bro i thought of this while I was sitting on my bathroom counter picking my face so here's a weird excerpt from a Bob Velseb x reader fic that doesn't exist titled Swine
When you were young, other kids around you were always so excited to hear that your family raised pigs. You never needed to be told what they were imagining, you already knew: cradling a fresh, pink piglet while it suckled from a bottle of warm milk. They always said they were jealous that you got to have pet pigs.
You wouldn't necessarily call them "pets", even back then. Your family's pigs weren't ever something you could walk in the same pen as, or stroke their noses, or cuddle with when nights grew chilly. The only warmth they ever provided to you as a child was the swelter of too many warm bodies packed into a poorly ventilated pen or the waft of rotting grain from a maw snapping too close to a small, wandering hand.
You didn't hate your family's pigs, they were just animals after all, but you weren't particularly fond of them either. You saw the way they bit and fought each other when packed too tightly together, how they'd tear up the plastic mats from the floors of their pens or try to root through the feed in their troughs with curious snouts. They'd make the biggest messes that you'd always hear your parents shouting about at the crack of dawn the next morning.
You could tell they were bored out of their minds. You'd be going crazy too if you were your parents' pigs.
But until recently, they weren't your problem.
Until recently, you had just finished community college and were on track to transfer to a real university.
Until recently, your dad had been able to walk.
It wasn't anyone's fault, is what you were told. You were told it was a miracle the stroke hadn't killed him. You were told you'd have to take up your father's half of the responsibilities to keep the family business on track.
Your first thought wasn't pity for your father or support for your mother. You were furious. You'd demanded to know why they couldn't just hire a farmhand to take your father's place, and your mother had said they couldn't afford it. You'd called them both stupid for running an operation they clearly couldn't afford in the long run if they didn't even have enough funds to hire even one extra pair of hands. They had to be out of their minds to think you'd drop everything to work their farm for free.
Still, the very next morning after you got the news, you had put on your coveralls at the crack of dawn and gotten right to work. As much as you kicked and screamed about it, you were willing to put your dreams on hold for your family. You felt you owed them as much; you'd heard all your life about how stretched thin they were financially, and such a sacrifice had to be repaid.
You hadn't realized how easy it was to fall into a cycle until you'd done it yourself. Every morning, you'd wake up as early as possible to head into the barn, adjust the piglets' nipple bars, check the hoses for leaks, adjust the troughs in each pen to make sure the feed levels were right, clean the pens, check on the sows and the new piglets if it happened to be that time of year, corral different groups of pigs from each pen into a new one to prevent overcrowding (not that it stopped them trying to bite each other's tails or ears), and be done in just time to have a late lunch or early dinner depending on how hard of a time the pigs had given you that day.
It was easier in the beginning. Back then, you had your mother working alongside you, and with the work going twice as fast, you were able to enjoy both lunch and dinner together as a reward for a job well done. But once she started slowing down, when her natural color became more silver than anything else, you were left on your own.
She would still always have dinner ready for you by the time you got in the house, as though an apology and a warm plate could make up for the fact that you were carrying a small pig farm on your back alone. They were always the kinds of salty, nostalgic meals that prioritized comfort over substance, the kind that sat heavily in your stomach overnight but gave you no real nutrition, leaving you lethargic in the morning. Still, it was your job to push through.
You had to count your blessings while you worked.
At least you had a mother to make you warm food every night, you'd tell yourself as piglets lined up next to you while you fixed a leaking nipple bar, eager to drink from artificial teats.
At least you had a warm bed to lay in at night, you'd tell yourself as you took off your jacket, sweating from the heat and stench of the pigs surrounding you despite snow falling outside.
At least both your parents were still alive, you'd tell yourself when a rare sharp squeal rang out through the barn because some stupid piglet had squeezed past the bars of the farrowing crate, been rolled onto by its equally stupid mother, and gotten itself crushed to death with the sow none the wiser.
You'd figured a long time ago that this was your parents' plan from the beginning. They'd had the pig farm since before you were born, and you'd likely have it long after they were both dead and rotten. But for now, you still have them.
And they certainly still had you to do their work for them. Your father had had his ups and downs after the stroke, and while he was never able to work again like he used to, on a good day, he still had the energy to go into town and cut a good deal with whoever was looking to buy your pigs. Most of the time, it ended up being a pork processing plant in the next county over or the local butcher in a small town a few miles down the road.
Today was one of your father's bad days. He didn't have the energy or the proper motor function to drive the half dozen pigs that one butcher had asked for that night, and since your mother needed to stay home and care for him, that responsibility fell to you. You were exhausted from the day, and the pork chops and potatoes your mother had made for dinner didn't help with your exhaustion, but what's one more little delivery on top of everything else? It was for your father's sake.
You were glad you weren't able to hear the pigs squeal in the trailer you were towing behind your truck every time you hit a bump in the road. You didn't need the added stress of their panic while you were trying to strategize. According to your dad, this guy was the type that insisted on processing everything himself, from piggy to plate. They'd been doing business for years, as far as you knew. That totally didn't make you even more nervous about making a good first impression.
A thought occurred to you: he was going to know you're new to this. You feel a vein in your temple throb at the thought of him trying to lowball you for the pigs you'd put so much work into raising. You could only hope he wasn't the swindling type; you'd much sooner drop dead than ever let him cheat you out of even a hard-earned cent.
origamiaround
gamechangershow
