This Old Mill part 5 by Chikahiro

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The bowling alley sign flickered off. Tuesday nights weren’t the busiest, much to Lyle’s disappointment. Still getting one round of play along with something resembling nachos, fries, and wings took the edge off the day. The bald man rubbed his head; forgetting his hat at the hotel was a bit annoying for the drive home.

“I know the back of that head!” rang through his ears. It took Lyle a moment to recognize the face of the older man, white teeth juxtaposed behind a gray beard.

“Hello Mr. Davidson,” was replied.

“No no, that’s my father. And I’m the vendor, remember? Robert, call me Robert.”

“Did I miss you inside the bowling alley?”

“Me, oh no,” he chuckled. “I was meeting Mr. Garrison here.”

Garrison nodded his head, keeping his eyes focused inside the bed of his truck. Shapes moved around, shuffling, beneath mesh netting.

“Mr. Garrison is one of local fluffy ranchers. He’s looking to expand, so we’ve been talking about the business while his family had fun inside.”

Lyle walked up closer, pulling his jacket closer as the wind blew against his face. In the truck bed were several large Earthy fluffies, jockeying for position within a fluff-pile.

“…no wike…” sulked a blue one.

“…wan go homesies…” moaned a red one.

“…whewe speshuw fwen? Whewe babbehs?” asked a brown one. Garrison unlatched a portion of the mesh, causing it to yip as he pulled it out.

“This one,” the rancher said flatly. “I’ve got four dams I want to breed him with but he won’t get it up for any of them. Keeps asking about his old herd and family.”

The brown stallion’s eyes looked about, not meeting any of their gazes. Instead they kept looking to the woods on either side of the road, hopeful, searching. A light chuckle didn’t distract him as Robert reached by his feet, raising a spray bottle. As a fine misting went all over his face, the fluffy sneezed, eyes watering, mouth smacking while its tongue licked off the moisture.

“And we time from there,” Davidson smirked. “This is a bottle of spray pheromone. Inexpensive, but does need refrigeration when not in use. We actually sell this as a concentrate so you can make it as you need it rather than constantly coming back for refills.”

“Fifteen seconds… twenty seconds…,” Garrison droned as kept focused on the fluffy. “Aaaand…”

“Thirty seconds,” Lyle noted. The stallion’s bright red penis matched the flushing he imaged the fluffy had. That he possibly had as well.

“Huuu huu… wai no-no stick huwties…?” it whimpered.

Garrison nodded in approval. “Works, works… why is this stuff more expensive than the shots, though?”

“Fair question,” Davidson said as he reached back down. “Big thing a bottle of the concentrate works out cheaper per dose when you consider all you need is a spray bottle. Shots? You need a vet or at least training for the employees. And needles. I don’t have to tell you how often those go missing.

The rancher grunted.

“Besides, the shots assume you’re cleaning your equipment. That’s more time, more money.”

“Which is more powerful?”

“Shots are, no doubt,” Lyle thought aloud. “But this is so much easier. No fighting either.”

“Just the sort of thing a breeder would notice,” Davidson laughed. In his hand was a silicon tube the size of a fist flopping about. On one end of it plastic specimen jar. “Here, let’s give the little guy some relief for his blue-balls there… it has a warming lubricant on it since its as cold as hell right now. Think you can do it, Lyle?”

“Not a problem,” the bald man said, shivering as the wind shifted direction. The stallion did likewise as the cold silicon enveloped its cold flesh. It squirmed a little at first, until its desperation took hold.

“Enf… enf… enf…” it gasped. As it breathed the night air rushed over Lyle, bringing his scent to the stallion’s nose and mouth. Eyes grew wide as it began to flail.

“Enf… nnuuuu… enf… scaaaaw-enf-eeeee, nuuuuu, NUUU-enf-enf-enf!”

“What the hell?” Garrison asked, looking as the fluffy contorted between the silicon tube and trying to escape his grasp. The others began whining loudly.

Lyle felt Davidson’s hand gently push him back away from the truck and fluffies. “Let me handle this,” he said. “You go wait over there.”

“How did it go?”

“Well, that stallion should be fine,” Robert sighed. “Had to give him a little tranquilizer. Quarter dose. No real harm done, I don’t think.”

“What happened?”

The salesman smacked the side of Lyle’s jacket a few times, watching dust fly off in small clouds. “You wear this at the work site?”

“Yeah. Too damn cold not to.”

The older man paused, looking him over. “You know what kind of place it was, right?”

“I do.”

“No, I don’t think you do. Not really,” he sighed. “But I think that fluffy smelled it on you.”

“Wood and concrete and black mold?”

A lone cigarette was pulled out from Davidson’s jacket. A little fumbling produced a lighter, igniting the tip. Lyle could feel his heart beating while the saleman took a drag from the lit stick.

“Listen, you seem like a nice guy, so I’m going to be straight with you. That place was a hell-hole.”

“I know. I’ve been working it since we started.”

“Well, you didn’t see it in action. Anyhow, you know fluffies got that sense of smell of theirs?”

“Yeah, its how the pheromones work. Spray ‘em down with stuff and you get them to hump anything, accept another mare’s kid, convince them their favorite is a runt…”

“Well, here’s the thing. Get enough of them miserable? Ready to die? That makes a smell too.”

“I’ve never heard about it.”

“I’ve got friends who helped design that horn-dog spray down in Athens. They’re the ones that told me. The conditions that cause it aren’t common and are pretty difficult to hit normally, but hell-holes like Alexander’s could do it.”

“…”

“Scares the shit out of the fluffies. Its smells like everything wrong to them.”

“My building smells like that.”

“That’s what I’m thinking. And death.”

“Death?”

“Foals are little pheromone factories. They can cheep and chirp all they want, but its the smells they give off that really tell their mothers what’s going on,” Robert said, taking another deep drag off the cigarette. “So if they die, especially if its a bad death, all that goes haywire and gives off a wretched smell that scares off a lot of fluffies.”

“My building smells like hell and tortured to death babies…”

“Very likely.”

Lyle looked at Robert for a moment before taking the other man’s cigarette.

“Fuck.”

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Wow. That’s a new twist on repurposing buildings in a fluffyverse. Good drama potential.

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Thanks! I’ve enjoyed the idea of pheromones ranging from “dead foal smell,” “mare spray,” and the ideas that @anon68543914 has been working on (including “enfie baby syndrome”). It kind of makes sense. I used to work for a company that did fire and flood restorations, and we had a whole room dedicated to deodorizing things.

Hell, a more mundane example: dogs smelling around. And what can they smell? Egad. Fluffies are, as I’ve read, close to that range so they’re still far past us. Add in pheromones that indicate emotional states, health, and more? I think its got potential for some stories.

Its a story telling tool, which is something I tend to like :slight_smile:

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Also, I’ve been hinting at this in the past couple chapters and got stuck. What finally got me writing again was basically, “okay, fine, lets just explain why the fluffies freak out around Lyle.” Now that’s out of my system hopefully the story can get to progressing again.

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Hope there is a way to remove that stench of death of the ol bldg.

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I need a prequel showing Andersen’s mill in action. Sounds like an industrial abuse champ

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Oh jeez , I don’t think I’ve got the writing choops for that. Especially compared to what y’all’s imaginations can come up with.

I’ve been happily busy, so this has been out of sight, out of mind. Many apologies!

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For good some good writing and a good story, I think I can manage waiting :slight_smile: I mean, I waited…I dunno, two years for a new season of Sherlock!

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Wow, that’s a really cool twist. Nicely built up to with the pastor’s daughter’s fluffy crapping itself and the feral family stampeding, both of which could just have been “fluffies being fluffies”.

Course, I’d hate to think how much deodorizing that entire building would cost, if it were even possible. You’d probably have to hoover all that dust up from the entire site, strip a few inches of soil, and treat every surface in the building with concentrated bleach and/or caustic soda. Personally, if I were Lyle, I’d hope Peggy and Richard did hire someone to burn the place down. Or he might be able to make a profit by collecting that dust and selling it as high-strength fluffy-repellent for homeowners.

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Maybe check out July Babies. It’s still my best story (10 parts, pretty short overall). Neighborhood Fluffs was okay but folks liked the story for the chill nature of it.

Thank you! The problem I had is I didn’t have a destination I wanted to end up at which really, REALLY proved detrimental to continuing. Too many ways to go.

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