The following is official training material for employees of the DuPont-Salvatore fluffy shelter.
————————————————————-
The camera focuses on a small iron cone with an odd shape, the sides lined with ridges like a screw, each ridge lined with backwards facing barbs. A hand reaches into frame, lifting the strange tool up, the camera zooming out and refocusing on a man as he contemplated the cone. Dressed business casual, clean pressed khaki pants and a pressed white shirt, sleeves rolled up to his shoulders, his long, glossy black hair was slicked, a slight five-o-clock shadow on his chin. He caressed the strange tool as he turned to the camera, his smile revealing impeccable veneer work. “Hi. My name is Emiliano Salvatore, current managa’ of the DuPont-Salvatore Fluffy Shelta’.”
The man had unsuccessfully attempted to wrestle his heavy New York accent under control, but it was evident even through the terrible audio that echoed off the bare cinderblock walls. He lifted the small cone to eye level, contemplating its shape as he ran his finger across the barbs, careful not to prick himself. “Didja know the average fluffy shelta’ spends ova three thousand dolla’s a month, just tryin’ to find a way to dispose of alla’ that crap?” He shook his head sadly as he gave the audience time to gasp. “It’s true. That’s more expensive than the entire inventory of a shelta’ full of these shitra- ah, ponies.”
“Some of the more rural shelta’s can offload their waste to farms, make a lil’ extra cash, but us city shelta’s can’t. Here in the city, we gots two options. We can invest in a special kinda bacteria filta’ system to allow us to pump waste into the sewa’, or spend the dough to have trucks come once a week to pump out a septic system. Total racket, we know.” He slipped the cone into his pocket with a sigh. “Three thousand a month, out the door, before they factor in rent, food, employees, all that stuff that keeps shelters runnin’..”
Emiliano smiled coyly. “Here at Du-Sal, my Pops found a third option.” The camera shakily follows the tall man through a set of swinging steel doors into a dim hallway. Orange incandescent lights glowered across the long hall, barely illuminating the interiors of the cell blocks lining the walls. The ground of the cells wriggled and writhed as though it was alive, blurry technicolor lumps shuffling through, around, under and over each other. But the subpar audio was more than enough to pick up the anguished wailing.
“Wet fwuffy gu!”
“POOPIE PWACE HUWTIES!”
“HUUuuuuu, nu wike, NU WIKE!”
“HEWP FWUFFY! SABE FWUFFY FWOM MEANIE SHEWTA!”
“Whewe babbehs? Whewe spechuw fwen? Huuhuuuuu, nu wike shewta! Wan out, WAN OUT!”
“Pwease hewp fwuffy! Sabe fwuffy fwom meanie shewta!”
These were the more coherent of shouts audible over the cacophony of shrieks, sobs, and sniffling.
Dozens of pairs of short, stubby legs protruded from the bars, ponies desperately reaching towards the cameraman, begging for salvation, freedom, even just a hug, the camera capturing tears and blood staining their screaming, sobbing faces in gritty detail. An off camera snap brought the lens focus back to Emiliano. “Come on Joey there will be plenty of those pig horses to film lata’, I’ll take ya through the whole process.
The camera followed the slim man through a maze of halls, all filled with sobbing and screaming ponies, desperately trying to seek salvation from the pair striding the hallways. Emiliano confidently led the camera man through a maze of twisting hallways and rooms, eventually leading the two through a swinging set of double doors into a brightly lit lobby. The room was in stark contrast to the rest of the dingy halls, brightly lit, well cleaned, the soft sound of ambient jazz emanating from unseen speakers. Well upholstered leather and fabric couches and chairs lined the room, dark rich colors complemented the deep rich wood furnishings, all illuminated by bright chandeliers and the beams of sunlight shining into the room from a full wall of windows.
“Sweet deal, isn’t it? Furnished the place myself through thriftin’ and refurbishing. Hobby of mine. Genuine fluffy leather on everythin’.” Emiliano smiled for the camera as he ran his hand over green leather upholstery, tiny seams linking different skins together the only evidence the leather wasn’t a singular piece. Close inspection by the camera observed minute differences in the color of each hide used in the loveseat, the camera watching as Emiliano’s long, olive skinned finger traced the seams of one hide.
“FUCK YOU, YOU MONSTAHS!”
The camera swiveled to zoom onto the screaming lady outside the window, frothing at the mouth as she clutched a large sign emblazoned with a crying fluffy and the words “Fluffies have feelings!”
“YOU FUCKAS ARE GOING TO BURN IN HELL!” Her voice was shrill but powerful, with an accent just as think as Emiliano’s, her dark frizzy hair bouncing as she flipped the shelter workers the bird, cheered on by about a dozen fellow protesters across the street.
The camera focused on Emiliano as he cheerfully waved, walking towards the door and leaning out to confront the woman. “Angelina, just cause I haven’t trespassed you like the rest of your friends don’t mean the city code don’t apply to you, ya gotta be on the other side of the street.” He closed the door and sighed as she shrieked something indistinguishable. The camera focused on Emiliano’s scowling face for a few tense moments before the man remembered he was on camera. “Ah, that was my sister, Angelina. She… has some opposin’ views on the family business.”
Emiliano sighed, watching his sister rejoin the picket line. “Joey, cut that from the final video.” He seemed mournful for a moment before the used car salesman smile returned. “But enough about all the unimportant stuff, let’s take you through the patented Salvatore process!”
Emiliano led the camera through a large door labeled ‘INTAKE’, the large swinging doors making an audible WOOSH as the two passed through into a large room, lined with stainless steel tables. A set of rubber waders lined the wall, alongside face shields, rubber gloves, and ventilator masks. “This,” Emiliano said with a grand sweeping gesture of his hands, “is the room where the magic happens.” He took a set of waders and PPE from off the rack, suiting up fully. “Now, normally” Emiliano grunted from under the ventilator as he pulled the gloves on, “we do all our processin’ in the morning, get it out of the way and send the workers to Giano’s for lunch. I asked them to hold one back so we could follow him through the Salvatore Process.”
———————————————
The film cuts to a damp cardboard box lying on one of the steel tables from which faint crying could be heard inside.
“Huu-huu, pwease wet Cwazy Fwog out ob’ da sowwy bawks, nu am bad fwuffy! Nu know wat du bad!”
The camera, now apparently affixed to a tripod, could pick up the faint sounds of hoofpad against cardboard as the pony weakly attempted escape, going silent with an “EEP!” as Emiliano clomped back into frame, face shield down. “Now, as ya can see we take worker safety and hygiene very seriously. Full outfit, all the time. Now, I told you before about the three thousand a month, right? Right. Now lemme show you how this works.”
Emiliano reached into the cardboard box, pulling out a wriggling pastel blue unicorn out. “WET FWUFFY GU! PWEASE MUNSTAH, FWUFFY NU AM NUMMIES, FWUFFY AM FO’-“ “Fluffies are for huggies and love” Emiliano finished the ponies sentence as he gently set him on the table, looking back to the camera. “There’s no need to unnecessarily rile them up unless you’re bored. The more scared they get, the less predicable they are.” He turned to the shivering pony, softly stroking his dingy grey mane. “Hey big guy, how are you doing?”
“Fwuffy am scawed!” The pony cried, seeming to not fully trust the masked man but still leaning into the physical comfort of neck scratches. “Daddeh say he nu wan Cwazy Fwog nu mowe, nu eben if du bestest dancies huu huu! Fwuffy hab biggest heawt huwties an, a den fwuffy wakies in scawy dawk bawks! Huuuu nu wike NU WIKE! Wan daddeh back!”
“Oh that’s too bad buddy! No one likes scary things.” Closed captions were inserted into the video, large white blocky text declaring “FLUFFIES LOVE WHEN YOU AGREE WITH THEM.” The pony, only minutes before a sniveling mess of snot and tears, was beginning to coo and giggle under Emiliano’s hand. “Now, lemme show you how the DuSal shelter avoids three thousand a year in waste management fees.” Reaching inside his waders to his khakis pocket, Emiliano retrieved the metal implement from earlier. “These,” he held up the small chunk of metal, light glinting off the dull surface of the plug, “are the Salvatore secret. Each one of these beauts cost three dollars to make back when Pops machined them himself on the tiny apartment patio we lived in.” He raised his face shield to brush his lips against the plug before clutching it to his chest, looking up at the ceiling with a tear in his eye. “Miss you Pops.”
Then, with practiced, measured motions, he aligned the plug with the unicorns rear, applied light pressure to its scruff, then slapped the plug into place with a light, open handed blow. “SCREEEEEEEEEAAAAAGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHH!” The fluffy shrieked and screamed, thrashing around under Emiliano’s grip as helpful captions faded in, “FLUFFIES DO NOT LIKE HAVING THEIR ‘POOPIE PLACE’ TOUCHED”
“WAI HUWT FWUFFY! AM GUD FWUFFY! WAI GIB HUWTIES!” The pony scrabbled around in fear and pain, desperately attempting to reach his rear, but prohibited by his anatomy. “WAI HUWT POOPIE PWACE, AM FOW POOPIES NU AM FOW HUWTIES HUU HUU!”
“See, this is where the beauty of the Salvatore method shines. My Pops, Paulie Salvatore, realized that there would be no point in runnin’ a shelta’ for these muties, so we ain’t actually a shelter, more a processin’ site than anything.” Emiliano continued despite the ponies hoarse screeches of pain as it realized the function of the barbed cork. “FWUFFY NU CAN MAEK POOPIES, PWEASE TAKE MEANIE TING OUT!” Its hooves flailed against the table, soft thunking near inaudible over its screams of agony. The fluffies eyes were now bloodshot, darting around the room looking for something to save it.
From beneath the table, Emiliano retrieved a set of pneumatic pruning shears, already attached to the air line that snaked down from the roof. “Now,” Emiliano spoke while maintaining his iron grip on the unicorn’s scruff, “there are three things we need to deal with on this pony. The first thing we gotta do is dehorn the guy.”
“NU TAKE PWETTY HOWN! FWUFFY NEE HOWN! NU TOUCH, NU TOUCH-“
Emiliano put his hand down in front of the pony, who instantly bit down into the thumb of the rubber glove in panic. “See, they ain’t even got the strength to bite into a piece of ha’ad candy. Easy as hell to shut them up this way.” Captions appeared once more, this time in yellow.
“BE AWARE OF SHARP OR CHIPPED TEETH!”
His fist tightened into a ball around the snout, quickly and effectively silencing the horse. A wretched burbling drew the camera to focus on the plugged rear of the horse, a mixture of blood and feces burbling out from beneath the cork. “Yeah that’s fine an normal, Jesus Joey you ain’t gotta film every thing!”
Emiliano smiled as the camera was directed back towards him. “Now where was… oh right the horn!” Removing his hand from the unicorns mouth, the young man retrieved the pneumatic pruning shears. “Now if this wasn’t a demonstration I could have this little sucker prepped and processed before it even knew what hit him, but I’ll be takin’ my time here. Now, the horn poses no threat to us, of course, but it’s not us I’m worried about it’s the other fluffies. We keep our fluffies stressed, uncomfortable, and scared, but we ain’t allowed to let them hurt each other, so this horn’s gotta go.”
The panicked unicorn was attempting desperately to run, hoofpads skittering across the stainless steel as he sought a way out from under the pruning shears Emiliano quickly positioned at the base of his horn.
KAA-CRUNCH
*SCREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!”
“Now, we have a buyer on one of those sites, whatchamacallit…. Etsy! Yeah we got a guy on Etsy who buys each horn for fifty cents a pop. Good little side hustle with the amount of ponies we get through a week.” Emiliano chucked the horn across the room, landing it inside a large cardboard box where it clattered against hundreds of its own kind. The fluffy had trailed off to a high pitched, gasping whine.
“eeeeeeeeeeeeeeee”
GARCHK
“eeeeeeeeeeeeeeee”
GRRHK
“eeeeeeeeeeeeeeee”
“Now remember when I said three things? First was his horn. Next, we ain’t allowed to have them going around knockin’ each other up, which is where the second thing comes in.”
Emiliano rolled the unicorn onto its back, shifting his grip from the scruff to the chest, pinning the pony to the table. Its legs pinwheeled in the air, still desperately trying to ferry their owner to safety. “See this weird little patch of fluff on its lower stomach? Called the modesty fluff. It hides what we’re lookin for here. You can already guess what’s going to happen and there’s no need to explain the finer details of what we do down there.”
KAA-CHUNK
The pneumatic shears had no issue chopping through horn, and even less going through the limp fibrous tissue that once comprised this stallions manhood. The video went totally silent. At first it seemed the stallion was silently screaming, his face contorted in agony, but the wince on Emiliano’s face made it apparent the stallion was peaking the microphone. The captions appeared again.
“A FLUFFY UNDER DURESS CAN DAMAGE HEARING!”
“EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee……..” the stallion was finally out of steam, collapsing face first on the table. Emiliano smiled at the camera from under his PPE. “Jesus H. Christ if I had known this guy had lungs like that I woulda gone lower, turned him into a castrato.” He winked at the camera as he threw the bleeding appendage into a large bin marked BIOWASTE. “Now, the first two things we did were to conform to the states code around fluffy mandates. Namely, we can’t have them kill or hurt each other, so no horns, and we can’t have no unaccounted for pregnancies. One of those loonies outside finds out we let either happen they can strip us of our shelter status.”
“CHECK YOUR LOCAL STATE AND CITY ORDINANCES FOR GUIDANCE” the captions added.
Emiliano appeared to wait for the captions to fade before continuing. “Now, the third thing we do, and this is something Pops used to do with a set of kitchen shears, is cripple them.”
In a singular, fluid motion Emiliano had the fluffies right hind leg splayed. “Now, what you’re gonna wanna do is place your shears here” Emiliano pointed to the first knee, known as the stifle joint in other equines, as he lined his shears up. “We want them lame enough to be unable to run, but still able to walk where we tell them to. Helps us with cell cleaning. A simple cut here-“
KAA-CRONCH
The shears tore through the limb, neither bones nor flesh offering meaningful resistance to the blades. The unicorn vomited, thick yellow pulpy sludge coating the table as it sobbed, thrashed, and screamed.
“SCHREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE Peeppipipipipipipipipipipi!”
“-is not only going to make it impossible to use this leg but it’s also gonna be basically a little ball an’ chain. Keeps em docile too.”
“pipipipipipipipipipipipipipi-“
The screen cut to black with more captions.
“IF FEMORAL ARTERY CUT, REMOVE FULL LEG AND CAUTERIZE”
—————————————————————
The camera was following Emiliano once again, the man still holding the unicorn he had shed the waders and PPE, now only slightly sweatier than before. He wheeled around and started walking backwards so as to face the camera. “Now, usually these little guys get to wait in the holding cells for a day or two. Not our lucky man, he gets to go to the next step of the Salvatore method!”
“WET FWUFFY GU! Meanie munstahs! FWUFFY GIB WOWSTEST SOWWY POOPIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE-“
“Sorry poopies huh? You know, there’s a funny story I think you should hear, little fluffy.”
The camera focused on Emiliano’s face. He was no longer smiling as he held the wriggling blue horse. “You know, fluffy shelta’s ain’t the family buisness. It used ta be cookin’. Salvatore’s Ristorante. Best god damn tordelli under the sun. My great grand pappy worked construction day in day out to build that place outta his sweat an’ fuckin’ BLOOD.”
The whole cell block was quiet except for sniffles, sobs, and soft huuhuuing. Even the pighorse gripped in Emiliano’s hand was quiet, shivering and wincing as his puckered sphincter bled, dragging its tail up to its stomach to have something, anything to hug for comfort as Emiliano continued his diatribe.
“Then one day, a fuckin’ talkin’ pighorse waltzes up. It ran away from its ‘meanie mummah’. Was ‘suuuu hungwy’ and all it wanted was ‘sketties’. My grandpa, the fuckin’ bleedin’ heart he was, feeds it. A nice warm plate of pappardelle with cheese and spinach and sauce. And what do you think it did?”
The camera cuts to black.
————————————————————
When the video returned it Emiliano smiling once more, holding the now shivering pony at arm’s length. Its tail was curled up to its belly, the grey wisps soaked with piss and blood. “Now, we come to the next step of the Salvatore process.” He led the camera through one last set of swinging double doors to a large room, the size of a basketball court. “This my friends, is the processin’ room.”
The room was primarily occupied by a set of titanic steel vats and barrels, as well as a large square machine that occupied a fourth of the room. “Now, I’m sure you noticed something odd here. ‘Emiliano’ you ask, ‘where’s the incineratah?”
“Wat am in-sini-wait-ah?”
Emiliano chuckled as he lifted the frightened fluffy to his eye level. “It’s a meany metal monstah that gives fluffies the worstest ‘burnie hurties’ and ‘forever sleepies!’”
“NU WAN! FWUFFY WAN WIB! NU WAN FOWEVA SWEEPIES!” The pony thrashed around, finding newfound strength to struggle against the steel grip around his scruff. “Calm down little man, that’s not how we do things at OUR shelta’.
“sniffle weawwy? Nu am goin’ gib huwties nu mow? Nu foweba sweepies?”
Emiliano smiled. “No, no! of course not! All we are going to do here is mechanically macerate, centrifuge, and process you into base components. After that I’ll take you straight to sketti land what do you think about that?”
” The fluffy, while still distrustful of the man who had inflicted such pain on it, stopped struggling. Whether fully exhausted or willfully compliant, the pony allowed Emiliano to buckle it into a leg restraint hold while he turned the large machine on. The quiet hum of motors was accented by the clicking of unseen gears as the camera focused on the rumbling behemoth of a machine. “Now normally, we don’t run the machines to dispose of a single fluffy. But we’ll make an exception for the video.”
Emiliano reached under the table and retrieved an ice pick. “Now what you REALLY don’t want, is a bunch of scared fluffies flailing’ around the hundred thousand dolla’ machines gutty works, which is where this comes in, Joey get a close up on this it’s important.”
The camera cuts to a close up of the fluffies head, or at least the back of it. Emiliano was pointing to the fluffies neck, the pony giggling and cooing at the physical attention the man’s actions provided. “Stahp! STAHP! Fwuffy am tickwish!”
“Now you see right here? Two vertebrae down. We’re searchin’ fo the C3, don’t ask why it’s just what works best. Now just line the pick up an’-“ with a short, quick thrust the stallion jerked around for a moment before falling limp.
“WOWSTEST OWWIES!” The stallion shrieked from his position lying face down in the leg restraints. A pool of steaming piss and blood began to spread out from under him as he sobbed in pain. “MEANIE MUNSTAH WIED! GABE FWUFFY WOWSTEST HUWTIES!” The fluffy began to grunt in a rythmic fashion as it tried to move its now paralyzed body. “WAI WEGGIES NU WOWK? PWEASE WEGGIES, FWUFFY NEE’ WUN AWAY!”
Emiliano lifted the limp but shrieking stallion out of the restraints and used his body to wipe up the puddle of piss. “Alright now that the little guy is prepped and ready let’s show you how we actually make our money.”
Carrying the whimpering pony by the neck he walked over to a conveyor belt that led to the entrance of the machine, large whirring teeth spinning slowly at the end of the conveyor belt. “Pops used to give them catholic last rites but let’s be real,” Emiliano smiled as he placed the fluffy on the conveyor belt, making sure it was facing the grinder, “they ain’t making it to heaven.”
The camera focused on the screaming, sobbing fluffy as the conveyor belt inched it closer to the gnashing teeth. “SABE FWUFFY! Pwease! Huu Huu, Nu wan foweba sweepies, fwuffy am sowwy! Pwease WEGGIES PWEASE WISTEN TO FWUFFY! FWUFFY NU KNOW WAT DU BUT FWUFFY AM SOWWY!”
The unicorns hoof finally reached the gears, and with a shriek of pain he was pulled through the inch wide gap the grinder, his shrieks cut short as the machine crushed and broke his body, all captured in gruesome detail on film. “Now I’m sure you’re asking ‘Emiliano, how does grinding fluffies make you money?’ And that is an excellent question my friend, how does it?”
Emiliano led the camera to a wall with a large diagram drawn on it, the title reading “Fluffy fat as feedstock for Non-catalytic supercritical alcohol transesterification production of Biodiesel.”
Emiliano smiled as he pointed at the title. “Lotta big fancy words up there, but what it comes down to is that fluffy fat can be used for biodiesel production. Now I’m sure we’ve all seen these tubs of lard waddle their way to a food bowl before and wondered how much fat they were packing. More than pigs, cows, and horses, they’ve got body fat percentages comparable to whales.” As if on cue, the machine made a burbling noise as unidentifiable liquid bubbled over to the holding tanks. The machine made a loud DING!.
“Ey, turkeys done!” The camera followed Emiliano to a second conveyor belt out of the machine, helpfully marked “WASTE”. After a second of silence, the conveyor belt started and a strange, irregularly shaped cube rolled out. “Once the extraction is complete, the machine compresses them to make it easier to cart them to the incinerator. I designed the machine itself, saved us probably a million in labor.”
The camera focused on the grotesque, gelatinous cube. It was a wad of muscle tissue and organs, perforated with thousands upon thousands of tiny holes. It was less a corpse than a pile of viscera and bones wrapped tightly in the skinned hide of the unicorn. There was shockingly little blood, apparently having been removed alongside the fat. The skull of the unicorn protruded, the bone ground up, eyes macerated, a clean, neat hole cut in the cranium to remove the brain. The camera man gagged offscreen. The captions appeared once again, this time a menacing red text. “NEVER LOOK IN A DEAD FLUFFIES EYES”
Emiliano chuckled as he picked the cube up, holding it like a basketball. “Gotta have a tough stomach for this line of work Joey. Follow me, we gotta finish the Salvatore process. That’s right, death is just a midway point for our fluffy friend.”
—————————————————————
The camera cut to black for a moment. When it returned, Emiliano was standing in front of a large, roaring incinerator. “Now, I lied when I told our fluffy friend here we didn’t have an incineratah. We do, and he’s going in it.” Emiliano opened the heavy iron door, dodging the gout of fire that blew from the opening. “Woooo that’s hot! Fun fact this baby is partially powahed by fluffy fat!” With a flick of his wrist Emiliano tossed the mangled remains into the fire, slotting the door back into place using a large metal hook. The captions appeared again.
“FLUFFY BODIES ARE HIGHLY FLAMMABLE!”
—————————————————————
The camera cuts back to Emiliano, still standing in front of the incinerator. Though the roar of flames was gone the furnace still glowed orange, heat rippling off of the fire brick sidings. “Welcome back, it’s been about two hours, so the incineratah has finished its cycle.” Opening the door, the camera attempted to see inside but the glare of infrared rendered it blinded. Instead, the lens focused on Emiliano reaching in with a set of tongs and retrieving a glowing orange lump. “Here it is. The final step of the Salvatore process.”
The camera zoomed out to reveal a bucket of water at Emiliano’s feet, which he promptly plunged the glowing lump into. Sizzles and pops and steam erupted as the metal underwent rapid cooling, Emiliano pulling out the still intact plug. “I made sure the machine would be able to leave the plugs untouched, they’re a part of the family history afta all.”
Emiliano stared at the plug, the camera capturing the mix of emotions that ran across his face. Anger, amusement, but most of all sadness. Slipping the plug into his pocket Emiliano put on his usual smile and looked into the camera. “And that my friends, is the DuPont-Salvatore patented Salvatore process! We are so glad you have chosen to become a member of the team, and a big hearty thank you from the Salvatore family!”
The camera cuts to black for the final time as the captions appear one last time.
“TRAINING VIDEO FOR DUPONT-SALVATORE FLUFFY SHELTER EMPLOYEES ONLY, UNAUTHORIZED DISTRIBUTION WILL RESULT IN LEGAL ACTION”