“Trent, I’ve seen a lot of stupid ideas come out of these labs, but this is by far the dumbest one I’ve ever seen.”
“I needed to improve their fins!”
“So you spliced toad genes into them?”
“Well yeah! You see how well they’re swimming now! And they’re not drowning like the seal-gene fluffs!”
"That still doesn’t explain why the hell you used genes from a
Goddamn I can’t even look at these things!"
Six tanks were on pedestals in the sterile white room. Each tank held a single toadfluffy, swimming around in circles and gasping in wonder every time one of them would see another in the adjacent tanks.
“Hii nyu fwiend!” they exclaimed in glee every time they saw each other again.
At least these things would never get depressed. Their memory seemed to about as long as a good fart. They would almost be cute, …if it weren’t for all the tiny fluffy faces looking up at them from the skin on the back of the…creation.
“Why the hell did you let them breed?”
“I didn’t”
“Well where did” grimacing he gesticulated at the wriggling masses embedded in the mothers “all of those come from?”
“Well, it seems that this particular mix of genes has the ability to self-fertilize”
“Oh great, so not only are there thousands of them ready to…” he shuddered “hatch. But they’re all inbred too?”
"Yeah, that’s about the size of it.
“You’d better not let any of these things escape. We’d be stepping on them for weeks.”
"Yeah, I know. But I’ve got that all figured out.
A shrill shout from one of the tanks drew the attention of scientists and fluffies alike
“BABBIES AM MAKIN’ BESTEST WIGGWIES! FWUFFY AM BE MUMMAH SUUN!”
“Oh god, already?” Trent hurriedly pushed past his associate, grabbing a tool from one of the drawers.
Gary couldn’t believe his eyes when he saw the tool
“A razor?!?! Really? A fucking straight-razor!?”
“Just trust me, it’s the fastest way. These things don’t come out one or two at a time, they all struggle out at the same time.” Trent scooped up the wriggling dam
As the dumb little wall-eyed faces poked through the thin skin covering the mother’s back he would slice them off, a few dozen at a time
“this kills the fluffy” Gary muttered, remembering an old meme he’d laughed so much about.
Somehow it didn’t seem quite so funny anymore…
Other toadfluffs looked up at the process. Most didn’t understand what was happening. But one seemed intelligent enough to realize the babies were dying.
“DAT FING BAD FO BABBEHS!” it shouted, flopping onto the side of her aquarium and struggling to reach the top with her long skinny fingers
The babies embedded in her back wriggled and peeped in glee at their new adventure
Gary watched, horrified, as the soon-mother slowly hauled herself up the glass
Trent shouted “Well don’t just let her get out! Do something! I kinda have my hands full here!!!”
He looked around, pulling open drawers, his hand seizing upon the first tool he could find
A light fiberglass sorry-stick with a weighted tip
He raised the stick and swung at the escapee
Trent looked up just in time to see Gary bring the stick whipping down
“NO NOT LIKE THAT!!!”
The toadfluff’s body reacted immediately to the strike, her body bending backward until her nose nearly touched her scaly tail
Thousands of young toadfluffs hurtled across the room
They ricocheted off of glass,
They skipped off of the water
One splatted directly onto Gary’s glasses, it’s stupid smile leaving a bloody streak down the lens
They were EVERYWHERE
With every dizzy step they took dozens of little screams were sounded, and silenced
Rotating yellow lights dropped from the ceiling and a klaxon began to sound
“Containment breech detected in LABORATORY 5. Evacuate laboratory and prepare for decontamination procedures.”
Trent had enough time to disgustedly look Gary in the eye
and throw the screaming mother down onto the tiles, where she bounced and screeched, as a few dozen babies were ejected from her back
“Thanks buddy. Appreciate your help.”
Sprinklers poked down out of the ceiling tiles, and the acrid smell of hydrogen peroxide entered the room as the sprinklers flooded it with the relatively harmless liquid that was so deadly to most fluffies
“So much for that project. You’re buying lunch”
Author’s Note: Apparently I wasn’t the first to think of this idea
