They were shrieking in distress, not squealing, like pigs usually do. It was as if they knew what was about to happen to them.
McCormack hadn't heard shrieking like that since he was a boy and he found himself trying to remember that kid's name.
Billy... Billy Pendergill!
That was him. Man, that kid was a total shithead.
He never came to school after that day and all Billy was doing was showing off a bike trick on his BMX.
He wasn't the most popular kid at Claymore Public School, because he was bigger than other students, a repeater, knew he was older, and liked to show kids like McCormack that he could hurt them. He sometimes punched girls in the arm, too.
His friends were some older boys, his age, and they rode around on trashed out bicycles, like a BMX gang, trying out tricks, modifying their bikes with pegs on the axles. Some of them, like Billy, didn't even have seats, or seat poles. They thought it was tough to coast around, sprouting their pubes early, standing tall on their bikes, when in truth, they just couldn't afford to fix them, or get new ones.
Sometimes, though, McCormack and his friends wished they could ride a BMX like Billy, fearless, and accurate, until the day came, during the Summer holidays of nineteen eighty-four.
They were riding their bikes at a building development compound that day.
The older boys were jumping their bikes full speed from a ten step downward stretch, getting air, landing, flipping the handlebars, and rolling in backward, wheels whizzing in freespin. They dared Billy to try it out and full of confidence he rolled to the top step, then made his run up.
McCormack wasn't watching when Billy got air, but he heard the boy land. There was a neck snapping clank and thud and scrape of metal and flesh on concrete. Then, there was a rising cry that became a squeal, then a non-refundable shrieking, like the pigs before McCormack now.
Billy was clutching onto his bike, prone in the position he had landed, just shrieking in pain, but not only that, he was shrieking in fear.
His friends gathered around him and a boy named Josh – McCormack remembered – warned them not to touch Billy, to go get help, but they didn't listen
McCormack watched them pull the bike away, watched the spreading of blood, then the squirting, watched Billy twitch, and gasp, and very suddenly lose conciousness. He had cut his ear and lost some teeth, but he had landed so hard he slit his scrotum, and sliced and forced his entire left testicle into the pole housing.
When they moved the bike, they'd separated the testicle from his body.
It was very quiet in that compound then.
Nobody knew what to do, so they all climbed on their bikes, rode home, and left him there, some thinking he'd be fine. Josh was the one who called the ambulance and went back to wait with his friend's body. Billy died that day.
“ Hey! Hey, Mack! “ a voice called. “ You good to go, or what? “
McCormack placed a cartridge in the gun and put it to a shrieking pig's head, the pig making eye contact. He thought of Billy Pendergill, closed his eyes, and fired.
The End
BIO: I Live in Orange, NSW, Australia. I have an only child, a daughter, we LIKE Penny Dreadfuls, James Herbet, and Ripley's Believe It, Or Not. And all kinds of other fucked up shit.