17/10/2024
Sharing with you today my 3000 word story. I hope you like it.
PIG HEAVEN by Ruth Hawe
PIG HEAVEN
Baby Pixie stirred in his fitful sleep, squirming along with his littermates under the dull red glow of the heatlamp above them. They should have been nestling up to their mother's huge warm body, within wriggling distance of her teats and the reassuring sound of her breath. Mother pigs sing to their babies, did you know that? Pregnant pigs have an immensely powerful instinctual need to gather twigs, branches and leaves to make a deep nest. They dig out a hollow in the ground, usually in the cleft of a fallen tree for shelter, and they line and fill this for several days with whatever their explorations into the forest have gleaned. With her strong snout acting as the perfect shovel, and her cleft toes treading and spreading, Pixie's mother Bryony had rolled and rearranged her bed ceaselessly until it was the exactly perfect place in which to birth her babies. Or at least she did so in her mind, whilst acting it out stereotypically between the tightly clamped bars of the gestation crate in which she had been imprisoned. In her forest fantasy land she snuffled out delicious nourishing roots and buds, and even the most prized find of all, a secret cache of subterranean truffles. In truth her mouth was actually chewing desperately at the prison bars. Her ears were constantly assailed not by the piercing sweetness of a nightingale's song, the exultation of an ascending lark, or the murmur of a soft spring breeze. Rather, she heard the shrill screams of fellow females in the throws of confinement and insatiable need.
Born into slavery, Bryony had the desperate longing which all factory farmed animals are forced to live with, for the freedom and natural surroundings they knew were their birthright. How awful to never feel the yielding spring of the precious earth beneath your feet, and to be denied the overriding impulse to root with your powerful nose the beloved scents of the woods. From his reverie, little Pixie felt his body roughly snatched out of the pile of brothers and sisters he had been huddling amongst, and hoisted terrifyingly into the glare of cold air. Worse was to come, much worse than terror. Unimaginable pain seared through his entire nervous system as his little curly tail was sliced off. But that was just the beginning of his agony, for being male his testicles had to go – his human captors thought they made his meat taste unpleasant, so a deep incision was made, and they were dragged out of his body and severed. His mouth gaped open as his eyes screwed themselves shut in desperate but futile efforts to evade the flood of pain, only to find cold metal pliers that tasted of the blood of his brothers forced mercilessly into his mouth. The two biggest teeth he had were snapped off by this instrument of torture sending the most horrible nerve pain straight to his brain. The next moment his body was flung back into the heap of others similarly treated who were writhing and screaming on the filthy concrete floor.
Welcome to the world, small being. Welcome to the hell humans have created for you, because they regard you only as food. Even though you were endowed with keener senses and demonstrably brighter consciousness than a 3 year old human child. These self styled superior beings with their blunt faces and undeveloped compassion who fancy themselves so evolved and refined in the heights of their artificial culture. In fact they are barely more kind to one another than they feel they have to be, and relentlessly prey upon each other using every imaginable deviance and deception their narrow minds can conjure up. Not a single species of life upon the haunted planet Pixie had the misfortune to be born upon escaped the tyranny, abuse and destruction of human unkind. Even those the humans show affection and lavish attention upon are inevitably slaves forced to learn tricks and remain subservient or be shot dead. Yet the humans boast of being animal lovers. Indeed most even concede that all baby creatures have a form of “cuteness”, which fades rapidly once the infantile miracle-of-life radiance is besmirched and drowned by the barrage of callous, relentless force inflicted by their captors.
Why do these brutal savage people not once consider the feelings or life purpose of the objectified, living, breathing commodities they call livestock? Because they are living a lie, that's why, and to even briefly stop and query the practices their self-serving laws have permitted might provoke a landslide of empathy which cannot be tolerated. Their own young have consequently to be shielded from the truth of how their bacon, eggs and milk arrive on their breakfast plate. As the human children grow and ask difficult questions, they are told that meat, dairy and eggs are natural and necessary food without which people would not grow healthy and strong. Another lie, because these very animal substances are responsible for the premature death and miserable diseases humanity is rife with. The innate joy which children feel upon being in the presence of animals is appeased by tamed, domesticated, caged pet animals they swiftly grew tired of molesting and then neglect. All human children want soft cuddly fake animals made out of fluff, and by the hands of less fortunate children forced to work in sweat shops to earn their daily bread. And so the conditioning, shut down numbing of their own offspring is a perpetration handed down as a necessary condition of fitting into a profoundly dystopic society.
Yes humans have some elevated sensibilities and are capable of creating and appreciating exquisite music and art. Yet they are deaf and blind to the harmony of the spheres and the eloquence of the subtle realms of communication used by all other lifeforms on the shared planet they claim as their own exclusive property. Thinking their language and speech so lofty and an attainment utterly beyond the capability of lesser beings, they are therefore entirely oblivious to the wealth of awareness of which even an ant is capable. Every other being but man has the good sense to know their place in the whole, to not destroy their own ecosystem, nor to wage war upon their own kind.
Baby Pixie sucks as hard as he can from the only sustenance and comfort allowed to him, on the false ni**le containing the blood of his relatives mixed with syrup and grain. He grows with unnatural rapidity on this, as the humans intend he should. Meanwhile his beloved mother for whom he pines and longs, is undergoing the routine r**e of her intimate self by a man paid to impregnate her with a plastic device another man has designed precisely for that purpose. This device has been made by yet another man who dully thinks not to ask the intended function it might perform. He is too busy churning out thousands of them from their pre-formed moulds every day as fast as his hands can move. And anyway he has problems of his own and is grateful to be in paid work. Other men are paid semen extractors, adept in the swift enforced ej*******on of bulls, turkey c***s, and roosters, often using electric currents. This cunning if deeply depraved idea saves other humans money they might have had to spend upon keeping alive every other calf or chick born ~ because half of them are inevitably males and hence worthless for milk producing or egg laying purposes. All surplus unnecessary males are summarily executed by the cheapest possible means. In the case of chicks this entails being thrown alive into grinding machines if they are lucky, but most are tossed into plastic bags to be slowly suffocated by their brothers.
Pixie overcomes the intense fear he is surrounded by and grows to the desired weight, unlike his sister Poppy who was the runt of the litter. This condemned her to an even earlier death than the 3 to 6 months allotted the rest of her family. She was snatched up by her back legs and had her brains dashed out on the concrete floor. Even so she was more lucky than others who were merely stunned by this procedure only to regain consciousness whilst languishing in a heap of other discarded bodies. Pixie meanwhile sleeps a deep dreamfilled sleep, during which he meets a very different human than any it had been his misfortune to encounter in his short miserable life thus far. This human is a young female, called Daisy, and he in his dream is a handsome and fearless wild hog who has become infamous for defending his family and territory from attacking humans from the nearby village. They were plotting his death whilst this little girlchild listened wide-eyed with sympathy for the magnificent striped boar she had glimpsed whilst gathering berries with her mother the day before. She determines to warn him, to tell him to take his family and run deep into the woods and teach them to avoid all contact with humans.
Very early the next morning Daisy slips unseen from the cottage and runs into the forest. She has no fear of this enchanting place, and has an intense love and trustfulness towards all creatures great and small. In her mind she is calling out to the boar to come to her, pleading with all her might for him to appear and meet with her. In her rush she tears her arms on brambles, and her clothes get caught in the dense undergrowth. Pixie imagines himself safe within the bushes, but he knows not of the fire which humans will use to reveal his hiding place and destroy his sanctuary. He smells the girl long before he hears her, and his telepathic capacity registers her harmless intent such that, intrigued, he moves in closer to where she has paused for breath in a clearing.
Would he come if I called? She wonders, like the domestic animals in the village had learned to do for food rewards. She decides to sing to him, and raises her high clear voice in supplication. Immediately a memory is triggered within his psyche, the sweet song his mother had murmured to him as he lay in placid ecstatic joy next to her, before his eyes had ever opened for the very first time and he had gazed upon her glorious countenance. Humans wrongly think the wallowing sprawl they observe free range pigs indulging themselves in is simple contentment. Pity the humans who permit themselves only the rarest of completely natural free expressionism, covertly and in muted darkness. Pity them their fat heads spewing unstoppable thoughts that give them no peace. Pity them the suspicion of, and collusion in, the deliberately inflicted suffering those depraved greedy thoughts entice them to do. Pity them their rank, sweaty, naked ,thin skinned, puny bodies. And pity them their incapacity to realise the irony of the ways in which they project all of this upon the pig nations. For pigs are incapable of sweating and so use mud to cool themselves, they love water, and are excellent swimmers. Nor do they overeat or bolt their food, but rather prefer to chew it calmly, except when penned in with lots of others, and starved of environmental stimulation and natural nourishment. They are fastidious and would never sleep in their own waste unless forced to do so by inhumane incarceration.
And so it is that Pixie and Daisy come to lie down side by side on a mossy bank bestrewn with primroses and wild thyme. Daisy lays her small golden head upon his giant forehead and shares with him what she knows of her people, their ruthless rapacity and relentless predatoriness. She confers through the force of her indomitable will her wish for a long life of freedom upon him and his family. She cannot save the whole clan, let alone the entire species, but she promises to try. But he must also promise to stay away from people and to raise his offspring to be canny about her dangerous kind. One day, oh one day she says, their suffering and persecution must come to an end. “I remember, oh most beautiful and noble pig, a life I lived long ago, the lowliest of the low in human estimation but the happiest existence of all in genuine honesty”. For Daisy has total recall of being a simpleton swineherder who cherishes his friends and mourns the loss of each as its inevitable untimely death comes. The villagers laugh and mock him, and the youths taunt and spurn him, but he simply sits there and sings with his beloved pigs all night long, and shows them the mind pictures he keeps safe inside his head. Together they dreamed their dreams of the place of bliss and love out of which they had fallen to get here, and which they would one day re-find. A beautiful place of clean sparkling water and sun dappled forests, abundant berry bushes, succulent roots, delicious herbs and juicy fruits. No humans to disturb, hurt or enslave them. People yes, but gentle guardians not tyrannical rulers, who have learned how to co-exist in the peace that surpasses all concepts.
Daisy's parents search increasingly frantically for her, and it is her father who comes upon her, sleeping so idyllically upon the flank of the dreaded boar. He is so very confused by this perplexing sight, that he drops to the ground as his legs buckle beneath him. His youngest daughter has always been a wild untameable creature, refusing to wear shoes or to eat anything but plain fruits and vegetables, seeds and nuts. Her mother blames him for overindulging her foolish talk and fanciful notions, and had already planned to send her away to a strict boarding school where they will knock her into shape. He hangs his head in his hands and weeps at the tension and torments of life, at the harshness of survival and its bitter cost. Little Daisy awakens and cradles her father in her arms like a baby, making noises and rocking just as every female instinctively knows how to do.
Pixie, identifiable only by his pierced eartag as hog 269 awakens to feel the rush of air past his nostrils. Something is going to happen! The big barn doors are hinged open, and one by one the pens containing other piglets are being emptied. Has the promised day of liberation arrived at long lovely last? Soon he is pushed and prodded by alarmingly shocking goads along a passageway with the weight and force of many others similarly forced along behind him. Managing to stay upright and in control of his emotions, he attempts to assist and reassure those around him. He is the presence of calm in a chaotic sea of crippling fear, just as he had been in the dreamstate as his alterego the mighty boar. Terror all around him causes many to void their bowels, and the pressure to move forward causes some to attempt to leap up above the huddling morass of bodies. Inevitably some are trampled and injured, yet the relentless flow crushes the mass of beings ever onward. Pixie notices a dramatic change in the quality of the light, as the herd emerges from the enclosure into the sunlight for the first time. A distant memory is echoing within his consciousness, of the warmth and joy of sunshine, and Pixie tells his comrades not to worry, that this is a delightful healing sentient lightform called sunlight, come to illuminate their way home.
The forward thrust slows as it narrows into a funnel sloping sharply upward, with hard slippery metal underfoot, but braced tightly together the piglets clamber up the ramp and into the transport truck. Little Pixie is squashed to one side, where his snout can poke through a vent and sniff the outside air. Again he remembers the fresh living atmosphere so different from the stale stench of the factory farm enclosure out of which they have all been propelled. It smells so good, so full of wildness, so rich with the hope of freedom and potential. He is feeling elated and hopefilled, and transmits this joy amongst his fellows as the ramp is closed and the vehicle moves along with increasing speed. “Rest, dear ones”, he tells them: “Rest and be hopeful, for we are really on our journey now, we are out of prison and we are on our way!” From the vantage point of his aperture Pixie learns how to interpret the blur passing by and recognises with an unsuppressed squeal of delight the countryside, the trees and living landscape he has seen all along within his mind's eye. It truly is real, I always believed it must be, he says to himself, whilst doing his utmost to confer these truths around the assembled congregation. Together aboard their transport wending its way inexorably into the night, amongst the shadows and beyond, moving and approaching their destiny.
The journey is long and tiring and they sleep fitfully, flickering in and out of wakefulness, unable to lie down. The truck lurches and rolls this way and that, sometimes slowing and stopping momentarily, and the piglets register then learn to ignore their hunger pangs and thirst. It will be as it will be, this they now accept. At last the thrum of the engine is switched off, the ramp re-emerges and they are forcibly ushered back down it. Pixie has a powerful surge of excitement as the use comes back into his legs, and hope springs up in his heart, beating so strongly just like it did as the fearless wild boar. He wonders if he shall meet Daisy at this time in this new place, and sends forth a clarion call to her essence wherever she may be across time and space. For before she left him she made him a promise, to honour the indissolvable bond between them. And yes, it is undeniably so, he feels her close by ~ he could never mistake her resonance and her signature sound. A wave of pure requited love wells up through him, lifting him up and out, above the scrum, away from the hubris and the hot stench. And so it is that even whilst somewhere a hind leg is shackled, a body is hoisted, and a throat is slit, the spirit of Pixie rises up beyond all physical sensation. Borne aloft by the wings of a human angel who has come to rescue him from the nightmare. No fear or pain can touch him now, nor ever again, as he rises in the arms of Daisy up into the happiness so long awaited. It is completed – the quest. It is accomplished – the swift arc from conception through life, beyond death back to oneness. All is indeed well and good. He is home, and it is heavenly.
