A Pig Gets His Day

Sebastian sat on the floor of the bank vault shoving coins and dollars into his mouth as efficiently as possible. He focused on one point on the opposite wall and tried to keep his breathing even and constant. Every time he felt the chill of another quarter sliding down his gullet, his cold, green eyes tightened slightly, waiting for the one coin that was going to cause him problems. Or top him off. Although that was ridiculous. He knew that what he had done had no limit. He could swallow the whole world and still walk around as the tall, bean pole of a man he had always been. He knew there was no technical limit to his ability to cart everything with him, but he wondered if there was a limit to how much he could carry. He knew the difference was slim, but it was still a difference.

He pulled his mind back into focus. Looking at the slowly dwindling mounds around him. He had planned on starting with the gold bars housed at the very back of the vault sitting on their wooden pallets. But the first one had given him so much trouble he knew he’d never get out of the vault before the cops showed up if he only focused on the bars. So he had moved on to the large denomination bills first and worked his way down from there. He was now working on the last of the coinage and the dollar bills. Those were the biggest piles and he wondered how much time he had left.

As he paused for one moment to look at his watch, the door of the vault blew open laying him flat on his back from the whoosh of the wind. When he was able to pull himself back up into a sitting position, he was surrounded by the swat team with their guns trained solely on him. He sighed heavily and allowed them to wrestle him to his feet with no contest.

They transported him back to the station house and put him in one of those classic interview rooms. Too bright, too clean and too empty. One large mirror taking up half of the wall opposite to the door. The light overhead glaring off the stainless steel table and chair in the middle of the room. He sighed heavily and cursed himself for his own greediness. How did he get so stupid? Coins?! Seriously?!?

He sat down in one corner and waited. Finally a detective entered the room.

“Hi there Sebastian, how you feeling?”

“Fine thanks, although I’d love a glass of water.”

“Yeah, we’ll see what we can do about that.” The detective snickered slightly as he hooked one thumb into his belt. Sebastian noticed that the cop’s belt buckle was an aberration to the rest of his staid and dress code friendly attire. The man’s belt buckle was a large, bronze pig. No other adornment or decoration, just a fully grown, well fed, highly polished pig.

Sebastian knitted his eyebrows together a bit over that one, pondering its significance to this man’s character. If there was one.

“So,” the cop said “did you enjoy your midnight snack?”

Sebastian’s head popped up almost painfully with the knowledge that this cop knew what he had been doing. He knew he had been ingesting the money. That he was not just an ordinary bank robber caught in the act.

He blinked a few times and said slowly “I’m not sure I know what you’re talking about.”

The cop smiled slowly and with one finger started to pet his pig in an absentminded way.

“Yeah, ok. You can go that way if you want. But I just thought you should know, since this is your first time out…oh yeah, I know that too Sebastian.”

Sebastian was nearing panic at this point. Who the hell was this guy? How did he know so much about him already? Beads of sweat had started to form along Sebastian’s hairline and his breathing was picking up speed, along with his heart. He could feel the adrenaline starting to flow readily through his blood stream and he welcomed it, until…

“I know, I know. I’m being rude aren’t I? I haven’t even introduced myself properly and here I am flaunting all these facts that I already know about you. Sorry about that, but there has always been one point I’ve wondered about with all of this. Did you know what you were doing?” The cop asked the last question with genuine interest, all charades put down in place of curiosity.

Sebastian considered that for a moment and with the clarity the adrenaline was lending him he decided to also lay down his charade as he knew he had already lost with this guy.

“Yes. I knew.” He was being honest, but there was no need to go over the top.

The cop took that in and walked around the room a couple of times, squeezing his girth in between the wall and Sebastian’s chair each time he passed behind him. Sebastian could hear the bronze pig scrape against the back of his chair and wondered if the cop would have to polish it again tonight to remove any scuffs left there.

The cop finally stopped walking and turned back to Sebastian, his face friendly and open again.

“I’m Jones. “ He thrust out his hand as if to shake, but Sebastian just eyed his plump digits with care and jingled his handcuffs against the back of the chair.

“Oh! Right! Sorry about that.” Jones produced a tiny key from somewhere in his jacket pocket and wedged himself behind Sebastian’s chair again to unlock his handcuffs.

Sebastian brought his freed hands to the table, gingerly rubbing his wrists. He had always thought all of those actors on TV who made such a big deal about being in handcuffs were being overly dramatic, but now he was rubbing the red indentations left behind by the metal manacles.

“Thanks,” Sebastian muttered as Jones walked back around the table and stuck out his hand again to shake.

This time Sebastian slowly put out his own hand and placed it in Jones’ hand preparing to be crushed in the man’s thick paw. But for all of Jones’ size, he was a remarkable gentleman as he shook Sebastian’s hand with only the required amount of pressure and force.

Jones smiled widely then and with a slight chuckle in his voice said, “So Sebastian, what are we going to do with you now?”

Sebastian just stared at him then. All trace of games wiped away from his face. His mind raced to find an answer that would appease them both, but before he could Jones spoke again.

“You know, I’m just curious, what were you going to do with all the money?”

“Pay my mom back and go to the beach. For the rest of my life.” Sebastian smiled at the idea of the last part. Being able to extricate himself from his mother’s guilt and do nothing but lay on a warm beach in Fiji, sipping umbrella drinks and watching the waves.

Jones looked at him for a moment then allowed a broad smile to race back across his face as he shook his head slowly with understanding.

“Yeah, I figured it was something like that. You seem like such a nice guy Sebastian. Like a normal kind of guy. A guys who pays his debts and says good bye to his mother before he leaves the country with a belly full of stolen money,” Jones said with growing animation.

Sebastian grew cautious again as he was once again struck by how much this guy knew.

“Had you given any thought to how you were going to get the money out of your stomach Sebastian?” The way Jones asked this question made Sebastian feel like he already knew the answer, he was just leading Sebastian into something. And he was growing quickly uncomfortable with the turn this conversation had taken.

“Well, I figured I would just do the opposite. I mean I was planning to wash it all before using it.” For some reason it was important to Sebastian that Jones knew he wasn’t going to be handing out stomach acid covered bills across town.

Jones nodded his head slowly then, “Yeah, that’s what I figured you’d say Sebastian. That’s what they all say. But I am afraid you were misled. It’s not quite so simple you see.” Jones was working up to a roll now. “You probably thought that this, ah, procedure was simply to allow your stomach to expand to accommodate anything you put in it, right?” He looked at Sebastian expectantly.

“Um, yeah.”

“Yeah. Well it turns out that’s not how it works. So you could puke your guts out until you had nothing left and you’d never even get one measly little quarter back Sebastian. No, it seems as though this somehow actually allows your body to absorb whatever you can fit down your throat and stores it an entirely other place until it can be fully absorbed.”

Sebastian’s eyes flew wide as the ideas flew through his head. He couldn’t just get the money back out? How was he going to pay his mother back? His perfect beach image was fading quickly now. He looked back to Jones with undisguised panic on his face now as the final realization came to him.

“You’re here to get the money back aren’t you?”

“Ah, see, I told them you weren’t stupid Sebastian. Thank you so much for not making a liar out of me. “

Jones’ entire demeanor shifted then. The friendly face was gone, replaced by a look of sinister determination. But what made Sebastian really go cold was the glimmer of satisfaction in Jones’ eyes. He was looking forward to what he was about to do.

Sebastian took a deep breath and tried to sound nonchalant as he asked, “So what do we have to do to get the money out?”

Jones’ head cocked slightly to the side as he deftly slid a gigantic knife out of a holster Sebastian presumed was somehow concealed on his back. He looked at the blade for a moment, enjoying the way the light from the over head bulb splashed its reflection across the blade. He slowly lowered the blade until it was positioned directly, intentionally, under the chin of the pig on his belt buckle. If Sebastian didn’t know any better, he could have sworn that bronze pig was smiling.

“Well, we’re going to have to cut it out of you, of course.”