Living with pigs
Hiadel
Slipping through the dark moonlit hallways Lazaro listened for noise. There wasn't any. Good, he thought, there won't be anything to hold me up tonight. White carpet wrapped around his boots as he slowly took his steps. Red paint spread across the walls and the slight trace of light that fed through the windows showed what seemed to be family portraits hung up on the walls. Rounding a dark corner he saw a door down the side of the hallway and stopped at it. He bent down beside the doorknob and took out a lock pick and got to work. In a matter of seconds he could hear the mechanisms in the knob click and the door unlock.
Flipping out his flashlight Lazaro opened the door and walked into the room. Turning on his flashlight he waved a cone of light over the room and looked for valuables. There didn't seem to be much in the room though. A bed sat in one corner of the room and a few chairs paired up with a dresser sat on the opposite side of the room. Lazaro was quick not to waste any time in his heist and went over to the dresser and started strip searching the drawers. Rifling through an underwear drawer he felt something small and pointy hit his fingers. Pulling the light over the contents of the drawer he could see what he had hit; a gold ring. Smiling he pocketed the ring and continued his search. After going through the dresser and a nearby bedside table Lazaro headed for the doorway. He put away his flashlight and closed the bedroom door on his way out; full of content with the loot he had just bagged.
Walking back down the hall he started to retrace his footsteps so he could make his escape. The only sounds that accompanied him tonight were the sounds of his boots hitting lightly against the wooden floors as he made his way across the dark house. Wait, wood? Wasn’t the floor supposed to be covered in carpet? Lazaro shined his flashlight down the hallway to find that it wasn’t the same hallway he had walked in before. The red on the walls was now stone and the family pictures that had hanged on the wall beforehand were now replaced with massive forks that sat on the wall like rifles do in museums. Heading down the hall Lazaro couldn’t seem to find an exit. What had happened? Why did everything seem to be getting out of hand? Lazaro couldn’t understand any of it.
As if things couldn’t get stranger Lazaro heard a sudden noise from behind that put him on edge.
“Lazaro, you know why you’re here, right?”
Turning around to face the noise Lazaro found himself staring into the face of a pig. This was no ordinary pig though. He was standing on his hind legs and was wearing a black suit. The most important thing about the pig was that he had a large fork in his hand the size of a baseball bat.
Before Lazaro had any time to react to what he had just seen this pig brought his fork down on Lazaro’s head and knocked him to the floor. As Lazaro lost consciousness he looked up into the pig’s dirty face and wondered why the hell all this was happening.
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Waking up Lazaro noticed that he was now in a cell and dressed in an orange jumpsuit. Dark holes covered the area below his eyes and he felt like at any moment he might lean over the cot he was lying on and throw up.
After a few minutes a pig dressed in a bailiff’s outfit came to the door of the cell and unlocked it. Leading Lazaro out of his cell the bailiff escorted him down the hall towards what seemed to be an exit. Exiting the jail area through those doors, Lazaro found himself in a large courtoom. All the traditional aspects of a courtroom were here: the brown jury bench, the large pulpit that the judge worked from, and the seating area where the public could sit and listen to the trials. The only difference between this courtroom and other ones was the fact that everyone inside of it was a pig except for Lazaro. The bailiff walked Lazaro up to the stand and let him take his seat.
Looking out onto the crowd Lazaro could see all those pigs staring back at him. God they were disgusting! He could see mud on their skin and food smeared all across their snouts.
The judge came to the pulpit after a few minutes and turned to the jury.
“What is the verdict?” He asked.
“Guilty!” Shouted all the pigs on the jury.
The crowd erupted with glee and a mass of snorts.
“Finally, justice will be served!” Cried the judge and motioned towards a few pigs who were near one of the exits. The pigs went away and came back through the doors carrying this large barbeque pit. They carried it out into the center of the courtroom and laid some firewood underneath it.
The bailiff and two other pigs walked up behind Lazaro and took him by the handcuffs towards the barbeque pit that was now being lit. While he was being carried down all the pigs in the crowd were going crazy. They hollered and shouted at the top of their lungs everything they could think of.
“Kill him!”
“Make him medium rare!”
“We’ll show you what we do with thieves!”
As the pigs readied the fire Lazaro stared into the crowd and knew that it was all over. Nothing could be changed, he thought. He would just have to deal with the consequences. The only question that loomed over his head now only concerned what right the pigs had in passing judgment on him. A thief is a thief, but does a pig have a right to get the final say in what happens to that thief? If you were to ask Lazaro he would tell you no, all those pigs are just as bad as he is.
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“So, is that how you really feel?” The news reporter asked Lazaro as he walked down the hall after his trial.
“Yes.” He replied. “That’s exactly how I feel, like I was left to be cooked in front of all those people.”
