The Pig-Man
Piggy, eyes opening up gradually, woke up and found himself laying in a hospital bed with a blue curtain that separated himself from the medical ward that he to be in right now. He didn't know how he ended up here, but he felt that it was justified; his entire body ached, as if he were hit by four massive hammers, one for each side of his body. Counting out the blanket that covered him from navel to feet, he was in nothing but a hospital gown as he lay in pain on the bed.
Piggy noticed a shadow approaching the curtain. When the figure who made up the shadow parted the curtain, a tall, tanned human male with a brown coat and gray pants, with hair that stood up from his head, looked in horror at the pained Gamorrean.
"What are you looking at, Frokastan?" Piggy asked, referencing a character from a holodrama he watched years earlier; the character of Fronkensteen looked like this fellow. However, when he asked that question ,it was in his rough and gruff language, and not in Basic. But the Gamorrean didn't notice this as he continued. "You never seen a Gamorrean in a hospital bed before? Or you just shocked that I can talk?" At that, the human turned around and ran away in a particularly over-the-top fashion.
It was at that point that Piggy realized that his throat-mounted vocal translator was gone. Without it, he couldn't communicate to most other non-Gamorreans. He then wondered what happened to it, and why anyone would want to take it away.
The last thing he remembered before he woke up in this hospital bed was doing some practice drills in his X-wing with Wedge Antilles and his daughters, Syal and Myri, at the edge of the Coruscant system. Since the incarceration of the treacherous General Stavin Thaal, Wedge decided to reward Piggy and Myri by going on that drill with them. Syal didn't mind joining.
The drill had been interrupted when a sudden bright light appeared before Piggy while he had been piloting his X-wing. That was the last thing that happened before he knew blackness.
Now he was here, in a hospital whose location he didn't know about, severely injured for no apparent reason, and missing his vocal translator.
What the hell happened?
At that point, another bright light appeared above Piggy, and he only knew darkness again.
~o~
"Jerry, I'm telling you, I saw him, it was a Pig Man!" Kramer told Jerry later that day in the latter's apartment.
"A Pig-Man, Kramer?" Jerry asked sceptically with his arms crossed.
"Yes, it was a big, fat, green-skinned Pig-Man!" Kramer enunciated as he spread his arms wide to mimic the Pig-Man's girth. "And he even had tusks, too." With both hands, he indicated the sides of his face where the tusks would be on the Pig-Man.
Jerry made a wry face. "If he had tusks, wouldn't he be a Boar-Man?"
"Oh, yeah, he would be a Boar-Man," Kramer reflected, abruptly snapping out of his usual energetic mood. But then he snapped right back in with, "But you know, that's not the weird part."
"A Pig-Man isn't the weird part of this story?" Jerry retorted.
"Hey, you just said that he would be a Boar-Man," Kramer pointed out.
"Pig-Man, Boar-Man, I don't care, Kramer, just get to the point," Jerry said with a resigned tone.
"The weird part is that he looked like one of those Gamorreans in Star Wars, Jerry," Kramer informed his friend.
"Gamorreans?" Jerry asked genuinely.
"Yeah, the Gamorreans," Kramer repeated. "You know, those Pig-Men–I mean, Boar-Men–who were Jabba the Hutt's guards in Return of the Jedi."
"Oh, yeah, I remember those guys," Jerry said. "He looked like one of those?"
"Yeah, minus the armour," Kramer said. "He even growled like those Gamorreans."
"So you're telling me that you saw a member of an alien species from Star Wars lay in a hospital bed today, Kramer," Jerry summed up.
"That's basically it, yeah," Kramer said with a nod.
"You know, Kramer, you've said and done quite a few weird and bizarre things over the years we've known each other, but this just takes the cake," Jerry said. "Gimme one good reasons why I shouldn't call the men in white coats right now."
"Well, what if you come with me?" Kramer asked. "I could show you where the Boar-Man is."
Jerry rolled his eyes. "All right, I'll come."
~o~
When Jerry and Kramer returned to the hospital several minutes later, the latter guided the former to the hospital room where he found the Boar-Man. But when they arrived, the bed was empty.
Kramer then asked a passing doctor where the Boar-Man was. The doctor at first denied such a thing, but Kramer pressed on, and the doctor relented by telling him that the "Boar-Man" was just released recently. After Kramer waved him away, he declared, "He's alive!"
~o~
After Kramer returned to the hospital again, a bright light appeared in the hallway before him. He quickly shielded his eyes and backed away in his usual "subtle" self while everyone else was even more "inconspicuous" with their reactions. When the light came to pass, the Boar-Man, in his hospital gown, stood before Kramer.
"The Pig-Man!" Kramer pointed with a loud shout, forgetting his designation for him being the Boar-Man.
At that, he turned around and ran away along with all of the able patients. In his cowardice, he began pushing people out of the way.
And Piggy just stood there, stunned, with all the pain he experienced previously suddenly gone.
Yet he was even more confused than before.
But before he could even contemplate what was happening to him, once again, another bright light appeared before him. However, this time, darkness wasn't all he knew.
It was darkness dotted with white pinpricks of light; stars that covered the vast expanse of space, as he saw it from the cockpit of his X-wing.
"Hey, Piggy, you okay out there?" Wedge's voice came over the commlink. "My daughters and I have all but vaped you in the drill. Why you just floating there like an idiot?"
Piggy was hesitant before he answered. "Sorry, Wedge. I guess I must be coming down with something; probably due to my age."
"I hear ya," Wedge responded sympathetically. "Well, we're all done here anyway. Wanna head back home?"
"Yeah, sure." With that, he followed the trio of X-wings back to Coruscant.
~o~
As Kramer ran down the hall of the hospital, he was suddenly enveloped by a sheet of white light. Darkness was all he knew for a moment before he found himself several metres in the air before he began falling to the metal ground before him. In spite of his rough landing, he was otherwise all right as he pushed himself to his feet, but instantly stood in shock when he found himself in a bar filled with Pig-Men, and Pig-Women, all around him.
They all glanced at him and grunted in curiosity as Kramer looked at all of them in turn with horror in his eyes. After several turns in the spot he was in, he simply fainted on the floor right there.
THE END.