I’ve slowly been building a setting around my “Tea Wizard” character and this is his fluffalo assistant, Sammick. Before he meets Diana and Bo, he gets absolutely FUCKED up by a couple of guys who don’t know who he belongs to or that he functionally cannot die.
I don’t know how much I’ve actually posted about him bc i’ve kinda just been re-reading my same google doc over and over and slowly adding to it. gun to my head, I’d describe it as “magical misery porn” (also it’s my gun, and i put it there sdfhjfjsfb)
Story WIP idk my head is empty no thoughts
“Would you like to stay with daddy forever?”
“Yesh! Ob couwse! Sammick wuv daddeh!”
Seeing the pure adoration in the fluffy’s eyes, the wizard gave up on his plan of trying to explain the true definition of “forever” to this simple creature.
He didn’t explain still being alive when your children die. And your grandchildren, and their children, until you’re either killed so violently that your body literally cannot piece itself back together, or the long-awaited heat-death of the universe.
He ruffled Sammick’s mane and smiled wryly,
“That’s what I thought you’d say.”
Sammick was in unimaginable pain, and this wouldn’t even be the last of it. Infection had set into his left eye and the socket would need to be scraped clean. The skin of his cheek had been carved away like a Christmas ham to reveal the fleshy holes where his teeth had been, pus running down his chin like honeyed glaze. His hind leg was necrotic, hanging on by a mere thread, black and oozing and teeming with maggots. It wasn’t a question of “if,” but rather “how much” would need to come off.
The stench was indescribable. Like misery and rot, it was inescapable.
His breath came in shallow gasps, “huwt… daddeh… wan die… wan die…”
But that would never happen. The magic etched into his bones wouldn’t allow it. Not now, not ever. Even if his heart stopped beating, even if his lungs stopped breathing, Sammick would be alive to feel every agonizing second of it.
“I know, boy,” the wizard whispered, “I know, I’m sorry.”
Sammick’s body spasmed, wracked with seizure, vomiting froth and black bile down his father’s vest. His remaining eye rolled wildly, disappearing beneath flickering lids until the fit passed. He gurgled one final word and went limp,
“hewp…”
Healing wounds this severe would be a long, arduous process. The most humane thing to do would be to put him down, but it was far too late for that now. It had taken the wizard decades to perfect the blend of poisons that granted him eternal life, and it would take him decades longer to brew a cure for that same curse. Decades that Sammick would not be able to endure.
Sammick’s body was splayed out on the coffee table, surrounded by tinctures and salves and anything else the wizard thought he might need. Snip! Off came Sammick’s hoof with a pair of sewing shears, black and shriveled like a flower left on the vine too long. Hard to believe it was once part of a living creature. The end of the leg still attached to him was going the same way, flesh coming off in dry chunks. And disgusting as it was, the maggots would stay. Few creatures were more thorough at separating dead tissue from living.
Moving up to Sammick’s face, the wizard pulled a red hot teaspoon from the fireplace and plunged it into ice cold water. Sterile enough, at least on such short notice. Going by feel, the wizard slowly and carefully scooped out what was left of Sammick’s eye, scraping the insides until nothing remained of the infected tissue. The smell of burnt flesh was matched only by that of rotting meat. He swirled an iodine-soaked wad of cotton around in the socket and sewed it shut.
The sterilized teaspoon came back for Sammick’s mouth and left behind four little pockets of blood pooled in his jawbone.
The wizard did his best to cut Sammick’s ear into roughly the right shape, but the same could not be said for his testicles. They were dangling out of their sac, swollen and inflamed and caked in the foul feces fluffies were famous for. The wizard opted to remove them entirely, along with the infected flaps of skin they’d come out of. They were too far gone, and he could only pray Sammick would forgive him.
Sammick had been burned with boiling oil by the local kids some years ago, still bearing the scars where the skin of his back had bubbled away, but this was something else. This was bigger, this was… planned.
He’d been caught in a bear trap that cost him his leg, and thrown into an old storm shelter that flooded when it rained. Sammick described in horrible detail the memory of an ice pick dipped in excrement, slowly coming closer and closer to his eye, watching as it pierced through his pupil, and the feeling of it swirling around until the organ inside was nothing but mush dribbling down his face.
He described his mouth being forced open with a vice and, when his tormentors couldn’t get a good grip, slicing off the meat of his cheek to get at his teeth. He described the wet crackling sounds and the tearing feeling when his molars didn’t want to let go, and being made to eat his own shit afterwards. When he tried to swallow, it simply packed itself into the holes in his head. He tasted it for days when no amount of licking would get it all out, until the infection set in and his mouth flooded with pus instead.
He described being pinned blind side down in a puddle of grime by one man, as another raised a hammer and brought it down on his horn, over and over, an earth-shattering hit each time, until it broke apart completely. They forced the shards down his throat but he couldn’t swallow them, so they tied his mouth shut and lashed him with a whip until he vomited blood through his nose.
Finally, they sliced open his ballsack and pulled out his testes with dirty fingers, taking turns pinching and poking and pulling on them, jabbing them with fishhooks and forcing him to limp around the room so they could watch and laugh at the way they bounced with each step.
But eventually they got careless. They left the hatch unlocked on a rainy night, figuring Sammick would drown and be washed away by the storm.
But he wasn’t.
He kept his head down and plodded through the mud on three legs all the way home.
“Wha’ am da wight mushywooms again, daddeh?”
Sammick just wanted to be really, really sure of the mushroom his daddy wanted. He’d rather not experience an amanita pantherina ever again. He shuddered at the memory.
“It’s chicken of the woods, you’ve had it before. It’s flat and wavy and pinkish orange,” the wizard pulled an old leather-bound book off a shelf and leafed through it. He showed Sammick a beautiful hand-illustration of a huge, multi-layered mushroom, “Here, see?”
Sammick nodded, “Otay daddeh, Sammy am weady!”
“Off you go, then! And back before dark or dinner will be cold.”
“Nu wowwy daddeh, Sammy awways be homsie fow nummie time! Wuv yu, daddeh! Bye-bye!”
“Bye, Sammy,” the wizard saw Sammick out the little dutch door and into the sunshine, trotting on feather-light hoofsies and humming a happy little song.
Daddeh wuv Sammy~
Fin’ mushies fow daddeh~
Make bestes’ hot nummies~
Fo’ daddeh an’ me!~
It was just an unfortunate happenstance.
He wandered too far from the wizard’s house, too close to a cabin commandeered by a couple of grifters, there to poach black bears and Grizzlies until the state troopers caught up with them.
“Motherfucker, it’s just one of those damn fluffy things.”
“With the fuckin’ feast of shitrats around you’d think the bears would be poppin’ out cubs left and right.”
“Naw mate, check it out. It reflexively shit itself when it got caught.”
“Ugh, gross. It’s like a hognose. Guess that means we can’t use it as bait.”
“Prob’ly not, then,” Oscar hefted the creature up by one horn like a shot buck, “Lookit this fat li’l fella, someone’s obviously been feeding him. Y’think he’s some kinda pet?” The weird fluffy was heavier than it looked, and was much bigger than the mangy, starving strays that infested Oscar’s hometown.
Miguel threw his hands up and took a step back, “Oh hell naw! I ain’t goin’ away for breakin’ no fucking shitrat, no way.”
“Untwist ya panties, we’ll toss him in the old storm cellar. He’ll die down there by the time we’re gone and nobody’ll hear him. Plus…” There was a cruel twinkle in Oscar’s eye as he reset the bear trap, “We can have a little fun while we’re at it.”
“I like the way you think, you sick bastard.”
"EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEK!”
Sammick shrieked as he was pelted with cold water.
“BAD WAWA! BADDEST BAD WAWAS!”
snrk
The man holding the hose was snickering to his partner. The partner looked less than amused.
“You know he’s just gonna shit himself again, right?”
“Then I’ll spray that off him too,” the man with the hose deadpanned, “The wonders of modern household plumbing.”
“NU CAN MUV WEGGIES! WHA’S HAPPENIN? BIGGES’ SCAWEDIES!!” The thing squealed.
“SHUT UP!” The man aimed the hose at Sammick’s head.
“Owie! Meanie wawa! Huu huuuuu…”
The water eventually stopped and left Sammick confused and trembling, hogtied on the forest floor. He found himself dried in the loosest sense of the word, a cursory rub-down with a dirty old towel that made his skin burn. He was thrown headlong into a hole in the ground and the doors shut and locked behind him.
“NUU!!! PWEASE NU WEAVE! WHEWE MISTUHS GOIN’? PWEASE WET OUT! SAMMEH WAN GU HOME! SAMMEH PWOMISE BE HOMESIE FO’ NUMMIE TIME! PWEASE!!! HUU HUUU…” Sammick cried at the top of his lungs, unaware that said misters were already long gone.
“Pwease doorsies! Huuuuu Pwease wet Sammeh gu back tu daddeh… Su cowd… Weggie huwties… Wan daddeh huu huuuu…” Sammick sniveled and scratched with his hooves for hours, climbing up the stairs to the hatch only to tumble back down over and over again. He pleaded with the mean misters, the heavy doors, the dingy walls, the insects that crawled up through the drain in the floor to let him go. Just let him go. Please.
He made every kind of promise a fluffy could make:
“Wiww nebah gib sowwee-poopies.”
“Wiww neba num da housepwants.”
“Wiww neba yeww at daddeh.”
“Wiww neba 'spwowe tuu faw fwom home.”
“Wiww neba num daddeh’s speshow nummies.”
“Wiww nebah be meanie ow stoopie ebah again, wiww awways be guddest, nicest, bestes-behabe fwuffy.”
He babbled for hours, non-stop. He cried at the doors til his eyes went dry. He took a single break to munch on a few decaying leaves and relieve himself in the far corner, but even that did not pause the waterworks. His head went dizzy from the crying. Yet as his voice grew hoarse and the darkness closed in around him, daddy still did not save him. He dragged his damp towel over to a different corner and curled up on top of it. The family of crickets living in the drain sung him to sleep.
timeline of the shit that's supposed to happen to him bc GOD knows i can't keep track of it by myself
Day 1
caught in the bear trap
thrown in the storm cellar
cries all night
Day 2
eyeball punctured (stumbles around scratching his eye & trying to get out)
Day 3
face sliced with a razor blade
refuses to eat poop, is lashed with a whip as punishment
chews on everything to see if its edible
Day 4
flay his face
yank his teeth out
make him eat more shit so it gets infected
Day 5
smash his horn with a hammer
make him swallow the shards
tape his mouth shut
Day 6
he’s starving now (can’t even eat poop)
today they stick things up his ass
and mutilate his balls
Day 7
rainy day
they tie him up & leave the hatch cracked so he’ll drown
he doesn’t drown, he uses the water to get up the stairs safely
limps home through the mud
has to limp through town, past warm, dry houses he can’t enter
he stops to eat some dandelions but can’t get his mouth open
he slurps up water from puddles
he sleeps instead of eating
Day 8
he sets off again before morning
the rain stopped
he leaves distinct tracks in the mud
he finds the Tea Wizard before his kidnappers find him
they eventually follow his tracks from town to the Tea Wizard’s cabin & they’re like “oh shit”
Questions I asked myself while Writing
do the villains intentionally take Sammick to spite the Tea Wizard, or is it just an unfortunate happenstance? Why is Sammick alone? If he’s caught in a bear trap (actually maybe a fox trap) who would have heard him scream? Were the villains hunting bears? foxes? did Sammick wander onto their property? why did they decide to torture Sammick so badly?
Is it someone new to town who just treats Sammick like any other fluffy (someone who doesn’t know about the Tea Wizard living outside of town?) Is it someone just passing through? Was it jsut some random, everyday abusers? or was it someone who knew full well which fluffy they were torturing? Getting back at athe Tea Wizard for something by torturing Sammick? (i think it’s sadder if they’re just some run-of-the-mill abusers doing a little side project)
They probably had no idea he was immortal & belonged to a legit wizard. If one of them figures it out & they’re like “oh shit” would they just keep him around as an immortal punching bag? would they return him & beg for forgiveness? or would they just dump him somewhere to hide the evidence?
Y’know, just some fun, uplifting food for thought 
((this feels more unfinished than fucking Sonic Boom, i just gotta get it out of my brain & in front of fresh eyes. y’all are gonna be just as victimized by my ADHD as i am 
alksdjfj))