowing them down more and more. It was getting harder to keep up, and he knew it.
He looked at his hurt leg, and winced.
The fluff had rotted away, and he could see tiny white maggots wriggling around inside the torn, darkened, stinking flesh. Of course, he wasn’t sure what maggots were, but he had a pretty good feeling that tiny white buggies shouldn’t be inside of a fluffy’s body.
Limpy extracted himself from the fluff-pile, too hot and uncomfortable to sleep.
He dragged himself away from the group, making his way out of the dead-end and back to the main tunnel, where a shallow river of murky water was flowing by. Limpy lowered his head to take a drink, and found it tasted too foul to drink, just like everything in this miserable new place they had been forced to call ‘home’.
Limpy looked at the flowing water.
Limpy looked at his leg.
Limpy looked back at the herd sleeping soundly without him.
And Limpy knew what had to be done.
The splash was loud in the tunnel, but not loud enough to wake up the herd, who slept on peacefully, unaware that they had lost yet another of their number.
The herd awoke the next morning, disentangling themselves from the fluff-pile as usual, but felt like something was strangely missing. It took them several minutes of babbling and thinking as hard as possible to realise that Limpy had vanished.
“WHEWE WIMPY GO?!” The first mare squeaked.
“Dunno!” The other replied, frantically turning in circles to try and see him.
“WIMPY?! WIMPY?! WHEWE YOO GO?!” The stallion yelled as loud as he could, but gained no response.
The herd were panicked. Maybe he had been stolen away by a monster, or maybe… maybe he had been found by a new daddy! But then, why hadn’t the rest of the herd been taken?! Maybe he had gone off to find food, and gotten lost… or maybe he had simply decided the herd was stupid!
The various terrible thoughts made the herd start to cry, as they imagined worse and worse fates for their friend Limpy… until one tiny foal peeped up.
“Wawas…” It murmured, having waddled it’s way to the river just like Limpy had done several hours ago. Just like before, the baby lowered it’s head to the flowing water to take a mouthful, but it’s short neck couldn’t reach. The baby stepped closer to the edge, straining it’s neck as much as possible… until it’s tiny, undeveloped hooves slipped on the concrete edge.
“EEP! HEWP BA-” Was all the foal could squeak before it crashed into the flowing water.
“BABBEH!” The herd squealed, charging towards the water. They could already see the baby being pulled away by the flowing stream, and they were all suddenly reminded of the foal, it’s mother and the stallion who Smarty had condemned to a watery grave only a day ago.
“Wha we do?!” The mare squeaked.
“Nu know! Nu know!” The stallion replied, panickedly hopping from foot to foot.
“Hewp babbeh!” The second mare squealed. “Wawa bad fow babbeh!”
“How?! How hewp?!” The stallion asked, completely lost on what to do. The herd, foals included, watched as the single lost baby was swept away by the river, pulled towards a large, dark pipe that was hungrily sucking at the rushing water.
“NU! BABBEH NU GO IN DAWK HOWE!” The mare shrieked. “HEWP BABBEH, DUMMEH! HEWP BABBEH!”
And with that, she turned and hoofed the stallion in the side, knocking him off balance and sending him stumbling into the second mare, who then fell with a crash into the water. The stallion, still stumbling, fell in after her.
“HEWP!” The stallion peeped. “HEWP! WAWAS! HEWP!”
The mare and the foals left on the ledge were still lost on what to do. Their tiny minds overloaded by the constant death and suffering they’d faced in the dark, gloomy tunnels, they could only think of one thing to do.
They jumped in too.
The fluffies bobbed through the murky water, finally reaching each other, at which point they grabbed on to each other instinctively, attempting to form some kind of fluff-pile hug combo as the water swept them away to an unknown location.
“Howd aww togeddah!” The stallion insisted. “Pwotect da babbehs!”
The fluffies pulled themselves closer, gripping each other as hard as possible with their hooves and teeth, creating a makeshift raft out of their bodies as the various foals clung onto them in random locations.
And so they were swept along by the river, just as Limpy had been earlier, vanishing into the dark pipe.
Approximately one week later, Jansen stepped into the sewer.
He was 46, and had worked for the Backwater sanitation department for most of his adult life. He’d lived by a single, simple motto: it was a shit job, but someone had to do it.
Apparently there was something wrong with one of the main outflow pipes, something was apparently blocking it off. The pipe was pretty big, so either some kind of clog had formed over time, or there had been a cave-in… and either way it would be a nightmare to deal with. Jansen hoped it would be neither and he could just go home early.
He turned a corner, the angled flashlight in his jumpsuit pocket lighting up a path for him to follow. He knew these tunnels well enough to find his way through them in the dark, but better safe than sorry. It was all too easy to die in a place like this, especially if you were on your own.
Which, thanks to the council wanting to cut staff costs, meant Jansen WAS on his own, at least until he knew what the problem was, and therefore, knew exactly how many men would be required to resolve it, minimum.
Jansen turned another corner, and noted something odd. There was a smattering of bloodstains on the concrete ground, and what looked like… fur. But it wasn’t grey or brown, like what you’d expect to find from a rat or a squirrel, it was all colours. Pink, blue, black, white, green, brown, orange, yellow… it was like a technicolour coat had vomited up it’s lunch.
Jansen pushed on, but then noticed a set of what looked like footprints, tiny circular marks across the concrete, some big, some small, but all an ugly brown colour. They seemed to deviate and criss-cross in a few places… whatever had been wandering around here seemed to have doubled back and gone in circles a few times over.
A rat scampered by as Jansen turned down another tunnel. As he caught a brief glimpse of it, he thought it looked like the rat was chewing on some kind of tiny technicolour hamster, but he couldn’t be sure.
Jansen turned, making his way to where the blockage had been detected, and halted.
He could hear something.
A strange kind of mewling.
Jansen felt his heart sink.
During a bad storm, it wasn’t unheard of for stray kittens and puppies to get washed away in the flood waters, carried away into the sewer never to be seen again. Even if some sewer worker (such as Jansen himself) happened to find them still alive, they were usually too injured, malnourished, or too loaded down with bacteria and sickness to be saved.
Jansen stepped into the shallow stream of murky grey-brown water, and followed the mewling, finding his way to a relatively large pipe. The water should have been coming out of the pipe like a firehose, but at present it seemed to only be trickling out. Jansen turned his light towards the pipe, and let out an audible gasp.
There was something ALIVE in the pipe.
It took him several moments of frightened confusion to work out exactly what it was. At first it just seemed like a large heap of solid filth, all congealed and stuck together in one large clump, with visible bulges and indentations all across it.
But then he noticed it was moving.
Only slightly, granted, but it seemed to be twitching slightly, not in any kind of pattern or rhythm, not any sort of heart-beat… but there was definitely something moving among it.
Jansen pulled a screwdriver from his belt and braced himself. Maybe it was just a rat of some kind that had gotten stuck in the filth-clog, but either way, he had to move it.
He jabbed the screwdriver into the twitching, brown, filthy mass, and saw it was surprisingly soft. He poked and jabbed it a few more times, and realised it wasn’t pure filth at all, it was more like some kind of… hair.
Replacing the screwdriver on his belt, Jansen reached forward with a gloved hand and wrapped it around some of the greasy, grimy hair, and gave it a yank.
He heard the mewling sound again. It was faint, but it was definitely coming from clog inside the pipe.
He reached in with both hands, gripping the clog, and gave it a hard yank. The clog shifted just enough that some more water sifted through, and he actually heard the mewling sound speak.
“Hep… hep… pwease… hep…”
Jansen paused.
It sounded almost like a child, but also… not. Like if you wanted to do a parody imitation of a child’s voice, all simpering and soft and lisping.
Jansen reset his grip on the clog and yanked again, pulling it to the mouth of the pipe. He could get a better look at it now, and was able to see that it wasn’t so much hair as much as it was some kind of matted fluff, darkened and stained from the murk and filth of the sewer, but far more like a sheep than anything else.
Jansen felt one part of the clog shift and grabbed it, yanking hard on it and pulling it out.
What he found in his hand was a shit-smeared, bloated corpse of what looked like a fuzzy pig, with blank, dead eyes and clammy skin. It looked like it’d drowned several days ago, one of it’s limbs was twisted and full of infection.
Jansen dropped it to the ground with a heavy, wet ‘slap’ and returned to the ‘fluff-berg’ that was still blocking most of the drain. With the trouble-maker out of the way, it should be easier to shift. He dug into it, trying to see how deep it went, until he felt something.
Something moved.
“Hep… hep fwuffeh… hep…” The tiny voice peeped weakly.
Jansen with drew his hand, and shifted as much of the clog to either side as he could, and finally saw what had happened.
Four fluffy ponies (two female, one male, and the broken leg one) had been washed into the pipe, and had evidently been trying to hang onto each other. The broken leg one had gotten stuck on part of the pipe’s mouth, and the others had been caught on it’s body, with all four ultimately blocking the pipe.
At the centre of them all had been a bunch of foals, most of which had been squashed between the adults as they were crammed into the pipe by the flowing water. In the absolute middle of it all was one singular foal, still alive, but trapped between it’s kin, unable to move, trapped within the bulk of the clog.
It had been facing away from the water, so it hadn’t drowned, but it hadn’t been able to wriggle free either. It had been held tight by the corpses around it, with the pipe’s murky water, the matted filth stuck among their various fuzzy coats, and the rotting bodies causing them all to fuse together into one stinking, fetid heap of flesh and fur.
“Pwease mistuh… hep… hep fwuh… hep…” The baby weakly pleaded. Jansen reached into the clog, grabbed the foal and tugged at it.
“Eep! Owie! Nu huwt! Pwease!” The foal chirped. Jansen gave it a few more experimental tugs, before confirming it for sure. It was stuck among the rest of the clog.
Jansen stepped back, biting his lip as he thought over what to do next.
One hour later, the pipe was clear. The rotting fluffy corpses had been yanked free of the pipe and left to float down the stream, visually no different from the many turds that floated with them.
Jansen climbed back out of the pipe, climbing the ladder one-handed, as he carried up something in his other hand.
A tiny, shivering fluffy pony foal, freed from the clog of it’s dead bretheren.
Jansen had been able to pull the clog free, then worked with some scissors (more suited for cutting electrical wires than anything else) to trim away at the foal’s fur until he had been able to free it from the rotting, soaking, stinking bulk.
It left the foal’s rear almost completely shaved, and the foal never stopped crying about it’s fluff being ‘taken’, but it was alive nonetheless.
Although Jansen wasn’t optimistic about it’s changes.
The foal’s entire rear had been submerged for several days, it’s skin was soggy and bloated. Jansen remembered seeing pictures of trench-foot in his high school history classes, and the sight of the foal’s back half was disturbingly similar.
He clambered into his van, where he had left his jacket before entering the sewer, and wrapped the tiny shivering foal up in it’s folds, where it began to quietly coo to itself.
Jansen started up the engine and the van rumbled off.
It stopped a short while later outside a pet-store. Jansen had passed it several times in the past but had never bothered going in. He never had any interest in the things himself, he only vaguely knew what they were overall.
But he knew this one had fluffy ponies for sale. They were about the only live animals it did sell. Everything else was just supplies.
Jansen got out of the van and picked up his jacket, with the tiny shivering foal still inside it. He carried it across the parking lot, through the front doors and up to the only person he could see in the entire store, a young man sitting behind the checkout desk.
“Hey, uh… I found a fluffy pony. A baby one.” Jansen said, not sure what to call it, or even what to say. “I work in sanitation, I found it down in the sewer.”
“Oh, hell.” The cashier said, standing up. Jansen noted that the name on his tag read ‘FRANK’.
“Yeah. It’s not looking good.” Jansen said, unwrapping his jacket and revealing the fluffy foal. Tiny, shivering, half devoid of fluff, and the other half was shit-brown, stinking and clumped with knots and tangles. At first Jansen wasn’t even sure if it had survived it’s trip, it was still breathing, but it was wheezing heavily and barely seemed to be moving.
“That’s a sorry case alright.” Frank said, gingerly lifting the tiny foal out of Jansen’s jacket. He looked it over, grimacing when he the bloated, soggy skin of it’s rear.
“I don’t know if there’s much that we can do for it here.” Frank said. “We’re only a petshop after all, but we have the numbers for a few vets on hand, I’ll see if any of them can come by and give it a look.”
He paused, noting how concerned Jansen seemed.
“Hey, it’ll probably be okay.” Frank said, picking up the phone with a free hand. “You’d be surprised at how resilient fluffy ponies can be. They can take a beating, even a deliberate one, and keep on going.”
“Yeah, even so…” Jansen said, fumbling into his pocket and pulling out a notepad and pencil he used for work. “You reckon you could keep me updated on it? After what it went through down there… it deserves a better life. I just want to know how it goes.”
He scrawled his number on the pad, along with his name, tore off the sheet and left it on the counter. Frank smiled, and nodded.
“I’ll let you know as soon as I hear anything.”
Jansen smiled back, and turned to leave, heading towards the door.
“Daddeh, who dat?” A small voice asked.
“His name’s Jansen, Rosie.” Frank replied, dialling a number into the phone with one hand, and gently petting the shivering foal with the other. “He just came by to help out a lost fluffy foal.”
(Epilogue)
(If you’re wondering who Frank and Rosie are, check out ‘Monster Mama’, my first story.)