Page 129 of Fractured Fates

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Something organic and dripping onto the floor.

The stench is rancid and I cover my face with my sleeve trying not to gag.

I step closer.

What the hell is it?

I lean forward.

It’s pink and fleshy with coarse hairs. Dark red blood. The white blur of bone.

It takes a while for my brain to process, to unjumble the mess, to see the object for what it is.

A pig’s trotter.

I scream again, Jumping away.

“Pip!” I scream, “Pip!”

They wouldn’t. They couldn’t.

Would they?

Could they?

“Pip!” I sob.

Biting hard on my sleeve, screwing up my eyes as pain splinters through my heart. “Pip!”

Grunt.

I jump a mile up into the air.

Grunt, grunt.

I swing my head around desperately.

“Pip?”

My pig comes wiggling out from under Winnie’s bed, grunting all the time.

The space is small and, with his newly rounded tummy, he only just fits.

I drop down on my knees and tug him. He emerges with a pop, and I tumble backwards onto my behind, Pip coming with me, snuffling and grunting and licking my face.

“Are you okay?” I say desperately, checking each of his legs and sighing with relief when I find all four untouched.

I hug him to me.

“Did you hide? Did you hide under the bed?” My pig snorts in reply. “Good boy. Clever boy.”

I squeeze him tight, trying not to peer up at the severed limb.

“Who was it? Did you see them?” He grunts again, meeting my eyes with his own beady black ones. “It doesn’t matter. I’ll find out. I’ll find out who it was.”

And as I say the words, I realize Spencer was a part of this. That’s why he stopped me on the path. That’s why he kissed me. It wasn’t anything else. He was simply delaying me, preventing me from returning to my room too soon.

37

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