I wound my way though a series of dry culverts and eventually found myself looking at a shantytown, in the deepest and most remote area, a dead grove of orange trees, covered in garbage, that hadn’t seen the sun in twenty years, shaded by the layered freeways. There were about twenty shacks, made of cardboard and plywood and old billboards and plastic garbage bags. No-one was visible, but I could smell something cooking, and I turned to quietly avoid the area, but found my way blocked by two enormous razorback hogs holding rusty spears. At first I was afraid that they were from Piggleyland, and then I was afraid because I could see that they weren’t. Their pigsuits were as ripped up and dirty as mine, held together with scraps of wire and accessorized with loincloths fashioned from roadkill pelts and bone jewelry.

     “Oh,” I said, “Hi.”

     “Another Pig has been cast out of the Promised Land, Pickles,” said one of the hogs to the other.

     “Oh ye foolish pig!” Pickles the razorback said to me, “What hast thou done to be ejected thus like sausage unfit for consumption?”

     I wasn’t sure how to play this yet, so I stayed silent and raised my shoulders and upturned palms in a woebegone shrug.

     “Wast thou seen without thy head? Didst thou kick the children? Didst ask for the forbidden pay increase or take breaks like a wastrel?” Pickles continued.

     “I…who are you?” I asked.

     “WE ARE THE LOST PIGS!” screamed the first hog. At the sound of his voice, thirty more filthy, tattered pigs silently emerged from the shanties or rose up from behind the dunes of drifting fast food garbage. Each of the razorbacks grabbed one of my arms and they marched me down into the cluster of shacks.

     A stooped old pig, black with soot and ashes, festooned with tufts of rat fur and a necklace of alligator teeth and bird bones, shambled up to me and laid his hand on my forehead, saying, “As thou art so are all of us. All were cast out from that happy land where pig eats pig in innocence. The Consortium will not let us back in, and so now we seek to atone for our porcine sins. Come and take the sacrament.”

     The crowd of pigs hustled me around the corner, where I was sad to see a fat man in a pigsuit roasting on a spit over a fire. The meaty smell was pretty good, but the scent of burning fabric overwhelmed it somewhat. The old blackened pig hacked out a couple of ribs with difficulty and thrust them towards me, saying, “Eat, and know that thou wouldst be delicious also, with barbecue sauce or perhaps a honey glaze.”

     At that moment, there was a huge explosion as several of the shacks were blown apart  and two Jeeps full of Piggleyland Security Warthogs rammed directly into the crowd of pigs, firing automatic weapons in all directions, mowing them down mercilessly. There were pigs dropping on all sides of me, screaming that Hamageddon had come. I threw off my pig head and ran like hell between the dead trunks and brittle branches of the orange trees.  From the gunshots and dwindling screams, I could tell that the Warthogs had made short work of the little colony, and it was all my fault, as they had probably come looking for me. My guilt was somewhat mitigated by the lingering image of the fat man on the spit, however. I ran back into a culvert and shortly had made my way back up to the sunlit parking lots that led me over to the Ice Cream Indulgences! Hotel and Resort, shedding the last scraps of pink pig costume as I approached the peppermint lozenge front door.

     That detour had made me slightly late for the breakfast buffet, which was pretty picked over, so I had to content myself with some rum raisin end table and part of a strudel loveseat, while a different waiter, also sad about his organ-grinders’ monkey outfit, poured coffee. Frankly, I wasn’t all that hungry, after seeing the spitted man in the pigsuit.

     I was seated at a cherry pie today, with two well-groomed identical representatives from a limousine company in  Boston, an insurance specialist and three soft auto insurance salesmen. The banter around the table was lively, sports figures and celebrities, traffic complaints and the price of gasoline, amusing transportation anecdotes galore, but I got the idea that something about my appearance was off, from the way they kept glancing away from me.

     I excused myself and stepped into the tutti-frutti restroom to freshen up. My clothes were slightly rumpled and damp from the long hot time in the pigsuit, but were essentially presentable; black jeans, black canvas tennis shoes, red bowling shirt with black stenciled flames and the name “Carlos” embroidered on the pocket. My mop of hair was a little matted, and there were some small smears and spatters of dirt and blood across one cheek, but it could have been fudge and strawberry jelly for all anyone could tell. Harder to explain was the blue eyeball, sitting on my shoulder, peeking out shyly from under my collar.

     I brushed it off into a toilet and flushed it quickly, grimacing, and splashed my face with club soda from the tap. I went back to the cherry pie, but no-one was seated there anymore. In fact, all six of them seemed now to be on the other side of the Carved Fudge Forest altogether. A grey man stepped to the podium at the far end of the room and began to read minutes from various meetings, and show overhead projector slides of budgets, and read lists of sponsors and supporters until it was evident that I had to leave or die a horrible death. I slid out of one of the wintergreen side doors of the conference center, and climbed over the tall stucco wall to sneak into the hotel outdoor pool and bar area, where I had to strip to my underwear and charge a drink in a coconut to room 223 so that I’d look like I was supposed to be there. I had a Hot Fudge Jacuzzi, then a brisk and invigorating swim in Pink Champagne, then reclined my white Northern body on a licorice lounge chair in the sun and fell asleep. I woke up an hour and a half later, not yet acutely sunburned and aware that I was fifteen minutes late for a scheduled twenty minute interview with a potential client. I hopped back into my pants and over the wall, and stumbled to Retro Cab’s flimsy folding table, made of hardened meringue, just as she was beginning to stand up and leave in disgust. I apologized skillfully- apology is my most-utilized management skill, working for Retro Cab.