Post by Radrook Admin on Apr 5, 2021 12:04:37 GMT -5
The Rope
By Radrook
By Radrook
It is a hot sunny day in Puerto Rico, and I am running down the narrow, sunlit, dirt country road bordered by trees of red foliage called Famboyans. Beyond the trees, there are barbed wired fences stopping me from fleeing into the meadows beyond where escaping would be much easier. I am dragging the short rope around my neck behind me. I am desperately fleeing by instinct and I don’t know exactly why. It is just a gut-feeling that today will be a special day for those people who purchased me at the Farmer’s Market, and that I am somehow part of it in some sinister way.
Yes, the people who bought me have all been very kind. They have not harmed me. I was carefully placed in a pen and fed from piglet to adult. Yet today, today I suddenly feel the urge to flee. Maybe it was the strange intense way in which they all suddenly began gazing at me. It was a look I had seen in wolves and dogs that had approached my pen. Or maybe it was the way they were suddenly cheerfully speaking to one another as if in expecting something unusual concerning me. Or maybe it was the sudden purposeful and rough way that they suddenly tied this thick, rough rope around my neck this morning and made absolutely sure that it was so tight that has spooked me.
Whatever the reason, I felt I needed to escape, to run as I had never run before. So when the small old lady who bought me became distracted, I broke loose and bolted down this long dusty road leading ahead to who knows where? The feeble old lady doesn't follow, she just watches after looking surprise and disappointed with a loud gasp saying:
“Oh no! He escaped me! Now what?”
Then, as I feel I have escaped, I hear the familiar patter of a young boy's footsteps behind me. It is the patter that had been once playful when I was a piglet, and slow down to turn and look. I feel a strong tug on the rope as the familiar boy grabs the it in his small pale hands and begins to proudly pull me back towards the others. He is a small boy, about ten, and I can seriously harmed him. But I feel no such inclination. I do struggle a bit, but he is barely strong enough to keep me from running until the others arrive.
They who bought me seem so extremely happy to see me once more as they chatter and laugh nervously and pat the boy on the head as he smiles broadly and looks proud. Then I notice that some are salivating, and once again I feel a strong urge to bolt for freedom into the nearby hills, but this time a skinny but strong man named Juan, the boy’s uncle, holds the rope tightly in both his calloused, hands and I know that any tug would be useless. Yet I try but feel pain as he yanks me back to his side. Soon my neck is bleeding. So I start to follow along obediently.
The group is quieter now. The excited chatter has died down to a soft excited talk as they follow the man slowly leading me away from the road through a wooded gate attached to barbed wire and then through the short, yellow, dry grass up a slope. Atop a hill is his father’s house. He leads me behind it to towards a small wooden shed.
Something about the shed, the rougher way the man is leading me, and the sudden deep silence of the group, makes my urge to flee even stronger. He senses my intentions, and before I can try to pull free and make another run for it, he tightens his grip even more and is yanking me through the shed’s narrow open door which he has kicked open with his bare foot and is dragging me inside. It is dark in the shed, and I suddenly smell the scent of the dried blood on its planks- the blood of creatures who have all died here. Porcines like me, fowl, and the butchered meat of cattle. Instinct tells me what it means, and it galvanizes my fear into a mad struggle for freedom. I struggle to kick wildly with my short-hoofed legs and snort and squeal with all my porcine might.
As I struggle, I see the boy who had stopped me peeking at me from between the shed's plank . I see his tearful brown eye and hear his bitter weeping. He had been so proud, so happy just moments before-basking in the accomplishment of having caught me. Didn’t he know?
I am slowly suffocating as the man’s bony forearm tightens firmly against my thick furred neck. Desperately I flail with my four legs to break loose, so I can head for the hills beyond their reach, but my feet only strike air. I try to bite him, but cannot break his grip and reach his arm. Then I feel the sudden blunted glimmer of his machete and the rusted edge of its blade sliding slowly against my throat.
Still I struggle, but my squeals and grunts are growing feeble, and I feel myself growing limp as the blood gushes and pools around the man’s bare feet and pours through the wooden planks of the shed’s floor. Yet he tightens his grip thinking I am trying to fool him into releasing me too soon.
Finally, after seeing enough blood has been spilled, and feeling me weaken, he lets me go. The shed’metallic roof tilts sideways as I slump to the ground landing on my side with the tip of my snout pointing towards the shed’s open door. The group is peeking in now as if to make sure that it has been done. Then, the rope is finally removed from around my neck as the light grows dimmer.