I REMEMBER WATCHING THE ELEPHANTES DIE. It was the last living animal in the world! We were all huddled on the couch, my younger brother, Chase, was sitting on the floor. There was no room for him. My little sister, Britain, was sitting on my lap, screaming about how she wanted to see the "pony channel." To her, every show or movie on the TV was a "channel." My father sat shirtless, shoeless, and sockless — beer in his hand. My mother had my youngest brother cradled in her arm. Koda was sleeping — he was a quiet baby.
We all huddled in the too small living room. "The rich get richer and the poor grow poorer!" My father'd say. He'd take another swig of beer.
"Brit, hush!" Chase would yell. The Afrikkun elephantes was huge, with big ears, knobby tusks on each corner of her mouth, and a trunk. Her name was Mrs. Jumbo — very original. She was of the largest species of elephantes — and the hardest to keep happy and healthy in captivity. Ironic that Mrs. Jumbo, one of the hardest animals to keep alive in a cage, would be the very last to cling to life.
Apparently, as the announcer explained, Mrs. Jumbo had been on a heavy dose of sedative, anti-depressants, and painkillers for that past couple of months. "After months of deliberation..." The announcer continued, "...The government has decided to let Mrs. Jumbo off of her cocktail. They've agreed to allow her to do whatever she wanted — until she couldn't."
Immediately Mrs. Jumbo seemed very delighted to be off of her meds. She ran around in a circle, ears flapping and trunk up, reaching for the sky. She was trotting around her enclosure as if it was the first time she'd seen it and she was but a year old. She even seemed to want to play with some of her handlers, which came as a surprise, the announcer was explaining, "...They are delighted that Mrs. Jumbo came out of her drug-induced stupor with such a good attitude."
"It's very rare that elephantes' come out of these things happy. We were sure that Mrs. Jumbo would follow similarly and exit her — stupor, uh, angry and violent." One of the keepers explained. She seemed to have a hard time with the implication of the word "stupor." Like it made her look bad, but she couldn't find another word fast enough.
There was a silence as Mrs. Jumbo stopped romping around. It was as if all of her activity caught up with her body and she realized she was much too old and sick to have run around like a foolish calf! Mrs. Jumbo teetered near the fencing of her enclosure. Through the live feed you could see a crowd of people eagerly leaning over the fence, craning to see Mrs. Jumbo. Everyone had their Palm devices out, recording whatever action the elephantes was going to perform. There was so much tension in the air. Everyone knew that something unorthodox was going to happen. Greedy onlookers, hoping their video becomes viral so they can cash in their views.
"Can we watch the Pony Channel now?" Britain asked.
"No!" My brother and I said at the same time. This prompted little miss princess to start howling again. This time she was kicking, so I threw her off my lap, which only caused her to wail more, claiming I'd hurt her knee. Frustrated, my mother got up, grabbing Britain from underneath one of her arms, at the armpit, and half-dragging, half-lifting her, into another room. My father drank another big gulp of beer. Fermented alcohol wafted through the air, which grew worse when my father belched. This is where he'd reach his hand out and ask me or my brother to "pull his finger."
Mrs. Jumbo tried running around the perimeter of her enclosure. This time she ran with less enthusiasm, less speed. Something in the creature's intelligent eyes knew what was going on. This was to be her last clear memories after months of drug induced fog. Her trunk swung happily from side to side. She seemed surprised that she could still make it gesture so dramatically.
My mother returned. She was standing in the doorway, Koda still swaddled in her arm. Britain must be standing in a corner somewhere. "What happened?"
"Nothing yet," my father replied.
"It's dying," I said. I was suddenly pissed off. "And all of those people can't wait to cash in their views! That creature — the last of its kind — is going to die." I didn't want to watch the inevitable, but I couldn't look away. It was like being a witness to a car crash.
"Ethan!" My mother gasped.
"It's true," Chase said.
"I never did get into them damn computers." My father said. "My brother, he was smart, he always said that anything you have ever done on a computer, some one, somewhere, can find it."
"We know dad," My brother and I, again, said at the same time. We did that a lot.
"Oh my god!" My mother cried.
On the TV, Mrs. Jumbo had fallen over on her said, her feet kicking in the air as if the fall had caught her by surprise. I saw my brother slightly inch closer to the screen. We needed a bigger TV. The Afrikkun elephants was visibly exhausted. Her excited exertion was too much for her body. Time seemed to slow down and speed up at the same time. Like events were happening too fast, but your hyper-sensitive mind was replaying everything in slow motion in your mind. This is when it would happen.
The zookeepers started moving quickly, swarming around Mrs. Jumbo. Everyone had their specific job to perform. Stethoscopes and needles were produced from almost nowhere. Mrs. Jumbo began breathing heavily. She was scared. Her trunk reached weakly, trying to caress who the announcer had earlier claimed was the elephantes' main trainer. There were tears already falling from this trainer's eyes. She did nothing to hide them. In fact, as time went on and Mrs. Jumbo's breaths became ragged, the trainer stopped helping. The others continued to move frantically around her, but she had stopped. She simply wrapped her arms around Mrs. Jumbo's neck, letting the elephantes drape her trunk over the trainer's shoulder. They both knew this was the end.
I felt stray tear crawl down my cheek. Chase was silent. Even Britain seemed to hush for a moment. The world was holding its breath.
"It is with greatest regret — that I announce — Mrs. Jumbo has been pronounced dead." For some reason the TV started playing the national anthem. I never knew that the anthem could be so sad.
"Oh my...!" My mother gasped quietly. Her hand was over her mouth. My father took the last swig of his beer.
By this time, the main trainer was practically laying the upper-half of her body over Mrs. Jumbo's flank. She was openly, hysterically, crying. All of the other trainers and personnel stepped back, allowing them to have their moment together.
I wasn't sure if I could hold myself together.
I was half-expecting Britain to say something insensitive — but she didn't. She just sat there, eyes glued to the TV like the rest of us. Except, perhaps. my father, who was probably internally deciding when was the best time to get up and grab himself another beer.
"What is that?" Chase said.
I focused on the TV screen. I had spaced out, lost within my own thoughts. I was focused on not crying like a childish school girl. I was holding it together! But there, on the screen, was a black swarm, like thousands of flies. It was so thick it was like a cloud of black smoke that moved with a purpose! I wanted to tell them to look out!
"Oh my Mother!" My mother said.
"What the fuck!"
The swarm reached the reporters and trainers. By the time they realized what was coming their way, they were already breathing the black swarm into their noses and mouths! Everyone was waving their hands like they were swatting at flies, not that flies existed anymore. Everything was dead, every creature — except this swarm. "Are they bugs?"
"They can't breathe!" My brother said. It was true, everyone on the screen had fallen to the ground, clutching their throats, coughing, desperate for air! The cameraman must have hit his stand on the way down because the viewpoint flung sideways.
"What is going on?" My father said, seemingly asking the announcer as if he could hear us.
The national anthem was still playing. Everyone was rolling around, faces blues, some reaching their hands into their throats, grabbing handfuls of black flies or spores or whatever they were! People that had been out of camera shot, could now be seen. All of them were fighting off their own oral invasions, but some were still trying to help the ones turning blue.
Just as quickly as the swarm appeared, the swarm collective seemed to disappear. The fallen were breathing again, still expelling black spores from their nostrils and mouth. They were glad to be alive, relieved. The first to expel the flies were getting to their feet. Brushing off their knees and throwing up in bushes.
"Holy shit!" Chase said, jumping to his feet, pointing. My father was about to slap Chase on the head for his language. But my mother saw. In the background of the camera shot — like before, where the swarm had appeared from, came another...But this swarm was a cloud, a storm cloud of spores or flies! It was enough to cover the entire sky.
Someone else saw it too. Someone with power. The TV screen went black. After a could seconds, that felt like an eternity, it went to colors and the emergency signal sounded with its annoying, blaring ennnnnt ennnnnnt ennnnnnnt's. "Robbie," my mother said.
"That zoo is nowhere near us." My father replied.
My mother: "It was so big."
Chase: "What was that?"
Me: "I don't know."
My father got to his feet, "Everyone just calm down." My sister started to cry. This wasn't a "I want attention" type of cry, it was a fearful cry. Something had scared my sister. Or perhaps some primal instinct was telling her to fear. I felt nauseous.
There was a banging sound on the window, like a small pebble had been chucked at it.
My father, already on his feet — on his way to the kitchen for a beer, no doubt — started towards the window. Another crash sounded, this time a different window. "Robbie?" My mother inquired. Another crash! Chase was walking towards a window. Crash! Crash! Crash crash crash crash! It was like bb gun bullets were being shot at the windows. "Robbie!"
"Shella, take the kids into the basement," my father said carefully. I was standing now. I didn't want to see what was crashing at the windows, but I couldn't force myself to look away. I found myself, on autopilot, walking towards the window.
"Boys! Get away from the windows!"
My father's warning was already too late! "Fuck," my brother said simply.
"Boys!" My mother screamed, Koda in her arm and Britain attached to her hand. Britain was till crying. The ennnnnt ennnnnt of the TV was still blaring. And a tiny crack, a hole, was forming in the window that my brother had bore naked, pulling the curtain aside. Thousands and thousands of winged black spores were slamming their oval bodies against our windows — all of them.
"Ethan! Chase! Get downstairs!" My father ordered. He had a baseball bat in his hand. I didn't even know we had one of those. It had been fashioned into a deadly weapon with nails halfway hammered into the top and a saw partially exposed.
Chase and I were at the top of the stairs when the first lonely spore squeezed through the first sizable hole in a window. It float there, as if thinking, or smelling, or sensing. There was no telling how it found prey, but there was body language, the way the wings flapped from lazily hovering to speedily with intent that told the creature had found its dinner! It flew straight for my father. "Dad!" I cried, but my mother had grabbed me from behind. She wrapped a face mask around my mouth and literally yanked me towards the stairs to the basement.
Chase already had a mask on. Her was helping our mother to get me to follow them. "Dad!" I screamed, my voice muffled by the mask. "Dad! No!" I tried slapping them off of me. Spores — hundreds of them were pouring into the house now. They quickly swarmed my father, his face invisible behind their black cloud of body and dragonfly wings. My father had his hands around his neck after he took a few useless swings with the bat.
My mother and Chase pulled me down the stairs. Chase locked the door above us. He had towels ready to seal the bottom of the door. I could hear Britain and Koda crying downstairs. I yanked my mask off. "What was that!?" Chase blocked me from the stairs. "Dad! No! Dad!"
"He's going to be okay." I knew my brother didn't know anything else to say. But I was working on primal instinct. I was in survival mode. I was pissed that Chase could lie to me so bluntly. I punched him in the face. His face swung back, nose bleeding — I could see blood gathering on the other side of his mask. Chase just held his face, but didn't hold it against me. "I'm sorry," I said.
"I know." Chase just grabbed me and pulled me into a tight hug.
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