It's funny how a good day can turn dark so quickly.

And it had been a very good day for Saul. The promotion, the start of a week of lazy sand and sunshine, the comfort of tonight's wine and that film that he'd never managed to find the three hours to see. But he had time now, and the energy and satisfaction of work well done and rewards well deserved. Plus, he'd already got the shopping out the way and it was still only half four.

He hadn't taken the car to work today. He wanted to feel that sun on his back, to add to all the other parts of being so alive. And because of this, he was walking along the cracked pavement by the warehouse on the corner of his street, the one with the big rusted-away patch of shadow and the barbed wire and scatter of glass and the general aura of get-away-now-while-you-still-can, just as his buzzing phone drew his gaze away from the dead opening across the wall.

Even on the sunniest days, dusk is coming.

"I don't start till next Wednesday so I've even got two extra days off," Saul chirped. He was studying the paper shop across the street. "No, don't put it on yet love, I'm stuffed. After I got the news, I went out and got myself a massive hog roast from that van across the car park. It's a special day after all. I can treat myself."

Then, the phone was on the ground, and Saul was lying dazed in the glass with a blade of grass tickling his chin and blood running down into his eyes.

Someone, presumably the same someone that had just hauled him over the broken wall by his jacket, took hold of him again and rolled him over with one hard bony hand.

It was never good to be dragged into an abandoned building in a trail of your own smashed eggs and shreds of shopping bag. But when Saul saw the pigs, he knew he was in real trouble.

They were gathered in the middle of the empty concrete expanse, squinting out towards the light with tiny gleaming eyes. Leather jackets of brown and black strained across their pink flesh. Hammers and wrenches hung loose and ready from their foretrotters.

And they were angry.

The pig that had seized Saul let him go suddenly. Saul's head fell to the concrete with a heavy thud, bursting with pain. The pigs advanced in a group. Saul tried to shuffle to his feet, but his legs writhed on the surface of industrial detritus and he put his hands over his face instead. When next he looked, a circle of snouts haloed him in the gloom.

Next would come the hammer, he thought, with sudden calm. One deep blow of rusted metal to the temple, and it would be over. Sandra would never get that lettuce. It was a shame. They'd only had organic left, and it had cost him an extra ten pence.

But instead of the hammer, a question.

"What did you say?"

It was the deep, bubbling voice of a pig, echoing in the deep folds of the speaker's hanging jowls before finding the human cowering into the ground beneath. A pig, of course. There was only Saul and the pigs.

Saul tried to answer, but there was dust and fear in his throat.

"Say it again."

The only thing Saul did was rise, finally, to his knees. But as he turned to crawl away, a heavy foot came down firmly on his back and crushed him groundwards.

"Say. It. Again. So all my friends can hear." There was hot and sour breath at his neck.

What came out from Saul's trembling lips was only a whimper, but the pig picked it up anyway.

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"That word. The H-word."

"The one that you use for people that aren't allowed past the red barriers," someone else spat from further back.

"The ones that have to go scraping round in places like this, looking for stuff to sell 'cos we're not even fit for cleaning."

"And you leave all this to rot and then say we live in sties!" The bubbling was all around him now, leering, teasing, rushing out of the dark. Saul's eyes strafed the screws and shreds of paper and bruised mushrooms in front of him.

"Yeah," said the first voice. It was very, very close now. Saul felt the promise of immense bulk just above, considering the fragility of his stick arms and his stick legs. "The ones that spend fifteen hours a day in hiding scraping together enough to feed their families... they're the hogs!"

"Hogs! Hogs! Think we're the hogs!" came the chorus from the shadows all around. The furious beating of a metal sheet ricocheted thunder all through the warehouse. Saul screamed.

The scream turned to a hiss as the ragged edge of something danced teasingly down his back. Heavy iron. Flakes of rust tinkled to the floor by Saul's waist.

"And we're violent, aren't we?" The voice was playful, the acrid smell of meat on Saul's cheek. He whimpered. The cracks in the concrete under his nose shimmered behind the tears. "Always have been." The iron thing reached Saul's buttocks. "Eating farmers. Crushing children when we're too fat to look round before we roll over in the sty. Raging down the farm when the wife's late with the apples." There was a sharp ripping sound as the claw of the hammer cut through Saul's right trouser leg, tickled the skin beneath.

"And nowadays, out here on the edge, we'll cave skulls in for a loaf of bread." Suddenly, the weight was gone. Saul felt, rather than heard, the wiiish of stifling air as the hammer was raised high. And all he could think about was the waste, waste, waste, all those crisps and peppers and eggs that would never reach home because he was dead dead dead and oh god any second now that metal fist was coming down on his neck and why wasn't he trying to get away too scared to move too scared and now it was too late.

More footsteps. Trottersteps. Away.

"That's what you think," said the pig, from far away. "That's what you all think." No anger now, only sadness.

Two more shapes advanced from the shadows.

And Saul was returned, cringing and gibbering, to the light.

* * *

Time passes. Some things become memories. Some don't. Some don't want to be remembered.

After a few months, Saul didn't remember staggering through the door, crying and torn and bleeding, into the arms of his terrified wife. There were better things to remember. Things like that happened all the time in the rough parts of town, where the animals roamed. Just another statistic. Just one of those things. He'd been lucky, and though he'd lost twenty pounds of groceries, he still had that job. They couldn't take that from him.

Seven months later, he was promoted again. Three months after that, a far more lucrative role, albeit a more stressful one, in the city. An hour's drive each way, but worth it. He got them out of that crumbling dead terrace by the warehouses. His wife was very happy. Between the fifty hours and the coming baby and the endless shopping trips, he was okay.

He was feeling okay, chattering away about the pre-conference post-brainstorm preliminary meeting of the board with the vice-secretary on his new iPhone, when he saw the pigs again.

He was as alone as on that day last year that he suddenly remembered with startling clarity, in 3D and surround sound and the unmistakable feeling of warm blood running down his forehead, all alone with the pigs. He'd been so busy trying to hash out the presentation that he'd completely missed his turn onto the street with the coffee shop, had wandered on and on and on until the paving stones cracked and the kerb turned to dust and the road to gravel. Tired, sagging power lines all around. The blank faces of forgotten factories. The open doorway to a hollow tomb. And the pigs, staring out.

He couldn't be certain it was them. They all looked the same to him. And he'd only caught glimpses, that awful day when he thought he was dead, and it had been dark, and there had been blood and tears in his eyes and he'd mainly been looking at concrete while it went on. It could have been any of those roving vagabonds slowly tearing the dead places apart for a scrap of copper. They were everywhere.

But he knew it was them all the same.

He told the vice-secretary that he would call her back and put his phone in his pocket. He walked on, as if he had a purpose here even though all the humans were behind him, within the safety of the red barriers, in another world. Chin up, head held high, back straight. Onwards past the doorway.

He couldn't help but turn slightly as the mounds of pink heaved their way out into the sunlight. And as he turned, he remembered the sandwich, half-eaten, half-forgotten, in his right hand. He still enjoyed a hog roast. The flesh was there for all to see, nestled in the stuffing, dripping with gravy.

Some splattered to the floor at his feet. He turned and walked. Back straight, head high.

And the pigs never said a word.