The Pig's day out (greasy swine cop)

It was a day like any other you decided to move into the big city finally and rented an apartment to stay at while your knuckles whitened around the steering wheel as your car rolled to a stop. The apartment building loomed—cheap brick stained with decades of exhaust fumes, its fire escape sagging like a broken ribcage.

you then thought this was a bad idea and you should of stayed where you were but you shook off those thoughts and maybe this wasn't as bad as you thought before, what could possibly go wrong?

The phone screen glowed too bright in the dim car, maps scrolling endlessly as your thumb twitched over for alternate routes the half-empty gas gauge mocked you.

your legs prickled awake like static as you stepped onto pavement cracked with weed sprouts. One hand braced against the car roof, the other clutching your phone like a lifeline. The city hummed around you, indifferent.

A garbage truck's hydraulic whine sliced through the symphony of yapping terriers and wailing infants your shoulders hunched instinctively, your shoes scuffing against gum-blackened concrete as you power-walked toward the apartment entrance.

'Like someone cranked reality's volume knob,' you thought, dodging a pigeon carcass flattened into the sidewalk. Your keys jangled—one jagged silver tooth for the deadbolt, the other for the nightmare waiting behind door 307. The building's shadow swallowed you whole as you took the steps two at a time, lungs burning with cigarette smoke drifting from some unseen balcony.

The door clicked shut behind you with a finality that severed the city’s chaos like a guillotine. Silence pooled thickly in the apartment—stale air, dust motes drifting through a slat of streetlight cutting across the carpet you exhaled through your nose, shoulders slumping as if wires had been snipped.

‘Indoor air smells like mothballs and regret,’ you noted absently, fishing keys from your damp palm and shoving them into your pockets. The sofa cushions wheezed under your weight, springs poking like accusatory fingers. You rested for awhile, eyelids fluttering shut for three whole seconds before the ceiling’s water stain caught your attention—a Rorschach blot that looked suspiciously like your landlord’s smirk.

With a grunt, you heaved forward and snatched the remote off a pizza box. The TV flickered to life with a soap opera’s exaggerated gasp. ‘Perfect,’ you thought, watching a woman in pearls slap a man twice her size. ‘At least someone’s day is worse.’

The greasy cardboard tugged at your fingers as you flipped the pizza box lid. Cold congealed cheese stared back—half a slice fossilized into orange cement.

"Who leaves pizza but takes the TV stand?" you thought

Your nose wrinkled at a chemical undertone beneath pepperoni grease. Then you saw it tucked under the couch leg like a shy confession a Ziploc bag of white powder, corner torn.

The realization hit like a sucker punch. Your fingers twitched away. ‘Previous tenant wasn’t just messy—he was cooking.’

You were suddenly hyperaware of the apartment's silence pressing against your eardrums like cotton. The Ziploc bag seemed to pulse in your peripheral vision, a tiny landmine left by some ghost tenant.

"Fuck. Fuck. Is this?" thumbprint smeared across the plastic as you nudged it with your shoe, revealing clumped powder stuck to the inner seams. The pizza box clattered to the floor your phone was already in your hand, 9-1-1 half-dialed before hesitation froze you. "What if they think it's mine? Lease papers are still in the glove compartme-" A car backfired outside

The phone trembled against your ear as the dispatcher's monotone voice crackled through. Your words tumbled out too fast "No ma'am, I just moved in, found it under the couch, swear to god" your free hand gestured at nothing, as if the apartment itself could vouch for you. The dispatcher cut you off with a tired sigh, asking for the address again while your eyes darted to the lease agreement half-pulled from your duffel bag.

"Should've taken pictures first." you realized belatedly Outside, sirens began to wail—close, then closer, until red and blue lights strobed through your blinds like a silent alarm.

The knock came again—three thunderous beats that made the doorframe shudder so you decided to look out through the peephole. You saw a large figure that stood in front of your door a wall of white fabric stretched taut over a barrel chest, the smell of leather and stale coffee rolling off him in waves. The shadow shifted, and your gaze traveled upward past a badge glinting dully to meet mirrored sunglasses despite the hour. A snout. Curved tusks.

"This is police open up." rumbled a voice from outside that came from the authority figure standing in front of your door.