Some people just aren’t right.
Their choices put them on the wrong path. The way they were treated by others left something to be desired. A combination of both. The product in the present is what matters. And some people just aren’t right.
There is a ground floor apartment in some unremarkable building in some congested metropolis, overlooked by all, day in and day out. It is the only one where the lights are hardly switched on, regardless of the time of day. The neighbors don’t care to pry: they know someone lives on the other side of the door, even though it would seem that the flat is empty. They could hear the noises traveling through the vents and across the walls occasionally in the night. The faded thumping of a mallet of some kind, and gleeful giggling. Someone lives in that apartment, alright. And as long as the rent gets paid, it is nobody’s business who they are and what they do.
At a certain hour in the evening, the safety bars of the window are lifted out of place and a canvas spread is roped down to the ground outside, a few feet down. Upon the canvas is a presentation of pasta stained red from sitting in tomato sauce, although the noodles themselves are cold and dry. The bait carries on the breeze all the same and draws in another quarry for the night’s game.
The fluffies come as a sounder, curiously prodding at the lukewarm spaghetti with their snouts and hooves. Their little voices sound off in exchanges about how they love the shoddily prepared bait. There is a hesitation when they say these things, as though they are having difficulties believing, yet wish to convince each other that their meal really was the best thing a fluffy could hope for in the world. They are attempting to reconcile their expectations of a spaghetti dinner with the paltry reality, and their shallow idealism cannot withstand the withering effects of their discovery.
The seeds are planted.
One of the fluffies begins to choke. The hacking coughs are high pitched and ineffective. There’s murmuring as hugs are offered to the fluffy struggling with the uncooperative pasta, and then complaints that the coughing is making it hard for the huggies to work. In the span of a few short minutes, the coughing ceases, and then the pitiful moans of grief begin.
This was a surprise, but a welcome one. These fluffies were even more predisposed to be broken.
While the fluffies are too absorbed in mourning their dead comrade, the ropes are pulled tight on the four corners of the canvas. The fabric lurches upwards and folds over the bunch while they let out noises of shock and fear. Before they know it, they’re yanked through the window and thrown to the floor, bound inside the improvised sack.
They hear the scraping of the window frame as it is slid shut. They don’t grasp the finality of that sound. They don’t understand that they will never be free again.
In the stress of the moment, the animals’ lacking sense of time is tested further. In fact, the fluffies don’t even realize when the canvas is opened again, how dark it is inside the apartment. They try to paw at the sides of the sack and feel nothing but open air, which disorients them even more on top of the debilitating fear wracking their sensibilities.
They wail, sob and shriek as they are plucked one by one from the canvas and taken away to the next room. They swear up and down that a monster has them and beg for aid from the rest of the herd. This makes the crying that much more intense. The fear-gripped fluffies void their bowels, the contents splatter on the floor with a plastic-like rapport. The floor is absolutely covered with protective film, and still the perpetrator moves with ghostly silence. It comes with experience.
The last fluffy to be taken from the canvas thought it was still surrounded by a number of its group, when in actuality it was only in the company of the deceased and its excrement. It could not appreciate that the separation was only temporary, as the terror reached a fever pitch. All of their little voices were crying into the dark, bargaining for mercy.
There was no answer. One of them felt the hands carelessly grappling their pelt and was cut off in the middle of voicing their inquiry. The fluffies heard the splashing and gurgling next. The proximity to water made a few of them vomit a slurry of various liquids and bits of chewed up noodles.
The water sloshed as the first victim struggled, and the assailant’s voice was finally heard as an airy, child-like laugh. Then there was a kind of rattling as a handle was fumbled with until finally, the water drained away with a whoosh. More water started to trickle back into the bowl, and the person’s laughter increased in volume and eccentric joy. The laughter overshadowed the fluffy that was coughing up toilet water, moments away from another dunking into the bowl.
The water rushed up its nostrils and burned. The fluffy attempted to cry out for mercy, but aside from meek mewling, the fluffy could not manage a peep before being forced to drink more, and choke. The fleeting seconds when its head was above water were wasted coughing and sputtering. The gulping roar of the toilet’s flushing was equivalent to Leviathan’s bellowing calls of the abyss.
A long time went by, and all of the captured fluffies were given their swirlies. The tormentor cackled with each iteration. The fluffies were invariably reduced to chirping like defenseless foals, their minds broken by the toilet. Creatures that lived in blissful disregard of their own piss and shit deserved nothing more, and nothing less.
And thus, at the end of the game, the fluffies were sprawled out on their stomachs upon the kitchen counter in groups of three at a time. They were wet, shivering and whimpering, and completely compliant. The assailant in the dark brandished their mallet and unleashed their primal violence.
The heavy metal head lined with tenderizing ridges thumped into the pelts of the haggard fluffies. Bones and organs shifted painfully underneath the flesh. Yelps of anguish punctuated each unforgiving swing. The fluffies’ chirping would grow frantic with the surge of pain amidst the joyful laughter, then quickly fall silent when the fluffies were too battered to continue.
Then it was the next three’s turn.
Then the next three.
And then the next three.
Until all were the texture of paste. After that, the fluffy mulch was pushed into a large garbage bag, blood dripping off the counter, meat splattering into the plastic. Another night’s game, at its end. A senseless, depraved showing that took place in the obscuring dark. All of it for a laugh.
Who knows how this person ended up this way. Be it their own decisions, or some incompatibility with society, or both; all that mattered now was that they were not right. They were a bonafide gremlin hiding from the sun. But as long as the rent got paid…
-Author’s Note-
I only posted this because there was a typo on the Reddit source. Seeing as I’m banned from Reddit, I can’t fix it. Which is fine, because you can’t find this post normally anyhow because it’s archived!
I added an extra paragraph to really sell the swirly terror.