Hoss watched as Maxim and the Slav drove off with the white and green fluffy on a tiny medical stretcher. It was like something out of a cartoon. Neither of them thought to ask him to come along, so he just didn’t. After they had left, Hoss went about collecting his bacci balls. They had killed the entire herd, just about—a few foals were left—crowded around a brown mare with a bright orange mane, one broken leg from where one of Hoss’s bacci balls had bounced off of another fluffy and rolled into her. She was a bowl-fluff. Hoss had no real opinion on bowl fluffs, he had an insider perspective though, he’d personally spoken to one of the men on the design project, and to hear it, it was more of a flex on the Texas branch to prove that they were better than the Californian branch, so skillful was the fleshcrafter’s art that they could produce a concave abdomen without crushing the organs. A triumhp of engineering, but to what end? Bowl fluffs actually drowned more often than normal fluffies because they weren’t as afraid of water. The mare was blubbering, and the foals were hugging her—even the chirpies were piled on top of her—the other foals had likely assumed that hugs would fix her legs. Hoss went and got an armchair and a beer cooler from his truck and walked back, setting up the chair, a small electric lanter, and the cooler, and sitting down a yard away from the fluffpile. He crossed one leg over the other, lit a cigarette, and watched.
“Huu huuu, Mawcia weggie nu wowk… daddeh, pwease hewp fwuffy!”
“I just killed your entire herd for money, fluffy. I cannot be reasoned with unless you’ve got,” he thought for a moment, “about eight hundred dollars.”
“Wah dowwa?” the fluffy asked, its expression pained, “fwuffy huu huu, nu pwetty weggie huwties huu huu… mummaah nee nummies fow miwkies fow babbehs, huu…”
“Yeah, obviously that’s not going to work there are… What, hold on how many foals is that, fifteen? You have no chance of feeding them all, and even less chance of feeding yourself. Those foals are going to die.”
“Nuuuu! Daddeh, pwease gib fwuffy housie aan nummies!”
“I return to the part where I kill fluffies for a living. Why are all the foals here with you?”
“Mawcia take cawe of babbehs, huu huu… Mawcia bes’ miwkies mummah… Feed aww da babbehs… Huu, mistah Smawty saw Mawcia is wike miwkbag,” Hoss’s eyebrows shot directly into his black hair.
“That’s not a compliment. This Smarty must be someone’s science experiment. But you, yes, distended teats, are you currently carrying?”
“Nu, Mawcia am nu huggies, because poopie cowow…”
“Ha! Little eugenecists,” Hoss chuckled, “I see. We’ve run into perma-feeders before, the gene is in all of you but it’s only normally unlocked pheremonally… Never seen it on a bowl though. That’s new.” he paused, and brought one hand up to his cheek, resting the elbow in his other hand. He tapped his temple, idly, “I sense another hand in all this. Unusual intelligence, an unsual mutation in the mares… If only whichever idiot hired us knew th
Hoss blinked. Something tapped his temple, and he jerked. It was his own hand. Other side of the head, though, when had that switched? He shrugged, and reached for his beer. He pushed over a small pile of cans. That wasn’t normal. That—where were the fluffies? Hoss flew to his feet. He was in his living room, sitting on the couch. The lights were dim, and there were no fluffies to be seen. Why was he home, wait, who had hired them to do that job? Where was the job? Why did his head hurt? Hoss suddenly felt claustrophobic. He ripped off the long coat and black gloves they wore on the job, and threw the bundle and his peaked cap onto the couch. Suffocating, like his chest was being crushed in a vice—no, not his chest, just his heart. He couldn’t breathe, he stumbled to the front door and burst out of hit, tearing his collar, gasping the frozen night air as he fell to his knees on the oak porch. What was that feeling? Hoss didn’t get anxiety. Hoss had been in New York. He’d been in the city when the razor drones had filled the sky. He didn’t feel fear anymore. Not fear of death. Why then, did his heart scream to him like this? Why did it feel like bony hands were tightening around his throat? Why did he suddenly feel so small?
“Daddeh?” something said. Hoss actually fell down two steps of the front stairs as he spin, crying out. It was a foal, a deep blue-green, monochrome, even its eyes were the same color. Hoss had never seen this thing before in his life.
“What are you doing here?”
“Babbeh jus’ wan daddeh to knu, fwuffies wub daddeh.” Hoss narrowed his eyes.
“Did I bring you here?”
“Yes daddeh,” the foal looked vaguely confused, as though it had a script of how this conversation was supposed to go, and this was not part of it, “daddeh sabe babbehs ‘n Mawcia Mummah fwom munstah bawws.”
“Monster b-” Hoss interrupted himself with one sharp involuntary HA, and then glanced around. He’d just drank too much. Adopting fluffies, Jesus Christ. He got up, and picked the little foal up, “alright lil’ fella, I guess you’ve got cute colors, but there are too many of you to take care of, I might have to bring some of you to a shelter, okay?” Hoss was as callous as the next guy, but he had long noticed that if he undid the mistakes he made while drunk, he would always inflict them twice as badly the next time. Like Drunken Hoss held a grudge against Sober Hoss for spoiling his mischief. He could tolerate a drunken act of kindness from time to time.
“Buh… Is jus’ Mawcia Mummah ‘n Sissy. Udda babbehs go tu heww alweady.” Hoss quickly compartmentalized that statement, and took the fluffy in the crook of his arm, stroking its back.
“Did daddy say they went to hell?”
“Nu,” the fluffy said. It did not elaborate. Hoss brought the thing in, and following now extant sounds of peeping, went into the garage, where apparently drunken him had set up a rudimentary saferoom. Any suspicion he might have had that this was a practical joke by Maxim evaporated, as there was zero chance that Zoomgroid would have done this good of a job impersonating Hoss’s handiwork. It was a children’s swimming pool with a shoebox lid full of sand. The toys were a set of pool balls, a stuffed shrimp in a tophat he had gotten from a Forrest Gump themed resteraunt in Monterey, and a claw hammer. Marcia was there, her little broken leg (her left foreleg) in a simple splint, gingerly feeding a very well fed white foal, which was sleepily suckling. Hoss put the teal fluffy done, scratching its sides as he did, and giving it a little push. It waddled over to the brown mare, who gently adjusted the other foal to make room. The recess on its abdomen had the curious effect of causing the teats to face upwards, unwards to the bowl slightly so that they could be accessed from within. The mare was unble to pick the foals up to place them there, so it was sort of awkwardly poking the white one to try and convince it to make it easier for itself. As it was, the two were essentially on tippy-toes just barely able to reach the milkbags.
“Why did I bring you here?” Hoss asked. The mare looked at him oblivious to the absurdity of the question.
“Mummah ask fow miwkies, Hoss say he wet fwuffy gu fow… Fow… Fouw dowwas.”
“It was eight hundred.”
“Oh. Wots of dowwas. Now fwuffy hewe.”
“You gave me eight hundred dollars?” Hoss grinned, and took out his wallet. It was empty. Nobody used paper money anymore anyway.
“Fwuffy nu nu buh daddeh sai Zewwe!” the fluffy said, and leaned over to coo to the foal, which briefly stopped suckling to bump its little snout against hers, and chirp. Hoss felt the weight on his chest again as he walked back to the living room, to his coat, and drew his phone out of the breast pocket. He flicked it on. 800 dollars, 7:06 PM. ‘Fow alkie daddeh’ Hoss continued looking at the phone as he walked into his office, pulled open the drawer, withdrew the Rhino, checked the clylinder, and then withdrew a bottle of scotch and drank half of it. As the panic recessed, Hoss took a deep breath.
“Dagoth, full lockdown,” he said to the nearest electronic device. The AI slave responded.
“Come Nerevar, Friend or Traitor Come, to the Control Room, and Enter your nine digit passkey to-”
“Machine access file LighthouseAlert.exe Admin authority 1527.”
“Ah, what grand and intoxicating credentials. I will call the police and inform them that the Jehovah’s Witnesses are at it again. Lockdown engaged,” the steel doors that came standard on any party-member’s abode let out a low buzz and then clicked as the heavy bolts set into place.
“Skip the police call, it might’ve just been a rat,” Hoss still checked the entire building one room at a time with a flashlight and the .357. Nothing. No movement. His wife and the kids were in Italy, the kids for school, the wife seeing her parents. Finally he walked into the bathroom, closed the door, and flicked on the light. No emaciated naked women with greasy hair and unhinged jaws, no skinless demons with pinprick eyes and razor teeth, no obese man in overalls with a bag over his head. Alright, good. Good sign. The only living things in the building were him and the fluffies.
“Okay, well I was paid, so I guess you can stay,” Hoss said, strolling back into the makeshift saferoom.
“Yay!” the little bowl-fluff giggled. The blue-green foal clambered up into Marcia’s recessed tummy, and curned into a frankly precious little oblong sphere of fluff, “fwuffy be gud fwuffy and gib miwkies to babbehs, wots of miwkies, Caww sai Mawcia am key to stw… Stwate…” The fluffy’s face took on an expression of almost serious concentrtion.
“Strategy. You were key to his strategy because you can feed…” Hoss suddenly felt a pang of realization, “how many foals do you need?”
“Any babbehs is good babbehs,” Marcia said, “’cept poopie babbehs, ‘cept Mawcia. Smawty sai poopie fwuffies nu happi, Mawcia knu dis twu, Mawcia nu happy untiw smawty gib pwetty babbehs. Weab poopie babbehs in sowwy howw at owd howsie.”
“Okay, that’s the weirdest wait to do the bitch mare thing I’ve heard in a minute,” Hoss scratched one of his sideburns, “but what I meant was, if you produce enough milk for multiple mares, you must also need to use it. Am I going to have to get a milking device or something?” There was a sound, so subtle it might have escaped his notice, if it did not have the distinct hiss of a whisper.
“Oh. Mawcia nu knu. Wha miwkie dwise?”
“Foals. Foals are milking devices,” Hoss said, turning around and pointing the gun directly at… Nothing. He pulled the hammer on the revoler back, “I’ve killed more men than there are atoms of hydrogen in the sun. If you come out in five seconds, there is a nonzero chance that I will not kill you.” There was a pause, with only the soft, confused sounds of fluffies coming from behind Hoss. He sneered, “both.” His hands were not trembling, but the sway of his aim was just barely noticable. The drink. Better than panicking. He pulled the gun back, both hands, close to the chest, “Dagoth. Strobe lights, five-dash-one.” The smart-lights of the building instantly began to flicker, on and off, five times per second. The screaming of fluffies in panic was immediate, Hoss barely heard it. The first gunshot was wild, surprsied. It blew a fine hole in the bricks to the right of the door as Hoss stormed through. The panicked cry alerted him to the shooter. He fired once, twice. The figure buckled and fell. Someone cursed. A burst of flechettes from a gauss pistol caught Hoss directly in the chest. Without flinching, he adjusted his aim and fired. A human shape jerked, and then jerked again as he shot it twice. The figure collapsed into a heap, arms extending upwards. Like a fencer’s pose.
“HUUUUUU NOISES BAD FO BABBEHS HUUUUU”
“Oh man. Dagoth, flicker off please. Why are there two dead people in my house?”
“Nerevar, you are wounded. I shall call the-”
“You are supposed to tell me if people enter my house, Dagoth.”
“With all respect my moon and star, I did,” The AI said, its tone flattening slightly, “you were as plastered as an Argonian at Big Rock Candy Mountain.”
“What—what the fuck are you talking about?”
“Big Rock Candy Mountain is a comedic song from the 20th century recounting the tale of a ‘hobo’ or homeless person, who claims to know of a paradise with rivers of whiskey. Since Argonians can breathe underwater, it stands to reason that in such a location they would be highly intoxicated most or all of the time. This is a humorous way of shifting the blame for my failure to warn you of the intruders in your home onto you because you were too intoxicated to hear me.”
“Great, do not call the police. What kind of asshole uses flechette rounds in 2141,” he looked down at his chest. The ceramic darts were visibly stuck in the ballistic fabric of his vest. One had hit above, however, and was visibly stuck in his collar bone. I was the size of a toothpick. Hoss took a deep breath, and then plucked it out. He shook himself, and checked the bodies. The first was a teenage girl, maybe an adult. Maybe. Dark hair, blue eyes, salsa-kraut according to the current nomenclature. Same as most citizens since the Amish had become the dominant ethnic group in North America. The other was a young man, he would guess Indian but most of those had left the country. India was one of the few places on Earth where fluffies had never been a problem. Many had returnd there as industries flocked to a locale where fluffies were simply a non-issue. These days you needed to prove ancestry just to get in! Fascists. Hoss would have chuckled here but though this all has taken quite some time to explain it actually occurred in a very brief span of time. He’d hit this one in the hand, it looked like the bullet had traveled the length of his arm into his shoulder. The double tap had gotten him in the chest, and then right below the adams apple. This guy was as dead as a sack of particularly dead hammers. Hoss stood, and walked back to the makeshift safe room. He reloaded the revolver with loose roudns from his pocket as he went. He was unpleasantly surprised to find Mawcia and the teal foal frothing at the mouth.
“Oh come on, loud noises don’t-” Hoss looked up. The lights. “oh FUCK ME the strobes? Dagoth do fluffies have epileptic seizures?”
“No Nerevar they do not, unless they are of a protected model not intended for distribution, those have a failsafe meant to trigger if they see electronic media, it makes it easy to prevent them from surviving being stolen or escaping.”
“GOD DAMN IT!” Hoss screamed. This had confirmed his fears. This fluffy was proprietary, a superfeeder bowl fluff, probably a limited test run, this thing was worth millions of dollars. There was a chirp. Hoss looked and saw that the fat foal was still moving. Its eyes were closed, still, it was likely oblivious to what was happening. It looked too old though. Was it Marcia’s? That seemed unlikely. He picked the critter up and set it aside. It hugged his hand as he patted it to calm it down. He was more concerned with the mre. She was having a fit. He put her in the fluffy recovery position, and then attended to the green foal. He had actually liked tht one’s colors, he’d actually been thinking of keeping it, it was the same color as all of his décor, he’d be like a James Bond villain. “Come on little guys, it’s not every day a fluffy gets me shot, can’t die now,” he ran and got the kit he normally used to keep the Smarties live while they tortured them for their herd locations. He knew that he shouldn’t try to save the foal. It was unimportant. Marcia was a good fluffy, and she was worth money. A lot of money. He was able to keep them from choking to death, but the seizures just kept going. He needed something drastic. He found a injected both with a sedative—they didn’t tell consumers how easy it was to knock fluffies out. Propofol was what they used on humans but fluffies had a carefully engineered receptor in their neurostructure for diphenhydramine. The contents of a benadryl would kill five or six fluffies, but an extremely small dose could be injected to great effect. This worked. He had separate dosages for foals and adult fluffies but he wasn’t sure if bowl fluffs had more or less total volume than regulars. He assumed they would be designed similarly but it was also just like Hasbio to have each model require a different dosage. Definitely not a foal though. He went with the full dose. The brown fluffy, its facial fluff matted with dissipated foam, its eyes crusted over with mucus, its nose running, finally stopped spasming. For a brief moment, Hoss thought she was dead, but Marcia suddenly drew in an obnoxious snorring intake of breath, and then, like a cartoon, released it with a beebebebebebebebebe.
“fwuffy am gud fwuffeh, bowwie wike a fwuit boww,
babbehs aww wike fwuties cause babbehs is da best,
babbehs is da best ‘cause mummh is da best,
mummah is da best cause mummah has hew west,”
Marcia was probably supposed to sing this, the fluffies’ sleepy-songs were genetic memory, but perhaps because of the sedetive she said it in a flat affect. Checked on the foal. He was fine, better actually than her. Suckling his little hoof. Hoss poked the little guy in the abdomen with one finger. The foal giggled sleepily and batted his finger with a hoof. Hoss did not actually feel the emotion, but he was aware tht he should. He should not be feeling calm now at all. He should be feeling the sound of a the triangular selector lever on an AK—Polish you can tell because the milling leaves grooves that abrade the case—moving to automatic at 5. Hoss twisted his legs to hasten his turn. He pulled the revolver out from his waistband. He hadn’t slowed down but nobody was that fast. He’d always perceived gunfire as being quiet. Reflexive earplugs dulled it down to about the volume of a finger snap, but nobody wore those casually. In the close confines of the room, the rifle blast should have been physically painful. Instead it was as loud as it ever was when he was at war. So, he was very aware that he was not struck by the noise. He was simply struck. He wasn’t even sure he had fired. He hit the ground hard. The foal was right there, its little face a centimeter from his nose. Damn. A few inches and I’d have a pillow, he thought absurdly. The gunfire continued for a second. He saw rounds hit the wall opposite him, tracing an arc, cutting across the ceiling. Then silence. He was still a long moment, and then sat up. Third corpse, older man, maybe in his 50s. He had a black stocking cap on, casual clothing. But no, there it was. Three point sling? I’ll bet that’s a LPVO, yes it is you fucking asshole. Hoss stood, slowly. He had been shot in the chest, he’d guess it was a carbine in .45 or something else subsonic. The suppressor—thank God. If that had been chambered in a rifle cartridge he would currently be in Hell explaining the concept of cosmic irony to a bunch of fluffies. Hoss poked his boot into the man’s face. He did not so much as twitch. Hoss kicked the gun away regardless and then looked around. The dying man, shot in the throat, had spun and sprayed the room with lead. Hoss grimaced as he followed this line of thought—and the line of bullets—to Marcia. Hoss slapped his hand to his face. Great. What the fuck is happening. A hitman, two thieves, three fluffies, four bodies. He… He needed to think. He needed to stop drinking. “Dagoth, why is there a third dead man in my house?”
“Nerevar, there is no third dead man in your house, unless you are speaking metaphorically about yourself because you feel emotionally deadened by your killing of two children.”
“They are not children,” Hess snarled, “people have children.”
“Okay, that was a very weird and nonsequitorial response Nerevar and it is making me uncomfortable, I’m going to adjust the happiness of your AI content consumption up by 4 degrees, but also I was referring to the two teenagers you shot in the other room.”
“Oh. Whatever. No, I mean this guy,” Hoss said, pointing at the corpse.
“That is not a person my Moon and Star you appear to be bleeding to death.”
“I shouldn’t be bleeding, it, it hit,” Hoss looked down, and saw that his side was soaked. The round had somehow punched through his ballistic fabric vest. He sighed, and reached into his pocket for his phone.
Maxim was smoking a cigarette when the phone rang. Nik had saved the fluffy, but there was something going on, he said they needed to keep all electronics off, shut down everything, he sent Maxim outside so that he could keep their phones in case someone called. It was his phone, though, and it was displaying “Hoss v. Westerwald” and an atrocious anime version of his face produced by Maxim’s filter settings.
“Yellow fellow,” Maxim said, hoping to irritate the man with a frivolous greeting.
“Shut the fuck up Max I’ve been shot. I killed two punjabis and a salsa kraut. The mare that herd had was an experimental superfeeder, at least ten times normal production, coded to fail with exposure to electr… Oh wow,” there was a clattering sound, “okay, I’ve lost blood, alright listen, the mare is-”
“You killed three people Hoss, where are you?”
“I’m home, I’m—look I’m fine, the mare is dead Maxim that thing was worth like ten million woolongs, you need ot go back to the enclosure,”
“THREE people? Hoss, why did you kill three people?”
“Two people, sorry, Dagoth Ur says the third guy isn’t human—listen, Maxim there is WEIRD shit going on here, you need to go back to the gay sports stadium and find wherever the shitrats were throwing away trash, look for brown foals, Marcia said she had brown foals but she abandoned them, they might have the gene Maxim. There might be multiple of them. Each one of those fucking foals is a beachside house in Greece Maxim, get the fuck over there.”
“Hoss call an ambulance, I’ll go check the stadium but you need to get help, I can’t lose you man you’re the onl-”
“Maxim I would rather die right now than die in a hundred years not in Athens, go get the fucking foals.”
Maxim stood there for a long moment, wishing he hadn’t taken the whole gummy.
Hoss was lucky he had the stupid fluffy torture kit there. Anticoagulants were an essential part of any such kit. He would live. Marcia was not so lucky. She had been hit in the abdomen. Right in the recessed bowl of her belly,. She was awake. Fear. Pain. Her teeth were clenched. The round had been low velocity. Her intestines had been shredded by the dumdum rounds. Even now, acid from her stomachs, stronger than usual for the constant eating of grasses, ws chewing through the gracile walls of her flesh, abrading the marmoreal walls of muscle and fat, like sand chipping away at stone in the wind. She would have shrieked, but she seemed to be choking, perhaps o nblood. Her voice escaped only in choking gulps, gu, hwu, Hoss reached out to touch the fluffy, and put his hand on her side, and patted her.
“It’s okay, fluffy. You did well.”
“Babbehs,” Marcia vomited out a mouthful of gore and organ meat as she spoke, it seemed to clear her airways briefly, “babbehs… otay?”
“I think so. You have given me the information I need to save them. In so doing you have redeemed yourself, I am sure, of your many sins.”
“Daddeh fowbib Fluffy? Daddeh wub fwuffy?” Marcia said, her eyes growing distant. She was not dying. It would not be quick, gut wounds seldom were, but the pain was beginning to overwhelm her, she was only functional at all because she was already on a homeopathic scale dose of benadryl.
“To be sure,” Hoss said. He was preparing the other half of a lethal dose.
“Huu, huwties…” the fluffy began to jerk with sobs It was dragged, down into the depths of its own pain, the feeling of its lacerated flesh consumed, solved by liquid flame. The pain was terrible. Marcia knew that she was dying. Forever sleepies. But Marcia also knew, from much experience, that sleepies had dreamies. And to be a bad fluffy was to have bad dreamies. But to be a good fluffy was to have good dreamies! And Marcia had had her doubts, because she had learned the mummah song, the sacred song, known only to mummahs, which had as many verses as there were starries in the sky, at least four and possibly some larger number. She knew that good mummahs loved all their babies, and bad mummahs gave hurties to babies. Ergo, she, by abandoning her foals for being of a low colorage indicative of an inferior race to the glorious Carliasts she had sworn service to, haad committed an unforgivable sin against the values of mummah fluffies. She had given her baby worst hurties, and indeed, forever sleepies. She had simply wanted to save him. Babies always dream of milkies. This means that a bestest babbeh given forever sleepies, would dream of milkies forever. Ideally for many forevers, an arbitrarily high number of forevers here to mean, without end. Marcia felt something lift within her.
“I forgive you fluffy. It is paradise for you, I am sure,” the man Hoss’s voice said, softly. Marcia smiled.
And then, a sudden cold, like fingers light and soft tracing lines up exposed shoulders in the dark. Like a near brush in deep water. Cold, as ice. And she saw them. From every direction, she saw them. The bottom of the world fell out.
Nu.
They crept towards her, reaching, and reaching, slavering, neglect and hunger slick for grease on fangs of unchewed grass, and blades of regret for teeth.
NU! DADDEH SAI SABE Marcia tried to scream, but there was no sound. She had truly believed. She had truly believed, no, damned after all of this, no! She had trusted him! She had trusted him! No! No! She screamed, she screamed, her eyes flew open one last time, and she saw the shock in the man’s eyes. He hadn’t known. He didn’t know. He wasn’t daddeh. Who, who was daddeh, where was daddeh, who could forgive her, who had the right? She would give anything, to anyone, anyone, who, who had she wroned by throwing away those worthless, filthy, shit-colored pigsouled munstahs, vermin, parasites , to whom did she owe apolgoy? Not them. Not them of course.
And then, with sudden, crystal clear clarity, saw her first foals brutally abused and then eaten alive by other fluffies. She had fought back, but they made her accept the trade, they hit her until she agreed. A few foals that weren’t even her color, for acceptance into a herd. Carl had saved her from that herd. She had realized then her mistake. She had foolishly given away good, beautiful foals, OH NO! That was why she was being punished! Not those stupid, worthless, shit-colored foals, those disgusting inferior ugly ugly monster creatures, they weren’t even fluffies. Her mistake was that she had forgotten about the other ones! Silly her. Now she would be forgiven!
And it is here, in this final instant, that all became suddenly, frightfully clear to the fluffy, for as part of the many torments of Hell, the truth is generally used only once, and only to ensure that all other horrors are increased. For Marcia was made suddenly aware with a terrible clarity that no fluffy would ever have in life, that the time for that had long, long passsed.
But daddeh! Daddeh hewp!
“HGEEEEEEWEWP FWUFFFFFFEIEEEIEEEEEEEEEE MAWCIIIIIAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA NUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU, UUU PWOOOOOOMIIIIIIISED FOWGIIIIIIIB!”
Down a winding bowel of knives, sharp and broken like the edges of fractured glass, dragged down into a heartless sea. Ripped, like skin tugged free of clingy meat, nerves suddenly hidden beneath layers of protection, exposed suddenly to the terrible scrutiny and cruelties of Hell. The soul of Marcia, a putrid thing, rightly condemned, down and down, into the pit of hell. Every vulnerability, every sinful tenderness, every guilty, painted regret, all exposed to flame and gnashing teeth. She saw her daddeh—the one who had been her mother’s special friend—eviscerated with a spinning blade held by a man in a white dress, with a mask. She saw sliced open bellies, and ripped out teeth, and gouged out eyes, and tongues slit down the middle, and hoovesies sliced off thinly like wafers, and squealing, porcine, shrieking eviscerations. She saw with terrible clarity, the man Hoss slicing her bestest sensitive baby right down the belly, and peeling away his vulnerable flesh. How, how could her love for that baby not mean anything? How could she not be redeemed, saved by her willignness to die for those babies? How? How could it be insufficient to act without malice, and only towards the end of love? How could she be condemned for that!? How!? Love is what fluffies are for! What other thing in the world could possbily have any meaning, FOR WHAT REASON WOULD ANYONE LIVE AT ALL IF NOT FOR LOVE? TO BE DENIED SUCH A THING WAS UNTHINKABLE HORROR, THE WORST POSSIBLE THING.
And her being, the very self she was, was split apart, and each remained aware of the other, yet there was only ever enough space for one of them to think. And the screams multiplied, as each of the many selves fought to remain thinking, like a mass of drowning fluffies fighting over the last gasp of air. Shrieking, each was played like the string of a lute, peeled and vivisected and scrapped clean of flesh, and restored, and consumed, their soft fluffy flesh consumed, over and over, over and over, in different combinations, in different permutations, a million, a trillion, an infinite number of equally grotesque, horrific, tragic refutations of the fluffy existence, ten times a trillion trillion. Shrieking. Shrieking. Shrieking. The brothers drink deeply, from their cups of shrieking wine, babes innocent around them refill the bowls, each tender and innocent as the instant they came into being, reverting back to chirping form, and peeled anew, again and again. They howl, and hoot, and feast, and masticate, grinding fragile sensitivities, making intrusive thoughts and all manner of horrors true, and truer than true, in resolution higher than anything any fluffy had ever experienced. Could ever. Marcia squealed, screaming, screaming, yet even then she heard nothing, she had no release from the pain, there could be none, the pressure intensified to new unimaginble phase changes of anguish, exquisie as any of the delicate bites those toughies had taken out of her beautiful, beautiful favorite foal. Why had she abandoned him? Was th-
“You are here,” the brother said, cupping a flayed chin with a full hand, slapping a meaty jowell, and whispering sibilently into it, extracting another triumph of unspeakable horror that may as well have lasted a milion years as an instant. It was as though it was not talking to Marcia at all, but to another, “because you enjoy hurting things. Just like me. And nobody is coming to save you. It would be so easy for him, but he will not. He’ll forget you. Then*, you are mine.* ”
Marcia never ceased to exist, for the soul is immortal.
Hoss watched the fluffy go, and sighed. She had screamed one last time, at the end. It was too much to ask that a fluffy get an easy death, but that was at least that. Hoss had shot himself full of actual morphine and had called one of his friends from the city. He considered going to get a drink, but also considered that he probably wouldn’t have gotten himself shot or Marcia killed if he had been sober. So he sat there, waiting. “Dagoth, something upbeat please.”
“Of course my Moon and Star, Playing Freebird” Hoss cringed. He stared at the fluffy’s lifeless body, and shivvered.
“Jesus Christ, I… I don’t have the authority to forgive anyone fluffy. But I forgive you. And I hope whoever does have that authority forgives you. I doubt that helps. I’ve never made anything better. I doubt my word counts.”
[Hello, I’m Proust, and I’m on drugs. This is a continuation of a previous story The Granary. I actually screwed up posting that one and accidentally lost a big chunk of it. Rather than fix that, I’ve decided that this is actually Pruflas talking to me, and he says that there is no soteriological implication in any of this, and you shouldn’t look up what that word means either.
Also there’s no tag for Mystery? Anyway I will keep schizoposting until someone stops me.]