I'm a freshman and I like to write about a lot of things but mostly in short story form. A small thing that motivated me to write this was the movie Groundhog Day.
Thing by Kacey Hollerich
In the morning before farm chores, Raynold liked to have breakfast with his wife and daughter. This morning they were having bacon, eggs, and waffles per his daughter Meg’s request. If Raynold didn’t think there was enough food for him to eat for breakfast, he would grill himself a steak, sometimes just to make the ‘doing work’ part of his day come later. According to him, sleeping in till nine am wasn’t enough rest for a farmer of his age. His wife, Rinaya, was never fond of these tendencies of his; she thought his actions were childish because she woke up at six in the morning to make breakfast and get herself ready for her day of work at an office. Meg tried to stay out of their feuds and focused on watching cable on their small box TV. On this day in particular, it was known through the tension in the air that Raynold and Rinaya would fight. Rinaya had messed up by not doing the dishes the night before, and now Ray couldn’t eat his breakfast off of his breakfast plate that was meant for just him because of the logo of one of Ray’s farmer’s insurance. He was proud that he was able to build his farm from the ground up. He felt the need to brag and constantly remind his family of it. Therefore, anything with a resemblance that even vaguely represents his accomplishments is plastered all over the house. This means while Rinaya does all the washing up after dinner or having guests over, Raynold sits himself before the TV and drinks beer. Ray slept while his wife made breakfast.
After getting dressed in his coveralls, Raynold heads into the pig barns. He forgets to put gloves on and grab a mask. When he opens the door to the first barn, he trips on the door frame, and his head lands on something soft. At first Ray thought it was poop, but no sort of liquid solid went into his ear. It was a pig. At first, Ray felt bad for landing on the innocent creature but remembered its life only really lasted six months, and it wouldn’t really matter if it was hurt because it was gonna die soon anyway. Ray stood up and brushed himself off, only a little bit of poop on his coveralls, but that was normal. He looked around the pens and cried out. The pigs were gone. Every last one of them except for the bloated, blue, dead pig he landed on. He kneeled next to the unfortunate pig and examined its cold body. It had hoof marks on its snout and legs. It must have been trampled, not uncommon due to the many pigs that lay and sleep all day. This still didn’t explain where all the pigs went. Ray takes another look at the bloated pig dead on the floor before he turns to leave the pen. He walks the twenty feet to the next barn and makes sure not to trip this time. He looks up, and once again there are no pigs around; the room is empty except for the feeders that are still filled with food from when they were distributed this morning. Ray was really proud of the fact that he could build automatic feeders that go off at a specific time in the morning so the pigs have food for the whole day. But now, it's only a reminder of how he failed. How the pigs got out, so desperately that they left their food sitting untouched. Ray was panicking now; he ran out of the barn without closing the door to the next one. The same thing, no pigs, food untouched. He runs out of the barn and to the next, and when he opens the door and looks up, he stops breathing. He stops dead in his tracks, not even up the step to the barn. All of the pen borders have been taken out and seem to have disappeared. His automatic feeders, gone. All the accomplishments he has made with this last barn, gone. The only thing in the room, a large pile of dead pigs. The pigs from the other pens and the pigs from this barn were all piled up, making almost a cone of dead pigs.
“Holy mother of God, help me.” Ray prayed; he didn’t really think Mary could help him in this situation, but God, he could hope. Ray walked around the large pile of pigs, at least five hundred pigs piled up, and the smallest runt on the very top of the cone. He inspected it and wondered how the hell he was going to report this. He hadn’t heard any pigs screaming during the night; that was weird; they were mostly vocal about all of their discomforts. His house was only about one hundred feet away from the first barn; he would’ve heard something. Was God punishing him? Ray couldn’t think of a reason as to why he would. The pigs’ eyes were all open, like they were staring at him, waiting for him to do something other than look at their lifeless bodies. What could he do next? He could call the police, but they might think that he was trying to get insurance money. Ray felt sick; the smell was overwhelming, and he felt like he was going to pass out. Something woke him up, though, a squeal. The squeal of a pig. He rushes out of the death pen and to where the squeal came from. How was he going to deal with this? His brother, Dennis, was set to arrive at around 12 pm. Ray checks his watch, 10:36 am. The scream came from the very first barn, the one with the dead pig. Ray opens the door to the first barn.
“Holy shit.” Ray’s mouth hung open.
The dead pig was now standing all on its own. Its eyes were dead black; the marks on the pig’s face looked more prominent than from earlier this morning. The hoof marks were a deep red, and if looked at closely, they were starting to bleed. The pig was silent, staring into the void of Raynold’s soul; its legs were cut from the broken bones digging into the skin. The clotted blood poked out through the cuts. Ray couldn’t move, like the pig's stare was forcing him to stay put. Ray steps back with force, as if he had to forcefully remove himself from the pig’s gaze. He doesn’t turn his back when walking away from the pig, so he falls off the ledge of the barn and lands on his back, hitting his head on the ground with a snap. His eyes droop even when he tries to keep them open. The last thing he sees is the pig on the ledge looking down at him with its dead eyes.
Dennis pulled into the driveway of his brother’s house. He doesn’t see any cars home besides the gray old rusty one that sits by the side of the house. He tries to open his car door, but it's jammed. This happens often, and he just has to climb into the passenger seat and go through that door. He tries the door handle, but the door is jammed. He tries again, more aggressively, to see if the door was just minorly stuck. It was like bricks were built around the door like a wall. Dennis climbs into the back seat and tries to open the doors on each side. Nothing. He was essentially stuck in his car. He hears a fabric tear coming from the back of the car. He crawls to see where it came from. The fabric in the back storage space was ripping. It was ripping to spell words, it seemed. The sentence read, You cannot stop it. Stop what? The letters were barely clear enough to read, but it was enough to make Dennis jump back once he read them. His breathing became strained as he moved to sit back in the passenger seat. His back and neck were completely pressed up against the seat and headrest. His legs forcefully press up to the bottom of the seat by an invisible force. First, his ankles broke to ensure he couldn’t run. Then, his wrists broke to ensure he wouldn’t try to open the doors again. It stopped for a while to try and give him hope to live. Finally, his neck broke to ensure he wouldn’t live to tell the tale.
Ray awoke encompassed in pig shit and vomit. The room is completely dark, the only light coming from the narrow spaces in between the floorboards of the pen above him. The light is faint, only covering his body, leaving the corners black. His one flaw was never draining the pig poop from below the pig pens. The smell was always overwhelming first thing in the morning and was bound to make him dizzy. When his daughter helped him in the barns and brought up the smell, knowing it was a sensitive topic for him, he had no choice but to get angry with her. Even when she went outside to try and breathe in fresh air, he would get annoyed and yell at her to get inside and help. But now, the smell is so overpowering it's the only thing he can think about. The smell only seems to get stronger when he tries to cover his nose with his shirt. To his right, a candle lights, then another in a different corner on the left. Four more candles lit by themselves revealed a small figure a few yards away. At first, it looked like a normal pig, nothing too scary, definitely not scarier than what he saw this morning. Then, the pig’s head started to rise up towards the ceiling. Ray shrieked and tried to get as far away from that thing as he possibly could, but his right ankle was tethered to the ground. He pulled as hard as he could but stopped when he started bleeding. The thing that now stood in front of him was large, head held high up to the ceiling. Flesh for skin, small pig bones peeking out from the “skin.” The thing was not bleeding, nor did it look hurt. It was made completely of pig; the distinct head of the pig had two mouths, one of a regular pig and a clean pig jaw right underneath it. A hoof floated in the murky blackwater next to Ray, making him jump. When he tried to look back at the thing, it was gone. Ray panicked; he swerved his head in every direction. When he looked forward again, the pig head was right in front of him. Staring at him, unmoving and jaw slack. It smelled horribly, worse than the pig shit he was surrounded with; the scent was even stronger. The thing moved on top of Ray, so he was almost fully submerged in the blackwater, its hanging jawbone sitting right above his forehead. The thing leans forward and presses the bone of its jaw lightly on his forehead, and his eyes shut forcefully.
He wakes up in his house, but it's different; the decorations his wife bought aren’t there. The carpet is green instead of gray. The flowerpots that sit there crumbled years ago. His mother’s taste in decor is seen everywhere, not even a hint of his wife. The house reeks of his father’s cigar smoke and the weak candles his mother used to try and drown out the smell. The sun is no longer high in the sky like it was before he blacked out for the first time. It is night. Ray feels like he might know what will ensue. He hears a boy sobbing outside, and he whips his head in that direction. He runs to open the door and sees his father holding his childhood dog by the collar. He sees his younger self tugging on his father’s wrist, but his feet are sliding on the ground as his father walks. Ray can only watch from the porch, frozen, as his father throws his younger self to the ground and brings the dog into the shed.
“I told you if you couldn’t get this dog to shut up while I’m sleeping, he would go away!” Ray’s father yells at younger Ray’s motionless body.
Ray remembered his father hadn’t actually knocked him out on the ground; Ray had faked it so his dad wouldn’t stay much longer. His father was particularly bad when he was drunk; getting home from the bar after work, he was never in a good mood. Unless, of course, he had gone home with a woman who wasn’t his mother. Ray had sworn he would never turn out like his father, and he did a great job at that. A gunshot and a loud, broken sob took Ray out of his thoughts. The scene wasn’t as he remembered, if he ever could remember what happened that dreadful night. There was a shadowy figure standing by the shed. Tall and fleshy, a pig’s head at the very top. The thing was watching everything unfold, his traumatic past on display for this horrifying creature. Ray’s eyes shut forcefully.
Ray wakes up in his modern house; he can see all of his wife’s decorations instead of his mom’s. It gave him a false sense of security for the time being. He then noticed himself on the chair in front of the television. It must have been a few years ago because his hair hadn’t started thinning yet. His wife enters the living room from the kitchen.
“Ray, do you mind picking up some of your dishes?” Rinaya asks, sounding exhausted. Memory Ray doesn’t look up from the television, not even sparing a glance towards his tired wife.
“Ray?”
Still. No reaction. His head not lifting from the football game.
“Ray? Can you please help me out?” Rinaya is almost yelling now; Ray can basically see the steam coming from his past self’s ears. He snaps his head to look at his wife.
“I do everything for this family! I make all the money! I do everything; you do nothing. Do not belittle me, woman!” Ray’s standing up now, his finger pointing in his wife’s face. That's pretty much all she was. His wife. She was nothing compared to Ray. He was a self-made farmer with little help. He built a farm on the land surrounding his house. His wife just came to live with him, only bearing a single child, nothing close to what his expectations were for the future. These thoughts always invaded his mind, surrounding himself with thoughts of self-praise. He knew he wasn’t supposed to have them, but he couldn’t help but agree.
The thing stood, watching Ray. Ray hadn’t seen it yet. The thing is a reflection of Ray’s soul; it was once a very sweet thing, cute, almost like a piglet. That piglet has grown into a monster, someone who only cares about themselves. A large and tall monster because he thinks of himself as bigger and stronger than those around him. The body filled with broken bones and flesh of the people he had hurt and not soothed in the past. A reincarnation of his father. The anger was still there, inherited after his father’s death. The anger was always there, waiting for an invitation to finally be free. An event that you wait to be invited to. Ray would never hit someone, let alone shoot a dog; that was his father’s way. Ray manipulated that anger into a rage, a rage for his childhood self, and a rage for his life never going the way he wanted even though he always bragged about the glamorous life he had. He has never truly been fulfilled, and that anger turned into a monster. The monster that stood before his very eyes, but he never was able to see. Like now, as Ray watches his past self, his memories flying by, he is enamored with his own actions and never how they affected those around him. He was always focused on himself, how he was so perfect; he never realized his wife would sneak away at night to a man that loved her. How his daughter stayed in her room after dinner to call friends that talked to her. Even when he was brought to his past, he was only focused on himself.
This brought him back to the pigpen. Staring at the underside of the monster’s jaw as it crushes his skull into water. The darkness feels new; the light of the day and the pixels of the television screen are what he’s used to. This darkness is so different from sleep; it's not calming at all; it hurts. The pain is shooting through whatever is left of his being, the pain of the people he has hurt. The people who are still hurting because of him. A picture is shown in the darkness, his brother in the car. The picture fades, and so does the pain, bringing Ray into the eternal darkness. In the darkness he walks in clear water. When he goes to look at his reflection, the thing looks back at him.