The Pig

1.

Woke up this morning with the overwhelming urge to kill a pig. Had to do it! I snook out of bed and left the girlfriend sleeping and got dressed in the kitchen trying to think where the nearest pig was. Suddenly realised I had no idea. Imagine! All that bacon, all those sausages – but not an actual genuine pig anywhere to be found.

Still, I figured it shouldn’t be too hard: must be a pig round here some place. I pulled on my shoes, got out the big knife, and biked off into the city.

Two hours later, still no pig. Then I remembered seeing a pair of pigs in a muddy enclosure not far from where I used to live in Canterbury – big uns too. Only problem: Canterbury is over two hundred miles away. Take too long to bike there. Train too expensive. Bus make me sick. Only one thing for it: the mighty thumb. I turned my bike towards that trusty M1 motorway I done hitch so many times before.

I locked up the bike. I got out my thumb. I smiled and waved at all the cars and I realised once again for the ten thousandth time that oh yes, this is the life. A man alone in the world with his pockets empty of appointment books and keys: his shoes and his jeans and the hair on his head all he needs to sustain himself and bliss. This ratty old coat will be his pillow – and when the coat falls to shreds he’ll find another. Not even a backpack. One day I’ll return and pick up the bike – but not till a pig lies dead its throat on my knife.

I patted the knife in my pocket and smiled. The sky was soft and grey. And a pig was going to die. Oh yes.

2.

First man that picked me up was a black man, a bad man, a man with scars on his wrists and the stink of women left curled up and crying on his stupid black lips. I could feel it emanating off him: it sent shudders right down to my stomach. Every time he turned to me and smiled…the look in his big black eyes, the things they’d seen. He kept on turning and smiling and the fat rubbery lips that had chowed down on victims, shushed victims, talked bad to victims grew bigger and bigger until they were inches from the end of my nose and readied themselves to chow down on me too. I grew terrified and mad and got out the knife. I stuck it in his belly, in his arm, one in the face, one right through the hand that he raised for to protect himself and still got his eye. He squealed and snorted and the car weaved sillily across the road.

Oink oink, he said, the dumb fucking pig.

Oh yeah? I said. I stuck him once more in the belly, in the side, in his neck. In the belly in the belly in the belly. In the belly was the best bit: soft and satisfying and smooth; the rest of it was all a bit clumsy, aiming for an ear but then slicing off a finger or bouncing off a shoulder or just missing all together. Belly belly belly. I spiked him good, the stupid fucking pig.

Ah, bloody hell, what a mess we made the two of us coming to a rolling rest right in the hard shoulder and all that red juice spattered up over the windscreen and running, even, down the side of my face and wanting to get in my mouth.

Silly pig.

3.

It was a bad place to hitch from there, all the traffic going wildly fast at seventy, eighty miles an hour. I stood by the car thinking maybe someone would help cos I’d broken down but no one stopped. I walked out a bit into the road and waved the knife and my arms up in the air so they could see me better.

Woooom! they went. Woooom, wooooom, woooom! And beep and honnnnnk and mee-mee-meeeeeeeep. Why not stop? Me still wavin’ and smilin’ and wavin’. I walked up to the cars. I went to grab a door handle. I jumped in front of them. Come on, come on: me got to get to Canterbury to stick another pig. Stop, motherfuckers; oink! Oink! Oink oink oink!