David sat at his kitchen table, taking a moment to reflect on the past few days.
He had planned this as well as he could, given that he was dealing with chaotic creatures with minds of their own, albeit not especially sharp ones.
He had called in sick for work. His attendance record was good and he didn’t want any distractions.
He had cleaned up the mess Cartman had left and set his kitchen up for the next stage, clearing the table and laying tarp down over it.
A pair of fluffy restraints now lay on the table in top of the tarp.
David took a deep breath. “The moment of truth”, he thought to himself.
He stood up and headed up stairs with a solemn air.
******************
Toffee lay in the cupboard, willing himself to wake up from the nightmare he found himself in. He hadn’t slept. How could he? He was waiting out the final few hours of his short and unjust existence.
He thought of the Fluffmart where he had started out his life. He thought of the fluff piles, the toys, the love and all the other things he would never see again. Most of all, he thought of Grapefruit.
The cupboard door swung open. Toffee looked up, almost paralysed with dread.
“It’s time”, David said.
He picked Toffee up by the scruff of the neck. He did so deliberately, wanting to maximise the sense of impending doom.
He felt Toffee stiffen up but noticed that he didn’t squeal about “bad upsies”. David wasn’t sure whether that was a good sign or not. He wanted Toffee scared, not catatonic.
He carried the trembling fluffy downstairs and placed him in the restraints. They were unnecessary; there was no way that Toffee had any chance of stopping him. They were just there to intensify his last few moments of terror as much as possible.
David placed Toffee in the restraints and fastened them quickly. Toffee didn’t struggle.
Anxious butterlflies began to build in David’s stomach. “Please don’t be too broken for this to work”, he silently willed the universe.
David looked Toffeee in the the eye and to his relief, Toffee looked back. “Good, you’re still in there”, thought David.
“Toffee”, mumered David softly. “You’ve been a bad fluffy. And bad fluffies get punished. That’s why you’re getting forever sleepies. Do you have anything to say?”
As though he were simply waiting for this opportunity, Toffee let out a wail of anguish, his despair flooding out as though a damn had been broken.
“Huuuuuuuuuuuuu!”, he cried. “Towwfe am nu bad fwuffy! Towwfe am gud fwuffy. Wai dadaah gib Towwfe foreba sweepies?! Am nu faiw! Cawtman am bad fwuffy, nu Towwfee! Huuuuuuhuhuh”
“No, Toffee”, replied David, raising his voice slightly and letting a note of anger slip in. “You’re a bad fluffy. Good fluffies don’t get punished.”
And before Toffee had a chance to plead his case any further, David grabbed a belt that he had brought downstairs for this very purpose and looped it around Toffee’s neck. He paused just long enough to allow him to register what was happening and then tightened it, quickly and firmly.
“Huuurrk!”, gurgled Toffee, the strangled sound articulating his pain and shock more than any words could.
David looked into Toffee’s eyes as he tightened the belt further. Toffee’s legs buckled uselessly against the restraints and the choking noise intensified.
Toffee’s mind was a rush of agony so intense that his mind could barely form a coherent thought.
One sentence and one sentence only was flashing through his mind repeatedly, although he was too terrified to fully register it.
“Nu faiw”, the tiny voice in his head kept repeating. “Am gud fwuffy. Gud fings happen tu gud fwuffies”.
David looked onto Toffee’s eyes once more and as the blood vessles in pitiful creature’s eyes began to rupture, turning them red and bloodshot, David finally knew he had won.
As his sense of triumph grew, he remembered Helen’s words to him that night, as they lay in each other’s arms.
“I guess…the ones who really get scared are the ones who haven’t thought about it before. They’ve had their world view, whatever that might be and then death has come and…made them have to confront it. Sometimes they can reconcile it with their worldview and sometimes they can’t".
Toffee lived in a world where good and bad fluffies got what they deserved accordingly. Now he was dying for something a bad fluffy did.
The purple fluffy he’d drowned in the bath had died realising that the universe didn’t care about her existence.
The blue pegasus he’d scared to death had died quickly but it had done so believing that the monsters it feared had finally gotten him.
But the fluffy he had throttled in the park that night on a drunken impulse? No doubt it had been scared, but it had been too sudden.
There had been no time for it to process the situation. It was the equivalent of getting hit by a car or struck down by a sudden heart attack.
Toffee gave a final anguished croak before the light left his eyes.
A final stream of piss and shit flowed out of him and a trickle of blood leaked from his snout. His bloated tongue hung loosely from his mouth.
Finally, as David saw the last light of life faded from his eyes, the taste hit him.
Hit him was not an exaggeration. The sensation was so sudden that he had to sit down and whilst he didn’t actually loose consciousness, the room around him appeared to fade for just a moment.
After a moment, the room came back into focus.
He sat contentedly, relishing the long awaited sensation, until a crash from upstairs brought his focus back to the situation at hand.
“Right”, said David, to no one in particular. “Your turn next, you little prick”.
****************
Cartman roamed the saferoom restlessly. He was bored.
The day had started out well enough, with the dummeh poopie being taken away again for the bad poopies Cartman had made.
That had been foweba ago though and Cartman was running out of ways to amuse himself.
He stacked some bwockies up and looked them up and down
He imagined that they were another fluffy, one of the many he would eventually have in his herd.
“Dummeh fwuffy’”, he snarled at the stack of bricks. “Cawtman am bestest smawty eba. Wisten to Cawtman or take sowwy hoofsies!” He smashed the bwockies across the room and puffed out his cheeks in triumph.
He was strutting around the room some more, muttering to himself about his self declared virtues when David opened the door and walked into the saferoom.
“Where dummeh poopie?!”, Cartman demanded. Not out of concern of course. He was bored and wanted his toy back.
“Never mind that”, David said. “I brought you some skettis”.
David placed the bowl on the floor and watched with a smile, as Cartman practically faceplanted into it in his eagerness.
Cartman didn’t question why he was being brought sketti all of a sudden. Why would he? He was the bestest smarty.
“Maybe dadda gib Cawtman more toysies tu!”, he snorted through mouthfuls of food. It was a statement, not a question.
David just stood there, the smile still on his face.
Cartman started to stagger on his feet, as the sleeping pills David had mixed into his bowl kicked in. Fast acting, just like the label on the box had promised.
“We’ll talk about that when you wake up”, smirked David, as Cartman fell to the floor with a crash.
*****************
Cartman blinked his eyes open slowly. His head was foggy and he felt an oppresive sense of weight constricting his limbs. Cold air blew on his face.
Cartman blinked his eyes some more, in a further attempt to clear his head.
All of a sudden, a stream of something warm splashed against his face. It smelt funny but it was enough to finally snap him into a state of being completely awake.
His eyes opened fully, just in time to see David doing his flies up.
“Wakey, wakey, sunshine”, David called with a cheerful smile. “I don’t want you missing any of this.”
Cartman spluttered and looked around in confusion.
They were in a wide field, with open space stretching out as far as he could see. That wasn’t far though. It was dawktime. Wind blew in Cartman’s face and the damp of David’s piss accentuated the cold.
Cartman went to raise his hooves and found that he couldn’t. He looked down and let out a shreik of suprise when he realised that he couldn’t see his body.
“Screeeeeeeeee! Where am Cawtman’s hoofsies?!”, he asked with a screech of terror.
David smirked. Cartman may have been slightly more intelligent than your average feral but in the grand scheme of things, that didn’t amount to much.
“Relax mate”, David smiled amiably. “Your body is still there. I’ve just buried you.”
“Dummeh dadda!”, yelled Cartman. “Wai yu buwey Cawtman?! Wet Cawtman gu now!”
David smirked again.
They were standing on the local common, a few miles from David’s house.
David had picked a spot right in the middle, where he gambled that they wouldn’t be interrupted. It was dark and the forecast was looking bleak. Any late night ramblers would probably keep to the foot path. And if not…well, it wasn’t like David was doing anything illegal.
David took a swig from his thermos of coffee, with just a tiny bit of whiskey dribbled into it.
He was dressed in a thick coat and hat. Thick enough for him to be able to stay out for a good few hours. He was still warm from all the digging though.
“Wai dadda buwwy bestest smawrty?!”, Cartman demanded once more.
“Yes, you’ll be wanting an explanation”, continued David in the same conversational tone. “First things first though”.
He knelt down to the rucksack next to his feet and pulled out a pair of gardening gloves and a pair of pliers.
He pulled the gloves on, reached over to Cartman and wrenched his mouth open. He made a fist with his left hand and stuck it in Cartman’s mouth, wedging it open, eliciting a gagging noise from the helpless smarty.
David took the pliers with his right hand, latching them firmly onto one of Cartman’s front teeth. He gazed into his eyes, the good humour from his expression gone.
“This”, said David “is for shitting in my fucking house”.
He gave firm twist with the pliers the tooth popped out.
“Screeeeeeeeeeeeeee!”
Blood and drool dripped from Cartman’s mouth, a mixture of pain, suprise, rage and fear plastered all over his face.
“Wai dadda gib wowsest huwties?! Cawtman am gud fwuffie!”
David didn’t see fit to dignify that with a response. He gripped the next tooth with his pliers again and gave a good tug.
Another scream filled the air, as Cartman spluttered and gasped for breath. A wad of bloody spit landed on David’s sleeve but he didn’t care.
For the next ten minutes, David concentrated on his grizzly task, slowly and methodically moving from tooth to tooth, until his hapless victim’s mouth was a bloody pulp of red gum.
Cartman’s head lolled back and forth in a daze. Blood, drool and snot all hung from his face.
“Right”, said David, with the satisfied air of a man who has just completed a tedious household task that he has been procrastinating. “Now we’ve cleared the air a bit, we can have a chat.”
“Wai gib fwubby wobbesb huwbies?”, Cartman mumbled once more, albeit with considerably less spirit this time.
"Because I’m done with you , replied David, after a moments thought. “I needed you to get to Toffee. I’ve done that. I don’t need you anymore. So here we are.”
“Tobbee?”, came the semi coherent reply. “Nu unberstanb”.
“I needed a bad fluffy to do bad things and blame them on Toffee”, explained David, as though he were talking to a small child. 'Toffee was my plan. You were just a tool".
David began to feel mildly silly, spouting exposition like he was some sort of Bond villain. Still though, it was the first time he’d had a chance to talk about any of this with anyone outloud. It felt cathartic.
“I know you think you’re important. But you’re nothing to me. Toffee was the experiment. This? This is just because I hate you”.
It was true. As strange as it sounded, nothing David had done to Toffee was personal.
Sure, he had hurt him, but it was a means to an end.
For reasons David would probably never really understand, the fear and despair of a fluffy produced a powerful physical response which he found pleasurable. David had wanted to experience it, so he had done what he had to do to make it happen.
But he didn’t hate Toffee anymore than he hated a cow who would have to die to make a beefburger he wanted to eat. It was just how the world worked.
Cartman in the other hand, repulsed David.
Whether or not he ended up tasting his fear genuinely didn’t matter.
He was going to kill him because as far as he was concerned, he was a waste of space. Hypocritical though it may have been, it really was that simple.
“Bub Carbman am besbesb smarby”, came the whine of protest. “Wib hab besbesb herb.”
“And Toffee thought that good things were going to happen to him because he was good fluffy”, snorted David. “The universe doesn’t care about you or your plans. I’m going to hurt you some more. I may give you forever sleepies. I may just leave you to freeze to death or starve. You have no say in the matter.”
Cartman started to sob miserably. “Nu faiw…”
As of on cue, it started to rain.
“You’re right”, replied David, as the drizzle of rain became heavier, threatening to turn into a downpour.
As the heavens continued to flood down on them, David was struck by a sudden thought. He began to giggle.
Quietly at first. But the intensity of the past few days needed an outlet and the giggles gave way to full on laughter.
Cartman could only look on in confusion.
“I’m sorry”, gasped David, as he continued to wheeze with mirth. “You wouldn’t understand…the weather…it just reminds me of a very apt human expression…”, David broke off, overcome by a fresh wave of giggling.
David was right. Cartman didn’t understand.
The rain continued to fall.
David continued to laugh.