She wakes early, the sun shines in through her bedroom window. Her boyfriend, Ted, hadn’t stayed last night, as he’d felt the flu coming on. Fiona’s arm aches psychosomatically where she’d had her swine flu vaccination yesterday, thinking about Ted. She can feel it burn, she doesn’t think anything of it.
The birds cheep in the trees outside. She swings her legs out from under the bedclothes, she rubs her face with both her hands. She looks up, out the window to outside. She sits for a moment on the edge of the bed. She feels a little woozy, she isn’t sure why. Just the morning, she guesses. She has never really been a morning person.
She can feel that something is different. She squirms a little on the bed. She can feel that her arse is different. What she sits on has changed. She can feel that her arse is huge and round. She thinks she has been reading too many Kim Kardashian magazine articles. She looks down one side. Her torn nickers lay on the sheet under her. She thinks of Ted again. She looks down her other side. She jumps up onto her feet, which make an unusual clack, clack, clack sound on the tiled floor, as she grabs her arse with both hands. She looks down at her feet, which are trotters.
Ah!
She spins around to look at her now, huge, arse, in the full length mirror she keeps in the corner of her room, only to see a curly tail growing out of her unusually pink rump. “Oink!”
She hears herself for the first time. “Oink!”
She can’t believe what she sees. “Oink!”
Her head spins. “Oink!”
How could this happen? “Oink?”
"Oink! Oink!" She wails and spins around on the spot. Clods of shit fall from her big, round arse, plop, plop, plop. "Oink! Oink! Oink!" she cries. Her snout in the air. Clack, clack, clack, sound her feet on the tiled floor. Clack, clack, squish, squish, sound her feet as she slips in her own shit, smearing it across the white, tiled floor.
Ah! “Oink!”
She throws herself to the ground and rolls in her faeces smearing it across her face, and her body, pissing herself as she lies hysterical on her back kicking her totters in the air. It was strangely satisfying.
How... “oink”... did... “oink”... this… “oink"… happen?
She oinks and flails on the shit smeared tiled floor until she is exhausted.
She has to be dreaming. This had to be a nightmare. Someone must have spiked her drink? If only she could remember anything before this morning?
The points of pink ears appeared first in the mirror on the dressing table, sliding up, sliding up, as she dares to look. The creased forehead, the small black eyes. Her hands clasp her face. It is true, she isn’t dreaming. She hadn’t taken a bad trip, or drunk a bottle of absinth she’d forgotten about. At least that might have explained it. What did she do last night? She couldn’t remember. She lets out a wail, "Oink, oink, oink, oink!" and falls to the floor again.
What is wrong with me?
She begins to sob, but only pig grunts can be heard coming from her.
She grabs at her phone on the bedside table, panicked. Her fingers are webbed with skin. Her small finger is welded to her next finger, and the skin is turning shiny and black as she types. She tries to pull her fingers apart, but they won’t separate. Her longest finger punches at the phone screen, but pretty quickly the soft touch of flesh changes to the clack, clack of hoof.
“Hello?” says her Ted’s voice.
“Oink, oink,” she says.
“Who is this?”
She drops the phone. She bangs her trotters together trying to catch it. She throws herself onto the floor.
Ah! “Oink!”
There is the sound of air brakes hissing out in the parking area.
She raises her head from the floor. “Oink?”
She runs to the window and looks out. Clack, clack, clack, clack. The big animal cartage truck has pulled up.
Oh good, she thinks, they have come to get Bob the pig.
Bobby the pig is going to market.
Jack Haulage comes to the door. Knock, knock, knock.
What is she to do? The back door is open, she believes, Jack could come in at any stage. Would he? Will he?
Knock, knock, knock, knock.
Jack will leave again when she doesn’t answer the door, she is sure of that.
“Fiona, it is Jack,” Jack calls from the back door.
Fiona backs away from the window.
“Fiona? I’m here to pick up Bob.” Knock, knock, knock, knock.
Fiona sits back on her haunches behind the couch.
“Fiona?”
Fiona hears footsteps on the gravel walking away from the back door.
She hears the clanging of the gates on the back of Jack’s truck as he opens them up and pulls down the metal ramp from the back of the truck to the ground.
Fiona hears Bob squeal. She can just make out an unfamiliar voice saying, “What? Mate, what are you up to?”
“Jack Haulage’s truck, she hears an the same voice say.”
She hears the cabin door. The truck starts up. There is the hiss of air brakes. She hears the double de clutch and the big rig rattle into motion.
Jack isn’t loading up, he’s packed up and he’s leaving.
Fiona forgets herself for a minute. She runs to the back door. Clack, clack, clack, clack. She runs out into the back yard just in time to see Jack’s rig disappearing down the drive way. She stands in the car park and watches it go.
No, Jack, wait. “Oink, oink, oink.”
“Hey,” calls a voice. “Hey, over here.”
Fiona looks around. She’s alone on the farm, there shouldn’t be anyone here.
“It’s me, Bob,” says the voice. “Over here?”
Bob? Bob! thinks Fiona. Bob can speak English?
Fiona walks slowly over to the paling fence. Bob? “Oink?”
“Yes.” Bob pushes the latch to the gate and it opens and Bob walks out.
“Bob?” says Fiona. “I can understand you?”
“You expected me to speak duck?”
“But I can understand you?”
“You’re a pig,” says Bob. “Did you not get that?”
“I can’t… be… it… makes… no… how?”
“You opened the gate,” says Fiona, suddenly, like that was the most amazing thing that was going on.
“You guys think you are so smart,” says Bob. “Do you think we stay in there when you are not around?”
“That is the point of the fencing?” says Fiona. “To keep you in, to keep you safe.”
Bob laughs as though he was hearing something ridiculous. “More to the point, what was that guy doing here?” says Bob.
“Who, Bob?”
“The guy with the big truck?”
“Oh… um?”
“What was he doing here?” asks Bob.
“Oh, um…” Fiona stumbles over her words.
“My father always warned me about the man with the big truck who takes our kind away never to be seen again?”
“Really… your father?”
“Napoleon,” says Bob. “Was that who he was?”
“Who?”
“The man with the big truck?”
“The man with the big truck?”
“Yes, was he the man with the big truck who takes our kind away never to be seen again?”
Fiona blushes.
“He was! He was the man with the big truck who takes our kind away never to be seen again.”
“Oh… um?”
“Where was he going to take me?”
“Where?”
“Yes. Where was he going to take me?”
“Um, oh…”
“Well, thanks a lot.”
“It wasn’t personal,” says Fiona.
“How could it not be personal,” says Bob.
“It’s just not,” says Fiona. “You’re not a pet.”
“Is that what happened to Wibur?” says Bob.
“What?” Fiona squirms.
“What happened to Lester?” says Bob. The pitch in his voice rising.
“Oh…” Fiona stutters.
“What happened to Gryllus?” says Bob.
“Um?” Fiona stumbles on her words again.
“What happened to Napoleon? What happened to Pequeninos? What happened to Piglet, Porky, Snowball and Squealer?”
“It’s just business,” says Fiona. “Nothing personal. Besides…”
“Besides you’ve never been a pig before.
“How?”
“The swine is strong…”
“What do you mean?”
“It is dominant?”
“That makes no sense…”
“There are more pigs in the world than ever before in history, now a days, haven’t you noticed?”
“No,” says Fiona. “Well, maybe…”
“You just have to get used to it…”
“I won’t…”
“Sister…”
“Don’t say that.”
“So what are you going to do?” says Bob.
“I don’t know.” Fiona flops down onto the dirt. She pushes her snout through the gravel, from side to side, scratching, scratching, as though stressed she is trying to sniff out an answer.
Bob brushes his snout up against her. “I like the way you smell,” says Bob.
“What?” asks Fiona.
“You’re covered in shit,” says Bob. “Did you do that just for me?”
“It was the shock…”
Bob nuzzles Fiona. “Well, I like it.”
“Oh Bob.”
Bob sniffs at Fiona.
Fiona lays her snout between her front trotters. She exhales loudly.
Bob lay against her in the morning sunshine. “It is not so bad…”
“What’s not so bad?” askes Fiona.
“Being a pig.”
“Easy for you to say.”
“At least now you can give up the crazy diet,” says Bob.
“What makes you think I am on a diet?”
“I see everything you eat,” says Bob. He snorts. “Or don’t eat.”
“I eat suckling…” says Fiona.
“Yeah, well, we won’t be having any more of that talk.”
Fiona exhales.
Bod nuzzles.
“Those crazy anti-vaxxers?” says Fiona. "Who'd have thought?"
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