You knew everyone’s stories were going to bum you right the fuck out. You know people are fucked up, you know that America and probably the world are filled with secret torture chambers in garages and basements, that many fluffies are born unregistered and die unspeakable deaths. It’s even easier access to victims for the truly psychopathic than having children of their own, after all. You know fluffies are fucked up, too, created by man in his own image, capable of purest love and the most guileless, childish malice you’ve ever seen.
Between Sunshine being forced to watch babies with their eyes not even open yet die of internal ruptures from rape by adult males, Hank having both front legs hacked off to make him less able to defend himself and to keep him stuck in an ‘available’ position, and poor little Valentina being tackled and mounted by a feral in her own backyard before Heather’s father and stepmother had managed to bestir themselves from inside the house (after having promised to supervise Valentina’s time outside, of course) and catch the little fucker. At least once the old man had been on his feet, he had done the right thing, and bashed the little bastard’s head in with a shovel. Still, you’re getting the vibe that Heather isn’t going to be speaking to them again for a long time, if ever, and you really don’t blame her.
The fluffies, with all their characteristic resilience, are playing now, while the humans just try and catch their collective breath with bottled water and snacks. There had been some huu-huuing, but being able to give each other huggies ‘n’ wub had been a big help to all of them, on top of the more human-style benefits of realizing that they’re not alone with their terrible experiences. Hank is also kind of an unofficial therapy stallion, just being here, having also been hurt by stallions, and being a genuinely sweet guy. He’s like a little green haystack, animated by pure goodwill. All fluffies run like rocking-horses, but his prosthetics add to the effect, and it makes you smile just looking at him.
Daniel settles next to you, having gone to the room’s minifridge for a mandarin orange. His designer slacks are incongruous on the foam-tile floor, but at least he doesn’t fuss about them. He smiles, watching his fluffy as he peels the orange. “Isn’t he great?”
“Hank? Yeah, he sparks joy.”
“A friend of mine works in front-line rescue, really gnarly stuff. I’ve always just given them money and stayed away from actually fostering or anything because I’m a coward, but last year he sent me a photo of Hank, looking like six kinds of hell but smiling all across his face at being rescued, and just added the text, went to take buddy off his goddamn rape rack and he looked up at me and said ‘nyu fwen?’ Sure you don’t want to foster him? I knew it was going to be a foster-fail from the start, I figure Viktor sent him to me because he knew I would spring for the good legs.”
You snort quietly. “Yeah, you should see my grocery bill. I spend a fortune on keeping melamine out of the little bastards and making sure I keep my nurse mare from making ‘bestest milkies’ out of her own skeleton.”
“Nurse mare?”
“Yeah, I run a little rescue,” you tell him, and show him a photo of Milly on your phone.
“Oh, what a pretty girl! Her mane is, what, silver-lavender?”
“I’ve never known what else to call it, it’s like something you’d put on Galadriel for a cartoon Lord Of The Rings, isn’t it? She came to me half-grown, playing mother to two litters under her. Their mother was a piece of work, bestests and everything, but Milly stepped in. Didn’t even breed to start lactating, just got desperate enough and had enough hungry chirpies around. Of course, it was stunting her growth, so I put a stop to that shit, but these days I just keep her on the right kibble and take her to the vet every six weeks on the dot. She’s the best nurse mare you could ever ask for. Loves foals, produces gallons of good milk, and will fight anything or anyone that lays a finger on them.” You can never help bragging about Milly, because Milly may be the best fluffy you have ever known, and you can see the knowing amusement on Daniel’s face.
“I’m just a really proud mama and employer, okay?” you say, and he just laughs.
“It’s like looking into a mirror, that’s all. Employer?”
“There’s an account I keep aside for Milly, and she asks me sometimes if she has enough money for something she wants. She works so hard, I ought to pay her.”
“…That’s a level of ‘hugbox’ even I haven’t achieved, wow.”
You sigh. “Well. I have gone Judge Dredd a few times, and I haven’t lost any sleep over it.” You can see him tense up, and you get it. The shit some people do to a ‘bad fluffy’ in the name of ‘justice’ is just sick. You check the time, and see that there’s still another fifteen minutes left of this half hour of unstructured play and decompression. Sundae is playing what a lot of people call ‘fluff-soccer’ with Terra and Sparkle against Spike, Valentina, and Sunshine, she should be fine. You let Dr. Lisa (as she has everyone address her, not just the fluffies) know that you’re going to get some air, and invite Daniel to walk with you. He does a similar check for Hank, finds him watching the game and letting Sunshine study his metal legs, apparently fascinated by them. He goes over and ruffles the little green pony’s mane, saying something to him that makes him nod and wag his wild, scruffy tail, golden eyes wide and trusting. Daniel smiles down at him, and then comes to join you.
There’s a small veranda close by, a good place to escape for a smoke, actually. Not that it’s allowed here. Forget secondhand smoke, the amount of assholes who put cigarettes out on fluffies doesn’t bear thinking about. You lean on the railing, looking out over the sunny, manicured grass, where other clients play, humans monitoring around the fence. Further in the distance, you can barely see another paddock, which seems to hold inmates of Sunshine Hearts Daycare, which is of course under the same management, and is the place Domino was talking about. It’s a beautiful day, the summer version of that one in December: dazzling.
“So,” Daniel says, leaning on the railing beside you, elbows propped in the same say, “are you a good witch or a bad witch?”
“The last time I killed a fluffy, it was a feral who came into my yard to steal a foal. I knew the drifts were high, but I figured fluffies would have such a hard time moving through the snow that it would be all right for at least that afternoon, and the foals hadn’t been out in forever. So what happens but I go inside just long enough to take a crap and come back out to find the situation totally FUBAR. Milly, God bless her, is stomping and kicking and biting, really giving him hell, and Sundae has all the foals huddled around her, cuddling and comforting this little pink filly that we named Sakura, because she was that exact shade of pink. Little velvet-coated talkie-baby, adorable. She needed a sweater even on a day warm enough for them to go out, and it was all raveled and torn at the back, like someone had picked her up by it with their teeth.”
“Gotcha,” Daniel says, in that careful, neutral tone you use to keep somebody talking.
“The little bastard was still hard, so I scooped him up and slapped him in the balls, and then took him to the woodshed. There’s a compartment out there for quarantine, so I threw him in, locked the door, and ran back to do a headcount, get everyone into the house, and check them all over. The foals were okay, just scared out of their tiny minds, same for Sundae, she just looked like she wanted to puke. Milly was bruised and scratched up, but nothing I couldn’t fix at home. She was furious, though. I think the only time I’ve seen her more pissed off was when an emergency shelter family turned out to be a BMS case. I had to keep her from killing the mare, but that’s a whole other story.”
“Wow,” Daniel murmurs, eyeing you with concern.
“So, once I had everyone straightened out with some FluffTV and treats, I went back to the woodshed.” The whole place had reeked of rancid fluffy shit. You live on the edge of the suburbs, so ferals get plenty of trash, and it makes their effluvium fucking rank. You don’t bore Daniel with the details of your whole setup out there, you just mention only using wet wipes to clean the fucker because of how quickly being properly washed would have frozen him, and ignoring his dire threats of what would happen if you didn’t let Toughie go, right now. “Once I had him scraped off enough to handle, I stuck him in the medical restraints and started asking questions.”
“…Questions?”
“Yeah. Fluffies do get boners just from nervous excitement sometimes, so I wanted to make sure he was a baby-raping piece of shit before I treated him like one. If he had said something about his special friend being sad and wanting a new pink baby, or even about needing to bring another one to keep the smarty from raping his own, I would have let him live. You know fluffies, it’s hard for them to fully develop and stand on moral principles without human guidance. He would have been adoptable if he had just been scared and bullied and backed into a corner. But no. He wanted a new ‘enfie-babbeh’, because his last one ‘broke’.” You grimace and shudder all over again. A glance over at Daniel shows him making a truly horrified face, composure finally cracking. It’s almost funny.
You gaze back out across the vivid green grass with the gold light pouring through it, and continue. “After making very sure that I understood him, I asked him where his herd was.” And he had told you, all puffed up with pride because he was the big, bad, toughie-friend. “Once I had some comprehensible directions to give my contacts at the shelter, I told him that he was a good boy, and to close his eyes and wait for skettis. And then I cut his head off with a hatchet.”
Daniel lets out a spat of horrified laughter, his manicured hand flying to his mouth, brown eyes wide. “Oh my God, girl, you did not!”
“What? I did,” you tell him, and he starts to giggle, clearly appalled at himself.
“So violent!”
“It was quick!” you protest, and the giggling intensifies. “It was the most humane option available to me at the time!”
“All that,” Daniel giggles, slightly hysterical, voice hushed, “and he didn’t even get skettis!”
The giggles infect you, too, even though you’re genuinely offended. “I don’t care if it was his last meal, I was not giving that shit-smeared baby-raper skettis!”
Daniel’s face contorts in a silent howl of laughter, and he slumps weakly against the railing. Dumbass. You slump beside him, also laughing too hard to stand up correctly anymore, and pissed about it. At least he gets it, though. You didn’t spend all night torturing the fucker, you just found out what he was about and put him down.
(Author’s Note: I really don’t know if this needs Controversial tags or not for really fucked up things being mentioned but not occurring on-page, which will of course be a regular occurrence in a setting where it’s literally traumatized fluffies getting therapy.)