When Pigs Fly, Mind Your Tongue

The undersides of soft pink bellies drifted overhead. Vincent raised a hand to shield his eyes.

The sky was a cloudless, brilliant blue. In every direction, joyful, round pigs flew with abandon, their wings disproportionately small.

For a moment, he forgot to breathe.

Vincent clamped a hand over his mouth. He’d used the idiom in a poem the day before, a phrase meant to mean never. Nothing had ever come of his words. They had always stayed safely where he left them, harmless ink on a page.

A man on a parked car looked up and laughed. “When pigs fly!” he called, as if naming it made it ordinary.

Talk radio blared from an open car door, repeating the same phrase between static and music. People stood in the middle of the street, faces tilted upward like witnesses to a first rehearsal.

“Oink, oink,” from a toddler learning animal sounds. “Look!” Older children squealed, delighted rather than surprised.

Hooves dangling, the pig’s tails wiggled lazily as if the sky were a pond and they were enjoying a swim.

Vincent felt something loosen in his chest, a sense that a boundary had been crossed without anyone questioning it.

In the morning, a sandpaper tongue grazed his cheek. Tiny paws kneaded his chest. He squinted into the sharp sunlight, rubbing confusion from his eyes.

He bolted upright, ran a hand through his hair, then crossed to the window and pulled the curtains back. In the glare, he thought he could still make out the last of the pigs, their wiggling tails dissolving into cotton clouds. He stepped back too quickly, as if distance alone might keep the world from rearranging itself again.

He was starting to wonder if waking up was just another kind of dreaming.

The sour smell of fish stung his nose as he scraped a can into his Bengal, Maxine’s dish.

She purred at the sound of fork against tin, tail curling around his ankles, unbothered by whatever had just rewritten the sky.

Vincent wrote that day until his hand ached, until his fingers and the meaty part of his palm were smudged gray.

He wrote until he fell asleep at his desk. A postcard come to life—that’s how Vincent pictured Hawaii, and he’d always wanted to go. He’d been working on a flash fiction piece, turning the phrase the world at your feet over in his mind, imagining warm sand beneath his bare soles. He remembered the cool press of paper against his cheek as he drifted off.

He woke standing at his front door, sandals on his feet. Pristine white sand and swaying palm leaves covered the porch, “Wish you were here” written in bright, bubble cursive. Humid, salty air pulled him in, lingering raindrops melting down his cheeks. A rainbow appeared, then another. He spotted a pair of dolphins jumping through a wave.

Hawaii was so perfect it almost seemed staged.

Until Vincent’s mouth went dry and his stomach ached, until the bare skin on his shoulders burned. Fallen coconuts lay evenly on the beach, as if placed intentionally, but he didn’t have a knife. He felt for pockets, realized he didn’t have anything.

His vision blurred. He could feel it unraveling at the edges. It was just a dream, just a dream, the thought looping tighter, as if repetition might hold it in place. He tried to take a deeper breath; tears would only make things worse. The air seemed to have thickened, pressing against him in waves. Sounds bound him in circles, crying birds, breaking waves, his own cry folding back on itself.

When he’d first arrived, he’d been relieved to be the only person in sight. The emptiness had felt like permission, like the world had stepped aside just long enough for him to exist without being seen. Now it felt different, more an omission than an absence. The silence felt aware, waiting to see what he’d write next.

The horizon tilted. The sky felt too close, pressing down like a lid.

When Maxine finally woke him, Vincent scrambled for water.

He’d spent the day far from his computer, away from any pencils or paper. For a brief moment, he even wondered if his thoughts could come true.

Prickly whiskers tickled his nose, followed by the soft press of her cheek against his jaw. She rarely needed to remind him about dinner.

“Sorry, Max. I’m under the weather,” he said, scraping flakes of tuna and oil into her dish. He washed his hands, letting the tap run longer than necessary, splashing cold water onto his face until it stung. It slid down his neck in heavier sheets, thickening as it fell.

It didn’t stop.

Water burst through gaps in the ceiling that hadn’t been there before. Lightning flashed, stark and fluorescent against a darkened sky. Thunder seized the room and turned it on its side. Glass shattered. Paperbacks tumbled. Playing cards scattered like startled birds.

Heat climbed Vincent’s neck. His lips were dry, burning with salt. He fought to breathe.

He was sick, below the deck of a ship.

He didn’t remember going to bed.

Splintered wood bit into his fingers as he felt his way through the dark. He stumbled into a bunk, a thin mattress breaking his fall. He peeled off his soaked shirt and tore a curtain loose, wrapping it tight around his shoulders.

Maxine was nowhere to be found.

Tears burned his eyes as he braced himself, thrown against the side of the boat as the storm barreled on.

When morning broke, harsh sunlight pierced through the deck, illuminating the mess. Vincent’s eyes were swollen. His body ached. He’d only wanted to believe his words could matter.

Voices swelled above deck. Three crew members ducked down the narrow stairs, laughing at an inside joke.

“Wooo, that was a rough one. How ya doin?”

Vincent tried to speak,

“Cat got your tongue?”

More laughter.

Vincent’s eyes widened. He tried to speak. He wanted to beg the man to take it back.

What came out was only a strangled, useless sound.

Behind the crew, Maxine toyed with something on the ship’s floor, batting it lazily between her paws.

His tongue.