'The Pig And The Goat.'

A man's souls drifts into hell, after his body is overtaken by something dealt of pure evil, from the darkest of corners. He wanders through his own purgatory and comes across his first acquaintance.

This smell of this town is unsavory to say the least, like damp clothing that hung for too many days during a long and cold winter. Everything is dressed in night and now that I mention it, I can’t remember it ever turning to day here. The streetlights that were stuck into the concrete ground stood tall, but every last one had its bulbs shattered. I don’t remember how I got here and all I've been doing since is slowly wandering down this dark road. My mind isn't right; I can’t hold onto a single word or thought. I have no concept of time and even less concept of the words I pair together. I just walk now. That's all I do, that’s all my body will do. On and on for what seemed like days, had I known the span of one. Houses lined up on both sides of me. All were broken down and boarded up. No "happy" humming from cooking housewives or girls and boys neglecting their homework. No hardworking men, pulling up from their 9 to 5 jobs, or another romantic affair. All was absent, all had fled. And each aimless step forward got me absolutely nowhere.

Until a smell drifted right by my mortal nose. It was something familiar and rather intoxicating, I’d say! The aroma was consistent, familiar and teasing me the whole way. I sniffed and sniffed and sniffed like a dumb dog would figuring his way toward the source of something heavenly, something that got more powerful with each step that went in front of the other. Something so gripping, that I would happily kill for a taste…

Onward and onward, until my eyes came to see two standing objects in the distance; living, no doubt. They were animated and stood across from each other, over a fire placed in the center of them that burned abnormally tall. Then came the voices of friendly chatter and genuine laughter. One voice had a funny squeak to it; a sort of snort came in-between almost pitch of laughter. The other: deep with a very strange and awkward bleating undertone. My eyes focused as I moved in closer and undetected. One wore a tall chefs hat that creased in the middle. Their whole body from head to toe looked coated in some pink, skintight leather-like suit. The one across wore something made of short, white fur.

The banter abruptly stopped and the one in pink turned his eyes toward me. The furry white one continued over the fire, holding in his hand a long stick with something stuck to the tip of it; he poked it in and out of the fire, as if cooking a hot dog. I approached the both of them and my mind came to an utter standstill that matched everything else surrounded me. For what I saw couldn't be explained to the human eye.

"Haven’t seen one of your kind make it this far in a real long time." Said the pink leathery one, with a snort coming from his large circular nose that sat almost flush against his face.

The furry one finally looked at me; not phased in the least as he appeared annoyed at the simple sight of me. His mouth stuck out like a snout. His eyes wide with pupils in the shape of rectangles. He had horns sprouting and spiraling down from his head, making a circular shape that almost touched his cheeks. The creature stood straight up, taller than me, on his hooved feet while chomping down on something juicy. He blinked a few times, shook his head as if a cold chill sunk into his furry neck, then looked back down to the base of the intensely burning fire.

"You must be something special." Said the pink one as his teeth violently ripped into a piece of fleshy meat stuck in-between the only two thick and pointed fingers he had. His eyes were jet black and looked virtually soulless, blinking an animistic blink every few seconds. He also had a snout that shortly stuck out. His clearly well-fed stomach was fat, with many pointed n*****s tracing down it.

Walking through a broken down and light-less community, absent of all humanly contact, I’ve somehow and most strangely stumbled upon a speaking pig and his silent and possibly angry goat friend. They were simply having a nighttime barbecue in the midst of absolute nothingness.

"Don’t get many of you with the smarts to pass any further than ‘Owl Street’." He said again.

His goat friend brought the stick that he held in the fire to his mouth and stripped off a piece of whatever fleshy meat they were cooking.

The squealing pig bent down to the ground, “In fact…” He stood up now holding a sack that was loosely tied. “Let me introduce you,” he opened the sack, “To the last one who passed by here,” he pulled out a man’s bloody, decapitated head.

I shrieked in horror but had no voice to vocalize it. My body stiffened as flat as a surfboard. I stepped back, ran around them and took off as fast as my feet knew how. It wasn’t long after that the streets echoed in the snorting laughter of a standing pig, teamed with a loud bleating chuckle from his goat friend. Their banter continued on normally as if I was never actually there.

© 2014 Michael J. Dippolito

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R. A. Merritt

Seems almost like the perverse, nightmarish journey of some latter day Alice through the looking glass confronted by some hellish creatures the equal of those the original Alice confronted along her way. A frightening and as well intriguing concept. Well done.