Friday Story: 4) The curious incident of the pig in the café – Cath Barton Skip to content Cath Barton Writer and photographer Menu Home About Stories Critical Writing Contact Posted on June 15, 2018 June 29, 2018 by Cath Barton Friday Story: 4) The curious incident of the pig in the café It’s National Flash Fiction Day in the UK tomorrow, 16th June. Every year there’s a Flash Flood of stories. My story The curious incident of the pig in the café was included in the Flash Flood a couple of years back. This year I have a micro story included. It’s called Lonely Hearts and it’ll be published here at about 1.50pm (BST) on 16th June. The curious incident of the pig in the café It was that elusive thing, the first day of summer. The day when you fling off your cardies and your winter boundaries. So it was that at 12 noon sharp Charmaine and Sophie could be seen emerging from the dingy office where they worked, heading for Porky’s Pizzeria, just up the street. The local dosser, Ed the Rags, was sitting in a doorway crying out for the price of a cup of tea as usual. There was a queue at Porky’s. As usual. The girls were happy to wait in the sunshine for their “You must be smoking!” specials with smoked cheese, bacon, pepperoni and smoked sausage. As they had their faces raised to the sun neither of them noticed Ed the Rags approaching. Someone must have slipped him a fiver. He pushed to the top of the queue and no-one tried to stop him, be it out of guilt or revulsion, because he ponged something terrible. Ed got his pizza and emerged from the café dripping cheese and tomato onto the street and himself as he shoved the hot pizza into his mouth. A shout went up from inside. Had Ed run away without paying? It didn’t look like it, the way he was ambling with a beatific smile on his face. But following him and sniffing at his shoes, was a pig. A genuine porker! Charmaine jumped back and Sophie squealed as her friend’s stiletto nearly pierced her foot. Other people were spilling out of the doorway holding their noses. A pungent odour swirled in the air, and it was not the sweet smell of baking dough mingling with cooked meats, but something altogether more earthy. Francesco, chef-patron of Porky’s, emerged in a cloud of Italian expletives, waving a tea-towel at the retreating backs of Ed and the porker. “Finito!” he cried. “Ze lunch is finito. Zat pig has made escremento in my café. Eet is a dirty dog.” People watched as Ed the Rags and the pig processed down the street. Ed seemed to remain blissfully unaware of his follower, engrossed as he was in the rich flavours of his pizza. Then the pig must have pulled at his coat, because he turned and saw it. What he did next was either poignant or gross, depending on your point of view. He bent down and offered the beast his last piece of pizza. The pig swallowed it whole and ran off down the street. It turned out that the pig had escaped from a lorry that was taking it to market and run in the open back door of Porky’s. It’s now gone to live the rest of its days in a community farm, where it may not get pizza but children feed it other titbits daily. Ed the Rags got his his toothless grin in the local paper and some kindly old soul has paid for him to have pizza every week from Francesco. As for Porky’s, it’s thriving more than ever, it’s name finally justified! First published in National Flash Fiction Day Flash Flood, June 2016 Share this: Twitter Facebook Like this: Like Loading... Related Categoriesstories Tagsflash fiction, Flash Flood, NFFD, stories 3 Replies to “Friday Story: 4) The curious incident of the pig in the café” Shreya Punjabi says: June 15, 2018 at 11:04 am I’m so glad the pig made it out. 💕 LikeLiked by 1 person Reply khimpidutta says: August 4, 2018 at 6:12 pm Such a lovely story. It brought a smile to my face LikeLike Reply Cath Barton says: August 5, 2018 at 7:54 am Thank you! I’m so glad you enjoyed it. LikeLike Reply Leave a Reply Cancel reply Enter your comment here... Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in: Email (required) (Address never made public) Name (required) Website You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. ( Log Out / Change ) You are commenting using your Twitter account. ( Log Out / Change ) You are commenting using your Facebook account. ( Log Out / Change ) Cancel Connecting to %s Notify me of new comments via email. Notify me of new posts via email. Δ Post navigation Previous PostPrevious Guest post: by author Nadya A.R. Next PostNext Friday Story: 5) This is a safe attachment, trust me Story snippets “The phone ringing will wake you in the night. You’ll answer it but there’ll be no-one there. Just a cat miaouing.” From Baby “I blink and he’s standing there, just for a minute. Glitter lands on my shoes. I blink. 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