Born With Blood On The Walls

By Caitlin Hoffman

Born With Blood On the Walls is a story of survival. It follows the piglet's confinement, eventual escape from the slaughterhouse, as well as the trials that befall him throughout. Yet even when he has escaped the clutches of the butcher, he doesn’t know if humans in the outside world will treat him with any sort of compassion.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Caitlin Hoffman
• Release date: Dec 9, 2013
• ISBN: 9781310942082

Caitlin Hoffman

I write books nobody reads.

Book preview

Born With Blood on the Walls

Caitlin Hoffman

Copyright Caitlin Hoffman 2013

Published by Caitlin Hoffman at Smashwords

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously.

Table of Contents

Chapter One: Born in Blood

Chapter Two: A Hog’s Hope

Chapter Three: The Great Escape

Chapter Four: First Glimpse of Grass

Chapter Five: A Hog’s Hardship

Chapter Six: A World of Endless Fields

Afterword

Chapter One: Born in Blood

I imagine existence was easy in the slaughterhouse- for the humans, that is. All that transpired there was as easily wiped from their shoulders as weak rain. Herding, breeding, killing- these were all part of a process to export goods, import wealth, and feed the growing demand for flesh. For the humans it was a simple, basic affair, from those who spread the feed to those who commanded the killing floors. They could play their part, do their work, and go home to their families, conscience complacent.

For the animals, it was a different story.

For us, being herded, bred, and killed was less of a routine and more of a nightmare. Pigs are sensitive beings, and can account for nothing more beyond that realm. For us there weren’t facts, only feelings.

I heard the humans talking, but none of it made sense to me. I heard those words: export, livestock, the talk of supply and demand, but understood nothing of it. Neither did my brothers and sisters. We had no choice in our struggle, no option to quit from the grind, and no say in our own value.

They watched us with censored eyes, content to disconnect while turning us to gore. Pigs aren’t granted the luxury of denial; we don’t even understand it! We weren’t manning the knives, locking the cages, brushing waste or scraping caked blood from the ceilings (those ceilings we’d never see until it was too late). We were the ones squealing, scrambling, vomiting.

We were the product.

At the end of each day, the humans could retire from hell. As for us, we were stuck.

My mother would lay in the musk of faeces, cramped so close to the metal and concrete she couldn’t spread her legs. She’d heave heavily, trying to breathe through the muck, kicking against the bars around her. Yet all she could do was whimper with sores on her knees, condemned to the grates.

This is where I was born.

I don’t remember my birth, and I’m sure few do. All I remember are disjointed sensations: searing cold, hot breath, howling air, and a trembling body- my own. I had no idea what world I was being born into. I had no idea I was marked down to be fattened and feasted upon. This horrible fate I had yet to realize. I was just a piglet, pink, tiny, and struggling to blink. All I wanted was my mother’s embrace and her moist, warm milk.

The floor was cold. My brothers and sisters mewled and sprawled on its surface, not bothering to discern their surroundings, but I was almost immediately aware of the beastly lights, the chalky smells, and the other pigs speaking around me. Sows whispered back and forth to each other, moaning in ways that made my ears twitch. They babbled from madness, going on and on about their stolen children and welting hooves. It seemed there was a monster creeping about the metal pens, one with a thirst for blood.

Even the older sows didn’t understand our situation. Theirs was a dialogue dictated by fear, not comprehension. They couldn’t begin to grasp the reasons behind the pain. After all, they, like me, were just animals. How could they begin to know why they were being punished so? Yet even if they had understood, how would that have made their suffering any more bearable?

My siblings couldn’t speak at first- they grunted and whined, huffing through their scrunched noses. I took to speech quickly, and my mother seemed grateful for this; she said it was nice having someone to talk to. (The sows in adjacent crates were too sick to offer real company.)

My mother was lovely in my eyes. She was the source of my life, my love, my warmth and growth. I knew she loved me, but all I ever saw was her sadness. How could I blame her? Sadness was as common as the steel. I never heard a word in that place that was not full of fear and dismal tidings. According to the mothers, the ones selected to breed, that was how it had always been. No one could imagine a world where things were different. While some had heard stories of animals who didn’t disappear in the dark, dragged off to the end of a large, wielded blade, these were no more than faraway legends, seeming as unreachable as they were unlikely. Some even said they’d heard of people who didn’t like the idea of killing animals, but we had never seen proof of such a soul. How could such a human exist? Weren’t they made to kill, as we were made to die?

I don’t begrudge my fellow pigs for their misery. After all, misery was all they knew. They lived through antibiotics, sticky slop, and claustrophobic space. Pain was as common as their breakfast, expected in their daily existence. Yet through all the carnage, these sordid sights and stenches, not one of my family ever considered escape.

They didn’t believe it was their place to dream. All they did was accept the misery and submit.

When I first saw those muck-covered stalls and unfeeling iron bars, I was but one piglet among many, hardly aware of my own hooves. A baby, regardless of species, has no control over