This experience has been living rent-free inside my head now for a very long time. After browsing ‘No Sleep’ as a complete newbie; I guess the idea of sharing the burden feels quite appealing, in a therapeutic sort of way.
At the time I spoke about it with those around me who I loved and trusted, but as with most things discussed by a teenage guy, who’d been out having a beer or several when he definitely shouldn’t have been, the incident was quickly forgotten. Not by me though….. It sounds cliche, but it’s haunted me for nearly 20 years.
Early 2000’s and in the middle of the Summer as i remember it and it was a typical one for any young person growing up in the countryside in The East of England. School was over for the year and we had six weeks to do anything we wanted, although the reality was that the days were spent working a really shit job either pot washing in a local pub or restaurant or gardening for some old rich family. The nights however, they were for the parties. Every Friday and Saturday of the summer, someone, somewhere local had some sort of shindig. House parties, Beach Parties, Raves, BBQ’s, where most of the people from our school year would take their first foray into alcohol poisoning, Class C drugs and reaching 1st or 2nd base with one another.
When one night became yesterday at one of the bigger get-togethers of that summer, myself and three friends decided not to torture our poor parents any longer and head for home. We were in a small village on the coast with a solid five mile trek back to the larger town we all lived in. A combination of ‘Dutch Courage’ and a lack of taxis (and the cash to afford one) decided things for us and we set off on foot.
It wasn’t a dark night, from what I remember, it was warm and the four of us sobered up pretty quickly in the dry night air. As we got within a mile of home, the other three peeled off towards the estate they lived on. I said my goodbyes and set off to cut across the farmer’s fields in the direction of my parent’s house.
That summer, a lot of the local crop fields had been replaced with livestock and the smell of pig shit was one I’d grown very used to. I knew I was skirting along the footpath adjacent to the woods about half a mile from home; but it wasn’t the smell that told me I was near the pig field, it was the noise.
The pigs were screaming and squealing almost like they were being slaughtered. The shrill cries made the hairs stand on end along my arms and up the back of my neck. As the shadows faded in front of me I could see a mass of the animals gathered towards the fence at one end of the enclosure.
As I got closer, I could see them, all pink skin and brown with muck, clambering over each other, the shrieking a cacophony of pure pleasure. I must have edged another ten to fifteen yards towards them when I suddenly stopped, frozen in place by some extra-sensory fear. My feet planted in place and as my eyes adjusted I could see a dark shape appear in my vision; a small van was parked up alongside the fence, right next to the screaming pigs. Movement caught my attention out of the corner of my eye; a dark figure swiftly dumped a black bin bag over the fence, spilling the contents into the mass of dirt and animals. The noise was wet, a sort of moist thud, like a bare foot in a shallow puddle. I hadn’t realised that I’d inched closer, maybe out of morbid curiosity or sheer partially inebriated stupidity, but I was now hovering behind a small tree, eyes wide like a hawk, watching as another black bag was split open and hastily poured over the fence.
It was after the third bag that I realised the pigs were gleefully consuming this black bag bounty and doing so with squealing delight.
My gaze was broken by a ripping sound. coarse, it split the air. The next black sack had caught on the barbed wire fence, tearing the bag open. From my vantage point I could see the pigs consuming this next course; however, the ripping continued and as the bile rose up in my throat, i saw the figure tear the light, long, blonde hair from the scalp of the head that was being butchered by the razor sharp barbed wire. In a split second, it too, dropped and rolled, to be quickly devoured by the tusk like teeth of the ravenous diners.
I can’t remember if I was sobbing at this point or if that came later, all I remember is looking up from that macabre banquet and seeing the whites of that dark figure’s eyes staring right through me. It felt like hours before one of the swine’s screams broke my frozen state and I watched as the figure casually got in the van and drove away, lights off, almost invisible.
I hoped it was all in my mind as I cautiously approached the fence. The pigs had disposed of most of her, two of the beasts hadn’t quite finished chewing through her skull, playing a sort of sick game of tug-of-war, whilst she smiled at me, a sad and toothless smile.
I’ll never forget the blood red gums, I’ll never forget the sound of bone crunching, pigs squealing and I’ll never stop thinking about why no one believed me.
I went back a couple of days later, once I built up the courage to do so; there was nothing, save a scrap of black plastic blowing in the wind on that barbed wire fence. She was gone, whoever she was and the sight of those bloated pink pigs made me sick to my core.
My parents still live in the same house, a stone’s throw, as they say, from that field. It’s fallow most years now and a part of me hopes it always will be, a part of me hopes nothing will ever grow there again. The soil is tainted by blood and one person’s barbaric way of avoiding justice.
My blood still runs cold when I hear people say….. “As Greedy As A Pig”.