Bramble's Runt - 1

FractalFluff, February 24, 2014; 15:21 / FB 18442
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[Mostly hb, some psychological abuse. Nothing for abusefans to get their teeth into, I fear.]

BRAMBLE'S RUNT (pt 1 of 2)

"Huuhuuhuu! Pwease, Mummah, nu mowe hewties! Huuhuuuhuuhuu! Bwambwe be gud geww!"

You sigh. You don't like sorry-sticking your fluffy, but as long as she's throwing these baby tantrums every day you don't know what else to do. At least the sorry stick brings things to a head; once she's reached a certain pitch there's nowhere else for her to go. The crash lets her calm down.

Until the next time.

It's been going on for weeks now. Three weeks — four? You can't take much more. You've tried everything: she's banned from TV, you've removed most of the toys from her saferoom; you've even started restricting her food. Nothing works.

If only you could simply put her off babies; make the prospect too unpleasant to bear. But reminding her of all the things she'll have to give up, telling her what she'll have to go through, even showing her graphic footage of problem fluffy births — nothing deters her. You've almost resigned yourself to either ditching her at a shelter or having her euthanized. The thought of allowing her to be mated and letting her raise a litter is just too nauseating to bear — you're not averse to the idea in principle, and you could certainly afford it, but the prospect of giving in to a fluffy... well, that just sticks in your craw.

Then one day you're discussing your predicament with a friend, a fellow fluffy owner who went through something similar with her wingie.

"Oh, I just faked mine out," she tells you breezily. "Slipped her one of those baby Fluffcker's Jr. dolls. They're very lifelike."

"I heard they don't always accept them, though," you say. "And £200 is a lot to spend on something that's going to end up buried in her litter tray."

"You can tackle that pretty easily, though," says your friend. "Most doll rejections occur because the mare knows she wasn't pregnant. You can get this stuff now — there's an oestragen-juiced chow and some other hormonal props that give her the whole experience. Bloating, lactation and all. Lasts as long as you want it to — get it all over with in a week or keep her a blimp for six months. They don't know any different!" Your friend crows with laughter.

Later on, though, you reflect on what your friend told you. Maybe rejection wouldn't be such a bad thing, for your purposes. You don't really want to give Bramble a fake infant — she would drag it around everywhere and annoy you with indefinitely, and again, you'd be giving in. What you really want is something that would get her to shut up about babies. If you ostensibly let her get pregnant and then she herself rejected the baby, she could hardly beg for more.

You duly spring for a course of that weird "Dream Mummah" fake-pregnancy chow, plus a few other props. You have her mated with a friend's fixed stallion, and start her on the chow. You have taken care to show her lots of material on runts: how they smell bad and often look different, how Bad Mothers and mothers in the wild (who are Bad Mothers by definition) often kill their runt babies, but Good Mothers look after them and rear them. For the duration of her chemically-induced confinement, you step things up considerably.

She has to watch mothers nurse and coo over babies that are not merely undersized or just limbless, but too damaged to live; babies with the most heartbreaking deformities. You dun it into her that if she doesn't love her babies no matter what, you won't love her anymore.

Pretty soon, she's nearing the end of her accelerated "pregnancy". You don't bother with the Fluffcker's Jr.; why shell out all that money when shelter foals are cheaper? It probably won't survive what you have in mind; but you reason that its mother was a feral. If it hadn't been picked up, it would have died anyway. You buy an orphaned foal one morning and sneak it indoors, placing it in a makeshift incubator made from a heating pad and a Tupperware box. Once you've given her the jollop to start the artificial contractions, you spray the baby down with the fake afterbirth goop... but not before dressing it carefully with your most crucial purchace: a can of RuntSpray. Born prematurely to a malnourished mother, the undersized feral foal makes the perfect runt.

"Huuhuuhuu... nu feew babbeh kickin..." Bramble sobs, curled up on her side on a pile of old towels and newspapers. For a moment, you consider smothering the runt and subjecting Bramble to a "stillbirth", but you're not sure that would yield the requisite trauma.

"It's okay, Bramble," you say, "not everyone feel the babies kick. You're doing fine." Your pet answers with a groan, curling up as a particuarly bad cramp wracks her. A fat gob of blood, mucus and tissue — generated by the doctored food that she's been on — slides out of her body. Now's your chance!

"Here you go, sweetie," you say, pretending to pick up the foal that you smuggled in with you, "here's your baby!"

You hand her the runt. The look of wonderment and joy on her dopey pony face almost gives you pause, especially when you have to watch it melt into disappointment and sadness when she smells the baby.

"Mummah," she says, voice thick with tears, "Bwambew haf... haf sickie babbeh..."

Not a dummy baby or a bad baby, you note with disappointment. The videos, intended as a guilt trip, actually seem to have sunk in.

"Poow sickie babbeh," says Bramble sadly, cradling the runt to her chest. She licks him clean of the protein mixture simulating the afterbirth, and places the chirping baby to her teat. "Dwink miwkies, gud babbeh," she tells him. "Dwink miwkies an be a happy babbeh... Mummah wuv yu... you dah bestes babbeh..."

And then she starts to cry.

***

Hours pass, and — although clearly conflicted — Bramble resolutely clings to the baby. She nurses him, coos to him, snuggles him; she cleans him almost obsessively. Over time, her mood seems to lighten and she's more relaxed — the runt spray must be wearing off. When she drifts off to sleep, you take the baby outside and re-apply it more generously than ever.

On awakening, she seems repelled by the ammonia-like reek, mouthing "bad babbeh" before catching herself and licking the baby with renewed affection. "Gud babbeh," she corrects herself. "Bestest babbeh. Mummah wuv. Mummah gif miwkies an huggies..."

Well, she can't hold out forever, you reason. It's obviously getting to her.

***

One day becomes two, and you're rapidly becoming fed up with the chore of hosing down the baby with RuntSpray every few hours. Bramble is more and more listless and depressed. By the third day, you've used up almost the entire can and she's crying all the time. Yet she still clings to the baby, licking him, feeding him. Trying to love him.

Her appetite is off. You mix some spaghetti sauce in with the Lact-Oh! kibble to get her to eat it. If she stops producing milk, the baby might die before the big event. Even the kibble is pushing it; really, she should be getting hormone injections to ensure good lactation. You just didn't think it'd take so long.

To be on the safe side, you pick up an extra feeding bottle and some specially enriched Runt-Gro formula when you go out to buy more RuntSpray. This time you opt for the more expensive extra-strong/long-life version of the spray; you're sick of having to keep applying it, and the Standard strength isn't moving things along fast enough. The warning on the can specifies "FERALS ONLY! Not recommended for domestic use. May cause violence in adults." Sounds like it might be the charm. "Sorry, baby" you say grimly as you drop it into your basket.

You apply some of the new spray just before bed. When you come down in the morning, you find Bramble face down in her litter-box. She's managed to twist her hindquarters sideways so that the baby can still nurse, but is huuhuuhuuing into the bentonite granules.

"Bramby!" you say, calling her by the baby name you haven't used since she was a foal. "Bramby, baby, what are you doing?" You lift her out of the litter and brush the granules out of her fluff. Luckily the box is large and had been changed recently; there's no actual crap where she was lying.

"Mummah!" she sobs, flinging her forelegs around you. "Bwambew am poopies. Bwambew wan gu inna wittaboxie wif aww dah uffew poopies. Bwambew wustes fwuffy. Nu 'serve babbeh. Nu 'serve Mummah. Bwambew... Bwambew bad mummaaaah!" she wails. "Bwambew nu-gud fwuffy, am poopies, bewong in wittahboxie!"

"Why do you think you're a bad mummah, Bramby? You've been looking after your baby like a good girl, haven't you?"

"Yeh, bu'... Bwambew was wickin babbeh, an smewwed sickie smeww... an membewed show... huuhuu... whewe a fwuffy mummah had a sickie-babbeh... huuu... an put inna wittaboxie. An... an Bwambew fowt... fowt bout doin same fing to Bwambew wittew babbeh! Huuhuuhuu... suuu sowwy, babbeh... Bwambew wustest mummah... huuhuuuhuuuu..!"

You carry the sobbing mare back to her bed. You sit with her and pet her mane as she cries herself to sleep. Poor thing seems exhausted. She was probably in her litterbox all night, you realize.

For a few moments, looking down at the pony's tearstained muzzle, you nearly relent. Maybe you should just stop all of this. Stop spraying the foal; just let her raise it. Let her have what she wants so badly.

Somehow, thought you just can't. Even though she has no idea of your scheme, even though she isn't opposing you — It feels too much like a defeat. You've come this far; are you really going to show less willpower than a fluffy pony?

You take the baby into the kitchen for a formula feed and a runt-spray treatment, then sneak him back into his sleeping "mother"'s fluff.

There are no repeats of the litterbox incident; Bramble appears to have moved on to the bargaining stage of the grieving process. She starts by asking you to give her and the baby a bath; she couldn't clean away the sickie-smell with her lickies, but maybe Mummah can use her bubblies and hottie wawa? Mummah is sooo clever!

You duly give her and the baby a good wash in the shower, safe in the knowledge that RuntSpray Extra is meant to survive repeated drenchings with rainwater and even detergents. The disappointment on your fluffy's face when she takes back her baby and smells the runt-smell still on him is painful.

Next, she wants you to take the baby to the vet. Maybe the nicey Doctor-man at PonyCare can fix the baby? You consent to take her and the baby in for a checkup — they're due one anyway. The doctor tells Bramble that it's normal to feel funny about a baby with that smell, and the important thing is to tell Mummah if she feels like she can't take care of the baby anymore. Doctor Novak offers you a neutralizer spray, but you tell him you don't want to subject either of them to something "artificial."

Bramble gets lots of petting and a lollipop from Novak for being such a great fluffy mummah. From you, the baby gets a top-up of his RuntSpray when nobody's looking.

The fluffy becomes more and more desperate. You have to take her to the vet again after you find her stuffing grains of litter up her nose; she pleads with you to "bweak sniffie-pwace, Mummah!" so that that she can't smell her baby anymore. While at PonyCare, she begs you to ask the vet to take her leggies away so that she can't hurt the baby. This time you assent to the neutralizer spray. Since you keep applying RuntSpray on top of it, the neutralizer has no effect.

Over the next few days, Bramble gets steadily sicker. Her fluff is coming out in patches. Her appetite is so poor that her milk supply becomes erratic; you go public with the formula feeds, letting her cuddle the baby while he drinks his bottle on the days when she just can't feed him. Part of the reason she isn't eating is the blistering and ulceration inside and around her mouth.

You can't believe that the fluffy is still holding out, but holding out she is. You feel guilty, but this is a battle of wills now. Even though she has no idea that you're anything other than on board with her motherhood — even though she's trying her hardest to obey your explicit instructions — it still feels as if she's defying you in some way.

You can't give in. You just can't.

***