You look around, there is grassies as far as the see place can see in one direction, and an overlook to the biggest body of wawa imaginable in the other.
You suddenly feel your hoofies in the grassies, the day is lovely, with the sun wrapping its arms around you in an embrace of golden warmth.
A light breeze ruffles your untouched white mane and fluff. Pulling the excess heat of the sun from your body to leave a perfect temperature for comfort.
You take a deep breath of the crisp air and a sniff of the grassies before strolling around your nestie to stretch your legs.
Your ears twitch as a rustle comes from behind…
“Speshuw fwen?”
You awaken as B-16, today is much the same as the last, and the one before. Sure sometimes it may be hotter.. well actually it is more often colder. But things have been static for… well… forever.
You gaze through the metal mesh of your prison’s door out into the dim, unfeeling pseudo-safe room. It’s dark but your eyes are still good enough to make out the details.
The room is longer than you can see obliquely out of the mesh but also somewhat narrow.
You see the familiar concrete floor illuminated burnt orange by the low-energy light on the wall.
You see the myraid colors of other fluffies stuffed into their own destinies coating the entirety of the opposite wall.
Concrete shelving units form a grid of small cells decorated only by the mechanics necessary to sustain an unworthy life.
You take a deep breath of the stale frigidness of the room, filling your lungs with the sharp rancidness of the poopies pipe behind you and every other fluffy in here.
You shuffle your legs under you and stand into a half-squat to try and stretch your legs as much as possible, almost immediately feeling your back hit the rough concrete ceiling within the confines of your own eternal sorry box.
Feeling the dull aches and mild soreness constantly threatening your joints and the sting of morning hunger, you num some icky kibble from the trough railed along the row and sip at your wawa tube.
The stagnant coppery liquid fails to remedy your throat rendered terribly dry from the cardboard-like pellets arrayed in front of you.
You shuffle awkwardly side-to-side in a feeble attempt to exercise and work out the various cramps and knots equipped to your muscles from a life spent near immobile.
“Gud bwite time Bee-wun-seven”
“Siwwy Bee-wun-six, it nu am bwite time, it am dawkies time!”
It appears the unchanging circumstances has caused you to become out of phase with your best friend… Again.
You hate it when this happens. This means you won’t get morning talkies time with B-17 again. But there’s always time in this place.
You’re so lucky you have him, all of the other fluffies trapped in this safe room are in various stages of grief, panic, depression or nihilism.
But B-17 is always up for a casual chat. Sometimes about sketties, sometimes about pretty mares and families, and sometimes just about life.
Specifically his life before this place.
B-17 is fairly new, the old fluffy that lived in his box never spoke. One day the human who comes by took him and you never saw him again.
B-17 was shoved in soon after.. and curiously struck up a conversation with you. Unusual behaviour in a place where there is simply nothing to talk about.
He says he comes from outside, where there is this big bright warm sky ball and lots of fluffies to play with.
He says he had the prettiest special friend with two and two talkie babies.
He says one day his herd and special friend was taken by a group of humans whilst they made sleepies and he ended up here.
He doesn’t know what became of his special friend or his babies.
He doesn’t know his special friend was not, in fact, ‘pretty’.
He doesn’t know his special friend was milkbagged in this very building and his babies would all meet their fate at the teeth of a busy grinder.
But you don’t care about that, not really, as much as you feel you have heart hurties for his loss. His prior life fascinates you and gives you terrible envy.
You have known nothing but the safe room since you were born, in fact you were born IN this facility. Fed on a milkbag much like B-17's special friend.
You’ve never experienced grassies, the big bright ball in the sky, or running and playing, or special friends, or babies.
But B-17 has, and he laments the significant drop in the quality of his circumstances late into what you would call the night.
He often prompts many unempathetic ‘shaddap dummeh, fwuffy twyin ta sweepies!’ from the others who are just trying to deal with their own untenable circumstances.
But his tales of freedom give strong impetus for your dreaming. And nightly you are plagued with an unattainable level of agency, exploration and mental stimulation.
It’s something you can enjoy. Something you can almost look forward to as if you can cement it into your future via longing.
“h.. how time tiww outsidies..”
You hear mumbles outside the door of the safe room. Humans are coming.
You always hate it when they come. They take your mane and all of your fluff and you’re always left freezing cold for many forevers afterwards.
Sometimes they even take despondent fluffies from the boxes and you somehow know from extrapolation that a dark fate indeed must await them.
Two humans walk through the door with a cart, that’s one more than usual and just this sliver of unexpected change is enough to make you nervous in your constant tiny world.
They flick a switch and the room is flooded with an overpowering brightness. Your see places aren’t used to it and they burn as you quickly shut them tight. Your hear places hurt too as the human talkies boom through the enclosed space.
“And this, Newbs, is room B, where we keep fluffies with colors not suitable for your Versaces or Guccis but still good enough for textiles for high-end stores.” a familiar face explains.
“Question… Why is it so cold? Feels like a server room or something.” an new face ponders.
“Bingo, it’s an old data center. If you keep it cold, their fur grows back faster and thicker, it’s all about margins. Because they’re just toys, there is zero legislation surrounding things like welfare. This makes them a PERFECT solution to the meat and fur industry. Which is obviously very attractive for things like clothing and food on a domestic level. They can eat like pigs, their meat is like a sweeter pork and their fur comes soft and naturally colored.”
“So… You said facility admins have to shave all the fluffies themselves? Really?”
“Margins Newbs, it takes a while but it’s only a monthly affair and it’s easy. You can’t justify hiring laborers for it.”
“So when do I get to see A?”
“A few years yet Newbs, some of the fluffies in there have fur required for producing coats that can go for twenty thousand minimum… We can’t have some newbie junior kill or maim that kind of capital. Accidental or otherwise. If you do feel the urge. Keep it for at least room E or below. Those are mostly dime a dozen ferals or shelter rejects kept for the meat. Anyway let’s get this done, let’s get these things shaved.”
“Shouldn’t we have more equipment? I can do repair work and Excel spreadsheets but I’m no shephard or anything… Besides don’t these things shit everywhere and throw tantrums?”
The familiar man ponders Newbs’ question whilst unravelling a sheath of electric shavers, lining up a row of colored boxes along the side of the cart.
“Ah ignore that Newbs. Bad attitude fluffies are rarer than you might think, they’re just the ones you hear about most often. Most of these are sweet, shy little guys. It’s only the ones from irresponsible owners we can have problems with, but those usually get sent straight to the abattoir, not worth the trouble.”
“We don’t waste time with stuff like that. Up here at the A and B end, we do try to conserve but ultimately it’s garbage-in garbage-out, and there is a lot of garbage out there.”
“I’ve actually been nagged enough by my daughter to get her one. A young filly. Sweetest little thing in the world, it’d do anything for you… If it could.”
The familiar man then strolls to the top corner of your wall, you hear the shrill metallic screech of the rusty lock pulled from its socket, and the wailing of the metal grid swinging open.
You crane your neck against your own gate to observe the fluffy being pulled out first. It’s something you’ve seen, but don’t want to, thousands of times before. But, like every other fluffy here, you can’t help but watch, it’s the only thing that happens around here.
“Huuhuuhuu, pwe- pwease da- nice mistuh.. Pwease nu take Bee-wun’s pwetty fwuff an mane agin, cowdies su huwties an..”
The man, ignoring the pointless pleading of the object in his grasp, dispassionately tosses the scaredy peepee and tear stained fluffy on the cart.
“Poor little guy…”
“Sorry?”
“Oh.. I said poor little guy, begging for his fur and that..”
“Oh ignore that, its relatively new here I think. Think of them like AI, they spew whatever they can match to a situation then after about 6 months they adapt.”
The man then clicks the buzzy fluff stealing monster on, its growls sending shivers of fear through the rest of the fluffies in the room. Causing a flood of scaredy poopies to hit the soil pipes running the back of every box.
The men then prepare to go about their business. And the fluffies prepare to suffer what they must. The primary function of a life by one species’ perspective is the most negative event in another. Such is the way of the heirarchy of life in this unfeeling universe.
“Dead simple, hold the fluffy over the correct colored box and shave it bald.
Don’t worry if the shade varies slightly. And don’t worry about tears, blood or piss either, it all gets a chemical bath before shipping.”
The man then holds the inconsolable fluffy up by the front-left hoof over a red box, and begins the process of shaving off swaths of fur in long strips starting at the leathery hoof into the box.
“AH-HAO-HAOWWWIIIIEEEEES! HUUUUUU HUUUUU HUUUU! huuhuuhuuHUU”
The anguished fluffy struggles in the familiar man’s arm, resulting in little more than a slight rapid swivel of oscillatory angular momentum which is quickly cancelled out by the vastly more massive human as he inspects his quarry.
“I.. I think you gashed his armpit..”
A stream of blood quickly begins to run from the crevice of his armpit and down his stomach, drip dropping into the awaiting box along with everything else.
“Don’t worry about knicking the capital Newbs, they’re surprisingly robust against infection.”
Within a few moments, his front-left leg is completely bare, pale peach if not for the specks of red caused by the teeth of the now sanguine-salivating shaver.
In quick succession by the deft hands of a veteren. The other three legs are stripped bare. Beautiful crimson fur that once warmed the anguished fluffy was now the property of the red box by right of commerce.
“The face is the hard part… It’s not a HUGE drama if you knick them in the eye… But blindness causes too much stress which causes fur-loss and… money-loss.
The problem with these more inexperienced units are the tears. You can see its already dampened basically its entire face. Use the little shaver.”
The familiar man puts down the big buzzy monster and picks up its baby, clicking it to life with a shrill caterwauling.
He shifts the fluffy, forcing it’s neck against the rim of the box. Clenching the base of the jaw and skull as its head dangles over the container.
He then goes about the dextrous task of mowing away the delicate down fluff off of the face of the poor creature. Silky fur slick with tears is cut from around the eye and into the awaiting box. Leaving nothing for the fluffy.
The man twists his wrist, exposing the throat of the helpless fluffy to the world. He carefully meanders the shaver across the underside of the poor thing’s jaw as teardrops begin to meet red strands snowing into the box. Within moments his entire face was bare and raw.
“The biggest issue we had at first was when their manes and fur are different colors, made everything take so much longer and you’d always get a pale green hair in a pink box…”
“Eventually we just started sending multicolored fluffs directly to the abattoir.. There’s no shortage of fluffs and a little more investment for a quality-controlled product and employee satisfaction is sensible.”
“Easiest part now. Just shave away all of the body fur into the box. Leave the tails on, they’re useful for handling and the fibres are too long anyway.”
The man sets the fluffy down and reaches for a new shaver, the largest of the set. Which lazily hums to life with a deep hornet-like symphony. Sending vibrations straight through B-16’s body.
In a desperate attempt to at least reach some form of compromise with his captors, the fluffy turns his head, now free and barren, towards the familiar man.
“Pwe.. sniff huu.. Pwe nice mistuh.. Nu gib bee-wun taiw uppsies.. gibs wowstest..”
The man dispassionately snatches the fluffy up by its long red tail and dangles it over the box.
“..OWWIIEEEES HUU HUU HUU!”
The fluffy’s mind is caught between writhing in pain at the deep sickly sensation of sensitive hair follicles supporting 8kg of suffering, and the anxiety of being precariously pointed head first a lethal half meter drop toward the predatory box.
Its naked peach legs flailed around uselessly in circles. Whether in agony or panic in trying to orient itself correctly, the humans did not know.
But B-16 knew, he knew the mental overload of going from a world of no input to a world of far too much. The panic, the pain, the feeling of the heart overworked with rapid beating.
The inexperienced can but flail in an attempt to instill SOME form of control over the situation, SOME kind of order to this sudden and abrupt madness.
“I’m surprised fluffy fur and meat gets any demand given their… you know..”
The man laughs as he clearcuts another long strip of crimson from the crying fluffy’s back.
“Come on Newbs… How many ‘animal lovers’ do you know that are vegetarian?”
“Well… I don’t know many vegetarians so..”
“That’s the point. People are more than willing to overlook a gruesome situation if it means convenience or a cheaper product…
Ethics is more of a conversational piece nowadays than an actual… You know… Life philosophy.”
“But these are smart… I think? They talk and it seems like they really feel..”
“Maybe they do, maybe they don’t. I’m not Carl Jung. But all I know is that you could take the smartest being in the universe, make it taste like dad’s grill-work during a childhood barbeque. And we’ll happily turn it into an industrialized commodity.”
The familiar man breaks from shearing the red from the flailing creature firmly clasped in his hand to gesticulate at his colleague.
“Take pigs, you get these people that love their dogs so much that they feed them bacon or whatever… Conveniently forgetting the fact that the animal the meat came from is more intelligent than the dog.
It’s not about intelligence or suffering. It’s just the universe is set up to make all of us inherently selfish. We can only ever feel an abstract interpretation of suffering in these things, which will always fall by the wayside in our own quest for contentment.”
The familiar man rotates the fluffy in his hand, and begins to work on the belly, causing more ‘owwies’ with each knick and cut made across the underlying contours.
“Besides… I don’t think these things are really ‘all there’ anyway.. They’re toys Newbs”
Not much hurt B-16 anymore, but that statement always did. The man would never understand that despite B-16’s simpler neural make-up, he still had dreams, he still experienced, and he still felt his own sources of suffering.
Simpler than the familiar man’s, no doubt, but just as real to the fluffy. And how could they not be? For a living thing to live, it must experience, otherwise it would be ill-equipped to deal with the ebbs and flows of reality.
Geneticists understood that fact just as well as evolution.
Eventually B-1 was bare. His peach goosebumped body exposed naked and fragile to the room. The only thing transferring to the box now were his near-depleted tears and thick strands of dripping blood where his fur had once been.
What had once been a fairly respectable creature aesthetically was now just a saggy sack of drooping fat, insufficient muscle and brittle bones. Complete with its own red handle like a drawstring bag.
The fluffy began to shiver uncontrollably, teeth chattering and wheezing through a sore throat.
He swayed back and forth by the tail in the man’s hand like a nightmare pendulum. The only sensation interrupting his ferocious shivering being the occasional twitch of pain.
Still holding him by the tail, the familiar man hoisted the fluffy back up to his box in the corner, with a slight swing the fluffy was fed back into his prison. And the bars reinstated with a metallic shriek.
“Right! I’ll show you a few more times then you have a go…”
B-16 decided to retreat to his happy thinkie place. His safe area with his nestie and his special friend. She is so pretty and pink and has wingies and always gives the warmest huggies.
You decide that soon she should have some babies. So you can be the bestest daddeh ever. You’ll teach them how to count and stretch and num kibble and even some of the things B-17 talked about.
You run and play with your special friend all bright time and wait until the big bright sky ball goes to sleepies to tell her to start making tummeh babbehs. She’s so happy!
“Bee-wun-six an speshuw fwen gun haff pwettiest babbehs ebeh..”
You watch your thinkie place pictures and mumble to yourself until you start to get dragged from that illusory heaven into a more corporeal hell. The soft grassies and mud of the nestie give way to cold hard concrete.
“This one is B-16, he is an older fluff that has been with us for a long time now. You should find the skin under his fur wrinkly and pockmarked.
As they get older, their fur gets more wirey and patchy. No good to us by that point, straight to the abattoir.”
“Pure white? If we make a lot of our own fluffies with good colors… Why not just sell them?”
“We aren’t licensed, and it’s not what our investors expect. They invest for the production of textiles, fertilizers and foodstuffs. Simple.
Getting into the pet biotoy business at this scale is a huge deviation with a whole bunch of legislation and cost and will no doubt just make our investors anxious.
Leave it to the breeding mills. Plus everyone and their moms thinks they’re a pedigree fluffy breeder nowadays, and a loooot of those fluffs make their way here eventually anyway…”
The gates of your prison are unlocked, but this is not a moment of joy.
You’re dragged out unceremoniously by your mane and onto the cart with a thump. It hurts, but you’ve long since stopped responding to this kind of pain.
The new human holds you there whilst he spins up the buzzy monster. Your eyes glance over to the part of your wall holding the already shaved fluffies.
They’re in pain. They’re curled over in a desperate attempt to maintain any kind of body heat they can. Unanimously wrapping their tails over their face, trying to escape to their own mental paradises.
Crying and shivering them all you hear mumbles of 'Huu’s and ‘cowdies huwt so muchies’. Now fate dictated you join them.
It was a regular torment. Over quickly if you didn’t toss or turn or cry or fight. You knew this was the best way. Just get it over and done with quickly so you can focus on shivering what little warmth you can generate before it radiated away into the room through your inadequate paper-thin skin.
The new human cuts your wrinkled skin. A lot. But you don’t cry, you don’t make ‘owwies’, you just accept it and stay still as your pretty white fluff is consumed by the boxie.
As you dangle around by your tail. You learnt to take the opportunity to look at the other fluffies instead of thinking about the pain.
You see B-17 for the first time since you arrived. A wingie stallion with a light blue coat. He was of course abjectly terrified. Couched as low and inwardly as possible with what little flexibility his front limbs could muster being used to cover his see places.
You began to get the worst heart hurties ever for him. He’s never experienced a fluff takies time before and he must be so scaredies. You feel a compulsion to go and hug him, but you doubt he’d want to hug a naked fluffy.
And just like that, it was done. Once more you feel the biting cold of the meanie safe room steal all of your warmies.
You’re chucked without care back into your box by the tail. If there is one injustice amongst many that still REALLY bothered you. It’s that the humans never took the half second it would take to flip you so your head wasn’t facing the poopie pipe.
It is a difficult affair for you to try and turn around in the cramped box, especially given the pervasive shivering and your old atrophied limbs.
Then the new human reaches B-17's box. And unlatches it. The sound of the latch and gate pierces your body through your cell wall. And B-17 is dragged out roughly by the mane
“OWWIES! BAD UPPSIES! NU BAD UPPSIES! SPESHUW FWEN! BABBEHS! HEWP BEE-WUN-SEBEN!”
You flip yourself around quickly to peek at the commotion. B-17 is panicking in the arm of the new human, spraying scaredy poopies and peepees everywhere. This isn’t good…
“What the fuck is the issue with this one? The last one was dead calm?”
“Ah this one came in from fluffy control after the last monthly shave…”
You rap your leathery hooves again the grate of your box.
“Pwease nicie nyoo hoomin… Bee-wun-seben am nu yoosed to fwuff takie times… Am tu nyoo fow bad-uppsies!”
This falls upon deaf ears as the new human desperately tries to wrangle control of the soiled fluffy. Its near seizure-like struggle flinging peepees and poopies everywhere.
“OWW.. OWWIES! HUUHUUHUU! NU WAN MUNSTAHS TAK PWETTY FWUFF! NU WAN MUNSTAH BUZZY FING! HUU HUU!”
B-17 frantically flaps his wingies as if he could suddenly up and fly away from this place, all his efforts show is a shower of feathers snowing onto the floor and into the pile of feces.
“What the fuck! Man this is fucked up what do I do? There’s shit everywhere!”
“PWESE NYOO MISTUH BE CAWEFUW WIFF FWEN! He am fwuffy’s onwy fwen! He am aww Bee-wun-six hab!”
Then the familiar human walks over and grabs B-17 roughly by the mane. Pulling enough skin such that B-17 is locked in place and slightly choking.
“URK NU! MUNSTAHS! FWEN! BESTEST FWEN! HEWP BEE- UUURK”
“I’m sorry Newbs, sometimes the ferals have a lot of fight in them, fuck it. It’s a pegasus anyway which is an inconvenience. This’ll be an excellent time to show you the abattoir.”
For the first time in many years, you felt a certain energy to your depression and suffering. There was some steam left in your old engine.
You didn’t know exactly what an abattoir was. But you can infer from context that its the word humans used for where fluffies go… where fluffies go and don’t come back.
Which you correctly surmise means forever sleepies. You rush forward, thudding against the metal grate and plead.
“PWESE MISTUH! NU TAKE BEE-WUN-SEBEN TU ABBER.. ABBER-TWAH! He am Bee-wun-six BESTEST EBEH fwen! He nu mean tu mak scawedy poopies! He am jus nyoo an nu am yoosed to safe woomies and fwuff takie tim! PWESE MISTUH PWESE!”
You hammer on the cage as they leave the room. Desperately trying to get any sort of acknowledgement. You lock eyes with B-17 for the first time and… before you know it, they were gone. Leaving only the dead stares of your compatriots to witness your outburst.
B-17 was gone, and with him, your only source of entertainment, the coal from which your dreams went from an ember to a conflagration. You knew he wouldn’t be back. You knew he would probably get forever sleepies.
You curl up and shiver, and sob, and shiver again. Trying to switch focus from the heart hurties to the more physical and familiar coldie hurties.
After a short forever, they return, you’re unsurprised but never-the-less crushed to see them return empty-handed. He’s gone.
Your heart has the worstest hurties it has ever felt for as long as you can remember. The only friend you’ve ever had… would ever have. The anchor of a better life. The fuel of your happy thinkie place pictures was ripped cruelly out of your life.
The humans are soon done with their shaving, dimming the lights for the discordant room of suffering left in their wake.
“By the way… This is your job now, I need to focus on management stuff, answering emails from management and investor relations… Procurement and sales…”
“I’m not saying shit rolls downhill. And I’m not trying to be unfair… But… You know how it is.. My experience is needed with other things.”
The new human looks at his colleague with a miffed expression, as though the man who makes a living selling products of suffering for profit was not on the same level of evil as one who’d mildly slight another human.
As though they were conditioned to think that inconvenience was the ground level of unacceptable amongst a crying room of lesser things.
They push the now laden cart through the door and close it behind them. Leaving the dark room a chorus of chattering teeth, Sobbing, and the multiplet repetitions of understandable questions and statements such as “Huu.. How time tiww fwuff”, “Fwuffy hate cowdie owwies” and “Fwuffy miss warmies fwuff”.
A lot of them seemed to blame the boxes, pleading into the empty dimness for the boxes to be nicer next time, and not num so much of their fluff so they can have ‘just a widdle wawmies’.
After a few forevers, the room goes quiet once more, and in the uneasy solace there is only one audible sorrow left. Your own. You whisper your suffering out into the world in a desperate hunt for catharsis.
“huu huu.. MEANIE mistuh tak Bee-wun-six’s bestest fwen Bee-wun-seben tu abber-twah”
“huu huu fwuffy HATE safe woom, HATE fwuff takies time… HATE dat boksies and mistahs tak AWW fwuff and weave NUN fow fwuffy’s wawmies huu huu”
“huu… Fwuffy… FWUFFY NEBEH EBEN GOT TAWKIES TIME WIV BEE-WUN-SEBEN DIS BWITE TIME! HUUUUU HUUUU HUUUUUUU!”
“SHADDAP DUMMEH FWUFFY! FWUFFY TWYIN TA SWEEPIES SO COWDIES OWWIES GU WAY!”
You slink down. For the first time in a very long time your mind reminded your body of how capacious your tear ducts can be. You try to quiet down but you can’t stop crying, and sniffling, and thinking.
Unable to stop the events of the day replaying over and over in your mind, denying you any kind of respite or sleep. You replay the horror of how your only friend struggled in the new human’s hands. How his leggies flailed and his wingies flapped.
How you didn’t help him, how you were unable to help him, you were already naked by the time it came to him. Perhaps if you spent less time interrogating him for mental material and more time explaining how this place worked he’d still be here.
And now you’ve added gnawing guilt to the pile of negative emotions already frying your brain. You try and go to your special thinkie place pictures but it doesn’t work. Your special friend isn’t there. You can’t feel the grass. You can’t even see the bright sky ball anymore.
You’ve spent a while like this now, snivelling and whimpering and begging your thinkie place to go back to the special thinkie place pictures and away from the reality of previous events of the day.
But it isn’t listening, it’s being a meanie. So you make a covenant with it, a level of psychological sophistication a human wouldn’t typically associate with a fluffy.
You promise your thinkie place that you’ll be outsidies eventually, you’ll get a special friend and have babies and you’ll name the first one B-17. It’s not the prettiest name for a pretty baby but you want to live vicariously in honor of the friend who showed you things CAN be different.
“h.. how time tiww outsidies…”
Several of what you think are bright times have passed now. You know this because its the second worst part of this endless cycle. Your fluff and mane have began to grow back in full force. Causing terrible itchies.
You lean a fuzzy side against the wall of your cell and begin to rock back on forth on crouched leggies.
“owwies..”
Your scratching against the rough concrete wall has pulled open a barely-healed cut on your side, and once more it weeps boo-boo juice.
It’s a dichotomy every other fluffy in the room is familiar with and simultaneously experiencing. The burning need to scratch however they can is juxtaposed with the need to let their various wounds heal from the rough shaving process.
“Pwese itchies weave Bee-tu-fouw awone.. stiww haf tu many owwies fow scwatchies!”
You though, are used to pain. The relief of scratching the itchies is one of the only real positive sensations you get. Unlike most of the other complaining fluffies you delight in scratching your sides, back, leggies and tummy against the various sides of your cell. Owwies be damned!
Wait… Your special thinkie place pictures have come back! It’s time for thinkie place pictures! You lay down and fold a front leggie under your chest and shut your eyes tight.
You have babies now! Your must’ve ran and played with your special friend REALLY well because she has made the PRETTIEST babies for you!
There’s a little light blue pegasus colt.. That’s B-17. There’s a deep blue filly named sky. A green colt named grassies and a yellow filly named sky ball. You make sure to let them eat from your nestie’s kibble pipe first and teach them all the important lessons.
“Wemembew babbehs, if yu haff tu tuwn wound but nu haf nuff woom, yu can woll yuw headies undew yuw tummeh an woll ovew aftew!”
“Daddeh am SUU smawties! WUB DADDEH! WUB!”
You spend all day running and playing some nebulous ill-defined game with your babbehs. The bright sky ball is giving you all the warmest huggies and your babies are chuckling and darting to and fro.
Your special friend looks on with a loving and proud look. She flaps her wings in quiet contentment whilst watching her family from the nestie. You give her a knowing smile and wave a leggie at her.
“DADDEH! WOOK DADDEH BEE-WUN-SEBEN AM FWYIN! AM FWYIN BABBEH DADDEH!”
He pivot around and see your little blue colt flapping through the air on his wings. Chuckling manically as he tags his bwuddas and sistahs from the sky. He’ll NEVER lose taggies now.
“Cawefuw babbeh! Mite fwy tu hawd an wose pwetty wingie fethews!”
“Otay daddeh! Bee-wun-seben come back tu daddeh!”
With that, Your babbeh (the bestest one if you’re being honest) glides back down and into your arms.
That night, you give your progeny their lesson before sleepies. You try and keep advice for the mornings and warnings for the evenings. That way your babies aren’t too nervous for all the bright time fun. They all sit attentively on their haunches in a crescent in front of you.
“Wemembew babbehs, dere am dees munstahs called ‘hoomins’, dere vewy big an stwong an twy tu steaw AWW fwuffy’s pwetty fwuff, if see hoomin, git bee-wun-seben tu fwy famiwy away, hoomins awe stwong but nu haf wingies fow fwy wike bee-wun-seben.”
“Otay daddeh! Bee-wun-seben fwy daddeh an mummah an bwuddas an sissies 'way when MEANIE munstah ‘hoomins’ awe hewe!”
You reach forward with your front leggies and carefully pull B-17 into a deep hug.
“Yu am bestest babbeh ebeh, daddeh wub yu, wub aww babbehs, wub speshuw fwen..”
Your pretty pink special friend gives you the biggest warmest hug for being the bestest dad, and she is shortly joined by the tackling of your other three babies, diving into an impromptu fluff-pile.
You lock your arms around your family and look out of your nestie at the bright sky ball, who looks like they’re getting ready for sleepies in the big body of water.
“Wub yu mostest ob aww bwite sky baww… Tank yu fow giffin wawmies tu Bee-wun-six an famiwy, yu am bestest ting EBEH!”
The bright sky ball dips beyond the horizon, but the light doesn’t disappear along with it. Hmm.. you shake your thinkie place, inadvertently opening your eyes to the real source of the light.
The room is quiet, there is only the humming of the wall light. Casting its cheap imitation of the real thing into a dim orange triangle across your cell. All else was cold, inky blackness.
“huu huu huu”
You well up again. As you paw at the illuminated sector of your cell with a front hoof in between shivers.
“How time tiww outsidies?”
It’s a question you’ve asked many times since B-17 came along. You feel the more you ask the question the more the answer you want has to manifest. But time keeps on passing. Your little fluffy joints ache more and your muscles atrophy more.
You don’t like this bit. This is the bit where you’re done with the good thinkie place pictures and the baddie thinkie place words start. You think of that day again. You think of B-17. The real B-17.
You think of what you can say differently to convince the universe to give you what you want. What little insignificant pacts and covenants you can make to steer destiny in a happier direction.
One thing most of all gnawed away at the roots of your hapless pondering. An innocuous statement by the familiar human…
“He is an older fluffy”. An older fluffy… This makes you anxious. The longer you spend in this place the less time you’ll get to spend running and playing with your special friend… The less time you’ll get to spend with your future family… You may not even be able to see your babies grow up into big fluffies!
In a flash of lucidity you become painfully aware that the time you spend in your cell is exchanged for the time spent with your family.
That is to say, the more of your life you devote to suffering, the less of your life you spend on enjoyment.
“huuhuu fwuffy wan outsidies nao”
This cycle repeated for many forevers… LONG forevers. Even multiple fluff taking times. Good thinkie place pictures followed by bad thinkie place words. Locked in a back-and-forth waltz between cope and comprehension.
Your dreams kept you company well enough, your babbehs were all big fluffies now. B-17 spends his time soaring through the clear blue skies. He has seen so much and knows so much about the world. The other three have taken to spending their time playing huggie-tag. Now everyone is a big fluffy you can upgrade from tappie-tag to proper huggie-tag!
Sometimes you’ll change the details of the picture. You found sky ball’s name too hard to remember now so you decided to call her ‘light’ instead. You’re sure your special friend has changed color multiple times as well. And her face has gone from well-defined to blurry.
You’re tired after a long day of play and lie down in the nestie, cooing next to your illusory special friend. Psychosomatically feeling that vaunted company brushing against your side in an tangling of long bountiful fluff.
“Ah B-16, getting real old now aren’t we buddy…”
You open your eyes to the world, it’s bright again as it always is when the humans come. The now not-so-new human unlatches the cage and pulls you out by the mane as usual.
He begins to paw idly at your fluff, feeling it coming away in wirey clumps. A single neural pathway judged the quality as insufficient, and the rest of your story was thus written.
The man carries you out of the room into a corridor so bright it burns your see places. The usual tones of grey replaced by white drywall much like your own fluff.
Although unintentional, you feel the man’s hoisting of your mane as you bounce around in his grip as somewhat comforting. It’s almost like awaiting the embrace of an old friend.
You’re ready for your eternal rest. You look up at the man, a rare tear in your eyes. As he takes you through a set of blue double doors into a large room that smells like booboo juice and sawed bone.
“Pwese nice mistuh… Fwuffy wanna see outsidies an big bwite sky baww… jus wun time? pwese?”
The man others no response other than the click of his shoes across the tiles. And you’re immediately plopped onto a dirty conveyor. You’re the only fluffy on it. It is stained with generations of poopies and peepees. Bearing a slight smell of antiseptic.
The experience almost makes YOU want to make scaredy poopies… But you emptied your bowels into the poopies pipe during your thinkie place time.
The man presses a green button on the wall, and an ear-shattering churning sound fills the expanse of the room. Which does cause you to make scaredy peepees at least. The conveyor hums to life and begins to slide you agonizingly slowly through a rubber tapestry into darkness. You feel your weight become unsupported, a drop, then a final sensation.
The cold teeth of the churning maw of a grinder. You hit it side on. Within an instant your entrails, right haunch and thinkie place are nummed by the machine.
All of your dreaming and cogitating, Would soon be fried up and served as McDonald’s new McFluff Bites. And half of those would go in the bin.
At least… That’s how things were supposed to go… Right? But the truth is… Sometimes reality doesn’t behave so rationally.
Sometimes quirks do exist along a causal line spanning the universe that does lead to the wish fulfillment of the individuals living within it.
There are certainly myriad stories in our own reality that, if read from the pages of a book, would have one groaning at the unlikeliness and saccharinity of the text.
Maybe the reader should simply pick the conclusion they desire.
The new familiar human carries you through the large theatre. Shoes clicking along the tiles toward the conveyor. But they’re joined by the accompanying clicking of a second pair of shoes. The two humans exchange waves of their not-hoofies at each other as B-16 dangled haplessly above oblivion.
“Hey, Newbs, is that B-16?”
“Hey, I told you to stop calling me that I’ve been here for ages now… And yeah it is… why?”
“My daughter’s toy got itself knocked up in the garden somehow and popped out four little ones. I disposed of it for behavioural reasons… Big mistake but that’s a story for another day… I had to keep the little ones to avoid furthering the wrath of my missus and kid…”
He sighs, with a thin veil of ‘it is what it is’ coating frustration and a little worry.
“They constantly require attention and she’s not one for chores and I’m fed up with it… I was thinking of grabbing like… A mature male for them, some tough but patient SOB who’ll play with and look after them so us humans can get on with more important shit. Especially when they’re old enough to go in the garden. Like a grandpa fluff or something…”
The old familiar human reaches a hand out and the new familiar human passes you off into his arms. He takes you by the mane as usual. The new familiar human presses a red button on the wall, and the churning of the grinder ceases. The conveyor stilled.
The old familiar human then shifts you to better carry you the longer distance to his car. He holds you differently to how you’ve ever experienced, wrapping an arm under your back and coddling you like a baby.
For the first time in your life you’ve truly experienced comfort.
“I don’t know if they’re weaned but I’m sure he can figure out giving them formula, I’ll get around to pouring out some spaghetti for him tonight and see if they nibble at it.”