If You're Reading This, It's Too Late by Pseudonymous Bosch

Author:Pseudonymous Bosch
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, pdf
Tags: Mystery, Young Adult, Childrens, Fantasy, Adventure, JUV000000
ISBN: 9780316113670
Publisher: Little, Brown Young Readers
Published: 2008-10-01T10:00:00+00:00

Part the Third

He might not get much sleep, but, at least, the Homunculus reflected, it wouldn’t be a cold night.

The pigpen was nothing if not warm. The pigs were packed so tight they could barely turn around. Steam rose with every snort and kick and bowel movement.

Alas, warm did not mean comfortable. These pigs were not cuddly creatures. Instead, they had mottled bristly coats caked in mud and feces, and they had hard hooves and hungry mouths and long, fight-sharpened tusks.

In short, they were hogs. Swine.

The Homunculus cowered in the corner of the pen, waiting for the hogs to realize he wasn’t one of them, and that he had quite possibly been left for them to eat. And yet he bore them no resentment. He felt an affectionate kinship with these beasts — and not only because their snouts resembled a bit his own. They too were helpless captives, condemned to feed on scraps, never satisfied, forever hungry.

Ah, hunger.

Hunger was his first memory, his only memory. Before the red glow of the furnace there was hunger. Before the cold stone walls of his dungeon room there was hunger. Before the painful blows of his master there was hunger. Before the jeering crowds there was hunger. This gnawing pit inside him. This never-healing wound.

His master never fed him more than the bare minimum necessary to keep him alive — and sometimes not even that much. Often, he had to feed on the cockroaches that found their way into his room. If he was very, very lucky, and the housekeeper took pity on him, he might get a bone to gnaw on now and then. Bones were his favorite food. He sucked out the rich, buttery marrow as if his life depended on his extracting every last drop.

If only he could have some bone marrow now!

He looked at the hogs around him, weighing the odds: if he struck first, would he eat or would he be eaten?

Lost in his bloody reverie, he didn’t notice the tune playing in the barnyard outside the pigpen until it was quite close. But his attention finally shifted to the ethereal music — so utterly unlike his muddy, grunting surroundings that it seemed to come from some other plane of existence altogether.

“Where art thou, my little ’Munculus?”

The Homunculus saw the Jester’s face peering into the pen before the Jester saw him. Instinctively, he recoiled. No one had ever sought him out before except to throw rocks at him or worse.

“Ah, there you are — if not a pearl among swine, then certainly the Earl!” proclaimed the Jester with a laugh. “Here — I have brought you dinner. From the table of the King, no less!”

He tossed a turkey leg into the pen. The Homunculus caught it with his large hand — and immediately devoured it, bone and all.

“What? Nary a thank-you?” teased the Jester. “Are you but a hog, after all?”

The Homunculus did not answer, but he looked up from his drumstick long enough to lock eyes with the Jester.

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