The brightly-colored, inviting building resembled a normal pet shop, and indeed the walls were lined with shelves offering various fluffy toys, treats, and bed, with a notable lack of any items that could be used to punish fluffies. The sign above the door simply said “The Tank.” The building was mostly empty, except for a tall, thin man with the sort of smile associated with the friendly-prankster type, and a shorter figure of indeterminate gender wearing a mask that covered all facial features.
Today was the big day. The day Carl Wittinger could finally reveal his greatest project to the world. This project had taken years of toil and suffering (although none of that suffering had been his), but it’d all be worth it once he was rolling in enough cash to buy a luxury car for each day of the week. Visions of franchising rights and licensing deals paraded through his mind.
“So,” the masked figure rasped, with a voice so distorted by digital voice alteration that it gave no illumination regarding their real self. “What is this project of yours that you were so insistent on showing me and my audience? The camera’s running, so might as well stop wasting time.”
“I am so glad you asked that,” Carl replied, and he meant it, although his general attitude might remind a viewer of a particularly manipulative used-car salesman. “What I’ve been working on here will revolutionize fluffy abuse. I’ve discovered a way to get a fluffy out of the dreaded ‘wan-die’ loop, so you can continue to have your fun without having to spend time searching for a new fluffy. I’m a bit of a sentimentalist, myself, so I always hate to lose a fluffy after all the good times we’ve had together. Allow me to demonstrate!”
He strode to the back of the room and opened a fluffy carrier, roughly pulling out a catatonic purple earthie and roughly setting it on the store’s front counter. Bald spots, scars, and other remnants of a horrific life scarred the creature’s hide, and both of its front legs had been removed.
“Wan. Die. Wan. Die. Wan! Die! WAN! DIE!” she repeated over and over.
“This little gal was an enfie mare, as I’m sure many of you can tell. Now, as I’m sure you know, that kind of life can quickly put a fluffy into a ‘wan-die’ loop, but in this case she was a bit more…resilient than that, so I had to add a little stress. Just a bit of fun with a blowtorch and some sodium hydroxide. I know, I’m terribly uncultured, but at least I make up for it with charm!” He grinned wildly.
"Now, normally once they get this far you really have two options: Leave them alone for a few months, maybe pamper them a bit so they start thinking life’s worth another shot, or you just kill 'em and toss 'em in the nearest biowaste bin. The problem with those options is that you need to find another fluffy to play with, either for a little while or forever. But for a lot of us, we really get to know our fluffies, get to understand what makes them tick, so it’s hard to go without the little guys.
"But where’s the solution to this problem? Sure, I imagine someone’s engineering a fluffy that’ll never break, but where’s the fun in that? Why even bother if you can’t break them and then drag 'em back from the edge? So, in this sad, sad world we either have to wait to let them recover, and even if they do you know they’ll break easier next time, or you just scrap 'em and lose your favorite toy.
"To that I say ‘no more!’ I, through years of effort, have devised a way to always, with a 100% guarantee, bring back fluffies from the ‘wan-die’ loop and have them ready to be played with again within a single day! And what does this miracle cost you? Why, only $200.
“But I can hear you now. ‘$200? Every time I want to bring my fluffy back from the wan-die loop? Isn’t that overpriced?’ And that’s where the magic is. You see, the treatment only has to be done once, and you can break your favorite fluffy from the loop over and over! What’s more, if your fluffy falls back into the ‘wan-die’ loop and won’t come out again, we offer a 100% discount on future treatments!”
"Now, of course, some of you probably don’t care about bringing fluffies back. For some of us, I know, it’s not about the fluffy, it’s about the creativity and seeing how far you can push them before they ‘cease operation.’ But let me ask you this: is it really pushing a fluffy to the brink if they give up and stop fighting? I think not!
“Now, I’ll let the host of this most illustrious program ask some of your questions!”
“You’ve talked a lot, but haven’t shown us anything,” the masked figure pointed out. “How can we believe anything you say?”
“That, my dear friend, is why I have this poor mare here today. She’s already undergone the treatment, so let me show you the miracle that I offer!”
Carl picked up the mare, who only intensified her dreary chant. Leaning close to her ear, he spoke. “Do you really want to die?”
“WAN DIE!”
“Alright then, I’ll let you die, but only after forever-drownies.”
Like magic, the fluffy stopped her chant. True, it was only to scree in abject horror, but it was still a stop to the chant.
“NU WAN FOREBAH-DWOWNIES! PWEASE NU FOREBAH-DWOWNIES! FWUFFY NU WAN DIE NU MOWE!”
“Is that so?” Carl said menacingly. He reached behind the counter and brought out a saw. “But you said you wanted to die. Did you lie to me?”
"Fwuffy nu mean tu wie. Pwease nu forebah-dwownies!
“Well, I guess I can forgive you…”
“Fwuffy am su happy!”
“If you let me cut off both of your leggies.”
The fluffy froze, not knowing how to handle the current situation. Eventually, she nodded.
“Fwuffy nu wan wose weggies, bu’ nu wan forebah-dwownies. Pwease take weggies.”
Carl roughly shoved the fluffy back into the carrier, stifling her sobs. “Now, as much as I would like to actually take her legs, let’s keep this a little bit more PG, shall we? I think that demonstrates how quickly our treatment can pull a fluffy back to reality.”
“How does it work?” the masked figure inquired.
“Now, you know a magician never gives away their secrets. But since I have a patent and fully intend on selling home kits for this, let me show you. This way,” Carl said, leading the show host and the cameraman into the back room. Here, there were numerous tanks full of a clear, viscous fluid, which was continuously pumped into machines and back into the tanks.
"You see, it first started when I couldn’t bring back one of my favorite fluffies from the ‘wan-die’ loop and decided it was time to let him go. So, being the sentimental type that I am, wanted him to be in reasonably good shape when I buried him. That left drowning or drugs as the method of demise, and I’m too frugal to waste good money on drugs for fluffies, so drowning was my method of choice.
"I noticed something as he drowned though. Although he professed to want to die, as he drowned he started to struggle. I was hopeful that if I pulled him out quickly, he’d be out of the ‘wan-die’ loop but would still live. Sadly, it seems that fluffies die shockingly fast once they inhale water, so I wasn’t able to save him.
"This sparked a bit of a realization in me. Fluffies aren’t scared of water by itself, they just have a fear of drowning that’s so exaggerated that they develop a phobia of water as a result. This fear is strong enough to overwhelm a ‘wan-die’ loop, at least in theory. In practice, the fluffy would die long before the mental shock was enough to bring them back.
"But thanks to the miracles of science, liquid that you can breathe without (many) ill effects is available, if you have the money. Now, most people don’t use it for anything, since it still feels like you’re drowning and all, but it does see occasional use in Hollywood when they need to show an animal suspended in liquid. With this liquid, I realized there was a chance.
"Trials were remarkably successful. After only a few hours, a fluffy pulled from the tank would, of course, still be in the ‘wan-die’ loop. But if you told that fluffy that fluffies who want to die have to spend time in the tank…well, you saw the results yourselves.
"As for those of you who want to use the tank to make your fluffies suffer, well, we have options for that as well. I know a lot of you like to abuse fluffy mummahs by proxy, but unfortunately foals seem to be unable to survive The Tank. However, we do offer rentals of extremely life-like foal replicas that are guaranteed to fool any fluffy mummah, so you can enjoy having them watch as their '‘foals’ experience the same thing they do!
“Thanks to The Tank, you can mutilate, humiliate, even violate your fluffies to your heart’s content, knowing that you can always bring them back from the ‘wan-die’ loop just by mentioning ‘forever-drownies’. So stop spending time looking for new fluffies to play with, and start building a real bond with your favorite fluffy, knowing that you’ll be having fun together for a long, long time!”
…
The building was empty, save for Carl and a film crew, this time from a well-known and liked hugbox media producer. See, Carl knew that limiting your audience wasn’t the best way to make money, so he was going to sell this to both hugboxers and abusers, albeit with dramatically different uses. It’s remarkable, how versatile a tank full of liquid could be.
“It’s a sad world,” he said, this time his tone somber and full of sadness. "Sometimes, even our best intentions go awry. We love our fluffies, but sometimes we love them too much, we spoil them and our little angels turn into nightmares. Smarties, if you want to call them that.
"But what options are we given? The harsh reality is that once a fluffy shows those symptoms, there’s no good way to bring them back to the loving, caring fluffy we once knew. Worse, in many places there are mandates in place that smarties must be pillowed or killed. So what do we do?
"Growing up, I lost a fluffy to Smarty syndrome. The first time she called herself a smarty my dad killed her. It was better than having her be pillowed and suffering through that until she died, he said. But I always wanted a better way, a way to get my sweet Daisy back.
"Eventually, I found a way. A way to treat smarty syndrome that actually works. A way that doesn’t leave them crippled like pillowing does. A way that’s more reliable than other so-called treatments and doesn’t leave your precious angel in a ‘wan-die’ loop for the rest of their sad life.
"You see, smarty syndrome is due to a fluffy that feels superior to those around it, a fluffy that feels like it has control. All you have to do, is shatter those illusions of control and the fluffy will revert back to a normal, loving fluffy. There are lots of ways to do this, but as a rule they’re all traumatic and cause physical as well as emotional scars.
“But the technique I’ve developed uses a fluffy’s deepest fears to make it realize how scary the world actually is. How much it owes its owner for taking care of it. Erase those illusions of grandeur. Allow me to demonstrate.”
Carl walked behind the counter and picked up a fluffy carrier, this time far larger, more padded, and generally more comfortable. Shouts of anger came from inside the carrier, and when he opened the door an angry pink fluffy came rushing out.
“Dummeh hoomin! Smawty nu wike sowwy box! Gib sowwy hoofsies and forebah-sweepies!” the little creature cried as it attempted to attack Carl.
“I imagine this is a sight far too many of my fellow hugboxers have seen. You know what comes next, but I know none of us like it. So let me show you an alternative.”
Carl leaned closer to the smarty, and said in a perfectly calm and happy voice “Smarty? Isn’t your name Henry? If you’re a smarty, I guess you need to go to the smarty place.”
“Nu! Henwy am jus’ bein’ siwwy! Pwease nu smawty pwace! Henwy be gud fwuffy!”
"See, it’s just that simple after our patented smarty-be-gone treatment. If your fluffy starts exhibiting smarty symptoms again, simply mention the smarty place and your fluffy will be back to its old self in no time! Our treatment is so effective you should only need to remind the fluffy once every six to eight weeks. Treatment only takes about 15 minutes and costs only $50, and if additional treatments are needed they’ll be 100% free!
"Now, I wouldn’t be honest if I said the treatment is nice, or that fluffies don’t suffer emotionally because of it. While no violence is used, we do use a type of custom sorry box that determines and exploits each fluffy’s worst fears to ensure that it will lose all sense of superiority. We do allow visitors to see their fluffy during the treatment, but we strongly recommend against it as it can result in the fluffy associating its owner with the, unfortunately necessary, suffering involved in the treatment.
“Thank you for watching, and I hope you all come let us save your smarties!”
38 Likes
Really neat concept 
I always like when a story analyzes a fluffy’s inherent fear of water
I find their hydrophobia fascinating and always love when it’s explored in depth
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I don’t generally write abuse stories unless there’s an interesting concept I want to explore since it’s harder to keep it engaging when there’s no reason to get invested in characters that you know are going to die at the end anyway.
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This is actually genius. Pander to both sides. Save some fluffies, but make others suffer more. This guy’s gonna go far, kid.
6 Likes
Preach it mang.
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I thought they were going to get water boarded. But this is a much more interesting idea.
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Yeah, I wrote Carl as the kind of conniving person who tries to sell to both sides of a conflict. How he presents himself changes dramatically based on who he’s talking to, so he can try to squeeze the most benefit out of each interaction he can. Overall, he’s a total slime-ball, but he knows how to manipulate people.
6 Likes