5 Minute Freewrite Day 478: Pig's Ear

There was a bunch of weird people in my squad, with all manners of traumas and quirks, which is honestly natural considering my current line of work, the Raging Drakes were everything you could expect from a mercenary group. But as violent as they were, they had some interesting, and dare I say, funny quirks.

One of those was that they had a nickname for everyone, I was “Sapling” since I was young and green in eye color, experience and clothing (at least until I was asked to go all red for our uniforms). There was also “Fang”, the guy who recruited me, “Grim” our bitter cook, and “Blaze” our captain, and many, many others. But there was one other, a quiet one who always weared a big hat, who I learned was our “Interrogator”. He was left alone, and no one ever talked to him except Captain Blaze, but the looks he received, of caution and respect, contrasted with his nickname of “Pig’s Ear”.

“Why?”, I asked once, and Fang just told me that it was better if I didn’t know. But I wanted to know. One day while serving his trademark porridge, Grim suddenly asked “Sapling, you like the creepy fatso?”, my disgusted face must have showed because he started to laugh in his characteristic lifeless and sarcastic tone. “If you wanna know, wait ‘till the night after our next raid on the rebels”.

That much I did, and while I was tired and somewhat bruised, I put my infiltration gear and went towards the interrogation tent, the one furthest from the group. Inside I could hear some muffled screams, probably that guy’s doing, but what I never guessed was what I saw when peaking trough the heavy curtains: the tied up prisoner, some rebel leader, had his ears cut off and on the ground, and in his head, awkwardly sewn, a pair of pig’s ears that matched the appearance of the deformed interrogator’s. We got a lot of information from that guy before he died.