Saturday's Storyteller: "Maybe if he were more careful, things like that wouldn't happen so often."
by Belinda Roddie
Maybe if he were more careful, things like that wouldn't happen so often. But as it were, Todd's truck had been totaled, a lion cub had escaped from the zoo as a direct result of said crash into the wildcat exhibit, and an enraged zookeeper with a greasy coif and a long-handled taser was after him.
Now he was crawling on his hands and knees through tall grass, not knowing how close he was to the zoo after so much running. The entire city was surrounded by forest and valleys, almost nestled into nature like an ugly metropolitan steel tumor. He could be lost in the thickening landscape, for all he cared, with no food or water. The only two things he had on him besides his hoodie and his baseball cap were his dead zoned cellphone and a crushed can of beer - which he had been unapologetically drinking at the time he had barreled his way past the lemur cages and disturbed the lions.
Poor lion cub. In the last minute of pulling himself from the smashed pick-up, Todd had decided to name it Freddy, after his youngest cousin. Freddy was a nine-year-old genius with a little pink nose and shaggy orange hair, so Todd supposed he looked more like a tiger than a lion. Still, Freddy acted very morally upright around his oldest cousin, lecturing him every time he went for an IPA instead of an O'Doule's. Looking out for his better character, he said. The little snot.
Pushing the brim of his cap over his eyes to stave off the glare of the sunset in front of him, Todd finally had the decency to stand up, though not without noticing a horridly sharp pain slithering its way down his right thigh. Trauma from the accident, no less. He was still woozy from the cheap liquor store booze, but only now was he beginning to feels aches and twinges all over his body. He began to limp more and more as he walked, hoping for something - anything - to provide him shelter. He didn't want to think of the zookeeper, with the oily long hair and the lightning rod. She was definitely not his type, anyway.
Todd found a tree nearby and propped himself against it. A few yards away, a dozen or so spotted cattle were chewing on dry weeds. Their bulbous eyes kept swiveling this way and that, and the man wondered if they had mad cow disease or something. When one decided to look at him, he pressed himself further against the trunk, trying to appease the literal dairy queens. Or were they steer? He was no good with animals. As obviously shown through his earlier antics.
When given an opening, he kept walking, thinking about how it had all unraveled. First, his third ex-girlfriend in a month had shown up on his doorstep, already shit-faced at three o'clock in the afternoon. Drool ran from the corner of her mouth as she pleaded for the guy to take her back for one more good night, and in return, he could raid her refrigerator for every last can, bottle, jug, or pitcher of beer. Todd, thirsty and already horny, thought this could be a great idea. So he slurped the make-up off his ex's face and took her to his truck. Lo and behold, he already had a stash of beer in the back, so the two had started drinking, up until the point that she vomited out the window and then promptly asked to be left at the bus stop.
Do better, Todd, Freddy would say. Do better.
Todd let the poor gal go, knowing he was happy enough masturbating to the spare Victoria's Secret catalog he kept in the glove compartment. There was a particularly sexy picture of a young British lady in neon blue lingerie, sticking her ass in his general direction and winking over the curve of one of her plump buttocks. Todd, mid-drink, starting scanning the magazine and immediately started jerking off - while still driving. And there was the climax to his already shitty story.
Todd was a no-good, drunken, post-pubescent, college-flunking, unmotivated, slovenly, sex-maddened, unlikable twenty-five-year-old man. The thing was, he knew that.
He felt his knee go numb beneath him and he slipped into the dirt, his fingers scraping against crusted earth as his leg shuddered under his weight. Wiping sweat away from a sideburn, Todd could only imagine that he had hurt himself more than he previously thought. The sun was lodged behind a hill now, giving him little light, and he almost wished he could be dead until he saw a glow from the corner of his right eye.
He could not have been luckier. Stuck right in the middle of nowhere was a small, nondescript shack. If someone was it, he or she could help. If someone wasn't, at least he had a place to hide and spend the night until he could find his way back into the city.
As long as the zookeeper didn't get there, first, that is.
***
This had been the hardest hit to the zoo yet. Seven years prior, an elephant had stepped on a worker's hand and pulverized the bone, and Lucille Deville O'Neill had been blamed for it. Two years later, a monkey had thrown feces right into a young boy's eyes, and it had resulted in a near-impossible but bad infection that left him in the hospital for two months. O'Neill had been blamed for that, too.
Now, the zoo's prized new cub - Sir Leonard Nimoy, O'Neill had decided to call him - had gone missing. All because some wasted jack-off had decided to ruin her year again. With luck, she would be demoted. In reality, she'd be fired. Unless she could bring the asshole to justice.
Brandishing her custom long-handled taser (she had been a pretty kooky cop in her youth), the graying Lucille Deville O'Neill twisted her wide-brimmed hat against her greasy black hair and pursed her lips, feeling her fat black mole stand out just below her flared nostrils. Scrambling to keep up with her as she inspected the outskirts of the city was Nestor Havenshire, a stubby little janitor who had decided to join her and most likely, in her mind, wanted to bone her after each shift.
"Boy, oh, boy," he kept stammering, rubbing his hands together as the sky grew inkier and inkier. "With all this happening, the zoo may not re-open for weeks."
"Don't remind me, you little brat," sniveled O'Neill, looking over her nose at the seemingly idyllic wooded area.
"Sorry," squeaked Nestor. "It's just that...well, Mister Mallory will have quite the mental breakdown upon seeing this. And Mister Franklin...well, he's itching to take your job."
"Not after he let that hyena into the kitchen, he ain't getting it," the zookeeper hissed. "Stay focused, will you?"
Sighing loudly and nasally, Nestor kept silent. O'Neill could only imagine where the scumbag had stumbled off to. With the way he had banged up his legs, it was a wonder he could walk far. Perhaps she had to knock on doors and see if he had snaked his way into someone's house, whether by asking or by sneaking into an unlocked window or other miscellaneous entryway. She almost considered asking her own daughter, but she had never really liked her.
Still, was it worth the effort? She was close to her little house, anyway. With luck, the child could have a meal on the table. O'Neill deserved it. Nestor could have crumbs.
***
Todd banged on the round little door and was disoriented to see a fat-lipped, wide-eyed young woman answer it. If he hadn't known any better, he would have thought she had come straight from the Victoria's Secret catalog. The catalog that, he remembered, he had left back in his abandoned vehicle.
"Hello," the woman mused. "Fancy seeing bums outside the city. Sorry that I don't have any change."
"It's okay," grumbled Todd. "Do you have a phone?"
"Anyone you need to call?"
"Buddy of mine. I call him Tank."
Tank was the opposite of a tank in terms of figure, but he got the name because he could chug six pitchers of beer without breaking a sweat or the seal until hours later. He could help a brother out. They had been roommates in college, then coworkers at the deli in the nearby grocery store. Tank was now an accountant, however, and hadn't exactly shown up for the regular parties. Unlike Todd, he had grown up. Freddy would be so proud.
The woman looked the guy up and down, clucked her tongue, and nodded.
"Go ahead, but make it quick," she said. "Oh, and don't mind the cub."
"What cub?"
The growl Todd received, as he stepped into the tiny house, startled him. Curled up in the corner, licking himself, was Freddy the lion, his ears folded back and his tail audibly thumping against the wood. Everything else, from the salty-sweet smell of soup yo the sound of dripping water in the sink, didn't matter compared to the furry little man-eater against the wall.
"That...that's..."
"Poor guy must have escaped from the zoo," the woman said without skipping a beat as she went to the stove and started stirring a pot where the soup must have been. "I think it might be Sir Leonard Nimoy."
"No, that's Freddy."
"I'd seen him before. My mom always wanted me to see him. I wonder if I should let her know he's here."
"His name is Freddy."
The woman lifted her head from the steam and frowned at Todd. "Who's Freddy?"
Todd shrugged and gave up. "Nobody."
He found the phone on the kitchen table and dialed Tank's number. Apart from the professional voicemail, Tank didn't reply. Todd called his mother and got a busy tone. His father was probably at work. His sister didn't speak to him.
"No one else?" asked the woman as he exasperatedly slammed down the receiver.
"Fuck. I need to sit down."
He did, his leg quaking as he did so. The woman let the ladle slip into the soup and went to tend to him. She clucked her tongue again as she examined his thigh.
"Pulled tendon, I'd imagine. You'd be in more pain if it was torn or a bone was broken. Who beat you up?"
"A zoo cage," muttered Todd.
"Zoo cage? What...is that why Sir Leonard Nimoy's here?"
"That is not Sir Leonard Nimoy!"
"I can't believe this." The woman threw back her head and laughed. "You better get out of here, then. I'll have to make sure you leave before my mother comes and electrocutes you."
Todd's eyes bulged. "Who's your mother?" he stammered.
"The zookeeper, of course!" giggled the woman. "Lucille Deville O'Neill. I never got along with her, but man, did she try to get me as passionate as she was. If you ask me, her brain's a bit overbaked, but I'm sure she'll be all right once she finds Leonard."
The cub's ear twitched as he looked at Todd. Todd shuddered and looked at his hands.
"She won't...tase me, will she?"
The woman smiled. "I won't let her," she said. "But if you did what I think you did to the zoo, you may want to ask for some bail money."
"I..."
"But first, dinner," she chattered, as she returned to the stove and sniffed the soup. "You like butternut squash?"
This week's prompt was provided by Arden Kilzer.
Maybe if he were more careful, things like that wouldn't happen so often. But as it were, Todd's truck had been totaled, a lion cub had escaped from the zoo as a direct result of said crash into the wildcat exhibit, and an enraged zookeeper with a greasy coif and a long-handled taser was after him.
Now he was crawling on his hands and knees through tall grass, not knowing how close he was to the zoo after so much running. The entire city was surrounded by forest and valleys, almost nestled into nature like an ugly metropolitan steel tumor. He could be lost in the thickening landscape, for all he cared, with no food or water. The only two things he had on him besides his hoodie and his baseball cap were his dead zoned cellphone and a crushed can of beer - which he had been unapologetically drinking at the time he had barreled his way past the lemur cages and disturbed the lions.
Poor lion cub. In the last minute of pulling himself from the smashed pick-up, Todd had decided to name it Freddy, after his youngest cousin. Freddy was a nine-year-old genius with a little pink nose and shaggy orange hair, so Todd supposed he looked more like a tiger than a lion. Still, Freddy acted very morally upright around his oldest cousin, lecturing him every time he went for an IPA instead of an O'Doule's. Looking out for his better character, he said. The little snot.
Pushing the brim of his cap over his eyes to stave off the glare of the sunset in front of him, Todd finally had the decency to stand up, though not without noticing a horridly sharp pain slithering its way down his right thigh. Trauma from the accident, no less. He was still woozy from the cheap liquor store booze, but only now was he beginning to feels aches and twinges all over his body. He began to limp more and more as he walked, hoping for something - anything - to provide him shelter. He didn't want to think of the zookeeper, with the oily long hair and the lightning rod. She was definitely not his type, anyway.
Todd found a tree nearby and propped himself against it. A few yards away, a dozen or so spotted cattle were chewing on dry weeds. Their bulbous eyes kept swiveling this way and that, and the man wondered if they had mad cow disease or something. When one decided to look at him, he pressed himself further against the trunk, trying to appease the literal dairy queens. Or were they steer? He was no good with animals. As obviously shown through his earlier antics.
When given an opening, he kept walking, thinking about how it had all unraveled. First, his third ex-girlfriend in a month had shown up on his doorstep, already shit-faced at three o'clock in the afternoon. Drool ran from the corner of her mouth as she pleaded for the guy to take her back for one more good night, and in return, he could raid her refrigerator for every last can, bottle, jug, or pitcher of beer. Todd, thirsty and already horny, thought this could be a great idea. So he slurped the make-up off his ex's face and took her to his truck. Lo and behold, he already had a stash of beer in the back, so the two had started drinking, up until the point that she vomited out the window and then promptly asked to be left at the bus stop.
Do better, Todd, Freddy would say. Do better.
Todd let the poor gal go, knowing he was happy enough masturbating to the spare Victoria's Secret catalog he kept in the glove compartment. There was a particularly sexy picture of a young British lady in neon blue lingerie, sticking her ass in his general direction and winking over the curve of one of her plump buttocks. Todd, mid-drink, starting scanning the magazine and immediately started jerking off - while still driving. And there was the climax to his already shitty story.
Todd was a no-good, drunken, post-pubescent, college-flunking, unmotivated, slovenly, sex-maddened, unlikable twenty-five-year-old man. The thing was, he knew that.
He felt his knee go numb beneath him and he slipped into the dirt, his fingers scraping against crusted earth as his leg shuddered under his weight. Wiping sweat away from a sideburn, Todd could only imagine that he had hurt himself more than he previously thought. The sun was lodged behind a hill now, giving him little light, and he almost wished he could be dead until he saw a glow from the corner of his right eye.
He could not have been luckier. Stuck right in the middle of nowhere was a small, nondescript shack. If someone was it, he or she could help. If someone wasn't, at least he had a place to hide and spend the night until he could find his way back into the city.
As long as the zookeeper didn't get there, first, that is.
***
This had been the hardest hit to the zoo yet. Seven years prior, an elephant had stepped on a worker's hand and pulverized the bone, and Lucille Deville O'Neill had been blamed for it. Two years later, a monkey had thrown feces right into a young boy's eyes, and it had resulted in a near-impossible but bad infection that left him in the hospital for two months. O'Neill had been blamed for that, too.
Now, the zoo's prized new cub - Sir Leonard Nimoy, O'Neill had decided to call him - had gone missing. All because some wasted jack-off had decided to ruin her year again. With luck, she would be demoted. In reality, she'd be fired. Unless she could bring the asshole to justice.
Brandishing her custom long-handled taser (she had been a pretty kooky cop in her youth), the graying Lucille Deville O'Neill twisted her wide-brimmed hat against her greasy black hair and pursed her lips, feeling her fat black mole stand out just below her flared nostrils. Scrambling to keep up with her as she inspected the outskirts of the city was Nestor Havenshire, a stubby little janitor who had decided to join her and most likely, in her mind, wanted to bone her after each shift.
"Boy, oh, boy," he kept stammering, rubbing his hands together as the sky grew inkier and inkier. "With all this happening, the zoo may not re-open for weeks."
"Don't remind me, you little brat," sniveled O'Neill, looking over her nose at the seemingly idyllic wooded area.
"Sorry," squeaked Nestor. "It's just that...well, Mister Mallory will have quite the mental breakdown upon seeing this. And Mister Franklin...well, he's itching to take your job."
"Not after he let that hyena into the kitchen, he ain't getting it," the zookeeper hissed. "Stay focused, will you?"
Sighing loudly and nasally, Nestor kept silent. O'Neill could only imagine where the scumbag had stumbled off to. With the way he had banged up his legs, it was a wonder he could walk far. Perhaps she had to knock on doors and see if he had snaked his way into someone's house, whether by asking or by sneaking into an unlocked window or other miscellaneous entryway. She almost considered asking her own daughter, but she had never really liked her.
Still, was it worth the effort? She was close to her little house, anyway. With luck, the child could have a meal on the table. O'Neill deserved it. Nestor could have crumbs.
***
Todd banged on the round little door and was disoriented to see a fat-lipped, wide-eyed young woman answer it. If he hadn't known any better, he would have thought she had come straight from the Victoria's Secret catalog. The catalog that, he remembered, he had left back in his abandoned vehicle.
"Hello," the woman mused. "Fancy seeing bums outside the city. Sorry that I don't have any change."
"It's okay," grumbled Todd. "Do you have a phone?"
"Anyone you need to call?"
"Buddy of mine. I call him Tank."
Tank was the opposite of a tank in terms of figure, but he got the name because he could chug six pitchers of beer without breaking a sweat or the seal until hours later. He could help a brother out. They had been roommates in college, then coworkers at the deli in the nearby grocery store. Tank was now an accountant, however, and hadn't exactly shown up for the regular parties. Unlike Todd, he had grown up. Freddy would be so proud.
The woman looked the guy up and down, clucked her tongue, and nodded.
"Go ahead, but make it quick," she said. "Oh, and don't mind the cub."
"What cub?"
The growl Todd received, as he stepped into the tiny house, startled him. Curled up in the corner, licking himself, was Freddy the lion, his ears folded back and his tail audibly thumping against the wood. Everything else, from the salty-sweet smell of soup yo the sound of dripping water in the sink, didn't matter compared to the furry little man-eater against the wall.
"That...that's..."
"Poor guy must have escaped from the zoo," the woman said without skipping a beat as she went to the stove and started stirring a pot where the soup must have been. "I think it might be Sir Leonard Nimoy."
"No, that's Freddy."
"I'd seen him before. My mom always wanted me to see him. I wonder if I should let her know he's here."
"His name is Freddy."
The woman lifted her head from the steam and frowned at Todd. "Who's Freddy?"
Todd shrugged and gave up. "Nobody."
He found the phone on the kitchen table and dialed Tank's number. Apart from the professional voicemail, Tank didn't reply. Todd called his mother and got a busy tone. His father was probably at work. His sister didn't speak to him.
"No one else?" asked the woman as he exasperatedly slammed down the receiver.
"Fuck. I need to sit down."
He did, his leg quaking as he did so. The woman let the ladle slip into the soup and went to tend to him. She clucked her tongue again as she examined his thigh.
"Pulled tendon, I'd imagine. You'd be in more pain if it was torn or a bone was broken. Who beat you up?"
"A zoo cage," muttered Todd.
"Zoo cage? What...is that why Sir Leonard Nimoy's here?"
"That is not Sir Leonard Nimoy!"
"I can't believe this." The woman threw back her head and laughed. "You better get out of here, then. I'll have to make sure you leave before my mother comes and electrocutes you."
Todd's eyes bulged. "Who's your mother?" he stammered.
"The zookeeper, of course!" giggled the woman. "Lucille Deville O'Neill. I never got along with her, but man, did she try to get me as passionate as she was. If you ask me, her brain's a bit overbaked, but I'm sure she'll be all right once she finds Leonard."
The cub's ear twitched as he looked at Todd. Todd shuddered and looked at his hands.
"She won't...tase me, will she?"
The woman smiled. "I won't let her," she said. "But if you did what I think you did to the zoo, you may want to ask for some bail money."
"I..."
"But first, dinner," she chattered, as she returned to the stove and sniffed the soup. "You like butternut squash?"
This week's prompt was provided by Arden Kilzer.
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