Carl Wittinger sat bolt upright from a dead sleep, knowing instantly he wouldn’t be able to fall asleep again. He glanced at the clock, its glowing numerals showing that it was just before six o’clock. Normally he would be irritated, since he was by nature and inclination more of a night owl, but after the dream he’d just had, he foresaw a good day.
Sometimes, things just click. A single moment of realization, a glorious epiphany, can make something ordinary into something special. Carl grinned from ear to ear, getting up to start his day. Today was going to be amazing.
Taking advantage of his rare early-bird mood, he walked silently through the dark house, carefully opening the door to the unsaferoom and making his way over to Lilac, his most recent acquisition. She was sleeping fitfully, likely grateful for a few house without Carl’s ministrations. Of course, he didn’t have time to do anything too fun right now, so he contented himself with a sharp slap. See if she managed to get some rest knowing he was awake.
His stomach growled, but right now Carl wasn’t in the mood for such distraction. No, he had a new project to work on, something that made him shiver in anticipation. He hadn’t felt like this since he’d come up with The Tank.
Time to exploit another fluffy phobia. Or rather, two at once.
…
“Bestest babbeh wan sketties!” a petulant potential smarty demanded, and Carl grinned from ear to ear. There was a certain appeal to abusing bratty fluffies in particular, although he was a connoisseur of the flavor of rampant injustice. But before anything else, he was frugal, and this had been the easiest-to-acquire healthy (and more importantly, free) foal he’d found.
“Tell me,” he said, in a tone of genuine curiosity. “Do you want to die?”
The foal froze, not understanding the question, but intuiting that it should be very afraid. Carl’s grin morphed into a sadistic smirk, and he lifted the foal, not even caring about the jet of scardy-poopies that got all over his expensive tailored suit. Carrying the struggling foal, he walked to the door of his latest project, opened the door, and tossed it in.
…
Bestest babbeh shrieked in horror as she fell, floor opening up beneath her, showing she was at an impossible height. After the first instant, her instincts told her it was pointless to struggle, that she’d been falling too long, and would die the moment she landed. She went limp, eyes watering and lungs struggling as she fell faster and faster, watching the ground coming closer and closer.
Time seemed to slow, each moment seeming to last forever. Her heart pounded in her chest as synthetic pseudoadrenaline burned in every blood vessel. She would hit the ground soon, and when that happened she would die. For a moment, she accepted it. Then the horror settled in.
The ground rushed up to meet her, and something in her head shattered.
…
Carl Wittinger gave his trademark grin, perfect teeth glinting in the light. “Hello again!” he half-shouted cheerily, drawing an annoyed sigh from his guest.
“You know I wouldn’t have come, but you promised something new, something to rival The Tank,” they said, voice somehow even more distorted than during their last interview.
“I’ve become more ambitious, you might say,” Carl said. “Or maybe I’ve just come to a new realization. You see, I’m not scared of the dark.”
“How is that relevant?” his guest snapped irritably. “I hope you didn’t call me here to waste my time.”
“Oh, I would never,” Carl gasped, voice dripping with fake hurt. “See, when I was a kid, I was terrified of the dark, but over time I just got used to it. The same can even happen with fluffies, as I’m sure you know from experience.”
He waited for a reply, but only got a dead stare from the masked face of his, rapidly becoming annoyed, guest.
“Fine,” Carl sighed, genuinely regretting the lost chance for a bit of showmanship. "Extended exposure tends to make things less scary. After around the fiftieth time you beat a fluffy they’re just used to it and don’t really respond much. So, as painful and horrifying as The Tank is, the depth of the horror it can inflict is limited by the way that fluffies are all exposed to water all the time. So, I decided to exploit a different fear, one that fluffies rarely get exposure to, and even more rarely live through exposure.
“Now I’m sure you’re thinking bugs or cats or rats or some shit, but if I wanted to kill my…clients…my business model would hardly be sustainable. Strictly survivable, that’s my motto. Follow me.”
He lead the interviewer and cameraman into an office, where a small, light green filly lay on the desk. She seemed catatonic, until Carl pinched her scruff and lifted her. Then she screamed.
They’d all heard fluffies scree before, or chirp, or beg, depending on how much trauma they suffered. This was different. This was a full scream, each instant growing hoarser as the filly’s vocal chords frayed from the strain. It wasn’t a sound any creature her size should be able to make.
Carl set the filly down, and in an instant she was back to her semi-catatonic state. "See, I made a new toy. Sadly not as portable as The Tank, but one which abuses a far more potent fluffy phobia. Falling.
"Most fluffies never fall a significant distance and survive, but all fluffies need to drink water to survive. They may fear it, may fear drowning, but deep down they all see water as something they need, which makes them fear it a little less. Falling, on the other hand…
"So I modified a wind tunnel to keep fluffies suspended in midair, and added screens to make them genuinely believe they’re falling to their deaths. In my experience, they tend to go catatonic like this filly when they ‘hit’ the ground. But here’s the fun part: lifting them into the air after seems to make them completely melt down.
“Oh, and for you pegasus haters out there…realizing their wings are worthless destroys their entire sense of self-worth, too, even if you ‘save’ them before the end. I’m sure you can all find a way to use that.”
…
Carl checked his watch, escorted the abuse blogger out of the building, and waited. Three minutes later, the hugbox blogger he’d been carefully cultivating a relationship with. He gave a kind, genuine smile when he saw her. Of course, she knew that The Tank was used for abuse as well as rehabilitation, but he’d convinced her that corporate was responsible for selling it to abusers. She’d immediately accepted that, since everyone hates corporate.
“Marie!” he called, in his most friendly voice, opening his arms for a hug. Hugboxers tended to be clingy, in Carl’s experience. “It’s been so long since I’ve been able to show you something new.”
“It has!” Marie responded, smiling and embracing him. She seemed to be genuinely in love with the persona Carl had crafted for interacting with her, and he had every intention of taking advantage of that. “It’s so exciting to see what you’ve been working on!”
“I know,” Carl said, adopting a morose expression for a moment. “After what happened with my last project…I didn’t know if I should even make anything new if people were just going to pervert it to hurt innocent creatures!” He smiled again. “But this time I’m sure I’ve come up with something that’ll bring joy to so many fluffies!”
“I’m sure you’ve heard about Lilac, my pet pegasus,” he continued, leading her through into the building. “Well, for a long time she asked me to let her fly, and it broke my heart to see how sad she got when I told her she couldn’t. I don’t know how Hasbio could be so cruel to make pegasi want to fly so desperately when it can only hurt them!” he scowled dramatically.
"But then I remembered something, a excursion my family went on when I was a kid. Skydiving was too dangerous, but my older sister always wanted to try it, so we did the next best thing. She didn’t really appreciate it at the time, but I thought it was magical, being able to fly with just a few fans making an updraft.
“Then I thought ‘why couldn’t fluffies use these too?’ Well, turns out that calibration for fluffies is completely different than for peo-humans,” he caught himself, reminding himself that, for many hugboxers, fluffies were people. “But I didn’t want to see Lilac crying like that anymore, so I put in some work, and…I think you’ll like what I came up with!”
He opened the door to the tunnel. “See, I calibrated it just right for fluffies, set up screens, and now pegasi and alicorns can ‘fly!’ Lilac loved it so much she refused to leave, even after I offered her sketties,” he felt bile rise using the term, but ignored it. “Since then, we’ve had a lot of pegasi try it, and it’s been a smashing success!”
He smiled beatifically. “Imagine! We can make so many dreams come true!”
And nightmares, too! he added silently, in the privacy of his mind.
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