Previous Challenge Entry (Level 4 – Masters)
Topic: At Wit’s End (02/13/14)
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TITLE: Out of Options | Previous Challenge Entry
By Jack Taylor
02/15/14 -
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Coming nose to nose with a 700 pound porker isn’t what Joe had planned when the sun prodded his eyelids. The curious hog smudged his face with its slop covered snout and made a timid attempt to chomp his ear.
Joe elbowed the giant on the cheek and rolled onto his back and into a wallow. ‘How had he come to this moment?’
The beast was longer than he by a handwidth and it had shared its trough long enough. Stubby tusks gouged the prone intruder and only Joe’s piercing scream held it off from another dig into his ribs. The sparsely haired hide moved quickly to crush him.
For thousands of years Joe’s kind had penned and prodded and feasted on omnivorous monsters like this. This hog seemed determined to change all that.
The owner of this operation had hired Joe to turn every part of these pigs into profit. Flesh became food. Hides became shields. Bones became tools or weapons. Bristles became brushes.
That didn’t help Joe now with a tusk in his back. This avenger seemed to have kept track of every one of its lost mates.
The heavy grunts drew in other earth toned gougers and Joe found himself surrounded by probing proboscises. This time they weren’t looking for roots or fruits or silage. They were looking for meat.
The drought had been brutal on all the livestock and the slaughter had been more extensive lately to save on feed. Even the sows were being put down.
Joe kept rolling ahead of the hungry herd. It was a stick poking up from a dusty sow’s nest that actually turned his thoughts toward home. The stick pierced his bicep and stimulated a memory from his childhood.
In that flashpoint his older brother Ben prodded him with a cow goad. Lowing at him and mocking him as the fugitive ran to tattle one more time. His dad had hugged him and brushed him off and taught him a trick or two about self defense. The meals had always been good at home. He had everything he needed.
For some reason, that hadn’t been enough. The constant mocking at his manhood, the tempting tales from his age mates, the restless urgings of his flesh, all pulled at him and drew his heart toward the distant horizon.
His dad had almost released him too easily. There had been the usual arguments about his reputation, his safety, his place in the family. None of that mattered on the day he slammed the door behind him. He wanted freedom as desperately as an eagle seeks the skies.
The first month had been a little tentative as he found his stride. He was new in this town. His father’s voice and moral scruples flashed in his memory and cautioned him at the edge of temptation. But in time a girl pulled him past his boundaries. And then another. And another. The voice of home soon was lost in the haze of glamor and glory. And then it was over.
The inheritance evaporated along with the attention. No one had time for a loser. He sometimes begged and conned and intimidated others into keeping him on the edge. He picked up a few odd jobs enough to party on the side but then the drought had hit with a vengeance. Almost as if some divine conspiracy was set to bring him to his wit’s end.
It was at that point he had stumbled across one last chance. A pig farmer. A hog dealer. Willing to let him slop the pigs. Slop that began to tempt him and make his stomach gurgle.
That temptation didn’t even touch him as he finally scrambled to his feet and fled the snorting ham herd. His tattered robe hung up on the stick and stayed behind. A leather sandal slipped off his foot during his getaway.
The beady eyes watched him waiver and look for a way back to the farm house.
Hopelessness surged through his soul as he saw what he had become. His thick tongue screamed at him for moisture. His unsandaled foot burned on the barren clay.
Pictures of home pierced his soul as strongly as the last thorn he had withdrawn from his sole. Faint whispers of love struggled to break through the angry mocking of a brother. Fear and anxiety wrestled with hope.
The sight of familiar hills pulled him another step. One lonely figure far off. Joe began to run.
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