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Elephants
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I had always wanted to be a short story writer, like Shirley Jackson. Just a story or two that were so terrifying and shocking that people would still be talking about your work 200 years after you are dead. In the end being a writer didn’t fit in with my grand plan to live a totally self-reliant life. Writers are like actors, they need constant validation and applause, praise and reviews and sales to constantly reassure them that yes, they are good, they are talented, someone does love them. It was sort of like a replacement for drugs or Jesus or whatever your opiate of choice was. And I didn’t like it. I already had too many vices to go around trying to please the huddled masses.
Every so often though, I did write something I could feel proud of. I don’t like needing an audience. And without an audience, all the writing in the world is meaningless. Someone needs to know about it, to care. Miss Flynn said this was the best story I ever wrote, and she’d know since she’s read pretty much all of them:
I grew up in Africa, the oldest son of a fine old family. Fine old families were treated just about like royalty here, well fed and adored by everyone else who lived here. Different tribes with different ways, but we respected them all. With mutual respect and co-operation, we lived harmonious and full lives. Lots to eat, beautiful land, loving, close families who learned and lived and mourned together. Not everyone was as distinguished as out own clan. We had more than most, but none among us ever went wanting.
I would wake in the morning and follow my mother to the watering hole. Many other families, like the Gibbons down the path, had their servants fetch the water and do other daily chores, but our mother assured us it would build character. It was very important to know how to sustain oneself in case of, well a million different things, mother would say. You never knew when you might have to stand up for yourself, to take care of yourself or your family. Family, mother said, was the most important thing. Family loyalty and togetherness.
We lived all together, my family, in our comfortable home in the plains. My great grandmother, her sister, my aunt and two uncles, mom and dad, my cousins and my little sister. It was far away from where everyone else lived, but we liked it that way. Quiet, peaceful, leisurely lives we led. Every day, bathed in happiness and sweet breezes.
We were out walking and collecting fruits and flowers when a tribe of strangers approached us. They seemed very small and silly with their hopping and shaking and loud screeches we could not understand. They pointed something at mother and grandmother, some sort of stick. We would all be lost without mother and grandmother! Father stood between our family and these violent savages, and that’s when we saw that they had weapons, like those we had seen the previous season. I ran to help Father when suddenly I felt something sharp and burning, then another, and another. I was dying…dying…I saw my family running away. “Run!” I was thinking to them “run away…get away…” and I lay down, knowing I would never again wake up.
But I did wake up. I woke up alone in a box made of metal and bars. It seemed to be moving, jostling me around. I stumbled and felt something wet on my foot. I would have fallen had this cage been large enough. A bowl of “drinking water” sat stagnating at my feet. It was muddy now from having my foot inside it. My captors clearly believed me to be a non-entity.
I banged on the walls, I called for help, but none came. Surely someone would hear me if I yelled loud enough. They left me here for days with nothing but some wilting greens and the filthy bucket of water.
What did these savages want from me? When would I ever see my family again? I’d have to reason with them, give them what they want. If I’m patient, and see this thing through, surely I’ll return home to my mother and father. I know they must be in terrible worry for me.
Finally on the third day one of them came into the small room with me. I wanted to stand up tall and rage at him, but I restrained myself. He crept toward me slowly like I might kill him at any moment. I couldn’t really do that though, I didn’t know where I was. The thick ropes tied to my feet told me I wouldn’t be able to escape without help from someone, but who? I did not speak the language of these savages; and they appeared to have no desire to learn mine.
Better to just give them whatever they wanted and then they’d let me go. They had no reason to want to keep me here. When he tried to put his hand on me, I recoiled out of panic. What right had he to touch me? He got right up after that and left me alone, I thought. It did seem like they were afraid of me, maybe I could use that to my advantage later on.
A few minutes later, he returned with another one like him. They threw cold water on me and started yelling things I couldn’t understand. Pushed me and shoved me all around. They hit me with a kind of stick that felt like lightening; sharp and terribly painful. They made me walk behind them carrying huge packs while they walked ahead laughing at me. They laughed at me a lot over the weeks they had me there. Keeping me in that, well it was a cage really, no other word for it. It was hot and dry and they only gave me dirty water to bathe in. Once after I bathed in the water, they laughed and said that was all I was going to get to drink all day. It was like these savages lived to humiliate me. Why was I here? What had I ever done to deserve this torture? Still, if I can only figure out what they want I can live through this and get back to my life. And as the weeks went on, all I could do was dream of my family, my home, and my old life. My wonderful old life before these savages took it away so as not to have to carry their own packs. They were horrible, ugly savages, and I was sure I could die of sadness or loneliness if I was kept away from my family much longer.
After the equinox, the savages took me to the forest. I was sure they’d let me go since I’d worked so hard for them. But instead they used their fire stick on me again and made me help them take down trees. Imagine, taking down the trees it had taken hundreds of years to grow. Poor beautiful forest ruined by these savages, and I had to help them. I cried for the forest as well as for my mother that night. And when they gave me my usual ration of rotting fruit and browning greens and a dead animal of some kind. I told them my whole family was vegetarians from way back, but they didn’t listen. Those savages couldn’t even communicate properly. I was truly trapped here. But as I listened to their ramblings, I began to understand their crude language.
On and on it went like this. I stayed here past my birthday, past the solstice, past many, many moons. My mother would be so worried for me, so afraid. She might even think me dead by now, poor mother. I looked up at the stars through the bars in my horrible cage and hoped my mother was looking too. “I’m sorry to scare you like this mom, I’ll come home to you someday.” I would tell the sky, hoping it would reach her and Dad. But with each passing moon, my hope was less and less. The savages woke me in the middle of the night, and locked me in here before the evening meal. I never got more than rotten scraps, even though they seemed to want me to work, and this treatment was making me weaker and weaker. I didn’t want to go on living here, with no cool breezes and no family. I had to get out, or die trying.
The savages took me out for torture every morning. Cold water, screams and screeches, making me do degrading, awful things. Two days after the full moon, they brought out a whip and cracked it in the air. Again and again they’d strike me with it, while I screamed and rose up to my tallest height. They were so tiny, these savages, no wonder they had so many implements of torture. Cowardly, horrible savages, kidnapping the young for their forced labor and needless torture.
I went back to my cage to think. I thought and planned all through the night. Finally I realized that they were only as strong as their devices, these tiny little savages. This time I would stay awake, wouldn’t they be surprised when they came to wake me for torture and find me already awake!
I stayed awake and alert all through that night. I paced back and forth as quietly as I could. Don’t fall asleep, stay awake, be ready, this is your only chance. If this didn’t work, who knows what they might do, and when if ever, I would be able to go home again.
Finally I saw one of them coming out to my cage with a bucket of water. “ This is the last time”, I think to myself “the last time you come here with your gift of filthy water….the last time you treat me like I’m nothing, like I belong to you…the last time.”
He opened the cage door. I stood up as tall as I could and came down on him hard. I struck him again and again, screaming like I was utterly mad. I felt like insane as well, violence and hatred rushing out at me as I rendered my torturer motionless. Another came to his aid, without even thinking I gave him the same treatment. It settled his hash I can tell you! Another came out, and another and another, I ran past them all as they screamed and threw things but were powerless in the end. It seemed an easier fight this time than when they took me from my home. I felt stronger now, better able to fight. Still, I was a little surprised to see so many savages dead on the ground.
My fight finally over, I ran and ran while frightened savages scattered out of my way, there sure were a lot of them. So many savages, enough surely that they could have cut down their own trees, and carried their own packs. I looked back once at my cage, which had tipped onto its side during my escape, I was running back to my family…Mother! Dad! Grnadmother! I’m coming home.
I ran and ran into the night, looking and looking for my beloved family, for anyone I remembered from out tiny home in Africa. After a few days of walking, I saw the Grandfather of the Gibbons. He told me the savages came looking for me, and tried to take my cousin when they couldn’t find me, but that my Dad and Grandmother ran them off. Grandmother was very strong that way. The savages were calling me a killer, and saying there was a price on my head. I didn’t really care about that, but asked Gibbon to take me to my family. He said he would, and without another thought, I followed him into the jungle.
But that Gibbon would betray me as well. He led me to even more savages, these looking oddly different than those who attacked my family in the spring. These looked like they hadn’t seen sunshine ever in their lives, pale and sickly they looked. And they had those sticks. The sticks!
I ran away as fast as my legs would go, but they were so tired and sore from my months of torture and slavery. Before I could hide or elude these new savages…I was a captive once again. As they pulled me into yet another cage, I saw two of the Gibbons we thought had left the plains to seek their fortune. It seems that they had been taken by these sickly savages, and now they were being released…in exchange for me. I didn’t want to blame the eldest Gibbon for this, but I couldn’t help feeling hatred. Seething hatred. Not only was I still a captive but I had killed, I had murdered for my freedom and still had none. All I had succeeded in doing in all this time is learning to speak and read the language of the savages. So the next week, when my own picture appeared in their newspaper I was able to read about my own crimes in the headline “Worker elephant kills 3 in forest abatement project”.
So he killed a bunch of people for his freedom but still didn’t get to be free. He was going to get sent to a circus and kill a few more people before actually going free. But that made the story start to drag.
And the elephant killing all those people was for nothing, except now he’s a murderer and hates himself. They say murder can never be justified, but the elephant and I disagree. Anyway, Miss Flynn said I should cut out that part, so the story would have a happier ending. I suppose it is nicer to think that the elephant goes home to his family and is happy again. But come on, how often does that kind of thing ever turn out well?
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As I've mentioned, this is the only chapter that I think really stands alone in this novella. Actually, it's almost a novel now.
And my 2005 Writers Market and Agents guides will both be here soon!
Can you feel it? The excitement!
In less exciting news, I have yet to get my hands on a box of those Peanut Butter Chocolate Girl Scout Cookies. I really need to find some before they are all gone. If you know the whereabouts of any cookie hoarding scouts of some kind, do send her my way.
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I'm not sure if the thing about girlscout cookies works.
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I'm quite certain that elelphants would love girl scout cookies; maybe not as much as I do, but some.