I’m not stupid. When I see a pig monster I don’t believe I saw what I saw without asking some questions. The first thing I think is brain tumor. Or psychotic break. The problem with this notion is that Marti saw the giant pig monster too. We googled for a good fifteen minutes and neither one of us found anything about two people seeing the same hallucination at the same time. So that’s a proven fact by the standards of the day. That’s when I started thinking that we actually had seen what we saw.
Duke pigman was gone when the cops showed up of course. I didn’t see it but he must have gotten back in his killmobile and driven away. I wonder what the cops would have done if he was still there just hanging out smoking and waiting for them. What does the patrolman’s manual say about mutant pigs out for revenge on dedicated civil servants who were just doing their job? Wasn’t there one of those guys on Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles? Rockabilly or something?
Marti and I didn’t mention the pig-monster in his road tank to the police. We’re not idiots. Not that kind of idiot anyway. I’ve been on a 48-hour hold psych before and I don’t care to repeat the experience. When I told the officer that the accident was a hit and run he gave me that condescending “sure honey” look that males learn in grade school to make us feel small. He gave his partner a “women drivers huh?” look as well. What did he think had happened? Somehow I managed to pull off a single car accident from the side?
There’s a weird thing that happens when you’re a very attractive woman my of a certain age. You’re not young enough for men to want to bend over backwards to please you anymore, but not old enough to be a MILF. It’s a weird kind of twilight zone where men don’t know what to do with you so they fall back on the school-yard paradigm of being a dick to you because you’re still attractive so they can’t not react in some way, but you’re not young enough for them to get bro-y and rapey and not old enough to remind them of their friend’s hot mom that they wanted to fuck as teens.
Point being after Marti went in the ambulance and they pretended to take my statement they just left me there sitting on the curb waiting for an uber and the tow truck guy. If I was ten years younger or ten years older that wouldn’t have happened. The weather wasn’t cold cold but it was cold enough that I got back in the car and blasted the heat. It didn’t do much since there it has no door on one side and no windows on both sides but it was better than nothing.
I closed my eyes for a moment and tried to not think about pig monsters when I felt something scamper across my legs. I was hoping for squirrel and assuming rat when I opened my eyes and saw a blue lizard sprawled on the dashboard. It turned its little lizard head back at me and spoke with its little lizard mouth.
“Hi.”
I looked at it for a moment “So what are you? The new Gieco spokesthing?”
I knew that was wrong because that particular advertising pitchman has and English and this little guy had a French accent “No, I’m your spirit animal, here to give you advice on your sojourny.”
I raised an eyebrow “Really?”
“No.”
“I don’t think sojourny is a word. If you played that in Scrabble I would challenge that.”
Did you know that lizards can roll their eyes? “Give me a break lady, I just learned to speak like three days ago.”
“Did you get into the energy drink spill too?” it nodded its little lizard head “Why are you just a little talking lizard then instead of a giant humanoid lizard monster?”
Its face was expressive enough that I could tell it was being judgey “Because I only drank a little bit of that wonderful ooze. I know how to control myself. Duke . . . man, that guy is out of control. He drank way too much. The bad news is that it transforminated him into a giant monster, the good news is he’s burning himself up metabiologically, he’s not going to live more than two, three years tops.”
“Somehow I don’t think I’m going to outlast him on that timeframe.”
He looked me in the eyes, deadly serious but adorable if you like lizards “Neither do I. That guy really has it out for you. I get it, he’s mad at you for the same reason I’m mad at him, feral swine are pushing the great plains skink to extinction.”
“Feral swine aren’t going extinct, their population is exploding.”
It raised a browless eyelid “Really? Okay, I guess I thought you were better at your job than that.”
“Hey” I scowled at him “it’s not my fault I’m doing everything I can, it’s Texas that’s the problem. By the time the pigs got here there were already too many of them for an army of drunken rednecks on four wheelers with shotguns to stop.”
“Sorry, I didn’t mean . . . well, whatever, nevermind, the point is you’re trying to kill them and no one likes when people are trying to kill them.”
“Fair enough. So, if this all happened two days ago how does Duke know how to use a phone? And how did he find my number? Can he read? Did he get my information online? How did he know about the internet? And how does he know how to drive a car? And where did he get the car from? There’s like a million things here that don’t make sense.”
It flicked its tail in a way that seemed annoyed to me “How should I know? I’m just a lizard. I’m not your spirit animal but I am here to give you advice on how to save yourself from Duke.”
I perked up “I’m all ears little buddy.”
