My sister Julie bought a pig. Not a puppy. Not a kitten. Not even a hamster or a rabbit. A pig. It was a black-haired Vietnamese pot-bellied piglet. She lost all claims to creativity by naming him Pig-Pig. Not Ham-ster, not Boar-Butt, not Baby Back Ribs, but Pig-pig. Pig for short. When I first met Pig-pig, he had outgrown his cute, bunny-sized stage: he had left his stubby, wet piggy-snout behind – a snout which Julie kissed lovingly and repeatedly. Maybe I would have warmed to him more if I had memories of holding his apple-sized belly in my palm, interlacing my fingers between his tiny hooves, listening to his baby-sized snuffs while he nuzzled against my chest. But I didn't have the pleasure. When I first came nose-to-snout with my porcine nephew, he was already a 200-pound, honking, snorting, beast-borne-of-the-devil, complete with dripping nostrils and an underbite of sharp beige teeth. Now, I love animals to the point where I’ll sob if the horse falls over in a ...
Hyper-focus and Chaos: Absurd Short Stories