Swine

By Monica Vogel

As the last person left the room, Swinton saw the pig. His throat closed up and he gagged as the air was knocked out of his stomach.

"Holy shit," was all he managed to think at first glance. Sure, Swinton was used to gruesome scenes, but not like this.

Set i

• Language: English
• Publisher: New Degree Press
• Release date: Aug 30, 2021
• ISBN: 9781637303528

Book preview

Chapter One

1

The record turned. Jack tapped his fingers against his stomach with the beat as the climax of Danse Macabre rolled over him and crashed down, his heart rate rising and falling in parallel. He let the piece finish, then stood up.

Jack always listened to classical music when he was deep in thought. Its emotional progressions thieved his feelings and stowed them away, leaving him with a clear, relaxed mind.

He looked out the window into the woods as he pulled on a white button-down collared shirt and leather jacket, but what interested him wasn’t visible. He thought of the machine in the cellar, which he would use for the first time today. He had finally finished the plan and was moving on to the operational phase.

Jack took a deep breath, full of excitement and the slightest tint of anxiety. No mistakes could be made past this point. He composed himself and walked quickly out the door toward the Toyota sitting in the driveway, then swung himself into the seat when he reached it.

After a few moments, Jack pushed the gear selector over to drive and rolled out of the driveway toward his destination, rehearsing along the way.

I’m sorry. He smiled charmingly to the windshield. I must confess I didn’t hear anything you said. Your eyes are too beautiful, striking me down like lightning bolts of love. His face shifted to a grimace. That was stupid. No one in their right mind would say that. You’re just nervous, he consoled himself. You know what to say.

Jack often had trouble empathizing with others, as could be expected, but it was the inability to socialize in congruence with societal norms that really got him. And really, it was a mostly normal problem to have. He just struggled with it a lot more than others. He often found himself lost in a whirlwind of unprocessable emotional information that clumped up into garbled bits in some secret database to which he didn’t have the password.

So he practiced. He stood in front of the mirror repeating phrases he saw in movies, trying to understand those ridiculously confusing social cues because people were somehow incapable of saying what they really meant. It made him feel like everyone was in on this big joke he didn’t understand.

Jack stared at the windshield, took a deep breath, and tried again. He laughed with just the right amount of awkwardness, enough to be relatable but not so much that he would make his date—the beautiful windshield, at the moment—uncomfortable.

He had just been nervous; that was all. Once he was sitting in front of Olivia, his practice would kick in, dispelling his awkward instincts and leaving the world of onlookers with a handsome young man flaunting bright blue eyes and a smile sweeter than honey.

Besides, it wasn’t as if he didn’t care about anyone, which would have made it insurmountably difficult to pretend; he simply didn’t care about the people he was going to murder. No, they were the epitome of what drew mankind into the oblivion of stupidity, plagued with hypocrisy, dragging the earth behind it without a care in the world.

. . .

Jack was almost there—just a few miles out. As he turned onto the last road on the way, he reviewed how he’d studied Olivia beforehand, thinking of her quirks, her problems, her thoughts. He had followed her for periods of time on one day every other week for eight weeks, randomizing the hours and days that he chose so as not to draw attention. Luckily, no one had noticed. He had been subtle, and he hadn’t stalked her for too long during each period. It had been a long, slow process, but the reward was not getting caught, so it was worth it.

Olivia Walker was an animal rights fanatic, but she was into the rights instead of their actual well-being. He supposed he himself was into neither, but he cared a lot less about people’s actual beliefs than whether they lined up logically and made sense or not—depending on the topic, of course. To him, most people had both ridiculous belief systems and flawed logic, though certainly some people he disagreed with politely.

Olivia was not one of them. She, of course, had fallen into the lack of logic category as a self-proclaimed animal rights champion who would not step in to save an animal if it was dying because she believed humans had no place in animals’ lives. He could not disagree with this by itself, but knowing that the issue was caused by society in the first place, it would be illogical for that decision to follow the same system of ethics that caring about animals’ well-being in general would follow. Olivia claimed to follow both.

And not only that, his thoughts continued. No, not only that. She also consistently claimed to people that she wasn’t trying to impose her views on them, yet it was obvious to Jack, as a spectator, that she only did that so they would be more open to discussion. Olivia would plant seeds like that in her friends’ and family members’ heads, then slowly mention things over longer periods of time to make them feel guilty. She was like a small child guilt-tripping her parents, manipulating them through passive, seemingly harmless comments. But there was no way she herself knew the cunning of what she was doing: the manner in which she did it, with no real power gain beyond convincing someone of an argument, implied that she genuinely thought she was being reasonable. Perhaps if she did realize her own manipulation tactics, Jack could have appreciated it as some level of intelligence, but it was beyond unlikely that that was the case. He hated a lot of things, but passive aggression and social cues… Those combined to create one of his most personal nemeses in society. That wouldn’t be the main reason why he killed her, but it certainly served as a side dish.

Jack slowed down as he got closer to the location, leaning his head over the wheel and looking around to his right. He saw the building a few hundred feet away and cleared his mind, preparing himself mentally.

. . .

He rolled into a parking spot, choosing a row mostly full of cars. He was intrigued to realize he was humming Symphonie fantastique. It was the fifth movement, of course, Songe d’une nuit du sabbat. The Dies Irae note sequence matched his anticipatory mood perfectly. It made him think of the opening scene in The Shining.

Jack often felt that his life was a series of orchestral movements, which helped him make sense of the world. He could feel emotions and could even logically deduce what other people were feeling most of the time; his primary issue was mimicking the emotions of others, being able to empathize with them. Music helped him keep with the mood of a situation, to feel a little bit of what others were feeling and to break up the confusing world into smaller, more comprehensible sections.

Jack knew Olivia would be here because she always was—every Friday after work, unfailingly. Perhaps she had already started drinking, though he doubted it. She usually waited to see if some hot shot would come flirt with her and offer to buy one first. She was, of course, more than pretty enough to do that.

He looked up at the big, lit-up sign over the door with half of the letters dull and not working: M l er’s P b, it read. He opened the door and walked in.

Light music greeted him, easing the dull pulsing of blood in his head that was growing gradually as he walked toward the table. He couldn’t tell if it was excitement or nerves but decided it was probably both.

She was right in front of him, sitting at the bar, and turned around when the bell rang as he opened the door. Her eyes settled on him for a long moment, and he smiled politely. She smiled back.

Only a few people were in the bar as of yet—it was only about six—so not many were looking. There she was, smiling, beckoning. He rarely found social situations easy, but this, with the knowledge of what he planned to do to her, was certainly one of those occasions.

Hi, Jack said. He could feel the heat rising in his cheeks, but he could tell from the look on her face that she thought it was cute. Bingo.

Well, hello there, she said. Care to share a drink?

Only if they’re on me, he replied. She didn’t look surprised but smiled politely anyway. I’m celebrating.

Oh? What for?

He paused for the bartender to come by and take their requests, then said, I got fired.

Oh…? Jack could tell by her face that she was intrigued and expected more.

Well, the owner’s a bum anyway. I work—well, worked—at the Fruity Smoothie down the road. Bunch of idiots there. You’d think you could expect people to know how to put fruit in a cup and press a button, but alas, apparently it’s more difficult than it seems. He paused before saying, I’m John, by the way.

She laughed. "Olivia. Trust me, you’re preaching to the choir. I work over at the Vegan Season just left off of Parsons Street. Sometimes I wonder if my coworkers even have brains or if they’re just zombies. The things they do are so ridiculous. But it won’t last forever. Just until I figure out what I want to do with my life. I’m not quite there yet."

The Vegan Season? I think I went there a few months ago when it first opened. I’ve been thinking about going vegan for a while, but I just don’t know if I can give up filet. It’s like asking me to give up water and only drink juice and coffee for the rest of my life. I think I’d die of hunger. My stomach might actually explode if I had to do that. And just like that, the tango began.

Okay, okay, okay. You’ve got it all wrong, though, Olivia said, laughing a little bit. The bartender set the drinks down on the table in front of them, and she swirled hers around from the bottom of the glass mindlessly. "You see, it’s not about you. Is all that pain really worth it just to eat something that tastes good? I mean, come on, have a soul."

Jack flinched slightly at that last word. It had always bothered him and made him think that someone knew something he didn’t. Maybe she was onto him. No way, he thought quickly. I’m just a guy at a bar making jokes like any normal person. He turned to see her smiling as if she was the host of the game show waiting for the contestant’s answer in the midst of an awkward pause. She was just playing with him. She wasn’t really calling him soulless. I hate social interactions, he thought. Well, I guess you’re right.

"Wow, that was convincing, Olivia said sarcastically and took a long sip of her drink. Well, I’m not here to impose my views on anyone. I just think it’s a bit selfish to endorse such a morally depraved manner of killing animals just for your own satisfaction. But then again, it’s society that makes you think that way. Can’t really blame the individual. It’s hard to give up something you’ve been raised with." She drank more.

Oh yeah, huh? Just a little bit selfish? Sure, Olivia, sure, he thought. She was doing her thing again. He had known it would happen, but it still threw him off. It made him angry, and he needed to avoid showing it.

"Well, how do you do it, then? It’s clearly possible. I mean, I’m not going to be peer pressured into totally changing my lifestyle by some girl I just met at the bar who is calling me a morally depraved psychopath, he said jokingly, but I may consider doing further research." He smiled and watched as she finished her first drink. He had known ahead of time that she was a drinker, of course, but he was impressed by how casually she consumed the alcohol and made it look like she wasn’t drinking all that much.

Olivia requested a second drink from the bartender before she replied, "Oh, please. Men are so dramatic. Well, if you must know, I was actually persuaded into veganism after a college literature class. We had read this whole section on moral philosophy mumbo jumbo, and I thought it was pretty interesting. I mostly studied sociology in college, but I did dabble in some literature and philosophy. I think it was a quote by some famous guy—Edison, maybe?—that finally got me. Something like, ‘The highest ethics lie in nonviolence, which is the goal of evolution. We are all savages until we stop harming other beings, something something…’"

Olivia saw him listening intently and stopped her attempt to remember it. Based on her performances with her family members and friends, Jack guessed she could have recited it easily if she wanted to but only pretended to forget to maintain the fake casual aura of the conversation.

You get the gist, she finished.

Jack smiled. He could tell she was starting to get a little bit loopy by the way she giggled at his silence and knew the topic was over. While she was speaking, she had consumed quite a bit more alcohol, taking swigs during each pause. He was actually surprised she’d become loopy so quickly, but he didn’t mind since he had gotten all of the information he wanted. Having listened to her try to stick her fangs into him, he was sufficiently put off at that point to do the job. Now it was just a matter of ending the conversation and carrying through with it. "So… I told you why I’m celebrating. How about you?"

Olivia giggled again and said she was celebrating the fact that it was Friday. Did she need any other reason? The conversation continued for another half an hour. Olivia took a fairly large number of vodka shots, not at all put off by the fact that he didn’t want to do them with her, before he said he (regrettably) had to leave but that it was a lovely night and he’d love to see her again sometime, if she so happened to pop into the bar again. She giggled more and said goodbye. By that point, she was quite drunk.

Jack left the bar, got into his car, and drove away. He parked about five miles out in a parking garage for one of the large grocery stores. After grabbing the supplies he needed, he wiped down the car just in case he couldn’t get back to it safely.

He was about to walk away but turned back. He eyed the license plate, debating whether he should pull it off and get rid of it or leave it there. It would be a lot more suspicious to leave the car there without a license plate than to leave it, and yet, it was registered to him. I’ll just have to come back for it then, Jack decided and turned away. He headed back toward the bar, arriving just a little over an hour later.

. . .

Jack walked over and sat down at a bench about two hundred meters away, careful to not get within eyesight of the pub, then waited.

Not long after, he saw her stand up from the bar. He realized he had cut it close with the timing.

He felt the syringe and wire in his pocket and started walking. She was alone, which was good. Not that he had expected any different.

Jack moved like a machine, eyes calculating the closing distance, legs striding at exact intervals. His chest puffed like gas from an exhaust tube; his arms swung stiffly as he pulled on his black gloves.

Finally, he was there. Jack looked over only once to see her paying, calculating the amount of time he had left. He surveyed the area. No people, thank god. He positioned himself behind the next car, knowing he’d need to creep over and then make a swift movement since she’d be able to see him in the side mirror if she was paying attention.

Olivia walked toward her car. She was only about twenty meters out. His heart pounded.

Shhhit, Jack heard her mutter as she approached the car, key in hand. I shhhould call an Uber. She put her hand on the car for stability. She must have had a lot more to drink, he thought. Olivia put the key in her back pocket and pulled out her phone, turning to walk back toward the bar, presumably so she could wait inside.

Before she could take another step, he sprang out, just as he had planned and practiced. He wrapped the wire around her neck multiple times as she gasped, cutting off all air flow. She tried to scream but could only make spluttering noises as he squeezed tighter and tighter. His left arm curled around her chest from behind, left hand recoiled, pulling the wire taut and bringing her head to his chest. Her arms started flailing, but he paid no attention.

Jack pierced her neck with the syringe he held in his right arm… but she kept struggling. He moved his head from side to side as her hands tried to claw at him. Her initial movement had been to go for the wire, the natural instinct of pretty much anyone being strangled, but she had obviously realized she wouldn’t be able to get that undone. For a moment, he thought he’d injected her in the wrong place and quickly moved his right arm to grab hold of her arms. But just as he was doing so, her head drooped and her legs went limp: the injection had worked.

Jack breathed heavily, cursing himself for that moment when he had doubted himself. Besides, if the injection hadn’t done anything, she would have screamed. Boy, would that have been fun, he thought.

But he couldn’t let himself rest, not now, not in the middle of a parking lot with an unconscious girl in his black-gloved hands. That would come later.

He pulled the car key from Olivia’s pocket, opened the trunk, lifted her into it, and closed it quietly. Then he got into the driver’s seat and drove away.

2

It was cold. Olivia tried to look around but couldn’t move her head. She could feel her breath constricted by whatever container she was inside, which made her breathing even heavier and more frantic. Her heartbeat crescendoed with it.

Why was it so damn cold? Last night was a blur in her drowsy state. The moments swirled together in a haze of muddled colors on a memory collage in her mind. Olivia sat and tried to force the pieces of her memory’s jigsaw puzzle into places they did not belong… She could not understand nor accept what the final picture should really look like, wanting desperately to change her depressing reality.

She was naked, which she knew not because she could see her body—it was pitch black—but because she could feel the sweat gluing her to the sides of the container within which she was caught. She felt, for lack of better words, like a wild animal in a trap. A deer in headlights, a pig in a slaughterhouse. The latter, of course, was far more accurate than Olivia Walker would ever know.

The container was long and thin. Two barriers on either side of her neck separated her head from the rest of her body, and the box was so small she could not turn over or even wriggle much. Olivia was on her back, breathing unsteadily. Her body shook. Tears rolled down the sides of her face and into her hair, like war paint being hosed off a prisoner of war by the enemy.

The container surface was sticky. It felt like rubber. She wiggled her toes just to make sure this was real. But of course it was.

That was when she heard a noise like a machine starting up.

3

Jack stared at the box containing Olivia’s body. Adrenaline plagued his churning blood and his vessels bulged out in anticipation. His hopes were high; the machine was finally ready to be tested, and she was the first subject. He’d designed and built it from scratch, and now he would finally see if it worked. Of course, if it didn’t work, he would just have to kill her with a quick slash to the neck and revise his design, but it was still an exciting moment.

Jack’s blue eyes stood out against his wispy black hair and dark clothing. Her blood would not be the first to stain his dark gray gloves and apron, but it would be the first to test his masterpiece. He stood there holding her fragile life in his callused hands, waiting patiently for the adrenaline to reach its highest point so that the pull was ever more interesting. He thought about what each of the different parts of the machine would do before actually pulling the lever. The machine will work, he assured himself. He was no less a magnificent craftsman than he was a murderer. He was high on anticipation and his blood was toxic, burning his skin and wishing to be released.

Jack almost pulled the lever… then stopped. Music, he thought. I need music. Then it will be perfect.

He put on Chopin’s Funeral March in C Minor. He thought about playing the reversed version as a tribute to Ray Bradbury, smiling to himself a little, but decided against it. He had already waited too long, and the anticipation was practically killing him by that point.

Finally, Jack pulled the lever and started the machine.

4

It was the creepy piano music that pushed Olivia over the edge.

Before that point, she had tried to stay calm. When the music started, she completely lost it. "Wh—wh—what is this what is this what is going on Jesus FUCKING Christ is someone out there? What are you doing? What is that FUCKING music? Why—what—wh—"

Olivia heard a compartment open in the box. She turned her head slightly—as much as she could, which wasn’t much at all—to see just as a needle came out and injected her with some kind of substance. The needle was cold like the air; she could almost feel the paralysis creeping across her skin and swimming through her veins at frightening speeds.

She squirmed, and as the seconds ticked by, she found she could move less and less. Finally, she was completely still, unable to even wiggle her fingers. By then the needle had retracted, and two rectangular slots opened up above her, revealing the dull ceiling of a dark room, which she could not see. Two small blades shaped like X-Acto knives came toward her. They went right through her neck and dragged down effortlessly, neatly slicing the bulging arteries on both sides of her throat. The blood gushed out wildly like a geyser, splashing on top of her face and stinging as it ran into her eyes.Olivia tried to scream but could only make weak choking noises. It wasn’t physically painful—she couldn’t feel anything at all, in fact—but it was terrifying. It was terrifying to lose control of her body. It was terrifying to see that much blood. And it was beyond terrifying to know with absolute certainty that her end was coming very, very soon. Her body was pushed out of the box, and she knew in an instant that the final picture of the jigsaw puzzle would be her barbarous death scene. In the last moments of her life, Olivia’s mind flurried through a slew of half-baked, outlandish thoughts and prayers that would never be answered: Maybe the cops are on their way right now. Maybe they’ll bust down the door. God knows I’ve been good, and He will save me. He will…

Olivia’s head tilted to the right slightly, and the last thing she saw before the world went irreversibly black was Jack Webster’s crooked left-sided grin.

Chapter Two

1

Dr. Lowell was just opening up for the day. She was already exhausted, just like every other day in her life for the past few years, and she felt like a zombie before the day even really started. Plus, it was a Saturday. Who the hell wanted to work on a Saturday?

She went to the bathroom and looked in the mirror. Her hair was in a ponytail, but some of it had fallen down across her face, matching the dark lines and shadows of age’s evil plague.

She put her hands on either side of the sink and exhaled, eyeing herself with dismay. What the fuck am I doing? she thought. Maybe it was time for a vacation, but deep down she knew that wouldn’t be enough. No matter how long she took off from work—from a career her ten-year-old self had foolishly thought was her dream but her forty-eight-year-old self absolutely fucking hated—there would always be the transience dangled in front of her, taunting, allowing her to take a physical vacation but never an emotional one.

Dr. Lowell hung her head, letting it rest against her chest for a moment, feeling her lungs inflate and deflate against her chin as it bobbed up and down with the shaky rhythm. Then she promptly splashed her face with water and walked out of the bathroom. Her good posture and false smile assured the two other people who had already arrived at the clinic that everything was hunky-dory, spirits were higher than the ceiling, and it was going to be a great day thanks to such wonderful coworkers.

She closed the door and walked into the lobby… then stopped. Something smelled weird. It’s a fucking clinic, she thought. Of course it smells weird from time to time. Then: Maybe it’s the physical form of my hatred and disgust, come to make the place even more repulsive.

If that’s possible, she added with a dry smile and a half-hearted chuckle.

But it felt… off. She exhaled with exasperation, swiveled to the left melodramatically—where the smell was coming from—and then paced quickly through the hallway. It’s nothing. Stop trying to make the clinic more interesting than it is. You’ll get your hopes up.

But it wasn’t nothing. Dr. Lowell turned left again, and what she saw sitting in one of the examination rooms made her choke on the acidic air accumulating around her with all of the force an older-aged woman’s amygdala could muster.

It was mostly just organs, she told herself. Mostly. And whose? She tried to push the thoughts away with logic, but it didn’t work. Of course, she had seen organs a million times before, but never like this.

A pig lay in the middle of the white tiled floor with its belly up and a neat oval in the center of its body. It had been fully gutted and then refilled, the oval clearly displaying a careful arrangement of human organs. The lungs, heart, liver, large intestine, and kidneys were all in their correct places, but the small intestine had been wrapped around the pig’s neck like a noose. How do you even do that? Dr. Lowell thought stupidly. The pancreas had been shoved into the pig’s mouth. She leaned in closer against her will, curiosity getting the better of her, and could see that there were also what appeared to be dead bees jammed into the extra spaces in the mouth. There was a clean red apple sitting in the pig’s body among the other organs, right where the pancreas should have been.

Image Credit: Kean Yin

The precision from the cuts is impressive, Dr. Lowell thought in a dream-like flurry. Then her lips cracked from the dryness in her throat and a hoarse scream escaped. After a few moments, her legs finally unfroze, and she ran to call the cops.

2

These patrols were always the worst. They were the most goddamn boring part of the job, and that was saying a lot. Officer Howard Swinton drove his car slowly around the next turn, just as he had done ten minutes ago, and twenty minutes ago, and—shocker!—thirty minutes ago as well.

The route was short, boring, and repetitive… as in nothing ever happened. It was like sitting on your ass in a ditch and waiting for the killer rabbit from Monty Python to pop out because a superior said there was a one in a billion chance that the movie might have been based on reality—meaning, of course, that no one would ever find anything, that it would never happen, and that sitting around was a huge waste of fucking time.

But then, they were punishing him, of course. Swinton had a habit of going off in his head and doing work without letting other people know what he was doing. You could say he was a lone wolf, but that wasn’t quite right. He was frankly just a cynical guy and thought a lot of people were too stupid to keep up with him. He worked on his own agenda, and if people couldn’t keep up, well, that was their problem.

He rolled around the corner slowly without a care in the world. If he could just do this job for another week, they’d let him go back to his real investigative work. Sure, he’d made a mistake… Well really, he’d made this same kind of mistake a