by Gene Stone
“Do you think that’s wise?” 613 asked.
“I do. And I’ll stay.”
The other pigs nodded. None of them wanted to remain in the house. 323 watched them disappear into the evening. She was glad to be alone. But she felt guilty. Was she staying to help her kind? Or did she want the fruit? It didn’t belong to her alone. But no one else had smelled those amazing fragrances. No one else knew it was there. Why hadn’t she told them?
Alone—she realized that this was her first time alone. How strange. She walked through the empty house with careful steps. She instinctively understood some of the objects in the house. The tables and chairs. The utensils and tools she understood too. Humans needed help to eat and sleep and sit. She felt a moment of empathy for them.
She stepped into a room which she knew must be where the adults slept; then she entered other rooms where their progeny surely spent their nights. These beds were smaller; the clothes that were strewn on the floor were also smaller. A family lived here. Things were becoming clearer and clearer to 323. This was a large home where humans lived together, generations of them, all eating together and sleeping in comfortable beds and having all the time in the world to be with one another. She looked up at the walls, and saw images there: humans. Babies with shocks of blond hair, toddlers with missing teeth and the smiles to prove it, teenagers with acne and awkwardness, poised for first kisses. They seemed wonderful, 323 thought.
She went back into the room where the adults lived. There she saw more pictures—strange that she hadn’t seen them the first time. Here were the adults. The humans in these photos lacked the delight of the kids, they lacked the spark. They smiled just as their children had, but there was something forced or reluctant behind those smiles, and yet there was honor in them too. A complicated pride in the smile, a pride in the fact each human was able to find something to smile about. 323 kept walking. She wanted to get away from those photos, from the promise that they held captive. She was tired of looking at human happiness.
At the end of the hallway, she came across a mirror that hung from the floor to the ceiling. She was startled at first to see a facsimile of herself staring back. This wasn’t the same as looking at another pig with similar features. She stared into her own eyes with the same intensity she had stared at the photos. But now the eyes stared back, just as intently. She moved in as close as she could to the quicksilver, her breath staining it with fog, and the mirror seemed to move too.
She posed. For a photo. She tilted her head like the babies. She opened her mouth and smiled as broadly as she could.
Her imagination roamed, filling the loneliness of the house, of her mind—with noises and complaints and tussling and joy.
In her mind, babies were crying. She could hear them in the rooms down the hall. “They must be hungry,” a pig said to her. The father.
“Yes,” responded 323. “I have fruit waiting in the kitchen. Let’s let them cry. Just for a little while.”
“Sometimes it’s good to get it all out,” he agreed.
“Father will be home soon, child,” 323 said to a boy pig. He was big now, he could feed himself, his crying had ceased years ago. “I made my bed,” he said proudly. 323 beamed at him and kissed him atop his pink, glowing head.
“Can you believe she’s getting married?” 323 said, stifling a cry. “Now, now, my dear. This is what happens. This is what happened to you and me, and now it’s happening to her.”
“Oh, I know. But you have to just let me be a silly old pig, with silly old emotions.” The young female pig came out of her old room with the knowing glance of a full-grown animal. Her parents, older, gravity winning its war against the sagging belly, beamed with pride.
“I loved you most of all,” 323 said as the two old pigs sat on the porch, watching the sunset. He looked over at her and he kissed her gently upon the brow. “You’ve made this life, these burdens, the sun and the sunburns, seem like jewels.”
323 opened her eyes and studied herself. A wave of silliness passed over her. The fantasies drifted away, but they left something within. 323 missed the orbit of the living. She longed for human routines, rising and working and taking pictures and building worlds like this farm. How must it feel then to rest under blankets after the day’s toil? She wished she would have the opportunity to make something of herself, even if all she made was a mess.
“There is nothing to make,” she said aloud, into the mirror, into the emptiness of the house. “There is nothing. My life has had no meaning. No reason.”
Her body slumped. She felt a range of emotions, but they were all unhappy, despairing. Was this what awareness brought? Maybe it would have been better to stay in the pen, never to know what she now knew, to be born, be fed, to sleep, and to die without knowing anything else. Ever.
She could barely walk now. Each time she lifted her hoof, she held it in the air for as long as she could, thinking about the next step. She closed her eyes. The next step, the next step. Her mind raced. She pictured a million steps in an endless meadow, her hoof planting itself again and again in the soft ground, an endless messy line showing only that she once took another step, that she once walked, that she once was. And then she watched the hoofmarks disappearing, washed over by the rain and the sun, washed over by the markings of other animals, maybe humans—bigger, stronger, faster animals, until the proof she had stepped was gone forever.
She put her hoof down; it made a gentle thud.
She gazed at herself. Her eyes closed and then opened.
“Pig,” she said, and then walked away from the mirror and down the stairs.
Sleeping in the pen would be fine. She belonged there.
As she trudged down the stairs, she heard a noise in the kitchen.
She tensed.
Had they come back? The humans?
Another noise.
Did she care? Maybe it was somehow right that the humans kill her, right here, in their house. Why not? They were probably going to take her anyway, someday, somehow. Might as well get it over with. Suddenly death seemed like a welcome friend.
She scraped along the edge of the wall. When she finally reached the bottom of the stairs, she turned to walk through the dining room and into the kitchen.
“Oh, well, looky, looky, looky,” 323 heard as she passed through the dining room. “I have stashes upon stashes upon stashes.”
323 peaked her head in through the kitchen door. There, upon the counter, was the ferret. He was doing his dance, singing his song. “Da-da-da, de-de-de, dum-de-dum-dum da.” He misstepped, fell on the counter, and looked up self-consciously to see if anyone had been watching.
“Oh my, a pig,” he said.
Then he tore a banana from a large bunch in the fruit basket. He peeled it with carefully with his mouth, and then tossed the fruit to the ground.
323 looked at the banana. Once again, she could almost taste it. But this time she opened her mouth and she did taste it.
“Is it good?” the ferret asked.
“Yes,” 323 said between swallows.
“It seems only fair that you eat their food,” he said.
“I’m too tired to play your games. Once was enough.”
“No, no. It wasn’t enough. Look at you. A dark, dark pig. With dark, dark thoughts. Don’t think I didn’t hear you.”
“Leave me alone. Or, perhaps, give me an apple, and then leave me alone.”
“Get your own apple,” the ferret said. He hopped around, showing off his nimble steps. Then he fell again, and burped, and laughed. He threw an apple at 323 and it bounced off her brow. Then, without saying a word, the ferret took off upstairs, giggling, leaving 323 alone in the kitchen.
“It’s not as good as I thought it’d be,” she said after she ate the apple.
“It should be better. Forbidden fruit,” the ferret said. Just like that, he had returned from whatever mission he had sent himself on.
“Where’d you go?”
“Here and there,” h
e said, still laughing.
323 smelled something in the air, something foul. The ferret had brought the stink of humans back into the room.
“Like I said, I’m too tired for you. This day. It hasn’t been what I’d hoped.”
“And what did you hope for?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
He tossed her a plum.
“Try this one instead.”
She didn’t want to try anything, but she couldn’t help herself. The plum was delicious–so sweet, so cold. She hoped the other pigs would forgive her as she ate what they had never tasted.
The ferret took a drink from his thimble. He burped once more. Then he winked.
“I see you.”
“Of course you can see me.”
“No, I see inside you.”
For a moment 323 felt naked, vulnerable. But the ferret was probably just talking nonsense. She finished off the plum and wished for another.
“You’ve seen what you’ve seen. You know truth. Truth hurts. A lot. We’re all finding that out.”
“Stop talking,” the pig said.
“Poor unhappy pig. Poor unhappy pig. Da-da-da-da-da-da. Well, sitting around being unhappy isn’t going to help anyone.”
“I don’t want to help anyone.”
“Yes, you do.”
“No, I don’t.”
“Fine. You want to be like me? Here, drink.” He jumped off the counter and rushed towards 323. He put the liquid under her nose. She sniffed it and drew back. The ferret nodded.
“Follow me. Who knows how much time we have, who knows if we have any time at all.”
“Time for what?”
“You don’t want to be like me, pig. I see something in you. Something I wish I saw in me. But it’s not there. I know that. It’s been gone for as long as I’ve been strong. No. The opposite. Never mind. So, come with me. Or drink. That’s the choice. Up to you.”
The ferret scampered toward the open front door. He paused and turned, waiting for 323 to decide.
“You come with me,” the ferret said, “and your world will never be the same. You won’t be the same.”
323 rolled this promise around in her mind. She had already seen the burial ground. She had seen the human home. And she was ready to give up on this world that existed outside the pen. There was nothing to do, there was nothing more to learn except misery. At first she thought, Why bother? Why did all this have to happen?
Oddly, and not for the first time, the ferret seemed to understand what she was thinking.
“Come with me.” He said it with such conviction that she knew whatever she was about to see would turn her world upside down again—so many times the world was turning and turning! She was turning too. Her body was turning, following. Even though she still felt glum and moody, she was putting one hoof in front of the other, and once again taking slow, unwanted steps toward her fate.
Elephant
The animals spent the night circled around the crushed car as if it were a campfire. The gentle hum of sleeping diminished the aura of violence, and, although carcasses scattered the fields like fleshy weeds, this was a peaceful evening. Predator and prey slept as one, breathing in and out, over and over, in and out.
The issue of hunter living beside the hunted had been resolved quickly. Of all the animals in the circus, only the lion, who was dead, and the tiger, who was missing, might eat the others. The rest were omnivores or herbivores, which meant they competed with each other for food rather than acting as food for each other. For now, Nancy thought. She wondered about the tiger, but hoped, if he were still nearby, that the human bodies would tide him over.
The tiger was just one of many concerns that kept Nancy awake. She kept replaying the events of the afternoon. What could she have done differently? Four of her kind had been killed. She wanted to bury the lion and honor him somehow. She wanted him to come back to life so she could thank him. Most of all, she wanted him to be the leader, so that she could sleep like everyone else. She wanted to forget. She wanted to stay awake and think. She didn’t know what she wanted.
The sun rose over an eastern butte, and an edgeless pink overtook the sky. Nancy watched the world with new eyes. It looked beautiful.
She flexed her leg. It felt better than it had even a few hours earlier. Whatever Joe had done, his little goat mouth digging at her rough skin, seemed to have worked.
Nancy knew that Joe and the others would expect her to have a plan. In the absence of the lion and the tiger, she was the leader.
Images, ideas, worries flooded her mind. The animals needed to leave the circus site. They needed food. They needed water. When they awoke, they would need to scavenge the trucks for anything to drink or eat, first thing. Every plan began with a first step and she had hers. So she watched the sky as it turned from pink to light orange, she felt her eyes become heavy, and closed them, and rested.
She didn’t sleep long. The little monkey woke her, dancing on the crown of her head. She raised her trunk instinctively and tried to shoo him off. He was too quick.
“We’re hungry, we’re hungry,” the monkey said. “Hungry.”
Nancy rose. The other animals were up. Twenty-eight eyeballs, all trained on hers.
She sighed. “We need to get up and moving. Let’s scavenge through the food trucks and find the stored feed and water. They had to have enough to last us many days.”
She looked at the monkey, who looked at his hands, and understood. The thumbs. Only he could manage locks and handles. The remaining baboon was too busy weeping for his friend. The monkey scurried off.
“I’ll follow, make sure he doesn’t get into trouble,” Joe said. Nancy nodded. The monkey was known for mischief. But he was also very clever, and he found the way into the food truck rather quickly. He shrieked gently, with pleasure and pride, as it opened. Nancy ambled over to it gingerly and, with Joe’s help, dispensed the oats and grains. The animals ate with voracious intent. The killing had left them hungry. Nancy nibbled on acacia leaves, but her appetite was small. Too much in her mind to leave room in her stomach, she thought.
Nancy had the monkey search for the water truck. He found it, and the animals lapped up the water just as the sun was taking every color but blue from the sky.
Fed and quenched, the animals met back at the crushed car and waited for Nancy. She drank her fill and then sprayed some of the water over her back, cooling it off.
As she returned, the flash returned. Something about that water drenching her back, the sun, the heat, this group of kin—caged kin, not kin from birth—reminded her of something. She’d been with a group like this before. She shook it off. These flashes had to stop. Craziness, insanity. These were human constructs, but now she understood them well enough to fear them.
“What now?” Joe asked.
“We have food and water here—but not as much as I’d hoped. There’s less than a full supply. This isn’t a good place for us. Not with the dead.”
“We can join the fight,” one of the horses said.
“If there are any real battles near us. I’d guess we’re far away. We drove on that small highway for miles and miles since last we saw a city.”
“Maybe one will find us as we migrate,” a zebra said.
“Maybe,” Nancy said. She was distracted by that word, “migrate.” It felt right to be out here, to migrate, rather than being in the back of a trailer, trapped by metal; it felt right to be walking toward the horizon, instead of trying to find it from inside a cage.
“Something will find us. Of that I’m sure.” Happiness overwhelmed her. The part of her that was animal and the newly acquired part that was aware seemed to be fusing together. It was time to migrate, she told herself, and the sun felt good as it beat down on her. They would find food, they would find adventure, they would find life.
But first they had work to do. “There might be extra food anywhere. Look for whatever you can find,” Nancy said.
The animals did as they were
told, searching the trailers, the cars, the pens. They found nothing, except in one pen, where something peculiar cowered in the corner. Joe and the monkey approached, and made out a shivering beast, crouching in the dark.
The tiger.
Joe bleated loudly. The monkey clapped like a drunken goon. They had momentarily forgotten their new voices.
Nancy and the others, hearing the commotion, rushed to the trailer and peered inside. Nancy couldn’t believe what she saw: a tiger who seemed afraid of the light.
“What should we do?” Joe whispered. He was wary of the animal, as were the others.
Nancy could see the whites of the tiger’s eyes, but, no, white was the wrong color. Rivulets of red crisscrossed the whiteness. “Leave me with the him,” she said.
“Is that safe?” Joe asked.
“I think it is. Elephants and tigers aren’t enemies.”
“It must be so easy to be you,” Joe lamented yet again. But he did as he was told, leading the others back to the comfort of the crushed black sedan.
Nancy waited for the last animal to clear, then poked her head into the tiger’s pen.
“How are you, friend?”
The tiger tried to find a deeper corner.
“You can come out now. Do you know what happened? Are you aware?”
“Yes,” he said with a meek growl. “I’m aware.”
“Would you like to come out?”
“I would prefer not to. You all go and find more of them to hunt and kill, and leave me alone.”
“And you’ll just stay here? Alone?”
“I was made to be alone.”
“But things have changed.”
“No. They haven’t.”
“We need you.”
“No, you don’t.”
“We do. The lion is dead. Shot by a trainer as he saved me. They all want me to lead. But you should lead. You were born to lead.”
“I was born to do lots of things I no longer do. I just want to sit here in the dark and be left alone.”
“We will be hungry soon and we need an expert hunter.”
“There are plenty of dead humans to eat.”