Little Pigs

 The Guild of Builders did not, as a rule, admit pigs. This was not due to speciesism, Ankh-Morpork was a progressive city where trolls ran banks and zombies were respected members of the civil service, but rather because pigs had a somewhat cavalier attitude toward load-bearing walls and building permits.

Pig One (whose name was Barnaby, though in the heavier, noisier music venues around the Mended Drum he answered to Swinestock) stood back to admire his masterpiece. It was a house made entirely of straw.

It is an established fact across the universe that straw is a wonderful material for hats, scarecrows, and farm animals to sleep on, but a distinctly suboptimal choice for keeping out atmospheric weather or hungry apex predators.

“It’s organic,” Barnaby grunted, tuning his three-string bass guitar. “It’s sustainable. It’s got a real earthy,cosmic-folk-thrash vibe. Plus, I saved four hundred dollars on timber, which I immediately spent on this vintage two-thousand-watt amplifier.”

“It has no foundations,” pointed out Pig Two (Mortimer), who was chewing thoughtfully on a piece of greasy twine. “And the roof appears to be held together purely by optimism and a single length of used gaffer tape.”

“Yeah, but check out the acoustic resonance!” Barnaby slammed an E-minor chord. Three stalks of barley fell out of the front door and disintegrated into dust.

Mortimer’s own structure was slightly more ambitious. It was made of sticks. Not seasoned oak or sturdy pine, but twigs he had gathered from the edge of the Shades after five minutes of exhausting, sweat-inducing labour. He had arranged them in a sort of wobbly tepee shape and secured the joints with cheap PVA glue and a severe lack of long-term vision.

“Wood,” Mortimer declared, tapping a twig. “Classic. Rustic. Very Pork-Metal. Nobody’s huffing and puffing this down. It’s got flexibility.”

Pig Three (Ignatius) leaned on a spirit level and stared at his brothers with the weary, profound disappointment usually reserved for city inspectors looking at unlicensed sausage stalls. Ignatius had an actual hard hat. He had blueprint paper tucked under his arm. He had spent three years studying structural masonry at night school.

“A slight breeze,” Ignatius said dryly, “will turn both your domiciles into high-velocity yard debris. Have you calculated the wind resistance of a wolf’s respiratory output?”

“Wolves are a social construct!” yelled Barnaby over a roaring guitar riff.

Meanwhile, elsewhere in the local continuum, the Big Bad Wolf was experiencing an existential crisis. He was not, in fact, inherently evil. He was a middle-tier bureaucrat from the Guild of Landlords who had taken an evening course in Applied Pneumatics. He wore a slightly stained trench coat and carried a clipboard.

He walked up to Barnaby’s straw shack.

“Excuse me,” the Wolf said, tapping the doorframe. A small shower of chaff rained down on his snout. “Is this structure registered with the City Planning Commission?”

“Eat distortion, narc!” shouted Barnaby, launching into a furious, sloppy riff.

The Wolf sighed. He took a deep breath.

It is a little-known fact that a fully grown wolf with a slight asthma condition can generate approximately forty-five pounds per square inch of localised air force if he really focuses on his diaphragm. He didn’t even need to huff and puff. He merely sneezed.

WHOOSH.

The straw house didn’t fall; it simply ceased to participate in the physical realm of architecture. It scattered across three neighbourhood wards exposing Barnaby sitting on an overturned bucket, still clutching his bass.

“Property value dropped,” the Wolf noted, making a tick on his clipboard.

Barnaby grabbed his instrument and bolted toward Mortimer’s stick hut.

“He’s got air attack capabilities!” Barnaby shrieked, diving through the door made of twigs.

“Hold the door!” Mortimer yelled, pressing his snout against three wobbly branches. “The sticks will absorb the kinetic—!”

The Wolf didn't even bother breathing in. He just leaned his shoulder gently against the side frame to inspect the timber grade. The PVA glue gave up its earthly struggle instantly. The stick house collapsed like a drunkard falling into a hamper of dry kindling.

Two frantic, muddy pigs scrambled up the hill to Ignatius’s place. Ignatius was sitting on the front porch of a double-brick, steel-reinforced, mortar-cured bunker complete with slate roofing, copper guttering, and a chimney designed strictly to building code.

“In,” Ignatius sighed, opening the solid oak, triple-deadbolted door.

The two pigs dove inside, panting.

The Wolf sauntered up the path. He looked at the brickwork. He pulled out a small brass measuring tape,checked the mortar depth, and tapped a brick with his knuckle.

CLINK.

“Double-course brick,” the Wolf muttered, impressed. “Fired clay. Proper damp-proof course. Nice pointing.”

He turned to the three pigs looking out through the reinforced iron-grated window.

“I can’t blow this down,” the Wolf said matter-of-factly. “The thermodynamic resistance alone makes atmospheric displacement mathematically improbable.”

“Ha!” yelled Barnaby, sticking his snout out. “Not by the hair on our chinny-chin-chins!”

“However,” the Wolf continued, adjusting his spectacles, “you’re encroaching on the drainage easement for the Ankh River by roughly two inches. Also, you didn’t file an Environmental Impact Statement regarding the chimney smoke.”

Ignatius froze. “I filed Form 108-C with the Patrician’s office last Tuesday!”

“Form 108-C is for timber frame,” the Wolf said with a thin, sharp-toothed smile. “For brick, you need Form 108-C Sub-section Blue. Which means I don’t have to blow it down. The City Bailiffs will dismantle it on Monday.”

Silence descended upon the bunker.

Barnaby plugged his amp back into the wall, cranked the volume to eleven, and looked at his brothers.

“So,” Barnaby said, “punk rock venue until Monday morning?”

Ignatius looked at his useless blueprints, looked at the Wolf, and slowly took off his hard hat.

“Hand me a guitar,” he said.