Pigs on the Wing Chapter 1

Dr. Cockroach walked up the sidewalk, his hands in the pockets of his lab coat, his head firmly fixed towards the ground. Why he had walked so far out of the city... well, he didn't care to bring up the painful reason for his late night walks at the moment. All that mattered at the moment was getting home, before the sun crept slowly up above the horizon.1

He aimed one large, bulbous eye towards the bus stop he was approaching. There didn't seem to be anybody there, but he was nonetheless cautionary as he closed in on the bench...2

Nobody. Not even a vagrant, sleeping softly in the heart of a cruel and unfair world; a soul as lowly as he. Complete isolation.3

The doctor dug a newspaper out of the nearby garbage can, resisting the urge to eat the half-eaten, rotting remains of a tuna sandwich, and opened it as wide as he could in front of his face. An ad for plastic surgery glared at him. He furiously flipped to a different page, hypocrisies bubbling inside his thin body as he tried to control himself.4

With a sickening, grating screech, the bus pulled up to the curb. The doctor kept the newspaper open in front of his face. It stayed there with a furious resolution as he dropped money into the till. It stayed there as he walked to the very back seat of the nearly empty bus. And it stayed there all the way back to Modesto. 5

An elderly woman with a shawl wrapped tightly around her neck and a vice-like grip on her royal purple purse glanced back at the doctor, before immediately turning back, but with her eyes fixed straight and her mouth in a thin line. Dr. Cockroach sighed, but there was nothing he could do to hide the antennae that showed out the top of the newspaper, even if it did shield the rest of his face.6

The bus slowed to another screeching halt. As the doors opened, the doctor's newspaper was ripped from his hands. The woman shrieked, frozen at the sight of his hideous head, his big, bulging eyes... eyes that welled up with tears. He rushed down the aisle as fast as he could, trying his hardest not to scurry as he did so. If he could burn scarlet in shame, he would have. But if he could blush, he wouldn't need to be ashamed.7

He never got a look at the bus driver's expression, but walked resolutely out the bus, onto the sidewalk, and into the comforting depths of a dark alley. Here he was at home, here he belonged. 8

The doctor leant against the wall, and then slowly slid down it onto the wet ground. Roaches ran out of the gutter.9

"Hello, brothers..." he said softly. His tears splashed onto the cement, and the bugs scattered in every direction. He buried his face in his hands and wept. Yes, he had his freedom. But what was freedom if it meant a lifetime of isolation, of hatred. Of being scared to come out of the shadows...10

Freedom was hell.11