This Little Piggy

Tony used his phone to read from a Wikipedia page. "Pig Beach is an island populated by feral, swimming pigs."Their bartender said, "Síõor." "They're also amiable. Visitors come to swim with the pigs, but if you're sailing alone, be cautious. It's easy to get lost because there are hundreds of islands out here.

Karen let out a squeal. "Oh my gosh! That sounds adorable! We must leave."

Ena was reluctant to express her doubts. She reassured herself, "You're just paranoid." You no longer take your anxiety medication. You're panicking out because of this. You're alright. It's all good.

However, Ena couldn't get rid of the notion that they need to turn around and head back to Miami instead of leaving.

She was obviously the only one who shared that sentiment. Karen and Tony were thrilled.

Even Penny, bronzing in the light, appeared easygoing and modest. She caressed her arm and said, "You okay, babe?"

Ena gave a nod. She maintained her composure and concealed her growing sense of dread.

You're alright. It will be enjoyable. Play with some pigs. Have fun.

Karen gasped in shock and anguish as her mouth opened wide. Blood pulsed from the cut on her leg. Her eyes bulged as she observed her own blood loss.Babe, hold on! Hold on! Tony sinched his belt taught after slipping it around her upper thigh.

At that moment, Karen let out a desperate, beseeching cry.

Penny was pulled up the beach by Ena in the direction of her other pals. "Stay awake, babe!"

Penny lolled her head. Her face was dripping with blood. When the boat lurched, she must have struck her head. Fiberglass slivers penetrated her shoulder like a porcupine's quills.

Did something explode?

Ena glanced out to sea and watched as Tony's broken sailboat slipped beneath the waves with sickening finality.

A sound pulled her attention to the tree line behind her. A grunt? Something shifted among the ferns and moved away from them into the shadows of foliage.

"Hello?" she shouted. "We need help!"

No one answered.

#

The sheer volume of the absolute darkness around them—the screeches and clicks of critters and the rustling of wind in the palms—filled the night between the booms of breakers on the beach, making it impossible to sleep.

They had tended their injuries as best as they could. They knew they couldn't keep Karen's leg in a tourniquet forever. She could lose the leg if they weren't careful. Once the bleeding had stopped, right before the sun had set, Ena had used Tony's t-shirt to bandage Karen's wound, tying it tight, then, saying a prayer that Karen wouldn't immediately bleed out, removed the belt from her thigh.

As infuriating as it was to hear Karen's incessant wails all night, at least it meant she wasn't dead. That's what Ena told herself. She was more worried about Penny. Her head injury could be a concussion. It could be something worse. In any case, they needed a hospital.

Something trampled the earth nearby.

"Hello?" Tony shouted into the opaque darkness.

They heard oinks recede into the night.

"Fucking pigs," Ena sighed.

#

The night passed in indeterminable hours. Ena did her best to tend to their wounds with no light source. Karen still sobbed, Penny rested, and the cacophony of the island roared around them.

More pigs bayed and trampled by. Their little oinks like chuckles and grunts of condescension.

"Shut up!" Tony shouted into the darkness. "Shut up you fucking pigs! Shut up!"

The pigs only grew louder.

Ena could have sworn that among the patter of tiny hoofs in the sand she heard something else—something with a heavier, wider gait. The slow stalking tread of something human.

It's just a pig, she told herself. You're being paranoid.

#

Ena woke to hot breath on her face, the sound of heavy grunts inches away from her. She opened her eyes to see nothing but the glint of starlight in a black, beady eye in the night.

Ena held perfectly still, her entire body locked between flight and fright, electric with adrenaline.

"Ena? Is that you?" Tony said.

The presence looming over her shifted, and charged, kicking sand into her face.

"What the—" Tony shouted, but was cut off.

Ena spat sand, rising to her hands and knees. "Tony?"

Tony gagged. All Ena could see were shadows.

"Tony, where are you?"

A muffled crack shattered the night. A body hit the earth with loose limbs.

A heavy shape, big as a linebacker, melded into the darkness.

Ena felt her way across the ground until she found Tony's leg.

"Tony?" Karen screeched. "What's going on? Tony??"

Ena felt Tony's chest, his pulse. Nothing.

Tony was dead, his neck shattered.

The pigs laughed, oinking and stinking up the night with their shit.

#

Ena armed herself with a heavy branch. She stood over Penny protectively, waving her branch around her, testing the air for assailants in the dark, like a blind child swinging for a piñata.

There was nothing there.

She felt a hand on her leg. Ena jumped and swung her branch around, connecting with nothing.

"It's just me, babe," Penny moaned.

Ena reached down to hold her hand. "Penny? You okay?"

"You need to go, Ena."

"What?"

"You need to run. Get out of here."

"I'm not leaving you, babe. I'm staying right here."

Karen wept silently somewhere near them.

Pigs bayed all around incessantly. They wouldn't stop. There were so many of them.

"You gotta run, babe," Penny said. "Swim to the next island. You can do it. Do it for me, okay?"

"No!" Ena held tight to Penny's hand and swung her cudgel about them with the other. "Not a chance."

#

Karen had stopped crying.

When did she stop? Ena wondered.

"Karen?" Ena said into the dark. "Karen, you there?"

The pigs oinked. The pigs grunted. The pigs smacked their lips, gnashed their teeth, and squealed. The pigs fucked, the pigs ran to and fro, the pigs laughed, the pigs chewed, the pigs ate.

"Karen?" Ena screamed. "Karen!"

The pigs oinked. The pigs ate.

#

In the ruddy glow of pre-dawn, Ena looked into Tony's dead eyes and the expression of horror forever frozen on his face.

Ena cast her tired, sand-scratched eyes around and saw what remained of Karen.

Ena retched what little remained in her stomach: a few ounces of sea water and bile.

"Babe," Penny said, weakly.

Ena looked down at her girlfriend. Brown blood caked the sand around her head in a grim halo.

"Babe, I'm not feelin' too good," Penny said. "I feel cold."

"Hang on, babe," Ena said. "Just hang on."

Ena heaved Penny across her shoulders, and trudged away from the half-eaten carnage that used to be their friends.

#

Ena never saw a single pig. There could have been thousands of them on this island for the raucous they'd made in the night. But now they had fallen eerily silent.

Ena carried Penny along the coastline, searching for signs of civilization, signs of boats on the horizon, signs of anything she could use to help.

"We're gonna get back to Miami," Ena said. "We're gonna get you some help, and we're never gonna leave our house again, just be a couple of shut-ins who never go on adventures. We'll take up knitting or crocheting or some shit, and we'll just sit on the couch all day. How's that sound?"

Penny hadn't said a word since the sun had come up.

#

The sun was high in the sky. Ena collapsed under Penny's limp weight. She couldn't carry her a step further. But to try to rouse her, to press open an eyelid, to check for a pulse would confirm something she feared she already knew.

Penny was gone.

#

Ena sat and cradled Penny's lifeless form for hours. Time stretched.

Ena swatted the crabs and birds away from her girlfriend. She wept. Nature was coming to claim it's pound of flesh. She couldn't hold it off forever.

The chorus of pigs drew near. Ena stood on unsteady legs.

"I'm sorry, babe," she said.

She picked a direction, and walked farther down the beach, choking on sobs that shook her to her core.

#

She walked in a daze the rest of the day, following the coastline. She glanced about her as the last of the light faded.

She wasn't alone.

A hulking silhouette stood on the beach, just barely visible in the distance. A human man, naked, but with a pig's snout and ears.

Ena heard the distant squeals of pigs. She turned away from it, and shuffled farther down the beach.

#

Ena dragged her feet forward, one then the other, exhausted, dehydrated, sore all over. She walked through the pitch-black night, following the steady curve of the beach, barely able to see her hand in front of her face.

She got too close to the water a few times, and the waves knocked her over. But she couldn't stop. She knew that the pig-man could be right behind her, could descend upon her any second and snap her limbs and eat her flesh.

#

But it never did.

When dawn finally broke, and she could barely stand, shuffling one small step at a time through wet sand, she heard something.

Pigs. Somewhere ahead of her. Oinks and squeals and splashing and something else. Was that people laughing?

As she drew near to the sound, she heard people talking and shouting in excited exclamations.

"Oh my god! They're so cute!"

"Look at that one!"

Around a bend in the coast, Ena saw a boat off the shore and people: tourists swimming with the pigs.

"Run," Ena said weakly. "Run away."

Tourists threw food to the pigs, laughing in glee to each other as the little pigs hogged their offerings, wolfing down their processed foods, their chips and candy and crackers.

"Give them some beer!" one girl laughed.

A man in board shorts cracked open a light beer and poured it over a pigs head. Three pigs crowded in around him and lapped up the liquid. The tourists laughed riotously.

"Get away," Ena croaked, dragging herself closer, waving a weak arm.

The pigs frolicked. The tourists clapped and laughed.

The pigs surrounded the tourists. The pigs feasted in bacchanalian riot. And when the humans had no food left to give them, they ate what hadn't been offered, taking more than what was given, eating all, feasting to the bone, chewing down to the marrow until there was nothing left.

Ena watched it all, saw the blood ooze down to the ocean in rivulets, darkening the sea foam.

Ena scratched at her own face with her fingernails and screamed. She fell to her knees.

When heavy footsteps approached behind her, she had nothing left in her. No fight. No flight. Nothing.

A shadow passed over her, blocking out the sun. There was a deep, croaking, grunting oink right behind her.

"I know," Ena wept. "I know. Just kill me. I'm so tired. Just kill me."

She felt a hand pat her on the head. There was another deep, resounding oink.

Then the shadow passed. Footsteps moved up the beach, back the way she had come.

#

Ena woke to voices.

"Oh my god! There's a body over there in the sand! Look!"

She couldn't move. She was too weak. All she could do was turn her eyes and squint at the shapes moving toward her along the beach. In the waves of heat rising from the sand, they looked inhuman. Like smears of grease against glass.

As she lost consciousness, she wondered why she was spared.

I wasn't, she told herself. I wasn't spared. The pigs are going to eat me eventually. They're going to eat everybody.