Fluffy Art Project

FractalFluff, April 9, 2014; 09:17 / FB 20248
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Fluffy Art Project

If Charlotte had just been one of the neighbourhood children, you'd never have played with her. She was more than just mean; she was scary. She did... stuff. Cruel games, strange games, things that left littler children in tears, small fires guttering wherever small fires could be hidden, and pets injured or missing. The grownups don't seem to want to admit it, but she did stuff that scared even the mean big kids. Most of the other children learn to stay away from "that Green girl". You can't, because Mr. Green is Mum's brother. You're stuck with her.

You love your uncle to bits, but you don't like your aunt and you're terrified of Charlotte. You've been terrified of Charlotte ever since you were eight years old. That was when she killed Chubby, your pet hamster.

You'd put Chubby's cage on a garden chair out on the balcony, so he could get some fresh air and maybe look out over the park. When Charlotte and you were alone, she opened up the cage and began grabbing at the hamster. You begged her to leave him alone but she ignored you, snatching him up in one fist and dragging him out of his cage.

"Please, Charlotte," you begged, as she held the hamster round his middle. Nobody was to call Charlotte Charlie or Char under any circumstances. You could tell she was holding him too tight. "Please don't! Please put him back!"

You don't say "please let him go," because even at eight years old you knew she'd use that as an excuse to open her hand and drop him.

"What? I thought you wanted him to get some fresh air?" she cackled. You made a dash for her, but pulled up short when she stuck her arm out over the railing.

"Charlotte, don't!" you squealed, horrified. "You can't!"

"No such word as 'can't'," she sneered. Two years older than you, she had a stock of phrases like that. "Anyway, who said you could boss me around? Your Mum said you had to be nice to me. I'm the guest. You have to be nice to guests."

"Please!" you begged. "I'll — I'll tell Mum!" You didn't want to get Charlotte in trouble, but you didn't want her to hurt your pet, either. You loved Chubby. You loved petting his soft brown fur and giving him sunflower seeds to stuff his cheeks with.

Anyway, it might have been you who got in trouble. Your mother seemed to have a rule that anything you did was your fault, and anything Charlotte did was your fault too. It was't not fair — she was a whole two years older than you and she was going to Big School next autumn, but somehow you were supposed to make her be good and nice when she came to visit.

Charlotte is never nice.

"Please what?" she jeered, waving her closed fist over the two-story drop. "Go on, please what?" She was trying to get you to say it, to say "let him go." If you did, she'd have an excuse to drop him off the balcony.

"Please put him back!" you said instead. "Put him back in the cage, Charlotte! Please! You're going to hurt him!"

"If I do, will you give me your — " Just which of your possessions Charlotte was going to demand as a ransom remained a mystery, however, as you both heard the voices of the adults moving towards you. They were coming into the kitchen. You wanted to yell at them to help you, to save Chubby, but you didn't dare; if you deliberately got Charlotte in trouble, she'd kill your pet for sure.

"Please, Charlotte," you whisper. "Please. You'll get in trouble."

"Bet I won't," she hisses back.

"...And so I said, 'why didn't you use pressure-treated...'" Charlotte's dad was saying as he walked in, your mother and Charlotte's mother following him.

"What are you kids up to?" asked your aunt, suddenly noticing you both: you standing at bay, hands clenching and splaying as you tried not to cry or scream, Charlotte still waving her outstretched arm like a weathervane. "Charlotte, what have you got there?"

You heard noises of distress as Charlotte squeezed Chubby even more tightly. She looked dead at her aunt, looked back at you, and mouthed one word: Oops.

She let go.

You started screaming.

***

And somehow, it was your fault. Your mother slapped you for screaming, and demanded to know what Chubby had been doing out of his cage anyway. Somehow, the narrative was adjusted such that you'd both been playing with the hamster when Chubby accidentally fell. Your uncle offered to buy you a new hamster, which you didn't want; your mother waved aside the offer and muttered something about how hamsters didn't live very long anyway.

They all managed to not understand what Charlotte had done. Going forward, your mother would actually bring up Chubby if you hinted at getting another pet, or even a new gadget. "Just look what happened to your hamster!" became her go-to refusal for anything that might involve responsibilty on your part.

So as you stand in your aunt's kitchen, ostensibly helping her with a school project, you're very careful not to make her angry. You wish there were some adults around you could talk to about her Art Project, but you're on your own. You're not sure it would help anyway.

"Are... are you sure this is okay, Charlotte?" you ask your cousin timidly. She tuts and sighs in response.

"Ye-e-e-e-es, Linda, of course it's okay. He'll be fine if he just stops wriggling."

This last is addressed to the red fluffy foal she's trying to keep from running away. Almost two months old, he's about the size of a half-grown kitten. He and his mother are a smaller breed of fluffy; fully grown, he will be no larger than the average house cat. He's not quite weaned all the way, but he can certainly move fast. For a fluffy, anyway. Currently he's trying to get back to his mother. Poor Flossie is trapped in her dog crate, legs waving through the bars as she strains to reach her baby; the baby, for his part, makes a beeline in her direction anytime he's let go.

This is bad for two reasons: one, rebelling against the Will of Charlotte is generally unhealthy, and grows moreso the smaller you are relative to her. The other reason is that he's on the kitchen table. There's a good chance he'd run right off the edge and break every tiny bone in his body.

You really don't want him to be hurt. When this visit is over, the little red foal is supposed to go home with you. You don't want to seem too keen — Charlotte doesn't care for the fluffy, but if she realizes how much you like him she'll find some way to keep you from having him — so you haven't dared give him a name yet. In your heart, though, he's Cinnamon.

"Huuhuu..." sobs not-quite-Cinnamon. "Nu wike Awt game. Scawy game. Babbeh nu wan be Awt. Wan gu back in housie wif Mummah."

You share the baby's concerns. You don't like the sound of Charlotte's project. You hope desperately that one of the adults appears and intervenes before things go too far. But Charlotte has carefully waited till her mum is lying down for her afternoon nap and her dad has driven down to the hardware store to grab supplies for a weekend project. It's just you, her, and the fluffies.

You wish there were some grownups around you could talk to about what she's doing, but nobody ever seems to think there's anything wrong with what Charlotte does.

"Doesn't that stuff have... you know... chemicals and stuff in it?" you ask nervously.

"Don't be stu-u-u-u-pid, Linda. How could it have chemicals in? They let little kids play with this stuff." She gives a loud grunt of exasperation as the foal tries to climb out of the shallow plastic pot. "GHHHOD. He is NEVER going to stay STILL!"

"Wha happen babbeh?" Flossie asks anxiously. "Him gud babbeh! Pwease nu gif owwies! Pwease, nicey Chawotte?"

"Shut up, dumb-dumb. If you weren't such a useless mother, he'd do what I told him." She flicks the foal's nose. "Tell your brat that if he messes up my art project, I'll flush him down the toilet."

"Huuhuu... nu wan fwushies! Babbeh, nu be bad, nu messies up hoomin Awt, otay? Be gud babbeh. Nu make nicey hoomin haf angwies. Pwease nu fwushie wastest babbeh! Fwossie nee wastest babbeh..."

"Oh, can it, you silly bitch."

Planting the baby in the middle of the table, Charlotte puts the jug of water on his tail. "Stay there," she snarls at the sobbing foal. You ache to pick him up and stroke him, or at least hold him and comfort him while Charlotte gets her stupid project finished; but touching the foal without her explicit invitation will just make things worse.

Charlotte rummages through the kitchen drawers, returning to the table with a few old biros and a roll of tape. It's the Christmassy stuff, you notice: shiny green foil with a pattern of silver bells. "Very festive," snickers your cousin, grabbing the foal's tail again. She unpeels a strip of the tape, allowing him to dangle carelessly from her clenched fist as she bites off the tape.

You watch, horrified, as she tapes one of the biros across his left hind leg.

"Won't that pull out his fluff?" you stammer.

She shoots you a dirty look. "So what? It'll grow back."

She repeats the process with his other hind leg. Now both legs are lashed to the pen at a right angle. She lets go of him and laughs as he tries to walk, hobbling and stumbling. The pen is too long to let him fall all the way over, so when he inevitably loses his footing he twists awkwardly, crying as the tape pulls at his fluff. "Eep! Eep! Munsta! Munsta eatin weggies!" he peeps.

"Retard," sneers Charlotte. She pulls off more tape and lashes a second ballpoint across his forelegs. Now he can't walk at all; he's going crazy, convinced that his legs have been eaten by a monster. Flossie can't see her foal properly, but she can hear him. His distress is driving her out of her mind.

"Pwease, Miss Chawwotte, pwease nu hewt babbeh! Pwease, gif babbeh? Babbeh gut owwies! Nee huggies, nee wuv!"

"Pipe down."

Flossie's tear-filled eyes turn beseechingly towards you. "Pwease, Miss Chawwotte fwend? Yu hewp babbeh? Pwease?"

Charlotte saves you from having to answer by hissing angrily at the fluffy mother. "If you wake up Mum, I'll put you both in the rubbish bin for the metal monsters to take away. Now. Shut. Up."

"Huuhuuhuu..."

Now Charlotte has the foal where she wants him. She stands him in the tray again. "Hmmm..." she says, thoughtfully. "I forgot about a mould release agent." She goes to the fridge and comes back with an empty butter wrapper; her mother saves them to grease baking trays, just like yours does. She rubs the greasy paper all over the foal's hooves and lower legs, where they protrude below the tape.

"Yikkie!" sobs the foal. "Nu wike yikkies on fwuff! Pwease nu make fwuff yikkie?"

She ignores him and carries on buttering his legs. The process seems to be intensely distressing to the baby. By the time she sets him back in the tray, he's a nervous wreck; he can do nothing but make sad, frightened little peeping noises as she wraps the tape over each end of both biros and under the tray, lashing them firmly in place.

Now he can't do anything except tip the whole construction over, which he promptly does; she responds by flicking his nose painfully, and jabbing the ends of the biros into chunks of modelling clay from her craft supplies. With the clay propping everything up, he can't move more than a fraction of an inch. He's trembling now, tears dripping from his muzzle and into the tray.

You watch nervously as Charlotte spoons some of the greyish-white powder into a plastic bowl. She stops to read the instructions on the packet, lips moving as she does so. "Hey. A tablespoon's about an ounce, right?" she demands.

"I think so," you say nervously, trying to recall your mother's rare attempts to involve you in her baking. "I mean, yeah. Yeah, it is."

"So does 'fl oz' mean flour ounces?"

That you don't know.

"Same diff. How many spoons was that, anyway?"

"Umm..."

"JESUS. I thought you were WATCHING."

"About... four?" you guess, nervously.

"Ugh. You're as retarded as Shithead here. I'm just going to mix it up anyway." Charlotte goes to the sink and holds the bowl under the tap. She turns it on too hard; water and plaster dust splash out of the shallow bowl. She grunts in annoyance and turns the tap on more gently.

She's not measuring anything properly. That makes you even more nervous. This is supposed to be a school project; why isn't she more worried about getting it right? Is she going to blame you if something goes wrong?

She stirrs up the mixture irritably and clumsily, splashing even more of it around. It's still lumpy when she starts to pour it in around the foal's hooves.

The baby squeaks. "Nu wike! Nu wike yikky wawa!" He wriggles around helplessly, but the
pens stop him from thrashing free of the sticky mixture. She keeps puring until he's up to his tiny knees. "Huuhuuhuu... nu wike yikkies... Fwuffy nu wan be Awt nu mowe... huuhuuhuu... weggies cowd... huuhuuu... weggies coooowwwd..."

"Not for much longer," remarks Charlotte. You're not sure of her meaning, but you don't like the way she says it. You don't like the way she smirks. You're reaching for the bag of plaster when she says: "Let's go and play my new game."

"We probably shouldn't leave all this alone?" you suggest. She rolls her eyes again.

"Ghhhooood, Linda. He'll be okay for a few minutes."

"It's just..."

"My Dad's a vet, Linda. He looks after fluffies all the time. Your dad doesn't even live with you. I think I'm the one who knows how to look after fluffies, don't you?"

Anxious for the putative Cinnamon but terrified of triggering worse violence, you follow your cousin into the living room and dutifully watch her playing her game. Sometimes Charlotte likes to have you play against her so that she can enjoy beating you, but today she's more into performing. It's understood that if you do play, you won't win; and if you're relegated to the role of observer, you won't ask for a turn or suggest another activity until she's done demonstrating her prowess. Your job is to sit quietly on the floor, beside but a little in back of her, while she loudly comments on her progress and celebrates her past acheivements in the field of video gaming.

You glance at the clock. Your uncle should be back soon. He's picking up your mum on the way, and then after tea you're both going home. Hopefully you can help the foal to stay intact until then.

After a few minutes, though, you become aware of two things. One is that your cousin is getting genuinely caught up in what she's doing; she hasn't nudged you or glanced at you for a while.

The other is a high-pitched squealing sound, distant and hard to hear, but growing louder.

You rise as quietly as you can and back out of the room. You flee silently towards the rear of the house, to the kitchen and the fluffies.

The baby is screaming. He's tiny and his screams are tiny too, high and shrill. You can only just make out words. "Hewwwwwwtiiiies!" he's crying. "Buwwwwwwniiiees!" His mother is whining in her throat, a wordless, terrified thread of sound.

You snatch up the plastic trough, foal and all, being as careful as you can not to yank or squeeze him. It's hot. The plaster is hot! How did it get so hot? You whisk the foal over to the sink and turn on the cold tap while he shrieks about "buwie hewties" and "weggies". The Plaster of Paris is already going hard, and at first you're afraid he'll be stuck in the blistering heat of it; but Charlotte's shitty mixing comes to your aid as the weakened plaster begins to snap off in your fingers. The foal's screams diminish slightly. His fluff is coming away...

You're dousing his tiny legs in cold water and trying not to cry when Charlotte barges in. "What are you doing? You've fucked up my project! Give me that foal!"

You hunch your body over the sink, sheltering the tiny creature. "No! You burnt him! His legs are burnt! He needs help!"

"Fuck you! It's mine, not yours! Give it!"

"No! His legs are burnt! He needs water!"

You're only distantly aware of the front door opening and closing, of footsteps on the stairs. You no longer care about how much trouble you're in; all you care about is the red and blistered skin of the baby's legs.

"Fuck you, you stupid bitch! Give me the fucking FOAL!" Charlotte is screaming. She rains blows down on your back and kicks furiously at your legs.

"No!"

"It's mine! I'll do what I want!"

"Charlotte?" you hear your uncle's voice, puzzled rather than angry. "What's going on?"

She doesn't seem to hear him. She grabs a handful of your hair and yanks back your head, then smacks it downwards. Your forehead hits the tap and you yelp. She does it again.

"Give it! Give it, you stupid bitch!"

"No! You'll kill him!"

"I'll fucking kill it if I want! Nobody gives a fuck about fluffies, and nobody gives a fuck about you! I'll kill it like I killed that stupid hamster! I'll fucking kill you too!" She yanks on your hair again, but then her grip is gone.

"Charlotte! That is enough!" shouts her father. You peek over your shoulder to see that he has hold of your cousin around the waist. She wriggles madly. Your mother is standing behind him with her mouth hanging open.

"What's going on?" Your aunt is using her whiniest voice. "You girls know I hate to be woken up."

You turn off the tap. You don't think more water is going to help. However, you stay hunched over the sink; it's the nearest thing you can think of to a defensible space. Before you can try to explain, Charlotte does it for you.

"Let me go. Let me GO! It's just a fluffy! I can do what I want with it! I'll kill it! And I'll fucking kill her too! Let me GO, you bastard! You're not even my real Dad!"

"I'll show you a real dad, young lady," grunts your uncle, hauling her out of the room.

***

Your uncle drives you and your mother home in near-silence. You dribble tears over the cotton-wool-stuffed shoebox on your lap. The foal is alive — just. Wedged in the back is the dog crate containing a bewildered and huuhuuing Flossie.

After locking Charlotte in her room, your uncle came down and gently took the little red foal from you. As you listened distantly to your aunt's sobs and the sound of Charlotte methodically breaking her possessions, he fed the foal a mixture of alcohol and fruit juice — a safer anaesthetic for baby fluffies than most medication — and checked the tiny creature over.

"It'be touch and go for a while," was his verdict. "Those burns could have been worse, though. Plaster of Paris can get up to 300 degrees when it sets, as Charlotte knew well good." He admitted that the foal's legs may never really heal completely, even with a fluffy pony's enhanced healing.

Your mother's suggestion that you leave the baby behind and wait for another fluffy foal to come along had you in tears again, and her derisive "...and look what happened to your hamster!" sent you into a total meltdown.

"Yes!" you sobbed. "Look what happened! SHE got Chubby out his cage! SHE squeezed him round his stomach! SHE dropped him off the balcony! And now she's tried to kill Cinna — the fluffy!"

You begged. You pleaded. You even suggested taking the fluffies to a shelter — anything rather than leave them with her.

Your uncle hugged you and made soothing sounds. "No, no," he said. "No, she won't have access to any more animals. I'm going to get her some help. Proper help. I'd have done something sooner, but your aunt was dead against it..." He sighed. "I'd no idea she'd got this bad. Julia always insisted that she's just a bit of a hothead, just a kid with a bit of a temper. But the pets... the fires... if we don't get her proper treatment now, I don't want to think of where she'll end up."

It's agreed that you'll take both the red foal and his mother home, at least for now. Your mother is mollified by the inclusion of their crates, bedding, and all their bits of things in the deal. If they need a vet, your uncle will take care of them.

Glancing at the rear-view mirror, you meet his eyes. "It's a mercy you were able to get him out, Lin," he says quietly. "There was a nasty case when I was a kid, years and years back; little girl lost all her fingers, trying to make a cast of her hands..."

He stops talking as he sees you turn white. "They heal fast, these little fellas," he says, trying to calm you. "They're fragile, but if they get through the first few hours after an injury, they usually mend."

Your shoulders shake as you watch the tiny flanks rise and fall under the soft red fluff. The foal's legs are wrapped in gauze and adhesive bandages, but he's in no pain. He's sleeping quietly. You don't know if he'll live, or what his life will be. But for now, he's your Cinnamon, and he's safe.

-end-