The Pig

The Pig

I remember the moment oh so well.  It was just before dawn.  You know the time I'm talking about, when the sky sometimes turns the color of a bruised cranberry and streaks of pink announce the coming of the lord of day.  I recall it so vividly.  It was early October and the smell of death perched itself on the tip of my nose then permeated deep within all my senses.  I couldn't give you the exact time.  Time is only a measure of one's heartbeat and mine was still beating to the tune of the ground, the wind, and smattering of frost among the blades of grass.  What was this thing up and about?  Change.  Some kind of horrible change was about to launch.

I couldn't control my bladder.  Urine seeped into my underwear making me shiver and causing my teeth to clatter like a train echoing through a tunnel.  Yes, the looming one-eyed Cyclops built by man to scream its power over the steel rails and to make us understand capitalism.  That's what I'm talking about.  I slipped out of my torn jeans and removed my soaked underwear.  I stood naked to the world and then it came after me.

It? You ask.  What was it?  You tell me.  Its snout shaped like a wild pig's rubbed violently against the back of my bare legs.  I felt the hotness of its breath crawling up my legs until it found itself a home inside my nose.  It snarled and smiled at the same time terrifying me like nothing before it.  I cannot remember anything before it.  Wasn't this enough?  Is not death's messengering enough for us to inhale, to comprehend?  I could not comprehend what faced me at that very moment.

"Are you ready, Freddie?"  It asked with its pig's snout and a pig's dripping cynicism.  Instantly it opened its jaws to reveal teeth jagged like stalagmites in tourist's cave.  "Take me a ride," It shouted.  "Ride me to eternity."  What else could I do?  I mounted the pig and rode it through the skies holding onto its needled skin.  My hands bled, but felt no pain.  I was anesthetized.  I was unable to feel the blast of cold air blowing around us as we flew across the sky, the cranberry magical sky.  "This is your world," He snorted.  "It's just like me you know."  I didn't know.

Though I wanted to know what the pig meant, I was muted by fear, by my humaneness.  As though reading my mind, and I'm sure it could, the monster animal said hauntingly, "It is violent and smart just like me.  It wallows in the muck to keep itself from blowing up.  You Freddie will watch from here and watch your world destroy itself."  The pig landed on a cliff, an outcropping of chiseled porcelain and laughed like only a pig could laugh.  Again it asked, "Are you ready Freddie?"  I had to force myself to nod.  "Here it goes."

I watched from my vantage.  The world below me…was the world.  It was my beautiful blue diamond called earth.  Where then, was I?  I could see the separations of land and sea.  I could see lights flickering.  Homes?  Cities?  I wasn't sure.  I wanted to ask my fiendish friend, but he had left.  I was alone standing on a porcelain mountain looking down at my earth and then it happened.  It happened suddenly without announcement, without a proper introduction.

A flash of light snapped like lightening below me.  It was blinding and synchronized with the rumbling of thunder following every streak of destruction.  The earth was covered with fire, the brimstone that man's god spoke about in ancient fairy tales.  The fire flowed in waves across the surface.  The oceans shriveled and the land melted into a ball of blackness, black like blackberry jam.  I was tossed about and fell on the smooth surface of my glass tree branch.

"Mr. Grimes?"  I heard a woman's voice.  "Wake up, you're dreaming again."  I opened my eyes to see a young shapely brunette giving me an eye of concern.  "It's time for breakfast.  My eyes cleared and before me sat a breakfast fit for a king, scrambled eggs and a side order of Canadian bacon.  The brunette looked at me and smiled reassuringly.  "You'll be okay.  Just eat and relax.  The nurse will be in soon with your medications.  She turned swiftly and I caught a whiff of her sweet perfume.  I heard her laughing as she walked through the doorway.  Her laugh was the keening of a wild animal, a wild boar.  I ate my bacon and relaxed, ready for another day of therapy.