Horror - Short

This story is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are fictitious and any similarities to actual persons, locations, or events is coincidental. This work cannot be used to train artificial intelligence programs.  No AI tools were used in the writing of this story.

All rights reserved. Porca Copyright © Eddie Generous 2026

PORCA

“What’s it say, Pa?”

Jimmy looked up at his father from where he sat at the family dining table, bacon and tomato sandwich in his grubby hands. His Pa, Harold Potvin, had before him on the table a letter from the county.

“Have they changed their minds?” Lucille Potvin said from where she leaned her ample backside on the lip of the counter which was currently busy with crumbs from the sandwiches she’d fixed.

Harold tipped his eyes from the letter to look out at his struggling pig farm, and to the ocean just beyond his barn. A single tear left his left eye—the glass one—as he flexed his bulky biceps.

“No, they ain’t,” he said before balling the letter in an angry fist.

They had until September 1, 1989 to accept the provincial buyout and move off the land or face legal backlash—legal backlash they couldn’t dream of affording, even based on the value of Pacific Coastline property. As a last ditch afront, Harold and Jimmy let all the hogs loose on the soon to be developed land. The bottom on hog prices had fallen out, this way at least they’d have a little payback. Those hogs would cause trouble for generations to come if they weren’t rounded up right quick. Harold didn’t reckon they would be, not when nobody would know they were loose until one caused trouble somewhere—the closest neighbour was nine kilometres away.

—

“Look, I can’t bull you three,” Maria Ortiz said to the trio of young faces standing around her desk. Maria was the managing editor of Bubble News, an online site dedicated to the strange, the unbelievable, and the difficult. “Ad sales are way down. Y’all have been excellent, which is why this is so damned tough.”

Doug Bourque tilted his head back and made a whiny noise. “You’re canning us?”

Zoya Gilmour and Eric LaFontaine looked at Doug with wide, wide eyes and then back to Maria.

“No, not exactly,” Maria said.

Doug’s entire body slackened.

“But probably,” Maria said. “Unless we get something we can turn into more than just a story.”

Doug made the noise again.

Maria ignored him and continued, her gaze bouncing from face to face to face. “According to Winsome in advertising, they have a major outdoors brand on the line—she wouldn’t say whom—and we need something adventurous.”

Zoya squinted. “Like another squatch thing?”

Maria shook her head, her frizzy black hair bouncing on her shoulders. “No. Not unless you can actually find a bigfoot. We need something new, we need a lot of footage—audio or video, both if it’s possible—we need something dangerous, and we need to be able to spread the story across as many platforms as we can. Meaning video, podcast, print, and, if you can swing it, live streaming.”

Eric nodded, always one for tackling challenges, and said, “Okay, so what’s the story?”

Maria scrunched her face. “No, you bring the story. I have nothing. You’re saving your jobs. If you can’t think of anything, I’ll look back on the total time you’ve been here and figure out average clicks, good or bad. Quality of content hardly matters anymore. I can only keep one of you, and I’m not sure for how long. Save yourselves.”

“How long do we have to put it together?” Zoya said.

“Four days. In four days, I need the first episodes edited and ready to review,” Maria said.

“Four days!” Zoya said, looking like she might cry.

“Okay. Okay,” Eric said, knocking his knuckles together.

Doug sat down and put his face in his hands.

—

An empty pitcher of beer, three foamy glasses, and the remains of a plate of nachos centered the table where the trio sat. On all the TVs was the Jays’ game—Toronto was hosting the stinkiest Red Sox team of the last quarter century. Doug had been oddly quiet while Zoya and Eric spit-balled terrible ideas.

“That’s all been done and the footage wouldn’t be enough,” Eric said.

Zoya shrugged. She hadn’t thought much of the idea to paddleboard close enough to walruses to put themselves in danger—it’s just where they’d gotten to, the extremes one needed to touch for saleable content. Zoya turned to Doug.

“You’re quiet tonight,” she said.

He huffed out a breath. “I rewatched E.T. last night.”

Eric bunched his mouth to the left side of his face. “I’m down if you know where to find aliens.”

Doug emptied the dregs of his glass down his throat. Eyes pinned to the foam like it possessed the secrets of the universe, he said, “No. You know the two maintenance men who died, mauled and chewed?”

“Wasn’t it four?” Eric said.

“Two are missing,” Doug said. “But presumed dead. You know?”

“Of course,” Zoya and Eric said in unison, Zoya then added, “Jinx, you owe me a beer.”

“They’re saying a grizzly got them, right? But how did a grizzly get down there, and why?” Doug didn’t give them a chance to answer. “Because it wasn’t a grizzly, they just needed a scapegoat.”

“This is all reported on,” Zoya said.

Doug shook his head gently, and then in a little girl voice—mimicking Drew Barrymore circa 1982—he said, “Alligators in the sewers.”

Eric motor-boated his lips. “How would a gator get all the way up here?”

“They wouldn’t,” Zoya said.

“They wouldn’t,” Doug said. “It’s not a gator, but it’s not a grizzly. Those maintenance guys were in the sewer, and something attacked them. We have to take a trip to find out what it was.”

Zoya opened her mouth to rebut, but snapped it closed without a word.

Eric rubbed at his five o’clock shadow. “Okay. Okay.”

—

Maria loved the idea but made sure to remind the trio that insurance did not cover them while breaking and entering, even if it was public property. She then called a friend who dealt in used sporting goods—along with a plethora of other items—and borrowed three sets of chest waders. She called her father and arranged to borrow three decommissioned handheld spotlights—he was a member of the city’s search and rescue team. Lastly, she signed out a video camera, a signal booster, and three days’ worth of batteries, just in case. The only necessities left came from Walmart: N95 masks, food, water, rope, and chalk—Doug’s idea, so they didn’t get all the way lost.

They decided to play a wait and see game when it came to live streaming. If the first few bits of footage were good, it was up to Maria if they’d use the rest. They filmed Doug explaining the plan while the others loaded their ride share rental car. It seemed like not much, but anything at the beginning was bound to be a bit cringey.

Doug held the camera, transmitting the footage directly to Maria, while Eric drove, explaining how they knew where to go. According to news reports of where the maintenance men had been scheduled to work, was near an underground collection pond that had been decommissioned more than a decade ago. The town’s website had all the sewer plans available to download.

“Given what we know, we’ve decided to enter the sewer at the Barnes and Third access point,” Eric said.

“It doesn’t say exactly, but we’re assuming that’s a manhole rather than anything more inviting,” Zoya said.

Doug had the camera on her, waiting for more, and then directed to Eric. When he had nothing to say, Doug shot footage out the window.

—

At Barnes and Third—a conveniently quiet area of town—the trio unloaded the car. Eric put the key in the designated cubby and then hit the return button. The moment he closed the door, the car began auto-piloting itself back to its lot.

Doug, being the biggest, was volunteered to handle the four-foot piece of rebar that had been removed from the dirt next to a maple tree no longer needing steadied by Zoya’s apartment building. It was fat and heavy, rust powdered away onto his palms as he inserted one end into a hole in the manhole cover. He’d watched a YouTube tutorial on how to perform this act. It was about as mindless as it looked, though the weight of the cover was a real surprise. Grunting, groaning, the trio got the cover off, revealing a ladder that led into an abyss.

The scent wasn’t what they’d anticipated. The guessed consensus had been the sewer would smell like sewage. It didn’t, not in this area. It smelled fishy, like low tide, which made sense too, given that they were about a kilometre from the Pacific.

“Who’s going first?” Zoya said. She and Eric both looked at Doug.

He made the whiny noise but did not object. The ladder was a touch off-putting, especially with a loaded pack on his back. It went straight up and down, the weight behind him threatening to tip him over. He was thankful when his feet found ground, was doubly thankful when he stepped onto dry cement.

“Hey, not even wet,” he said and then rooted through his pack for a flashlight. He clicked it on and looked both ways into the dark trails. The plan was to head west.

“Catch me,” Zoya said, tipping off the ladder.

Doug dropped his light and put out his arm, not catching her but still breaking most of her fall. The flashlight remained lit—built to withstand much more than being dropped.

“You all right?” Eric asked, his silhouette shadowing the hole above.

“Yeah,” Zoya said, pushing to stand.

“Take the camera,” Eric said.

The camera began lowering on a rope. Doug reached for it. It was Zoya’s turn to be spotlighted. The flashlight remained lit on the floor. Above, Eric grunted through sliding the manhole cover back into place—a much easier task than lifting it off. Suddenly, the only lights were the high-powered flashlight on the floor, the red light on the front of the camera, and the digital viewfinder panel at the back.

Zoya cleared her throat. “We’re now very near the two deceased maintenance workers’ last known whereabouts prior to washing up on a shore less than a kilometre from where I stand. The official report suggested a grizzly bear, and if that’s so, we should find plenty of scat down here. Though we’re not here to reaffirm anything unless it’s true and something seemed downright fishy about a bear killing, maiming, and eating huge portions of two fully grown men.” She paused a beat. “Cut.”

Doug hit STOP on the touchscreen, noticing then that there was an X through the wi-fi icon. He groaned. “Somebody text Maria. I think the streaming option is out.”

“No bars,” Eric said and immediately climbed up the ladder to test things closer to the surface. “Got one.” He wrapped his arm through the ladder in order to type with both hands. “We went down through manhole at Barnes and Third, no wi-fi, will record as we go,” he said, reading as he typed. He remained there until he received a response from Maria. “She says ‘okay.’” He pocketed the phone and descended.

Doug handed the camera back to Eric and picked up his flashlight. “It gets shorter, be easier for you or Zoya to handle the camera in the pipes,” he said, shining his bright beam onto the opening about fifteen feet west of the ladder, down the tunnel they’d planned to search first.

“Fine,” Eric said.

For a moment, none of them spoke and none of them moved. The only sounds were their breathing and the gentle flow of distant water.

—

After about thirty minutes of uninteresting walking footage, the tunnel opened into a large cavern with a murky pool of grey water at the bottom. There were a dozen steel handwheels, all tinted green by algae. There were lightbulbs behind cages—all currently turned off. Above was a heavy grate, beyond that was the world. It suddenly seemed as if they’d gone too deep, so deep they might never get out.

“Is this where they think?” Doug said after taking the camera and scanning the floor. “I don’t see any bear sh—droppings.”

“I’ll give my left arm if we come across anything that even remotely suggests a bear’s been here.” Eric had his phone out and was studying the PDF of the sewer map he’d downloaded.

“This isn’t it though, right? We’re going deeper?” Zoya said.

“Have to,” Doug said.

“Have to go as long as it takes to get something juicy. Outside of this job, I’m pretty much qualified to record weddings or work at McDonald’s,” Eric said.

“I’ll have to move in with my dad,” Zoya said.

“Let’s focus, the story’s here somewhere,” Eric said and then pointed through the rightmost opening of a trio of tunnels. “That one takes us toward the ocean. I say we go until we can’t anymore and try to loop back through another tunnel.”

Zoya dropped her pack and started fishing in a front compartment. She brought out a chunky piece of sidewalk chalk. She marked the wall they’d come through with a big #1 and stepped past Eric and put a #2 next to the tunnel he’d chosen.

—

The scent picked up, now reeking of both fish and human waste. They slipped masks over their faces. Doug had to crouch even further as the tunnel shrank, and only Zoya could walk completely upright, making her the de facto cameraperson. Eric ran a monologue as they walked, discretely reading from articles he’d downloaded to his phone. Doug waited for an extended pause to personalize some of the content.

“The day after my father showed me the film Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, I’d started scheming ways into the sewers to look for them. I was maybe six or seven; I guess that would’ve been oh-four or -five.”

“Did you go?” Zoya said, taking the bait, putting the camera on his slouching, lumbering form.

“No. Something else came along, but I’d heard later an urban legend about kids going into the sewers looking for the Ninja Turtles. Supposedly it happened around the time of the original release: nineteen-ninety,” Doug said.

“Sounds a bit like the alligators in the sewers myth,” Eric said.

“Alligators in the sewers is a tad more believable, though not so much up here,” Zoya said. “I’ve been wracking my brain to come up with something more plausible than grizzly bears, and it really seems like it could be anything.”

“My guess is they had an accident, fell into a pool that drained elsewhere, and a hungry seal or whale, even a dolphin maybe, got at them,” Eric said.

“That sounds right, but it can’t be. That answer works too well, right?” Zoya said. “I mean, why didn’t they simply use it instead of a grizzly. I think there’s something strange down here.”

Doug made that whiny sound in his throat. “Are we on a squatch hunt?”

“We’re on a truth hunt,” Eric said.

After a handful of quiet seconds, Zoya said, “That’s a good line.”

“Quality,” Doug said.

“I’m trying my best,” Eric said.

Ahead, the flashlight beam Eric held hit emptiness, announcing the end of the current tunnel. It smelled terrible and the water sounds were more pronounced, though not really loud. It was as if they remained apart from the true sewer where all the action happened.

The space opened and as Zoya was shining her light at a wall, she discovered a heavy-duty steel light switch. She flipped it, and five caged lightbulbs around the space lit, revealing guardrails encircling a pool, several hatch doors, and a change to the makeup of the walls. Brick with huge, sloppy cement patches. This area of the sewer was obviously older than the others.

“Take this, I want a break for a minute,” Zoya said and handed the camera to Doug.

The ceiling was plenty high enough there for him to straighten out so he made no argument, and began scanning the space for something worth shooting.

“Interesting,” Eric said, leaning over the railing and looking into the mucky pool three metres below.

“Hardly,” Zoya whispered looking over the railing as well. “This is the end; we have to backtrack…that took four hours and we have to backtrack.”

Doug continued walking slowly around the room. They’d have to edit out what Zoya was saying, but that was simple enough and they’d always, always need b-roll footage when cutting it together afterward. He got to the far end of the space and knelt. The water sounds were louder, the air a little fresher. There was a handwheel hatch on the floor.

Eric banged his fist on the railing. “We can’t give up. This is it. We might as well move down here if we don’t find the st—”

“Looks like this submarine door is functional,” Doug said, and then repeated it for the sake of the camera after silencing Eric.

Doug stood straight as Eric crouched into a squat. He grunted and the steel wheel squeaked, turning a quarter turn. He gave a bigger grunt, his arms taut. Zoya joined in and the wheel made a full revolution. Eric flattened his feet and tugged. The hatch opened, revealing a ladder into a new abyss, the water sounds much more pronounced, the scent of ocean blooming before them.

Zoya reached her flashlight into the hole, her head and shoulder following it down. She lifted herself out and looked directly into the camera. “It’s much deeper, and older looking. It could be dangerous.”

“And listen, there’s much more going on down there,” Eric said.

“I say we go,” Doug said from behind the camera.

They used the rope to lower the equipment. Doug held onto the camera to record the descent. Zoya went first, then Eric, both noting the sorry state of the rusted and crumbling ladder rungs. Once they touched bottom, Doug started down one-handedly. He reached the halfway point when he felt the first failure.

“Ugh,” he said, his body slamming against the ladder as a rung disappeared beneath his foot.

“You all right?” Zoya said.

“Yeah,” Doug said, sighing the word. He got himself together, took three more steps before two more rungs gave out like boards beneath a martial artist’s fist. Doug made that whiny noise, though louder than ever as his feet surged and he clung to the ladder with one arm. The floor came at him fast and he landed with both feet, his ankles screaming at the blunt force. Doug’s whine became a yowl and he jerked sideways, nailing the dirty floor with his back so as to keep the camera safe.

“Holy, you okay?” Eric said.

Zoya shined her light way up the ladder. The lowest remaining rung was more than ten feet up. “Uh, guys, Doug broke the ladder.”

From the floor, Doug tilted the camera to meet the flashlight beam.

—

It was dark, and loud, and felt a whole lot realer than the main sewer system. On the upside, they could all walked with straight spines because the ceiling was about eight metres above them. The space was also wide enough that they could walk together in a row. Their mission had developed a second part: find a way out. This kept them walking westward, as eventually they’d reach the coast, assumedly.

“Did you hear that?’ Zoya said over the gentle rush of water.

“What?” Eric said, pointing the camera at her.

Zoya stopped and shined her light into the blackness behind them. “I heard a slapping noise.”

Doug continued forward a few extra steps, his light finding something peculiar amid the blackness. “Hey, look at this.”

Eric hurried along with the camera.

“Bones,” Doug said. “Something big, like a cow with stubby legs…a pig?” He faced the camera.

Their stillness gave space for all to hear the wet slapping sound. Like feet running around a pool. They were distant, and yet closer than what Zoya had originally heard.

“What was that?” Zoya whispered.

They listened and heard nothing. Eric finally said, “Probably drips into a puddle,” and that eased much of the tension, momentarily.

They continued walking, their grouping a little bit tighter, the grip on their flashlights a little bit firmer. The gulley to their left had been the source of the water sound, but most had now disappeared with the deepening of the trench.

Eric pointed the camera at the water. Zoya and Doug pointed their lights in so he’d have a better shot—though light was now playing in from somewhere ahead of them, a fishy-scented breeze alongside it.

“It’s not difficult to imagine animals in the vicinity. Even meat eaters, though I can’t fathom how a bear might get in here,” Eric said.

“If we’re even near where the men went down…I mean, wouldn’t they have broken the ladder before we had the chance?” Zoya said.

Doug looked at her and Eric pointed the camera her way. This was a new thought and a wholly unwelcome one. All this work might be for naught, they might—

Something pattered behind them, much, much closer now.

“Maybe we should keep moving,” Doug whispered.

“Agreed,” Zoya said.

Before they could take a step, the slapping drew nearer, almost right behind them. They turned, shining lights and pointing the camera. There was nothing there. More slaps landed, and there it was, finally in their light beams. Bulbous, pale pink at the belly with black over its head and back like a cloak. It had the face of a baby orca, but the nose of a pig. Its feet were bulky fins. It seemed to grin at them, blinking into the light.

“What in the…?” Zoya said, the words hissing out of her like air from a punctured tire.

At the sound, the creature leapt into the trench and blew by them, swimming like lightening through the slow-moving water.

“Tell me you got that on camera,” Doug said.

“We’re going to be rich,” Eric said.

“And famous…it was like a pig and a killer whale…you know, did it,” Zoya said.

Doug made that whiny noise before saying, “Both mammals, right?”

“We need to get this footage to Maria,” Eric said.

“We’re going to be famous. Get a job anywhere after breaking a story like this,” Zoya said, suddenly with bounce to her step. She pushed past the guys. “Come on. It’s bright up there, bet it’s the beach.”

Eric caught up to her. Doug remained rooted a few extra seconds, thinking. “What if that thing is what killed the maintenance guys?” he said.

The others were beyond earshot already and he had to rush to catch up.

—

“Still no bars,” Zoya said.

“What about porca, like pig-orca?” Eric said.

Doug now held the camera, said nothing.

The light at the end of the tunnel was much bigger. Along with it came a tremendous fishy reek and the sound of the tide. The trio were almost jogging. Zoya and Eric were bubbly and had been talking about all the fantastic publicity the creature would bring. Doug remained quiet, the gears of his mind working overtime to keep away negative thoughts.

The walkway slimmed and the pool of water tripled in size from its original two to three metres across. It was so deep it seemed still. They’d passed more bones, huge rib cages and fins that appeared to have come from a sea lion or a very large seal. Now and then, they heard pattering behind them, but when they spun, they didn’t see the creature.

“Holy gees,” Zoya said, moving her mask from the back of her neck to her face.

The fishy scent had suddenly bloomed, was now brimming with rot. Ahead, everything was in a shadow around the bright, bright light coming through a wall of thick steel bars.

“I need to get outside,” Zoya said and began jogging into the darkness at the end of the space—only 20 or 30 metres from where they stood.

“Race ya,” Eric said after a moment and then blew by Zoya, his flashlight banging against his side as his arms pumped.

Doug kept up the hurried walk. He trained his light on the jagged corner that shared the barred wall. Something was strange about it. He squinted, trying to understand what he was looking at. He zoomed in and studied the viewfinder. The image auto focused, and Doug nearly dropped his camera and flashlight. There was a dead human face, upside down, amid piled bones and chunks of dead animal.

“Guys?” Doug said, nearly shouting.

Silky and massive, a shimmering shadow leapt from the pool, its great teeth and strange fins silhouetted by the light backdropping it. Eric stumbled sideways but really had no chance at avoiding the creature. It was about the size of a budget sedan.

Zoya screamed and turned. She took two steps and then slipped, her face slapping hard against the cement. Doug kept the camera upright, though not really focused as he hurried toward her. The flashlight beam hit her sobbing face—her upper row of teeth had broken and shot through her bottom lip, leaving behind something that looked a bit like pickled ginger. She lifted her right arm before her, revealing an extra, unwanted hinge. She didn’t try to get to her feet and Doug didn’t get a chance to help her. A second creature, this one slightly smaller, flopped onto the concrete and started snapping until it snatched her and began reeling her in as she wailed.

 Doug backed up to the cold brick wall behind him, that whine coming out of him in a high-pitched keen. Three more huge creatures leapt from the pool and started slapping their fin feet and paddling toward him. He broke into a crab run, the camera catching everything, sort of. Once he skirted the trio, they began flapping and slapping behind him. It was no trouble to outpace them. Two little creatures popped up onto the concrete ledge and purred orca cries that trailed into barnyard squeals. One snapped at Doug’s leg and he instinctively kicked out, booting the thing in the chin, sending both scurrying away, back into the water.

Quickly, he was back into the deep darkness of the tunnel. He continued past the broken ladder, mumbling apologies that the camera collected—apologies for surviving, for running, for needing to produce content, for not making sushi of the abominations…somehow.

—

Doug had no idea how long he’d been walking, or that he’d passed a rusty ladder that had broken even higher up than the one he’d gone through. Ahead there was firelight, an old straw bale, a very big man sitting on the bale.

“Hello?” Doug said.

The man turned, his eyes wide as Humvees in the flashlight beam. “You’re real,” he said. “I heard voices and I thought it was the pig whales…learning to talk to me.”

Doug drew close enough to read that the man’s shirt had a nametag above the left breast reading PEDRO. He also saw the salted remains of a human corpse.

“Are you one of the maintenance men who went missing?” Doug said.

“I’m the only one left,” Pedro said. “I had to eat something,” he added—Doug was staring at what remained of the corpse.

“Okay…why are you still down here?” Doug said.

“Nobody came, and I can’t fit.” Pedro pointed over his shoulder.

Doug adjusted the light beam to a handwheel on the wall.

“Go up like twenty feet and there’s an elevator to the surface…you go up and you get me help, okay? You don’t just leave me here, right?”

Doug swallowed. “Of course.” He pointed the camera at Pedro. “But first you need to explain what happened. In full, especially about how you had to resort to cannibalism.”

Pedro opened his mouth, closed it, and opened it once more before he said, “Then you’ll go up and get help?”

—

“Incredible,” Maria said.

In her office she watched the footage with a dirty, stinking, and exhausted Doug Bourque. He’d called Maria from the water treatment plant with details concerning the liberation and dangerous animal management plan that the search and rescue folks had cooked up with help from the cops. She’d sent another reporter out to cover it. Until other sites got wind, Bubble News had an exclusive look at a new breed of animal.

“Make sure to keep in the bit about calling it porca, Zoya would want it that way, maybe even point out that they came up with the name together.”

Maria nodded. “That’s very generous of you.”

Doug shrugged. “I get to keep my job, right?”

XX