Handsome Freaks: The Swine Vision Ch3- Part 2

ezravan (63)in #story • 9 years ago (edited)

_"Zola showed him a deformed bar of soap, soft and pores like the center of hot bread. She asked if he knew why the soap would not hold. He said he didn't. She had one hand behind her back. She asked one more time. He said he didn't know. She revealed a broomstick from behind her, poked him in the belly, hard, and was suddenly drenched in pig fat from Pio's stomach."_

Missed The Last Chapters?

Ch 1 - Prt 1 | Ch 1 Prt 2 | Ch 2 prt 1 | Ch 2 prt 2 | Ch 3 Pt 1

This is an original STEEM series novel. If you like odd dramas about odd things, strangely funny and sad, freaks, bearded ladies, emotional pain of invisible boys–I'll be writing a chapter in the series at least each week here on Steamit. Resteem, UpVote & Follow @ezravan

Chapter 3 / Part 2

The Swine vision

That night Zola quietly followed Elmo into her workroom where her soap was manufactured and stored. She stood in the dark hall and watched as he took one of the many prepared satchels of soap bars, as he did each night, and deliver it to Pio’s bedside. Once satisfied that she had uncovered the truth of the ongoing conspiracy in her house she returned to their bedroom and paced in a circle waiting for Elmo to return.

When Elmo returned to the room he saw her pacing, he glanced in her direction, her face was red but she said nothing; he slipping quietly under the covers.

He left the bed each night at the same time, almost in a daze and delivered the soap satchel to the roof. Zola hid the soap; He always found it. One evening she tied him to the bed, but he had become so insubstantial that the ropes slipped through his quiet skin and bones, and he delivered the soap as he always had then returned to the bedroom and slipped under the covers.

In the following weeks, she tried every form of restraint, but nothing could hold Elmo. If she nailed the door, he would walk through it, if she crushed glass on the floor, his feet, like an airy ghost, would be unharmed. She regretted that she had made such a quiet man of him that he could walk through walls so easily.

Pio had developed a taste for the soap. And, with seemingly no way to stop her husband's compassion, or feed Pio’s massive appetite in any less expensive way, Zola begrudgingly produced an extra satchel of soap each day for Elmo to deliver to Pio on the roof each night.

Bubbles filled the house each morning. They streamed from the rooftop at night. Young children would follow Pio home from school, laughing and jabbing him in the stomach with sticks producing one large bubble that they would then try to capture before it popped. Soon, Pio's catechism classroom was filled with bubbles and with the salvation of all the children of Bergamo at stake, the Sacred Heart Cathedra had no choice but to expelled Pio for causing such distractions.

With clearly no use in this world, Zola tried including Pio in her soap business, sending him to the Casa de Macello one afternoon to collect the fat for the next day’s production.

The fat was nearly free for Zola if Pio would clean it from the slaughter floor himself and carry the heavy baskets seven miles home. The first week he did well, returning with two large baskets of fat on his shoulders and a grand smile on his face. This saved Zola money, and saving money made her happy. So she sent him back to the slaughter house the next night.

He continued in his new duties for three weeks; with the extra help in her business, Zola regretted much less making one extra satchel of soap for Pio each night. But, secretly he had begun lusting after the sensuous creamy pig slush that he carried on his shoulders and one day without even a thought; he rewarded his hard work of the night with a finger full of the pig guts. But he stopped after one finger full knowing his satchel of soap would be waiting for him by his bed. Over the following days, he convinced himself that there was no harm done in continuing in his little 'finger-full' reward after all he had gathered the pig parts himself and was not being paid any wages. The one finger-full at the end of the journey, soon turned into a finger-full at the beginning of the journey, in the middle of the journey and at the end of the journey.

For a time it went unnoticed.

Over the following weeks, the obsession for one more taste became more and more cumbersome until one night he returned with two empty baskets.

Elmo came home from the tavern to find Pio sobbing on the front steps of the apartment with the two empty baskets set beside him. Pio explained what had happened to the pig fat; how he could not face his mother with the empty baskets. Drunk and barely able to stand, Elmo climbed a small cypress tree in the court yard and split a branch from the trunk. He then opened Pio's mouth with his fingers and shoved the branch down his throat. The problem was solved, the baskets were filled again with the pig fat regurgitate from his stomach. Pio carried them to his Mother, as he did every night, with a grand smile.

He continued using the trick his father had taught him that allowed him to enjoy, if only momentarily, relief of his desperate hunger each night.

Soon Zola began to complain that her soap would not hold its form. She grew suspicious (which was her nature), and followed him one night, to and from the slaughterhouse. She discovered the soap would not hold its shape because of Pio's regurgitated stomach liquids. The next night Zola surprised Pio a block before he had reached their apartment. The baskets were empty, he had not had a chance to put the branch in his throat, but he held them high on his shoulder where she could not see.

Zola showed him a deformed bar of soap, soft and pores like the center of hot bread. She asked if he knew why the soap would not hold. He said he didn't. She had one hand behind her back. She asked one more time. He said he didn't know. She revealed a broom stick from behind her, poked him in the belly, hard, and was suddenly drenched in pig fat from Pio's stomach. She ordered Pio to the roof and said he would no longer visit the slaughterhouse for her nor was he to have dinner that night, which, she reminded him was Friday night–the nights where she prepared his favorite meal of goat head stew.

His violent sobs returned with an even more beautiful sigh of misery and song.

Elmo brought him one satchel soap as was his routine, but it was soft and deformed. His stomach fluids had already digested the proteins and minerals from the Fat, it was little more than water to his increasing appetite, and by morning he thought he might die from hunger.

Before the sun was up, he snuck to his brother's room and opened the lid of Piero's small coffin. He saw nothing but the purple linen sheets and pillows. He drew near and could hear slight grunts and sighs of a sleeping man, and felt warm breath on his face. He shook the coffin. The sound stopped.
"I know you can hear me Piero, I know your there."
Silence.
"If you won't answer me, please only listen. I did not eat dinner and the soap was like water, I will surely die if I am only to have my portion for the morning meal. You must help me, my brother. You must give me your portion."

He heard his parents bed squeak in the room next door.
"Piero, please. I will do anything. Anything you ask." Pio wondered if he was even there, but whispered again, ”Anything."

He returned to the roof and slept in his olive wood bed well into the morning, exhausted from the night of hunger.

He soon fell into a deep sleep and dremt visions of a naked man, desperately thin a scared in his side. His hands were upraised with light springing from them and a crown on his head of white fire. Even his breath had light and seemed to egnyte the air around his mouth and sparkling blue flames came from his nostrils like sheer silk. He was mounted on a white horse, who’s powerful large muscles rippled and shook like slabs of wet clay; the horse so white that it emitted painful light that burned Pio’s eyes as he looked upon it. But he could not look away, and so it burned. Pio somehow knew in the dream, that the horse was the Father God, and the man was the devine-man Christ. He could see that the Christ was fully Devine yet fully Man in one being because he indeed did have a penis, just like his mother had always feared. The Christ lowered his arms toward Pio, and in front of him appeared a blanket with a large swine upon it. The boar was alive and laughing. Pio reached out his lips, they were like thick honey and streached over the pig, he sucked the skin and fat from the pig’s bones like inhaling smoke, still the pig’s bones laughed, and Pio felt a deep and lasting satisfaction like he had never had before; not only from the pains in his stomach but the pains in his heart and soul. The head of the white hourse transformed into an eagles head and spoke: "Pio my son, your hunger is not in vain. Do you think my arm is so short that I can not reach down even from the seventh heven and feed you the laughing bones of the swine? Soon you will feast like from the eagle's nest. In the eagle-land, I will send you to suck the skin from the swine that dare fill thier bellies with the tears of my people."

When he awoke there was a warm plate of Spaghetti Carboni between his legs, a delicious spaghetti mixture of eggs, bacon, parmesan, and green onions. Spaghetti Carboni was one of Pio's favorite meals; he did not question where it came from, he was still mesmerized and satisfied from the Devine meal in his dream. He ate the Spaghetti, but not as before with a desperation and rush to quench the pain of hunger, he ate slowly, despite the hunger, to tame the hunger in a way he had never been able to do before. He understood the deep satisfaction of the mortification of the flesh. He had heard the clergymen speak of mortification like the boys at school spoke of the teachers hidden breast, with an almost lustful awl and glee. Now he understood why. Pain could. if the mind would obey the illusion, feel like a pleasure. Not any pleasure so shallow as a full stomach but a real and substantial pleasure. A pleasure that was paid for and not so easily taken. For a moment in the quiet morning, with the taste of the Spaghetti Carboni still sweet on his tongue and the Christ man, his Father-Horse and the Devine meal still in all their detail before him, Pio was satisfied; he was changed.

But as these moments come, so they go. And within an hour the hunger returned as full and demanding as ever before. Pio did not seek to satisfy it. The dream had given him something he had never tasted and that was hope. Hope that there was another world, a world where he was special. For many a man, a divine vision from above spurs a great vision of the earth bellow–but not so for Pio. The earth, from his rooftop, seemed even more dead, more tired and empty. He wanted the other world; so he laid in bed, denying his hunger, but not with such sacrificial and holy motives as mortification of the flesh, but with a sullen new hope–a hope to die.

To Be Continued...