Never had been, and never would be.
And the mud under my feet made it even harder to stay upright.
But eventually I did get to the back door.
I took my shoes off and immediately went to the sink to wash my hands clean of the mud.
Because priorities.
The moment that I was clean, I went in search of Bruno, finding him nowhere on the first floor.
I hauled ass for the second floor where he’d pointed out was his home office, and all but slammed inside.
He looked up from his computer with a frown.
He saw my face and immediately knew that something was wrong.
“What happened?” he asked, taking in my clothes.
I was wearing nothing but his t-shirt, that was now slightly wet from rinsing my body of the smelly mud.
“There was a m-man that was outside. He tried to hit me over the head with a two-by-four, but I ducked and he hit the fence. Then I punched him so hard in the balls that I think I ruptured his testicle. Also, I rendered him unconscious by beaning him over the head with the same two-by-four he dropped. Then the pigs started to eat him!” I cried.
Bruno cursed and started to hurry as fast as his own poor little body could take him—which admittedly wasn’t all that fast because he first had to arm himself to the teeth, get dressed, and call a friend.
When he was done arming himself, speaking with his friend, and in a pair of sweatpants, a simple white t-shirt, and his muck boots, he turned to me.
“You come with me,” he ordered. “I haven’t been watching the security cameras, so there might be more. Didn’t think that they could find me here so fast.”
I wasn’t staying behind. That was how women died in horror movies.
Which I told him, causing him to chuckle.
“You’re right,” he agreed. “Always stick together.”
His strides were purposeful as he all but marched his way out to where I’d left that man.
Each second it took to get there had my heart rate ratcheting up another fifteen beats per second.
By the time we got to the point where I could see the pigs—all fighting over something on the ground—I could swear I was in cardiac arrest.
Bruno’s shoulders were bulging in the shirt he was wearing, and I could see the play of his tattoos through the t-shirt.
I was so focused on him that when we finally arrived at the scene of the crime, I didn’t first notice that there was something really, really wrong.
There was no screaming—like I expected—and honestly, the pigs weren’t even making much noise other than the occasional snort.
“Fuck me,” Bruno croaked.
That’s when I chose to look around his big hulking body at what lay ahead.
There was nothing left but a femur bone and blood that was quickly being spread around by the pigs that were rolling in the mud.
A femur bone that two massive pigs were playing tug of war with.
It’d been a max of fifteen minutes since I’d left him.
Fifteen minutes for fifteen pigs to consume a man’s body completely.