Oswald Mandus is a pig.
A fat, slobbering pig, pink leathery skin gleaming with sweat. His snout prods the metal floor, trying to push it away to get the food that is so obviously there. He, along with the hundreds of other pigs he realizes, can practically taste the sickly aroma of rotten fruit drifting in the air, and since there is nothing but solid copper walls surrounding them, the only place it could be, his small pig mind concluded, is in the ground. That is where all food is.
And yet he is dimly aware that he is, in fact, not a pig, but a wealthy man of industry, and that he is not in a copper room full of other pigs but is sleeping in his lavish bed in his house. But this is a small and transparent thought and soon it quickly fades away to the corners of his sleeping brain. He and the other pigs continue their fruitless search for the food that is not there, sometimes snorting when they bump into each other. His pig mind knows that the room is large, and that it is very, very hot. The heat is everywhere; on the walls, in the air, on the bodies massed around him, and it is heavy and solid like invisible smoke.
An uneasy feeling sends small waves of panic through him. The heat doesn't feel right. The floor will not part not matter how hard his hooves kick or scratch, and the fact there are so many pigs around him is unnerving. In the background he hears the sound of heavy machinery and gears turning, rumbling like a sleeping dog, and he feels his heartbeat quicken.
In the belly of the monster, a thought mutters, but it is quickly shoved away.
His ears pick up the sound of squealing and he pauses, looking up with beady black eyes in mild curiosity. He'd much rather occupy himself with searching for food, but the squeals startled him, and his piggish mind demanded he find the source of the surprise. Another squeal erupts from the other side of the room, followed by another from his left side, until a mass of shrieks shatters the rumbling silence. He does not join them, but begins to frantically back up, pushing his way past masses of pink until his rump hits hot metal. The fear that was once a shadow has grown into a black mass that was quickly filling his heart, which was hammering against his chest.
A full minute of wailing goes by before a sharp groan interrupts and dulls the uproar, like the cries of the pigs had angered something deep inside the metal walls. A few snouts close, but the sense of terror remains. Soon the groaning starts again, a heavy roar of grating metal, and to Oswald's shock he sees the wall to his right begin to part until it leaves a small gap. Further down, he can see small pricks of light leading away from the room.
At first, they are silent. He snorts in fear. The feeling of abnormality is persistent, mixing with the heat in the air. But then he smells the food again, and this time it is stronger, wafting from the opening in hot, delicious waves, filling his mouth with saliva which slobbers from his mouth.
Soon the other pigs smell it too, and begin to pour out of the room and into wherever the gap leads, squealing and snorting as their fat bodies squeeze against each other. Some loose their footing and are pushed to the floor, only for their faces to be trampled by a hundred hooves. His pig mind urges him to go forward towards the food, but he finds himself resisting. He's scared of what be beyond the space in the wall. It reminded him of an open jaw, ready to swallow every pink pig scrambling through it.
And yet, he find himself unconsciously lifting a hove forward. He is reminded again that he is still a pig, and therefore basic primal urges hold far more control. There is food beyond the opening, and his brain demands he go find it, even if he knew there was something detrimental at the end.
So it is not long before he find himself the last pig to leave the room and timidly entering a long corridor. Grey pipes lined the floor and ceiling, small slivers of steam escaping from loose nuts. Beyond them, small flashes of stone wall appear, smothered under the metal. The floor is mostly flat metal, clicking under his hooves with each step. High above him small yellow lamps nailed to the wall cast dim light.
He jumps when he hears screeching metal behind him, and whirls around. The gap in the wall is gone, leaving only blank copper in it's place.
In the back of his mind the human protests. Danger!, it screams, There is danger at the end of this! But he continues regardless. He passes a few spinning gears and pauses, trying to see where the trail of circles ended, but is unable to see past the small space in the ceiling allowing the machinery to climb to the level above him. Grunting in frustration, he moves on.
He reaches the end of the corridor and halts. The walls and ceiling have changed, now, switching to flat grey metal. The dead end confuses him, and he turns again in hopes that another gap has appeared, but nothing has changed.
But he does not have long to ponder this. He squeals and quickly backs up as a wall of metal shoots upwards and slams into the ceiling, trapping him inside a metal box. Terror envelops him. He slams his hooves against the wall, squealing, feeling the box jolt and begin to move. He regrets coming here, for he now knows there is no food, that there never was to begin with. It was a clever trap to entice him here, into this horrible box. If he had only stayed, the human wailed, if he had only heeded now silent warnings.
And then the box jolted, the walls slidaway, and Oswald saw.
Before him was a long, black conveyor belt, slick with blood and guts. Sharp metal knives, hooks and other cutting objects attached to robotic arms hovered over the wet rubber. Beyond that, another passage, ceiling dotted with curved meat hooks, carried away freshly skinned pig carcasses around a corner. Below him, he could see more of these belts in neat rows, pigs slowly being carved open by quick stabs and slashes, apparently without any painkillers applied beforehand. All he could hear was screeching, horrible, blood curdling wailing from the pigs in the process of being butchered, and soon he too began to join them as he frantically tried to back away.
But the small platform he was on gave a sudden jerk downward, sliding him onto the belt before begin carried away by something unseen. He heard a small click and looked down at four copper cuffs clamping onto his hooves. He shrieked, he wailed, he screamed, struggling against his bonds as the belt roared to life and began pulling him forward.
Any rational thought was out of the question. Oswald, both as pig and human, was terrified beyond words. The heat was alive, an intense inferno cooking his body and soul. He now smelt rotting flesh and blood, and in the corner of his eye he saw a pig on the line next to him give one final squeal before it's bloody pink skin was ripped off.
He approached the knives and hooks and watched them jerk to life, drills spinning as if testing themselves, knives slashing at the air. Even though he knew it was useless, he still struggled, praying that the cuffs would snap, that the machinery would malfunction, that he would wake up.
Wake up! he screamed at himself, because he knew what would happen next and he didn't care if it was just a dream, because the fear would kill him before the curved carving knife would ever penetrate his skin, Wake up! Wake up!
A small knife with a jagged edge moved up to waver by his face, light reflecting off it's smooth edges. And then it was an eye, a gleaming eye with silver slits for a pupil, and it was looking at him, glaring at him, and all he could do was look back in total, unadulterated horror, because he was looking into the eye of the monster and that the monster was this place, this horrible place in his dream.
Oh Oswald, the eye said, you know better than I do this isn't a dream.
And it lunged.