SWINE
By Dylan Angell
The pig came stomping his great hooves down the dirt path leaving a cloud of dust that hovered with the moments behind.
His shirt missing half of its buttons exposed his expansive stomach, bouncing and creating a tide as his stomach motioned with the unnecessary pounding of his two legs through the dust. The birds squawked at the beast like trumpets blaring as if preparing a town for invasion. It was barely midday and the pig was already drunk on champagne, busy yelling his curses to the birds and damning the sun. The taste of vile entered any mouth that bared witness to the beast. A strange power of hypnosis was released from the pig's belly as it jiggled, pointing in all directions inducing sea sickness or food poisoning from a food uneaten.
Soon all who bared witness became impotent, love became lust, all wants or needs soured perversely. Old people felt wrinkles scarring into their skin and teeth loosen. As the sun brightened, all became soft,pale,yellowed and old. The pig's brown rock hooves shook the town and nostalgia hit all the people--feeling as if an era had ended and a new awful day had begun and would not end.
In a small garden, four retired school teachers sat drinking their afternoon tea. The day had began beautifully and they sat among exotic flowers when suddenly a cloud of dust hovered upon them. Their tea turned the color of mud. A small swarm of dust found its way into their eyes and skin and they began to cough wildly. The women gasped as the beast appeared and the smell of shit and vile permeated the air. The beast reached with his giant, thumbless hands and grabbed the one named Pearl by the collar of her flower print dress.
His claws tore into her and he began to slide his mucus-drenched muzzle on her bare, wrinkled breasts that lay defeated like rotten fruit. The same bosom which many children had rested their heads in their darkest moments now was taking part in its own moment of terror. The other women froze like cowards and then ran leaving their brittle little friend to be engulfed by the great beast twice her size. He stretched Pearl's skin. Her eyes rolled back into her head, refusing the moment.
Pearl's lungs released a sound she had never heard before. It broke through the chords in her throat, layer by layer,finally releasing a banshee wail. This was not a cry for help for any human ear; no human could help her. To them this scream may well have been silence. This was a prayer. She waited and waited and no mercy came. Her silent prayer grew louder and louder until her voice collapsed. Her lord had gone deaf to her cry and she was now orphaned and mute.
When the eyes opened to the wrinkled body, its face swollen and legs weak, it stood naked. The pig gone,her clothes gone, and her mind elsewhere trying to come back. The body composed itself and began to move. It walked down the empty streets taking small steps. No eyes spotted it. People walked by but did not look towards it. " Why?" it asked looking towards the sky.
If thy father is no hope, the children must work. All life leaving her, as a body that is no longer her own, she laid on the floor of her little home. Pearl stared to the ceiling, thinking of all the children she had known. There was not a child in the town that she had not touched. In fifty years of teaching, most of her children had grown up and become important people in the city and she had taught their children's children. That night with the last of her strength,she wrote many letters since her voice no longer functioned. She called her children together to seek revenge to express the scream she could not manage. The characters were in place, everything was moving forward. That night she died in her sleep unable to see her plan hatched.
Walls of the city were splashed with glue. A stickiness floated threw the air. One's breath could get stuck to one's own throat. Young boys on bicycles rode through the city throwing posters up on the walls. Posters that read "Elect the beast!" and "The pig is the new way!". The whole city was drunk on champagne; people were fornicating and vomiting in the street. Children of all ages were out burning and looting the city they had built. All marriages dissolved and no rules or rights were respected. All men of business dropped their life's work and devoted all their time and energy to the beast. The street was filled with trash and human excrement. It went on for months.
With the election just weeks away people stopped celebrating, for they were not sure if the beast was real. There had been no sign of the beast. They began to clean up the streets and neighborhoods. The law was restored. Then one very quiet day the beast emerged into the town on a small platform in the city square and announced himself. He stood alone with just a microphone staring into a invisible crowd.
"My people show yourselves"! Lights flickered inside the homes.
Silence.
"If you are my people let me see you"! Suddenly the sound of windows breaking, women screaming, and humans shouting filled the square and a crowd of people exploded onto the street. "Shut up!", he yelled, and they followed his word. "You are all pathetic." He grinned. "You ask of me but ask nothing of yourselves. Look at you. You have clung too tightly to your pathetic lives. You have all married into mundane routines and empty rules stemmed from no truth! You worry about money and status but nothing that will cause you true death. If you elect me, don't elect me! Don't go to the voting booth! Stay here and burn the city! Break the windows and take the shards and smash them in the eyes of the statues of our former leaders! Loot and empty the banks, bring the money to this square and create a huge fire! Drag your clothes and your furniture, your precious antiques and burn them all! Paint your faces black! Don't elect the beast-- become the beast! "
Hundreds of jaws dropped in blind laughter and a marching band tread through the square. That night the city could have been seen from space it burned so bright. The city chanted all in a choir as one voice. As if a switch was flipped and all humanity left them they drank and screwed as animals, flinging shit into the fire. It went on like this till the first light of morning.
In a small dark corner a lone man emerged. He was well-dressed in a suit; he was a reminder of the days of order. He walked out on the platform and toward the microphone. The crowd was silent as if they were all children waiting to be scolded. The former mayor began to speak.
"Hello my city" he said with tears in his eyes,"I would like to share some final thoughts. First off I would like to congratulate the beast." The crowd was silent.
Second I would like to offer him the key to the city!"
The pig laughed.
"A key for a door I've already kicked in ?"
The mayor cleared his throat. His voice shook as he tried to find the words.
"I would like to say one more thing to my people before I bid farewell. You have spoken that the beast is the new way and you have acted on this, and the beast now acts as man. So we must make him feel vulnerable as he has made us as men feel".
The pig sat confused. The mayor looked towards him.
" I have one more gift I would like to give you."
"What?"
" An apple."
The mayor handed him a plump red apple and the pig placed it in his mouth. He raised his frail, small hands and swung, pushing the apple deeper into the pigs throat. With jaw stretched, the pig began to choke. The people's smiles straightened and their eyes squinted as if they had business to attend to. Suddenly, four men came out with a rope and ran in circles around the pig and they dragged him into the square. Around the beast the city burned and people began to drag pieces of wood into a great heap and set it ablaze in the middle of the square. They slid the pig into the fire. The pig's silent eyes expressed true terror. His pink flesh burned black and he squealed with pain.
Soon every mother, father, and child came to the square with knives,forks,shovels-- whatever tools they could find and they began to devour the beast like ants on a fallen fruit.
As the pig screamed its last grunt and life left its eyes, a bearded man with blood around his mouth stood up. "We have tempted the pig, and sought revenge!" The crowd cheered. "Now we can rebuild our lives!" another yelled. The crowd cheered again. The mayor stood before the microphone.
"You fools! You fell too deep into the beast's ways! There are no homes! There is no food! We have nothing to rebuild!"
With this declaration, anger possessed the people. With no one to blame they all began to fight one another. Within twenty four days they had all starved or been slaughtered. Only the way of the beast lived on.
THE END
