Blue sat alone beside the park bench, crying to himself. It had been so long since his mummah had left to go find nummies and he was still little. Old enough to walk and talk, not old enough to have teeth. He’d tried chewing on grass and sticks to fill his aching stomach but it didn’t work. Just a little talkie-babbeh all alone in the world since all of his siblings and mummah had gone.
All of the humans ignored him. They didn’t care. Other fluffies who passed by did too, and a mummah fluffy had even knocked him over with one hoof at the mere mention he should get any of her precious miwkies.
A cool breeze curled over the area. It made Blue shiver terribly, and he heard the sound of an approaching human. It was a tall man, skinny, why you could almost even say noodly. Dapper dressed though his features were hard to discern. A human looking upon him might say he was young and well-shaven one moment and old with a well groomed beard the next. Though one thing was certain: There was an incredibly ancient presence about him.
“Aw. Look at you. Poor boy.” The man said, stopping in place and looking down to the foal. Giving a wag of his tail, the babbeh would stand and wander out from his hiding place.
“Hewwo Nice Mistah. Hewp babbeh? Babbeh Bwue nee’ mummah ‘foh miwkies n wub.”
“Please! Call me Sketti Dave. As for your mother…I believe I can arrange it. If you make me a promise.”
Blue gasped. He could find mummah? Really? This really was a Nice Mister!
“If you promise me to never leave her side, you’ll have her back.” Sketti Dave would give the condition, idly picking a bit of fluff from his otherwise immaculate topcoat.
“Babbeh pwomise! Wub mummah! Wub su su much!” Blue nodded. What could be wrong with that? That was an easy thing to agree to. “Dank yew Sketti Dabe!”
The man smiled. An eerie thing that caused a nearby lightpost to flicker, as if the natural world could barely contain such energy. “Oh, no. The pleasure’s all mine.”
With a snap of his fingers, the world around Blue faded out. There was a sinking darkness, a feeling as if he were weightless, and suddenly he was somewhere new.
This was a ditch next to a big road. The ground here was all smooshy and filled with bad smelling wawa, though Blue was able to find a patch of itchy grass he could stand in.
“Babbeh? Am Babbeh?” Came a familiar voice through the darkness. It was mummah! Really it was! The vague outline of her in the shadows, too.
“Mummah! Babbeh am hewe!” He called out to her, the shape of her form moving toward him through the darkness. The sounds of her hooves made sucking sounds in the mud and grime they were surrounded by, and the smell of something horrible began to close in.
“Mummah?” Blue questioned again. His stomach began to growl, needing miwkies badly.
The thing approaching him out of the darkness had once been his mother. It wasn’t now. It couldn’t be. As his eyes adjusted, Blue saw that everything on her seemed wrong. Her face was smooshed in. It was like a rotten apple she had ate once to make milkies. One side was caved in, the other missing patches of pink fur, the place where had eye should have been was nothing more than an empty crater. The mare was hunched over, and he finally realized why it took so long for her to walk over: Only her front weggies worked. The back ones had been torn up and left as ribbons of flesh and exposed bone.
“Babbeh…wub…mummah….” It croaked to him, the words pushing up a great belch. Her body was bloated with gasses, ruined mouth turning up into a mockery of a smile that swarmed with maggots. Blue made scaredy pee-pees, the warm puddle spreading out over him. He turned to try and leave but he couldn’t: It was like an invisible box was around him. A box that dragged in from all sides and pushed him closer to mummah. “Nu! Bwue nu wan! Nu wan!” He screamed, tried to fight against the barrier. It didn’t matter. The shambling corpse of the mare which had once been his sole provider had flopped down into the muck, baring it’s teats to the foal. That which had provided the sweetest nourishment were now distended and bloated, leaking with a putrid yellow slime. “Babbeh nee’…miwkies…” Came her voice, dry as paper in the desert. No matter how hard he tried, Blue was brought closer and closer to her.
“NUUUUUUUU!”
And with that, the wish was fulfilled and the bargain upheld.