Short Story: The Pigmen

Intro: Well, I thought I'd celebrate my return by posting another original short story. This one is The Pigmen. It has many influences...among them George Orwell, (1984/Animal Farm) The Twilight Zone, and Pink Floyd. From my own alien experience, this story represents how medical professionals often see my body, according to me. Also, that the medical profession is run by piggy banks...unfortunately. I'd like to develop this story further actually...but until then, here's The Pigmen!

     

THE PIGMEN:

by Chris Bowsman

It was dark when I first saw the pigmen. I could make out only a hazy snout lit by torchlight. One of them drugged me when a green pill was forced down my throat, and bound my hands with force cuffs behind my back, while another boxed me around with heavy hands until my gut was visibly torn and I choked back bits of blood and vomit. The air around me smelled like dank piss. If the swine's wrecking ball sized fists didn't do me in, the stench would.

"Don't worry." sneered the pig behind me.

“We’ll improve you soon.” said the pig who was in front. Before I blacked out, I consciously shook my crooked fist in rage.

I awoke face down in a sea of filth with barely enough light to see the sewage spilling over me in this tunnel. Miraculously, I stood and dodged the oncoming torrent of mud and scum. Someone had cut me free…but who? A man in a dark cloak let out a strangled whisper. “The pigmen above ground don’t want us to reach the light.” He said. He took me by the force cuff and led me down the darkness.

A door whooshed open from behind. Through my blurred vision I could still see the giant chrome chamber,  full of sticky sacks hanging from the ceiling: The mutation chambers. I cut through them with the force cuffs, and we moved onto the roof, shaped like a trough and adorned with the high-flung banner of the Pig Empire: red with a black pig head.

A dozen soldiers greeted us and came out squealing, “Come out with your hands up!” Laser rifles pointed at us. We jumped down into the trough, and since the pigs liked that filth, they couldn’t spot us. We jumped a guard in one of the escape pods from before the pig takeover. As we flew out of sight, and cheered ourselves, we saw the Empire disappear.

Then, I knew what would finally do us in. It wasn’t greed that would destroy us. It was our willingness to stay in filth. To let ourselves be “improved” by drugs. To let them make us think we are ugly and stupid. As my vision blurred over, my comrade grew a snout and tail. So, the mutation had begun.
Thinking quickly, I threw the pod into a nosedive and crash-landed in the desert to throw him off. He bit me in the leg, and squealed, and I kicked him in the snout. That would be the end of him, I thought, and cleaned myself in the oasis, until I squealed in horror…  that I had now become a pig!

“If you didn't care what happened to me, 

And I didn't care for you, 

We would zigzag our way through the boredom and pain. 

Occasionally glancing up through the rain. 

Wondering which of the buggars to blame. 

And watching for pigs on the wing.”

- Pink Floyd, Animals, Pigs on the Wing Pt. 1