Screeeeeeeeeeeeee!!
The world stood still.
Cheesecake couldn’t hear her newborn son’s shrill little cry. It sliced through the chill winter air then faded into the distance like the whistle of a tiny firework.
She could barely hear Daddeh cracking up loudly at her baby’s great misfortune.
She couldn’t hear the blustery sound of the winter wind hitting the house.
She couldn’t hear the birds, still chirping and peeping as they flitted about in the bare branches outside.
The only sound Cheesecake could hear was that of her own pounding heart trying to break from her chest and follow her discarded baby into the unknown.
Cheesecake screamed.
The scream was so sudden, and so loud, and so full of palpable anguish that it actually caused Martin to startle.
It was disturbingly… human.
He was almost worried that the neighbors would think he was torturing a toddler while his parents were away. He decided it might be best to keep his fun confined to the house proper from then on.
Cheesecake’s body reacted automatically. Despite the momentary delay in her reaction, brought on by pure shock and disbelief, the royal-blue mother fluffy was already out the door and bounding down the back steps into the sea of frigid white ahead. There was no hesitation at the thought of the cold or the wet. Her son was in danger! Her baby needed her!
The fluffy trudged labouriously through the moist, heavy snow that was piled all the way up to the height of her back. Martin just watched her from the doorway. Cheesecake had to leap with each advance and still barely made any progress across the backyard in the time a human could have made it all the way to the far fence.
The snow kept falling down.
"Pwease, meanie cwoudies! Mummah nee’ tu sabe Wee-tawd! Pwease, pwease nu moa cowdie-spwinklies! Pwee-hee-hease!"
While Retard was flying through the air, he had utterly disappeared among the other falling white clumps. Cheesecake reared up onto her hind leggies to try and see over the top of the snow. By doing that, she was able to see all around the yard. But despite that, she couldn’t find any sign of where little Retard had come to rest.
A more experienced individual would be conscious of one cruel fact of fluffy biology that neither Martin, nor his miserable screaming fluffy, were aware of: An infant fluffy as young as Cheesecake’s foals could only survive out there for between five and ten minutes. Even short-term exposure to the temperature it was in the yard that day was deadly.
When one factored in the sloppy wetness of this particular batch of snow, it would have cut those survival times almost in half. Retard was out there somewhere. He was all alone, sopping wet, surrounded by snow, and warmed by nothing on earth but his own ever-weakening shivers.
The tissue damage had already begun to take hold in Retard’s stubby legs and in his tiny ears.
Cheesecake, either not knowing or not accepting the futility of her struggle, persisted. She cried and wailed the entire time for little Retard to come back to her. She pled and begged and sobbed at the top of her lungs for Daddy to help her find her baby.
Where was her baby!?
“Pwease, Daddeh! Mummah can’t fine widdew babbeh! Huu-huu-huuu… Babbeh hab juss disappeaw! Snowies am hiding babbeh away fwum Mummah! Babbeh am white! Ebewyting ow-side am white! Nuuuuu-huu-huuuuu-huuuuuuu!!”
Martin smiled. This was almost as fun as he’d hoped it would be. And he knew he had plenty of time to make sure that the fun only got funner from there.
Cheesecake’s luxurious blue fluff was becoming soaked and matted by the snow. She could feel the mounting drag exhausting her leggies. She struggled and continued pushing forward despite being soaked through to her skin. Snowballs of varying sizes hung from her fluff and made it so heavy.
She didn’t stop sobbing. She couldn’t. She was crying so hard that she could hardly breathe. Strings of drool and snot were hanging from her muzzle and burning her lips when the winter wind blew.
In a fit of abject desperation, Cheesecake began to gather snow up into her forelegs. The fluffy hugged onto a small mound of snow that she had managed to pack together. She compelled the snow to return her white pegasus. She attempted to bargain with the fallen snow for her son’s very life.
“Snowies! Snowies, Cheesecake am mummah… Pwease… Pwease, pwetty snowies! Gib Mummah back hew widdew babbeh Wee-tawd…” Her tears fell and landed on the snow’s surface with heavy pitter-patters.
Martin could barely make out her words through Cheesecake’s agonized sobs, but he distinctly heard her refer to the lost white baby by its given name. He snorted with laughter.
“Cheesecake’s babbeh nee’ Mummah! Pwease, snowies, pwease gib Wee-tawd back tuu Mummah. Mummah pwomise awways be gud fwuffy, foweba, an’ eba! Neba make pee-pees ow poopies on you again! Neba teww snowies to go 'way anymowe, awways be happies tu see snowies fwum nao on! Pwease, if snowies juss gib babbeh baa-haa-haaack!”
The sadistic high school drop-out also found it hilarious that he could, at first, hear Retard chirping for his mother to save him. But the chirping had already become too frail and weak for Martin to even hear it anymore. It had already been too quiet for about a minute or so before Cheesecake’s attempt at communicating with the unfeeling forces of nature.
Martin stepped away from the doorway. Cheesecake was unaware he’d even left, and remained distracted with begging the snowies to tell her where Retard was. After a few minutes, Daddeh emerged into the bakyard wearing a jacket, sweatpants and boots. He trudged through the nearly-knee-high snow and came to stop beside his crying pegasus fluffy.
“Come on back, Cheesecake,” came Daddeh’s voice. Cheesecake hadn’t even noticed him approach her, let alone that he had removed her earplugs. The air around them was deathly silent. She stared ahead into space.
There was nothing. Not the chirping of the songbirds, nor the chirping of a white wingie babbeh.
She just stared.
“Cheesecake! Now!!” Martin shouted at her.
“Nuu-huuuuu, Daddeh!” She exploded back at him.
He had so many memories of so many toddlers screaming like aircraft taking off all because their parents wanted to leave the store without buying them some stupid toy or trinket first. He’d been one of those kids at one point. That was a primal scream.
“What was that, Cheesecake?” Now that he had her attention, he was scarily calm.
“Nuu-huuu, Daddeh! Cheesecake nu can go! Cheesecake hab tu fine Wee-tawd! Hab to sabe babbeh!” She swung her furry head wildly side to side in refusal. “Mummah nu can weab pweh-shus widdew white wingie babbeh out in da cowdies and windies aww awone!”
Martin was drinking it all in; The sound of her voice, hoarse and pained from screaming. The way her eyes were puffy and red from her endless tears. The way the snot hung from her flaring nostrils onto her chapped lips. The way her entire body was shaking, wracked with grief.
He loved it.
“Cowd am bad fow babbehs! Su bewwy, bewwy bad fow babbeh-heh-hehs!!” She continued bawling. The adult pegasus’s big tear-filled eyes were zapped by the stinging cold. No pain she had ever felt could have compared to the heart-hurties.
But Martin wasn’t bullshitting around.
“Come inside now, or I’ll leave you out here forever. And let’s just say, I’ll have to figure out what to do with your other babies if you feel like breaking Rule Three again.”
Cheesecake squeaked in dread. Oh no. Her other babies… She had been so beside herself with the loss of Retard to the snow that she had almost forgotten that she had four babies left who still needed her. Idiot, Fuckface, Dumbass, and Failure. Her children.
Cheesecake was afraid of leaving Retard outside in the snow. But, Cheesecake was even more afraid of leaving her remaining young alone with her daddy. Her daddy, who had fed her white wingie baby to the snowies. Her helpless, innocent newborn baby.
Her daddy was… a monster.
The fluffy mother’s instincts (or maybe her programming?) told her that whatever had happened to Retard, all she had left was to focus on protecting her other babies.
Martin, still kneeling at her level, addressed his fluffy again.
“Cheesecake, it’s time to go in.”
“Daddeh… Daddeh was howdin’ Wee-tawd wight dawe. Daddeh hab him. Why Daddeh fwow Wee-tawd? Why Daddeh feed Mummah’s white wingie babbeh to da snowies? Why?” Cheesecake stared at him. Her lips quivered and she couldn’t stop shaking. The snowballs clinging to her fluff and hair made it heavy and cumbersome, but were also acting as icepacks against her skin.
“Because, Cheesecake. I wanted to. Because you made me angry. You needed to be punished and that was how I wanted to teach you not to disobey me. It wouldn’t have happened if you had just obeyed rule three.” Martin raised a hand and stroked Cheesecake’s light-blonde mane gently. She flinched. She couldn’t think of anything to say back to Daddeh.
“You loved Retard. I know.” He brought the hand down to stroke Cheesecake under her chin. “So, my little fluffy, I did it to hurt you. And I hurt you, because I wanted to. And I wanted to, because of your actions.” Martin stared into Cheesecake’s eyes. It was so unsettling that a toy would have eyes that could look so real. They almost looked like there was actual life in there.
“Now, Daddy has to ask you. Why didn’t you listen to my rules? And why didn’t you find your baby?” He could see the gears turning slowly behind those unsettling maroon orbs. “I guess you must not have wanted to protect him. Not badly enough, I mean. Oh well.”
Cheesecake just sat in silence. Only the low sound of the whistling wind, and the faraway siren of a firetruck, broke the absolute nothingness that hung in the air. Snow continued to accumulate, landing on Martin’s and Cheesecake’s shoulders and hair.
“I only hurt Retard because his mom was such a bad fluffy. If you’re just a good fluffy, Daddy won’t hurt your babies. Okay?”
Cheesecake didn’t even have the energy left in her diminutive body to argue with him. She couldn’t say that what Daddeh was saying didn’t make sense. And she remembered what happened last time she argued. She was done. All the physically and emotionally exhausted fluffy wanted, besides to have back her white wingie babbeh, was to go inside again. She raised her front leggies up into the ‘upsies,’ position and Martin scooped her into his arms.
He walked the short distance back to the house. That was enough for the day. He didn’t want to wear his fun out too quickly!
Martin carried her up the back steps, over the threshold, and back into the kitchen which had now lost all of its heat from the back door being left open. Martin, Cheesecake still in hand, approached the thermostat and turned it higher so the main level of the house would warm. The two of them made their way to the door of the basement.
“Oh, and, uh… You wanna know something, Cheesecake?” Daddy looked down at her and frowned.
“W-what is it, Daddeh…?”
“You may be the best at Hide-and-go-Peepies, but you suck ass at Where’s the Baby.”