Val pulled into the parking lot of the new suburban FluffMart, across the street from the Home Depot and Mattress Firm. She ached for a cigarette, but it had been fully seventeen months since her last one, and she wasn’t about to fuck that up and start over.
Antonio had told her that these stores, these FluffMarts, were springing up all over the East Coast as the bio-pet craze took hold on a nation hungry for something new. The garish multicolored FluffMart logo seemed to be right at home in this American desert of parking lots and big boxes.
“I can’t believe I am really doing this,” she muttered. As soon as her iPhone told her it was exactly eight-AM, opening time, she locked the doors of the car and crossed the mostly empty lot. She looked around to make sure no one she knew saw her, though it was unlikely, as she chose a FluffMart far away from her own stomping grounds.
The sliding glass doors opened with a ding-dong. “Welcome to FluffMart, where we hope you have a Fluff of a good day!” said a too-cheery young woman. Val nodded and gave her what she hoped was a friendly smile.
“Can I help you find anything today?” A FluffMart employee wearing a lime green vest emerged from behind the register and approached Val with a smile. “Just so you know, we’ve got a sale on all Sorry products, thirty percent off!”
Val nodded to her while without stopping. “I’m good,” she said. “Just looking today.”
“Sure, sure,” said the FluffMart employee. “My name is Hannah! And you just holler if you need assistance! We’ve got a whole new batch of new Designer Fluffies, and if that’s not your jam, we have a load of adoptable adults!”
“Thank you,” Val commented. The employee Hannah followed closely behind. Val gritted her teeth.
“Oh, and I am supposed to tell you that any FSA-branded products are BOGO, you know, buy one, get one fr…”
Val stopped and swiveled to face her. Hannah nearly crashed into Val; she stopped close enough to feel Val’s hot breath on her face.
“If I NEED something, I will ASK. Get off my FUCKING CASE!” Val took a deep breath. The voice of Adam, her court-ordered anger management therapist, floated into her mind.
Valeriya, you must breathe when faced with a trigger.
You must contain your rage within a box in your mind and keep it there.
Hannah’s eyes were so wide that Val could see the whites around the iris. She wordlessly turned and walked back to the front of the store.
Other people are not your enemy.
The anger is your enemy.
When you are wrong, when you slip up, you must own up to it.
“Sorry,” Val called after her. “I’m sorry!”
The defeated Hannah didn’t turn back. She was already safely behind the register, wearing a humble frown.
“Fuck me,” Val said. She thought about going after Hannah to apologize for a brief moment, but didn’t. “Dammit.”
Perhaps a dog or cat that relies on you for its needs can restore your empathy. Open your heart, Valeriya.
She looked around the store. Where were the fluffies? Judging by the variety of hanging signs and placards in annoying fonts and gaudy color combinations, Val surmised that a PetSmart, a Toys-R-Us, and a Montessori preschool fucked in a threesome and birthed a FluffMart nine months later.
She spotted a sign for “Nyu Foals” and wondered if New York University was somehow involved in the invention of Fluffies.
The answer to that question was provided quickly. In front of double doors labeled “Available Pets,” a sign was posted:
NYU (NEW) to FLUFFIES? A GUIDE TO FLUFFSPEAK
Val’s eyebrows contorted with wonder. It was true. Fluffies talked – her co-worker Antonio told her all about it. He failed to mention that they couldn’t pronounce half the alphabet. Still, it was impressive technology. She scanned over the Guide to Fluffspeak, took a deep breath, and passed through the double doors.
The cacophony of high-pitched begging and mewling began immediately. The sounds and the smells hit at the same time, and she stopped to adjust her focus and not retch from the stink.
An odor sommelier, if there was such a thing, might have described the smell as “reminiscent of a barn, with pit-toilet overtones, and notes of sulfur and ammonia.”
She gaped at the scene. Val had never seen Fluffies before, and now, before her, were ALL of the Fluffies. It had to be. If more fluffies existed, the world was doomed. The place was roiling with moving, wriggling creatures in every color combination possible. Cages behind a glass enclosure held large fluffies, the size of a cat or a corgi. Bins lined the walls, some containing tiny writhing fluffy pony foals. Some of the tiniest foals were as small as her thumbnail.
“Nyth wady? Nyu fwen?”
Val turned toward the voice coming from a nearby bin. A fat, dark blue creature rolled onto its side. Val cringed in disgust as the uncanny valley took hold - the fat blue creature’s human-looking tits slapped onto the surface with a moist squish.
The plump tits were not where human tits would be, say, on a chest. Val supposed they would look just as out of place on a fluffy chest as they did in their current location, sagging between the hind quarters. Val noted that the hole between the fluffy’s legs was in full view, depending on what position the weird tits were hanging.
Six tiny foals clambered toward the rose-nippled mother, all of them cheep-cheeping, peep-peeping in a pitch that had to be close to “dog whistle.” Two of the tiny vermin-babies managed to latch on to the fleshy nipples to suckle. As their tiny lips smacked and sucked, thin white-yellow fluffy milk dribbled down the exposed areola and pooled under the foals.
The nearest foal shit itself with a loud, happy peep. The pooled milk darkened as the liquid feces melded with it. Two more foals suckled at the floor, slurping up the foul combination as fast as they could.
The light-yellow foal on the left teat wriggled its tiny, weird front legs in an attempt to knead at the breast, but it’s short legs just waved in the air, useless. It held onto the nipple by its mouth, suckling all the while and hanging on for dear life as it swayed from its mother’s bosom. The swaying reminded Val of an ancient Mission: Impossible flick, in which Tom Cruise (rest his soul) swung from the side of a red cliff with one arm.
This light-yellow foal was no action hero, though, as it finally weakened and released the nipple. It squeaked in fear from the short fall to the floor. It landed atop its baby blue sibling, who lapped at the puddle of milk and feces. Both foals squealed in surprise. Their light-colored fluff darkened as it absorbed the foul liquid. They wriggled on their backs, emanating wild and fearful chirps.
A darker yellow foal climbed atop its wet siblings and found the available nipple with its tiny mouth. The blue mother with the human tits watched her foals roll and soak up the poopy milk with a proud look on its face. Then it looked at Val, perhaps for validation that its babies were good.
Val blushed with embarrassment. This is what man hath wrought, she thought.
No cure for cancer.
No cure for childhood leukemia.
Yet mankind has developed eighty different methods to give a man a boner.
All human knowledge in existence was collected and available in a device literally at the palm of one’s hand, yet the device was used to watch videos of stupid human challenges and to arrange the occasional booty call.
And now, the apex of technology, life itself had been summoned from the petri dish of science. Humanity created living, breathing creatures, these animal-toys that should not exist.
Humanity, in its infinite wisdom, also decided that it would provide the masses with said animal toys from a warehouse that sat between a Best Buy and a Wendy’s. For money, of course.
No wonder I hate people, Val thought.
The blue mother locked eyes with Val. “Be nyu mummah?” it asked.
Val stared.
It cocked its head to the side. “Be nyu mummah?” it asked again.
Val rolled her eyes.
The blue mother leaned closer, and in a louder tone declared “am GUD mummah – babbehs gwow big an’ stwong!” It seemed to be uncertain if she was getting her message across.
It shouted “Be nyu mummah and gif sketties an’ toys?”
Val shook her head, made a hrrmpppph sound, then turned to look in the next bin.
Now the blue fluffy was agitated. “Pwease!” it begged. It rolled over, squashing her tiny suckling babies with her engorged, fleshy crotch-tits. It ignored the pained chirping coming from underneath its own belly, and waddled as close to Val as the bin would allow. “BE NYU MUMMAH?!” it cried.
The foals cheeped and peeped louder now, as if to remind their mother of their presence.
“BE NY MUMMAH?!” it shouted again. It was on its hind legs, peeking out of the top of the bin, stomping and pounding for attention.
Val continued to ignore the creature. She investigated the bin full of older foals. No stupid, plodding mother creature was present for these foals. In this bin, milk bottles were attached to the corners. A few foals pushed a tennis ball back and forth to each other. Their tails were long, but their manes hadn’t developed yet. Their fluff was more like a thick layer of fuzz.
Val watched one of the velvety foals hoist its little body into a litter box, bear down, grunt, and shit. The vermin looked up to Val with hopeful, innocent eyes, and announced “Am makin’ gud poopies!”
“Congratulations,” Val said to the foal. “You should be very proud of your shitting abilities.”
The foal giggled, oblivious to the condescension. “Be nyu mummah?” it inquired.
The blue bitch-mare in the previous bin heard the foal’s request and launched into jealous panic. “Nuuu! Nuuu!” the blue mare wailed. “Nyth wady am be BEWWY’S NYU MUMMAH!” It pounded the side of the bin rapidly, but it’s toy hooves were squishy and useless, it barely registered as noise. “Nu be dat DUMMEH’s mummah! Be BEWWY’S mummah! Wady haf tu!”
Val turned to the blue fluffy. She raised an eyebrow at the demanding mother. “Do you ever shut your fat maw?” she asked. “I don’t have to do anything.”
The velvety foal with the good shits began to cry and peep. “Nu leaf babbeh!” it cried out. “Nu faiw! Wan’ nyu mummah!” The little foal sobbed and cried.
The wailing of the mother and baby foals caused the rest of the fluffies to start babbling with concern.
“God, you fuckers are noisy.” Val stood above the blue mother fluffy, who continued to mash its pliable, pleather hooves against the sides.
It stomped and beat at the walls of the bin with the force of a dozen cotton balls.
Val noticed that two of its babies were dead, another was almost dead; smashed under the hooves and tits of the panic-stricken mother.
The light-yellow foal lay dead with entrails hanging out of its mouth and rectum. The light blue fluffy was intact, but bent in a deadly position. Its neck had snapped, and the top of its head lay flat against its hind quarters.
The darker yellow foal, not quite dead, tried to crawl away. It pulled itself slowly forward by reaching out with its one functional front leg. Both back legs were smashed and ruined. A pink and purple section of slick intestine bulged from a hole in its peach-fuzz belly, a smear of blood and mucus trailed behind it.
“Um, you killed your kids,” Val stated.
“Wat?” The blue fluffy mother froze. She stared into Val’s cold yellow-brown eyes trying to comprehend what was just said.
“Look," Val said. “Look at your babies. You killed them, you stupid pig.”
The blue fluffy looked down. She saw the two dead babies, and one more baby that chose that moment to breathe its last, rattled breath.
The mother let out a terrible SCREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE, followed by more wailing and stomping. “Bewwy am dummeh mummah!” she yelled to the room. She lifted the dead blue foal between her front hooves, squeezing and hugging it to her chest fluff. Its limp neck lolled about as she cried “Mummah hewe babbeh! Huggies fwum mummah wiww mak owies gu away!”
Three surviving foals had long since skittered to the farthest corner, their tiny legs pawing at the wall, seeking safety from their crazed mother. “Bewwy am WOWSTEST MUMMAH!” She shook the dead blue foal back and forth. “Wai nu wakies, babbeh?” she wailed. “Huggies mak babbeh mak bweevies!”
“Hugs don’t fix shit,” Val said. She watched the mother fluffy with amusement.
“But huggies fix ebbyting,” the stupid creature insisted.
“You can’t fix dead,” Val replied. “Dead is dead.”
Voluminous tears flowed from the fluffy’s glassy eyes, which soaked into the polyester-looking “fur” around its snout and down its cheeks. The tears poured from the heartbroken idiot. They can cry real tears, Val thought.
Val remembered a doll her Aunt Pat had given her as a child. The doll would cry “real tears” until you stuffed a toy bottle into its permanently open pink plastic lips.
Val hated the doll immediately. It was a doll. It didn’t need to cry. It never got yelled at; it could never skin its knee. The doll would never get her hair pulled by mean boys at school. The doll would never have to stand in the corner for forgetting to raise her hand in class.
The doll didn’t need tears and it made Val angry that such a stupid toy even existed.
She forced a smile for her Aunt Pat and thanked her for the gift with an awkward hug; by that age, Val had learned enough about social conduct and familial expectations to pass as a regular child.
As soon as Aunt Pat had left for the bus station, Val wrapped the plastic baby doll in a ratty towel and carried it several blocks to the old fairgrounds. It was the place where the town’s young kids played in the summer, and where the old kids took turns passing around a bottle of their parent’s liquor.
Val dropped the doll into a shallow pit, the pit that the sixth graders played marbles in. The doll’s shiny dead eyes stared up at the endless blue sky.
“Die, stupid doll.” Val pulled a bottle ofs fingernail polish remover from her backpack and splashed the doll with it, taking extra care to soak the fake hair and polyester dress with acetone.
Striking it against the matchbook swiped from the kitchen, Val lit a match on her fourth try. She dropped the flame into the pit, and smiled as the doll erupted into blue flame and black smoke. Val laughed as the hateful doll melted and burned. The doll’s smiling, open pout melted and contorted into a gruesome frown. Take that.
After several minutes, only a blackened heap of unidentifiable junk remained.
The blue mare, still sobbing and wailing for her babbehs, let out a stream of ochre shit that splattered the side of the bin and coated her three dead foals. She fell back on her haunches with a shitty splat, crying and scree-ing all the while.
I should go, Val thought. But then the double doors swung open.
Val turned to see a tall, auburn-haired man enter the room. He was a FluffMart employee, wearing a dark green vest. A lanyard with an ID tag hung around his neck, but he was too far for Val to read his name.
The man looked surprised. “Hello…” he said. “Are you back here by yourself?”
Val looked around. “Sure seems that way,” she said. “Am I not supposed to be back here?”
The man glanced at the clock on the wall. “It’s still early,” he said. “I didn’t know there were any customers here yet. My name is Jeff. I am the general manager for FluffMart 497.”
“Hello Jeff. It’s nice to meet you.”
He held his hands out, palms facing up, as if to present the fluffies to a tour group. “Behold, any fluffy imaginable, we carry. And if you can’t find one you like, we will find one and get it shipped here. We go the extra mile for customers.” He took a faux bow.
Val laughed. “Well, I am not sure if I will be a customer or not,” she said. “Just looking.”
“Can I ask your name?”
Val pondered for a moment. Was that a twinkle in Jeff’s dark eyes? “I’m Val. Well, my name is Valeriya – but you can call me Val. And if I am not supposed to be back here, I can leave.”
Jeff nodded. “Nice to meet you as well, Valeriya. Val. And you are okay, no, you are great! To be here, I mean.” He looked away and then back. He clasped his hands as if he didn’t know what to do with them. “We try to always have at least one FluffMart employee in here, but two people have called off sick today. We like to keep watch in here. Especially around the foals. Just to watch for abuser kids, stuff like that, you know.”
“Abuse your kids?” Val frowned.
Jeff chuckled. “No. God no. Abuser. As in, someone who abuses fluffies. The Fluffy industry has its own lingo.”
“Wow. Antonio – my coworker – he mentioned fluffy abuse, but I thought he was kidding.”
“He wasn’t kidding,” Jeff replied. “Abuse equipment sells just as much as, if not more, than general pet supplies.”
“I see. But from what I can tell, they do a fine job abusing themselves,” Val said. “And to be clear, I’m not abusing any of them. Don’t call the cops! I surrender!” She raised her hands and laughed at the joke.
Jeff grinned. “We wouldn’t call the cops,” he said. “We’d just send you over to the Abuse section.”
“Abuse section?”
“I take it you are new to fluffies?”
Val shook his hand. “How can you tell,” she joked. “To be honest, this is my first time seeing them.”
“A fluffy virgin!” he said. “Well, what do you think so far?” Jeff asked.
“I’ve still got 99 percent of the store to peruse,” she said. “I am not impressed with this one.” She motioned to the blue mummah fluffy who was sobbing quietly with huu huu huus. “She killed half of her foals trying to get at me. Are they all this dumb?”
“Fwuffy NU DUMMEH!” yelled the blue mare. Val cringed from its sudden shriek.
Jeff’s jaw dropped. “Again?!”
He furrowed his brows and gritted his teeth. “Again?” Val moved to the side as his demeanor morphed from General Manager to angry General Manager; Jeff rushed across the room. He reached into the bin and yanked the blue fluffy out by the scruff of its neck. “You killed more foals?” he shouted at the blue fluffy. Jeff peered into the bin where the dead foals lay covered in excrement, and the living foals piled into the corner, shaking with fear, hunger, or maybe both.
Shit dripped from the mother fluffy’s ass; some of it hit the bin, most of it splattered onto the linoleum floor. “What do you have to say for yourself, Berry?” he demanded.
Val admired Jeff’s strong forearms as he interacted with the stupid, foal killing Berry. What a dumb animal, she thought. A toy. It’s a toy.
But they seemed so alive.
“Ba’ upthies! Ba’ Upthies!” Berry cried. “Pu’ Fwuffy down! Pu’ Fwuffy down NAO!”
“You got it.” Jeff released his grip on Berry, and dropped the fluffy to the floor; she hit the floor with a thud and a crack. A bone peeked out from a broken leg.
“Nu huwt Bewwy! Pwease! Pwease pu’ Bewwy back wif babbehs! Nee’ miwkies!”
“You’re out of chances,” Jeff said, not looking at the biotoy, which began to SCREEEEE again.
As Berry wailed and cried on the cold, dirty floor, Jeff used a gentle touch to lift each tiny surviving foal from Berry’s bin. He carried them into the glass enclosure where additional fluffy-packed cages were stacked in rows ten high. Each foal was placed in front of another weird-titted female Fluffy, this one a pale pink with a shiny golden mane. The fluffy’s eyes shone with delight and pride. She lifted her jointless front legs to receive the tiny foals one by one.
Val watched in awe as the biotoy as it placed two foals on its crotchtits. It lifted the third foal and then began to sing. Val couldn’t hear the song through the glass, but it was just as well. The whole room was too noisy to begin with.
Jeff returned to the floor and rinsed his hands in a deep sink.
“Wow,” Val said. “This is all…really…something.” She watched through the glass as the pink fluffy rotated the foals to ensure they each got a taste of milk and love.
“That’s Denver,” he explained, reaching down to pick up Berry with one hand. “She just had a whole litter of stillborn foals. Plenty of milk to go around.”
“It…I mean, she… She seems like a good mom,” Val said.
“She is,” Jeff agreed. “That’s what you will learn, I mean, if you decide to go down the Fluffy path. They all have personalities, just like people.”
Jeff walked over to the double doors and peered out the window to the main showroom. He made a clicking sound with his tongue. “Store isn’t too busy yet, “ he said with a curious smile. “Never really gets busy on a Monday, anyway.” He turned to Val and expanded his smile into a toothy, charming grin. “Can I show you something wild?
Val followed Jeff past the rows of cages, past a broom closet, and through a door marked FLUFF-MART STAFF ONLY in large, stenciled letters. When they passed the cages, the mass of crayon-hued Fluffies moved as close to Val as their cages would allow, demanding “Be nyu mummah?” and “Gif Fwuffy housie and sketties?”
She bared her teeth at them in a mean smile. Jeff noticed her grimacing at the Fluffies, and she blushed. “Sorry,” she said.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “It’s a good thing. You might be a natural.”
Val wondered what he meant.
The duo arrived deep in the bowels of FluffMart 497, near a storage-slash-equipment room. A set of washers and dryers stood ready for some FluffMart entry level noob to fill them with soiled materials. An autoclave built into the wall was covered in DANGER stickers. Some industrial whirrrrr sound grew the farther they traversed the basement.
“This is what I wanted to show you,” Jeff said, in a voice loud enough to carry over the sounds of the equipment. An iron and steel monstrosity spanned from floor to ceiling. A grid of multiple red, blue, and yellow buttons was arranged just to the side of a heavy door on the face of the machine. Jeff slapped the side of the steel beast. “Ever see an incinerator before?” There was that twinkle in his eyes again.
Val felt the hair on the back of her neck stand up. She felt her stomach sink like the floor had been pulled from under her. What the fuck was she thinking? Why did she follow this strange man, alone, to the back of this loud room in the basement for fucks sake? Where no one would hear or could hear her screams. Not your finest moment, Val. She reached into her purse for her keys, feeling out for the longest and sharpest…
Jeff may have picked up on her fear. “Hey, we just use this to get rid of dead fluffies. And bad fluffies.” He looked at Berry, hanging from his grip. Berry was silent, her eyes were wide with terror. Her entire body shook with fear. “I thought you might like to watch me give Berry the ol’ Sleepies.”
Val relaxed her grip on the keys. She released a breath that she didn’t realize she was holding. “Oh…oh. You’re going to burn it? Not me?” She gave a nervous laugh.
“SCREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE,” scree’d Berry, now flailing about again. “Nu buwnie huwties! Nuuuuu nuuuu nuuuuu buwn Fwuffy pwease pwease nu buwn Bewwy!” Berry’s eyes were practically a fountain of tears.
“Oh my God,” Jeff said. He face-palmed with his free hand. “I am so sorry to scare you,” he said, while Berry’s legs ran an air marathon. “Leave it to me to just casually take a gorgeous woman into a dark basement five seconds after I met her,” he said.
Val raised an eyebrow.
“I mean, you are very…” Jeff stammered. “I just thought maybe you’d like to see…
“I would love to see what happens,” Val said, rescuing Jeff from himself. “But yes, maybe don’t be taking the ladies into the basement alone in the future,” she added. Jeff smiled. Even in the dark of the basement, Val could see him blushing.
Jeff turned his attention to the creature.
“Bewwy am GUD!” the blue mare insisted. “Bewwy am GUD MUMMAH! Bewwy nu wan’ go fowebah sweepy! Am GUD!"
“Oh are you?” Jeff asked Berry, raising the blue bitch to look her in the eye. “Are you a good fluffy? You haven’t mentioned your babies, your babies that you KILLED, a single time. That doesn’t sound like a good fluffy to me.”
At the mention of her babies, Berry’s eyes seemed to re-focus. Her little mouth gaped open. Val could almost sense the squeaky hamster wheel of a brain turning slowly in the Fluffy’s feeble mind. Berry burst into more tears, tears which dripped through the fluff and onto the floor, with the shit-drips that continued to pile there.
How much liquid do these things hold? Val wondered. She made a mental note to ask Jeff after the incineration was complete.
“AM MUMMAH!” Berry squealed. “Wan’ babbehs! Babbehs nee’ Bewwy miwkies!” Val scrunched her nose in disgust. Milky droplets seeped from the fluffy’s nipples as the doomed creature remembered that she had babies. “Wan’ babbehs! Bewwy nu kiww babbehs!”
“Your babies are with Denver now. Denver is a good mummah,” Jeff said. He punched the largest red button on the side of the machine, and the belly of the steel incinerator roared to life.
“Nuuuuu!” cried Berry, pawing at the air, chomping toward Jeff, trying as hard as she could, all in vain, to escape his clutch. “AM BEWWY’S BAABBBBEEEEEEEEEEEEHS!!!”
“You haven’t run screaming for the door yet,” Jeff said as he winked at Val. “You ready for this?”
Val felt a tingle of unexpected pleasure in her spine. Her mouth watered. She opened her mouth to speak but couldn’t think of anything to say. Why did she feel excited at the prospect of watching a fluffy get burned alive? She nodded. “Ready,” she said.
Jeff smiled. He reached for the metal handle, turned it downward and away, and the door swung open with a deep metal groan. Val felt the heat from the belly of the incinerator on her cheeks. The roar of the fire drowned out Berry’s screams.
With a flick of his wrist, Jeff flung the screaming blue mummah into the fire.
