The Curse of the Werepig

Leo visits a city farm with horrifying consequences

The neon pulse of Canal Street felt a million miles away from the damp, heavy silence of the Northern Quarter. For Leo, a twenty-four-year-old with a penchant for thrifted flannels and a career in freelance graphic design that barely paid for his oat milk lattes, Manchester was a city of edges. Usually, those edges were sharp and exciting. Today, they felt frayed.
Seeking a moment of grounding, Leo had wandered toward one of the city’s small, tucked-away urban farms—a defiant patch of green and mud squeezed between red-brick warehouses and luxury apartment blocks.
The air at the farm smelled of wet hay and old stone. Leo leaned over the wooden slats of a waist-high fence, watching a massive sow wallow in a patch of greyish sludge. Standing apart from the rest was a boar that looked... wrong. It was large, even for its breed, with skin the color of a bruised plum and eyes that weren't the usual dull orbs of a farm animal. They were a piercing, intelligent amber.
"Hey there, big guy," Leo murmured, reaching out a hand. He didn’t have any food, just a misguided sense of kinship with a creature that looked as out of place as he felt.
In a blur of muscle and grit, the boar lunged.
It wasn't a feast; it was a nip. A sharp, lightning-fast snap of yellowed teeth against the fleshy part of Leo’s thumb. He yelped, pulling back. A bead of dark, thick blood rose to the surface. The boar didn't retreat; it stood there, chewing on the air, its amber eyes locked on his.
"Shit," Leo hissed, sucking on the wound. It tasted metallic, bitter—more like copper and bile than salt. He looked around, but the farmhands were busy with a group of schoolkids near the goats. He wiped his hand on his jeans, shook off the stinging sensation, and started the walk home. He thought nothing of it. After all, Manchester was full of things that bit; usually, they just did it with words.

The Transformation Begins
By 8:00 PM, the rain began to lash against the windows of Leo’s studio apartment. He sat at his desk, the glow of his monitor casting a sickly blue light over his skin. He felt... heavy. It wasn't the heaviness of tiredness, but a literal weight, as if his bones were being replaced with lead.
He stood up to get a glass of water, and a wave of nausea hit him—not a spinning head, but a churning, ravenous hunger that felt like a hole opening in his gut. He stumbled into the bathroom, splashing cold water on his face.
Then, he looked in the mirror.
The first thing he noticed was the smell. A pungent, earthy musk was radiating from his own pores, thick enough to taste. He leaned in closer, his breath fogging the glass.
"What the...?"
His nose was twitching uncontrollably. As he watched, the bridge of his nose began to flatten, the cartilage softening and spreading. The nostrils flared, stretching wide and wet. The skin there turned a raw, irritated pink, slick with a thick, translucent mucus. It wasn't just a cold; his nose was migrating, pushing forward into a blunt, sensitive disc.
Leo gasped, but the sound that came out wasn't a breath. It was a wet, guttural huff.
He pulled his lips back in horror. His straight, white teeth—the ones his parents had spent thousands on in braces—were darkening. A foul, brownish stain bloomed from the gums downward, the enamel thickening and squaring off into heavy, grinding plates. His canines began to elongate, pushing against his lower lip with a dull, aching pressure.
He reached up to his head, his fingers trembling. His ears were migrating upward. The delicate lobes were vanishing, replaced by thick, leathery triangles that flopped forward, heavy with coarse, wiry hair. He could hear everything—the scurrying of a mouse behind the wainscoting, the wet slap of tires on the street three floors down, the rhythmic thumping of his own heart, which now sounded like a heavy hoofbeat.

The Bloating
"Help," he tried to scream.
The word died in a spray of foam. His throat felt thick, his vocal cords snapping and reforming into something wider, deeper.
The transformation moved downward. Leo watched in the mirror as his lean, gym-toned frame began to distort. His ribs didn't just expand; they bowed outward. His stomach didn't just bloat; it surged. The skin stretched tight, becoming translucent and mapped with angry red veins. He felt his abdominal muscles tear and knit back together as a massive, pendulous weight settled in his midsection.
He was becoming round. Not soft-fat, but a dense, muscular bloating that made his fashionable clothes hiss at the seams. His favorite vintage shirt gave way first, buttons flying off like shrapnel.
His hands were the most painful. He watched, screaming silently, as his fingers fused. The index and middle fingers thickened into pillars of bone, the fingernails darkening and hardening into cloven, obsidian horn. His thumbs shriveled, receding into the wrist. By the time the sun had fully set over the Pennines, Leo was no longer standing on two legs. His center of gravity had shifted, forcing him onto all fours as his spine arched and thickened.
He was a Werepig. A creature of gluttony and filth, born of an ancient, muddy curse.
The Night of the Grunt
The apartment felt like a cage. The smell of his own laundry, his expensive cologne, his discarded pizza boxes—it was all overwhelming, a cacophony of scents that demanded investigation.
He didn't walk out of his apartment; he trotted, his new hooves clicking rhythmically on the hardwood floor. He pushed the door open with the sheer mass of his snout and tumbled into the hallway.
The back alleys of Manchester are a labyrinth of shadows, grease-stained cobblestones, and forgotten history. To the human Leo, they were shortcuts to be avoided after midnight. To the Werepig, they were a buffet.
He moved through the darkness of the Northern Quarter, a pale, bloated shape weaving between overflowing dumpsters. He wasn't looking for love or conversation anymore. He was looking for slop.
He found a bin behind a kebab shop. With a powerful toss of his head, he sent the heavy plastic lid flying. He didn't use hands—he didn't have them. He dived in snout-first. Cold fries, congealed grease, grey meat, sodden cardboard—it was a symphony of flavor. He let out a long, satisfied oink that echoed off the brick walls, a sound so deep it vibrated in his chest.
Occasionally, a drunk reveler would stumble past the mouth of the alley.
"Oi, did you hear that?" a voice would drift into the dark.
"Just a big rat, mate. Manchester's full of 'em."
Leo would freeze, his amber eyes glowing in the dark, his trotters buried in filth. He wanted to call out, to tell them he was the guy who used to buy them drinks at The Eagle, but all that came out was a wet, rhythmic snort. He was a prisoner in a carcass of lard and bristle.

The Curse of the New Moon
As the first light of dawn began to grey the soot-stained sky, Leo felt a sickening contraction. The mass retreated, the bones cracked back into place, and he found himself shivering and naked behind a dumpster, covered in bin juice and shame.
He scrambled home, his mind racing. He remembered the farm. He remembered the amber eyes of the boar.
He did the math. The lunar cycle was unforgiving. He had exactly twenty-eight days. If he didn't find the specific animal that had bitten him—the "Plug" as the old legends called the source of the infection—and somehow break the cycle by the next new moon, the change would become permanent. He wouldn't wake up as Leo anymore. He would be a five-hundred-pound hog, destined for the mud, or worse, the slaughterhouse.
The Descent
The following weeks were a blur of terror and hunger. Every night, the change came faster. Every night, he became a little more pig and a little less man.
He stopped going to work. He stopped answering texts. His apartment began to smell. He spent his days scouring occult forums and old books on lycanthropy, his human fingers trembling as they grew thicker and more calloused with each passing day.
"The Suidae Curse," one forum post read. "Unlike the wolf, the pig does not hunt for blood. It hunts for waste. It seeks to consume the world's filth until it becomes part of the earth. To break it, the victim must draw the blood of the sire under the shadow of the New Moon."
Leo looked at his calendar. The New Moon was tomorrow.
He was already losing his speech. When he tried to say "help," it sounded like "huff." When he tried to say "boar," it sounded like a wet "borgh."
His skin was permanently stained a pale, sickly pink. He could no longer wear shoes; his feet had become too blocky, the toes already beginning to fuse into the dreaded cloven shape.

The Final Night
The New Moon rose—or rather, it didn't. The sky was a void of pitch black, the stars swallowed by Manchester's perpetual cloud cover.
Leo didn't wait for the sun to go down. The transformation took him in the late afternoon, a violent, bone-snapping eruption of flesh. He was massive now, his back bristling with coarse, black wire, his tusks curving out from his brownish maw like ivory daggers.
He burst through his apartment door, shattering the frame. He didn't take the stairs; he tumbled down them, a boulder of muscle and hunger.
He ran. He didn't run like a man; he charged with the terrifying power of a wild animal. He ignored the screams of pedestrians on Great Ancoats Street. He was a blur of pinkish-grey flesh and thundering hooves, his snout held high, catching the scent of the farm.
The scent of him.
The farm was closed, locked behind heavy iron gates. Leo didn't care. He slammed his shoulder into the wood-and-wire fence, the structure groaning and splintering under his weight.
He reached the mud pit.
The other pigs scattered, squealing in terror at the monster in their midst. But one stayed.
The Sire. The Plug.
The boar stood in the center of the muck, its amber eyes glowing with a hellish light. It was even larger than Leo, a mountain of ancient, cursed muscle. It let out a roar—not a squeal, but a sound like a grinding tectonic plate.
Leo charged.
The two beasts collided in the mud. It was a silent battle, save for the wet thud of flesh on flesh and the rhythmic, desperate grunting. Leo felt the Sire’s tusks rake across his flank, tearing through his thick hide. He didn't feel pain—he felt a surging, porcine rage.
He lunged, his brown, heavy teeth seeking the Sire’s throat. He didn't want to kill; he needed the blood. He needed the source.
As the midnight hour struck, Leo clamped his jaws onto the Sire's ear. He bit down, hard.
A fountain of dark, hot blood sprayed into his mouth. It tasted like lightning and old earth.
The world went white.

The Morning After
The sun rose over Manchester, casting a cold, judgmental light over the city farm.
A farmhand, arriving early to feed the livestock, stopped at the gate. The fence was demolished. In the center of the mud pit, a young man lay curled in a fetal position. He was naked, covered in filth and deep, jagged scratches.
Next to him lay the Great Boar, dead. Not from a wound, but seemingly from exhaustion, its heart having given out in the night.
Leo opened his eyes. He felt the cold mud against his skin. He reached up and touched his face.
His nose was narrow. His teeth felt smooth and small. His ears were soft and human.
He let out a breath—a long, shaky, human breath.
He stood up, his legs wobbling like a newborn calf’s. He looked at the city skyline in the distance, the glass towers of Deansgate catching the morning sun. He was Leo again.
But as he turned to leave, he caught a glimpse of his reflection in a puddle of rainwater.
His eyes were still amber. And deep in his throat, when he tried to clear it, there was the faint, unmistakable echo of an oink.
He walked toward the exit, but as he passed the trash cans near the entrance, he stopped. The smell of a discarded, half-eaten burger wafted toward him.
He hesitated. His stomach growled—a deep, cavernous sound.
Leo looked around to see if anyone was watching. Then, slowly, he reached into the bin.
The curse was broken, but the hunger... the hunger was forever.