You walk towards a pavilion with low wooden walls shaped vaguely like a half hexagon attached to a larger building behind it. A large banner is draped across the entrance reading "Plush Paradise". Inside the pavilion you see a mixture of tourists, employees and people in animal mascot costumes. The dry heat beating down on your head and the tables of free beverages contained therein make entering seem like a good idea. You approach the bored-looking carnival employee by the entrance.
"How much to get in?" you ask.
"One ticket." he says as he leans against a wooden beam, not bothering to look up from his phone.
"Where do I get tickets?" you ask.
"Dude, forget about it." he says still tapping his phone with his index finger "There're, like, 12 people who've snuck past me already to get at that lemonade so I'm probably getting fired today anyway."
"Thanks," you say and step into the pavilion.
As you enter you're approached by a large mascot in a pink and white teddy bear costume who holds its arms out as if requesting a hug. You smile somewhat politely and wave the bear off and walk further in. The bear just moves a paw up to its face as though it were giggling and approaches someone else, a young woman wearing jeans and a black t-shirt with the logo of a local gaming convention. You laugh a bit as the girl is blindsided and hugged from behind by the large mascot. You shake your head, still smiling a bit as the woman lets out an ack at first and then starts laughing.
On your way to the drink table you're offered hugs by other animal costumes; skunks, squirrels, lions, lionesses, there seem to be quite a variety of animal mascots. Some of them politely offer as the first one did, others approach you as though they've no intention of taking no for an answer, forcing you to duck between other tourists causing them to get the hug rather then you. At least they're not picky. Still something seems odd about this whole thing. As you finally reach the table where several paper cups with lemonade sit you slowly realize that though you've seen plenty of these animal mascots you don't see any plush toys for sale. You look at the building the pavilion is attached to and decide they must be in there.
You look back out into the crowd and something odd strikes you again. It dawns on you, as you down your second cup of lemonade, that you don't see quite as many tourists, and you see quite a few more animal mascots. Your heart sinks a bit at this, it just seems strange. Are they selling the mascot costumes?
"Wanna hug?" you hear a voice behind you. You roll your eyes and turn around only to find yourself face to face with another teddy bear mascot, round form and pink plush skin is oddly realistic, but what really strikes you is the shirt. The green dragon shirt is stretched to capacity but you recognize it as the one that was worn by the young woman who'd gotten hugged by the first teddy bear. Just as your mind is trying to piece together this information you see the impossible. The teddy bear mascot's mouth opens as she speaks.
"I got a hug earlier and it's the best hug ever." she says, voice vaguely reminiscent of the voice that acked and laughed at the hug ambush. "Lemme show you how great it was." she approaches you with arms outstretched. You back away in fear as she barely misses wrapping her large furry arms around you. You glance around to see a plush lion holding a protesting grounds cleaner from behind. The employee struggles and yells out trying to break the hold before plush fur begins spreading down his arms and over his face. A tufted tail worms its way out of his coveralls and as his face pushes out into the visage of a toy lioness he starts laughing, his voice becoming feminine as she cries out for more.
"Crud." you say as your face goes pale. You look towards the entrance of the pavilion but there are a group of the plush creatures camped out waiting to ambush anyone who tries to leave. One of them, a smiling plush raccoon, wears an employee badge and has a cell phone by his plush paws. It looks like that unambitious carnival employee has already found a new job.
"Hug!" you hear from behind you. You narrowly dodge out of the way as the plush lioness barrels into one of the other plush creatures tumbling them both over. They both laugh heartily at the occurrence and snuggle with each other. You back away towards the building behind you, realize that it's probably not any safer, but knowing that it's the only spot open enough for you to make a break for and given that you only see one other human, who currently has a large plush snake coiled around her as she laughs and cries out for more, you don't have much time before you're the only prey in the room.
"It's not that bad." the only other human says to you, her feet merging into one tail as her clothes turn into green and yellow fur. "It's wonderfuuulllll..." she says as her body is squeezed into a plush snake body. You'd say you're caught between a rock and a hard place, but the truth is you're caught between a rock and several very soft places.