Stacey often had to cut through the city on foot between shifts. It was easier than trying to keep track of which bus lines overlapped in just the right way to get her to work on time or home with enough time left over to crash for a few hours’ rest. She flicked through her social media sites as she waited for a light to turn, occasionally huffing out her nose at the stupid memes her brother posted. She tapped out a comment as she walked forward, following the flow of foot traffic she could see out the corner of her eye.
Was it really the best idea? Nah, but she hadn’t gotten run over yet. And if she ever did… well, pedestrians had the right of way so she’d pretend to need crutches if that’s what it took to sue.
Looking to cut a few minutes off her commute, she strayed from the bustling sidewalks and slipped into a rear-access road between buildings. Trying to take a right on seventh avenue was like swimming upriver, and she didn’t have the patience to deal with anyone pinching her ass as she passed by today. Her knuckles still hurt from slugging that fifty-something businessman looking to start his fifth affair with someone a third of his age on the bus that morning.
True, in the alleys she had to dodge those Easter-ugly shitrats that had taken to the less-traveled parts of the city like a pet snake loosed in the Everglades, multiplying ad infinitum and shitting all over the natural established ecosystem… literally in the case of the fluffies. Though, they hadn’t caused a decline in any other animal population, really, just a new supplement to their diets. Even mice could take down an adult from what she’d seen. Dumb things had some idea of self-preservation, but they also thought that covering up their eyes so they couldn’t see their tormenter would make them go away like magical self-defence peek-a-boo.
Snickering to herself at the thought, she scrolled down her newsfeed as she turned down her favorite alleyway. Her shin smacked against something sharp, and she cursed aloud, throwing her hand out to steady herself. Her acrylics scraped against the brick wall as she recovered from the stumble, narrowly avoiding a fall at the cost of chipping her nails.
Scowling, Stacey looked down to see what the hell she’d tripped up on: a misshapen cardboard box. Half-collapsed and reeking of rot, the thing had bent just enough to stab her with a corner. She huffed, pulled back her leg, and gave the box a piece of her mind, “Corrugated bitch!”
The side of the box busted, and her foot went right through before it gave a loud Scree! Eyes wide, Stacey took an instinctive step back before her brain caught up enough to tell her that the box itself wasn’t sentient. Her kick sent two rancid fluffies tumbling out of the box, shouting nonsense about a “munstah twy gib sweepy fwuffies foweba sweepies!”
One of them, just bright enough blue to make out the color through all the grime, coughed up blood and staggered to its feet. That must’ve been the one she’d hit straight-on, probably cracked some ribs, maybe pierced a lung. The other couldn’t even make it to its feet, malnourished to the point of bloating and more helpless than a turtle on its back. Surprisingly the first went to help it instead of bolting to save its own skin. It spat blood against the other’s fur as it pressed all its weight into rolling its friend over enough for its useless flailing legs to gain traction. Then the two were off as fast as they could without so much as a glance back.
Holding her breath to keep from retching, Stacey glanced down to her feet. By some stroke of luck, she hadn’t managed to get any shit on her boots. She looked back up just in time to see the two fluffies run down the alley, off the sidewalk, straight into the road and oncoming traffic. A white service truck sped by, and the winch protruding from the front of the truck popped the blue one.
Her stomach turned at the wet splatter of the bloody firework show, and she cringed at the sound of squealing brakes and loud cursing. The streak left behind on the asphalt was impressively two dimensional. Hopefully whoever had run into the things hadn’t pierced a tire.
Insurance claims for anything involving the little bastards were hell unless they had an owner. Easier to classify them as property than anything else. Couldn’t claim force majeure when they weren’t natural. Call them an animal once in any document and the claim would be laughed out of court, the law was very specific about that. Hell, if her agent had just been struggling with the terminology in her report, maybe that’s why it took so long to get back her security deposit for the last place she rented…
Stacey shook her head and turned back to her phone, back to the video that’d taken up so much of her attention. Just looking at the dog on her screen brought a weak smile back to her face. She didn’t know what breed it was, but it was fluffy and small and really, really cute. Someone had trained it to walk on its back two legs like a person! They’d dressed it up and done its hair and took it all over the place. Apparently it was really well trained, too, since it didn’t even have one of those toddler-leashes on. It looked like a living, breathing teddy bear!
Pity she only had a three-figure bank balance when counting the cents. She would totally pay way too much for a dog like that and be completely fine with it. Her Insta would absolutely blow up. She could do its nails, make it all sorts of food, maybe dye its hair or give it extensions…
She scrolled down the page to see if there was any info about adopting a dog like that, and her heart sank. The comments were awash with outrage about how it was creepy and unnatural and abusive. One commenter mentioned how bad it was on the dog’s hips. Another spoke out about how it was trained with the good old abuelita method of smacking misbehaving brats with a sandal.
She sighed and shoved her phone back into her pocket. Couldn’t the internet have anything pure and good anymore?
Stacey made her way out of the alley, crossed the road after looking both ways the viscera had flown, and paused on the sidewalk before she could continue on her way. Was something… crying? She looked down only to find the second fluffy trying to haul itself up over the curb. From the size of the crimson puddle in the road, she had just assumed they’d both been flattened.
“Pwease, weggies,” the fluffy sobbed, its front legs up on the curb, back two solidly on the blacktop, “pwease wet soon-mummah up. Nee find new nestie. Nee find somepwace safe for tummeh-babehs.” No matter how much it tried to pull itself up with its front legs, no matter how hard it tried to push itself up with its back legs, it wasn’t moving. The dumb thing was practically just wriggling against on the concrete, slowly sanding away at the bottom of its stomach.
“What the fuck,” Stacey muttered softly, wondering exactly how the fat thing had won the impossible roulette against the odds of getting creamed on the road.
A nearby sanitation worker looked up from the biohazard bin he was taking to his truck. Curious, he walked over and took a look. “Ah, sick, you found a live one. Give me a minute, I’ll take care of it.”
Stacey furrowed her brow, turning her head to follow the man as he made his way back to his truck and dumped the box into the back to grab another. He came over and bent down, going to grab at the fluffy before it managed to duck out of the way and cry out for its “speshuw fwiend” to come to its aid, apparently oblivious to the fact it - he? - was roadkill.
“Bad upsies! Nu wan! Speshuw fwiend, hewp soon-mummah! Nee find new nestie!” With renewed fervor, the fluffy took up a new technique of hopping up about a centimeter from the ground and flinging itself forward to get up over the curb. Of course, it only managed to knock itself over onto its side, and once again its crying ramped up because it couldn’t wriggle upright.
“I thought you guys were just, y’know, sanitation. Not animal control.” Stacey scraped the bottom of her shoe against the curb, scowling at the blue fluff that’d gotten stuck in the treads. That was going to be a bitch to clean.
“Heh,” the worker laughed, wiping his brow with his forearm before another go at snatching the fluffy, “well, these aren’t really animals, are they?” He grabbed it by the mane, earning a shrill shriek when he pulled victoriously upward. Instead of getting the fluffy to the box, though, he only had a clump of mane-fluff. The fluffy thunked back down to the pavement and wailed in pain.
“Damnit,” the worker wiped his hand off on his coveralls with a frown. “When they get dehydrated like this their hair follicles shrivel up and their fluff falls out. Don’t know if its a defense mechanism or shitty design. I’m just going to get a trash bag, it’s not going anywhere soon.”
The sanitation worker pushed himself to his feet and made his way to his truck, leaving Stacey where she was with the fluffy. For some reason, she felt like she couldn’t leave. She had to see this through the end, but that was probably her social anxiety talking. At least this was cheaper than pay-per-view.
She looked down at the fluffy, tearfully attempting to rock itself over onto its feet. It was caked in filth. Excrement matted the fur around its ass and both hind legs. It must have trudged through some wet cement, too, because there were bits of dried concrete clumped in its fur from the knee down. Where its fluff had fallen out in clumps, she could see fly eggs and flea dirt so thick that she couldn’t even begin to make a guess at what its skin color was.
It stared at her, wide green eyes full of tears as it pawed at the concrete curb. “Pwease, nice wady! Pwease, pwease nu toss fwuffy ‘way wike twash. Fwuffy am good fwuffy! Have tummy-babehs! Nu wan be twashies. Pwease!”
Stacey’s stomach twisted. On one hand, it was probably best to euthanize it. They were disease-ridden pests, right? Invasive species and all that.
On the other, it had the potential to be really cute. She’d always been such a sucker for big puppy-dog eyes. And it was standing there like a little person on its back legs! Yeah, sure, she was dead inside because she worked customer service and everything, but she wasn’t completely heartless.
She could give it a bath, you know? Get some cute outfits. Teach it some sayings. Maybe she could even train it to walk on its back legs…
Or if not, it was pregnant, right? That’s what it meant when it called itself “soon-mummah”, that’s why it was all bloated. She could just toss it back to the street and train its babies up if it complained too much. And no one would get up in arms about a fluffy in a little pain; they weren’t animals, they didn’t have any protections. They were toys.
And if she managed to train all the babies, then she certainly wouldn’t have to keep them all, and how much would people pay for one? More for pretty ones, yeah, but at least fifty? With how fast these things popped out babies, she could industrialize it easily. Put in a Benjamin for supplies, catch a few free ferals, she could get at least twenty-five babies trained at a time. Spend a month with them, sell them off at fifty each…? And that wasn’t even considering if she got good at it or could pawn them off higher or there were “decent” colors in the batches!
While she ran the math through her head, the sanitation worker came back with the garbage bag and a grin, “Alright, let’s get this thing off the street.”
“Nu, pwease! Nu am twashies! Nu am twashies!” The fluffy begged, surely kept from shitting itself only because it had evacuated its bowels when Stacey ran into its box.
Cash on her mind, Stacey put her hand on the sanitation worker’s wrist, “Actually, you know what? Let me have that bag."
He shrugged and handed it over. “Knock yourself out.”
Stacey knelt down with the bag and set it down on the sidewalk beside her. She reached out to the fluffy with one hand, slowly.
“Nu! Nice wady, pwease! Nu wan be trashies! Pwease!” The fluffy cowered, pressing itself further into the pavement. Eyes screwed shut and hooves shielding its face, it could only screech when Stacey’s hand pressed against its head, “Nu! Nu bad upsies! Nu bad…!”
It cracked an eye open when it realized Stacey hadn’t grabbed it. She’d just put her hand on its head, gently stroking its mane back with her thumb and humming. Confused, the fluffy dropped one hoof from its face to see what was going on. Stacey was just petting it, that was all.
“Nu… nu bad upsies? Nu gon thwow fwuffy ‘way?” Cautiously, the fluffy stopped struggling, though it couldn’t keep itself from pushing into her hand, craving affection even in the face of potential danger.
Stacey laughed gently, smiling reassuringly to the fluffy as she used her full hand to pat its head now, “No, I’m not going to throw you away.” Stacey used her free hand to unfold the trash bag by her side, smoothing it out on the pavement.
The fluffy’s eyes darted to the bag before turning back to Stacey. Its ears flattened back on its head as it asked, “Gon huwt soon-mummah?”
“No, I’m not going to hurt you.”
“Den… den what am you gon’ do wif fwuffy?”
“I’m going to take you home.”
The fluffy’s ears perked, and its whole body tensed up in excitement, eyes taking on a new shine as it murmured to itself to make sure it understood what was going on, “New mummah? Fwuffy have new mummah?”
When everything clicked, the fluffy wriggled uncontrollably, reaching for Stacey with its front legs as its back legs kicked in an attempt to move closer, close enough to hug. When that clearly wasn’t going to work, it grabbed her hand and pulled it close, happily smooshing its face against her palm and babbling, “Mummah! Mummah! Fwuffy wub you! Thank you, mummah! Thank you! Thank you!”
“Calm down! Calm down, you’re going to hurt yourself!” Hurriedly, Stacey grabbed the trashbag and draped it over the fluffy, swaddling it while it was distracted. Though it was kinda difficult to keep the trash bag from slipping with all the fluffy’s wiggling, Stacey managed to get the fluffy wrapped up. Once she got it off the ground, she cradled it against her chest and stood up with a helping hand from the sanitation worker.
“Fwuffy have new mummah! So happy! Wub you! Wub you so muchies!”
Stacey pinched the fluffy’s cheek, “Yeah, yeah, you’re welcome.”
Undeterred, the fluffy kept on, improvising a little song about how much it loved her and how much its babies loved her and blah-blah saccharine sweet bullshit. At least she didn’t have to keep up a conversation with it.
“You’re actually going to keep that thing? Thought you just wanted the pleasure of killing it.” The sanitation worker asked, brow raised.
Thankfully, the fluffy was too caught up in her song to pay any mind to her surroundings and as such gave no reaction to the “k” word.
Stacey shrugged. “Can’t be too hard, can it? I’ve got plenty of sandals.”
“What?”
“Nevermind. I just have an idea, that’s all. What does it hurt to try?”
“Your eardrums, for one.”
Stacey laughed before giving him a flirty glance up and down, “Fair. Tell you what, give me your number and I’ll keep you updated?”