ANIMALS
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This story started out as a challenge I set myself to write a play.
A single location, and far more dialogue than I’ve ever written in a short story. It’s also the first time I’ve written a short story in third person - until now I’ve only been able to truly connect in first person.
The characters came quickly, and as they started talking and got to know them, I could feel what they wanted. I knew the story was about each person experiencing a flash forward through their lives, and then taking that away before they could ever experience it. I wanted to deeply feel the tragedy of those dreams and visions never coming true.
Writing a story about an active shooting event is something I didn’t want to take on lightly, or use as an empty storytelling device. It’s perhaps among the most sensitive and troubling of all subjects, and having the mostly-unexplained protest event led by young people wasn’t easy. But it felt somehow true, and grounded in awful reality, and matched the violence of how it feels to dream, to be able to reach out and touch it, and then have it all taken away.
Freeze time.
The movie’s on pause.
This is the ’90’s so it’s an ugly pause. The room looks like someone shredded a photograph and couldn’t put it back together, but you can still make it out clearly enough.
It’s dark.
Maybe no bigger than a two-car garage.
There are one, two, three- there are seven sources of light. Four security monitors, a computer screen, a sliding window and a door to the daylight outside that looks like it’s about to slam.
• • •
There are lines everywhere the light pours in. Sharp lines from the screens, smoke lines from Rosa’s cigars. Her old cheeks are sucked in like leathery bellows and she’s closed her eyes like it hurts a little after breathing out smokey lines of despair from Alex’s questions. Lines of escape from Hannah. From Hannah being Hannah. There are ashtrays and staff radios and old coffee mugs and broken pencils and zoo maps and marker pen corrections on zoo maps.
Here’s how the room’s laid out. That sliding window? That’s where Hannah sits. She has a bell that says ring for attention and she has a fake wedding ring that’s just for attention and she has a wooden holder full of timetables and she has a sickly positive outlook on the world that drives Rosa insane because Rosa is jealous because Rosa thinks Hannah thinks Hannah will live forever.
Rosa’s desk is on the left wall of the office, a desk she sits at with her chair arched back so she can stare at the soap opera action on the zoo’s black and white monitors mounted on the wall. It goes: monitor, cable tangled in cables, monitor, monitor, dried up silly string from the Christmas party ‘85, more tangled cables that aren’t plugged into anything anymore, monitor. Below that, a long desk. Rosa. Next to Rosa, Alex. Alex is the work experience boy who pretends he doesn’t want to be there but his secret is he actually thinks this is all really cool. Alex asks curious questions even though he doesn’t understand the answers.
The movie’s on pause, with less than an hour to go before Hannah, Rosa, Alex and everybody else in that VHS room will all be dead.
Ready?
Play.
• • •
Bang.
Rosa jerked in her chair as the door slammed hard and she yelled “Harriet,” emphasising the T like her spit was a dart and the ceiling was a picture of Harriet.
The slamming door also made Hannah jump and she jabbed her nail file into her thumb as she turned to answer the visitor’s question at the window.
“We close at nine, but the last road train to the car park leaves at eight-thirty.”
“Nine-thirty,” said the room in unison.
“What’s that?” asked Hannah, beaming, and still talking to the outside world. “Yes, absolutely. The penguin shows are at one, three-thirty and six-fifteen, but they only dress up for the last one.”
Here’s Hannah - twenty years old, crooked nose from a childhood accident she’ll tell you about sometime, eyes like badges saying have a nice day hiding signs saying I’m lonely help me. Mousy blonde hair tied up with giraffe-striped shoe laces from the zoo gift shop.
“You can get your tickets for the show at the entrance.”
She’d worked there for two months and, knowing almost nothing about the Maricopa County Zoo just off I-10 between Saddleback Trails and Lowes, just made it all up as she went along.
“We don’t have penguins,” muttered a voice from a shadowy corner at the back of the room. It was a quiet voice with a strange air of authority, the way a teacher might tell the class they’ve had an hour already and there’s only half an hour to go.
Hannah slid the window closed and rang the bell with a little hand tap of achievement.
“It’s not a typewriter love,” said Rosa. “The bell, you know, it’s for them to get your attention and you have to leave the window open for them to use it,” and then without taking a breath she hissed into the radio, “Don’t- Martin don’t go in there. Oh god.”
Rosa wore big headphones with only one ear covered and the chunky spiral cord rested in her line of cheap coffee-stained novels she bought from goodwill because she had a secret crush on the woman that worked there and would spend no end of loose change on junk just to hear her say good morning.
“What did he do now?” Hannah laughed, filing her nails, oblivious to the customer knocking on the glass behind her.
Rosa was still focused on the radio. “Control to Riley, come in Riley.”
“kkkshhhh - receiving what do you need control? - kksffffsssszzz”
“Riley take a first aider to W4 would you please?”
“Riley isn’t a first aider,” muttered the voice from the back of the room.
“I know I was asking her-” Rosa turned to Alex who nodded. “Didn’t I just ask her to-”
“The handbook says only qualified first ai-”
Rosa lobbed a desk tidy at the back corner of the room, sending pencils and pencil shavings and ball point pens and dust in all directions.
“The Otter Pool?” said Hannah through the window in a charming giggly voice that made anything she said sound like a fun activity, “you want to go up Main Street, see?” She traced the route on the back of a zoo map with her nail file, “Yes! Past the burger stand that looks like a pickle now ain’t that a dream? Go on up, up past the tigers, be sure not to miss those now - they’re a main attraction here at the county zoo - and you’ll find the otters in no time at all. Y’all have fun now!”
Hannah rang the bell and slid the window closed.
“So what happens when the little light comes on?”
Alex, who was covering his hand in yellow highlighter ink, had a question.
“What?”
“Because that one’s flashing there.”
“Memory of a-it’s flashing on four, ok? That’s the radio channel someone is calling in on.” Rosa pointed them out one by one. “One is maintenance, two, animal handlers, three and four are the park wardens, five is the local police.”
“But there’s six.”
“Six is broken.”
Rosa reached up to the panel on the wall and clicked a dial to the number four. Alex moved to press the red speak button on the joystick-shaped microphone but Rosa batted him away. There was a pause while Rosa listened to the receiver and then she dryly replied, “Tell her we lose children all the time.”
“What a lovely balloon!” said Hannah at the window. “And you’re all on your own? How exciting! Go see the penguins.”
Ding. Slide.
Rosa leaned back on her chair and took a long drag of a broken cigar. “I need an Alpaca-ccino.”
“Caffeine’s a killer,” said the voice at the back of the room, louder now, and it made everyone jump, “the handbook says-”
“Alex,” Rosa held up a dollar bill with her eyes closed, “just go.”
“See if they have any Double Iced Stingrays,” asked Hannah.
Alex turned up his nose at the single dollar bill in his hand, then grabbed his bag and wallet from beside the chair and trundled towards the door.
Rosa turned to the dark corner. “Are you-”
“I’m on break.”
• • •
“Was that your new guy I saw queuing up at The Watering Hole?”
Hakeem put his bag down at his desk. Where Rosa’s monitors looked out at the animal enclosures, the Reptile House and the Rainforest Pavilion, Hakeem’s station oversaw the footpaths, the car park and the restaurants. His desk had been sat empty all morning. So far he had missed:
A fight between the head chef of the Bison Diner and the delivery driver, over the expiry date on the burger buns.
The Big Red Road Train spinning out of control and careering into the postcard stand outside the gift shop. Four tourists posed in front of the chaos and asked the driver for a group photo.
A group of kids running away with the head of the Mason Moose Mascot.
“Chaos on the screens this morning,” said Rosa. “Catastrophes. All over the park.”
“Good morning to you too Rosa. It is definitely busy. School Holidays.” He bounced into his chair and span around to review the screens, on the opposite wall to Rosa’s station. How Hakeem, a tall, confident man with thick black glasses and cosy oversized jumpers came to work here was less of a mystery than Rosa. Hakeem had spent his youth dreaming about working with animals. His desk was full of every possible species of anything and everything. Plastic figures, wooden carvings, cuddly toys, it was surprising there was anything left in the gift shop. His dream, his real dream was to work with the birds. He loved them all, especially if it was big and colourful. He’d studied hard for his zookeeper finals but found it hard to stay focused under pressure, so after failing three times he decided to take any job that came up in the zoo. The security camera monitoring desk was as close to the animals as he could get, so for the last four years he’d stared at them all day long through black and white screens.
“He’s still queuing?”
“Hmm?”
“Alex. He was still queuing?”
“Like I said, it’s a busy day. He’s got his own drink though so my guess is he forgot yours and had to go back.”
“It’s March,” said the corner.
“I knew it was too much to hope for,” said Rosa, turning the dial to number two and lighting up a smoke. “Ok pumpkin I’ll get some more delivered to you now. Elephant Encounter, right?”
“So why are the kids off school?” said the voice from the corner again.
Hakeem kept his eyes fixed on the screens and pressed a pencil against the top of one of the monitors to level it.
“Spring break.”
“I love spring break,” said Hannah. “A few years ago all the girls went to-”
“Rosa, what’s the traffic been like from maintenance today?” asked Hakeem.
“Pretty normal honey, nothing out of the ordinary.”
“The crowds are making it hard to see but it looks like there’s a few jobs that need doing. Trash on the corner of E9 and E10 and there’s a broken fence by the pelicans.”
“I’ll report it,” said Rosa, flicking the dial to one.
“God it’s busy today.”
Hannah had been talking about spring break the whole time. “-it was such a blast and when we came home we couldn’t stop saying it to each other. Sir would you mind awfully if I,” she interrupted her own story to burst out laughing, “would you mind awfully if I sat on your lap.”
Alex opened the door adding streaks of sunlight to the dark and smokey room.
“Leave it open a little would you?” Hakeem asked without turning around.
“Yay my stingray!”
Alex addressed the man in the corner directly. “There’s a man out here says the café is out of ice.”
A man dressed in County Zoo overalls jumped to his feet from the shadowy corner and looked ready for action.
“He said it’s out of ice? That’s what he said that the café is out of ice?”
“That’s what the man says it’s out of ice.”
The man in the overalls left the room in a hurry and slammed the door behind him. The room jumped and Hakeem shook his head.
“Nine o’clock,” said Hannah at the window, “but the last road train to the car park leaves at eight-thirty.”
“Nine-thirty.” said the room.
“Here you go,” said Alex, passing the novelty drink to Hannah, “it looks gross.”
“-and don’t forget to check out the Arachnid Theatre! Here’s your map, bye now!”
Ding.
“It does not,” she said, taking it from his hands. “It’s chocolate, raspberry and chilli. That’s the sting.”
Slide.
“You’re really friendly to the guests.” said Alex, “you’re so happy.”
“Well they’re taking a break from life,” she said, taking a big long sip through the straw. “And what better way to take a break than to be around the animals.”
“How long have you worked here for?”
She screamed.
She screamed a horror movie scream. A horror movie scream where the director spins his hand at the actress and says, give it more, give it more. A horror movie scream where the red italic text slams into the trailer saying THIS YEAR NOWHERE IS SAFE.
Freeze time.
The movie’s on pause.
This is Betamax so it’s a snowstorm of static. Hannah’s screaming face bent by the bell curve of white pixel lines overlaid with codes and timestamps.
The playhead is caught between frames and Hakeem has both reacted to the scream and not reacted to the scream and he faces in two directions like a two headed monster and it flickers and flashes and Rosa’s head is up and also down and her face is contorted like a mirror broken by a drunken punch.
Play.
• • •
“What is that?” Hakeem muttered under his breath.
Rosa pulled off her headphones.
“What, is that-”
“This,” said the man in the overalls, “is a dead man. Dead as a victorian mouse. Dead.” He wheeled the upright body on a hand truck to the centre of the room. Hannah backed up against the wall and Alex held up his arms to protect her from death.
Rosa barked. “Why are you bringing that here?”
“He’s not a that, he’s a him. A hum. What’s the past tense of him?”
“Who is it?” Hakeem asked, standing up from his desk.
The workman tilted the handles forward and pushed the dead man onto the table at the centre of the room.
“What are you doing? This is not- Hannah, please stop screaming.”
“Who is that?” Hannah asked, crushing her cup between her fingers.
“He died a few minutes ago.”
“Who is it?” the room demanded in unison.
The workman walked back to the door and picked up a dark blue rucksack. He placed it carefully next to the face down corpse and said, “I have no idea.”
“What do you mean you have no idea?” said Rosa. “You’re ferrying him around like he’s a stack of sodas!”
The workman walked to the shadowy corner of the room, picked out a few things from a cupboard and walked out into the daylight. The closing door swung spirals in Rosa’s cigar smoke as she reached for the radio and turned the dial to five.
There was a quiet click.
“Did he just lock the door?” Hakeem asked as he walked towards it in wide strides. He rattled the handle. “He locked us in.”
“Call somebody to let us out!” yelled Hannah.
Rosa closed her eyes. “Everybody stay- I’ll call one of the maintenance team to come and open the door.” She turned the dial back to one. “Whoever’s clos-Alex!”
Alex had been rummaging in the dead man’s bag and was holding a brown leather wallet.
“Alex put that back,” said Hakeem, “That belongs to him, uh, hum.”
“Him,” said Rosa. “Not that anything could matter less right now yes Harriet are you close? Come and open the door to the Security Monitoring Station would you?”
“What’s his-” started Hannah before she started to cry, “does it say his name anywhere?”
“I don’t want to know his name,” Rosa barked. “Let’s just get him out of here.” She spoke into the radio. “Thank you see you soon.”
Alex whistled.
“What is it?” Hannah stepped forward to look.
“It’s somebody else’s stuff that’s what it is,” said Hakeem.
“There’s a lot of blood on the floor here,” said Alex.
The door rattled. Then a click, and someone turned the handle.
Rosa felt her body turn cold when she saw the wheels of the hand truck and the cold dead toes of another body pushing the door open.
“NO.”
Rosa banged the desk and her world turned to static snow and shredded black and white pictures that flickered on the monitor of her whole world and the tape danced over the playhead and she had visions of tomorrow and a long bath next week with the late night news and something near a railway station next month and then next year she would fall down and need a doctor and the year after and the year after and then she was standing with the girl of her dreams from the goodwill store crying and the tape stopped skipping and she realised it was the girl who was crying and she was at a funeral. Her funeral and her death and her screen on pause. At the end of her life.
The world snapped back to colour.
The workman walked forward a few paces stretching the wire between his belt and the key in the lock. He tilted the upright truck just like any man at work. Bricks from a wheelbarrow. Bird feed after the big show.
The second body hit the floor with an awful thud and Hakeem, hand on his forehead, he said, “Why are you-”
The workman muttered. “The handbook is very clear on procedure in the event of-”
He was gone with a click of the lock before anybody knew what to say or what to do.
“Now, right now,” said Hakeem, “channel five. Rosa. Now.”
Rosa span around and leaned over the desk. She clicked the dial with one hand and grabbed her headphones with the other.
She couldn’t get her vision out of her mind. The railway. Hospital lights. The girl.
“Requesting police assistance.”
The funeral.
It felt hot and stuffy and awful in that room. A pool of blood gathered under the table and around the body on the floor like the moving shadow of a sundial under the hot summer sun.
“Hannah please open that window. Please.”
“kkzzccczzzzz…dispatch please state your trade identification number…kkkzzzzchhh”
Rosa replied, “395, Area D7.”
“kchhhzzzzzzz…ok Maricopa County Zoo please state the nature of your call.”
Rosa looked up at the room. Hakeem was at Hannah’s desk with her head buried in his chest. Alex reached over to explore the dead man’s pockets.
“Reporting the death of two visitors,” said Rosa.
“Look. These men have been shot.”
“What did you say?” Rosa asked, turning to Alex while the radio buzzed questions she didn’t answer.
“These men have been shot.”
“Reporting an active shooting at Maricopa.”
• • •
Hannah stared at the dead bodies. One on the table, one on the floor. The sound of Alex and Hakeem fighting was a loud radio in a distant car and she felt cold and scared. Alone in a way she’d never been able to quite push away but this time was heavy. Those bodies, they were here and not here and predictable and also what if they moved right now.
Hakeem grabbed the wallet from Alex but Alex didn’t let go and they were caught in a grapple that span them both around and Hannah was knocked by sharp elbows and her world too jumped from the tape spools and flickered through her life like it was a magazine at the checkout counter.
There was a party and someone wore blue it looked like baby blue was it her? And then someone looked like they were shouting but the movie was silent and now black and white and the blue dress was gone. Now a telescope. Now a strike in the bowling alley. Now a man in a dark green shirt with a smile like iced coffee in July held her hand and they ran when there was no need for running. Then he had lost his hair and his weary smile was even more beautiful and she saw herself and her hair was short and silver and she had crows feet from a life of deep joy and that’s what it said on both of their gravestones a life of deep joy and they died together in the same year in the same bed in the same headspace of memories.
“I’m sorry I’m so sorry,” said Hakeem, “are you ok?”
Hannah blinked into that dark room and looked at her friend and nodded and smiled a smile like she could already see the green shirt with rolled up sleeves in the distance.
Ding.
“Nope,” said Hakeem, sliding the glass closed on an old fleecy couple holding a map and walking sticks meant for mountains.
Rosa clicked the red talk button and moved the dial back and forth.
“It’s gone dead.”
In a single motion, the door clicked, swung open and the workman span and stood with his back to the door like the door was a dam and he was a dam and soon there would be water.
He spoke, breathless, no air reaching the words.
Rosa let go of the dial. “What are you, what did you-“
“There are too many.”
“Too many what?”
“There are rules you know? We even have a code. Ice is code for a deceased guest in the zoo and-” the workman put his hand over his mouth and stared with wide eyes.
“Why did you bring them here?” asked Hakeem.
“The handb-“ he put his arm back against the door, “I couldn’t remember what to do next so I just bought them here.”
“These men have been sh-”
“I know,” said the workman, “and there are so many more.”
• • •
“I can- Rosa I can see them,” said Hakeem, staring at the monitor. “Three of them. Rosa look, by the-“
“They’re just kids,” whispered Rosa.
Hakeem stood so fast his chair clattered on the ground, “I’m going out there.”
“Don’t!” Hannah yelled. The workman kept his back to the door, his hand on the handle the other outstretched.
“People need help!” shouted Hakeem, louder than he’d ever heard his own voice. “Let me past.”
The workman only needed one forceful arm to keep Hakeem at bay and he kept the other on the door with deep fear in his eyes.
Alex was in Hakeem’s chair staring closely at the monitor, trying to make sense of the chaos they could neither see nor hear except through black and white lines. “They’ve put a plank or something down across the gorilla trench,” he said.
“What do you-“ Rosa moved back to her station to watch as the screen flicked from camera to camera. “And they’ve smashed the glass at the Reptile House-”
“And they’ve, can you see? They’re cutting open the fence at the-”
“At the end of the Safari Tour. They’re letting them all out.”
The camera at Hakeem’s desk circled back to the beginning, and Alex let out a stiff, strangled noise of fear and his eyes turned black and his heart became his future and he could see his name on the glass door of some glass office in a glassy tower above all other towers. The lights went out and his life long friends and coworkers were applauding so loudly with the candles and happy retirement icing that his tape skipped back to a rowing boat and the rain and laughing and children out of control and he didn’t care. Dinosaurs in crayon on wallpaper and school forms filled out over a hurried breakfast and big windows over mirror lakes all the way to the mountains.
“Alex,” shouted Hannah, “what is it what did you see?”
“They’re right outside.”
When the pounding on the door started everyone could feel the tapes of their lives as it tangled in the black machine and ended a run of holding it in their hands. Of thinking about it whenever they wanted. Of wondering how it ends.
When the door broke through against their cries, every arm every foot every heartbeat worked as one and as a barricade against the darkness until they could no longer hold it back. When the door broke through there were only black lines. Lines like all your eyes can see when they’re failing or the sky is done or the world is ending. Flicking madly, scanning upwards as the camera falls into darkness and your heart is broken and you blink to fix it but all you can do is watch and be hypnotised.
Hakeem said something to the three boys who were now standing in the room with no sound or colour. One of them spoke and it wasn’t in any language they understood, neither was it a language they didn’t because it was death and death spoke first and Rosa closed her eyes and knew it was over.
She knew it was over and she knew if Hakeem had stayed alive for a moment longer he would have seen his future too in the same cruel joke of hope and happiness and maybe his father was healthy and his dogs were running in the garden and his friends would be arriving soon ready for a week of laughing and no sleep. But instead he blinked and changed nothing and saw Alex join him in a haze of bright colours and soft focus abandoning the life he had just seen pass before his eyes but would never be.
And Hannah stared at Rosa. And she knew Rosa had been and would never be again. Because Rosa was gone because Rosa’s eyes were somewhere else now because Rosa’s future was a lie.
Freeze time.
The movie’s on pause.
This is a bloodshed so it’s an ugly pause. The room looks like someone shredded a photograph and couldn’t put it back together, but you can still make it out clearly enough.
There are lines everywhere the light pours in.
And as long as time stays frozen, Hannah will live forever. She will live forever standing in front of the bright window thinking about her time at Maricopa County Zoo during the summer of ’95. Maybe she’ll be thinking about the friends she made and the lost people she helped along their way. The man in the dark green shirt she would long to meet one day and grow old with and then fade happily to white like old tangled branches. As long as the movie is on pause, she will live forever and maybe time will save her from what is happening and what would have happened.
Ready?
Play.