Nate had always been a fan of horror stories, and so when he stumbled upon the Arctos Audio website, that was the first section he decided to check out. Of course, the tagline of the section–”Stories so horrifying you find yourself wishing they’d happen to you!”–was a bit…disturbing, he decided to take a look around anyway. The prices were decent, and as a new customer he was offered a free audiobook just for signing up. It couldn’t hurt, right? The story he ended up selecting was one called, “To be a Hog.” He loaded it up and listened, and to his surprise, it was one of the most horrific stories he’d ever heard–it was so awful, that over the course of the story he tried multiple times to try and stop the file, but he was, at the same time, gripped by a grim curiosity–he needed to hear how the story ended.
When the file had finally reached completion, he wasn’t sure what he wanted to do then–vomit? Take a shower? Who in their right mind had come up with such a fucked up story? To his surprise, there was no author listed with the story, and a cursory search around the internet didn’t reveal anything about the book–it didn’t seem to be listed on any sites other than Arctos, and it was difficult finding any real details about that company itself. In the end, he thought it best to just…put the story out of his mind as best he could–he certainly wasn’t going to be purchasing any other stories from them–he was a fan of horror, and he didn’t mind gore…but that story had gone beyond the morn, and into a sadistic realm Nate had never contemplated before in his life.
But as much as he wanted to leave it behind him, the story stuck around with him, haunting him over the next several days. He would see something on the street–a fat man gorging himself at a table or an overturned trashcan, and he’d be reminded of the story, replaying it in his mind, the calm voice of the narrator replaying the scenes for him unbidden. He found himself picturing the young man dragging the hog’s head from the butcher’s trash, examining it with glee and excitement as he hollowed out the skull. How he’d snuck onto the farm, hiding among the pigs, feasting on their slop, groping himself…
He’d break free eventually, but it was taking a toll on him. Soon, the story was invading his dreams, and he would find himself in the position of the young man, at the mercy of the farmer, knife gleaming in the lantern light–and he’d awake, heaving for breath, terrified, and disgusted to discover that the dream had been accompanied by…a nighttime emission of sizable quantity–something he struggled to hide from his husband, Paul, each morning, who began to wonder why the sheets were freshly laundered every night when he arrived home from work.
Who could have possibly written such a monstrous thing, he found himself wondering over and over again. He would search and search, but he never sound any detail of the story’s anonymous author, though a small note on the copyright page caught his eye again and again:
“Based on a true story.”
How could it be so? It had to be impossible, and yet he couldn’t quite bring himself to doubt it entirely. He searched for news of men mutilated on farms, but only found a few articles regarding various equipment accidents–and nothing so vile as the book described, and yet…and yet…the horror was beginning to turn into something else. He wanted to know what could drive someone to such horrors; he wanted to know how someone could do something so twisted to their own body, and how someone else could strip another of their humanity. Slowly but surely, another possibility began to creep into his mind. Why, after all, had he chosen that story of all the ones offered? Why had the main character, that young man seemed so relatable and sympathetic? Who else would he still be thinking about this, if he, in some small way, didn’t want the same? If he didn’t want to be a hog himself?
The idea was farcical to him, and yet…before too much longer, reliving parts of the story was the only thing that could get him to cum, whether he was sleeping or awake. He was gaining weight, and while Paul was concerned by his strange behavior and emotional distance, he also couldn’t bare the thought of exposing his husband to any of it. What would he think of him? He would be crushed, right?
And so, in desperation, he wrote in to Arctos and described what he was feeling, and what was happening to him. He didn’t know why, exactly, he thought telling them would give him a solution, but more than anything else, he just needed to tell someone! It didn’t matter who. Better it was some anonymous no-one on the other end of the internet, than someone he might know–and when he’d finished and sent it off…he really did feel better. A bit better. He slept more soundly that night that he had in weeks, and when he woke up the next morning, feeling refreshed and ready to move on past this nightmare that had been consuming him for weeks, he found a reply from Arctos waiting for him in the mailbox. Apparently, he was being shipped two packages, which would arrive later that day, and there was also a note:
“We here at Arctos are pleased that you enjoyed the book so much! We’ve sent you a special gift, complimentary of course, to help ease some of your worries. Thank you for helping make Arctos Audio the go to destination for erotic literature!”
Bracken's Corner 