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Kevyn ([personal profile] kevyn) wrote2008-02-07 02:55 pm

ENG 351 Fiction Writing Assignment: Tigers are Predators, Humans are Prey

Here it is, my first attempt at writing a complete short story.

Kevyn 'Hagrid' Jacobs
ENG 351: Intro to Fiction Writing
2008.01.31

Tigers are Predators, Humans are Prey


“WE RULE THE PLANET!”

The challenge reverberated across the dry moat, echoing off the sculpted concrete walls on the other side. A skinny human male with spots of acne and only the very first stirrings of a beard stood on the lip of the moat, his fist raised in the air defiantly. Across the gulf, on the grassy enclosure beyond, lay two Siberian tigers, ignoring the boy, just as they ignored most of the noisy visitors to the zoo. A third tiger, a tigress named Olga, turned her head to look at the source of the disturbance.

“Jim!” gasped one of his buddies, from behind the visitors' fence. “What are you doing?” he giggled nervously.

“Reminding them who's boss,” replied Jim, whose calves were buried deep in the low hedge that ran along the top of the moat on the public side. He turned his head to see his friends, who were still standing on the legal side of the metal bars of the fence. His audience of two was still there a few feet behind him, looking around nervously for security cameras or zoo employees to catch him.

“D-dude, that's enough!” whined Bill, the tallest of the three boys. “You're gonna get us b-busted!”

“Yeah, dude, come back!” pleaded Joe, the shortest and squattest of the three, his eyes wide in a mixture of fear and awe.

Jim ignored the requests of his friends to come back to the safety of the fence. He knew he wasn't going to fall into the moat, and the tigers weren't any real threat, what with the 13 foot vertical wall that separated them from zoo visitors. He was enjoying the rush from breaking the rules, by climbing the fence and crossing the hedge to the lip of the trench which marked the real barrier between human and animal. And he was enjoying the effect his antics had on his buddies.

The boy reached his grubby hand into his pocket and pulled out one of the small pebbles he had
gathered earlier in the day. He raised his arm in a throwing motion, and beamed the rock straight across the moat at the tigress that was watching him. It missed.

Grinning broadly, Jim shouted at the seated female. “You know you're over there, trapped, and we're over here, free, right? Why is that? That's because we're the top of the food chain!”
Another nervous giggle from Bill. Joe was quietly entertaining the notion of climbing the fence and joining Jim on the edge, then thought better of it. “Dude, come on, stop showing off!”

Jim reached into his pocket again, drawing out another stone. He let loose with another missile, striking the tigress squarely in the rump. Olga visibly flinched.

“Yeeeeeah!” shouted Jim. “Did ya see that, boys? I hit the tiger!”

“Nice s-shot,” stammered Bill.

“Yeah, nice shot! You hit the tiger. Now can we go?” added Joe, glancing around to see if anyone was watching them. Nobody was.

“Go? Hell!” retorted Jim, drawing another stone out of his pocket. “I'm just getting started teaching this oversized puddy tat about who's in charge.”

Olga was not going to take this pelting lying down. After the second stone hit her in the head, she stood up from her resting position, and stretched her body and claws and jaws the languid way cats do when they just get up from a nap. Then she padded to the edge of the moat, and stood there, staring intently at the boy with the rocks.

“Ooooh! Look! The puddy tat isn't happy!” Sneered Jim. “What are you going to do about it? Huh? Not a damn thing you can do from over there!”

Olga paced the edge of the moat briefly, never taking her eyes off of Jim. Fixated on him, she
suddenly bounded down into the moat. He fired off a couple more missiles at her, but missed as she flowed across the bottom of the concrete trench. When she reached the base of the wall, she was 13 feet directly below, staring unblinking up at him. Her tail was twitching.

“Where is it?” exhaled Joe from behind the fence. “I can't see it anymore!”

“We can't see that part of the moat from this angle,” replied Bill.

“Oh, I can see her all right,” snarled Jim, looking straight down into the predator's yellow eyes. “She's right down here looking at me. But there's still not a damn thing she can do! Puddy tat is stalking me! Isn't it cute?” With that, he let loose with another stone, which popped her right between the eyes. The tiger winced.

“Hah! Take that, Be-otch!” Jim hadn't had this much fun tormenting a cat since the time
he had shut his Aunt Lois' bad-tempered Siamese in the dishwasher, several years before.
By this time, Jim's antics were starting to draw a crowd, though no uniformed zoo employees showed up, nor did anyone take action to stop the boy from agitating the tiger. The onlookers just watched, blankly, as if a teenaged boy taunting a Siberian Tiger from inside the fence was something normal. He was inside the fence, some of them reasoned, so he must be a zoo employee.

Olga, however, knew better.

For three years, now, the tigress had calmly eyed the constant parade of noisy visitors that came to watch the tiger habitat. She had little direct contact with humans, except the zookeepers, who brought her food and were well-trained in how to interact with a Siberian Tiger -- they clearly had the upper hand in all dealings, so she didn't think of them as potential prey.

But as the rank smell of the pudgy, mewling crowd wafted over the moat towards her, day after day, she couldn't help but idly wonder if those plump, partially-shaved primate bodies would be good to eat.

Until today, however, they had always stayed behind the fence.

Until today, they had never gotten so close.

Sometimes visitors would throw things at the tigers to try to get their attention. Coins, wadded up brochures, the occasional pine cone. Rarely did the impromptu projectile make it across the 30-foot moat to the tigers' enclosure, and even rarer did one actually hit the resting tigers.

But this one had hit her several times now, and was intent on shouting at her, gesticulating at her, trying to get her attention. Well, it had it. And it was inside the fence and past the hedge.

“Awwwww, poor widdle puddy tat, whatsamattuh?” sniped Jim, letting lose with another pebble.
“Wanna take me out, but you can't jump this high? Awwwwwwwwww”

Thwack. Another stone popped Olga squarely between the eyes. She flinched again,
her tail twitching even more rapidly. She flattened herself against the floor of the moat tensing her hindquarters.

“Yeeeee-hah!” crowed Jim, proud of his marksmanship. “Did you hear that?”
“Is it still d-down there?” asked Bill, straining to lean as far over the fence and hedge as possible to see the action below, but without luck.

“Let's go now,” Joe whined, starting to get bored with the drama he couldn't see, and wondered if the lion exhibit wouldn't be more interesting. “People are starting to watch, too,” he nervously informed Jim.

Jim laughed, and glanced back over his shoulder at Joe with a devil-may-care grin. “Let them, what are they going to do, arrest us? We're minors. Worst they'll do is kick us out and call our parents. Big deal.I'm having fun. Watch this!”

He knelt down on the lip, balanced on one knee, and stuck his other leg out into the moat, directly above the tiger. He shook it back and forth, tauntingly.

“Can't get me, tuna-breath!” he crowed, and just as he did, Olga made her move.

Like a released spring uncoiling, she jumped. Higher than she had ever jumped in her life. Straight up the side of the wall. She propelled herself more than half the distance, before digging her extended claws into the rough and cracked concrete wall like climber's pitons. Going on a combination of momentum and sheer determination, she clawed and struggled for purchase in the aging cement of the wall, breaking a couple of claws in the process. In a flash, she had covered the 13 vertical feet , and was scrambling over the lip and smack into the shocked boy who still hadn't registered what had just happened. He flinched, and fell back into the hedge.

Olga pounced, grabbing Jim by the arm and back with her front claws, and sinking her teeth deep into the flesh of his neck. Hot blood instantly began to fill her mouth, and the sensation exhilarated her.

Jim barely had time to squeak, stunned as he was, before his vocal cords were crushed. Somewhere, deep down in the most primitive part of his mammalian brain, the message finally got through that should have been ringing alarm bells ten minutes before: “Danger! Predator! Attacking! Danger! Flee!”

But by then, it was too late, and he struggled vainly for a few moments, never finding purchase as Olga ripped huge gashes in his side and back with her claws. She then brought her hind claw up into his groin and raked a set of huge gashes across his genitals and leg.
He was losing massive amounts of blood, and his last conscious thought before succumbing to the darkness was, “...but... ...but... we rule the planet..!”

Blood was everywhere, and Bill and Joe were too much in shock to react for a couple of seconds. Then the delayed fear reaction kicked in, and the two remaining boys turned tail and ran, screaming.

Quickly, the realization of what was happening dawned on the rest of the onlookers, who also
expressed the better part of valour. They pushed and jostled each other in a blind panic to
escape. One plump woman with a baby stroller started to scream as another woman collided with her, tipping the stroller over. The toddler, still belted in to the seat, and startled to find itself in a sideways position, starts to howl, while the mother struggles to right the overturned stroller.

And Olga, satisfied that her tormentor is finally dead, decided to eat her dinner in a more tranquil setting. She grabs his head in her powerful jaws and jumps back down into the moat, dragging Jim's limp body with her, where she can eat without all the screaming monkeys.

And, my, oh yes, these primates are tasty!

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