pig

by Davor Mondom

I never had stage fright. In kindergarten I dressed up and put on performances for my teacher. As I grew older, I volunteered for plays at school and church, I joined the choir, I even dabbled in dance, though I was never very good at it. I’d step in front of my audience — my classmates, the congregation, the community — and my heartbeat quickened not from anxiety but anticipation. Then the performance began, and the whole world shrank. I didn’t register the dozens of pairs of eyes on me, the clearing of throats, the shuffling of chairs. After it was over, all of those sights and sounds came rushing back in and I was almost surprised that they’d been there the entire time. 

That day was different. As I stood on the amphitheater stage, my eyes followed every person as they filed in, my brain trying to capture every mundane detail about them: the clothes they wore, who they were with, whether they looked my way. My parents were in the front row — every time I glanced down at them, my mom or my dad would flash me the kind of smile that was meant to be reassuring but also carried the unmistakable subtext of concern. The more the amphitheater filled, the more I craved anonymity, to be just another face in the stands. But today was all about me.

‘The Vessel’ was the formal title within the community. There was a different word for it among the kids: the Pig. Some of the adults used it too, but never in public. Kids wouldn’t say it around their parents because they knew it would earn them an instant rebuke. It was an honor to be chosen as the Vessel. Without the Vessel — in truth, without Damian and the Vessel, since the two constituted a symbiotic relationship, neither able to do their work without the other — the community would have collapsed a long time ago.

The title used to be accompanied by a numeric designation — the 47th Vessel, for example — but the community had long since lost count. Lost knowledge was a fact of life in the community. No one knew how the machines that filtered the air we breathed or the water we drank worked. If they ever broke down, we would die well before anything else got the chance to kill us. It was the same with the Illness, which had become so incomprehensible to us that our efforts to understand it amounted to capitalizing a common noun. We knew that if the machines didn’t work, the Illness would spread. We also knew that the machines weren’t enough, that sometimes babies from perfectly healthy mothers and fathers were born with the Illness, that someone could go years without showing any symptoms and then suddenly become sick. The passage of time had diminished the Illness’s prevalence — our community had been designed to support a much larger population, and indeed the stories told of large die-offs in the years before Damian. But there were still enough cases where Damian and the Vessel were both indispensable. 

Unsurprisingly, a Vessel’s tenure varied. Great effort was made in the selection of the pool of potential Vessels to ensure that a Vessel could serve as long as possible, and that the terms were roughly consistent. Of course, you could plan only so well against the Illness. Sometimes the frequency and intensity of the Illness was such that a Vessel lasted one or two years at most. Conversely, there are Vessels who supposedly lived ten or more years. Another complication was that we had no means to test for the presence of the Illness in potential Vessels. This occasionally resulted in the selection of Vessels who were already touched by the Illness, thus compromising their utility to the community. 

All that being said, the process was generally effective. All members of the community aged 18 to 35 were eligible for election as Vessel. Occasionally a Vessel passed abruptly, but in most instances their decline and eventual death was apparent for weeks if not months. A basic medical screening of eligible Vessels was performed to rule out anyone with obvious manifestations of the Illness or other maladies that precluded their service. Those previously afflicted by the Illness were generally excluded as relapse could not be ruled out. Once the pool was chosen, election of the new Vessel was done by lottery — everyone’s name was written on strips of paper, and the mayor drew the name from a glass bowl at a public ceremony attended by all potential Vessels, their family, and members of the community. At any point during the election, someone could volunteer themselves as Vessel. This, however, happened rarely. Typically, volunteers were older siblings who wanted to spare their brother or sister the responsibility, or fanatics who believed that God had already anointed them to serve as a Vessel.

Which made it all the more shocking when I volunteered.

I didn’t fit the profile. I turned eighteen just months before a new election was called. Moreover, I was an only child — I didn’t seem like the sort of person willing to lay down my life for someone else’s sake. I made the declaration just as the mayor stuck his hand into the bowl. A gasp went through the assembled, followed by murmurs when everyone saw it was me. When I looked over at my parents, my mom’s face was ashen. Showing any sort of negative emotions at an election — crying, screaming — whether by an elected Vessel or their friends or family, was looked down upon. Offenders received a visit from the mayor or sometimes even Damian, who reminded them what an honor it was to be chosen. I could tell my mom was keeping her feelings in check. She showed her true colors when we got home. This was maternal instinct, but I also knew that she found the practice barbaric. My dad was more measured — I was an adult, he said, and therefore had the right to make my own decisions. 

Nathan, however, was beside himself.

He found me in the yard behind the school — all the kids in the community went to school in the same building, since there weren’t enough kids to have separate elementary, middle, and high schools. I was lying on a towel in the grass, staring at the stars through the roof of the dome. We met there one afternoon as kids, at recess. The school stood at the edge of a forest that comprised most of the southern third of the community — kids often went in there to hook up or engage in other activities out of the eyeshot of their parents or teachers. I’d be lying if I said Nathan and I weren’t among those kids. 

There’d always been something between us but for a long time we were too young to appreciate it — our mutual friends, however, routinely made innuendos behind our backs. I think we both felt something for each other but never at the same time, until about a year ago, at which point everyone was shocked that it hadn’t happened sooner. He was nineteen — our birthdays were a year and a day apart. It took us so long to admit what had always been there that I think we both believed that we lucked out and found The One on the first try.

Then the election happened.

It was the night before Inauguration Day, when the new Vessel officially assumed their duties. For dinner my parents made my favorite meal, spaghetti and meatballs. Afterwards we played some board games but the tension between my mom and me was too palpable, so it didn’t last long, and I needed to get out of the house. I counted on him finding me there. Probably he tried my house first, and once he learned I wasn’t there he knew exactly where I’d gone.

We got into an ugly fight the night after the election. We were supposed to grow old together, he said, and now I had thrown not just my own life away, but our future too. You’d think I’d be more candid in the company of my boyfriend, but I was no more direct with him than I was with my parents. I thought we would break up that night but then we had sex in the woods and went on as if nothing had happened.

That night he was calmer. I think he wanted to spend as much time with me as possible and not argue over decisions that couldn’t be undone. He brought his own towel and set it next to mine. He then laid down and reached out his hand so that he could hold mine. We stayed like that for a while, watching the sky, saying nothing. Nathan broke the silence, saying that he didn’t understand why I wouldn’t explain my decision to volunteer but that he wouldn’t push me. At the end of the day, he said, reasons don’t matter — what you do matters. I will die, my parents will grow old without their child, and he’ll grow old without his lover. 

I sighed. I could give you any number of reasons, I said, and you wouldn’t believe any of them. I could tell you that I wanted to make sure no one had to become Vessel against their will, and you’ll retort that sooner or later it will happen again, and my noble sacrifice will have meant nothing. I could tell you that my dad’s life was saved by the Vessel when he was a baby and so I had a duty to repay the debt, and you’d call bullshit because you’ve never known me to be that sentimental. I could tell you that I was moved by the Holy Spirit, that I wanted to put on a good show on Election Day. 

Nothing I say will satisfy you, I told him. It will, instead, only inspire you to dig deeper. Why did I want to put on a good show? Couldn’t I repay my dad’s debt some other way? I’d then have to offer another set of reasons to explain the first reason, and so on. Eventually we run out of reasons altogether and discover that we can only explain our actions by appealing to an irrational inner drive — we do a thing because we want to, and we want to because we want to. If that’s where we’ll end up, I reasoned, why not save time and start there?

After another interlude of silence, he leaned in and started kissing my neck, then made his way to my lips. He asked if I wanted to fuck. I was on the fence, but this would be our last chance, so I said yes. I thought we’d go into the woods, but we ended up having sex in the field. We didn’t even use one of the towels to cover ourselves up. If we’d been caught, he would’ve been in massive trouble, as much for having sex outside of marriage as for fucking in the schoolyard. I would have been spared rebuke since I was about to become the new Vessel. But I guess (from his point of view) both of our lives were ending tomorrow, so why not. 

Nathan came into the amphitheater accompanied by his parents and younger sister. They were going to sit in the back, but then Nathan pointed out some empty seats in the row behind my mom and dad and directed them there. He and I locked eyes as he sat down. After sex, I asked if he planned on coming to the inauguration ceremony, assuring him that I would understand if he wanted to skip it. He didn’t want to miss out on one second with me, he said. Vessels lived sequestered lives. Their exposure to the Illness — and, by extension, the community’s exposure to them — needed to be carefully monitored and controlled. Inauguration Day was as much a farewell ceremony for family and loved ones as anything else.

Inauguration Day always began at 10:00am sharp. There was no clock in the amphitheater, and I wasn’t wearing my watch, but I could tell that we were approaching the hour by the petering out of arrivals. Attendance at Inauguration Day was not mandatory, but those who didn’t attend were generally looked at suspiciously. Then the mayor came out from the back of the stage and whispered in my ear that we were about to begin. He was a pudgy man, a rarity in our community given that food was carefully rationed, though in his case it ran through his family. The hair on the top of his head was gone, though he still had some on the sides and back of his head, and his face was always some shade of pink or red. We didn’t hold elections for mayor — instead the office was filled through a general consensus among the adults as to who was best to lead. There were similarly no term limits — you got to be mayor for as long as you wanted to be, or until you lost the mandate of the community. This mayor had been in office for about five years.

After speaking to me, the mayor stepped into the center of the stage and called the gathering to order, at which the amphitheater fell silent. The mayor welcomed everyone, thanking them for taking the time to be here, and asked that we pray. Everyone bowed their heads simultaneously, including me. The mayor thanked God for continuing to provide for our community and for bringing us together on this day. He thanked me for volunteering to become the new Vessel and asked God to watch out for me as I took on this most sacred duty.

After a chorus of amens, the mayor launched into the history of the community and the Vessel. This was a staple of Inauguration Day ceremonies. If there’d once been a script, it had long since been lost or otherwise discarded, since everyone in the community knew it more or less by heart, and the wording hardly changed from mayor to mayor. Many years ago, mankind turned its back on God and embraced all manner of sin: unnatural marriages, the perversion of the sexes, baby murder, pollution. Enraged, God caused a great fire to spread across the world. All the nations were swept away, and the air and the soil and the water were poisoned. After the fire came the Illness. The Illness killed even more than the fire. Moreover, while the fire came and went quickly, the Illness lingered, passing from person to person and across generations. Between the fire and the Illness, most of mankind was wiped out. Those who survived established communities like ours. But even that wasn’t enough. Our walls were no match against the Illness. More died. Humans, it seemed, were on the brink of extinction.

Then Damian arrived. It’s said that he showed up one morning at the gates to our community and asked to be let in. The mayor wasn’t sure what to do — the gates hadn’t been open since the community was first settled, and opening them now risked another wave of the Illness. Moreover, no one knew if Damian carried the Illness, nor how he’d managed to survive outside of shelters like this one. Maybe it was safer to leave him outside to die. But generosity prevailed and he was let in. 

In return for their hospitality, Damian revealed that he had a gift: he had the power to take away the Illness. Within moments of laying his hands on someone, they were rid of whatever disease or disability crippled them. 

According to Damian, he belonged to a community that collapsed because of the Illness. Unable to support himself, he wandered through the desolation, searching for a new home. After several days, hunger and dehydration set in, and he couldn’t carry on. God then appeared to him and told him that it was not yet his time, that God had chosen him to lead humanity into a new golden age. God then granted him the ability to remove the Illness from the worthy few. 

God gave him the strength to continue his search. He told Damian that the unworthy would turn their backs to him, privileging their own safety over helping someone in need. He was to say nothing about his gift until a community let him in — otherwise, they’d only be helping him because he could save them and not because it was the right thing to do. Then he could start his work.

I first heard Damian’s story at my first Inauguration Day, which took place when I was four. At the time I accepted the story as told, as most of the community did and, I suppose, still does. As I got older, my doubts grew. I came to the belief — though I couldn’t prove it — that his abilities didn’t come from God but from the Illness itself. Don’t ask me to explain how. But if he was out in the desolation for as long as the story implied, then his exposure to the Illness would have been tremendous. Maybe it transformed him at his most fundamental level. 

I guess it doesn’t really matter. But it would explain the peculiar way that his powers manifested. Damian couldn’t actually heal people. Only Christ the Son, through the power of the Holy Spirit, had real healing powers. Those who claimed otherwise were confused at best and heretics at worst. Instead, Damian absorbed the Illness into himself, and if he held onto it for long enough, it would eventually infect him. He needed someplace to put the Illness. A vessel. A pig.

Damian and the community formed a compact: the community would provide him a home, and in return he would protect the community from the Illness, so long as the community supplied him with a Vessel. That is where the story always ended. They never said how Damian convinced the community that he had these powers. They never even told us the name of the first Vessel, assuming anyone actually knew.

Damian came on stage, with Natalia. I swallowed. Everyone in the amphitheater rose to their feet and broke into enthusiastic applause. Damian couldn’t wave because he was pushing the wheelchair, but he looked out into the audience, grinning broadly and nodding his head in acknowledgment. Damian had dark eyes and a long face with high cheekbones, his light gray hair standing on end as if he’d touched a live wire. All this gave him a severe look that clashed with the affable demeanor he always had in public. Damian had looked like this for as long as I could remember, and it wasn’t just me — I had heard adults in the community remark that Damian’s appearance hadn’t changed in all the years they knew him.

Natalia, meanwhile, registered nothing. She stared unblinkingly at the ground, her back permanently hunched. Her hands, too, seemed to be twisted into claws, the veins so visible that I thought they might burst out of her ghostly pale skin. They dressed her in a flowing gown that probably fit her once but was now many sizes too big. If they wanted to hide how thin she’d gotten, the train of fabric spilling over the sides of the wheelchair only drew more attention to it. Vessels didn’t receive any special medical treatment, because there was none to provide. There weren’t even pills to dull the pain. Instead, Damian just filled them up with the Illness until their bodies gave up.

Natalia was also…old. There was no other way to describe it. I didn’t know Natalia well, but she couldn’t have been more than 27 or 28. Nevertheless, her black hair had turned almost completely grey, and wrinkles cut across her face like water eroding rock.  

Natalia was only the third Vessel that I could remember — there was a fourth, but they died when I was still an infant. They all ended up like this, or so the adults said, aged decades in a matter of years or even months. Damian, meanwhile, never aged. A few were brave enough to put two and two together, but even they didn’t dare talk about it outside their homes.

Damian and Natalia stopped a few feet to my right. Natalia was close enough that I could hear her wheezing with each belabored inhale and exhale. Damian and the mayor shook hands. Damian then turned to the audience, who were still on their feet, and asked them to sit down. Today, he said, was not just about inaugurating a new Vessel, but also about celebrating Natalia’s service to the community. She had fulfilled her duties and would now get to live out the rest of her days in peace and quiet. He asked everyone to join him in a silent prayer of gratitude for Natalia’s service. In the quiet I heard a soft whimper and a poor attempt at stifling sniffles. Natalia’s parents were out there somewhere. This was their first time seeing her since her election two years earlier. Natalia would not get to return to her family. She had to remain isolated, to protect everyone from the Illness. Really, I don’t think they want anyone to see just how much the Vessels deteriorate.

After the moment passed, Damian rounded on me, Natalia seemingly ceasing to exist. Only a handful of Vessels have ever been volunteers, he said. They also happened to be among the longest-serving Vessels, according to Damian, though to him this was no coincidence. By volunteering, I was showing exceptional commitment both to the community and to God. This is the sort of adult that every parent should hope to raise, he declared, locking eyes with my mom and dad and pointing at them in recognition of a job well done. 

He stood over me now — you never appreciated how tall he was until he was right next to you. He put a hand on my shoulder. His fingers were long and colder than a living person’s should be — I had to resist the impulse to flinch. “Are you ready,” he asked me. I nodded. Damian’s gaze shifted to the mayor, who produced a Bible. I placed my right hand on the Bible and raised my left hand. Damian then recited the oath, which I repeated back to him:

In the name of the God the Father

His Son Jesus Christ

And the Holy Spirit

I pledge my life

To the service of my community

To surrender my body

As a vessel

For the sins of my people

To carry them until the end of my days

And to die

So that others may live

Damian returned the Bible to the mayor and pulled me into an embrace as the amphitheater broke into applause, though of a more muted, less celebratory variety than when Damian came out. I know you must be scared to leave your family and friends behind, he whispered as he held me, but you will not regret this. I’m sure I won’t, I answered.

I let the knife slip out of my sleeve and into my waiting hand. I plunged it just below Damian’s sternum. His eyes popped and his mouth fell open, letting out a strangled gasp. I pulled the knife out and stabbed him again. And again. And again. 

After the third time the audience caught on to what was happening, the applause replaced by shrieks as one after another came to the same horrific realization. Parents shielded the faces of their younger children — others fled the amphitheater, perhaps afraid I would jump off stage and go on a rampage. My hands became coated in blood, warm and sticky, as I put one gash after another into Damian’s stomach, each eliciting a soft grunt. The mayor lunged at me. I shoved Damian at him, satisfied that I had wounded him beyond repair. The mayor forgot all about me and gently lowered Damian to the ground, all the while calling for help. 

Natalia remained oblivious to everything, her vacant eyes fixed firmly on nothing, her breathing unchanged. I walked over to her and brushed the hair out of her face, tucking it behind her ears. I raised her head and slit her throat. Unlike Damian, the blood flowed down her gown silently. I hoped that I might see surprise or even gratitude on her face, but even her own death managed not to faze her. When I let go of her, she fell out of her wheelchair.

Wailing filled the amphitheater, and not just from the children. I looked back at Damian, who was convulsing. Mr. Peters and Mrs. Custer, the closest thing we had to doctors, were on stage, but they could do little more than stem the bleeding. 

I turned to face the audience. Those who weren’t hiding or comforting their children were now staring at me. I must have looked like a lunatic to them, my hands crimson, still clutching the knife. I think my mouth was curled into a smile, but I can’t be sure. If so, it wasn’t voluntary, because I wasn’t feeling especially happy at that moment. My face just does that sometimes. I figured someone would’ve come on stage to restrain me by now — we didn’t have police, but there were peace officers, though they didn’t carry guns. But they were nowhere in sight. Maybe even they were afraid to get too close to me.

I found my parents. My mom’s skin had gone pale, and she had a hand over her mouth. My dad was holding her. I could see his lips were moving but I couldn’t make out the words. 

Then I saw Nathan. I cocked my head, surprised. His parents and sister had fled but he had stayed. His arms were folded and his mouth turned sideways into…a smirk. When our eyes met, I swore his head shook ever so slightly. 

He wasn’t appalled, or even angry. He’d expected me to do something. Maybe not this, but some stunt. That’s why he came at all. I hoped I didn’t disappoint.

Mrs. Custer was doing mouth-to-mouth resuscitation on Damian. When that failed, she started beating on his chest, letting out a ferocious scream like a tiger caught in a snare. The mayor and Mr. Peters each grabbed an arm and pulled her off of Damian.

I didn’t have much time. Sorrow would give way to rage once reality set in. I stepped one foot in front of the other, held out my arms to either side, bent my knees in a curtsy, and bowed deeply. 

Then I ran.

I didn’t stop until I reached the trees. Fortunately, few were outside — most were either still in the amphitheater or, presumably, hiding in their homes. I slowed as I went deeper into the woods, until I was confident that I had all but disappeared. The community had a PA system that the mayor used for major announcements. If he had broadcast news of Damian’s death, I should have been able to hear it. 

Apart from the main gate, there was only one other way to leave the community. Past the trees were the machines that filtered the air and water. On several occasions I told my parents I was meeting up with friends, when, really, I came here. Adjacent to the machines was a hatch that opened using a wheel. There was a symbol on it that I did not understand: three black crescents arranged to form a triangle with a circle at their center, all inside a yellow triangle. I tried to figure out where it went and why someone had put it here, to no avail. But instinct told me that it led out.

I found the respirator I hid in the hollow of a tree — every house had respirators in the event of a breach. I put it on, opened the hatch, and climbed down a short ladder. I contemplated sabotaging the equipment, pictured all of them succumbing to the Illness one by one with no Damian and no Vessel to save them. It’s only a crime against humanity if you’re killing humans. But I still loved my parents, and Nathan.  

I learned that I didn’t like confined spaces. The tunnel could not have been more than four feet by two. It was impossible even to look back. The respirator didn’t help. 

Eventually, I reached another ladder leading up to another hatch. It turned out that I hadn’t gotten far from the community, only a few hundred feet at most. 

Something cool passed through my hair, pushing it to one side — I had never felt wind before. The community was built on some sort of steppe, short brown grass as far as you could see.

I walked for what felt like miles. My mouth grew dry. I yearned to take off my respirator, to feel the sun on my face and taste the air, but I didn’t know how quickly I’d come down with the Illness. 

Eventually, I saw a road in the distance, stretching across the horizon. By now I had lost sight of the community. I figured the road might lead me to another community, or at least someplace I could take shelter. It was in surprisingly good condition, I thought, only a few cracks here and there.

As I started to follow the road, I noticed something approaching from the opposite direction. It seemed to materialize out of thin air and then grow larger. I froze, more out of incredulity than fear. I knew what it was — I had seen pictures of them in school. But I didn’t think that they existed anymore, at least not outside any community.

It slowed before coming to a full stop. 

A man got out. He wore a wide-brimmed hat but no respirator. 

Jesus Christ, the man exclaimed. You’re one of them.

Photo of Davor Mondom

BIO: Davor was born in Bosnia. He and his parents came to the United States as refugees following the civil war in the 1990s. He received his B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. in history from Syracuse University. He currently lives in Syracuse with his wife Meg and their Siberian husky, Izzie.