LOTF: Before and After

Piggy

CRITICAL CONTENT WARNING: graphic, vivid depictions of murder and first person POV of the experience of death

It wasn't his name, not his real name anyway, but it might as well have been. It was a name cruelly invented by a group of mean kids in his first grade class, and it carried him all the way through until the end of fourth grade.

Military school was supposed to be different. It was supposed to be a fresh start, a chance to be someone else entirely; his true self. But that chance didn't last very long at all.

If Pieter Kingston didn't have trust issues before, he certainly did now.

The first friend Pieter made at Bainbridge Military Academy was a boy named James, or Jamie as he was better known. Jamie was his first roommate when Pieter started at the academy in fifth grade. At first, the short but slender boy was kind and polite to Pieter. The two roommates got along well for the first couple weeks of the new school year. They shared stories of their previous schools, talked about their families, their hobbies, the lives they left behind to come here. After nearly two weeks of getting to know each other, Pieter made the decision to tell his new and first real friend; to trust him with the awful nickname that stuck to him like glue.

"They really called you that? Piggy?" Jamie asked, his eyebrows raised in either surprise or judgment. Pieter couldn't tell which.

"All the time" Pieter confirmed with a sad nod.

"Damn" Jamie sighed as he absorbed the information. He left the topic of conversation die out from there, and Pieter assumed that was the end of it, and of the cruel nickname.

But he couldn't have been more wrong.

A couple nights later, Pieter made his way across the floor his dorm room was on on his way back from the main hall where he spent the last hour and a half studying for his big history test the following day. As he got close to the slightly cracked open door, he realized that Jamie wasn't in their room alone. Pieter heard the muffled sound of two different voices. Jamie had better luck at making friends that he did, and did so at a much faster rate. By the second week of school, Jamie already had a handful of friends. Whereas the boy was Pieter's only real friend thus far.

So when Pieter heard Jamie talking with someone in their room, he assumed he just invited a friend over to study or something of the sort. But just as he was about to open the door the rest of the way, he heard something that made him stop dead in his tracks. He froze in place and eavesdropped in hopes that he didn't hear what he thought he just heard.

"Piggy! No freakin' way!" the less familiar voice laughed through the words. "That's gold!"

"Right?" Jamie laughed too, "I swear I could barely keep myself from laughing when he told me."

"Piggy, it's like Pieter but the fat farm animal version" the other boy added with a snort and a chuckle. "He's Miss Piggy the Muppet but with a penis!"

"It's gotta be cause he's fat, right?" Jamie laughed.

"Well duh!" the other belted out joyously again.

Pieter stood on the other side of the door, begging the tears welling behind his eyes to stay there, just for a few moments longer, long enough so he could get in and out. He bravely pushed the door open, revealing himself to his roommate and the company he was keeping. Both boys locked their eyes on him in horror, clearly wondering exactly how much Jamie's roommate overheard.