The Previous Life of Mr. Jones Malcolm Kennedy
As a child, Nicholas Jones had always been jealous of his father, Alexander Jones, who owned Manor farm at the time. Conclusively, Nicholas was much closer to his mother, Mary Feodov, in his childhood. Nicholas had five siblings: three brothers and two sisters, and was the oldest sibling. This made him the future owner of manor farm, as he was first born.
That very year, Nicholas took over the thrown after the unexpected illness and sudden death of his father, Alexander. As this happened so suddenly, and since is father had been expected to live for several more years, (He was only 45 when he became severely ill), Mr. Jones was untrained and unprepared by the time he was to take over the farm.
During the same year as when he took over the farm, Mr. Jones got engaged to and married a woman named Alix. At first, Alix was hesitant about going through with the decision, as she would have to change her religion in order to go through with the marriage, but the local church made an exception, allowing both Alix and Nicholas to keep their religion upon marriage, and they were married within five months of engagement.
One Sunday morning, Nicholas awoke to the sounds of several hooves stomping slowly but steadily against the earth, and a soft combination of neighing, bleating, mooing and barking. Nicholas jumped out of bed, pulled back the curtain of the window that looked out across the farm. All of the animals, or most anyways, were out of the barn, marching solemnly about the yard. Mr. Jones grabbed his coat, put it on and grabbed his rifle from the closet and ran out the door. He then shot two loud warning shots into the sky. The animals were shocked and shaken up, but preceded with their protesting nevertheless. Nicholas, intimidated and frustrated, took up his gun and ran into the house to wake his men. "Men", he said, arm yourself and come outside. The animals were louder than ever now. Mr. Jones raised his gun and a loud bang shattered the crystal-clear, silent morning air. The animals flared up in anger as one of the most prominent old boars, Soba, fell to the ground with a thud, blood streaming from the bullet hole in the side of his head. But they remained peaceful, and did not lunge out at Mr. Jones or his men. Mr. Jones then yelled, "FIRE!" and within instants, several more bullets let loose from the men's guns, and four more animals fell to the ground: Two horses, Nima and Alfred, a dog, Charlie and another pig, Courtland, who was only three years old. Courtland was the son of Soba, and tears were found on his dead body after the protest was over.
Mr. Jones Had once cared much about his animals' well being, but if this sort of protest was how they thanked him for it, what was the use? He then poured himself a large glass of wine and sat down for a drink. It was only at almost 1AM that he finally realized that he had almost finished the entire bottle and was very drunk and very tired from the day.
Mr. Jones had locked the hen-houses for the night, but was too drunk to remember to shut the pop-holes. With the ring of the light from his lantern dancing from side to side he lurched across the yard, kicked off his boots at the back door, drew himself a last glass of wine from the near-empty bottle and mad his way up to bed, where Alix Jones was already snoring.