Hildy, the rat-faced girl, watched the pig man from outside his window. Despite her name, she was quite beautiful. She wasn't sure when they started calling her the rat-faced girl or why. It could've been because of the nervous twitch in her nose, or her buck teeth. But she knew it was most likely because of her whiskers. And they were genuine, honest-to-god whiskers, not just some hairy upper lip. They shot out from either side of her nose and would twitch when it did. She first noticed them when she was four and they had been steadily growing longer ever since. When she was a child, her mother told her it was because she let the barn cats lick her face. Throughout her life, she tried to pretend the name didn't bother her. But, it was especially difficult to maintain her dignity in the high school cafeteria when the others threw pieces of cheese and cornuts at her and chanted, "Hildy Grace has a rat face!"

Aside from the whiskers she was perfectly normal and her physical beauty was undeniable. She had legs from here to Nova Scotia and an ass that wouldn't quit. She spent most of her time entertaining men from the bar who found her whiskers to be "exotic." Some people in the town claimed she had magical powers. This was less on account of the whiskers, but rather because she had an unusual habit of being caught up in localized updrafts that would whisk her away into the air and carry her to the outskirts of town.

Which is exactly what happened twenty minutes before she stumbled across Pig Man's house and noticed he was admiring a very fine looking cake. The pig man fascinated her, but more than that she was drawn to cake. It had been a full day since she'd eaten, and what with flying across town and having to walk the 27 miles back home, she found herself rather famished. She wanted that cake, and at that moment she was prepared to do anything to get it.