The Distance Travelled

When the pig comes crashing through my kitchen window, I’m not sure what to think.

I mean, dig: There I am just hanging out, eating some Boo Berry, waiting for the afternoon rack session (hoping that Stanson and Jonesy are on duty ’cause they usually give me a break-Barnes and Salinger always stretch me till they hear ligaments tear and sockets pop), when lo, what’s this flying through my window? A big, fat, porcine letter bomb.

I jump out of my chair and run over to the window to try to get a look at the bastards who launched it, but by the time I get there, all that remain are the shattered window-bits still dropping off, tinkling in the post-apigalyptic silence-flames belching from the Lake of Sorrow (I have a villa on the waterfront), and smoking brimstone as far as the eye can see.

The pig scrambles to its feet and dashes into my living room, squealing all the way. I decide to abandon my Boo Berry in favour of trying to catch its dirty pig ass, and so stomp along after it. That’s when my talking thermometer goes off:

“The indoor temperature is four billion, one million, six hundred and fifty-two thousand, four hundred and twenty-one point seven degrees Celsius. The outdoor temperature is four billion, nine million, seven hundred and sixty-three thousand, five hundred and seventy-six point eight degrees Celsius.”

Great. A heat wave and I have to chase this pig around my house. And I’ve a racking to attend in forty-five minutes.

“Come here, ya little porker!” I shout, trudging into the living room, glancing about for his little pigtail as he perhaps shuffles behind the TV or tries to squeeze under the coffee table.

Nothing.

I have to seal up this window soon, or I’ll bake. The A/C units down here are pretty powerful, but they can only take so much. I glance around again, feeling the heat from the window more with each second.

“Ah, forget it,” I grumble, and head for the basement to see what I have to seal the pig point-of-entry.

By the time I get back upstairs with the sheet metal, the pig is on his last spoonful of Boo Berry.

Cheeky little fucker.

So.

Sheet metal in hand and pig in the oven (little bugger put up a good fight-tried poking one of my eyes out with that spoon), I’m determined to deter further piggings, so on the sheet metal, I paint a big pig’s head in a circle with a diagonal line crossing through it, the words

NO PIGS!

in big, black letters underneath it.

Once outside, even with my protective clothes on, I feel the heat of the lake punch me like a fist.

The Lake of Sorrows belches up a great gout of lava and fire, and I have to duck and cover from the shower as it rains down on my house. Luckily none of it falls through the new hole. I have to get that metal up before I lose my whole place, like I’ve already lost a window and a perfectly delicious bowl of Boo Berry.

Up goes the sheet metal. I drill small holes through the brick, then grab the cordless screwdriver and in go one, two thick screws. Great. Marvellous. I put the third screw on the end of the driver . . .

And hear an engine.

Louder . . . louder, still.

I hear hooting and hollering as the vehicle comes into view-a dune buggy. The driver points and laughs at me. His buddies spot me and join in the fun. As they get closer, the driver squints, reading the writing on the sheet metal. He bursts into more raucous laughter and floors the buggy. A guy in back stands up, reveals one arm holding a short rope. Lifting his arm higher reveals the pig attached to the rope. It looks terrified and squeals above their laughter.

With a grunt, the guy swings the pig around his head several times, lasso-style-cowboys from Hell.

I hold up my hands and scream, “No pigs!” But it’s too late. I duck. The pig crashes through the unscrewed bottom half of the sheet metal, and I hear it snorting all the way across my kitchen floor, then thudding against the wall and scrambling off to hide.

“Cocksuckers!” I roar, and throw my screwdriver at them. It whistles over their heads and melts into the lake. I quickly reach down and grab my drill, pull back and let fly. Still plugged in, extension cord in tow (yes, Hell has electricity; the Amish were right), the cord reaches its limit and snaps from the outlet. It whips back and collides with the forehead of the still-standing pig-thrower in the back seat. His laughter stops and he grunts as his body tumbles backward out of the car. He lands in a cloud of dust near the shore of the lake.

The dune buggy speeds off around the corner, laughter from the remaining pig hooligans drifting back to their unfortunate comrade.

Grinning madly, I cross the street and grab the pig-tossing bastard by the back of his leather jacket. Yeah, these guys are real cool. No protective outerwear for them. They’re mean motherfuckers, tossing farm animals through people’s windows, then driving away, laughing in their cute little dune buggy.

“Come on, shithead, you’re going to find that pig you just threw in my house. And now that my screwdriver’s gone, you’re going to hammer these last two screws in with your face.”

He groans, mutters some obscenity at me.

I drag him to my ‘window’ through the dirt and lava, drop him, kick him hard in the gut so he can’t run away, bend and yank out the sheet metal from the inside of the house, straighten it as best I can, kick the bastard again, and pull him to his feet.

With one hand, I place a screw into the third hole I’d drilled; with the other, I pound PigBoy’s forehead into it.

“You like that?” I ask him.

No reply.

Soon enough, the screw is driven all the way in, and we’re onto the fourth and final one in no time. Blood cascades down the boy’s face and, for the last few knocks of the final screw, he’s unconscious.

Should I leave him out here to bake? Maybe just toss him in the lake and watch him dissolve?

No, he still has to find the pig that’s loose in my house-no doubt munching on my Wheaties by now-and besides, I have some questions for him. For example, where are they getting these pigs from? They must be coming from Upside (Hell contains precisely zero animals), but how? And if there is this opening to the natural world, why are people only grabbing pigs?

I drag PigBoy into my house, put the coffeepot on, and wait for him to wake up.

This is how I got here:

Driving on a country road. Nothing but farmland for miles and miles. Gravel spluttering and popping in my wheel wells. Hot day. Not hot as Hell, because I now know how hot Hell can get, but still pretty brutal.

Zoning. Just staring ahead at the heat-shimmering trees to either side of me. Not even sleepy, just caught in that nowhere-land of hazy days and even hazier thoughts.

In my peripheral, a flash of orange and white.

Then a crunch, and the car lifts on the right side, like I’d just barrelled over a speed bump.

My heart slams in my chest. Sweat pops out on my forehead. I cram on the brakes. A plume of dirt rises behind me. The car stops.

In the rearview mirror, a woman-partially obscured by the cloud of dust I’ve created-runs to the edge of the road. She kneels. Screams once.

I open the door, get out of the car, walk toward the kneeling woman and her scream. The dust clears more with every step I take, and I see what she is kneeling over.

White shorts. Orange shirt. Splashes of dark red across them.

It is a young girl. She does not move.

The woman screams again, this time much longer. I can’t tell if I’m breathing anymore. I just stand there in the road and blink quickly, maybe waiting to wake up.

I hear a screen door slam, then gravel crunching, look up, see a man with a shotgun. Wet eyes. Determination in his step. He stops in front of me, plants his feet. Two giant oaks rooted in the ground. He takes one deep breath, raises the barrel.

I wonder if he was perhaps at the window, watching his daughter and wife play outside, maybe thinking about how good his life is, how lucky a man he is to have this wonderful family.

Life is like this, I think, my heart settling, slowing. For both of us, friend. It steals things when we’re not looking.

And then I am incapable of thinking anything at all, because my face has been blasted through the back of my skull.

When I open my eyes-these eyes that should no longer open, in my skull that should no longer be anything but splinters-I am in a house. Not a house I’ve ever been in before. Someone else’s house.

But now mine.

Now and forever.

It’s hot. Hot as Hell.

I immediately start sweating.

My talking thermometer tells me it’s getting even hotter out. The sheet metal helps, but it’s still getting mighty toasty in my kitchen.

PigBoy slumps in a chair in my kitchen and mutters things every once in awhile. Things about sex, chocolate, staples, and bunnies. I don’t want to know.

I sip from my mug and think about how I’d like to bash this kid’s head against my wall again.

You know, they should really have some sort of rehab program down here. I mean, how do they expect Hell to ever improve when they just leave us all to our own devices? No wonder folks have taken to throwing farm animals through innocent folks’ windows. That’s the level of frustration we have down here.

PigBoy comes around slowly, asks where he is. I kick out a foot and topple him from his chair, onto my kitchen floor.

“Rise and shine, chump. You’re going to talk to me, and you’re not going to give me any bullshit about how you can’t remember stuff because I bashed your cranium against a brick wall.”

I look down at myself and notice I’ve spilled coffee on my ‘Remember, kids, Satan loves you!’ T-shirt. I hear squealing and things getting knocked over in my living room. Not a good day, all told. Not a good day at all. I’m really starting to get mad.

I stand up and walk over to the kid, put a foot on his throat, watch his face turn all the colours of the spectrum. “Now, I don’t know who else you’ve ‘pigged,’ but this time you chose the wrong house.

“I have a rack session at three that I don’t plan to be late for, so you’re going to answer some questions, then, before I leave, you’re going to catch that pig you threw in here, got it?”

He twitches a little. Good enough.

I release my foot from his throat and he gasps for air, goes backward through his colour scheme.

I sip my coffee again, return to my chair, and watch PigBoy get slowly to his feet, wavering a little. Blood is caked on his hair and face. He has beady little weasel eyes, black as soot, and blond, matted hair. Angular features contrast with his pug nose.

Yet something about him makes me soften my anger toward him. Maybe it’s the way he fidgets with the zipper on his leather coat, like the proverbial little boy caught with his hand in the cookie jar.

I furrow my brow and open my mouth to speak. That’s when the second pig-of-the-day trundles out of the living room, apparently having had enough fun for now smashing up everything.

The kid-not even looking in the pig’s direction, eyes still stuck to his zipper-draws a pistol from his belt and fires. The pig squeals once, falls on its side, dead.

PigBoy looks back to me. “Okay, so what are your questions?”

I have to give it to him. The kid has style.

We pop the second pig in my oven-a tight fit, to be sure, but we manage. I let him clean his face, but the gash in his forehead is nasty and keeps reopening whenever he wrinkles his brow or makes any sort of expression involving the top half of his face. I give him a wet cloth to keep on hand for soaking up the blood.

“So why pigs?” I ask.

“Dunno,” says PigBoy. “That’s what falls out of the hole, so that’s what we throw.” He sips his java, grimaces. “Irish Cream?”

“Yes,” I say.

“Thought so.” He puts the cup down and fiddles some more with his zipper.

Ignoring the slight to my choice of coffee, I push on. “So you just grabbed some and started chucking them through people’s kitchen windows?”

“Yup. Got any cookies?”

“No.”

PigBoy flares his nostrils, but keeps quiet.

“How many did you get?”

The pigs crackle in the oven. The kitchen smells good.

“A bunch. Been back a few times to reload.”

I nod, gulp the rest of my java, eye the pot.

“Any idea where they learned to eat with proper kitchen utensils, PigBoy?”

He looks up from his zipper. “Huh?”

“Yeah, the first one you threw finished off my last bowl of Boo Berry before I caught it.”

He blinks. “Rough, man. That sucks.”

I nod again. I chalk the pig’s manners (and the fact that it didn’t just immediately flash-fry to crispy bacon) up to Star Trek logic-you know, when the writers can’t think of a decent explanation for something that makes no real sense:

But Captain, where did the pig learn to eat with a spoon?

It must have been his transference from Upside to Hell, Spock.

Ah, of course, the Transference Anomaly.

More crackling and popping of flesh and fats from the oven.

“Smells damn fine,” says PigBoy, inhaling deeply.

“So why didn’t you shoot me instead of the pig?” I ask.

“You want me to shoot you?”

“Well, not particularly. But you could have and gotten away.” The thought is sobering. He could very easily have just popped me, slowed me down at least a few seconds, and taken off. I’m such an idiot. Why didn’t I frisk him?

I rise from my seat, grab the coffeepot, tip the dregs into my mug, lift it to my face, close my eyes, inhale deeply. The steam clears my mind. I sip and swallow, allowing the liquid to funnel through my mouth, slide across my teeth, slither down my throat. I don’t care what anyone says, Irish Cream rules.

“No idea why I corked the pig and not you,” he says. “Just didn’t occur to me, I guess.”

“What’s your name?” I ask.

“Doesn’t matter,” he says, “I like what you call me better, anyhow.”

I nod. Fair enough.

Two-thirty-five. Almost time for my rack session.

“You know who’s on rack duty today?” I ask.

“No idea,” PigBoy answers.

“Damn,” I whisper.

Better not be Barnes and Salinger, that’s all I know. Stanson and Jonesy are as gentle as they can be about the whole business, but Barnes and Salinger are just downright nasty. Like being tortured isn’t already uncomfortable enough, they have to call you names and shove you onto the rack and all sorts of other crap that just makes the whole experience intolerable.

Looking at PigBoy, smelling the pigs in my oven, and imagining the joy of spending the day at my natural height of 6′ 2″, I decide right then and there that I’m playing hooky. Fuck Barnes and fuck Salinger and fuck The Big Red Fella, too. It’s time to eat some pig, then pop over to this mysterious hole to Upside to see what’s what.

Excerpt from The Distance Travelled by Brett Alexander Savory, forthcoming from Necro Publications in early 2006.

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