A tiger. A beautiful, deadly beast. He
walks. He purrs. His paws heave upward, then
drop with low smacks, every muscle and tendon
in his body visible.
The tiger stalks, slowly and silently, down
the aisle of a bodega.
Everyone will remember the time in
New York when the tiger escaped, and instead of
scrambling out of the city, he went to the closest
corner store and strolled through the aisles.
He was misunderstood in his home of
the zoo: the days stretched out long and left him
bored. Everyday the same breakfast, the same
lunch, same dinner. He missed his jungle home,
missed blending in, missed the bloodletting in the
hunt.
The tiger was the second biggest attraction in
the zoo. The seals, with their endless energy for
a show, never tiring of flapping their flippers or
barking loudly,
occupied first.
The tiger did not
hate everyone–just
the seals with their incessant vocals. They cheated
and faked every single action they performed.
One time, the tiger witnessed the seals
getting fed. Whilst they were waddling around
and the keeper threw slimy fish, the seal with the
spots startled him so much that he dropped the
fish and ran out the pen. The poor man, just trying to do his job until he got harassed by the seals
and gave them three days worth of fish.
This made the tiger enraged. The seals always got their way, always figured out how to put
somebody under pressure then seize what they
wanted.
The tiger was the second biggest attraction in the zoo. Sometimes the tiger would
purposely play around, either jumping or leaping
methodically to hear the oooo’s and ahhh’s from
viewers. He listened to their stories about him:
One day he did parkour along the rocks of
his cage. It was sick!
I heard the tiger went for the staff instead
of the food he was given. That’s why you should
never mess with wild animals.
On other days, he would lay still for
hours, stretched out as if he had been shot dead.
The people would peer in, wait and wonder, and
leave, unsatisfied. The tiger did not care what they
thought.
The tiger sat there in boredom, but the
seals never stopped performing, playing with their
inflatable beach balls and barking, always barking.
He hated them. They were hooligans with boasting
egos wrapped in blubber. The tiger vowed once, if
he ever got into their pen, he would rip every single
one of them apart.
The day of his Houdini, he was moping
on top of his rock when he heard it – or lack of it-
the familiar lock clicking shut. He watched as the
young guard strolled to the next pen. The tiger
craned his wide neck to see the tropical parrots
perched on their sticks, nestling their heads inside
their feet for sleep. He saw the gorilla slowly gnawing on something stuck in his tooth.
After a few minutes, the tiger stood, stretched his limbs,
straightened his head, and stepped toward the door.
His food was to his left, his freedom in front of him.
The tiger stepped. One paw. Then the next. One
paw. Then the next, until his muzzle met the steel
plate that held the door latch on the other side. He
nudged, and the door swung.
The tiger waited, thought, peered around
to see if any other animals were witnessing his
getaway. But no, they slept. He faced the open door.
The night was his.
The tiger started to jog. He’d always envied
the guards and people walking about the zoo with
nothing holding them back. He saw lights; below
them was an archway: the entrance to the zoo. He
padded silently forward into the city. The unknown
prickled his mind; he had not been outside of his
pen in a painfully long time.
The tiger started to run. Stretching,
pouncing and bounding, powerfully covering
ground, further and further away from the confines
of the zoo. Although the tiger’s instincts had been
dormant for quite some time, when he ran, his
predator mind awoke.
The tiger kept on exploring the city, one
block at a time. He wondered if the zoo keeper had
come back yet to check on the animals, if they had
noticed his absence.
If the seals had tried to escape, they wouldn’t have
been able to wobble past the gates. The gorillas could defi –
nitely make it out of there one day: pick the lock, open the
gate, maybe even close it behind them, and say goodbye to the
zoo; walk for blocks and enjoy the city life. Maybe the tiger
could give them some inspiration if he ever returned to his
pen.
The tiger tried to imagine how citizens walk through
the city. He came upon a place that had pictures of meat on
the windows. He sat there. He couldn’t smell the meat, but he
saw it, so where was it? He noticed a blinking light on a door.
The curious cat nuzzled the door with his head; it
swung open. He stepped through the door and was enclosed
by the bodega’s rough and warm stiff air.
The tiger’s claws brushed over the polished bodega floor as he walked two squares at a time, navigating his way
through the aisles. He smelled a hint of meat and followed its
scent to where the prey might lay.
The tiger ignored the voices of people gathering at
the front of the bodega, hungry to see the wild beast.
The tiger found the source of the scent: beef jerky. He was
soon ripping apart package after package, munching contentedly.
Faint sirens got louder: someone in the store had
raised the alarm, the zoo had been notified, and the police
rushed to the bodega as fast as they could. The tiger heard a
faint announcement outside, something about staying away
from anywhere in the radius.
The tiger rose from his meal. He was stumped. Did
he go back to the zoo? Did he try to run away further to find
some woods? By now, the seals would have announced to all
of the animals that he was gone. Maybe they would even envy
the tiger for his escape.
The tiger turned his head. Glass. A sad-eyed reflection of a powerfully cunning beast stared back. Looking
around, he saw crowds and crowds of people. All staring. All
waiting for his next twitch.
The tiger pushed himself up and started to walk. The
entirety of the crowd backed up. The tiger figured they were
being courteous, until he felt it: tiny stabs of needles injected
deep into the layer of his fur, piercing his skin.
The tiger roared. He growled and hissed. It hurt, but
he couldn’t do anything about it. Before he knew it, he was
tired. Ever so tired. He slid back, forgetting about leaving, and
shut his eyes.
***
A tiger. A beautiful, deadly beast. He walks. He purrs.
His paws heave upward, then drop with low smacks, every
muscle and tendon in his body visible.
The tiger struts – proud, confident, unstoppable. He
is the number one attraction in the zoo.