Spurred

“And back in those days, there were humans, and only humans among the civilized creatures. The upright walking hairless apes, whose appearance varied in shade and size on spectrums from galaxy to ivory and twig to boulder. Their divisions ranged between everything from politics to diets, and it was within the bickering of nations that the leaders rose to power with golden chains and silver whips, until they had consumed themselves and brought the common man down alongside their crumbling towers.

It was from this ash, creatures born of flame, we rose once more.”

The Book of Theian

Sweat poured down the back of chapped emerald skinned thighs, back, neck. Filthy black hair tapered into makeshift spikes around the small creature’s bulbous face.

His mouth was letting out little eager yelps of pleasure as the human whore on his cock spilled wetness out of both ends, the unplugged one giving way to unadulterated moans and grotesque descriptions.

A third companion, a male white-skinned human, had his tongue out, and had started lapping up the droplets from beneath the coupled pair. With a couple more thrusts, rough fingernails cutting deep into the whore’s skin on her hips, he came with an undefeated cry, informing the rest of the occupants of the modest home that he had concluded what he went upstairs two hours ago for.

Withdrawing his spent cock, he slapped the woman on the hind, and reveled as the male-whore readily sucked at the freshly milked member.

The door was open, the messy, unkempt room tattered with beer bottles, scraps of Canopy cigarettes, clothing and blood stains revealed to the fellow occupants at almost all times.

In the doorway stood a man, pink skin paler than death, his torn pierced up ears hanging off to the sides like wings on a bird.

He was smiling, a lit cigarette in his mouth, his eyes obscured by pink round glasses.

“Good times, I see?”

The goblin twitched in his direction, anybody but the Reverend would be welcome to a scene like this, though Dean supposed that was his fault for exposing his antics to the home indiscriminately.

“Don’tcha got cities to burn, snakeface?”

With that, the Reverend took a hit of his cig, puffed smoke in the goblin’s direction, and went on his way.

Dean shook off the scare. Every moment with Reverend Rey shook the little outlaw to his core.

He left his satisfied companions on the bed where they laid, wrapped up in their own embraces. A young couple they had been, met Dean at a bar. The lady friend had never been with a Hofflin before, but had been dreaming about the well endowed members of the dying race and wished to bed one before there were none left to bed. The male, on the other hand, had been messing around with Dean for months now, if not for the fact that the goblin paid him wonderfully for the pleasure of a romp.

Large green feet stomped into the kitchen, bare, as the rest of his body remained. A woman in red, her golden arm holding a hot cup of brown liquid to her face, simply stared at him.

This wasn’t a rare occurrence, more common than Dean’s species themselves at the least. The woman chose to ignore his presence.

He swung open a glass fridge, the grime on the door obscuring the items inside. He takes out a gallon of blue and unscrews the metal cap, plunging the tip to his face as teal cream poured onto his tongue.

The woman cringed in response.

“Dean!” a gruff voice, sharp and low cut through the air. Connected to it was the face of a man, large and built within the peak of humanoid perfection. He had his arms crossed, he stood at least 5 feet taller than the little green man.

Dean did not respond, continued to drink his blue cream.

“How many times I gotta tell’u t’quit bringin’ random folk ’round here!?”

The green man broke his lips from the gallon, screwed the cap back on and placed it back in the fridge before wiping his face with his hand and shrugging. “Oh please, who they gonna tell?”

“They got lips don’t they? Outsiders are a danger t’the rest of us. Nobody can know we’re here, not after the circus incident.”

“Hey! Blame Rev for that, not me! I wasn’t even with you guys that day!”

“Don’t matter where’ya were that day, lawmen want us, all of us.”

“Billie and Nikki are hookers, blhud. They ain’t tellin’ nobody nothin’.”

“Take care of ’em, Dean.”

The little green man looked up at him, put out his hands and raised an eyebrow. “Come on U, ain’t that bad.”

“Take care of ’em. Or I will.”

He frowned, dropped his hands and huffed. “Fine. Do it.”

“Last chance.”

“Do it’chu oaf!”

The man gripped his fists tightly together before taking a slow solemn step backwards and turning on his heels in the direction of the staircase. He ascended, and there was nothing but his faint footsteps heard from then on, until a wooden door slammed shut and the coupled screams, masculine and feminine muffledly filled the house.

Terror in their voices, shrieks of horror as flesh tore from bone and blood dripped to the floorboards beneath. Banging could be heard as one or the other attempted an escape, only to be ripped from the hinges by the beast of a man and sucked dry of their life essence.

It was over before it began.

The woman in red piped up after the screams had died, “how many times you gonna let him do this before you start banging your whores at a hotel like everyone else does?”

“Hotels don’t keep Quell on tap anymore. I could die if I cum anywhere else!”

“Then bring it with you, dumbass.”

A blood-coated humanoid monster descended the stairs once more, the bodies stacked on his left shoulder as he made his way to the door. He turned to Dean, the little guy looking like a child who just had his favorite toys thrown away. The man’s face was splattered with blood, particularly around his mouth.

“Thanks for lunch, Dean.” He walked through the front door, leaving behind the problem child and his snarky older sister, who took one last sip of her coffee and huffed at the scene before her.

This was the chaos she had come to find comfort in.

A comfort that was completely non-existent prior to her run in with Crow.

SPURRED

Episode 1

Book Of Scarlet

She would remember how she got that scar for the rest of her life.

A child in the arms of her father, flaming red hair and tiny body born from the blood of her mother, the love of the fragile man’s life.

She killed her to be born. Whether she knew it or not. And her tiny whining figure would someday soon pay for what she had done to the woman she only knew from the inside for a meager nine months.

He wanted her to remember it. He wanted her to remember, to know, why he would do this to her.

Why he would hit her, knock her down, tear her clothes off and violate her in every sickly manner imaginable.

The first time he did it, the first time he held her down and she fought as hard as a young woman could, he cut her.

A tiny blade, a cheese knife. From the top of her eyebrow and through her eye and down onto her cheek. It was over in an instant, and then his hand was on her throat, and in that moment she had been given a choice, struggle and die, or sit still and live.

Scarlet couldn’t choose, her body chose for her when he put down the knife and used his free hand to further her suffering.

She cried though it stung, and though she had lost half her sight she refused to make use of what she had left. If she looked him in the eyes while he violated her life, she could never see him as her father again.

It never stopped. It grew less violent once she had learned her place, as Poppa West put it. She took her mothers life, and so she had to fulfill her mother’s duties. That was the frame of mind he forced her into, the box she needed to be in if she had any hope of seeing another side to this life she led at all.

But it was all she ever knew, and it was all she ever would know, she was sure of it. Taking her mother’s life had so far not been worth the suffering of living itself.

It wasn’t long before she could feed and bathe not only herself, but the creatures and crops on their farm as well, and suddenly Poppa had no need to work so hard to keep the place afloat. She could do it too, she could do it alone, and at the end of the day the last chore as she walked in the door would be waiting for her, standing by the fireplace, nude, with a cup of moonshine in his hand.

Her broken soul could do little more than leave her body for the next hour or so, while Poppa used the lifeless vessel to his fill.

In a moment of looking out the window at the full moon’s light, her spirit somewhere far away, galavanting with steeds in the fields or floating on the rivers and streams, something appeared inside of her.

A spirit, not of her own, but from within herself.

For the first time since she was young, she pushed him back.

“What’chu doin’?!” he snapped, her hand on his chest, her blue eye wide with surprise at herself, her own strength she somehow had in this moment.

“I don’t wanna do this anymore,” she rasped. She took a deep breath, ready for him to hit her, ready for him to beat her and take what he believed to be his at the end of it.

“Lay down, and shuddup.”

“No,” she forced him away, further, another jolt of courage sending him off her and moving herself away.

He snatched her by the head, grabbing her hair, and crashed her skull into the side of the fireplace before he extended her arm within it, the skin turning deep blood red before crystalizing into black tar at her fingertips.

She screamed for mercy, her voice breaking, the new spirit within her still fighting with gnashed teeth and a writhing body, refusing to give up this newfound urge to fight.

“You don’t tell me no, lil’ bitch!”

“Get away from me!”

“You’s a slut! Yer my slut, a slut in your mother’s blood, and goddamn me if’u thinks you’s gon’ be anythin’ more!”

She pulled back her arm in a sudden jerked movement when she felt his grip go soft for a millisecond. Her elbow met his jaw, sending him backwards. She stumbled to her feet and fled to a corner of the room, where she stared at him and contemplated her options.

He was just standing there, staring at her with hatred, fire both literal and not burning in his eyes, the amber sheen making his sweaty fat body look almost artistic.

“Get back here. Now,” he tried to command, but his dog didn’t listen. She shook her head, wincing at the pain in her arm.

“Take me to a doctor. Take me right now.”

“I ain’t doin’ shit fer’u.”

“Take me, or this’ll get infected, and I’ll die, and you won’t have shit anymore. You won’t have a free whore no more, and you’ll go back to workin’ this wretched place by yerself. Take me to the damn doctor right now,” Scarlet commanded, holding her arm, her teeth seething between words.

He huffed, like a child being asked to do something he didn’t want to do. But Scarlet wasn’t lying, he was well aware that she could die with injuries this bad.

So he took her. Up on his steed, a desert mare, big enough to get them there fast.

They shot her up with morphine and amputated the limb, and they didn’t ask questions. Violence was too prevalent to keep a lock and key on it nowadays, their only job was to save her life, not rescue her.

And Poppa West, being ever the thinker, bought her a nice new Alien Tech arm, $10,000 worth, a drop in the bucket compared to the riches he had amassed in the Canopy trade. It was a selfish act at the end of the day, Scarlet couldn’t work with just one arm, and anything that wasn’t Alien Tech would break down and need replacing eventually. This arm would outlive Scarlet herself.

When they returned home a day later, it was as if nothing had happened. Besides the dull ache in her arm, numbed by the morphine she was sent home with, even her missing fingers seemed to have returned when she studied the new hand.

In a moment of near normalcy, Poppa came to check on her; clothed, standing by the doorway with a cup of something in his hand.

“How’s that new arm?”

Scarlet knew the words, but not the way in which to respond.

“It’s fine.”

She didn’t look him in the eye, it felt impossible. She felt like she might kill him with a mere glance if she did.

“Take some time, rest up, ’s what the doctors said,” he spoke, took a swig of his drink, and began to back out of the doorway, no longer wishing to be privy to the damage he had caused.

“Don’t’chu worry ‘bout me. Be back to the same ol’ in less than a week, ’m sure.”

He nodded, and waddled off. Sitting down at the fireplace, drink in hand, he stares into the flames and he contemplates nothing as his eyes close and his empty cup hits the floor.

When he awakens, a green goblin-looking man is staring him in the face, hot pink eyes looking into his menacingly as he stood with one foot on each arm rest.

“Wakey wakey!” he says, shrill, his voice raspy, loud and high pitched. He begins to cackle as the man goes to move, before finding he’s been tied to his seat, Scarlet beside him struggling against her own restraints in a misplaced dining chair.

A big man comes around, a large bow-rifle resting on his shoulder. His face is stoic, and his complexion is snowy. He bares barbed fangs, an Abnyan with a Hofflin friend had taken them hostage, it seemed.

“Whaddya want?!” Poppa yelled, and the little goblin man jumped down onto his lap, looking down at his face.

“Whadda all bad guys want, smut-fur-brains? Gold, cash, jewelry!” he pulled out a dagger and aimed it at his throat, “But if ya got nunna that, yer blood’ll do just fine!”

“I don’t got no gold! We’re poor farm folk!”

“Bullshit,” the Abnyan piped up and spat into the fire, “we found Canopy growing on your property, you’ve got money if you’ve been sellin’ it.”

“I don’t sell it! It’s for me! For my pain! Prescribed!”

A third man poked his head around, coming towards the fireplace with an entire canopy plant in his left hand. He had it swung over his shoulder, the stem was at least 4 feet in length, the umbrella-like leaves at the top shaded the man’s head and the fruit underneath filled the room with a warm, nutty aroma.

He spoke, a lit cigarette in his mouth, “least 40 plants out there, don’t see how that kin all be for one guy n’ ’is wife.”

“I ain’t his goddamn wife, asshole.”

The big Abnyan looked at her, lowered his rifle and used it like a walking stick as he came in front of her, “you ain’t ’is wife?”

“That’s what I said. Cotton in’yer ears?”

He chuckled warmly at her.

“You ain’t ’is wife, what’re ya then?”

“Daughter.”

The little green man looked in her direction with surprise, then turned his attention back to the man he was standing on.

“Daughter? Come on man, I know incest is legal now but sheesh.”

“If that’s yer issue with us I’ll, I’ll never do it again jus’, jus’ let’us go!”

The Abnyan returned his attention to the fat man. “We ain’t lettin’ neither of you go ’til we git some cash or blood outta yer hands and lemme tell ya feller, I’m gettin mighty thirsty for the latter.”

“I’ll show you the money!” Scarlet announced, lurching forward in her seat and nearly tipping the chair over.

“Don’t listen t’ that whore, there ain’t no money!”

“Hundred grand is under the floorboards! We got dried canopy berries in the locked pantry and I got somethin’ real valuable I’ll give ya if you let me go.”

The big man looked at her for a moment, then turned to his human partner and nodded at him. “Let ’er go. Let’s see what she’s got for us.”

The man handed his stolen plant to the Abnyan and withdrew a dagger, not much larger than the Hofflin’s. He came around behind her and began cutting away at her restraints, while the Abnyan tossed the plant to the ground and wiped his hand of the dirt.

“Yer gon’ sell us out!? You lil’ slut! We’s ’spose to’be family!”

Scarlet rose from her chair and walked over to a rug in the hallway, pulling it up and off to the side.

“Whore! You fuckin’ whore! Sellin’ out’cha own goddamn pa for a gang of miscreants!”

“We prefer the term outlaws, actually,” the goblin spun his blade and chuckled to himself before hopping off the man’s lap and coming over to the hole Scarlet was making in the floor as she removed the boards, revealing a massive metal box beneath.

“I’m jus’ doin’ what you always taught me since I was a lil’ girl, pa,” she pulled it open, revealing the thousands of dollars she said would be there, “takin’ what I need, not carin’ ’bout who it hurts.”

“BITCH! You lil’ selfish bitch! I’ll kill you! I’ll fuckin’ ring your pretty lil’ neck!”

“Hey big guy,” she looked up at the Abnyan, tossed him a bundle of purple tinted cash, “welcome’uh bite ’im if ya want.”

The Abnyan looked pleased with the offering, started investigating the dollars with his fingertips and found himself surprised that she wasn’t lying so far, “thanks for the offer, but I don’t eat food that’s gone rotten.”

The human partner was shocked at the wealth they had stumbled upon, but was more interested in the canopy berries.

“Said ya had some dried berries in the pantry?”

“Yep,” she pulled a string from around her neck, a tiny rusted silver key on the end of it. She tossed it to him, “take it all, I don’t use that stuff.”

He smiled widely before clamoring for the door of the pantry, sticking the key in and struggling with it for a moment before opening the door and revealing jars full of ripe purple and blue canopy berries, more than the guy could even take with him.

“U, we got a bag‘er somethin’?!”

“Just grab a few jars, you don’t need all of that.”

“But U, there’s like a hundred jars in here! This could keep me high for months!”

“Just take a few jars, Pete, come on. You already got a plant you’re takin’ too.”

The now dubbed Pete sighed and dropped his arms to the side as he grabbed a couple jars, then began opening up and dumping the contents of the rest into his tucked in shirt, causing the fabric to bulge out at the edges.

Meanwhile, the man in the chair was crying, seeing no way out of the mess, refusing to comprehend why his daughter would betray him like this.

“Please lemme go, I’don wanna die. Please, not tonight, don’t kill me. Take everythang you want, take my daughter, take my drugs, take my money, just please let me live.”

“Girls don’t turn on good dads, ol’ man. Looks like you made whatever bed this is a long ass time ago. Time to lay down and shut the hell up.”

The man known as U kicked him in the ankle as he walked over to Scarlet, the girl helping the green man pack his little bag with as much money as they could stuff in there.

“Said you’d give us something else’uh value, is that right?” the Abnyan asked, confronting her for the final offering she promised them.

Scarlet gulped as she looked up at him, but she had no fear. This man, whatever kind of blood-sucking monster he was, wasn’t worse than Poppa, “get me outta here, and I got Alien Tech I’ll give ya.”

“Deal. Hand it over.”

“Take me with you first.”

“Girl, you fool ’round ‘n I won’t hesitate on endin’ yer life.”

“Be pretty dumb uh me makin’ a promise I can’t keep this late in the game, right?”

He chewed something in his mouth before nodding, “you ride with Dean. Let’s head out boys.”

“I’m Dean, case you were wonderin’,” the goblin pointed a thumb to himself while U grabbed Pete and pulled him away from the pantry before he could shove anymore berries down his already maxed out shirt. He looked like he was physically turning into one of the bumpy fruits at this point, his hands and yellow shirt had been dyed a powdery dark blue.

U grabbed the remainder of the cash, quickly shoving what he could into his shirt, pockets, and satchel. The box had been cleaned out, and after Pete re-secured his canopy plant, the poor thing now wilting after being left next to the fire, the trio headed for the door, Scarlet tailing behind them with nothing in her hands to remind her of this place, except her hand itself.

She turned around at the screams of her father, unfinished business rearing its ugly head and screaming horrible things in her direction.

“Girl!” U called out when he saw her standing in the hall, “You wanna come with, you better follow.”

“Give me just a moment,” she pulled up a finger, walked over to her father’s liquor cabinet, and pulled out his favorites, whiskey and moonshine.

“Take ’em, I’don givah shit,” he cried and mumbled.

“I’don wann’em,” she walked over to him, bashed the moonshine on the side of the chair until bits of glass and bitter alcohol splattered onto the tied up man.

She did the same to the whiskey, and laid both broken bottles on his lap, before smacking him in the face as hard as she could with the arm he had replaced, the material ripping against his skin as she wailed on him again, again, again.

Again and again, she hit him, for every time he hurt her, she hit him. But it wasn’t enough, the action felt menial when measuring the torment one had done to the other.

She grabbed a wooden broom from off the wall, stuck it into the fire until it burned like her skin had.

“No, no!”

She flung it at him, the flames erupting faster than she could have imagined the moment the heat hit the alcohol.

She could hear the screams of her father as he erupted into a burning, melting mess in front of her. His calls of torment dampened by the roar of the fire, but still crystal clear as she left his dying body behind her.

She joined the group outside, all of them already on their diverse mounts. She helped herself up behind Dean, and as U gave the call, they rode off into the night.

Letter from the author,

Spurred is an idea I’ve been sitting on for about two years now, a series of illustrated short stories following a gang of fantasy creatures set in a New Age Wild West.

The episode you’ve just read was originally published to Patreon, but they removed it due to the content conflicting with their platform. In more words or less, they would not release the ban on Spurred unless I completely removed all mention of Scarlet’s abuse by the hands of her father, in essence completely changing her backstory. It was around this time I realized I had no interest in them dictating what I can and can’t write about, especially since without creators their platform wouldn’t serve any purpose at all, so I took all my remaining content off the website as well.

I spent years being told what I could and couldn’t write about. I won’t spend a single minute more at the mercy of someone else’s morals, especially if those morals are for the sake of advertisers and investors, not the sensitivities of individuals who have full control over the content they consume.

As of now, I don’t have any more episodes available to share. I was hoping to test the waters with this one, see how it goes, and write more if it’s received well. It has yet to find an audience anywhere, perhaps it will someday.

I hope you enjoyed it. I wrote a whole bible for this story complete with lore and characters and species, places and plants and anything else you could think of for a universe like this one. I hope it all gets to see the light of day sometime, I hope I can continue to be less afraid of my own creations, and I hope you have a great rest of your day, wherever and whoever you are.

Ride on,

Sullivan D. Cohen, AKA S.D. Cohen