Tom was at the vending machine. Guy takes forever to pick a snack. I’m casually checking my phone when Phoebe pops in carrying a babbling mare in a kennel and a similarly colored foal nestled against her collarbone. “Hey, I just had a client change his mind about a foal, I guess he found one on the street? Anyway can you deal with this thing?” Phoebe’s great, I can handle this for her. Her frantic demeanor conceals someone who is terrifyingly in control of her life and the world around her. She just pushes herself stupid hard.
Like sure, 150 mph is fast, but if you get that same car going 250? You’re gonna get a wind powered haircut.
“Yeah, I got it. Need anything done with him specifically?” She stops. Left wink. Right wink. Three standard blinks. Ah. “Loud and clear, I’ll make sure he gets the absolute bestest new mummah we can find. This adorable babbeh will be well taken care of.”
Phoebe smiles, pleased I read her signal. The fluffy is…less inclined towards emotional subtlety. "Weawwy? Hooway! Wukweesha suuuu happy fow babbeh! Goobai babbeh! Mummah nebba fowget ou! Mummah awways wub babbeh!" Phoebe started walking out as the mare carried on. Oof. So she’s this month’s Lucretia. Well hey, at least this doomed little shit doesn’t have to meet Tarquin. I’m sure he’s not gonna be thrilled about dying but I guarantee whatever I do with him pales in comparison to that sick fuck.
The foal snaps me out of my daze. “Nicey mistew? Ou can gu fow nummies fwom nummie bawks!” Tom had chosen while I was having flashbacks to reading “comment cards” Tarquin sent last February. Yeesh. I put in my dollar and get an Almond Joy. As it drops down, the foal speaks up again. “Mistew? Can wittwe babbeh hab a nummy? Babbeh am weawwy hungwy an mummah nu hewe fow gif babbeh miwkies nu mowe.” Jesus. Already with this shit. “Fine. I’ve got some formula back in my office. You can have that.” He scrunches his face as I carry him down the hall towards my workroom. “Nuuu, babbeh nu dwink fowmyuwa, babbeh kbwy dwink bestest miwkies. Wen mistew gif bestest miwkies fow babbeh?” I was feeling less and less shitty about killing this thing every word. Just can’t cop to it out here. Don’t want to tip off mummah and ruin her for…
Man this kid lucked the fuck out. I’m barely even gonna get weird with it, and he’ll be dead before I open my Almond Joy.
As I enter, closing the door behind me, I exhale. Finally. The only thing thst gets me through the day is poking and prodding at these little shit machines emotions to see what happens, and I can’t do that while being nice. Mummah has been yelling, I can hear how hoarse her voice is. She’s desperately trying to comfort her pointy babbeh and pleading her daughter to stop kicking him. “NUUU! BABBEHS NU FITE! NU GIF HUWTIES TU BWUDDAS! NU BE BAD BABBEH!” She sees me come in and starts begging for help. “Pwease! Babbehs in twubbwe! Pwease nicey mistew, sabe babbehs!” The foal in my hand is trembling. I can feel him scootching his hooves while he tries to back up with no room to move. Without acknowledging the mare I go to my workbench and set the foal in an immobilizer. “Nice mistew? Weggies nu weach tu gwound, babbeh nu can moov!” Hey, no shit.
I return to the tank with the siblings. The earthie filly is just going to town on her brother. Not doing much damage, but that leg looks awful. I think this lucky little shit might be, like, done. I pick him up delicately and his sister gives me a good hearty “paff” with her hooves. “Hoomin! Put bwudda down su can hab wowstest stompies! Bwudda nee say bwudda sowwy! Bwudda haftu apowogize!” Jesus, entitled much?
The unicorn has seen better days. His leg isn’t broken, but it’s been dislocated from his hip and his other front ankle seems to have been bent a few directions. He’s young so it’ll heal, but it’s pretty extreme so it’ll heal shitty. Damn. Hole in one. Two to go. I set the weeping colt down in a tank of NummieGel and reset his shoulder. He’s still gagged. Shit, his sister didn’t even notice. She thinks he’s just not sorry. Perfect. God I’m fucking on today, fuck yeah.
I remove the tape from his muzzle and let him open his mouth. A couple teeth fall out. Not as many as he lost. Must have swallowed them. “I see you already had teefie nummies. Eat some NummieGel and sleep, you’ve had a rough day.” He barely registered what I said but he’s slowly gnawing on the gel and making a sort of low and droning whine.
Back at the tank the filly is now bucking like a bronco and visibly furious. She’s really mad at her brother. I stop amd make a note for the customer. She didn’t request this specifically and she’s not going Smarty, but this is still an assertive foal. She’s not who I’m getting now, though. Her arc is set. But wingie brother?
“Okay wingie babbeh, time for your punishment.” He gasps and starts tripping over himself scrambling backwards. “Nuuu! Babbeh nu du nuffin! Babbeh onwy watch! Nu gof huwties tu bwudda! Dat am meanie sissy! Nu huwt wingie babbeh!” His sister turns on him. Her anger is tempered with what appears to be a genuine feeling of betrayal. “Nu! Was twyin’ tu stick up fow babbehs! Nu caww babbeh meanie, am ou bestest sissy!” She starts clumsily galloping over as I pick him up. “Oh don’t worry, we’ll deal with you next. It’s okay, I’ll give him hurties for you.” Now he was really freaking out. “Nu! Nu huwt babbeh! Am onwy wittwe babbeh! Nu wan die! Nu am eben big babbeh yet! Wan be big fwuffy!” I lightly flick his nose and he squeaks, clutching his face with his little hoofsies. “I’m not gonna kill you. But you and your sister hurt your brother pretty bad, so for it to be fair, I’ll have to hurt you too.”
He’s begging for mercy as my grip tightens. I grab the dropper from my tray and hold it up to his eyeAbuse_Sir. “Nuuuu! Wat dat? Nu put nuffin in see pwaces!”
“Shut up, it’s just gonna fix your eyes.” He started sobbing. “But see pwaces nu am bwoken! Nu hab nuffin wong wif see pwaces!” Luckily he’s too dumb to close his eyes, he’s tok scared to think that hard. A couple drops in his right eye and the surface sort of bubbled for a second before his iris and lens clouded over. Now he’s shrieking and squinting his eyes in pain, so I put the dropper back and pick up my hand laser. A foal’s eyelids aren’t enough to block out most light, so I hold it up to his other eye and hit the button. Three short bursts and I kill every rod and cone he’s got on that side. Blindings are weird, and they’re even weirder when the two eyes are blinded in different ways. The one I put the fluid in still has a basically functioning cornea but everything it sees through is permanently fucked. This means it’ll be sending his brain different signals than the other eye, which is sending no signals. Neither one is useful for forming a visual understanding of the space around you, but they’re bad in different ways and it makes fluffies even more disoriented.
Think of it this way: I found a way to give a blind foal astigmatism that’ll actually bother him. Genuinely kind of curious how he’ll deal, may have to do one for myself just to see. He’s shrieking and pissing and sobbing and slapping his hooves on me. “NUUUUU! WAI GIF WOWSTEST TU BABBEH? WITE AM TU BWITE, HUWT BABBEH SEE PWACE! BABBEH NU CAN SEE, HEWP MUMMAH! HEWP SISSY!” I set him back down and his sister runs over, no longer angry. She’s figured it out. She’s figured out at least the shape of what I’m doing. She starts hugging him when he pushes her away.
"Nu! Gu way, meanie sissy! Ou make hoomin munstah angwy! Nao wingie babbeh nu can see nu mowe!!! Hatechu! Nu tawk tu babbeh nebba 'gain ow ewse!" The hurt in her eyes is a thing of beauty. Mummah has screamed her voice out and is just making wheezing screeches and dumb tapping noises.
I pick up the last unmarred foal and hold her close. “Do you see? Do you see what you did?” I hold her next to her pointie brother. “He’s never gonna walk right. He’s certainly never going to run again. Hell, after the stomping you gave his front weggies, I don’t think he’ll ever be able to play with blockies or a ball.” She’s starting to cry more. “Nu! Am sowwy! Meanie hoomin twick fwuffy!” I shift my thumb into her mouth to shut her up. Then I reach down and flick him in the ribs. “Owwies! Nuuu, pwease! Meanie fiwwy nu huwt babbeh nu mowe!” Holy shit she kicked him so hard he stopped calling her ‘sissy.’ And she noticed.
I bring her to her other brother, who hasn’t stopped screaming at her, thinking she’s still there. A blind foal has very little to distract himself with, and often they can grow extremely resentful. "Because of you, your brother will never see again. Ever! He’s gonna live his whole life in the scariest darkies ever!" She manages to yelp through my thumb and I pull it out. “Pwease! Am su sowwy! Am sowwy huwt famiwy! Nu make babbeh dummeh babbeh, was onwy twyin’ tu sabe wingie bwudda fwum meanie pointie bwudda! He nu wan udda babbehs awound, ou say su!” I chuckle as I boop her lightly on the snout. “Well since all the wingie one did was watch, I took his eyes. You did a whole lot of kicking, but your brother already has messed up legs, so I’m not going to hurt your legs.” She seemed relieved. “Fankyu fow nu huwt gud fwaffy…” She tried to nuzzle my hand in a desperate attempt at sympathy as I picked up the sewing needle from my desk. “But all you wanted was an apology, right? To hear your brother say he was sorry for lying to you?” She starts nodding emphatically. “Uh huh, uh huh, das wite! Bwudda gib bof udda babbehs heawt huwties wen nu teww babbehs bowt nice mistahs test.” Sure, whatever.
“Y’know, I’ll let them decide. Hey wingie babbeh, should your sissy get hurties?” He stops his angry grumbling for a moment to shout approval. “And you, unicorn? What do you think?” He weakly tells me “meanie sissy nu am sissy, gif huwties, sissy hate aww babbehs huhuhuhuhuuuu.”
“Well since you want to hear an apology, your punishment is that you’ll never hear it!” She looked confused. Good. She doesn’t understand what I’m doing. I hold the needle up to her ear canal and before she can finish asking what’s in my hand, I plunge it in and annihilate the delicate structures of her inner ear. She starts screaming immediately. “NUUUUUU! NU HUWT HEAW PWACES! NEED HEAW PWACES FOW HEAW SONG AN WAFFIN’ AN FWENS AN BABBEHS AN-” Pop. Other one. “NUUUUUUUUUUU!”
I set her down in the tub with wingie brother. She’s running around and stomping and shouting and carrying on, trying to figure out why she can’t hear noises. It’ll be some time before she understands it.
I get the client on the phone in my side office, the one the merchandise can’t hear me from. I fill her in on the particulars, she’s delighted. She seems genuinely excited at the challenge of repairing such a broken family. While on the line with her, I have a thought.
“Hey, so I know your order was for the three siblings, but I’ve got a slightly smaller foal who’s just gonna go to waste. Between the filly and the Pegasus you have ‘see no evil’ and ‘hear no evil,’ how about a ‘speak no evil?’ I can get your babbehs all packaged up then tell him a bunch of fucked up shit and take his vocal cords so he can’t tell anyone.” The hearty laugh from the other end tells me this lady is exactly the kind of hugboxer who goes to a place like this for foals. “That sounds excellent, I do so love a good challenge.” We hash out the rate, I get my percentage, boom. Between him and the mare I’ve turned a standard Devil’s Triangle into two separate sales with an impulse commission paying off double. Fuck me, I can afford good weed to mix with my salvia tonight.
I re-enter my office. The interns have already packaged and readied the family, I fill them in on the whole “wait just a sec, got one more” situation and return to the terrified babbeh who’s been in hysterics this whole time. I get really close and snarl for him to shut up, and he obeys. I grab his face tight. “You are going to live with a very very mean lady. She’s the reason all those babbehs had such awful hurties, and she’s the reason you’re going to have them too.” I swing around to face the mare. “You hear that? I did all that shit to your babies because their new mummah asked me to! And now they’re going to live with her!” Bingo. She’s a hysterical mess. I flip my pickup light so the interns know to come back for the shipment, and I return to my last patient.
"Now open wide. Your new mummah doesn’t want you telling the other babbehs what she did, so I’m going to take your voice away now. You’ll be a chirpy fluffy forever." I pulled my thumb out and grabbed my ThroatScraper 69420 and set it to “debark.” The last words that fluffy will ever say are drowned out by the noise the machine produces. I’m sure they were profound. I don’t feel too bad. Sure, these fluffies all have terrible maladies to live with, but the house they’re going to is one of love and safety. The worst day of all of their lives is behind them now.
I place the shivering, sobbing foal in a transport can and hand him to the intern. Dave from receiving comes by for the mare, and I eat my almond bar.
Huh. Guess he didn’t die before I opened it.
