Read Online The Pig Did It by Joseph Caldwell - Free Book Online Page A

to force one leg ahead of the other and keep him moving along what had been the beach. He had no memory of the tide coming this far, of claiming all the available land at the foot of the cliffs. To his left was a small cave he hadn’t seen before, with a stone the size of a football about to loosen itself from the rounded roof and fall with a merry splash into the rising tide. A fossilized artifact? The lost toy of a Druid child, unearthed at last? Aaron had no time for speculation. And his energies should be rationed out to his legs, not given to the synapses chattering foolishly in his brain.
    And yet it seemed right that his mind should search for distractions. The effort it took to move one leg, then another, was replicate of a dream, the slow, effortful push, the impeded movement, the inability of the limbs to make progress no matter how desperate the urgings. He raised his arms from his sides, partly to keep his designer watch from getting wet but also to promote some mutation of his arms into wings, as he had tried to do as a child. If only nature would consider it a possibility, if only the evolutionary process could be speeded up on his behalf, he would be mightily grateful. Often enough in dreams he had flown. It required no more than a mild expenditure of the will, a spiritual lifting, the easy employment of a competence he kept forgetting he had.
    He slogged on, the freezing water threatening the warm blood of his dick, his balls, the water forcing a retreat of the waiting sperm, leaving behind a shrunken flap of flesh and a shriveled nut, the two appendages threatening in their deprivation and their shame to disappear completely.
    Beneath his feet the pebbles became more pointed, and even the growing numbness of his soles provided no protection against the pokes and jabs of the sharpened stones. The common assumption that the water would smooth them, that the washing sea would lubricate the surfaces for easier passage, proved false. The stones were no longer the beach; they belonged now to the sea. They were resentful; they were annoyed and they wanted this land-born, mud-dwelling intruder to feel the full force of their petulance. Aaron was certain that the soles of his feet were bleeding from a thousand cuts, that he was making a sizable contribution to the crimson tide.
    Possible rescue appeared ahead—the huge table of stone that had fallen from the cliff and had blocked his path. It seemed both a taunt and a challenge. The water was rising to his waist. Soon his circulation would stop. Strength he still had, and energy, but the rock was at least a hundred yards away. He wondered if he should strip, if the lightened load would provide the difference between making it to the rock and not making it. He decided, by some circuitous reasoning unavailable to his conscious mind, to give up his belt. The rest of his clothes he’d continue to wear—for the time being at least. If they got too heavy, he’d shed them along the way.
    He slid into the water. His boots, still slung by the shoestrings over his shoulder, floated away toward the sea. His watch’s claim to be waterproof was now being tested—severely. With each stroke of his arm, with each plunge of his hand, he seemed to douse it again and again, angry now that he had made it a cause for concern, that he had been so prissy in his protection. His purpose, as he swam closer and closer to the rock, was to punish his watch. He had no other intent. Take that! And that! And that! Given so strong a goad, he quickly gained the rock.
    He climbed on top. Had he given up his clothes, his skin might have been too slippery, but the coarse cotton of his denim shirt and the strong weave of his khakis clung nicely to the sandstone surface. With a minimum of clawing and scratching he got himself up out of the water and sprawled and spread-eagled himself on the cold surface. He’d stay still for a few moments, surrender to the rock, too exhausted