The Vegan Challenge

I think it was around 2000 when I picked up an anthology of horror stories at my local library (there was one by Isabel Allende, too – get off my case). The only one that’s really stuck with me, other than the Allende (which seemed to contain a few of the seeds for Daughter of Fortune, and was arguably, not really horror anyway) was a story set in an piggery.

The protagonist (henceforth known as “Bob”) for reasons I can’t remember, throws a colleague into a gigantic steel grinding machine. As the victim is torn apart from the feet up, he screams in orgasmic pleasure. Which puzzles Bob afterwards, but the death is ruled accidental and life, for everyone else, goes on.

Months later, Bob is gored by a bore in one of the pens, and as he drags himself out of harms way, the pig chews off his genitals as well.

As Bob, bleeding and mutilated, contemplates his future, he remembers the ecstatic shrieks of his victim as he was devoured by the grinder.

Dragging himself to the machine, he jumps in. And as the blades slowly shred his body, he realises that his victim had tricked him into the most horrible and painfully bloody death imaginable.

Which brings me to the Vegan Challenge.