However, when I got there, I saw that one of the small pigs was out.
Small being kind of a misleading word, seeing as ‘small’ still meant ‘over a hundred pounds.’
“What are you doing out?” I asked the little pig.
The pig snorted at me, then walked up to the wheelbarrow and nudged it.
Assuming that meant ‘feed me now, bitch’ I pushed the wheelbarrow the rest of the way toward the enclosure where I’d seen him dump the feed into the trough yesterday.
Just as I was about to upend the wheelbarrow, I felt the hair on the back of my neck start to stand on end.
Having a sort of sixth sense since I was younger—my brothers liked to sneak up on me and scare the absolute shit out of me every chance they got—I knew that there was someone behind me.
And it wasn’t Bruno, because he would’ve announced his presence.
Carefully acting like I wasn’t aware of him, I dropped down onto my haunches just as I felt something swing over the top of my head.
The two-by-four that’d been in the man’s hands swung and hit the fence right where my head would’ve been had I not ducked.
Turning around and aiming for the nuts—again, something that I’d learned on my brothers to do—I punched hard and viciously.
I heard an audible pop when my fist met the man’s nut sack.
He tried to back up, but the pig that was out chose that time to get pissed that she wasn’t getting fed, and directed her anger at the man that’d done the distracting.
She went for the man’s heels, causing him to trip.
The board landed at my feet as he went down onto his knees next to the trough where I’d been about to dump the food, upending the feed that I’d been about to dump.
The baby pig was happy.
The other pigs?
Not so much.
That’s when I saw where the smaller one had gotten out.
Because just as I noticed it, the heftiest pig in the bunch pushed his way right on through the too-small hole and went straight for the feet.
I picked the two-by-four up and slammed it down hard against the man’s head.
He went out like a light in the middle of the feed.
Pig after pig pushed out of the fence until not a single one remained inside.
That’s when I noticed that they weren’t just eating the feed.
They were now nibbling on the man’s body.
I watched, in utter horror, as the biggest pig in the bunch leaned over and practically ripped a piece of the man’s flesh off of his face.
A huge, hulking pig-sized bite mark was taken directly out of the man’s face.
I backed away, stunned into silence, as another pig followed suit.
“Oh, shit,” I said as I started to run back toward Bruno’s house.
I didn’t realize that the barn was so far away from the house until I had to run—and let’s just say, I wasn’t a freakin’ runner.