John had taken the job at the Underpass Motel because he was broke as shit and it had to be easy money. Just watching a motel that was closed for the summer season, it was a cinch right? The only rule was that he had to bring someone with him to stave off what the owner called ‘summer insanity’. John didn’t have any friends though, because he was a giant loser who spent all day online. A fluffy was fine for the job, which is why he had a new friend with him. A young blue stallion with a shock of bright yellow for his mane and tail. His name was Zippy. Not John’s choosing, but it didn’t matter. He was just the +1.
“Nyu homesie?” Zippy asked as they idled up to the motel. It was positioned directly under a road that would normally be quite busy in the winter months when people came out here for skiing or snowball fights or whatever rich people did with snow. Not that rich people ever came here. The motel was a place where roaches came to hump, that much was evident from the outside. It smelled like cigarettes, hooker piss, and hobo ejaculate in the parking lot. Not that there was anyone around. Even the owner who had told John he’d be instructing him wasn’t around. The only greeting he got was a flickering neon sign on an unwashed window guaranteeing the place had ‘De-LUX Color TV!’. Whatever, John exited the parking lot and went into the front lobby with Zippy following closely behind.
The front lobby was about as bad as outside. The clerk’s desk was a mess of sticky notes, old newspapers, styrofoam cups half-full of moldy coffee. He could see a mice skittering around in the glass dome of a quarter gumball machine, and the patchwork chairs that people could sit in while waiting for service all smelled like ancient farts. A single sticky note attached to the door read: ‘Just make sure the place doesn’t burn down’.
Great job instructions. What was…oh fuck, eww. A pillow fluffy was sitting in a basket at the front desk, a littertray full of shit behind it. He’d somehow looked over it upon entering the room, and didn’t want to talk to it. Zippy had noticed and excitedly leaned up on the desk to try and get a better look.
“Hewwo! Am Zippeh!” The pillow, a dull pink coat stained by nicotine from many years of being parked in a room with chainsmokers, didn’t answer him. Something hit the young blue fluff like a rocket though. An image forming in his brain. It was…wow….“SKETTI!”
John looked over to his +1, now babbling about sketti. This wasn’t anything new. Though now more images began hitting Zippy one after another. Bad poopies on the floor, mostly. “Zippeh make bad poopies?” The stallion asked the pillow curiously. He didn’t know how it was happening, but he knew the other fluff was somehow showing him these things. Was he supposed to? Would it help? All he heard back in response was ‘huuhuu….nuuuu wan scawdies….’, only it was in his brain. He knew this because his new daddy didn’t even look up from his position on a reception area chair, apparently engrossed in an episode of Judge Judy.
“O…Otay….make bad poopies ‘fuh hewp.” The stallion lifted his tail and immediately shit all over the lobby floor, thinking John wouldn’t notice because he wasn’t looking. Was this how he would get sketti? It wasn’t really clear. It was true that John hadn’t been paying much attention but it wasn’t like he didn’t have ears to hear the PBBBTTFFFF of a fluffy voiding it’s bowels or a nose to smell that they had just committed a scent warcrime. Looking away from the television mounted on the wall, the man would just shake his head. Alright, maybe he should have just brought just about anyone or anything else as a guest. Zippy stood by the mound of poopies, wagging his tail excitedly. “Am gud fwuffy? Make poopies ‘fuh skettis?”
John stood up and tossed a few newspapers over the shit on the floor. He wasn’t cleaning that up. When the owner came back, he’d just have to deal with it and likely wouldn’t even notice anything was awry. “Look, I don’t know what this ‘summer insanity’ thing is but I’m real worried about catching it. Go…play.”
The fluffy got off pretty lucky. He wandered out to the back-lot of the motel and trotted about for awhile. It was pretty fun out here! There were lots of colorful animal statues for decorations, and even pink flamingos with wire legs. Tall weeds were growing everywhere and animals had made tracks through them, and Zippy had a good time running through it all and getting lost. He’d poke out one end and then go scampering back through another, getting covered in lots of plant litter and pollen.
He was having the time of his life just tooling around out there, stepping on buggies and chasing around mice hiding in the weeds, until another series of images flashed in his brain. Skettis! A piping hot plate of skettis! Drenched in lots of yummy sauce. Then, a new image of a strange machine. It was big and made out of metal. There was a stick thing to push where wawa cubes came out. If he pushed that, would he get the skettis?
“Gun get skettis….bigges’ Zippeh sketti day…” The fluffy happily sang to himself as he went poking around looking for the thing which had been in his vision. The motel wasn’t very large. Eventually he found the big box along with it’s stick thing. The stallion had to get on the tips of his back-hooves to reach it, but he would slam the front ones onto the lever of the ice machine. The only one in the whole place. Ice cubes came flooding out in great big piles, and he giggled delightedly at the cool sensation and the funny clinks and clicks they made as they rattled down. He found it so much fun that he kept his hooves there! More and more cubes rattled down, they wouldn’t stop! Eventually though there was a loud crackling and black smoke pumped out from the back of the machine. It was old and a piece of shit, and Zippy had just burned the motor out.
“It’s so fucking hot. Goddamn, you’d think they make sure their Coke machine kept shit cold.” John grumbled, trundling down the corridor where the ice machine was kept. The Coke can in his hand actually seemed hotter than the sweltering air around him. That’s when he came across the sight of his +1 cheerfully prancing on top of a pile of icecubes next to a now obviously broken machine.
“Skettis!?” Zippy asked, as the unopened Coke can was pitched with an unflinching accuracy toward his ass. It slammed into him with enough force to send the fluffy spiraling through the air, screeching and flailing it’s limbs, smacking into a spackled wall and sliding down to land on the top of it’s head. It’s evacuation earlier hadn’t apparently been all the shit in the tank as some had shot out while in mid-air, sliding down the wall and onto Zippy’s dazed face.
“I’m feeling some SUMMER INSANITY coming on!” John screeched, and Zippy would go to sleep for awhile.