Pearl

by Josh Malerman

Time to take over the farm. Time to kill the people who killed the pigs and time to kill the pigs, too, the ones that got in the way.

Just like every farmer in America had driven every pig in their pen insane.

The faces of the cops flickered in the shadows cast by the trembling flames, and if Susan looked too long at them, they started to look like they had no faces at all. Two fleshy pink pancakes flattened over dirty blue uniforms, guns in both their hands. The other pigs were gathered at the foot of the hay bale, in what looked like worship and blockade.

Knew the fate awaiting them all, all the people who took Pearl for granted. All the people who didn’t think twice about slaughtering a brilliant animal.

The doors closed but the image remained, strong, vivid, as if the man (Bob Buck?) was immune to obscurity, unable to be blocked out, like the pig, the pig Pearl, who haunted this man because this man haunted him, because this man lined pigs up and slit their throats in front of other pigs, and suddenly Susan was seeing, seeing Pearl’s point of view, Pearl’s perspective as if Pearl was a slave rising up, rising up from the mud and blood to kill his captors, to slay those who slayed his mother, his father, big pigs who had their own purpose not to be slit or slayed by men like this, the waving man, the man preparing to drive out to Kopple Farm to face his ghost, his monster, ready within, or perhaps so haunted, so changed that he thought he was ready and didn’t know what ready was anymore, weak, dying, the end of things, saying goodbye, waving, this man who drove all this way to ask a girl where the pig was on the farm, not ready after all, so scared that he had to ask someone who knew something, anything, because the idea of going out there without talking to someone first would have broken all his bones, would’ve shattered him instantly, the idea of driving out there as the pig grew in his mind, grew so big that he blotted out the moon and the night sky and became all he could think about, taking root in his mind, coloring every thought a fleshy pink, ruling his mind so that by the time he arrived at the farm he’d believe he was driving a pig, his hands upon a steering whe...

The farmer dreamed as the farmer taught the pig about circles. About the far reach of self-motivation and how you can really make someone believe an idea is their own if you insert six ideas between A and B, if you take them on such a long walk that they’ve forgotten what it is you want them to do.

This book is dedicated to every living thing on Earth, past, present, future.