Piggy Graffiti

“The graffiti… what did it say?” I racked my brain, searching every nook and cranny, and came up with… nothing. I don’t fucking know. I can’t fucking remember.

“I don’t remember what it said.”

“You have to remember, Joyce. This is not a request; it’s an order.”

The door slammed. The darkness was unsettling. No light filtered under the door; I couldn’t see my fingers in front of my face. You ask how I know it’s so dark you can’t see anything. I touch my nose, then move my fingers back. Nothing. So dark. Damp, too. A chill hits, and my fingers begin to numb in the damp cold. I sit on them to warm them.

I know where I am. The Institution. The room is unfamiliar, but how could it be familiar in this lightless chamber? I must be in what they call the “memory enhancement” room.

I’ve heard of it, but no one has ever discussed it in depth. The Keepers would never stoop to tell us, and those who have been in it have either been too afraid to talk about it or never returned to the Glades to share what they saw. Just hints and whispers. And now, here I am.

The Glades are cordoned-off areas they keep us in. Oh, there are trees and babbling brooks, with koi fish that puff out their lips and look at you as you look down at them. All to make us “feel at home.” I never did. The mountains make me feel at home, but it’s clear I will never go there again.

What did the graffiti say? I remember now. I won’t tell them. I will sit in darkness until hell freezes over before I do what they want. But I can tell you what it said: You will never win. We will never give in. 24/7, we fight. You, Piggy, are the scum. You are the one who needs to watch out.

“Joyce. I’m out here waiting in the hall. Have you remembered?”

“NO. Don’t know. Can’t help you!” I shout through the heavy iron door.

A fist pounds on the door, the metal ringing and the noise clanging in my ears. I'm soaked by ice water from the overhead sprinklers. “Let me know, I’ll be back in three days. Everyday will be the same. Enjoy.”

“Fuck you!” I yell. Another shower, longer. I’m shivering, but my resolve is strong. Piggy will see who breaks first. It won’t be me.

It all began when a walkie-talkie on the table announced that Marianne was one block away. Marianne was a soldier with no hands. The garbled transmission wasn’t meant for me. I didn’t know Marianne, the soldier with no hands, and couldn’t make sense of the transmission.

But.

I answered. Clicking the talk button, I said, “Tango receives. Ready for Marianne.” Call me stupid, but I had to know what it was about.

I heard clanging on the tracks and looked over. A woman in camouflage fatigues, missing her hands, pumped the handcar with her tattooed forearms. Marianne. For sure. I called out to her and, in hindsight, realized my stupid mistake. I could have avoided all this if I'd just stayed quiet.

She stomped toward me in her combat boots and asked if I was Tango. I nodded – another stupid mistake. She motioned with her weapon for me to get on the handcar with her and made me pump it down the tracks. When I slowed even a bit, she whopped me on the back of the head.

I knew I couldn’t fight her. She was gnarly muscle and weighed 20 pounds more, all tight gristle. I just did my best and learned to duck when I felt her hand coming at my head.

We passed buildings covered in multicolored graffiti. “STOP!” she ordered when we came to one with an immense hog drawn and the words “Shut Up Piggy,” with a finger pointing at a woman holding a microphone. “Those mother fuckers,” she laughed. I watched as she lit a cigarette with the hook on her wrist. “Those sonsabitches just don’t know when to quit,” she drawled, the lit stick hanging low from her lip. The hook came up, holding the cigarette. She inhaled deeply, then stubbed it out and tucked it behind her ear. “Pump, Tango, faster. I’ve got a deadline.”

I was tired, but I kept pumping. I didn’t want any more whops on the head; I already had a headache, and the sun was blazing, hurting my eyes. I was sweating like a pig, but I didn’t dare say it aloud. The piggy references seemed to set her off, but I couldn’t tell if she liked it.

The walkie-talkie screeched, and she pulled it out of her belt. “Yep!” she said curtly.

“We’re waiting. How long?”

She looked at the immense watch on her forearm and keyed the mic. “5 minutes, give or take. Lots of paintings this way. Lots of pigs.”

“Roger that, Marianne.”

Suddenly, Marianne, the woman with no hands, fell off the handcart, a huge hole in the middle of her chest where the gunshot had struck. A giant of a man grabbed me by the hair and dragged me to his vehicle, shoving me into the trunk. I tried to kick my way out, but the trunk was reinforced; can you believe that? I couldn’t. Well, I had never been in a trunk before, but I had never heard of a reinforced one. I guess the giant guy kidnaps people regularly?

The vehicle slowed, and I knew it was backing up. Then 2 men pulled me out of the trunk while the giant stood by, talking on his walkie-talkie. “She’s dead. Yep. Clean shot through the chest. It’s her, no-hands-Marianne. Dead. I have her partner here.”

“I'm not her partner." He punched me, sinking me to my knees.

"Put her in the Glades.” Giant motioned at the men, and they marched into a mostly glass building with trees and a brook with a little footbridge over it. I looked up at offices and living quarters overlooking the brook.

“Nice glass digs,” I said.

“Glass equals no graffiti. Now shut up and follow me.” He took me to my new home. A cubicle with a cot, sink, a small mirror, and a microwave. Instant oatmeal and powdered milk sat on the short counter beside a container of honey. Instant coffee and an electric pot finished out my space.

A closed-caption TV screen was in the room, set to state media. “The graffiti enablers will be found, and those doing the obscene pictures and words will be punished. Call the number on your screen with tips.” It ran every ten minutes; I timed it. In between were stories of women marrying young and staying home with their babies: Dinner was ready for the husband; he played with the kids for a few minutes, and the woman put them to bed. Then she got ready for her husband to play with her. Always the same routine, always the same clothes.

A media blurb about criminals. Shame on women who wanted to work instead of staying home to raise their families, and then Billy Graham praying for everyone.  A book club meeting for women in their suburban homes followed Billy's ad, where they discussed books about perfect families that went to church with their husbands, the leaders and rulers of the home.

I giggled at the ridiculous scenarios. They reminded me of old TV shows from the 1950s and 1960s, like Father Knows Best, The Donna Reed Show, and Leave It to Beaver. My Three Sons wouldn't fit because the show didn't have a mother.

A hidden speaker in the room asked me who did the graffiti. I shrugged; I didn’t really know that. Just that I liked the drawings and sayings. Every hour I was asked again. Then the giant finally showed up. As he approached, I stood, fists ready, but he was too strong and overpowered me. He slammed me against the wall and choked me until I went limp.

I woke in darkness, ice water chilling me, topless and barefoot. Bruises were already darkening my arms and neck. Deep teeth-mark bruises were on my neck. He bit me, that bastard.

After what I estimated to be 5 days of that nonsense, Giant came into my room. He had a cattle prod in his hand and shocked me with it. I stared at him. He turned it up and up until I screamed, begging him to stop.

"That's my girl. Now you understand who is in charge. Blindfold her," he ordered the younger men. They drove me to the outskirts of the desert and threw me out into the sand.

When I was close to heat stroke, 2 young adults arrived. Chuck helped me drink from his canteen, and the blond woman, Chrissie, fed me juicy red seedless grapes and gave me a white T-shirt. Then she pulled out wedges of watermelon and gave me one. Heaven.

They listened on their walkie-talkies to the militia, as they called them; talk about the government wanting the criminals locked up. Suddenly, their compatriots radioed them the checkpoint coordinates. I got in the back of their Subaru Crosstrek, and we raced over dunes and ruts to get to the meet-up.

A videographer was present, camera rolling. A woman, the spitting image of the president’s wife, rode an enormous cardboard hog. A cutout figure of a news reporter popped up. The loudspeaker blared: You will never win. We will never give in. 24/7, we fight. You, Piggy, are the scum. You are the one who needs to watch out.

Then a cardboard image of the president, four times larger than the hog, popped up over the reporter figure and yelled, “Shut up, Piggy.”

We watched the video together, parked outside the glass building of the Glades.

Camden, a teenage whiz, had a device that jammed communications, including Walkie-talkies, military radios, CBs, and cell tower communications. It took him an hour to measure and map various points. Then he positioned it and flipped the switch.

Chuck and Chrissie directed their gang of graffiti artists, with immense paint cans hooked to hoses, as they painted the glass building. Inside or outside the building didn’t matter – the pictures looked the same: an immense hog, a man with combed-over hair, screaming at a female reporter while a jackass behind him brayed the same words, depicted by the speech bubble above its mouth.

The videographer captured it all. Teenagers posted up with slingshots and large rocks to break all the glass in the Glades, then gently netted the koi and transferred them to large tanks on a flatbed truck.

Chrissie walked me into the building, and we found the memory enhancement room. It was a soundproofed room, painted matte black, with overhead sprinklers, set in an inner tunnel between segments of the building. I stood on a table and cracked the sprinkler heads with the hammer Chrissie handed me. Water sprayed out. She took out her spray-paint can and wrote on the walls: You, Piggy, are the scum, in white cursive, over and over. Chuck drained the babbling brook. Men on the roof broke the glass ceiling, segment by segment.

Chrissie picked up the microphone and walked around, the videographer following. “Here, folks, is the end of the Glades. Mr. Piggy is scum. We will never give in. We have broken THEIR glass ceiling.” She pointed upward and laughed.

“Send it out everywhere, Camden. Block all their signals so nothing gets through except our videos, day and night. See if you can add ‘take that, Piggy’ at the end of each showing. Roll it across the bottom like their ‘breaking news,’ will you?” Camden ran off to prepare the transmissions.

                Copyright © 10/23/2026 by Andrea O. Corwin