Maxim and Hoss sat quietly at the outdoor cafe table. Maxim, a narrow younger man with a profoundly hatchet-shaped face, sipped his tea. Hoss, a far taller man with heavy sideburns, was drinking espresso from a full sized cup, and was on his third. The two often stopped at Dandy’s on the way home from work. Since the Crisis, every vestige of the developed world’s mastery over nature and society had vanished over night, and even officers could not expect the electricity to be on when they got home.
That Crisis, which would later be called The Managerial Crisis of Scale, was a phenomenon owed entirely, unbelievably, to fluffy ponies. Developed by some inbred retard from California, the fluffies were the final triumph of the newly rechristened Hasbio’s enormous legal and economic power. Patenting a sentient being was a new standard of unalloyed power. It was the final triumph, because immediately after winning a 600 billion dollar lawsuit, three left-wing extremists and one unusually sagacious right-wing extremist conspired to release them into the wild. It was quickly shown that not only could their breeding not be discouraged, it could not be controlled with anything less than lethal force.
“At least we’re not the gooks,” Hoss had said, “you hear about that Yukkuri shit? Fucking sentient food , two nukes weren’t enough.”
“Will you just take it easy for once, man?” Maxim had snapped back, “at least they just die if it rains.”
“Fluffies drown in the rain too,” Hoss said.
“No they do fucking not , that is a myth.”
“Oh?” Hoss lowered his newspaper, “if only there were a way to test this empirically.”
“I can’t tonight, I have to deal with Mary’s, it’s having foals or something,” Maxim said.
“Oh come on Max you’re one of those now? You keep doing your job when you get home? Are you German? Do you talk to them too, say like ‘babbeh nebaw gon tas’ miwkies agwain, hab foweba sweepies becauw mummah am bad mummah!’ and do the-” Hoss’s voice had risen to an astonishingly good impersonation of a fluffy, and he held his hands out from his chest like little hooves, crossing his eyes, “the stupid dance? While you’re killing them?”
“I’m not abusing the fluffy you tool, it is having foals, Mary doesn’t want them, you know how it is.”
“No I do not, I had children instead of adopting a fluffy because I am a normal person.”
“Fair, but you know how Mary is. She doesn’t want to do it, but she also doesn’t want to spay the things, yadda yadda.
The Crisis was not actually that fluffies ruined everything per-se, it was that they were engineered unintentionally to be a catastrophic invasive species. Fluffies are not good at adapting to their environment, but humans are, and fluffies were engineered to adapt to humans. As it turned out, they were about as good at parasitizing off of human civilization as they were at being pampered by it. Fluffies were too stupid to limit their population growth, too smart to be wiped out by simple traps, and too numerous to be wiped out by the elements. Enough fluffies could—and often did—pack together that at least the innermost circle of foals could survive arctic weather in a sepulchurial cacoon of their own dead. This meant that killing them, while not difficult in the abstract, in practice required a human hand to really be a sure thing, and moreover required careful monitoring the land, constant surveillence, rapid response to any wild herds. This was human capital, to the order of millions of men, who in any sane society would have been doing something useful instead of fighting a race war against pastel colored novelty hamsters with hooves as tough as marshmellows. In the West, where human capital was already in freefall as the last generation to enjoy an educational system that did not view mathematics as a form of white supremacy was now retiring, this meant that the people had to choose between millions of fluffy ponies rampaging through their homeland, or having electricity.
Carl Smarty surveyed his domain with the measured pace of a deck gun, his keel intellect could peel the world like a… an orange. Carl grinned, serruptitiously at his own utter mastery of language. Only Carl, the wistest of fluffies, had learned the glottal stop. Only Carl, the wisest of fluffies, knew what a preposition was. His mind, sharpened on the lathe of circumstance, his soul, a frozen glacier, unbleeding from the thousands of worst hurties which were inflicted every day that he was not rightfully lauded as God-Prince of All Fluffies. The weakling behind his eyes squealed. He paused a moment, and flinched, suppressing it with a wave of malace.
“deww a stawm comin’,” Carl said, and shat. Dragging his rump along the grass for several feet before proceeding, Carl strode past the mystified acolytes, who were already tittering about sky wawa and scawy noises.
“Smawty is bestest fwuffie! Cawet wuv Caww!” The white mare had a way of bouncing about that Carl found insufferable, but she was the only fluffy aside from him who had the superior colors of white and green. White, as the glorious parmesian. Green, as the sweet grassies. Unlike those stupid dummies the humans, who spent all of their time working instead of relaxing and enjoying huggies and love and also play and milkies and occasionally sketties and special hugs and sometimes perhaps sorry hoofsies for bad fluffies and if we are really being honest, poopies both sorry and good. Carl had detected correctly that the humans had territories that they were allowed to patrol in. The Blackhands weren’t allowed within a certain distance of the school, and the students weren’t allowed to hurt fluffies within sight of the grown-up office. Ergo, be there during the day, be elsewhere at night. Carl had found a secure location for the night, some sort of kicky-ball playroom for humans. If he got his herd inside by nightfall, they would lock the gates. It was bulletproof. At was night now, and they were safe in their enclosure, to feast on hot doggies and sweety bread. Carl passed the mummahs, who were there, bright green, teal, red, even Marcia, a hideous brown and orange fluffy whose teats were so ludicrously bountiful that she was capable of feeding a dozen babbehs without stressing herself at all. They sat on their behinds, their little leggies forming protective circles around the plump, chirping little babies, herding them towards the warmth and milkies of childhood innocence. Soft songs, of haunting beauty.
“Mummh wub babbehs, ‘n babbehs wub mummah, babbehs aww fow huggies and miwkies and wub,” Marcia’s lilting tone was mesmerising.
“Da stawwion recweates himself in da image of hewos, to better suwiwe. Da mawe cweates oders in heww image, to wender oders safe.”
“wha?” a mare—Celia—said. It was entirely possible that no fluffy had ever even attempted to say the word “render” before.
“Pwoceed,” Carl said dissmissively, and continued his march to the tribunal. There were bad fluffies assembled, fettered with chains woven from discarded straw wrappers, which sat heavily about their necks as they wailed. Darius, Turk, and Richter were there, three enormous fluffies, almost a foot tall, scarred by years of conflict. Once the Southbend Ten had numbered just that—now they numbered three, but they were worth a thousand.
“My Chiwwiarch,” Darius said, genuflecting, “dese fwuffies hab viowated da way.”
“Oh? Is dat u, good Sarcowzee?”
“It not twuu! Sarcowzee do nuffin wong!” the chartreuse filly wailed, “it not twuu!”
“What is da cwime?” Carl sneered.
“Wefusing to have babbehs,” Turk said. It was visibly painful for him to say this. Turk had lost his special friend in the 7th Battle of Buckees. Bowlfluffs had carried an elite force of toughies to make an abattoir of the maternity cave. Carl had won that battle, and he had won Turk’s trust by letting him eat the foals of the other tribe alive. Except for those with Carlian colors, of course. Only Ailicorns, obviously.
“Wit whom?” Carl said, contemptuously.
“Huu huuu!” Sarcozy sobbed, great gouts of tears running down her green face. The other mares, even amongt the condemned, stepped away from her in horror, “Sawcozee wub Mykwoft! Nu wan be speciaw fwens with ugwy dummeh meany munstah!”
This was a tremendously foolish thing to say. Carl’s horn burst into six entire lumens of incandescent brightness. Sarcozy shrieked in fear, and fell over backwards, shit exploding from her already brown-encrusted rear. Carl stepped skillfully through the advancing fingers of effluvial shit, his keen intellect allowing him to predict that not stepping directly in the path of shit would reduce his odds of getting it on his racially superior hoovsies tremendously. He drew up over the mare, rage in his eyes.
“Fwuffy is nu munstah.”
“Nuuu! Not smawty, Sarcozy mea-” the hooves both smashed into her teeth. Then, he did it again. And again. When Carl was done, Sarcozy was still alive, but on her back, sobbing, a broken face, missing teeth, one eye popped out of its socket, both of her forelegs broken. She choked, and sputtered.
“Gib dummeh mare babbehs foweba sweepies. Aww of dem. Dummeh mawe wast.”
“Tweck n’ Wiwe aww Sawcozi babbehs gwown up, how we explwain why we-”
“Why explwain to fowebeba sweepies dummehs why gib foweba sweepies?” Carl squinted at Turk, baffled as to why he would ask such a stupid question, “Do dem fiwst.”
Unlocking the soccer field’s gate with a keygun, Maxim glanced at Hoss, who held a duffle bag on one shoulder, filled as Maxim knew with bacci balls. This was his preferred weapon for killing fluffies, and his secret for having won every interoffice tournament for the last fifteen years.
“Why would they hide here, it’s really obvious.”
“Fluffies have good internal clocks. It’s the only thing they’re good at. They can tell where humans will be from memory, and they try to stay out of their way when they’re “Wowkin’, right, to avoid causing accidents. So they come in here because they see nobody’s here at night, and it’s got a gate and a fence. It’s safe.”
“Would’ve worked if they didn’t shit everywhere.”
“Almost worked even then, if they hadn’t started chewing open the garbage the owners wouldn’t have bothered,” Maxim threw open the gate. There was a chorus of surprised fluffy noises from within. Maxim removed a canister of vaseline from his coat and rubbed some under his nostrils. Hoss rolled his eyes.
“What, they smell awful.”
“Don’t have kids Max, trust me.”
“Why would I do that anyway, anyone born in this shit age is going to spend their entire life babysitting and killing these vermin alternatingly. It’s like that time I hung that mare up over the ferrets and then let it give birth into the-”
“You’re really going to let fluffies ruin your life?”
“You just told me not to have kids.”
“I was being fecetious retard, oh, hold on there they are, help me with this,” he heaved the duffle bag onto the ground as the first of the technicolor equines approached.
“Fwens? Nu fwiends? Wan play?”
“Yes” Hoss said, drawing a bacci ball the same color as the fluffy (blue) out of the bag, and after holding it before him for a moment, like a comic book villain holding the anti-life equation, he gripped it tightly, spun, and threw the ball with unerring precision durectly into the center of the fluffy’s back, as it lowered its head to cover it with its hoovesies in fear, and raised its rump reflexively. The ball smashed its spine into atoms, and the creature collapsed instantly, choking, it eyeyes wide, its front half thrashing.
“Nice,” Maxim said, “alright, I’ll get the slow ones, hey see if you can use the discus for one.”
“I shall,” Hoss said grimly.
The carnage was gruesome. Maxim got the impression they had interrupted some sort of tribunal, but this really didn’t concern him. He hated these things a lot. Mary had never been the same since the miscarriage. The way she pampered the fluffy, the way it so clearly occupied the affection that was supposed to be for their child. The way it was a surrogate for his child. The way even he found himself loving it, when he was not holding its throat closed, and then letting it breathe. And then holding it closed. And letting it breathe. It thanked him every time. It thanked him every fucking time. How hard was it to understand, and accept, his hatred? How hard was it to just hate him back, so that he could let go?
Fucking vermin. Fucking vermin. Good mummahs, fucking vermin. Fucking Vermin.
Maxim held the chirping foal, delicately in the compass of his hand, like an tree with all of its branches affixed to one little white apple. With his thumb, he gently stroked its little belly. The fluff was not unlike velvet, but with a thinner pipe, unbelievably soft, but so thin that the pale flesh was visible benath, transluscent. He could almost feel the milk in its little stomach. The creture chirped, and its hoof came up to its little snout. It began to sob, and to suckle on its hoof, shivvering. Its chirping was like the turning of a delicate hinge, the sort that could not be greased except with fine powders. Its little tail, brown, was curled up between its legs, brushing against the back of Maxim’s thumb, and the other legs wrapped around it, fearful, as though its little tail could protect it.
“MEANIE DADDEH PWEASE GIB BABBEH,” the white mare wailed, moving directly up to Maxim’s leg, its green mane matted with mud and gore. It rose up, and placed its little marshmellow hooves on his shin. The other chirping foals fell off and into the muddy grass—though they did not seem to notice the difference as in color there was none, they did notice the fall, and began to peep fearfully, “Babbehs nee’ huggies an’ wuv, nu cowdies and sowwie wawas, giv babbeh to mummah, mummaah am also soon mumma an’ nee’ bestes’ babbeh!”
“Oh man, you really needed to not do the bestest babbeh thing with me,” Maxim knelt down, “that was—just, just incredibly dumb. You’re a really bad mummha.”
“NU AM BAD MU-” the mare was interrupted, as Maxim drew a knife from his breast pocket. The mare was so tranfixxed in horror that it froze.
“What, nothing to say”
“Pwease, Cawet nu be bad fwuffy, Cawwot be gud fwuffy, nu huwt babbehs, pwease daddeh,”
“Carrot. You are not… Orange.”
“Cawet am showtew dan Ciwcumfwex.”
“Oh thank God I thought I was having a stroke,” Maxim said, and slid the knife down the fluff’s belly, so skillfully that only the skin was parted with a sound like the opening of a dry mouth. A tide of spume, following just behind the knife, as the surface pressure of the wet, exposed flesh held the skin together for a fraction of a second before parting, bursting outwards in a plume of butter-colored fat. The foal chirped once more, and then was silent for an instant. Then it erupted into thrashing, heart-rending peeping and shrieking. Caret began to scream as well, and her foals, which were behind her, began to cry. Maxim nonchalantly cut, down long the inside of the leg, all the way out to the hoof, and then the other side. He paused, to stroke the thing’s thrashing head with one finger. The foal actually stopped screaming, though its breath was rapid, pained peeps leaked into its raw breath. Tears ran down its eyes. And then, its eyes opened.
“huuu… MUMMAH!” it screamed, “HUUUU SCAWY HUWTIES, HUUU, WHY WEGGIE PWACES AN’ TUMMIE PWACES HUWTIES HUUU”
“Your soul,” Maxim said, softly, in a kind tone, a merciful, fatherly voice. The fluffy looked at him, its fearful, panicked eyes, focusing.
“Babbeh… Babbehs… Soww?”
“Yes. You. The you, thaat is in here,” Maxim said, tapping the foal’s head.
“Soww…” the fluffy said, its newly opened eyes widened. Maxum grasped the part of the fluffy’s skin, and pulled it down, smapping both of the creature’s hind legs, and wrenching the skin off, to hang like half of the wrapping of a container.
“It is the color of shit,” Maxim said, and began on the other half. The fluffy’s shrieking as its flesh betrayed it, as the skin tightened around its little legs, and tore itself away, breaking the fragile, gracile bones, and then, tearing free the precious, vital nerves that were designed to feel love, and warmth, and huggies, and sunshine, and exposed every vulnerability to the shrieking flames and gnashing teeth of the cold night air. The thing’s neck broke as he degloved its skull, but Maxim did not notice. He tossed the skinless thing down in front of the mare, and then tossed its skin down next to it.
“-BEH NU BANANA HUUUU BAD MUNSTAH DADDEH, WHY GIB BABBEH FOWEBA SWEEPIES HUUU HUUUUUUU HUUU BABBEHS FOW MIWKIES ‘N HUGGIES ‘N WUB, HUU HUUU!”
“Obviously not, Caret. Your entire race was designed to be expendible. You were engineered to live brief lives of confusion and fear, and then to die. In this regard, fluffy, we re very similar beings. But there is a difference,” Maxim leaned in, “it is a secret. Would you like to know it?”
“Nu,” Caret said, sobbing, covering her head with her hoovesies.
“The secret is that when you die, you do not sleep forever.”
“Nu fowebah sweepies?”
“No. Eventually you reawaken, in a place called Hell.”
“Dam am bad wobdie…”
“Yes. Hell is the sorry-box that people and fluffies go to, when they are bad. You have had scary dreams before, yes?”
“Huuuu huuuuu…”
“Hell is just a scary dream, but you never wake up. That’s where your foal is, fluffy.”
“Babbeh was gud babbeh, huuu, no in heww huuu!”
“There are no such thing as good fluffies. There are no good people, either. There was one good person. Once. Do you know what we did to him?”
“Pwease, munstah daddeh… Pwease wet Cawet weave wib famiwy, Cawet nebbeh do it agen, huuu”
“We nailed him to a cross.”
Carl screamed. The smarty, so weak on the inside, slipped away, and Carl was free, for the first time in years he was free, and he was dying. The knife buried up to its meanie hilt in his side turned. But he did nto care. Through the pain, tears of joy flowed from Carl’s eyes. “SCRREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE! SMAWTY GON HUUU HUUUUU TANK U DADDEH SMAWTY GONE, HUU HUU, MEANIE NO WONGEW HOLD FWUFFY SPWIIT IN BONDAWGE HUUU HUUUUU” the human actually stopped, and started for a long moment at Carl, a look of genuine confusion on his face.
“…Did you just say your spirit was released from bondage?”
“HUUUU, SMAWTY WIV IN FWUFFY THINKY-PWACE, TAKE CONTWOLL WHEN FWUFFY SWEEP, NEBEH GIB BAK HUU HUU, HAB TO WATCH, HAB TO WATCH IT HAPPEN” the human actually recoiled, flying to his feet and stepping back.
“Hoss. Hoss!”
“What?” the huge man’s shillouette appeared at the door, casting a shadow just over Carl’s eyes.
“This fluffy’s saying a smarty lives in his head and makes him do shit.”
“Yeah. Consciousness is schizophrenia, did you not know that?”
“I… What?”
“Left and right brain. They’re discrete entities, even in humans, the conscious one is mostly along for the ride, to do commentary. Your brain tricks you into thinking you’re the one behind the wheel, but it’s the other half that does the driving. It’s the visual cortex that fucks it all up, because the two halves see the world completely differently and it creates contrary narratives that to dissonance. Once the two halves no longer have the same picture, they start acting off of radically different information, and because they can’t really communicate directly this manifests as multiple personalities. That’s why there are no schizophrenic blind people, even given the rarity of both, the inability to develop that part of the brain eliminates the risk of the two halves diverging.”
“I…” Maxim blinked, “Hoss what the fuck does that have to do with the fluffy?”
“Max, fluffy brains are like 1/8th the size of ours, but their eyes are huge. They can’t hear for shit, that’s why they’ve got some bad pitch when they sing. They’re entirely visual creatures. The fluffy has a visual cortex so big it extends down into its torso, but the rest of the brain is the size of a golf ball. You do the math. They’re all schizophrenic, trauma causes them to create personas to relieve the stress. The fearless smarty, the suicidal loop, these are false emotions. There’s a normal, real, innocent fluffy hiding behind each of them, trying to create a friend to protect it.”
“Caww nu wike smawty, he nu pwotec anyting huuuu,” Carl sobbed. Maxim looked down, and his fingers beat softly on the grip of his knife.
“That actually sort of makes me feel bad, also this one said ‘bondage,’ that’s… Um, that sound is-”
“Postalveolar affricate, yeah they can’t do that. You should kill it, it’s too smart.”
“I dunno Hoss I’m getting like, Fluffy Napoleon vibes from this guy.”
“Okay, well we’ve killed all of his friends and also you stabbed him.”
“Well we can get him to a vent or something, I mean they pay a lot for smart fluffies.
“Caww nu wan wib… Pwease, wet Caww soww swip down into heww, to be consuwmed wike da oders”
“How do you know what Hell is?”
“Caww saw it. Saw it in da… Nu knu whew.”
“Fire? Meanies? Sowwy sticks?”
“Wike… Stwing,” the fluffy said, distantly. Maxim opened his mouth to mock the fluffy.
“String?”
“Stwetchie. Like… Like stwing. Hookies. So many hookies. Wed. Wike… Wike booboo juice. Hot. Fwuffy am becom stwings, aww diffewent, aww scawed, onwy pain. Wike stwingy fwen dat pway daddeh songies. Onwy scweaming. Da munstahs waff. Dey pass fwuffy awound, wike… Wike bowls of miwkies.” Hoss was staring now too, “bud… Bud fwuffy see… Fwuffy see, ‘an fwuffy knu, dis is Caww’s housie. Dis is Cawws futew… Fwuffy scweam, but it a cupbowd, an fwuffy is da sketties.”
“Why would you want to… Go there? Wouldn’t you rather live?” Maxim fingered the grip of the knife. He was trying to figure out where the fluffy had procured this ludicrous notion of hell. Some abuser’s cage?
“I saw ebewy fwuffy Caww knus. Even fwuffies nu foweba sweepies. Heww hab no… Nu bwight time… Nu dawk time… Wike miwwow. Miwwow fwuffy always dewe. Cawet deww. Tuwk deww. Caww deww. But caww nu scweamies.”
“And… Why is dat?”
“Caww,” the fluffy said, its eyes suddenly becoming very clear, “is nu fow nummies. Caww num.”
“I do not care what time it is, Dick, wake Nikola up, tell him we’re at Crosby & Westridge, and tell him we found a fluffy that knows what soteriology is,” Hoss said, flatly into the phone, “it’s got a steak knife stuck in its stomach but it was an empty stomach, I have to—Oh, yes please, thank you, um… Buttermilk bar, thanks. Yeah. Yeah you take it easy too. No it is not a fucking Yukkuri you Serbian retard, it’s a fluffy, a fluffy that thinks Hell is real. Yes. No that isn’t what soter-look will you just send the fucking medic already it’s cold as fuck and Maxim is trying to exorcise it. Yeah I dunno something about the Kabbalah. Oh, okay he’s up? Wait was he listening? Nick, it’s a fucking fluffy talking about what Hell is like! Yeah I know! Hurry up!”
Maxim was trying to hold the fluffy’s life inside of it. It looked like it was working. The creature, shivvering, was looking up at him with eyes tense with pain.
“Daddeh…” it said.
“I’m not your fucking daddy, shitrat, I work for the government.”
“Nu… u…” the creature said, reaching its hoof up to the sky, “Da…Weaw… Daddeh…” Maxim moved the thing’s hoof down onto its breast. The rain pattering on his hat suddenly felt like the ticking of some terrible clock. He took the hat off, and pressed it to the little fluffy’s side.
“You aren’t evil, fluffy. I didn’t know. Look, we know this guy, uh, he’s a good daddy, right, he loves fluffies, and he’s got a big house and a lot of spaghetti and he knows how to fix booboos, okay, and he’s really interested in certain things, right, things like… What you’re talking about,”
“Maxim,” Maxim turned to Hoss, and then realized that Hoss had not said his name. Hoss was staring at him, the phone still audibly speaking into his ear. Not at him, at the fluffy. Maxim’s head slowly turned back around.
“How do you know my name?”
“We’b met,” the fluffy said, its eyes were suddenly not very fluffylike at all. Something was there. Something different, lurking in the eyes. The *eyes, “*ad we wiww meet agen.”
“What?” Maxim said. And like that, the fluffy, whose name neither of the men even knew, drowned. The two men were silent for a long time. Perhaps ten uninterrupted minutes, before the white van pulled up in the parking lot, and the Serb emerged, cursing the full length of the walk to them.
“What de fack is dis, where is dis exorcist Yukkuri, jebe,” the Serb got out of the car, wearing a T-shirt which said I was tried at the Hague and all I got was this fucking shirt.
“FUCKING FLUFFIES.” Maxim screamed. Hoss opened his mouth, then glanced at the sky, and closed it.
(Fluffy Dog joke? First time writing in years.)