Zoo

• Natalie Evans, Grade 10
• Short Story
• 2015

Mist clambered up the iron bars, leaving a damp, metallic smell in the air. The purple sky was calm today, grey clumps of rock drifting to and fro. A fairly large crowd had gathered in front of the bars, poking and laughing.

‘034-2 don’t put your hand inside! You don’t know if it will come back out in one piece!’

‘036-5 come here! It’s time to go now!’

‘Isn’t that one funny! It’s face looks so ugly!’

‘That one’s boring, it’s been sleeping the whole day!’

One blue-skinned child with a rather long tail was quite intrigued by what lay beyond the bars. She pulled her father closer and ventured up quite close.

‘179-6 can you buy me some shuga? I want to feed that one.’

The child cupped her 8-fingered hands while her father handed her some small white crystals. Then she ventured right up to the black bars until she could go no further.

‘Creature! Come closer! I have something for you.’ she whispered, smiling gently.

A rather forlorn looking figure from within the cage looked up for a second from the box that it was staring at intently in the corner.

‘That’s it! Come on now, I won’t hurt you.’ urged the child.

‘Why don’t the aliens have tails 179-6?’ the child asked her father, ‘and what is that box which all of them are staring at?’

‘Maybe these creatures evolved without the need to have tails.’ answered the child’s father, ‘The boxes are an ancient device called a television. These creatures are compliant enough with the keepers if they are occupied with one of them.’

The child kept holding out the shuga for the creature, encouraging it to come closer. It picked it’s way cautiously forward, past discarded wrappers and rubbish. It stopped just out of reach of the shuga, not wanting to put its hand outside of the bars to take it.

‘These creatures love shuga,’ continued the child’s father, ‘that’s what contributed to their demise, that, and the eyefone.’

‘An eyefone?’ breathed the child, ‘is that what the others are touching as well as watching the big box?’

‘Yes. It keeps them from having too much social interaction.’ Her father wandered off then, to the next pen.

The child cocked her square head to the side as if considering something, and then thrust her hand inside the cage, through the bars.

The creature jumped back at the sudden movement, but then slowly crept forward again, it’s dirty feet shuffling along the floor. At last the creature licked the shuga off the child’s hand gratefully.

‘My name is 054-2. What is yours?’

The creature turned its hazy eyes to the child, unable to focus for a minute, but it didn’t answer.

‘Come on, the cage can’t stifle your voice can it? I’m your friend, you can trust me.’

But the creature still was silent, afraid.

‘You know, friends? You and me?’

Suddenly some recognition flickered in the creature’s eyes.

‘You friend, me Zachariah, not alien.’