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Trolls came in eleven different blood colours; eleven different breeds, as the humans called it. Although every now and again a troll would be born that was not one of those eleven. They were derisively referred to as ‘mutants’ and were not encouraged by breeders, not allowed in troll shows and generally disliked by the pet-owning public. Mutant wrigglers were usually culled at birth. At least that’s how Karkat remembered it. That’s how it was when he was wriggler being bought and sold cheaply by owners trying to get rid of him. He’d passed through so many hands that he couldn’t remember who his first owner was, or which owner had had him at what time. So when it seemed that someone wanted to actually keep him, he was hopeful and willing to take whatever he could get.
Humans were so difficult to understand at the best of times and Karkat certainly couldn’t comprehend how or why the candy red colour of his blood had suddenly become fashionable in the pet industry. The mutants were rebranded as ‘rare bloods’ and their market value had suddenly skyrocketed in the past couple of years. Despite public interest, most breeders insisted that it was still unethical to encourage the breeding of mutants. Others were more interested in the money to be made. That’s why Karkat ended up here…
It was a cold, late-autumn night. The chill bit down into the skin of anyone who wasn’t well-protected. Karkat shifted in the rough hammock and wrapped his blanket more securely around himself. It didn’t do much good. The thin, wooden walls of the box he lived in only kept out the wind and rain. Even then, they did a poor job of it. It still smelled damp from when it had rained lightly a few hours ago. In summer it was hot and stuffy without even a breeze to relieve his sweltering skin. At least in the colder months the place didn’t smell so bad. His litter pot hadn’t been changed in over a week so he’d stopped eating and drank as little as possible in the past few days just to avoid using it. That wasn’t very hard to do since the food had already gone mouldy and the water dispenser had some dubious greeny-blue slime growing in it. But they wouldn’t get changed until he’d finished them and that could take as long as two months.
He tried to focus on staying warm but that got harder as the night wore on. At some time roughly after midnight the troll in the next box started to whimper and sob. She was cold. Karkat swallowed back a sob. Her cries sent more chills through his body, causing him to shiver. He told himself he should be used to it by now. This shouldn’t bother him anymore, it happened so frequently. She’ll die this season, he knew it. It was only going to get colder from here and if she couldn’t handle it now, she’ll freeze to death later. He shifted uncomfortably in the hammock, not because it was the worst hammock ever and felt like it was made of burlap (actually, it probably was) but because of the sick feeling he got whenever he thought of the cold season. When the weather got colder, he got warmer and that meant all kinds of unpleasant things for him.
A week later the season changed rapidly. The temperature fell dramatically over a few short days and the troll in the next box died. For the next couple of days Karkat hadn’t seen any movement indicating that someone was going to move her. The slime colony in his water was getting larger and it had made him sick last time he’d drank from it. The vomit was still there, dried and crusty next to his water dispenser. Some ants had found his mouldy food and were starting to drag it away piece by piece. Rats were also starting to gnaw through the food. Good, he thought. The more of it they ate, the less of it he had to eat.
The next day he saw humans walking past his box through the side that was made of chain-link. There were the two he recognised as his owners and a third one was the vet who visited regularly but rarely actually saw to any of the trolls. They shuffled around in the box next door for a bit and then five minutes later one of the owners and the vet dragged the dead female away. They carried her between them; the vet had the legs while the owner took the arms. Karkat felt like he wanted to vomit again. He couldn’t see past the humans’ waists but the dead troll hung between them looking all skin and bones with hollow cheeks and thin, matted hair, whole body covered in filth and her clothing stained. The other owner followed them, bright pink heels clacking obnoxiously on the concrete. Karkat buried his head under the blanket. If he resolved to stay like that, maybe he would just die too. It would be nicer that way.
He kept his head under his blanket for a day and a half at best but then found that he couldn’t go through with the suicide. He picked through what was left of his food for any pieces of troll biscuit that weren’t either completely mouldy or partially eaten by something else. He didn’t go near his water and decided that he’d much rather get his hydration from the patches of frost that seeped through the corners of the plywood box. Despite the rapidly cooling temperature, he wasn’t given a new blanket or an extra one, or even new clothing if that’s what you would call what he was given to wear. It was a large human t-shirt with short sleeves but on a small troll like Karkat the hem reached his knees and the sleeves hung to his elbows.
At the end of the week the vet came back for a routine visit. Owner A in old jeans and boots came around unlocking and opening various boxes, including Karkat’s.
“Alright, out you come! Good ol’ Dr Phil’s here to see ya,” the owner barked.
Karkat lethargically swung his legs out of his hammock. He shivered when his skin met the cold air and sucked in a breath when his feet hit the concrete. Owner A shepherded him and a few other trolls down the concrete corridor between the boxes. Karkat gazed at them miserably and a few trolls gazed back at him equally as miserable. They were stacked two boxes high in large back-to-back rows of maybe twenty, Karkat had never had the opportunity to count them, even if he had been able to count. The chosen trolls were taken into a large shed attached to the back of the owners’ house. It was divided into rows of pens separated by thin plywood and chain-link. Karkat was shoved into one of them and locked in. He knew the drill. This had happened every year for the past four years that he’d been at this facility. The vet would come around to each troll and examine them for sexual ripeness and then he would be bred. That was the only reason why he’d been bought. The owners thought that they had higher chances of breeding more mutants – sorry, ‘rare-bloods’ – if they owned one themselves. Karkat had no idea if this was successful or not. He just laid the eggs and then they were taken away to be artificially incubated.
At least the actual environment in the pens was slightly better than that of the boxes. For one, the shed actually had a roof and four functioning walls. It was slightly warmer just by being right next to the house. It was usually dark, though. The lights were only on right now for the benefit of the vet but the trolls didn’t actually mind that, being mostly nocturnal and all. Some fresh food had just been put out with some water in a cleaner, slime-free water dispenser. Karkat took advantage of it immediately, careful not to make himself sick. At the back of the pen there was some bedding pushed up against the rough brick wall. It was actual bedding, not just a lousy hammock and a little blanket. It was a piece of foam covered with a sheet, a blanket and one small cushion but it was better than the box for sure.
Karkat nuzzled himself into the bedding while he waited for the vet to get to him. He came in due time and the owner let him into Karkat’s pen. Karkat didn’t move from his position just for the sake of being difficult but he didn’t have the energy to resist when the vet pulled the covers off and laid him on his back. The vet poked and prodded around his bulge and his nook and eventually got up, giving the owner a satisfied nod and exchanging a few friendly words. The gate for the pen clanged shut and Karkat wrapped himself up in the covers again, waiting for what was inevitably going to happen next.
Another troll was introduced to the pen. This one was meant to be Karkat’s breeding partner for the season. Every year they were both expected to give in to primal sexual urges and fuck each other until they were both inseminated and laid a nice clutch. Karkat wasn’t a very good egg-layer, though. In his first year he’d laid a grand total of one egg and only managed two in the following seasons. Each year he was bred with a different troll (Karkat suspected the owners picked them at random). When this year’s mating partner was thrown into the pen roughly he turned around with a snarl and threw himself at the gate. Owner B slammed the gate in his face, whinging loudly in her shrill voice while the other troll shook the chain-link barrier and growled menacingly at her. She left quickly to continue her distribution of trolls and it was only when she was gone that the new troll calmed down.
Karkat shuffled back towards the wall and curled himself in a ball, keeping a wary eye on the new troll the entire time. He seemed violent. Had the owners somehow gotten their hands on a high-blood? As far as Karkat knew, the owners only dealt with warm-blooded trolls but he didn’t actually know any of the trolls around here. He could only say based on those he’d been bred with because every other time he was strictly confined to his box. The other troll turned around. He was bigger and older than Karkat – he knew the other troll was definitely older because the irises of his eyes were full of colour, rather than the anonymous orange of a young troll. Karkat froze in awe. The other troll’s eyes were candy red.
The other troll spent the rest of the afternoon pacing at the front of the pen, shaking the chain-link whenever a human went by and climbing it all the while snarling, barking and growling like a feral animal. The top of the pen was sealed with chain-link too. There was no escaping from here. He didn’t stop until the lights went out. Then he sank to the floor and keened in such a melancholic way that it made Karkat weep. The younger troll was left alone while the elder kept a vigil by the gate all night.
The next couple of weeks were like an annually recurring nightmare, save for one thing. Karkat stayed curled up on the bedding as much as possible, squirming under the ache of sexual need between his legs. For most of the day his bulge was engorged and his nook throbbed. It wasn’t helped by the fact that all around him were the sounds of other horny trolls fornicating with their random mate for the season. It was mandatory. If you didn’t sire or lay you got sold and if no one would buy you, you were culled. Yet despite this, Karkat’s breeding partner stayed at his post by the gate. He didn’t move an inch closer to Karkat even though the younger troll was sure he was feeling the same grip of heat in his loins. He only moved when one night there was a cold snap that drove him away from the gate and under the covers with Karkat. The younger troll was facing the wall when the other adjusted the blankets to fit over the both of them and lay back-to-back.
The older troll was so warm. Karkat gulped. That ache between his legs became an itch and he started to squirm. His heart beat faster and his mouth went dry. He licked his lips between laboured breaths. His bulge was becoming engorged and he could feel it slipping out of its sheath. He whimpered. He wanted it so badly, how did this other troll not want it? Was there something wrong with him? Had the vet got it wrong during the check? Karkat couldn’t take it; he turned around and pulled on the other troll’s shoulder, forcing him to look at Karkat. The younger troll straddled him and rubbed their crotches together. Karkat felt a fully erect bulge, larger and harder than he was. He whimpered and then growled in indignation. This other troll had it up all along and he hadn’t been bothered to release it? Karkat shoved his hands up the other troll’s shirt aggressively, letting his claws rake the other’s skin and scratch his nipples. The older troll moaned and grabbed Karkat’s hands, pulling them away from his body. He rolled over so that he had Karkat underneath him. The smaller troll gulped. This was it. Now he was going to be taken. He tilted his head back and showed his neck as the older troll leaned down, indicating that he was willing to be submissive for any sexual act the other desired to use on him.
However, the older troll merely leaned down until his lips reached Karkat’s ear and began to speak. Karkat’s eyes widened. He hadn’t met a troll that could talk since he arrived at this place; the trolls here weren’t taught to speak. Karkat sure didn’t. He could pick out a few words that he understood from previous years and previous owners: “freedom”, “life”, “love”. This older troll’s eloquence was beautiful. He’d never heard anything like it, even from a human. Even though Karkat couldn’t understand the full passage he could hear the rebellion in the other troll’s voice, the promise and the sincerity. He spoke gently and yet firmly; so sure of himself. Karkat’s eyes began to water. Red tears fell from the corners of his eyes and tinted his vision.
The other troll put his hand between Karkat’s legs, rubbing gently at Karkat’s warm nook with cold fingers. Karkat moaned. The older troll’s free hand grabbed one of Karkat’s and guided it to his nook. The younger troll’s fingers were no warmer. Karkat jerked and moaned. He threw his free arm over the other troll’s shoulders and grabbed a fistful of cotton. In all his years, through all of his fertility cycles, he’d never been pleasured like this before. It was actually pleasurable. They weren’t truly inside each other; nobody was going to get any eggs out of this, it was just relief from the heat and the need. It felt almost naughty in a way – they were breaking the rules. Imaginings of how angry the owners would be when they found out Karkat wasn’t laying this year, of the miserable auction or dreadful culling post he would be subjected to disappeared in the bliss of the best orgasm he’d ever had. He thought that perhaps this was a true orgasm, one that he felt not just with his genitals but with his whole being. When the deed was done for both of them, they lay curled up together and waited out the unusually cold night.
The season came and went. The weather got warmer. Dr Phil came back. Trolls were removed from their pens one by one for their fertility check-up. Karkat had felt rebellious before but now he was feeling apprehensive. He and the other troll hadn’t tried to inseminate each other even once. They’d only gone as far as stroking each other’s bulges and nooks with their fingers. For the first time, Karkat would have nothing to show for his season of heat. The owners would be furious. He would probably get sold to some other horrible owner. He might get culled.
The other troll was back to being his old vicious self whenever the humans came around. When he was removed from the pen both owners had to work together and blind him with a burlap bag over his head. They dragged him away for his check-up kicking, scratching and snarling. The next twenty minutes felt like an hour. The owners came back and Karkat was compliant as he usually was when they herded him out of the pen. They’d put up a wooden table with a white cloth draped over it as an examination table for the vet. Dr Phil smiled insincerely as Owner A lifted Karkat onto the table. Karkat’s stomach dropped when the quick, simple examination began. The vet rubbed, squeezed and prodded him, checking for all the physical signs that there was something developing in there. Karkat knew he wouldn’t find any. The solemn shake of the head was inevitable when it came. The little troll turned to his owners with wide, woeful eyes. They were certainly unhappy with the result but Owner B visibly softened when Karkat looked at her. She huffed noisily.
“See? I told you we should’ve listened to Mark and Peggy about that one. Let them just put a bullet in him. He probably scared this little bugger so much that they couldn’t even mate.”
“Yeah, you’re probably right,” Owner A replied. “He was cheap but he wasn’t worth a cent of what we paid. I’ll put him on the post this afternoon.”
Karkat’s normally warm blood went cold. The owners liked to assume that just because they never taught their trolls to talk that they couldn’t be understood but Karkat knew what “put him on the post” meant. That was what the owners said when they were going to cull a troll. Karkat’s mate was going to be culled. That probably meant that he was going to be culled too.
Owner B took Karkat down from the table and steered him back to the boxes. That was actually a relief. If he’d been carrying eggs they would have moved him to the nursery and that place was awful. Even though it was only spring the corrugated iron shed got stiflingly hot during the day and always smelled like urine and excrement. On the way to the boxes Karkat dragged his feet, which made Owner B box him over the ears and snap at him to move faster. Maybe he should have been more insistent that they follow the rules and mate like good little breeding stock. Maybe then they wouldn’t have made the decision to cull that other troll. It was sad. Karkat had never known anything of beauty until that troll had whispered those words into his ears. He couldn’t stop the tears from flowing in rivers as he got closer to his box.
“Oh, what’s the matter, you big baby?” Owner B snapped. She didn’t really care for the answer and anyway, she knew Karkat couldn’t talk.
They approached Karkat’s empty box and Owner B started to flick through her keys to find the one that would open his padlock. Karkat stared at his box. The water was changed but the slime hadn’t been cleaned out properly. There was new food and a clean litter pot waiting in there just for him. But it may not matter. The owners might cull him. He recalled the words the older troll had said to him that night. Here he had only two choices: death or life in a cage and he didn’t know which was going to be bestowed upon him.
Owner B opened his cage door. “Alright, in you go.”
She reached for him. Karkat made his first act of direct rebellion. He growled at her and bit her hand. She yowled long and shrilly. He scratched her across the face and she fell over in surprise. Then he ran. His body teetered and his skinny legs could barely hold him but he ran all the way down to the end of the row. He stopped there and gawked in surprise. In the bottom box to his left was the older troll he had been supposed to mate with. Karkat hadn’t known that all along they’d been so close to each other. The older troll was sitting by the gate of his box, like he always had in the pen. Karkat kneeled down on shaky legs and grabbed the chain link, shaking it desperately. He whined and wailed, trying to convey something that he had no words for. The other troll shook his head. He placed his larger hands on the chain link and curled his fingers over Karkat’s.
“Just run,” he said. “I know what awaits me here and I don’t mind. This is the price I pay. But you’ve finally seized freedom, don’t let it go to waste.”
“Hey! You damn runt!” Owner B screeched, scrambling back to her feet.
“Run away.” The older troll pulled his hands back, letting his fingertips stroke the tops of Karkat’s knuckles. He kissed Karkat’s right palm through the chain link. “Spread the word.”
Karkat swallowed the lump in his throat as a fresh wave of tears slid down his cheeks. Owner B’s obnoxious heels were getting closer. Karkat tore himself away from the chain link and kept running across the small stretch of field at the back of the property. He ran past the post, covered in dark blotches of various colours and slid under the barbed wire fence. He kept going into the wilds beyond and didn’t look back once.
It was a quiet night at a police station in a small, rural town. The only activity on the main street was the frantic buzzing and fluttering of moths, mosquitoes and other insects around the bright white street lamps. There were just two officers on night duty, sitting behind the reception desk sipping coffee. One of them was sleepily reading the previous day’s newspaper. The other one yawned and decided that now would be a good time to get some more coffee. As he stood up he noticed what appeared to be some kind of spectre lurking by the glass door. He gasped and jumped in alarm, dropping his coffee mug.
“What’s going on?” his co-worker asked, flipping the paper down and standing up, following the other policeman’s gaze.
There was what appeared to be a small, grey child with eerie orange eyes standing outside with his palms pressed to the glass. He was dirty, wearing nothing but a filthy, old shirt and his hair was wild and matted. Nubby candy corn horns could barely be seen through the mess.
“It’s just a troll,” said the policeman with the paper. He sat down again to continue reading.
“I wonder who he belongs to.” The policeman who’d dropped his mug stepped out from behind the reception counter and opened the door. The troll didn’t come in so he crouched down to the troll’s level and asked: “Hey, little fella, where’d you come from?”
The troll pursed his lips and began to sob.
“Aw, come on, I just wanna know where you’re from.” The policeman picked the troll up and perched him on his hip as if the pet was a human child. “Did something bad happen? Can you show us the way?”
The troll nodded and pointed in the direction he’d come from.
Chief Inspector’s Report,
Thursday, 20th April
Summary of the investigation into The Happy Wriggler Meadows breeding facility:
Upon investigating The Happy Wriggler Meadows, the facilities and conditions were found to be below minimum legal requirements for the breeding of trolls. The structural integrity of the facilities housing the trolls was deemed dubious at best. Examination of the financial records and animal papers also showed evidence of malpractice and operation outside of the law. Medical records from vetinary doctor Phillip Jameson were not consistent with the observed condition of the trolls being kept at the facility. The owners of the facility have been placed under house arrest until further notice for breaching the conditions of their breeders licence and operating an unlawful business. All of the trolls have been confiscated and handed to the Animal Welfare Agency. The Happy Wriggler Meadows has been shut down and the owners have had their licence revoked.