“Yay! Fwuffy wub speshaw huggies! Make babbehs!”
When your special friend finished, he pulled himself off your back, nuzzling against you.
“Fwuffy hab bestest speshaw fwiend!” He said. You could see his blue coat and green mane. You hoped one of your babbehs would have a coat and a mane like his.
You happily pranced out of the upturned garbage can you’d recently found to the nearest puddle of water, licking up some fresh rain. When you finished, you noticed your reflection, your violet eyes, your yellow coat, your white mane. What manes would your babbehs have?
You walked back to the can. It was only yesterday you both found it while looking for shelter. It wouldn’t sog like a box, but the rain did make loud noises that sometimes scared you. Still, as good a place as any to have your babbehs.
That night you dreamed of lots of pretty babbehs, singing them songs and feeding them milkies. Days spent with your special friend bringing you nummies. Maybe even finding a new mummah or daddeh to take you and your babbehs in.
You dreamed about it the next night, and the next, until you felt it.
“Speshaw fwiend! Fwuffy hab tummeh babbehs!”
Your special friend blinked his teary grey eyes, and gave you huggies. In that moment you felt like nothing could tear the two of you apart.
“Bzzz…”
“Munsta!” You yelled, pulling from his hug and darting away. You made it 10 feet before you tired out. Must be the babbehs.
Looking back, you saw your special friend sniffing the source of the noise, a simple dragonfly crawling over some trash.
A month later you’d have five four three two more foals to your name.
Now you had a hundred.
You were a milkbag.
You couldn’t run or play. You had no legs.
You couldn’t look at the foals suckling away at you. You had no eyes.
You couldn’t taste sketti, hell you’d die just to taste kibble. You had no tongue.
Your rump was covered in sores, every tiny movement was agony. Probably for the best the straps kept you still.
Your only delight was when some deep memory of a time before came to the surface, just for a moment. A time of running and playing and babbehs. How you missed your babbehs. Your bestest yellow and pink, your clever blue and white… or was he blue and red?
It was a never-ending cycle. As soon as the memory came back you’d know what would happen. You’d shed tears thinking of better times. You’d try to run like you once had, shifting around in your straps, your rump burning. It hadn’t worked the last thousand times, maybe it would work this time?
WHACK!
The crop came down on you, and with it a wave of pain. You didn’t know what it was, only that it came when you moved around too much.
With the pain came the anger.
Why? Why were you stuck like this? How did you get here? Why couldn’t you get out?
You tried to scream, but only air came out. You didn’t have vocal cords anymore, you might as well have not had a mouth at all. But you had to scream.
Instead you screamed on the inside.
You raged and raged all you could, you wanted out, you needed out. But there was no way out. Nothing you could do but continue to exist.
Wan die. You thought to yourself.
Wan die.
Wan die.
Wan die.
Wan die.
Then, nothing. Static.
And in the static, a memory eventually surfaced, one of old days. The cycle began again.
For milkbags every minute is a year.
Milkbags live an average of 10 years. That’s 5,256,000 minutes. You were three weeks in.